A woman comes home one day in the dead of winter, and there's a snake on her front porch. She jumps, startled, but then the snake speaks. "Please help me, I am freezing to death," says the snake. "But you're a snake, you'll bit me," says the woman. "No no, please, I promise, I am dying - if you take me inside and let me warm myself by the fire I will live, and I will owe you my life. I would never bite you," replies the snake. So the woman lets the snake in, the snake warms itself by the fire, then slithers over and bites the woman. "You've poisoned me! Why did you do that?!? I saved your life!" screams the woman. "Yeah, but I'm a snake," replies the snake.
The strange thing here is not Microsoft failing to be altruistic. It is Miguel's stunning credulity.
You are a hero of Open Source, Miguel, and a heckuva project leader. I have a lot of respect for you. But you have a lot to learn about reading people.
Killer app? Yes, I say. Not so much for what it does for the individual, that's just nice. But think about what a killer app this is for economic efficiency.
People will be able to get instant comparisons of competing products. They will be able to find out which sunscreen really does protect even while swimming. They'll be able to know which digital camera provides better color reproduction. They'll be able to find out, in real time, which product serves their needs as a customer.
This will help them, sure. But think about the force this brings to bear to advance the free market. People will be buying products based on quality, instead of packaging. The network effect on product quality could be staggering. Products will improve, which will raise consumer confidence (the natural, healthy way). The economy could surge forward in a way unseen since women remained in the labor market after WW II.
Of course, that assumes we win network neutrality so that we remain able to share information without discrimination. That ability is a cornerstone of all the extraordinary advances that ubiquitous social computing will bring. Help advance collective intelligence: Learn about, and spread the word about, net neutrality.
Someone's gonna have to help me with that one. What's their role in this? Is it a continuation of their battle on software piracy?
Could be more than one reason, but here is one:
Microsoft hates trying to influence the government. They are much better at twisting the arms of corporations, where money speaks more freely. Granting the networks the right to provide discriminatory service is a game Microsoft can win. They'll just pay them to downgrade the service of competitors. Suppose it took four hours to download OpenOffice.org, or that the downloads constantly terminated, or did not start at all.
Suppose that were a service that the ISPs were legally allowed to sell to Microsoft.
Can't happen? They'd never get away with it?
Suppose it were legal for Microsoft to pay computer manufacturers to not ship any machines with Linux. Do you think they'd do it? Do you think they'd get away with that? They have. It all came out in the monopoly hearings. They weren't barred from the practice, and it is a matter of public record.
I'm a Brit,...in a country [the US] that things gun ownership is a right
Funny - you post your (entirely valid) disagreement with the overreach of the US government in this case, and in the same post decry a right that came about as a result of the overreach by your government back in the 1700s, and which remains protected to prevent overreach by our government.
When you are fighting the gods of marketing and "hip" over at Apple, you gotta play the game right.
Why would you do that? When you're competing, you don't play by the dominant player's rules unless you want to be their bitch. You make your own rules. This is the Linux of cell phones, not the Mac OS-X. It is less polished out of the box, but is more extensible. The fact that it is directly competing with the iPhone is more a reflection of how bad all other phones are than of the two phones targeting the same demographic.
Heck, look at what happened to Bill and Jerry when they tried to out-hip Apple.
There's room for a geek phone and a turtleneck phone. And even a business weenie phone - but they're so blindly amorous of Microsoft that it will be a while before they get anything better than the HTC Touch (which is not bad, but not in the same league as these two monsters).
If they're bold enough, the telcos may be able to help push this forward (since they're no longer able to be held liable, all this does it make their customers more comfortable by earning back their trust).
Yeah, right. The government is handing out $100 million dollar checks to keep their mouths shut. One company, QWest, had the balls to turn the money down. And the CEO got fired and sued (in part) for doing so.
To conclude: I got the message loud and clear and here's hoping you're having a nice, slightly fascistic police state that makes all of you feel right at home.
We're not, we hate it too.
Just to be clear: I'm not pissing on USians here. But what this administartion pulled off with a disregard of the most basic human rights (hello Mr. Torture President) is so depicable, that I for one certainly don't want anything of it.
No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.
Defend? No thanks. Explain? Sure - that's easy.
It is being hit so much harder because the RIAA gives a lot of money to politicians, and because politicians need money to get reelected, and because that money at the very least buys meme transmission time, and at the worst buys votes outright. In turn, the RIAA is asking for it to be hit harder because they fear it, do not understand it, and believe they will harvest more monetary wealth with less effort by hindering its growth. Finally, John Q. Public is a mix of those who do not care, those who do not understand, those who believe that DRM is a feature not a bug, those who believe that the current state of copyright fosters science and the useful arts, those who believe more property is good even if it does not foster science and the useful arts, and a very small number of people who do not hold any of those positions.
Am I missing something, or is that not really the question you were asking?
Start by taking away everything from those who know how to make and invest money, then give it to the worst investors you can.
And who are you talking about? The geniuses at Merril, Bear Stearns, and Lehman? Real bright bunch of bulbs there, eh? "Hey look - a giant bubble just like the dot-coms - let's go long!" Brilliant!
because congress thinks they can spend 600,000 of that man's first generated million better than he can.
Welcome to "How to ruin an economy 101: Start by taking away everything from those who know how to make and invest money, then give it to the worst investors you can." The Obama plan!
Fed income tax rate on the top income bracket is not 60%, it is 35%. Add in Social Security, which is capped, and you are still below 40%.
$1 million is not the top tax bracket, it's about $350k. The second bracket starts at $160k and is only 2% short of the top bracket.
The top tax rate since 1983 has been consistently lower than it has been at any other time since 1917 when federal taxation became big, with one exception - the runup to the 1929 crash.
In the fifties, the period when the US roared out in front of every other nation on the planet, the top tax rate was 91-92%, and kicked in at 3.25 million (inflation adjusted).
Today it is 35% and kicks in at $350,000.
In the runup to the 1929 crash, it was 25% and kicked in at 1.25 million (inflation adjusted).
Tell me - does the present economic situation more closely resemble the late 20's or the 50's?
When you give a huge chunk of the GDP to a very small portion of society, then fail to charge them for the privilege, you reward a pattern of behavior that looks a lot like Lehman, Enron, and Milken. You also take away the American Dream that makes middle income folks work hard. If they can't get ahead, why try?
However, businessmen only make money when the economy *lets their business make money*. So their motivation, at least if they think long-term, is toward a healthy economy. (Of course short-term profiteering and golden-parachuting tend to have the opposite effect, but we'll assume for this argument that there are more sensible businessmen than profiteers. Business isn't just Fortune 500 companies.)
HAHAHAHA - dude - you rule. That is the best one I've heard in days.
Have you taken any classes in business school? Have you worked on the management side of a publicly traded company? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the answer is yes, and that your above comment is intended as a joke.
Sensible businessmen are profiteers. Sensible businessmen are all about maximizing shareholder value. Actually, even that is not true, they are all about maximizing personal income, which requires a convincing appearance of being dedicated to maximizing shareholder value. They take it very seriously and genuinely believe that the line "greed is good" plumbs the entire depths of philosophical question. I'm not trying to make a value judgment here, and clearly the point of free market capitalism is an attempt to align societal advancement with personal acquisition of monetary wealth. But seriously - do you think it is very effective? With all the government regulation, ripe for the twisting influence of money, do you really think greed and the progress of our society are so well aligned? Or do you think most businessmen are altruists, choosing to sacrifice their personal monetary wealth acquisition in favor of societal economic wealth creation?
I'm not saying academics know more about what actually works - I'd give that edge to the businessmen. And clearly academia has politics, agendas, and other tainting influences. But in terms of the forms of direct motivation to which academics versus businessmen are exposed - the academics are one helluva lot more motivated to tell the truth as best they know it.
Ahh - yes. You make a very good point. These were not investors who were buying the stock because of the long-term potential. These were gamblers. Good point.
I recently got an itch to think more about evolution (some of you Bay Area folks may know why). The physical evolution side is very cool, but that aspect is very well covered. So I seized on the evolution of mind. Specifically, collective intelligence.
Bees, ants, flocks of birds, schools of fish - lots of groups engage in collective information processing. A beehive vastly exceeds the intelligence of any single bee. Similarly, the human brain is vastly more intelligent than any single neuron.
Over the past 50,000 years, our body has not evolved much. As a species, we are not significantly different than Euclid. And as individuals, we are not significantly more capable (as far as the machinery goes) of learning or discovering new things. And yet, we our rate of advance as a species is accelerating at a staggering pace. If we're using the same computing machine (more or less, maybe a bit better diet or whatever), what accounts for this extraordinary advance in our effective intelligence?
It is the evolution of collective intelligence. We neurons, we ants, we bees, are not getting any better - but the communications network is exploding. Consider the rate of advancement during the period of paper, then during the printing press, public lending libraries, the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, the web, email, Slashdot, YouTube. We are advancing faster not because the nodes in the network are any better, but because the information can flow more freely. Social networks are not new they've been with us since before speech, but back then the only communication channel was seeing someone doing something. A couple hundred years ago the best channels were books and town criers. Twenty years ago it was broadcast and telephone. Today instant, free, social networks are everywhere. And social networks are no more nor less than neural networks, beehives, writ large with us as the units of processing. The social network is vastly more powerful than any of us. More powerful than all of us.
And it is also a fantastic medium for siren songs. For flawed, but appealing, information. That is a problem.
But it is not a hard problem to solve. We see it here every single day, my fellow Slashdotters. Our community does an excellent job of culling the wheat from the chaff. And we do it with very little central directive (karma is about it), and with little if any deep discussion of the need to clean the information. It happens even in the face of great numbers of bad nodes - nodes that intentionally propagate bad information right here in our community. It happens because the rating system is pretty good.
Now imagine having that same rating system for the entire web. I think that would be pretty good.
But here is the important part, the call to action: We can help us advance as a species right now. We can improve the social networks right now. We already have the rating and feedback system, in one form or another, for most social networks. Most social networks at least have a way to leave comments. All we have to do is to think about what makes good information, and help it propagate.
Is good information that information with which I agree? I think not. Sometimes it is, but that is not the real measure of good information. The real measure of good information is whether it makes me question my assumptions. Whether it makes me dig deeper. Not even whether it is true, per se, but whether it leads us to truth.
My conscious objective, then, should be to find that good information, to find those nodes that are producing good information, and then to stimulate them to do more. How would I do that? Simple. Say, "Thank you for making me think." Post a comment demonstrating that the information presented has made our society better. It is a tiny thing, but most of us are good actors. The couple thousand intentional bad actors on Slashdot are no match for the tens or hundreds of thousands who do just a little to clean the information. One little thing.
The market responded by punishing the stock price of both companies. There could be little more clear evidence that the market is not efficient. How stupid does one need to be to think that EA + Take Two would be better than the two independently? Or, perhaps, how broken must our "free" market be for that combination to make sense?
EA pumps out extremely polished, but hopelessly formulaic titles. They treat their employees like interchangeable cogs. And they count every bean as if it were their last. It's not everyone's style, but it works for the products they create.
Take Two creates lavish works that are expressions of a borderline mental artistic genius. They treat their employees like, well, Rock Stars. They blow through cash like a 1999 dot-com. They are constantly bouncing from rags to riches and back again, but when they hit they move the industry.
The idiot investment analyst looks at that and thinks, "Imagine Take Two's brilliant artistry with EA's money management and product-focus." But, that is why you are called an "idiot" investment analyst, idiot. These are not compatible business models. EA is no more capable of nurturing artistry than Take Two is of being efficient. They are specialized, and they excel because they are specialized. Their flaws are facets of the strengths that make them great.
Outside of the hiking thing, you pretty much just described half of Slashdot (and of that half, I'm sure at least a couple others have ventured outdoors a couple of times). Maybe not as carbon-copy clones of yourself, but enough that the data could be used usefully.
I will happily admit that I fit in better in this community than in most. And the very cursory list I provided knocks me down below 50%, not counting hiking.
And I'm pretty sure you are overstating it by a significant margin - no way does 50% of this community ride motorcycles, let alone dirt and street, dressers and street fighters.
I'm not saying I'm unique, or that there are not groups into which I fit - in fact I fit well into many groups (provided I limit the topics to those which work with that group). Only that any group sufficiently large to provide a rich collaborative filtering set will be very hit-or-miss for me. I have broad interests, so I don't fit well in a narrow group, and I have relatively uncommon preferences so I do not fit well in a populist group. Pandora, Blockbuster, Google with personalization turned on, iTunes, Amazon - they all miss me by miles.
Oddly - Google with personalization turned off, or the eclectic mix that is the world that uses Google in English, hits me quite well.
Today, it seems like the thinking is that the government can get access to anything they want, unless it is specially protected in some way. That is backwards.
Today, it seems like the thinking is that the government can get access to anything they want, even when it is specially protected by The Constitution. That is backwards.
There. Fixed that for ya.
As to unprecedented, I think it means, "Unprecedented since 9/11, when we all decided that being terrified is a reasonable response to terrorism." Or, alternately, "Unprecedented since 9/11, when the executive realized that augmenting, or at least capitalizing upon, public terror would enable them to get the law enforcement tools they believe are important, even at the expense of our national principles."
There are over 6 billion people on this planet. You really think no one else shares those same interests?
I think there are maybe a couple thousand people who share a similar interest profile.
And I think thousands out of 6 billion will get lost in any analytical system whose intent is to create clusters - unless they have a million clusters, which would thin the data set to the point where it would be unusable. (as an aside, I work in Internet advertising at the moment, have written collaborative filtering systems, and that last bit there is about math, not my opinion)
Well god knows they have enough data on the entire world to implement ranking in a way that's weighted towards users similar to you
Ummm, sorry Mister Fitsinabox, but I do not believe that would work for me. I'm a Linux geek who also hangs out with and has shared interests with "the cool kids". I support the entire first amendment and the entire second amendment as protecting an individual right. I'm a code hacker, a circuit hacker, a hardware hacker, and a hardware maker (I use industrial scale mills for fun). I appreciate little sports cars, tiny efficiency cars, and big wasteful detroit old-school big-blocks. I ride dirt and street motorcycles, Harleys and crotch-rockets, with equal fervor. I run Linux because it is ugly and ferocious, and Mac because it is beautiful and elegant. I hike-in camp in extremely hostile environments without caffeine or WiFi, but can't live without my caffeine and email when I'm home.
Hell, I enjoy Madonna, The Postal Service, Clint Black, Iron Maiden, Marvin Gaye, Enya, and Bach. I can see both sides of Israel/Palestine. I am a capitalist, a patriot, and a proponent of many of views on Slashdot that appear to conflict with those -isms. I have Stripes, The Crow, and Howard's End on DVD.
I have tried many of the genetic algorithm and massive data-mining based systems that supposedly understand me. Not one of them works worth a shit for me (though they are impressive from an academic standpoint).
So now when I search for Image Magick, I'll see only results about Photoshop, because the average idiot knows nothing about scripted image manipulation (including what that phrase means).
When I search for "aptitude", I'll get nothing related to Debian, because the general public doesn't know what a Debian is.
When I search for "ALSA", I'll get nothing about Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, because the general public doesn't know what Linux, Sound Architecture, or even anything truly Advanced is.
When I search fo "BusyBox", I'll get a bunch of answers about toys, because the average idiot doesn't want to know about BusyBox.
The first was off the top of my head - the other three just came from the first page of dpkg -l.
Populist search? Ummm, no thanks. You're doing a great job as is, Google. Please, keep it up. I really don't care that my dipshit neighbor thinks WINE is some kind of fruity alcoholic beverage.
This is one bad symptom of the incomprehensible good that is the evolution of human collective intelligence. Yes, a bad node can infect thousands of other nodes in an instant. And it can cost billions of dollars occasionally. But these costs pale in comparison to the benefits of the network effect and collective intelligence. Any corrective treatment for this "problem" will have a devastating cost to the global economy unless it is extremely precisely and accurately targetted.
A billion dollars is nothing compared to the wealth generated by the network effect and collective intelligence every day. It is a natural consequence, and it will happen again, many times. But it is a very small price to pay.
>> The article makes clear that Google's news bot only noticed the old story because it has been voted up in popularity on the site of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
> Hmmm... Quick! Everybody click this link [to a story about MS losing their monopoly suit]!
Very well played. I nearly spewed coffee on my monitor. Thanks:)
SafeNet/MediaSentry defended their actions by claiming their company simply "records public information available to millions of users. If private investigator licenses were required to do what MediaSentry does, every user on Limewire and other illegal p2p networks would be required to have a license. Indeed, every search engine and Internet user would be required to have a private investigator license if MediaSentry needs one."
Bullshit. If private investigator licenses were required to take compromising photographs of people in public places, everyone who owns a camera would be required to have a private investigator license.
Ummm, hey, dumbass; it's not the act alone that matters. It is the act as part of an investigation. Are you retarded, or lying?
No one will do a single thing about it as long as they can watch their TV shows.
People need to stand up and defend their rights, but unless it derails their daily lives, nothing will change.....I hate being so negative...But you know it's true.:-/
But wait - what about Drakin020? I hear he's doing something about it. He's posting his concerns to a public forum to discuss them with his peers. He is helping to raise the awareness of the problem among a set of people with significant technical knowledge; one of the chief skills of the modern activist.
I believe Drakin020 is trying to make a difference, and I believe I am as well. That's two of us, and I see a bunch more on this thread. We are aware of the problem, which is the first and most important step. And we are discussing it openly with our peers, which is the second. We are doing something to fix this problem.
The next step is to begin discussing causes and effects, and means to steer the course of this great nation's internal dialogue. While considering negative potential side effects openly and honestly. In this potent forum we are discussing how to advance the proper, prosperous course for our nation. Debating serious issues like warrantless surveillance and economic wealth creation in a world of zero-cost copies.
We are doing it - right now, you and I, and our interesting and insightful collection of peers, in this thread.
Pretty sure most of us are above this anyway, but let's avoid a distro flamewar. You can look through my past comments and see that RH is far from my preferred distro, and I love to take shots at them. But now is not the time. Anyone can get hacked, and it sucks. And they're being responsible about reporting and mitigating.
Slashdot Mirror
A woman comes home one day in the dead of winter, and there's a snake on her front porch. She jumps, startled, but then the snake speaks. "Please help me, I am freezing to death," says the snake. "But you're a snake, you'll bit me," says the woman. "No no, please, I promise, I am dying - if you take me inside and let me warm myself by the fire I will live, and I will owe you my life. I would never bite you," replies the snake. So the woman lets the snake in, the snake warms itself by the fire, then slithers over and bites the woman. "You've poisoned me! Why did you do that?!? I saved your life!" screams the woman. "Yeah, but I'm a snake," replies the snake.
The strange thing here is not Microsoft failing to be altruistic. It is Miguel's stunning credulity.
You are a hero of Open Source, Miguel, and a heckuva project leader. I have a lot of respect for you. But you have a lot to learn about reading people.
Killer app? Yes, I say. Not so much for what it does for the individual, that's just nice. But think about what a killer app this is for economic efficiency.
People will be able to get instant comparisons of competing products. They will be able to find out which sunscreen really does protect even while swimming. They'll be able to know which digital camera provides better color reproduction. They'll be able to find out, in real time, which product serves their needs as a customer.
This will help them, sure. But think about the force this brings to bear to advance the free market. People will be buying products based on quality, instead of packaging. The network effect on product quality could be staggering. Products will improve, which will raise consumer confidence (the natural, healthy way). The economy could surge forward in a way unseen since women remained in the labor market after WW II.
Of course, that assumes we win network neutrality so that we remain able to share information without discrimination. That ability is a cornerstone of all the extraordinary advances that ubiquitous social computing will bring. Help advance collective intelligence: Learn about, and spread the word about, net neutrality.
Microsoft...
Someone's gonna have to help me with that one. What's their role in this? Is it a continuation of their battle on software piracy?
Could be more than one reason, but here is one:
Microsoft hates trying to influence the government. They are much better at twisting the arms of corporations, where money speaks more freely. Granting the networks the right to provide discriminatory service is a game Microsoft can win. They'll just pay them to downgrade the service of competitors. Suppose it took four hours to download OpenOffice.org, or that the downloads constantly terminated, or did not start at all.
Suppose that were a service that the ISPs were legally allowed to sell to Microsoft.
Can't happen? They'd never get away with it?
Suppose it were legal for Microsoft to pay computer manufacturers to not ship any machines with Linux. Do you think they'd do it? Do you think they'd get away with that? They have. It all came out in the monopoly hearings. They weren't barred from the practice, and it is a matter of public record.
I'm a Brit,...in a country [the US] that things gun ownership is a right
Funny - you post your (entirely valid) disagreement with the overreach of the US government in this case, and in the same post decry a right that came about as a result of the overreach by your government back in the 1700s, and which remains protected to prevent overreach by our government.
When you are fighting the gods of marketing and "hip" over at Apple, you gotta play the game right.
Why would you do that? When you're competing, you don't play by the dominant player's rules unless you want to be their bitch. You make your own rules. This is the Linux of cell phones, not the Mac OS-X. It is less polished out of the box, but is more extensible. The fact that it is directly competing with the iPhone is more a reflection of how bad all other phones are than of the two phones targeting the same demographic.
Heck, look at what happened to Bill and Jerry when they tried to out-hip Apple.
There's room for a geek phone and a turtleneck phone. And even a business weenie phone - but they're so blindly amorous of Microsoft that it will be a while before they get anything better than the HTC Touch (which is not bad, but not in the same league as these two monsters).
If they're bold enough, the telcos may be able to help push this forward (since they're no longer able to be held liable, all this does it make their customers more comfortable by earning back their trust).
Yeah, right. The government is handing out $100 million dollar checks to keep their mouths shut. One company, QWest, had the balls to turn the money down. And the CEO got fired and sued (in part) for doing so.
To conclude: I got the message loud and clear and here's hoping you're having a nice, slightly fascistic police state that makes all of you feel right at home.
We're not, we hate it too.
Just to be clear: I'm not pissing on USians here. But what this administartion pulled off with a disregard of the most basic human rights (hello Mr. Torture President) is so depicable, that I for one certainly don't want anything of it.
Thanks, we don't want it either.
No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.
Defend? No thanks. Explain? Sure - that's easy.
It is being hit so much harder because the RIAA gives a lot of money to politicians, and because politicians need money to get reelected, and because that money at the very least buys meme transmission time, and at the worst buys votes outright. In turn, the RIAA is asking for it to be hit harder because they fear it, do not understand it, and believe they will harvest more monetary wealth with less effort by hindering its growth. Finally, John Q. Public is a mix of those who do not care, those who do not understand, those who believe that DRM is a feature not a bug, those who believe that the current state of copyright fosters science and the useful arts, those who believe more property is good even if it does not foster science and the useful arts, and a very small number of people who do not hold any of those positions.
Am I missing something, or is that not really the question you were asking?
Start by taking away everything from those who know how to make and invest money, then give it to the worst investors you can.
And who are you talking about? The geniuses at Merril, Bear Stearns, and Lehman? Real bright bunch of bulbs there, eh? "Hey look - a giant bubble just like the dot-coms - let's go long!" Brilliant!
because congress thinks they can spend 600,000 of that man's first generated million better than he can.
Welcome to "How to ruin an economy 101: Start by taking away everything from those who know how to make and invest money, then give it to the worst investors you can." The Obama plan!
Fed income tax rate on the top income bracket is not 60%, it is 35%. Add in Social Security, which is capped, and you are still below 40%.
$1 million is not the top tax bracket, it's about $350k. The second bracket starts at $160k and is only 2% short of the top bracket.
The top tax rate since 1983 has been consistently lower than it has been at any other time since 1917 when federal taxation became big, with one exception - the runup to the 1929 crash.
In the fifties, the period when the US roared out in front of every other nation on the planet, the top tax rate was 91-92%, and kicked in at 3.25 million (inflation adjusted).
Today it is 35% and kicks in at $350,000.
In the runup to the 1929 crash, it was 25% and kicked in at 1.25 million (inflation adjusted).
Tell me - does the present economic situation more closely resemble the late 20's or the 50's?
When you give a huge chunk of the GDP to a very small portion of society, then fail to charge them for the privilege, you reward a pattern of behavior that looks a lot like Lehman, Enron, and Milken. You also take away the American Dream that makes middle income folks work hard. If they can't get ahead, why try?
However, businessmen only make money when the economy *lets their business make money*. So their motivation, at least if they think long-term, is toward a healthy economy. (Of course short-term profiteering and golden-parachuting tend to have the opposite effect, but we'll assume for this argument that there are more sensible businessmen than profiteers. Business isn't just Fortune 500 companies.)
HAHAHAHA - dude - you rule. That is the best one I've heard in days.
Have you taken any classes in business school? Have you worked on the management side of a publicly traded company? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the answer is yes, and that your above comment is intended as a joke.
Sensible businessmen are profiteers. Sensible businessmen are all about maximizing shareholder value. Actually, even that is not true, they are all about maximizing personal income, which requires a convincing appearance of being dedicated to maximizing shareholder value. They take it very seriously and genuinely believe that the line "greed is good" plumbs the entire depths of philosophical question. I'm not trying to make a value judgment here, and clearly the point of free market capitalism is an attempt to align societal advancement with personal acquisition of monetary wealth. But seriously - do you think it is very effective? With all the government regulation, ripe for the twisting influence of money, do you really think greed and the progress of our society are so well aligned? Or do you think most businessmen are altruists, choosing to sacrifice their personal monetary wealth acquisition in favor of societal economic wealth creation?
I'm not saying academics know more about what actually works - I'd give that edge to the businessmen. And clearly academia has politics, agendas, and other tainting influences. But in terms of the forms of direct motivation to which academics versus businessmen are exposed - the academics are one helluva lot more motivated to tell the truth as best they know it.
Ahh - yes. You make a very good point. These were not investors who were buying the stock because of the long-term potential. These were gamblers. Good point.
I recently got an itch to think more about evolution (some of you Bay Area folks may know why). The physical evolution side is very cool, but that aspect is very well covered. So I seized on the evolution of mind. Specifically, collective intelligence.
Bees, ants, flocks of birds, schools of fish - lots of groups engage in collective information processing. A beehive vastly exceeds the intelligence of any single bee. Similarly, the human brain is vastly more intelligent than any single neuron.
Over the past 50,000 years, our body has not evolved much. As a species, we are not significantly different than Euclid. And as individuals, we are not significantly more capable (as far as the machinery goes) of learning or discovering new things. And yet, we our rate of advance as a species is accelerating at a staggering pace. If we're using the same computing machine (more or less, maybe a bit better diet or whatever), what accounts for this extraordinary advance in our effective intelligence?
It is the evolution of collective intelligence. We neurons, we ants, we bees, are not getting any better - but the communications network is exploding. Consider the rate of advancement during the period of paper, then during the printing press, public lending libraries, the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, the web, email, Slashdot, YouTube. We are advancing faster not because the nodes in the network are any better, but because the information can flow more freely. Social networks are not new they've been with us since before speech, but back then the only communication channel was seeing someone doing something. A couple hundred years ago the best channels were books and town criers. Twenty years ago it was broadcast and telephone. Today instant, free, social networks are everywhere. And social networks are no more nor less than neural networks, beehives, writ large with us as the units of processing. The social network is vastly more powerful than any of us. More powerful than all of us.
And it is also a fantastic medium for siren songs. For flawed, but appealing, information. That is a problem.
But it is not a hard problem to solve. We see it here every single day, my fellow Slashdotters. Our community does an excellent job of culling the wheat from the chaff. And we do it with very little central directive (karma is about it), and with little if any deep discussion of the need to clean the information. It happens even in the face of great numbers of bad nodes - nodes that intentionally propagate bad information right here in our community. It happens because the rating system is pretty good.
Now imagine having that same rating system for the entire web. I think that would be pretty good.
But here is the important part, the call to action: We can help us advance as a species right now. We can improve the social networks right now. We already have the rating and feedback system, in one form or another, for most social networks. Most social networks at least have a way to leave comments. All we have to do is to think about what makes good information, and help it propagate.
Is good information that information with which I agree? I think not. Sometimes it is, but that is not the real measure of good information. The real measure of good information is whether it makes me question my assumptions. Whether it makes me dig deeper. Not even whether it is true, per se, but whether it leads us to truth.
My conscious objective, then, should be to find that good information, to find those nodes that are producing good information, and then to stimulate them to do more. How would I do that? Simple. Say, "Thank you for making me think." Post a comment demonstrating that the information presented has made our society better. It is a tiny thing, but most of us are good actors. The couple thousand intentional bad actors on Slashdot are no match for the tens or hundreds of thousands who do just a little to clean the information. One little thing.
The social networks ge
The market responded by punishing the stock price of both companies. There could be little more clear evidence that the market is not efficient. How stupid does one need to be to think that EA + Take Two would be better than the two independently? Or, perhaps, how broken must our "free" market be for that combination to make sense?
EA pumps out extremely polished, but hopelessly formulaic titles. They treat their employees like interchangeable cogs. And they count every bean as if it were their last. It's not everyone's style, but it works for the products they create.
Take Two creates lavish works that are expressions of a borderline mental artistic genius. They treat their employees like, well, Rock Stars. They blow through cash like a 1999 dot-com. They are constantly bouncing from rags to riches and back again, but when they hit they move the industry.
The idiot investment analyst looks at that and thinks, "Imagine Take Two's brilliant artistry with EA's money management and product-focus." But, that is why you are called an "idiot" investment analyst, idiot. These are not compatible business models. EA is no more capable of nurturing artistry than Take Two is of being efficient. They are specialized, and they excel because they are specialized. Their flaws are facets of the strengths that make them great.
Outside of the hiking thing, you pretty much just described half of Slashdot (and of that half, I'm sure at least a couple others have ventured outdoors a couple of times). Maybe not as carbon-copy clones of yourself, but enough that the data could be used usefully.
I will happily admit that I fit in better in this community than in most. And the very cursory list I provided knocks me down below 50%, not counting hiking.
And I'm pretty sure you are overstating it by a significant margin - no way does 50% of this community ride motorcycles, let alone dirt and street, dressers and street fighters.
I'm not saying I'm unique, or that there are not groups into which I fit - in fact I fit well into many groups (provided I limit the topics to those which work with that group). Only that any group sufficiently large to provide a rich collaborative filtering set will be very hit-or-miss for me. I have broad interests, so I don't fit well in a narrow group, and I have relatively uncommon preferences so I do not fit well in a populist group. Pandora, Blockbuster, Google with personalization turned on, iTunes, Amazon - they all miss me by miles.
Oddly - Google with personalization turned off, or the eclectic mix that is the world that uses Google in English, hits me quite well.
Today, it seems like the thinking is that the government can get access to anything they want, unless it is specially protected in some way. That is backwards.
Today, it seems like the thinking is that the government can get access to anything they want, even when it is specially protected by The Constitution. That is backwards.
There. Fixed that for ya.
As to unprecedented, I think it means, "Unprecedented since 9/11, when we all decided that being terrified is a reasonable response to terrorism." Or, alternately, "Unprecedented since 9/11, when the executive realized that augmenting, or at least capitalizing upon, public terror would enable them to get the law enforcement tools they believe are important, even at the expense of our national principles."
There are over 6 billion people on this planet. You really think no one else shares those same interests?
I think there are maybe a couple thousand people who share a similar interest profile.
And I think thousands out of 6 billion will get lost in any analytical system whose intent is to create clusters - unless they have a million clusters, which would thin the data set to the point where it would be unusable. (as an aside, I work in Internet advertising at the moment, have written collaborative filtering systems, and that last bit there is about math, not my opinion)
Well god knows they have enough data on the entire world to implement ranking in a way that's weighted towards users similar to you
Ummm, sorry Mister Fitsinabox, but I do not believe that would work for me. I'm a Linux geek who also hangs out with and has shared interests with "the cool kids". I support the entire first amendment and the entire second amendment as protecting an individual right. I'm a code hacker, a circuit hacker, a hardware hacker, and a hardware maker (I use industrial scale mills for fun). I appreciate little sports cars, tiny efficiency cars, and big wasteful detroit old-school big-blocks. I ride dirt and street motorcycles, Harleys and crotch-rockets, with equal fervor. I run Linux because it is ugly and ferocious, and Mac because it is beautiful and elegant. I hike-in camp in extremely hostile environments without caffeine or WiFi, but can't live without my caffeine and email when I'm home.
Hell, I enjoy Madonna, The Postal Service, Clint Black, Iron Maiden, Marvin Gaye, Enya, and Bach. I can see both sides of Israel/Palestine. I am a capitalist, a patriot, and a proponent of many of views on Slashdot that appear to conflict with those -isms. I have Stripes, The Crow, and Howard's End on DVD.
I have tried many of the genetic algorithm and massive data-mining based systems that supposedly understand me. Not one of them works worth a shit for me (though they are impressive from an academic standpoint).
There is no group of "users similar to me".
So now when I search for Image Magick, I'll see only results about Photoshop, because the average idiot knows nothing about scripted image manipulation (including what that phrase means).
When I search for "aptitude", I'll get nothing related to Debian, because the general public doesn't know what a Debian is.
When I search for "ALSA", I'll get nothing about Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, because the general public doesn't know what Linux, Sound Architecture, or even anything truly Advanced is.
When I search fo "BusyBox", I'll get a bunch of answers about toys, because the average idiot doesn't want to know about BusyBox.
The first was off the top of my head - the other three just came from the first page of dpkg -l.
Populist search? Ummm, no thanks. You're doing a great job as is, Google. Please, keep it up. I really don't care that my dipshit neighbor thinks WINE is some kind of fruity alcoholic beverage.
>> How about outlawing automated trading programs? sounds like a solution to me.
> How about letting stupid people lose money? Sounds like a better solution to me.
Hear hear. Thanks!
This is one bad symptom of the incomprehensible good that is the evolution of human collective intelligence. Yes, a bad node can infect thousands of other nodes in an instant. And it can cost billions of dollars occasionally. But these costs pale in comparison to the benefits of the network effect and collective intelligence. Any corrective treatment for this "problem" will have a devastating cost to the global economy unless it is extremely precisely and accurately targetted.
A billion dollars is nothing compared to the wealth generated by the network effect and collective intelligence every day. It is a natural consequence, and it will happen again, many times. But it is a very small price to pay.
>> The article makes clear that Google's news bot only noticed the old story because it has been voted up in popularity on the site of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
> Hmmm... Quick! Everybody click this link [to a story about MS losing their monopoly suit]!
Very well played. I nearly spewed coffee on my monitor. Thanks :)
SafeNet/MediaSentry defended their actions by claiming their company simply "records public information available to millions of users. If private investigator licenses were required to do what MediaSentry does, every user on Limewire and other illegal p2p networks would be required to have a license. Indeed, every search engine and Internet user would be required to have a private investigator license if MediaSentry needs one."
Bullshit. If private investigator licenses were required to take compromising photographs of people in public places, everyone who owns a camera would be required to have a private investigator license.
Ummm, hey, dumbass; it's not the act alone that matters. It is the act as part of an investigation. Are you retarded, or lying?
Nothing.
That's right, nothing.
No one will do a single thing about it as long as they can watch their TV shows.
People need to stand up and defend their rights, but unless it derails their daily lives, nothing will change. ....I hate being so negative...But you know it's true. :-/
But wait - what about Drakin020? I hear he's doing something about it. He's posting his concerns to a public forum to discuss them with his peers. He is helping to raise the awareness of the problem among a set of people with significant technical knowledge; one of the chief skills of the modern activist.
I believe Drakin020 is trying to make a difference, and I believe I am as well. That's two of us, and I see a bunch more on this thread. We are aware of the problem, which is the first and most important step. And we are discussing it openly with our peers, which is the second. We are doing something to fix this problem.
The next step is to begin discussing causes and effects, and means to steer the course of this great nation's internal dialogue. While considering negative potential side effects openly and honestly. In this potent forum we are discussing how to advance the proper, prosperous course for our nation. Debating serious issues like warrantless surveillance and economic wealth creation in a world of zero-cost copies.
We are doing it - right now, you and I, and our interesting and insightful collection of peers, in this thread.
We The People. On our soapboxes.
That makes me happy. :)
Pretty sure most of us are above this anyway, but let's avoid a distro flamewar. You can look through my past comments and see that RH is far from my preferred distro, and I love to take shots at them. But now is not the time. Anyone can get hacked, and it sucks. And they're being responsible about reporting and mitigating.
Godspeed, gentlemen.