The same is true IRL as well. Put the best lock on your front door that you want, it really doesn't matter. I'm coming in through the window anyway. Boarding up the windows reduces the utility of your house and just forces me to come in through the basement.
You could build a wall around the house I suppose, which again is a pain for you, not to mention expensive, and doesn't slow me down all that much really, but it makes me nice and invisible from the street once I get in. So now you have to add all the electronic gizmos. ..
I think Patton had something to say about fortifications.
Most physical security amounts to efforts to keep slightly dishonest people honest as regards your property. You don't have to outrun the bear, just your buddy.
The bad guys are going to do a certain amount of winning. It's selfish but the trick is to do your best to make sure it's the other guy who looks like the rube so you get left alone.
'Cause if they really, really want you, they're going to get you sooner or later.
Having bodyguards didn't help Indira Gandhi one little bit.
Ya know, food, clothing, shelter, books, lamps, toys, etc.
Property.
People aren't interested in an internet economy. They're interested in stuff. If you can find a way to use the internet as a leg up supplying stuff to customers, well, there ya go.
But anyone who thinks of the internet as a way to get people to just send them money isn't going to go anyplace.
People are also interested in certain services, like having their pool cleaned and the oil in their car changed. Ain't gonna happen over the internet at all. Real reality trumps virtual reality every time. That physics stuff is a bitch.
There will be some niche markets, but there's a catch. They're short term. If you're willing up front to realize this, get in, make some money, get out, invest it elsewhere in "stuff" you'll do ok. Most tradtional businesses have trouble thinking like this. It's entrepreneur territory.
Doesn't mean a corporation won't see the limitation of the model, come in, stomp your guts, then abandon the market though.
They will, as soon as email addresses are illegal.
As it is there's nothing illegal, or even inherently immoral, about compiling and/or transmiting email addresses, or we'd all be in jail.
Knowing where a bank is isn't a crime. Telling someone where a bank is isn't a crime. Robbing a bank is a crime.
It would actually be pretty neat if there were a real international directory of all email addresses. Perhaps the greatest crime the spammers have commited is making this impossible in practice.
That's what happens if just a few people persist in shitting where we all have to sleep. There's even a name for it.
Well, primarily I would say because the rules were changed after entries were accepted and private individuals suffered financial loss from those changes.
They didn't get "drubbed." They never even got the chance to get drubbed under the assumed parameters of the competition.
Had DARPA said something along the lines of "Ya'll are welcome to give it a go, but we have to warn you that entries are strictly limited and we reserve the right to make the decision of who gets to play and who doesn't on an arbritrary basis if we so choose," well, than the whole thing would be a complete nonissue.
People played by the rules. DARPA didn't. That tends to rile folk.
What the hell does that have to do with "Linux Predictions for 2004"?
Ummmmm, I predict that parent post will appear in 2004, just as it did in 2003?
Just working from memory mind you and even predictions about the past are risky, but it's kind of a hard post to forget given the specific detail it contains.
Paper rarely suffers from sudden catastrophic failure for no apparent reason.
For those conditions where paper is likely to fail your local locksmith has a wall of possible solutions. That wall exists because there is at least a viable market for such solutions.
Your bank has an expanded version of that available from the locksmith, which you may rent, which many people prefer because it keeps their valuable records offsite.
Family lawyers also perform offsite record backup.
While it's true that the majority didn't adequately pay attention to backups in the paper age I wouldn't go so far as to say that hardly anyone did.
In any case, given that this system does not provide for offsite backup its only real function seems to be to protect against HD failure, which you can do by simply mirroring to another drive right in your very own desktop.
The problem the product seems designed to solve is that of the enrichment of the sellers and not any real need of the buyer.
Well, perhaps my milage is different from the average bear, but I've always found that when traveling on a limited access highway the need for a gps has been obviated by the fact that my route has already been chosen for me. There really isn't much of any place to go but straight ahead.
If I've been neglectful of my route to such and extent that I'm not sure which exit I'm headed for I've also noted that on most of these highways there are periodic places where you can park for just such purposes as reading a map, taking a whiz, obtaining fuel, etc. without any need to actually exit the highway.
Where such are absent, well, exit. Park. Read map. Reenter.
The inconvenience is rather less than that engendered by causing a flaming wreck.
that no TV or such like device be visible to the driver. They can be there, but they have to be angled in such a manner that only the passenger can see them.
In other words, when driving a car your eyes belong on the road.
If you are driving alone and need to consult a gps unit for directions there is a simple first step to follow:
Park the frickin' car.
Honestly, it won't kill you, but not doing so just might. ..
as well as some other poor schmuck whose only transgression was to be anywhere near you.
On the whole I'm in agreement with you, as my posting record will show, right down to the child labor issue. I started to work when I was 13, by choice, to make my own money and to contribute to society as an equal. To deny that right to a child is to deny the child equality, which is much the point actually.
However, just for the sake of argument, let us flip the situation around, shall we?
What if you are the poor person in a third world country? When it's time for the village party you could buy a Sony stereo and a stack of CD's for the music. This requires the village to support a capital intensive industry outside their economic borders. In the local ecomomy this is a massive investment, perhaps several years of the average income, and it all flows out, enriching Sony and Britney Spears and all the middlemen, but leaving nothing behind to the village.
Or, you could just hire the local mariachi band for five days average income, who will then spend that money at the village store, restaurant, cobbler, etc.
The money flows in a circle within the community, each peso doing the work of ten as it passes from hand to hand and the community is better able support itself without having to rely on outside experts from the developed world.
Well, the same principle holds for rich communities as well.
Think globally, but act locally. That means wherever you are locally.
Yes, that means the rich get richer, that's what happens when you apply principles of enrichment. But the poor get richer too by applying those same principles.
And if followed to its logical extreme the rich get richer that way without exploiting the poor, which is the real issue, not the wealth itself, thus accelerating the closing of the wealth gap.
There is, however, a bad guy, and it's called capitalism.
Which is why me and the boys will be arriving shortly to nationalise your house, car and income.
We also strongly suspect you've been exploiting your animal companion rather mercilessly, so we'll have to declare it a ward of the state and remove it for its own protection.
You may occupy your work cell on Monday, in the meantime. ..
Yes, it would seem that's what they're trying to say. So what I feel really interested in is the apparent fact that 24% of people on the net do not use any sort of web application at all.
I don't use IM, but I've certainly had occasion to use Media Player.
They also skip the one piece of data that may have been of real interest to anyone but someone looking for an "emerging trend" to rape and pillage. What percentage of time do these people allocate to their IM client as opposed to their web browser. The simple fact that they use an IM client is pretty meaningless without knowing this.
The article also seems to be a bit rife with clueless confussion between the net and the web, using the words interchangably even when the distinction matters to their own point. A remarkable feat given how short the article is.
Which may be why there was no discussion about email, usenet and irc. Perhaps they consider these as normal browser functions or something? Their language certainly supports the conclusion that they think the browser is the standard net tool, as opposed to web tool. I can go a week or so using the net pretty heavily without ever accessing the web at all, and yet not using any of the "net" tools that have attracted their interest either. I get the feeling that this is even possible would surprise them.
Which may be why they seem to have trouble distinguishing the difference between things that originate locally and those that originate from the net, because to them if you don't have a browser loaded the implication is that it didn't come from the net.
Well, what can I say? If you're in London and you get an IM from someone in Pretoria and you don't realize that you're on the frickin' net you must think the other person is a little pixie who lives inside your monitor and is writing messages to you by scrawling on the backside of the screen with his little magic crayon or something.
My experience is that if there is any cause for confusion it works the other way around. Grandma thinks of the computer as an internet device and assumes everything is net.
"No grandma, you don't need an internet account to look at your pictures. They're inside your own computer (the little pixie takes care of them). You only need an internet account to look at the pictures on other people's computers. That's right. That means you don't have to be afraid to miss any calls while you're playing solitaire either."
Oh sure, the road certainly has certain value (which might well be negative in any particular case) if you want to discuss economic concepts as if people mattered.
Which is to say as a social issue as opposed to one reduced to a scientific calculus.
In that case the primary value of my house is that it provides me with shelter. A secondary value is that I enjoy being in it.
In point of fact, these are the only values of my house that I'm truely concerned about.
I agree with you entirely. That particular sentence is the only one in my post that was actually written with a certain amount of care and deliberation, each word chosen carefully in full realization of what they implied.
One might well ask where you get off denying Alexander Hamilton's (a "conservative" Federalist) admonition that the Bill of Rights is not to be interpreted as in any way being a restriction on the rights of the people and pointing out that even in the absence of the Bill of Rights the Constitution gives Congress no authority to pass laws that would violate the rights enumerated in it?
The Constitution overtly restricts the government, not the people, and your post is exactly the sort of thing he warned an explict Bill of Rights would lead to.
Your view is radical, antiliberty and downright unamerican.
From your tone one might surmise you consider yourself a conservative. Well sir, I am a conservative. As an American that also makes me a liberal, as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are overtly liberal documents. I have taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and you sir, are an enemy of the Constitution.
Ironically, what would have made a lot of sense from certain points of view would have been to back an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
They would have gotten Kuwait (just look at a frickin' map. It stands as a prime example of what was meant when it was commented that the drafters of the Versaille Treaty needed to be given a book on elementary geography. Sooner or later Iraq had to make a grab for it) and they could have slipped us a bit of oil under the table and subtly undermined OPEC.
Slashdot Mirror
The same is true IRL as well. Put the best lock on your front door that you want, it really doesn't matter. I'm coming in through the window anyway. Boarding up the windows reduces the utility of your house and just forces me to come in through the basement.
.
You could build a wall around the house I suppose, which again is a pain for you, not to mention expensive, and doesn't slow me down all that much really, but it makes me nice and invisible from the street once I get in. So now you have to add all the electronic gizmos. .
I think Patton had something to say about fortifications.
Most physical security amounts to efforts to keep slightly dishonest people honest as regards your property. You don't have to outrun the bear, just your buddy.
The bad guys are going to do a certain amount of winning. It's selfish but the trick is to do your best to make sure it's the other guy who looks like the rube so you get left alone.
'Cause if they really, really want you, they're going to get you sooner or later.
Having bodyguards didn't help Indira Gandhi one little bit.
KFG
Look, I don't suppose you could be convinced to take a dinner break or something, could you?
KFG
http://www.cs.uidaho.edu/~casey931/mega-math/gloss /math/4ct.html
KFG
Ya know, food, clothing, shelter, books, lamps, toys, etc.
Property.
People aren't interested in an internet economy. They're interested in stuff. If you can find a way to use the internet as a leg up supplying stuff to customers, well, there ya go.
But anyone who thinks of the internet as a way to get people to just send them money isn't going to go anyplace.
People are also interested in certain services, like having their pool cleaned and the oil in their car changed. Ain't gonna happen over the internet at all. Real reality trumps virtual reality every time. That physics stuff is a bitch.
There will be some niche markets, but there's a catch. They're short term. If you're willing up front to realize this, get in, make some money, get out, invest it elsewhere in "stuff" you'll do ok. Most tradtional businesses have trouble thinking like this. It's entrepreneur territory.
Doesn't mean a corporation won't see the limitation of the model, come in, stomp your guts, then abandon the market though.
As always, be careful out there.
KFG
We could do it without saying "fuck it"...
I believe he was refering to our ethical sense there, not our technical skills.
Of course your ethical sense may vary.
KFG
They will, as soon as email addresses are illegal.
As it is there's nothing illegal, or even inherently immoral, about compiling and/or transmiting email addresses, or we'd all be in jail.
Knowing where a bank is isn't a crime. Telling someone where a bank is isn't a crime. Robbing a bank is a crime.
It would actually be pretty neat if there were a real international directory of all email addresses. Perhaps the greatest crime the spammers have commited is making this impossible in practice.
That's what happens if just a few people persist in shitting where we all have to sleep. There's even a name for it.
KFG
What were they afraid of ? A mom and pop low budget garage organization making a contractor or prestigious university team look silly ? Oh the horror.
Well, maybe it's a bit of reverse trade protectionism, because I've always kinda thought that was Burt Rutan's job.
KFG
Well, primarily I would say because the rules were changed after entries were accepted and private individuals suffered financial loss from those changes.
They didn't get "drubbed." They never even got the chance to get drubbed under the assumed parameters of the competition.
Had DARPA said something along the lines of "Ya'll are welcome to give it a go, but we have to warn you that entries are strictly limited and we reserve the right to make the decision of who gets to play and who doesn't on an arbritrary basis if we so choose," well, than the whole thing would be a complete nonissue.
People played by the rules. DARPA didn't. That tends to rile folk.
KFG
Indeed. Looks like it's time for me to throw a set of 18" wheels on the ole RC10 and have at.
KFG
What the hell does that have to do with "Linux Predictions for 2004"?
Ummmmm, I predict that parent post will appear in 2004, just as it did in 2003?
Just working from memory mind you and even predictions about the past are risky, but it's kind of a hard post to forget given the specific detail it contains.
KFG
Paper rarely suffers from sudden catastrophic failure for no apparent reason.
For those conditions where paper is likely to fail your local locksmith has a wall of possible solutions. That wall exists because there is at least a viable market for such solutions.
Your bank has an expanded version of that available from the locksmith, which you may rent, which many people prefer because it keeps their valuable records offsite.
Family lawyers also perform offsite record backup.
While it's true that the majority didn't adequately pay attention to backups in the paper age I wouldn't go so far as to say that hardly anyone did.
In any case, given that this system does not provide for offsite backup its only real function seems to be to protect against HD failure, which you can do by simply mirroring to another drive right in your very own desktop.
The problem the product seems designed to solve is that of the enrichment of the sellers and not any real need of the buyer.
KFG
Well, perhaps my milage is different from the average bear, but I've always found that when traveling on a limited access highway the need for a gps has been obviated by the fact that my route has already been chosen for me. There really isn't much of any place to go but straight ahead.
If I've been neglectful of my route to such and extent that I'm not sure which exit I'm headed for I've also noted that on most of these highways there are periodic places where you can park for just such purposes as reading a map, taking a whiz, obtaining fuel, etc. without any need to actually exit the highway.
Where such are absent, well, exit. Park. Read map. Reenter.
The inconvenience is rather less than that engendered by causing a flaming wreck.
KFG
You assume I have a house, car and income.
I do no such thing.
KFG
As it happens I agree entirely with that as well.
When I lived in Mexico the border was just as open as the border with Canada was a few years ago.
KFG
that no TV or such like device be visible to the driver. They can be there, but they have to be angled in such a manner that only the passenger can see them.
.
In other words, when driving a car your eyes belong on the road.
If you are driving alone and need to consult a gps unit for directions there is a simple first step to follow:
Park the frickin' car.
Honestly, it won't kill you, but not doing so just might. .
as well as some other poor schmuck whose only transgression was to be anywhere near you.
KFG
Try not to simplify things so much.
Please note that I was responding satirically to a post that was so simplfied in outlook as to be braindead. Which was probably its intent.
KFG
On the whole I'm in agreement with you, as my posting record will show, right down to the child labor issue. I started to work when I was 13, by choice, to make my own money and to contribute to society as an equal. To deny that right to a child is to deny the child equality, which is much the point actually.
However, just for the sake of argument, let us flip the situation around, shall we?
What if you are the poor person in a third world country? When it's time for the village party you could buy a Sony stereo and a stack of CD's for the music. This requires the village to support a capital intensive industry outside their economic borders. In the local ecomomy this is a massive investment, perhaps several years of the average income, and it all flows out, enriching Sony and Britney Spears and all the middlemen, but leaving nothing behind to the village.
Or, you could just hire the local mariachi band for five days average income, who will then spend that money at the village store, restaurant, cobbler, etc.
The money flows in a circle within the community, each peso doing the work of ten as it passes from hand to hand and the community is better able support itself without having to rely on outside experts from the developed world.
Well, the same principle holds for rich communities as well.
Think globally, but act locally. That means wherever you are locally.
Yes, that means the rich get richer, that's what happens when you apply principles of enrichment. But the poor get richer too by applying those same principles.
And if followed to its logical extreme the rich get richer that way without exploiting the poor, which is the real issue, not the wealth itself, thus accelerating the closing of the wealth gap.
KFG
There is, however, a bad guy, and it's called capitalism.
.
Which is why me and the boys will be arriving shortly to nationalise your house, car and income.
We also strongly suspect you've been exploiting your animal companion rather mercilessly, so we'll have to declare it a ward of the state and remove it for its own protection.
You may occupy your work cell on Monday, in the meantime. .
Have a nice day citizen.
KFG
Yes, it would seem that's what they're trying to say. So what I feel really interested in is the apparent fact that 24% of people on the net do not use any sort of web application at all.
I don't use IM, but I've certainly had occasion to use Media Player.
They also skip the one piece of data that may have been of real interest to anyone but someone looking for an "emerging trend" to rape and pillage. What percentage of time do these people allocate to their IM client as opposed to their web browser. The simple fact that they use an IM client is pretty meaningless without knowing this.
The article also seems to be a bit rife with clueless confussion between the net and the web, using the words interchangably even when the distinction matters to their own point. A remarkable feat given how short the article is.
Which may be why there was no discussion about email, usenet and irc. Perhaps they consider these as normal browser functions or something? Their language certainly supports the conclusion that they think the browser is the standard net tool, as opposed to web tool. I can go a week or so using the net pretty heavily without ever accessing the web at all, and yet not using any of the "net" tools that have attracted their interest either. I get the feeling that this is even possible would surprise them.
Which may be why they seem to have trouble distinguishing the difference between things that originate locally and those that originate from the net, because to them if you don't have a browser loaded the implication is that it didn't come from the net.
Well, what can I say? If you're in London and you get an IM from someone in Pretoria and you don't realize that you're on the frickin' net you must think the other person is a little pixie who lives inside your monitor and is writing messages to you by scrawling on the backside of the screen with his little magic crayon or something.
My experience is that if there is any cause for confusion it works the other way around. Grandma thinks of the computer as an internet device and assumes everything is net.
"No grandma, you don't need an internet account to look at your pictures. They're inside your own computer (the little pixie takes care of them). You only need an internet account to look at the pictures on other people's computers. That's right. That means you don't have to be afraid to miss any calls while you're playing solitaire either."
KFG
Kinda like how things are at the office.
KFG
Oh sure, the road certainly has certain value (which might well be negative in any particular case) if you want to discuss economic concepts as if people mattered.
Which is to say as a social issue as opposed to one reduced to a scientific calculus.
In that case the primary value of my house is that it provides me with shelter. A secondary value is that I enjoy being in it.
In point of fact, these are the only values of my house that I'm truely concerned about.
KFG
No, it was compensation awarded by a court of law for a loss per life.
KFG
I agree with you entirely. That particular sentence is the only one in my post that was actually written with a certain amount of care and deliberation, each word chosen carefully in full realization of what they implied.
KFG
One might well ask where you get off denying Alexander Hamilton's (a "conservative" Federalist) admonition that the Bill of Rights is not to be interpreted as in any way being a restriction on the rights of the people and pointing out that even in the absence of the Bill of Rights the Constitution gives Congress no authority to pass laws that would violate the rights enumerated in it?
The Constitution overtly restricts the government, not the people, and your post is exactly the sort of thing he warned an explict Bill of Rights would lead to.
Your view is radical, antiliberty and downright unamerican.
From your tone one might surmise you consider yourself a conservative. Well sir, I am a conservative. As an American that also makes me a liberal, as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are overtly liberal documents. I have taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and you sir, are an enemy of the Constitution.
KFG
Ironically, what would have made a lot of sense from certain points of view would have been to back an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
They would have gotten Kuwait (just look at a frickin' map. It stands as a prime example of what was meant when it was commented that the drafters of the Versaille Treaty needed to be given a book on elementary geography. Sooner or later Iraq had to make a grab for it) and they could have slipped us a bit of oil under the table and subtly undermined OPEC.
Of course, for all I know, that was the plan.
KFG