"Freely available information just too valuable to mankind as a whole."
Food is too valuable to the individual and will always win out, in the extreme, to the value to mankind as a whole.
The question becomes, in an exchange society, with an abstracted medium of exchange which can only be obtained from other people ( self-sufficiency being virtually illegal), how does one obtain rice in the bowl tonight, as opposed to pie in the sky tomorrow?
It's a legitimate quandry that's going to become more and more pressing to solve.
In my case, last week I put rice in my bowl this week by charging money for the transmission of mathmatical information, which, in my turn, had to pay for as well.
For the most part I was even only able to do this because of an artificial market for mathmatics imposed by the government ( I was tutoring high school students).
As it happens I'm a poor American. I have a distaste for modern monetary trade, the art of making a living by filching money from the pockets of others. My approach is more old world. I be perfectly happy to do what I do for "free," because I do what I do because I wish to do it and not merely becasue I get payed to do it.
So, in an exchange economy where my knowledge is valuable, but all I have to exchange is my knowledge, how do I put rice in my bowl ( and ideally a roof over it) without charging for it?
Ah, you misunderstand. The laptops are not being used as "handheld" devices. They are being used as unitary desktop replacements that can be easily run from external DC power, such as can be obtained from a base camp generator or the electrical system of a vehicle.
They report that it's more useful to have to return to a vehicle to use the laptop than carry a PDA in their pocket.
This corresponds to my own experience when off the grid in remote locations for days at a time. A laptop and a generator at base camp is very useful, whereas the PDA in my pocket is of little to no use because the batteries don't last long enough.
Taking paper notes while in the field and transfering them to the laptop at base camp is still the most effective data technology and good, old fashioned radio is still the best commumications device.
Portable computing devices were actually the big hit of emerging military technologies in the Iraq war, so far at least.
Here's the interesting bit. Laptops were the real hit. The grunts love them. PDA's have gone almost unused. Why? Because the battery life is so short they're virtually useless in the field.
The small, portable handheld device is useless as a small, portable handheld device. They're still yuppie toys that only work, to the extent they work at all, while you remain in the yuppie enviroment.
Now, plenty of people do that of course, and many people like to just play with toys. That's ok.
But some of us really move around and need a small, handheld and reliable device.
I'm looking forward to owning one. Let me know when it arrives. For now my pocket spiral bound notebook gives me 100% uptime and access to my data, even when hundreds of miles by foot away from any power source or access point.
All three of those sites are blatant industry whores whose job is to pump up the fanboys to buy games.
When they say a game sucks you know that, one, it's from an independant who doesn't advertise with them, and two, it really, really sucks.
When they say things like "We expected to be disappointed, but we were pleasantly surprised" it means it's pretty mediocre, they know you know it's pretty mediocre, at best, but need to pump up the volume somehow. It's their job.
I'll wait to see what Old Man Murray has to say about it.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.:(
I guess making snippy, but accurate, critiques doesn't pay as well as quote whoring.
And that's one of the problems with "kids these days."
You think if you can't find it with Google it isn't on the internet; and if it isn't on the internet it isn't real.
Well Sparky, those of us who are more than 10 years old remember things that happened and things we read about them in books and magazines that Google has no clue about. If such books and magazines are in a computer archive somewhere they're diked off from the internet ( a growing phenomenom as more and more people realize that not only is their information valuable, their information is the only thing of value they have to exchange)
Case in point. If you use Google to find information about the sucessful flying of a kite across that Atlantic ocean all you will find is my own Slashdot post avering that it has been done. . . and a denial by someone else because they couldn't find it in a Google search.
Yet all you have to do to find an in depth article of the feat is to go down to your local library and start browsing (yes, we browsed magazines in "the old days") copies of New Yorker magazine from the late 60's.
The universe of knowledge has not been transfered to the internet.
It wasn't, like, any big deal to lay down a buck, maybe at that cool head shop you liked to support anyway. Made my buck back the first day using its dumpster diving tips. All in all it was a good investment.
Besides, you've got it inside out. The joke was on the proles in the traditional capitalist business mode. They actually bought the rights to, printed and distributed a book that admonished you to steal it, right on the cover ( and even explained that the "artist" would get his cut even if you did. That was part of the subversion. It has modern repurcussions. Download an ebook off Kazaa, go to the Federal pen for 20 years and get a quarter million dollar fine while screwing the artist. STEAL a book and it's only petty larceny. Probation at most if it's your first offense; and the artist gets payed for it! Support your favorite "content producer" and stick it to the man at the same time. Steal books and CDs. Do It! Abbie and Jerry live, man! Free Attica!)
Oh, sorry, I got sidetracked. Flashback. That brown acid was apparently some bad shit.
Anyway, I treasured Steal This Book and I'm not all ashamed that I payed for it, nor was I in any way a "prole" for having done so. I wish I still had my copy. I would, except ( are you ready for it?). ..
Ah, but you see someone getting searched. That's the point really. It looks like they're doing something. The Boy Scouts even think it's kinda cool and don't sue or nothin'.
It's kinda like the "Blue Line," where the cops don't go into the bad neighborhoods because that's where all the crime and dangerous people are, but they make sure they're well seen cruising the ritzy neighborhoods so the residents there feel "safe."
Granny gets a little annoyed when they take away her crochet hooks and so she starts sneaking plastic ones in inside her Suphose, but hey, that just proves she really is terrorist scum, doesn't it?
In the meantime most real terrorists could work around the system if they really wanted to. They always have. They always will. That's the one grim reality no one really wants to look in the eye.
And what do you do about the terrorist on a bicycle? Even the Israelis haven't been able to crack that conundrum with half a century of trying.
You could try to put a cop in everyone's pocket, but the recursive nature of that is somewhat daunting. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't even work.
Taking as assumed that this, through some really strange quirk of law, turned out to be legal, why on earth do you suppose this would avoid legal action?
It's legality could only be determined by legal action.
Got $50k and five years of your life to defend your concept?
Do you begin to see the problem with being right, but small?
"Scientists" cannot entirely escape blame either. For decades they have existed in an unofficial unholy union with the press.
"Warning! Recent study says if you've ever heard the word "FAT" you're going to die! 1000 times more likely to die TOMORROW!"
Appendix Z of study:
Technically our findings are true. We're all going to die. There's also a 1 in.9999999999 chance that we were looking up our own assholes while collecting the data, which was statistically insignificant anyway and our methodology was blatently bogus and ignored most of the obvious confounders and such.
Oh yeah, and "1000 times more likely" means you're still more likely to win every state lottery on the same day. Nothing to get all worked up over really, but if we said that right up front in the abstract we'd never make the front page of the NYT (free registration required). Plus, we're good people and really need the grant to feed our children. You like children, don't you?
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
P.S. We put all this back here in Appendix Z because we knew the press's eyes would be pretty well glazed over before they got anywhere near this far into the thing, but we can still honestly say it was here.
No, we will not write a letter to the editor politely pointing out that they effectively misreported our results. You think we're idiots or something?
We have Doctorates! (Ummmm, it says to continue press any key. Where the HELL is the any key? No, I will NOT "RTFM." You think I got a doctorate so I'd have to read an F'in manual?)
Appendix Z^1:
Ha, ha! Just serious.
***********************
Don't even get me going on the unholy trinity of "scientists," the press and the government.
There are those who have accused me, based on previous posts, of being anti-science with a poor and disrespectful view of scientist.
Well, I am a physicist by training and hold science in the deepest respect. Would that more scientists even knew how, then I could shed myself of whatever contempt by virtue of familiarity I have picked up over the years.
To be fair to the astronomers it doesn't surprise me that they're shocked and stunned by all of this. They're the least likely group to have engaged in the above type of behaviour, spending more time looking at data and less time talking to the press than just about any other branch of science ( including the physicists).
Welcome to the real world guys. Now you've got a better idea of the crap Carl had to put up with.
I was so disappointed when I cracked the case of my 286 and didn't find an HKK in there somewhere. I had thought that maybe I could replace the one big one with two little ones to reduce net lag.
From the marketing point of view the advantage of "Xtreme" is that you can't prove it isn't in there somewhere. Maybe keeping the Magic Smoke in or something.
The disadvantage is that they can't play games by making you think the go slower button is really a go faster button. I hated having to explain that to people, they always got mad at me.
Killing the messenger always works, if you're a nitwit.
Nevermind the fact that the Constitution itself, and the Bill of Rights in particular, is a finely crafted document part of whose explict purpose is to allow citizens not only to break a certain class of unjust laws, but to do so with little or no risk of prosecution by denying the government, and by extension anyone else ( because all law is enforced at the point of the government's guns) the power to do so.
Specificly, with regards to this case, the RIAA is invoking governmental powers ( court orders) to go on a "fishing expedition" to identify people it has only cursory a priori reason to suspect and without judicial oversight and on an assemblyline basis.
That sort of behaviour is traditionally verboten and shit.
And so we descend, bit by pleasant little bit, into hell, where "information" isn't "practical," where knowledge of reality isn't "necessary" and where, it turns out, the enviroment is a cube farm populated by clueless code monkeys happy to be there.
Sorry for wading into this thread after yelling "Flame On!", but reading most of the responses is just plain depressing.
The older I get the more I understand why Fabian Pascal tends to come across as a bit bitchy. He's earned the right.
Helloooooo, are there any geeks left in the house?
My mom has a degree in fine arts. Not a very geeky field, right? She took chemistry for years so she could understand her materials, particularly glazes. Is this necessary to throw a pot? No. Is it necessary to be a good ceramicist? Yes.
A real artist always knows her materials, right down to the last atom.
Otherwise you're just a semiskilled mechanic working on an assembly line.
Of course, it that was your goal when you set out . ..
Slashdot Mirror
"Freely available information just too valuable to mankind as a whole."
Food is too valuable to the individual and will always win out, in the extreme, to the value to mankind as a whole.
The question becomes, in an exchange society, with an abstracted medium of exchange which can only be obtained from other people ( self-sufficiency being virtually illegal), how does one obtain rice in the bowl tonight, as opposed to pie in the sky tomorrow?
It's a legitimate quandry that's going to become more and more pressing to solve.
In my case, last week I put rice in my bowl this week by charging money for the transmission of mathmatical information, which, in my turn, had to pay for as well.
For the most part I was even only able to do this because of an artificial market for mathmatics imposed by the government ( I was tutoring high school students).
As it happens I'm a poor American. I have a distaste for modern monetary trade, the art of making a living by filching money from the pockets of others. My approach is more old world. I be perfectly happy to do what I do for "free," because I do what I do because I wish to do it and not merely becasue I get payed to do it.
So, in an exchange economy where my knowledge is valuable, but all I have to exchange is my knowledge, how do I put rice in my bowl ( and ideally a roof over it) without charging for it?
KFG
Ah, you misunderstand. The laptops are not being used as "handheld" devices. They are being used as unitary desktop replacements that can be easily run from external DC power, such as can be obtained from a base camp generator or the electrical system of a vehicle.
They report that it's more useful to have to return to a vehicle to use the laptop than carry a PDA in their pocket.
This corresponds to my own experience when off the grid in remote locations for days at a time. A laptop and a generator at base camp is very useful, whereas the PDA in my pocket is of little to no use because the batteries don't last long enough.
Taking paper notes while in the field and transfering them to the laptop at base camp is still the most effective data technology and good, old fashioned radio is still the best commumications device.
KFG
Of course, which is what makes my human brain worth paying just to have around.
The same goes for your local librarian.
The machines don't have us beat . . . yet.
KFG
Portable computing devices were actually the big hit of emerging military technologies in the Iraq war, so far at least.
Here's the interesting bit. Laptops were the real hit. The grunts love them. PDA's have gone almost unused. Why? Because the battery life is so short they're virtually useless in the field.
The small, portable handheld device is useless as a small, portable handheld device. They're still yuppie toys that only work, to the extent they work at all, while you remain in the yuppie enviroment.
Now, plenty of people do that of course, and many people like to just play with toys. That's ok.
But some of us really move around and need a small, handheld and reliable device.
I'm looking forward to owning one. Let me know when it arrives. For now my pocket spiral bound notebook gives me 100% uptime and access to my data, even when hundreds of miles by foot away from any power source or access point.
KFG
All three of those sites are blatant industry whores whose job is to pump up the fanboys to buy games.
:(
When they say a game sucks you know that, one, it's from an independant who doesn't advertise with them, and two, it really, really sucks.
When they say things like "We expected to be disappointed, but we were pleasantly surprised" it means it's pretty mediocre, they know you know it's pretty mediocre, at best, but need to pump up the volume somehow. It's their job.
I'll wait to see what Old Man Murray has to say about it.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
I guess making snippy, but accurate, critiques doesn't pay as well as quote whoring.
KFG
Like, it's just a joke man. You really need to chill.
Take off that tie. Undo your top shirt button. Check out my new Hendrix black light poster, right there behind the Lava Lamp.
Here, have some acid, on me. It's the brown stuff. Really good shit, man.
KFG
As it happens I agree with your dad. I have several hundred books, aquired over decades, and look forward to making that several thousand books.
However, the counter to your dad's argument comes on moving day.
Several hundred ebooks fit on one CD. Thousands snuggle neatly in a hidden corner of your HD.
I love my books. They make me dread moving.
(Hot tip. Black background, off white text. BIG font. Very easy on the eyes)
KFG
And that's one of the problems with "kids these days."
You think if you can't find it with Google it isn't on the internet; and if it isn't on the internet it isn't real.
Well Sparky, those of us who are more than 10 years old remember things that happened and things we read about them in books and magazines that Google has no clue about. If such books and magazines are in a computer archive somewhere they're diked off from the internet ( a growing phenomenom as more and more people realize that not only is their information valuable, their information is the only thing of value they have to exchange)
Case in point. If you use Google to find information about the sucessful flying of a kite across that Atlantic ocean all you will find is my own Slashdot post avering that it has been done. . . and a denial by someone else because they couldn't find it in a Google search.
Yet all you have to do to find an in depth article of the feat is to go down to your local library and start browsing (yes, we browsed magazines in "the old days") copies of New Yorker magazine from the late 60's.
The universe of knowledge has not been transfered to the internet.
KFG
It wasn't, like, any big deal to lay down a buck, maybe at that cool head shop you liked to support anyway. Made my buck back the first day using its dumpster diving tips. All in all it was a good investment.
.
Besides, you've got it inside out. The joke was on the proles in the traditional capitalist business mode. They actually bought the rights to, printed and distributed a book that admonished you to steal it, right on the cover ( and even explained that the "artist" would get his cut even if you did. That was part of the subversion. It has modern repurcussions. Download an ebook off Kazaa, go to the Federal pen for 20 years and get a quarter million dollar fine while screwing the artist. STEAL a book and it's only petty larceny. Probation at most if it's your first offense; and the artist gets payed for it! Support your favorite "content producer" and stick it to the man at the same time. Steal books and CDs. Do It! Abbie and Jerry live, man! Free Attica!)
Oh, sorry, I got sidetracked. Flashback. That brown acid was apparently some bad shit.
Anyway, I treasured Steal This Book and I'm not all ashamed that I payed for it, nor was I in any way a "prole" for having done so. I wish I still had my copy. I would, except ( are you ready for it?). .
Someone stole it. Really.
KFG
You sure he wasn't just smuggling Boy Scout uniforms?
KFG
You want to really mess with their heads?
Fly to Florida one way, hitch-hike back, then fly one way to Florida again.
Rinse and repeat.
Smoke will probably come out of their tiny little ears before they figure out how you can do that.
KFG
Ah, but you see someone getting searched. That's the point really. It looks like they're doing something. The Boy Scouts even think it's kinda cool and don't sue or nothin'.
It's kinda like the "Blue Line," where the cops don't go into the bad neighborhoods because that's where all the crime and dangerous people are, but they make sure they're well seen cruising the ritzy neighborhoods so the residents there feel "safe."
Granny gets a little annoyed when they take away her crochet hooks and so she starts sneaking plastic ones in inside her Suphose, but hey, that just proves she really is terrorist scum, doesn't it?
In the meantime most real terrorists could work around the system if they really wanted to. They always have. They always will. That's the one grim reality no one really wants to look in the eye.
And what do you do about the terrorist on a bicycle? Even the Israelis haven't been able to crack that conundrum with half a century of trying.
You could try to put a cop in everyone's pocket, but the recursive nature of that is somewhat daunting. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't even work.
The world isn't a safe place.
Bummer, huh?
KFG
Very cute. :)
However, let me ask you this:
Taking as assumed that this, through some really strange quirk of law, turned out to be legal, why on earth do you suppose this would avoid legal action?
It's legality could only be determined by legal action.
Got $50k and five years of your life to defend your concept?
Do you begin to see the problem with being right, but small?
KFG
For me? No.
YMMV
KFG
"Scientists" developed the various protocols.
DARPA imposed the standards and provided funding for their development.
You weren't around for the protocol wars in the 80's, were you?
KFG
Because business is "customer driven."
And they've discovered how easy it is, indeed, to drive them.
"Baaaaaa! Baaaaaaa!"
KFG
You don't chat in email. You email them to meet you in your IRC channel.
"Ding! You've got friend"
KFG
shuts out third party clients, people may think they're really sick and won't patronize them.
If two, two providers do it, in harmony, people may think they're faggots and won't patronize either of them.
And it three providers do it, three, can you imagine? Three providers shutting out third party clients. People might think it's an orginization.
And if all, all the IM providers do it, people might think it's a movement.
And that's just what it is people. The third party IM client anti-trust masacree movement.
Sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.
With feeling.
KFG
However:
.9999999999 chance that we were looking up our own assholes while collecting the data, which was statistically insignificant anyway and our methodology was blatently bogus and ignored most of the obvious confounders and such.
"Scientists" cannot entirely escape blame either. For decades they have existed in an unofficial unholy union with the press.
"Warning! Recent study says if you've ever heard the word "FAT" you're going to die! 1000 times more likely to die TOMORROW!"
Appendix Z of study:
Technically our findings are true. We're all going to die. There's also a 1 in
Oh yeah, and "1000 times more likely" means you're still more likely to win every state lottery on the same day. Nothing to get all worked up over really, but if we said that right up front in the abstract we'd never make the front page of the NYT (free registration required). Plus, we're good people and really need the grant to feed our children. You like children, don't you?
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
P.S. We put all this back here in Appendix Z because we knew the press's eyes would be pretty well glazed over before they got anywhere near this far into the thing, but we can still honestly say it was here.
No, we will not write a letter to the editor politely pointing out that they effectively misreported our results. You think we're idiots or something?
We have Doctorates! (Ummmm, it says to continue press any key. Where the HELL is the any key? No, I will NOT "RTFM." You think I got a doctorate so I'd have to read an F'in manual?)
Appendix Z^1:
Ha, ha! Just serious.
***********************
Don't even get me going on the unholy trinity of "scientists," the press and the government.
There are those who have accused me, based on previous posts, of being anti-science with a poor and disrespectful view of scientist.
Well, I am a physicist by training and hold science in the deepest respect. Would that more scientists even knew how, then I could shed myself of whatever contempt by virtue of familiarity I have picked up over the years.
To be fair to the astronomers it doesn't surprise me that they're shocked and stunned by all of this. They're the least likely group to have engaged in the above type of behaviour, spending more time looking at data and less time talking to the press than just about any other branch of science ( including the physicists).
Welcome to the real world guys. Now you've got a better idea of the crap Carl had to put up with.
KFG
Well something had to replace "turbo."
I was so disappointed when I cracked the case of my 286 and didn't find an HKK in there somewhere. I had thought that maybe I could replace the one big one with two little ones to reduce net lag.
From the marketing point of view the advantage of "Xtreme" is that you can't prove it isn't in there somewhere. Maybe keeping the Magic Smoke in or something.
The disadvantage is that they can't play games by making you think the go slower button is really a go faster button. I hated having to explain that to people, they always got mad at me.
Killing the messenger always works, if you're a nitwit.
KFG
He supported freedom of speech.
If the two have come into such severe conflict perhaps something really has gone wrong with capitalism "as she is spoke."
There is a difference between capitalism and commercial anarchy. One of them follows rules of law. I'll give you two guesses which one.
KFG
Nevermind the fact that the Constitution itself, and the Bill of Rights in particular, is a finely crafted document part of whose explict purpose is to allow citizens not only to break a certain class of unjust laws, but to do so with little or no risk of prosecution by denying the government, and by extension anyone else ( because all law is enforced at the point of the government's guns) the power to do so.
Specificly, with regards to this case, the RIAA is invoking governmental powers ( court orders) to go on a "fishing expedition" to identify people it has only cursory a priori reason to suspect and without judicial oversight and on an assemblyline basis.
That sort of behaviour is traditionally verboten and shit.
KFG
are belong to me." - Bill Joy
KFG
. . .more 'informative.'
.
And so we descend, bit by pleasant little bit, into hell, where "information" isn't "practical," where knowledge of reality isn't "necessary" and where, it turns out, the enviroment is a cube farm populated by clueless code monkeys happy to be there.
Sorry for wading into this thread after yelling "Flame On!", but reading most of the responses is just plain depressing.
The older I get the more I understand why Fabian Pascal tends to come across as a bit bitchy. He's earned the right.
Helloooooo, are there any geeks left in the house?
My mom has a degree in fine arts. Not a very geeky field, right? She took chemistry for years so she could understand her materials, particularly glazes. Is this necessary to throw a pot? No. Is it necessary to be a good ceramicist? Yes.
A real artist always knows her materials, right down to the last atom.
Otherwise you're just a semiskilled mechanic working on an assembly line.
Of course, it that was your goal when you set out . .
KFG
KFG
"Of course, we have those that think by knowing how to spell and conjugate verbs make them literate, but that not necessarily the case."
Boy, you can that again. It so true.
But the meanest thing that he ever did Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."-J Cash
Shel Silverstein, actually.
KFG