>online communities tend to be pretty homogeneous.
Yep. On a forum like this, you can be pretty sure that 99% of us are from the US, and probably 75% of us are from the north, 90% are white, 100% are male.
The only really surprising thing is the wide spectrum of ages and jobs.
Are there any women here? Besides Natalie Portman and Esther Sassaman, that is.
Mmm, PageRank really made them take off. I remember with AltaVista, we got increasingly good at writing custom "advanced" searches. Once Google hit, we forgot all that.
>The article's author had a stunning failure of vision.
Do you realize the monumental volume of blood, sweat, and tears that went into making Wikipedia? It's 1% technology, 99% human effort.
I don't think it was easy to imagine that hundreds of thousands of people would just suddenly start writing everything down. Not to mention, db-backed sites were so rare in '95 that Cliff Stoll may have never seen one.
Seriously. If you can get bored with MySpace (and I have), and you can get bored with WoW (and I have), then you should be able to understand where Cliff Stoll was coming from.
He was, apparently, the first person to get bored on the internet.
That's a good question, actually. How have things improved since the 90's?
WHAT'S CHANGED:
Slashdot is less trolled, more predictable Better shopping sites with reviews (Amazon, Newegg) Wikipedia replaces Everything2 Google replaces AltaVista Bittorrent replaces ftp:// Connection speed wayyyyy up Comments on anything, anywhere Insane amounts of Flash games XML/DOM/Jscript is sweet, if you still care by now Pretty much every TV clip is on YouTube Newspapers have gotten worse Everyone blogs Everything is db-backed with a PHP forum on top of it Craigslist All idiots have been corralled into MySpace/FB where they will be electronically set on fire
HASN'T CHANGED:
Pricewatch ArsTechnica Yahoo! Slashdot still buggy, worst codebase ever. Web pages do not render instantaneously Most news articles still do not contain pictures Still reading news online HTML maxed out at 4.01 Still no videophone Still not using a Microsoft browser Still using a Microsoft OS Still credit-card shopping Checking email still crucial
Clearly there's a social aspect to iPod ownership. I have a Sansa...beautiful color screen, cheap as hell, expandable, does video, and I'll bet the interface blows away an iPod's. It's irritating to look around the gym and see that EVERYONE has an iPod stuck to their arm. I mean, don't they realize that iPods are expensive?
As I'm getting older, I find the youth "herd mentality" more and more bizarre. It's like they're stuck in a bad dream. Must...Own...iPod...
A friend of mine was commenting the other day that all blond girls drive Jettas. Hmm. Glad I didn't notice.
If you're going to mention alternate keyboards, the Kinesis Contoured is no joke. It's freaking comfortable for anything besides games. Granted, it's expensive, but for hardcore development, you'll stick with it.
I was appalled when I first saw one at age 19, but by age 25 I owned two...modified them...and had them repaired.
Now I'm looking at trackballs, and chorded, "game-controller" type keyboards. The flat Qwerty is a joke for anything but casual...and Slashdot qualifies as causal (hello Qwerty!)
>Should I switch to Dvorak and pretty much learn typing from scratch, but properly this time?
Yes. This is what I did.
Since I already had my qwerty technique down cold from childhood, my Dvorak technique was completely different, and easy to separate.
If your goal is to be good at typing, don't waste your time with an outmoded technique. Qwerty is just a variation of alphabetical. Since it's so common, you'll never forget Qwerty. But you'll pick up Dvorak in a couple of weeks.
After a couple months, you'll remember both. The only sticking point is special keys (brackets, parens, quotes, etc.) But whatever.
>Of course some scientists (and one in particular, Norman Borlaug) decided that was a load of shit, worked on food technology and spreading it around. The disaster did not happen
No, it just became a climate disaster instead. Borlaug bought us 50 years. Hopefully we can keep doing that.
That's preposterous. You think lugging home a jug of smelly, poisonous carbon distillates from a filthy pumping station is the pinnacle of human civilization?
You must have missed the era when people lugged home jugs of smelly, poisonous water from filthy pumping stations.
Lugging around buckets of filth eventually goes out of fashion.
We don't want everyone to be precisely equal. What we could use, however, is a rough equality that lets the wealthy stroll through a poor neighborhood without getting stabbed.
Intermingling of the classes is good for trade. This is only possible when they don't hate each other. If they do, then military means must be used to keep them apart. This is the rough idea behind a nation state.
You always need some plan of defense, but costs go up when tensions are high. Did you enjoy spending your tax dollars on nukes during the Cold War? Or would you rather go over there and bang some Russian broads now that it's over?
Communism is a real threat in the West, but probably not how you think. Just look at who the US government pays its money to, and you will find out who the real communists are: people who are lazy, and can articulate it.
The urban poor will always be the last to go on the public dole, because by struggling to survive, they are in some sense the least-lazy sector of society.
No, you don't. With an impressive 5-digit UID, you still failed to RTFA.
The Author of the article merely pointed out a handful of positive aspects of slum living, essentially the community aspect of foot travel, true free-market capitalism, and the efficiency of low-cost labor (i.e. rampant recycling).
The point is not to say that slums are good. The point is that slums have an ingenuity that is lacking in rich cities where people turn on the boob tube and zone out.
Slashdot Mirror
>online communities tend to be pretty homogeneous.
Yep. On a forum like this, you can be pretty sure that 99% of us are from the US, and probably 75% of us are from the north, 90% are white, 100% are male.
The only really surprising thing is the wide spectrum of ages and jobs.
Are there any women here? Besides Natalie Portman and Esther Sassaman, that is.
Mmm, PageRank really made them take off. I remember with AltaVista, we got increasingly good at writing custom "advanced" searches. Once Google hit, we forgot all that.
>The article's author had a stunning failure of vision.
Do you realize the monumental volume of blood, sweat, and tears that went into making Wikipedia? It's 1% technology, 99% human effort.
I don't think it was easy to imagine that hundreds of thousands of people would just suddenly start writing everything down. Not to mention, db-backed sites were so rare in '95 that Cliff Stoll may have never seen one.
>Perhaps only cynics could have foreseen the success of the internet?
Oh yes. Yes indeed. Texting is a bigger vice for young women than cocaine.
There's nothing quite as humiliating as spending a whole hour trying to craft the perfect 5-word text message just to get your dick properly wetted.
Funny thing is, I remember about four years ago they used to call. Is texting that new?
The snide comment that leapt out to me was "There's no way to safely send money over the internet."
Really...because the banks weren't the *first* people to get networked back in the 80's.
Other than that, fine article really.
Seriously. If you can get bored with MySpace (and I have), and you can get bored with WoW (and I have), then you should be able to understand where Cliff Stoll was coming from.
He was, apparently, the first person to get bored on the internet.
Lol. Exactly.
Now the question becomes, is Chat Roulette better or worse than going outside and talking to the neighbors?
WELL...I am indoors, online. So that should tell you something.
I would prefer to be outside, but I ACTUALLY LIKE YOU PEOPLE BETTER.
>That said, I don't think I could go back to 1995
That's a good question, actually. How have things improved since the 90's?
WHAT'S CHANGED:
Slashdot is less trolled, more predictable
Better shopping sites with reviews (Amazon, Newegg)
Wikipedia replaces Everything2
Google replaces AltaVista
Bittorrent replaces ftp://
Connection speed wayyyyy up
Comments on anything, anywhere
Insane amounts of Flash games
XML/DOM/Jscript is sweet, if you still care by now
Pretty much every TV clip is on YouTube
Newspapers have gotten worse
Everyone blogs
Everything is db-backed with a PHP forum on top of it
Craigslist
All idiots have been corralled into MySpace/FB where they will be electronically set on fire
HASN'T CHANGED:
Pricewatch
ArsTechnica
Yahoo!
Slashdot still buggy, worst codebase ever.
Web pages do not render instantaneously
Most news articles still do not contain pictures
Still reading news online
HTML maxed out at 4.01
Still no videophone
Still not using a Microsoft browser
Still using a Microsoft OS
Still credit-card shopping
Checking email still crucial
Clearly there's a social aspect to iPod ownership. I have a Sansa...beautiful color screen, cheap as hell, expandable, does video, and I'll bet the interface blows away an iPod's. It's irritating to look around the gym and see that EVERYONE has an iPod stuck to their arm. I mean, don't they realize that iPods are expensive?
As I'm getting older, I find the youth "herd mentality" more and more bizarre. It's like they're stuck in a bad dream. Must...Own...iPod...
A friend of mine was commenting the other day that all blond girls drive Jettas. Hmm. Glad I didn't notice.
Capacitive sensor? They probably did that to lower manufacturing costs.
Aren't there buttons under the wheel? I know my Sansa has them. To fast-forward, you push right.
I went to college in the C++ era...
I went back to college in the Java cut-and-paste era...
I have nothing against Java. I think it writes reliable, portable code...
But the idea that we were going to *learn something* from Java...lol...
I felt like I was back in first grade.
>1) You experience pain while typing and want a more ergonomically correct positioning of your fingers.
Welcome to Gen X. I've been out of typing for...let's see...8 years?
The best thing about going slow, is knowing that you will speed up...
Piano keys are extremely heavy. There's probably nothing that will give you the hand-musculature training that piano lessons will.
Playing piano is like punching a wall. If you can do that, keyboards will not give you any trouble.
If you're going to mention alternate keyboards, the Kinesis Contoured is no joke. It's freaking comfortable for anything besides games. Granted, it's expensive, but for hardcore development, you'll stick with it.
I was appalled when I first saw one at age 19, but by age 25 I owned two...modified them...and had them repaired.
Now I'm looking at trackballs, and chorded, "game-controller" type keyboards. The flat Qwerty is a joke for anything but casual...and Slashdot qualifies as causal (hello Qwerty!)
Yeah but you can be 90wpm with improper technique, and develop serious carpal tunnel.
I was a typist once. I quit. But I did take the time to learn Dvorak, and it's fun. Your fingers feel like they're creeping.
>Should I switch to Dvorak and pretty much learn typing from scratch, but properly this time?
Yes. This is what I did.
Since I already had my qwerty technique down cold from childhood, my Dvorak technique was completely different, and easy to separate.
If your goal is to be good at typing, don't waste your time with an outmoded technique. Qwerty is just a variation of alphabetical. Since it's so common, you'll never forget Qwerty. But you'll pick up Dvorak in a couple of weeks.
After a couple months, you'll remember both. The only sticking point is special keys (brackets, parens, quotes, etc.) But whatever.
>Of course some scientists (and one in particular, Norman Borlaug) decided that was a load of shit, worked on food technology and spreading it around. The disaster did not happen
No, it just became a climate disaster instead. Borlaug bought us 50 years. Hopefully we can keep doing that.
Not only can a rich society afford to be wasteful, but the ratio of waste to refined product is a key indicator of affluence.
If raw resources is baseline wealth, then a high level of waste indicates rapid conversion of raw materials to refined product.
I suppose then that waste is the first derivative of money.
But you can't get richer forever. Eventually waste stops and wealth plateaus. The problem with the slums is they're plateauing pretty low.
That's preposterous. You think lugging home a jug of smelly, poisonous carbon distillates from a filthy pumping station is the pinnacle of human civilization?
You must have missed the era when people lugged home jugs of smelly, poisonous water from filthy pumping stations.
Lugging around buckets of filth eventually goes out of fashion.
Student loan=slavery. Under normal conditions, you get paid to learn. With a student loan, suddenly a whole series of jobs can produce no income.
We don't want everyone to be precisely equal. What we could use, however, is a rough equality that lets the wealthy stroll through a poor neighborhood without getting stabbed.
Intermingling of the classes is good for trade. This is only possible when they don't hate each other. If they do, then military means must be used to keep them apart. This is the rough idea behind a nation state.
You always need some plan of defense, but costs go up when tensions are high. Did you enjoy spending your tax dollars on nukes during the Cold War? Or would you rather go over there and bang some Russian broads now that it's over?
Communism is a real threat in the West, but probably not how you think. Just look at who the US government pays its money to, and you will find out who the real communists are: people who are lazy, and can articulate it.
The urban poor will always be the last to go on the public dole, because by struggling to survive, they are in some sense the least-lazy sector of society.
>Is there something you find to be untrue about what you wrote above, or do you just not like it?
+1 ROFL +1 Italics!
>I get what the author is trying to say
No, you don't. With an impressive 5-digit UID, you still failed to RTFA.
The Author of the article merely pointed out a handful of positive aspects of slum living, essentially the community aspect of foot travel, true free-market capitalism, and the efficiency of low-cost labor (i.e. rampant recycling).
The point is not to say that slums are good. The point is that slums have an ingenuity that is lacking in rich cities where people turn on the boob tube and zone out.