Trigger locks, smart guns. It's getting to the point where more people will just say f*** it. Smith your own. Any Open Source guns out there? What do you need? A Lathe, a milling machine, some metal stock. Decent tools are affordable for most of the middle class. Smith your own gun. And of course, the government will know even less about homemade weapons.
Think I'm full of it? Why did the Israelis drop a load into some Palestinian metal shop a few months ago? Yep. They were allegedly making weapons. I imagine any competent machinist (look in your local Yellow Pages under "Machine shops") could take the plans and make a decent piece. Actually, since they would be finely crafted pieces receiving more attention than usual, I bet they would be excellent guns. Unfortunately, a lot of not-so-expert machinists would try too, and fail.
Remember back-alley abortionists? Same idea.
So what will they do next? Lathe control? Then only criminals will have lathes.:)
I have no idea what a Blue Devil is, but if paper is anything like charcoal briquettes, you shouldn't ignite it after pouring on LOX. According to people who have experience clowning around with LOX one briquette is "approx equiv to 1 stick of dynamite".
The only thing this piece needs is Yoko Ono rhythmicly chanting "number nine, number nine, number nine..." in the background. IIRC, it was John Lennon who did it originally, but he's gone so Yoko seems like the ideal stand-in for this. Bonus points if Yoko will do it live for a full 24 hours at least one day; as opposed to simply sampling an endless loop of chants.
since it chose the path of socialism it has been relegated to the dustbin of history
I wish this were true. If enough software gets trapped in the GPL potential well, IT will end up like law or teaching. Deprived of an honest source of revenue, programmers will turn towards the IT equivalent of the NEA and the Public School system. Only the rich will be able to afford Private Software. You will have to pay out the wazoo for software that's easy enough to use, or you'll have to hire an expert (someone like a lawyer) to make sure that you are interacting with the computer according to its convoluted logic (convoluted laws).
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it! Just look at other professions where the intellectual property is Public Domain, and ask yourself if you like the working environment and/or product of those professions.
Public Software Foundation is the most accurate name I think. They even bear some passing resemblance to PBS in that they beg for funds and have T-shirts and stuff with logos as trinkets. Likewise, their software continues to appeal to a smaller slice of the community, many who believe the content is better because of the way it's funded. I haven't looked, but surely there must be an FSF totebag someplace.:)
Of course they would never change the name because "Free" is such a powerful marketing word, and nonprofits market just like everybody else. They just do it with a different style.
Want a flying car? Move to Texas or Oklahoma. Wait for Spring.
Congratulations Mr. Marthouse, You've Invented...
on
The End of Solotrek
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Congratulations Mr. Marthouse, You've Invented The Train.
OK, time to share a personal experience. This happened my last year at UVa. Every engineering student was required to do a 4th year thesis, something that was held out as a matter of pride in the rigor of the engineering program. Mine was some software that tracked the edge of the roadway using splines. The justficication for it was that one day we'd have real-time MI that could drive cars, and that the technique might be a useful component of that.
Another student was designing a "volkscopter" personal flight vehicle.
Well, we all had to give presentations (including a Q & A) during the development phase, and I made the Trent Lott-like blunder of bringing up the fact that such things were routinely advertised in Popular Mechanics when I posed a question.
We were all so busy, I never got around to settling this issue with people. I just got some hardball questions during my Q & A from students sympathetic to the other guy, which I was able to dodge. The thesis project taught me as much about politics as it did about engineering!
To the student who was designing the volkscopter, I apologize. There was no need to drag you into what I was discovering.
First, I realized that asking an entire class of engineering students to do an "original" research project is just ridiculous. Truly original ideas are like winning lotto tickets.
Second, the whole idea of self-driving cars is just ridiculous. Why not just put us all back on trains? Well, we subsidize roads way too much. We're plunking $1 billion into the Springfield Interchange near where I live, and although I must say it has added some aesthetic flair to Springfield, it won't solve gridlock. Contrast this with how much money Amtrack needs to stay afloat. I don't think Amtrack was even asking for $1 billion, wasn't it $900 million? Regardless, the point is that if we subsidized rail at the same rate per passenger and freight mile that we do highways, things would, in my opinion, be a lot better.
So, at some point it dawned on me that my thesis was really just inventing the train. I thought to myself, Congratulations Mr. Marthouse, you've invented the train. Of course I never disclosed this to my profs. I wanted to graduate. My only form of protest was to refuse to change the title of my thesis to "An application of rational uniform bezier splines for edge detection in an automated navigation system" from "Snakes: an improved method for highway line following". I swear I'm not making this up. The prof was really disappointed I wouldn't give it an important sounding title.
What does this have to do with personal flight? Well, it's only safe if you build a train-like system where the vehicle "locks on" to a program and the user doesn't actually have to pilot the vehicle.
People will not accept this in a personal flight system until they accept it in a ground transportation system. If you try to do it in a ground system, they will ask themselves the same question I asked: why not just use trains.
The answer, like many things, has more to do with politics than engineering.
--Steven Marthouse, UVa ENGR '93.
p.s., the story of my "greening" after graduation has some interesting turns, but you'll have to buy my book.:)
...because they had cycled through all the users and few people ever switch *back* to AOL. That includes yours truly, who tried the free offer, ran one minute over, and then got zapped with monthly charges for service I never used. IIRC, that was the subject of a class action in the mid or late 90s, just before the internet bubble, and was one of the reasons I thought AOL was a bad investment. Silly me. If I had sold near the top... oh well... you know.
My reasoning was that companies that screw their customers will eventually fail. Of course that may be true, but if they can screw their customers and get away with it for several years, they are a good investment, provided you know when to get out.
I'm not saying that AOL screws customers now. It sounds like they learned a lesson. I think their problem is that they appeal to new users, then the new users move on. Either that, or they move off. Yep, that's right. People who don't need the interenet. Imagine that.
How about presenting all the items in the list on one page of plain-vanilla HTML with a simple abstract for each item and a link if we want details? Otherwise, this thing is broadband only.
M: We would like to be placed on your DNC list please. (or) He has a policy of not responding to telephone solicitations and would like to be placed on your do not call list.
T: (sometimes they will try to continue pitch/patter, etc.)
M: (re-assert request and hang up no matter what).
The only problem with this is that I need to add "this is he" regardless of who they are trying to reach. That way they can't weazel out that I'm not really the guy. Obviously this doesn't work if you're a guy and they are trying to reach a female, but fortunately (or rather, unfortunately) that's not a problem in my house. Otherwise I think this script is pretty good for 1. expending a minimum ammout of my precious time, and 2. accomplishing the purpose of asserting DNC rights.
Now, what I really need to do is put a recorder on my line because companies are still calling back; especially United Air Temps (a local HVAC contractor). They are the worst offenders. With a recording, you can maybe nab them with that legendary $500 judgement.
Sometimes I get cheeky and ask to hear their pitch, then just leave the line open to see how long the T speils without realizing that I've walked away. On rare occasions, you can come back a minute later and they are still speiling, but usually it's not too long before the phone makes that bzz-bzz-bzz noise indicating you are off hook.
I suspect I'm not as old as you, but I remember some of these, especially the cap bomb. The cap bomb eventually blew itself apart after I got tired of just putting one cap in there. How about water rockets? Fill it up with water, 10 pumps IIRC, release, WHOOOSH! They'd go almost out of sight. The end of that toy was similar to the cap bomb: 20 pumps and a hard landing on asphalt. It was just cracked, and still worked, but couldn't hold full pressure anymore. Then of course you can't forget delta darts--little styrofoam gliders that could be hand-thrown or launched with a rubber band. They were cheap enough for me to buy them 3 at a time in gradeschool. They were usually lost or stepped on before they got scuffed enough to be replaced. Don't get the big styro-gliders. One of my disapointments was saving up for one... probably 7th grade by then, and on the 2nd outing a gust of wind plowed it into a hillside and snapped a wing clean off. A total loss.
I think a good troll divides the moderators passionately on both sides, causing them to expend a maximum number of points to moderate the post. Preferably, the post remains with a fairly high mod. One of my best efforts expended something like 25-30 mod points, but only stayed level 1. I've had others that burned mod points and finished at 3 or 4, but never that many mod points.
Believe it or not, I think you are actually touching on an important issue--the Slashdot moderation system is linear and that limits us. It should be possible for Slashdot users to choose to regard trolling as positive or to regard any other type of moderation as negative, positive, or weighted. Only like humor half the time? Weight Funny 0.5. Totally serious? Funny gets weighted -2.
So how about it Slashlords? How hard would it be to add a "weighted" moderation preference to our comment viewing so that we can choose to inhabit obscure corners of the N-dimensional "modspace"?
One guy who used to work for Microsoft prefers Linux for some applications. In related news, a former salesman for Pfizer likes to save money buying generic drugs, a retired Ford line worker drives a Toyota, and RMS uses BSD sometimes (yes, the last one is true and verifiable).
Why can't they just sell it without support? If I were an IBM shareholder, I'd want to know why they are just throwing away money, even if it's not very much. If reproducing the CD-ROMs isn't economical, they could estimate their annual sales and auction off the rights to distribute that number of CD-ROMs to somebody like Cheapbytes. I don't see why *any* software package has to "just disappear".
Hey... wait a second. We used to get TV for *nothing*. Yep, just pulled it right out of thin air. They always told us this worked because the advertisers paid for the commercials we saw. You know, "Plop-plop Fizz-fizz, oh what a relief it is" and so on and so forth.
Then, these guys come along and show stuff without commercials through a cable, but only in wierd places where you can't get TV out of the air. Then, people start to realize that paying for TV to avoid the commercials and get a clean picture is a good business and around 1985 or so they started selling it here in my 'burb.
Now, by the time we got the cable a lot of the channels on it were showing commercials. Icing on the cake, you know. There were 3 different "tiers" of cable and for a while we had the one with HBO and some other premium channel. We eventually decided that premium stuff wasn't worth the extra dough, so now most of the stuff we see on cable has commercials.
Not only that, some of them have annoying little flash demos during the show, right on top of the screen. Speedy was a nice guy, he understood how things work. He never would have stepped on top of the show. Speedy must be fizzing in his grave.
So, what's the point? Well, I liked the idea of paying for cable so we didn't have to get commercials. Whatever happened to that? If they want to make us pay for the cable and still watch ads, maybe we'll just start pulling TV out of the air again. There's still some TV in the air. Really, with FOX, the big 3, PBS and AM talk radio that's probably more media exposure than we really need anyway. You've got all your political perspective there, and some pretty good mind-rotting tripe for when you just don't feel like thinking.
Too bad the cable companies couldn't make the "pay more for better signal and no commercials" business model work. Must be YABBM.
You know what? No great loss. Yep. That's right. It'd be like 1988 when almost nobody had net access. I was a courrier back then. There were signs all over the place that said "FAX It!" because that was a hot new thing back then. We routinely made pickups of mag-tapes to deliver to computer centers. You know the old bit about never underestimating the bandwidth of a truckload of CD-ROMs? Well, never underestimate the bandwidth of a college drop-out making a run with a cardboard box full of mag-tapes.
Now, of course we are a lot more dependant on the 'net these days and some things would get disrupted. But GET REAL. Very little data would be lost because it's backed up... much of it still to tape. Some businesses like Amazon would "lose" a lot of sales, but the bottom line is that Junior will still get his socks and that copy of "Harry Potter and the Delayed Puberty" for Christmas. It just might be late, that's all.
Making the Internet a national security issue is like making Showtime, Playboy and the Home Shopping Club cable channels a national security issue.
When I was a dialup tech we used to make fun of people with no backup ISP who said "my business depends on the internet". The idea of someone depending on just one ISP was funny, but the idea of depending on the Internet was funny too.
Now, I seriously doubt that someone logging onto the net--through 802.11 or otherwise--could bring it all down. Even if they could, the outtage wouldn't last long. This is big business now, and you know the problem would be isolated in hours. In the meantime, as Scott Adams said "the network is down, but everybody else is happy".
If money wins elections, why aren't Steve Forbes and Ross Perot building their presidential libraries now?
Unfortunately I don't have a list, but apparently several candidates in the last election won despite the fact that their opponents outspent them. That was an important election too, with the major parties spending enough money in some states to buy every voter several dinners if they had bribed the voters directly.
Campaign finance reform is not the answer. What the linked article alleges sounds a lot like quid pro quo and if they can prove it, we need to prosecute it. That's right--actually punish the criminals instead of punishing the innocent. Actually punish dirty politicians instead of taking free speech away from people. I know that must be a strange concept, what with us taking away fair use to prevent piracy and all; but I still have faith that when we get too far from Common Sense, something will pull us back. Hopefully it can be done without having some sort of revolution; 1776 was kind of a fluke as far as revolutions go. Most revolutions suck.
For now, the ballot box is still secret. We can still use it. We still do. We are not all fools. Thank God, and may god truly bless America. Please? God? Are you listening?
With the first part of your response, it's a little off base because the previous poster had posited that a lack of diversity in Free Software would be a good thing. Those who make that argument usually base it on the need to conserve community resources, namely the limited developer talent pool. Ooooh.. SNL is on, the faux Tom Ridge is speaking. This might be good. gotta go.
This is one of the major fallacies of Free Software/Open Source advocacy. Whenever presented with the argument that the GPL might tend to discourage entry and result in a public monopoly, the advocates always counter that "the user has the source so they can customize it".
Now, ask yourself how many times you've heard somebody say "I don't like the way this program does ______" and you could counter with "have you tried brand X? It does _____ differently".
Now, if there is no brand X, or if the only way to obtain brand X is to have it custom built to your specifications, how many SOHO users are going to learn C or hire a consultant to give their office suite a "different feel"? Slightly less than 1% of half of none of them. They will all be trapped because, while there will be some variations, fundamentally all suites will be the same.
...is that there are two slashdot mentionings of the two drives in the case in the article in case whoever reads the article about the two drives in the case doesn't understand that there are two drives in the case.
I'm pretty sure that Underwriter's Labs will reject an appliance that melts the user's face off everytime they use it. I've seen their checklist and "[x] make sure face doesn't melt" is on there. So, it will be hard to find any contractor who will install it, or any major department store that carries it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think maybe I'll wait for "Learn Anime in 21 Days".
Trigger locks, smart guns. It's getting to the point where more people will just say f*** it. Smith your own. Any Open Source guns out there? What do you need? A Lathe, a milling machine, some metal stock. Decent tools are affordable for most of the middle class. Smith your own gun. And of course, the government will know even less about homemade weapons.
Think I'm full of it? Why did the Israelis drop a load into some Palestinian metal shop a few months ago? Yep. They were allegedly making weapons. I imagine any competent machinist (look in your local Yellow Pages under "Machine shops") could take the plans and make a decent piece. Actually, since they would be finely crafted pieces receiving more attention than usual, I bet they would be excellent guns. Unfortunately, a lot of not-so-expert machinists would try too, and fail.
Remember back-alley abortionists? Same idea.
So what will they do next? Lathe control? Then only criminals will have lathes. :)
I have no idea what a Blue Devil is, but if paper is anything like charcoal briquettes, you shouldn't ignite it after pouring on LOX. According to people who have experience clowning around with LOX one briquette is "approx equiv to 1 stick of dynamite".
Just pour the LN2 on the paper and hit it with a hammer a few times. I bet that would shatter the old record. Pun intended!
I shudder to think of what you are doing with Zip Zaps that would invite such a comparison.
The only thing this piece needs is Yoko Ono rhythmicly chanting "number nine, number nine, number nine..." in the background. IIRC, it was John Lennon who did it originally, but he's gone so Yoko seems like the ideal stand-in for this. Bonus points if Yoko will do it live for a full 24 hours at least one day; as opposed to simply sampling an endless loop of chants.
since it chose the path of socialism it has been relegated to the dustbin of history
I wish this were true. If enough software gets trapped in the GPL potential well, IT will end up like law or teaching. Deprived of an honest source of revenue, programmers will turn towards the IT equivalent of the NEA and the Public School system. Only the rich will be able to afford Private Software. You will have to pay out the wazoo for software that's easy enough to use, or you'll have to hire an expert (someone like a lawyer) to make sure that you are interacting with the computer according to its convoluted logic (convoluted laws).
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it! Just look at other professions where the intellectual property is Public Domain, and ask yourself if you like the working environment and/or product of those professions.
Public Software Foundation is the most accurate name I think. They even bear some passing resemblance to PBS in that they beg for funds and have T-shirts and stuff with logos as trinkets. Likewise, their software continues to appeal to a smaller slice of the community, many who believe the content is better because of the way it's funded. I haven't looked, but surely there must be an FSF totebag someplace. :)
Of course they would never change the name because "Free" is such a powerful marketing word, and nonprofits market just like everybody else. They just do it with a different style.
Want a flying car? Move to Texas or Oklahoma. Wait for Spring.
Congratulations Mr. Marthouse, You've Invented The Train.
OK, time to share a personal experience. This happened my last year at UVa. Every engineering student was required to do a 4th year thesis, something that was held out as a matter of pride in the rigor of the engineering program. Mine was some software that tracked the edge of the roadway using splines. The justficication for it was that one day we'd have real-time MI that could drive cars, and that the technique might be a useful component of that.
Another student was designing a "volkscopter" personal flight vehicle.
Well, we all had to give presentations (including a Q & A) during the development phase, and I made the Trent Lott-like blunder of bringing up the fact that such things were routinely advertised in Popular Mechanics when I posed a question.
We were all so busy, I never got around to settling this issue with people. I just got some hardball questions during my Q & A from students sympathetic to the other guy, which I was able to dodge. The thesis project taught me as much about politics as it did about engineering!
To the student who was designing the volkscopter, I apologize. There was no need to drag you into what I was discovering.
First, I realized that asking an entire class of engineering students to do an "original" research project is just ridiculous. Truly original ideas are like winning lotto tickets.
Second, the whole idea of self-driving cars is just ridiculous. Why not just put us all back on trains? Well, we subsidize roads way too much. We're plunking $1 billion into the Springfield Interchange near where I live, and although I must say it has added some aesthetic flair to Springfield, it won't solve gridlock. Contrast this with how much money Amtrack needs to stay afloat. I don't think Amtrack was even asking for $1 billion, wasn't it $900 million? Regardless, the point is that if we subsidized rail at the same rate per passenger and freight mile that we do highways, things would, in my opinion, be a lot better.
So, at some point it dawned on me that my thesis was really just inventing the train. I thought to myself, Congratulations Mr. Marthouse, you've invented the train. Of course I never disclosed this to my profs. I wanted to graduate. My only form of protest was to refuse to change the title of my thesis to "An application of rational uniform bezier splines for edge detection in an automated navigation system" from "Snakes: an improved method for highway line following". I swear I'm not making this up. The prof was really disappointed I wouldn't give it an important sounding title.
What does this have to do with personal flight? Well, it's only safe if you build a train-like system where the vehicle "locks on" to a program and the user doesn't actually have to pilot the vehicle.
People will not accept this in a personal flight system until they accept it in a ground transportation system. If you try to do it in a ground system, they will ask themselves the same question I asked: why not just use trains.
The answer, like many things, has more to do with politics than engineering.
--Steven Marthouse, UVa ENGR '93.
p.s., the story of my "greening" after graduation has some interesting turns, but you'll have to buy my book. :)
...because they had cycled through all the users and few people ever switch *back* to AOL. That includes yours truly, who tried the free offer, ran one minute over, and then got zapped with monthly charges for service I never used. IIRC, that was the subject of a class action in the mid or late 90s, just before the internet bubble, and was one of the reasons I thought AOL was a bad investment. Silly me. If I had sold near the top... oh well... you know.
My reasoning was that companies that screw their customers will eventually fail. Of course that may be true, but if they can screw their customers and get away with it for several years, they are a good investment, provided you know when to get out.
I'm not saying that AOL screws customers now. It sounds like they learned a lesson. I think their problem is that they appeal to new users, then the new users move on. Either that, or they move off. Yep, that's right. People who don't need the interenet. Imagine that.
How about presenting all the items in the list on one page of plain-vanilla HTML with a simple abstract for each item and a link if we want details? Otherwise, this thing is broadband only.
My approach:
T: Is (whoever) home?
M: Who shall I say is calling?
T: (virtually always identifies company)
M: We would like to be placed on your DNC list please. (or) He has a policy of not responding to telephone solicitations and would like to be placed on your do not call list.
T: (sometimes they will try to continue pitch/patter, etc.)
M: (re-assert request and hang up no matter what).
The only problem with this is that I need to add "this is he" regardless of who they are trying to reach. That way they can't weazel out that I'm not really the guy. Obviously this doesn't work if you're a guy and they are trying to reach a female, but fortunately (or rather, unfortunately) that's not a problem in my house. Otherwise I think this script is pretty good for 1. expending a minimum ammout of my precious time, and 2. accomplishing the purpose of asserting DNC rights.
Now, what I really need to do is put a recorder on my line because companies are still calling back; especially United Air Temps (a local HVAC contractor). They are the worst offenders. With a recording, you can maybe nab them with that legendary $500 judgement.
Sometimes I get cheeky and ask to hear their pitch, then just leave the line open to see how long the T speils without realizing that I've walked away. On rare occasions, you can come back a minute later and they are still speiling, but usually it's not too long before the phone makes that bzz-bzz-bzz noise indicating you are off hook.
I suspect I'm not as old as you, but I remember some of these, especially the cap bomb. The cap bomb eventually blew itself apart after I got tired of just putting one cap in there. How about water rockets? Fill it up with water, 10 pumps IIRC, release, WHOOOSH! They'd go almost out of sight. The end of that toy was similar to the cap bomb: 20 pumps and a hard landing on asphalt. It was just cracked, and still worked, but couldn't hold full pressure anymore. Then of course you can't forget delta darts--little styrofoam gliders that could be hand-thrown or launched with a rubber band. They were cheap enough for me to buy them 3 at a time in gradeschool. They were usually lost or stepped on before they got scuffed enough to be replaced. Don't get the big styro-gliders. One of my disapointments was saving up for one... probably 7th grade by then, and on the 2nd outing a gust of wind plowed it into a hillside and snapped a wing clean off. A total loss.
I think a good troll divides the moderators passionately on both sides, causing them to expend a maximum number of points to moderate the post. Preferably, the post remains with a fairly high mod. One of my best efforts expended something like 25-30 mod points, but only stayed level 1. I've had others that burned mod points and finished at 3 or 4, but never that many mod points.
Believe it or not, I think you are actually touching on an important issue--the Slashdot moderation system is linear and that limits us. It should be possible for Slashdot users to choose to regard trolling as positive or to regard any other type of moderation as negative, positive, or weighted. Only like humor half the time? Weight Funny 0.5. Totally serious? Funny gets weighted -2.
So how about it Slashlords? How hard would it be to add a "weighted" moderation preference to our comment viewing so that we can choose to inhabit obscure corners of the N-dimensional "modspace"?
One guy who used to work for Microsoft prefers Linux for some applications. In related news, a former salesman for Pfizer likes to save money buying generic drugs, a retired Ford line worker drives a Toyota, and RMS uses BSD sometimes (yes, the last one is true and verifiable).
Why can't they just sell it without support? If I were an IBM shareholder, I'd want to know why they are just throwing away money, even if it's not very much. If reproducing the CD-ROMs isn't economical, they could estimate their annual sales and auction off the rights to distribute that number of CD-ROMs to somebody like Cheapbytes. I don't see why *any* software package has to "just disappear".
Will Jar-Jar be in this?
Yet Another Broken Business Model?
Hey... wait a second. We used to get TV for *nothing*. Yep, just pulled it right out of thin air. They always told us this worked because the advertisers paid for the commercials we saw. You know, "Plop-plop Fizz-fizz, oh what a relief it is" and so on and so forth.
Then, these guys come along and show stuff without commercials through a cable, but only in wierd places where you can't get TV out of the air. Then, people start to realize that paying for TV to avoid the commercials and get a clean picture is a good business and around 1985 or so they started selling it here in my 'burb.
Now, by the time we got the cable a lot of the channels on it were showing commercials. Icing on the cake, you know. There were 3 different "tiers" of cable and for a while we had the one with HBO and some other premium channel. We eventually decided that premium stuff wasn't worth the extra dough, so now most of the stuff we see on cable has commercials.
Not only that, some of them have annoying little flash demos during the show, right on top of the screen. Speedy was a nice guy, he understood how things work. He never would have stepped on top of the show. Speedy must be fizzing in his grave.
So, what's the point? Well, I liked the idea of paying for cable so we didn't have to get commercials. Whatever happened to that? If they want to make us pay for the cable and still watch ads, maybe we'll just start pulling TV out of the air again. There's still some TV in the air. Really, with FOX, the big 3, PBS and AM talk radio that's probably more media exposure than we really need anyway. You've got all your political perspective there, and some pretty good mind-rotting tripe for when you just don't feel like thinking.
Too bad the cable companies couldn't make the "pay more for better signal and no commercials" business model work. Must be YABBM.
You know what? No great loss. Yep. That's right. It'd be like 1988 when almost nobody had net access. I was a courrier back then. There were signs all over the place that said "FAX It!" because that was a hot new thing back then. We routinely made pickups of mag-tapes to deliver to computer centers. You know the old bit about never underestimating the bandwidth of a truckload of CD-ROMs? Well, never underestimate the bandwidth of a college drop-out making a run with a cardboard box full of mag-tapes.
Now, of course we are a lot more dependant on the 'net these days and some things would get disrupted. But GET REAL. Very little data would be lost because it's backed up... much of it still to tape. Some businesses like Amazon would "lose" a lot of sales, but the bottom line is that Junior will still get his socks and that copy of "Harry Potter and the Delayed Puberty" for Christmas. It just might be late, that's all.
Making the Internet a national security issue is like making Showtime, Playboy and the Home Shopping Club cable channels a national security issue.
When I was a dialup tech we used to make fun of people with no backup ISP who said "my business depends on the internet". The idea of someone depending on just one ISP was funny, but the idea of depending on the Internet was funny too.
Now, I seriously doubt that someone logging onto the net--through 802.11 or otherwise--could bring it all down. Even if they could, the outtage wouldn't last long. This is big business now, and you know the problem would be isolated in hours. In the meantime, as Scott Adams said "the network is down, but everybody else is happy".
If money wins elections, why aren't Steve Forbes and Ross Perot building their presidential libraries now?
Unfortunately I don't have a list, but apparently several candidates in the last election won despite the fact that their opponents outspent them. That was an important election too, with the major parties spending enough money in some states to buy every voter several dinners if they had bribed the voters directly.
Campaign finance reform is not the answer. What the linked article alleges sounds a lot like quid pro quo and if they can prove it, we need to prosecute it. That's right--actually punish the criminals instead of punishing the innocent. Actually punish dirty politicians instead of taking free speech away from people. I know that must be a strange concept, what with us taking away fair use to prevent piracy and all; but I still have faith that when we get too far from Common Sense, something will pull us back. Hopefully it can be done without having some sort of revolution; 1776 was kind of a fluke as far as revolutions go. Most revolutions suck.
For now, the ballot box is still secret. We can still use it. We still do. We are not all fools. Thank God, and may god truly bless America. Please? God? Are you listening?
With the first part of your response, it's a little off base because the previous poster had posited that a lack of diversity in Free Software would be a good thing. Those who make that argument usually base it on the need to conserve community resources, namely the limited developer talent pool. Ooooh.. SNL is on, the faux Tom Ridge is speaking. This might be good. gotta go.
more product choice equals more confusion
This is one of the major fallacies of Free Software/Open Source advocacy. Whenever presented with the argument that the GPL might tend to discourage entry and result in a public monopoly, the advocates always counter that "the user has the source so they can customize it".
Now, ask yourself how many times you've heard somebody say "I don't like the way this program does ______" and you could counter with "have you tried brand X? It does _____ differently".
Now, if there is no brand X, or if the only way to obtain brand X is to have it custom built to your specifications, how many SOHO users are going to learn C or hire a consultant to give their office suite a "different feel"? Slightly less than 1% of half of none of them. They will all be trapped because, while there will be some variations, fundamentally all suites will be the same.
What kind of freedom and choice is that?
...is that there are two slashdot mentionings of the two drives in the case in the article in case whoever reads the article about the two drives in the case doesn't understand that there are two drives in the case.
I'm pretty sure that Underwriter's Labs will reject an appliance that melts the user's face off everytime they use it. I've seen their checklist and "[x] make sure face doesn't melt" is on there. So, it will be hard to find any contractor who will install it, or any major department store that carries it.