Oh yeah, I should mention that by dark, I mean gritty stuff and unhappy endings. Americans love so-called "gothic" stuff, as long as it's not too heavy (there's a paradox). Hence the Buffy craze, etc.
Wolf Lake - Speaking of TV horror... only two eps so far, but really good: better than expected actually. Which probably means it's doomed. Whenever I like a show this much, and it's funded by Americans... sigh. (Another example: All Souls. Gone after, what, 6 episodes? Brimstone... Fantasy Island (with McDowell)... Empire (4 eps in 1984)... Earth 2 (which actually got a whole season)... but on the other hand, Max Headroom only got one season too.)
So in other words, you like dark fantasy. Yup, it's true, the American audience can't handle dark fantasy yet. We're catching on to dark sci-fi, which is easy due to our collective Luddite-conservative streak, but dark supernatural stuff just doesn't play. I think maybe it's the Disney-fied fairy tale thing; people tend to thing that silly happy endings are the only reason fantasy exists. And shows with a heavy theological burden tend to turn us off; either we don't agree with the interpretation, or we don't want to be reminded of our guilt-ridden religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
"It's the Show That Wouldn't Die!!" coming soon to a drive-in near you...
Seriously, I hated Lexx in the first season. I'd only watch because of a sort of morbid fascination I had with it (ok ok Zev may have had something to do with it also). I didn't watch regularly, and so it wasn't until the end of the season that I understood that there was more going on behind the B-movie schlock.
I still don't watch it regularly, but now I have greater appreciation for the show. There are a lot of interesting ideas floating around, and the cheesy and irreverent nature of the show allows it to explore them in unusual ways.
I actually did much more group programming in college than I have ever done in the real world. In my CS and EE classes, it was common to assign group programming projects. After some planning, we'd usually pick the fastest typist to enter the code, and the other(s) would stand over his shoulder and make suggestions/corrections.
When I got out and started my new job, I did this exactly once; and that was my first project, done with a 'mentor' type (ie. somebody bucking for a promotion to management). After that, it was solo work in the ol' cube farm; even when working closely with someone, we hardly ever looked directly at each others' code as we wrote it.
When I read my first article on eXtreme Programming methods (with pair programming), I thought back wistfully to those college days of yore. . .
My CS profs. were generally of the "code should comment itself" school of thought. They certainly didn't punish large comments, but they didn't reward or encourage it, either. Of course, once I got into the real world, I realized that there only so many unique & descriptive ways to name a loop index (index_for_functionX_1, index_for_functionX_2, etc.).
The people who buy that sort of thing already have more BMWs than they know what to do with. Or else they're reclusive millionaires who never leave their house:-)
Of course, this means that it clearly is circumventable (as the app can circumvent it), but that assuming this guy accepts that playing a CD in a computer is fair use, it may be legaly circumventable in Linux.
Uhh, yeah, and so was DeCSS; it didn't stop them from arresting people and suing the pants off websites who had it.
Not necessarily; a lot of stores will only do an exchange for the same item, which won't help much in this case. Most music stores aren't used to dealing with general compatibility issues.
That's fine for casual conversation, but professionals and those writing formal papers need to steer clear of this sort of propaganda. I was going to criticize Slashdot for stating it that way, until I realized that the original authors used that same phrase. Calling it a Microsoft worm is really a distortion, and it's the kind of thing that can damage the credibility of the author. If you're preaching to the choir, that's one thing; but if you're trying to produce a study that will actually persuade a 'non-believer,' you need appear as unbiased as possible.
Err, no, you're just reading too much into it. The story only mentions a correlation between the two phenomena; there's no implication of causality there. In fact, my impression upon reading it was that the worms cause the instability --probably because that's the only scenario that really makes sense to me.
The question is, would anyone accept this if it applied to tangible goods? Say you pick up that shiny new stereo at BestBuy, only to a note inside the box that says you don't actually own the receiver you just paid big bucks for, you've only licensed it? How long before Joe Sixpack would revolt?
Don't underestimate the power of the Buff. When we lost our only WB affiliate, the local Fox station started pulling double duty running WB at midnight. Eventually, they went so far as to create a cable-only WB channel for our area (ironcally about the same time Buffy was moved to UPN).
If Enterprise is any good, and Buffy doesn't suddenly go down the toilet, UPN could wind up being the "geek network" instead of..err...whatever it is now. (The suck network? The ex-FL channel(#2)? The sleep-along with Voyager channel?...)
Heh, I'd say it's a case of our being too efficient. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend" they say, but only so long as that common enemy exists. We're so good at eliminating our enemies that our former allies have to look around for a new enemy to fight. Considering that we also have a habit of abandoning said allies after the deal is done, and leaving them to clean up the mess, it's not surprising who they pick.
So in other words, we are going to try to out-guerrilla the guerillas in their own territory? Yeah, right. Besides, Special Forces units are great, but they can't win a whole war by themselves.
And don't think the terrorist leaders will be easy to find, either. They can pack up and move on a moment's notice, and probably already have several times. They can blend into the common populace just like the VC in Vietnam. With all those refugees streaming out from the major cities, even sympathetic locals won't know who's who.
The point he's trying to make is that there's a difference between 'fun' playtime and enjoying your work. It's a totally different mindset. If you're consciously having fun, that generally means you're not really working; however, if you enjoy the challenge and the results of your labor, your work can be quite satisfying. 'Fun' is not the be-all and end-all of existence, nor even of happiness.
The kind of extracurriculars your describe could just as easily be had outside of the workplace (ie., going to the arcade with *actual friends*). The freedom to play around and goof off in the office is nice, but not essential. If you like your work, you don't need as much goof-off time anyway. As long as your manager's not a total jerk, you should be fine.
Sometimes I think we give colonial Americans too much credit. Would they really have raised such an uproar about random searches if those searches hadn't been physically intrusive and bothersome? I tend to think that the inconvenience and disruption of a physical search had a lot to do with the outrage that was felt.
Modern wiretapping allows the government to 'search' without disruption. Does it really hurt us to let law enforcement eavesdrop on our conversations? Only if they jump to conclusions too quickly. Rather than preventing wiretaps, how about holding agencies accountable for abusing them? If these agencies were more accountable, many of the concerns over persecution would fall away.
As has been discussed before, the modern 'right' of privacy in most peoples' minds is really the privilege of anonymity. People in this century have become so used to being able to do things in public without their friends/bosses/cops knowing about it, that they've come to feel entitled. The Internet is just an extension of this.
Prior to this century, however, most people lived in small towns where everyone was well known by the other residents. In such a setting, it is nearly impossible to conduct business in public without relevant people hearing about it. That's one reason why the sanctity of the private residence was so important; it was the only place where people could feel safe from prying eyes.
People need to realize that communication over a public network is not the same as private communication within the home. To me, there's a big difference between raiding someone's home computer files and intercepting their net traffic at the ISP. One is an invasion of the home; the other is not. This is not to say that we have to eliminate all expectations of privacy, but we do need to be more realistic about it.
During a meeting, one of our senior office admins comes in all PO'd, because she was asked for some info and couldn't find it. Apparently she was trying to get to MIT's website and couldn't find it. "I kept trying www.mit.com, but it says host not found!" (emphasis added, of course)
She had no clue what a.edu was, or why MIT would be one. Unfortunately, a lot of internet users, especially the recent ones, are just like this. If they want to go to a site, they'll type yadayada.com without thinking. They probably don't even realize that other domains exist; and this goes double for the new domains. It's no wonder no one wants these alternates; they might as well have a gobbledygook URL, since people will only find.biz sites with a search engine anyway.
I'll have to go back and his book again. Doesn't it seem like this process should work both ways? If you can relocate a particle outside with an antiparticle falling in, couldn't you also relocate a particle inside with the normal particle falling in, and the anti. annihilating a particle somewhere else? Unless there's some reason why the one process is favored over the other (ie. more probable), the two should balance out evenly.
Seriously, I've always said that.NET was started with the intention of creating a new monopoly platform, just in case the court sanctions caused them to lose their Windows monopoly (eg. a breakup;.NET would have been an "application", and would have been in the same spinoff as their other monopoly, M$ Office).
Once Dubya came into office, they started getting ambitious, expanding and modifying their original strategy. Given the sudden increase in blatently anti-competitive behavior and strategies, I'm guessing Bill and Dubya had a nice long chat in private sometime after the inauguration.
Difference is, M$ already allows third party applications. They don't require M$ hardware or media. So how does this apply? The only analogy I can see is with browser integration, and the DoJ has already said that they're going to drop that issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, I should mention that by dark, I mean gritty stuff and unhappy endings. Americans love so-called "gothic" stuff, as long as it's not too heavy (there's a paradox). Hence the Buffy craze, etc.
Wolf Lake - Speaking of TV horror... only two eps so far, but really good: better than expected actually. Which probably means it's doomed. Whenever I like a show this much, and it's funded by Americans... sigh. (Another example: All Souls. Gone after, what, 6 episodes? Brimstone... Fantasy Island (with McDowell)... Empire (4 eps in 1984)... Earth 2 (which actually got a whole season)... but on the other hand, Max Headroom only got one season too.)
So in other words, you like dark fantasy. Yup, it's true, the American audience can't handle dark fantasy yet. We're catching on to dark sci-fi, which is easy due to our collective Luddite-conservative streak, but dark supernatural stuff just doesn't play. I think maybe it's the Disney-fied fairy tale thing; people tend to thing that silly happy endings are the only reason fantasy exists. And shows with a heavy theological burden tend to turn us off; either we don't agree with the interpretation, or we don't want to be reminded of our guilt-ridden religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
"It's the Show That Wouldn't Die!!" coming soon to a drive-in near you...
Seriously, I hated Lexx in the first season. I'd only watch because of a sort of morbid fascination I had with it (ok ok Zev may have had something to do with it also). I didn't watch regularly, and so it wasn't until the end of the season that I understood that there was more going on behind the B-movie schlock.
I still don't watch it regularly, but now I have greater appreciation for the show. There are a lot of interesting ideas floating around, and the cheesy and irreverent nature of the show allows it to explore them in unusual ways.
I actually did much more group programming in college than I have ever done in the real world. In my CS and EE classes, it was common to assign group programming projects. After some planning, we'd usually pick the fastest typist to enter the code, and the other(s) would stand over his shoulder and make suggestions/corrections.
When I got out and started my new job, I did this exactly once; and that was my first project, done with a 'mentor' type (ie. somebody bucking for a promotion to management). After that, it was solo work in the ol' cube farm; even when working closely with someone, we hardly ever looked directly at each others' code as we wrote it.
When I read my first article on eXtreme Programming methods (with pair programming), I thought back wistfully to those college days of yore. . .
My CS profs. were generally of the "code should comment itself" school of thought. They certainly didn't punish large comments, but they didn't reward or encourage it, either. Of course, once I got into the real world, I realized that there only so many unique & descriptive ways to name a loop index (index_for_functionX_1, index_for_functionX_2, etc.).
The people who buy that sort of thing already have more BMWs than they know what to do with. Or else they're reclusive millionaires who never leave their house :-)
1) Of course they can, as long as they pay the governing body enough. A bribe a day keeps the lawyers away...
2) I think we all know what a CD is by now; do they really need to put that silly logo on there?
Of course, this means that it clearly is circumventable (as the app can circumvent it), but that assuming this guy accepts that playing a CD in a computer is fair use, it may be legaly circumventable in Linux.
Uhh, yeah, and so was DeCSS; it didn't stop them from arresting people and suing the pants off websites who had it.
Not necessarily; a lot of stores will only do an exchange for the same item, which won't help much in this case. Most music stores aren't used to dealing with general compatibility issues.
That's fine for casual conversation, but professionals and those writing formal papers need to steer clear of this sort of propaganda. I was going to criticize Slashdot for stating it that way, until I realized that the original authors used that same phrase. Calling it a Microsoft worm is really a distortion, and it's the kind of thing that can damage the credibility of the author. If you're preaching to the choir, that's one thing; but if you're trying to produce a study that will actually persuade a 'non-believer,' you need appear as unbiased as possible.
Err, no, you're just reading too much into it. The story only mentions a correlation between the two phenomena; there's no implication of causality there. In fact, my impression upon reading it was that the worms cause the instability --probably because that's the only scenario that really makes sense to me.
The question is, would anyone accept this if it applied to tangible goods? Say you pick up that shiny new stereo at BestBuy, only to a note inside the box that says you don't actually own the receiver you just paid big bucks for, you've only licensed it? How long before Joe Sixpack would revolt?
When you start worrying about offline plates, interferometric particles, and other 'science facts':
'Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show; I should really just relax!"' --MST3K
Don't underestimate the power of the Buff. When we lost our only WB affiliate, the local Fox station started pulling double duty running WB at midnight. Eventually, they went so far as to create a cable-only WB channel for our area (ironcally about the same time Buffy was moved to UPN).
..err ...whatever it is now. (The suck network? The ex-FL channel(#2)? The sleep-along with Voyager channel?...)
If Enterprise is any good, and Buffy doesn't suddenly go down the toilet, UPN could wind up being the "geek network" instead of
Heh, I'd say it's a case of our being too efficient. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend" they say, but only so long as that common enemy exists. We're so good at eliminating our enemies that our former allies have to look around for a new enemy to fight. Considering that we also have a habit of abandoning said allies after the deal is done, and leaving them to clean up the mess, it's not surprising who they pick.
So in other words, we are going to try to out-guerrilla the guerillas in their own territory? Yeah, right. Besides, Special Forces units are great, but they can't win a whole war by themselves.
And don't think the terrorist leaders will be easy to find, either. They can pack up and move on a moment's notice, and probably already have several times. They can blend into the common populace just like the VC in Vietnam. With all those refugees streaming out from the major cities, even sympathetic locals won't know who's who.
The point he's trying to make is that there's a difference between 'fun' playtime and enjoying your work. It's a totally different mindset. If you're consciously having fun, that generally means you're not really working; however, if you enjoy the challenge and the results of your labor, your work can be quite satisfying. 'Fun' is not the be-all and end-all of existence, nor even of happiness.
The kind of extracurriculars your describe could just as easily be had outside of the workplace (ie., going to the arcade with *actual friends*). The freedom to play around and goof off in the office is nice, but not essential. If you like your work, you don't need as much goof-off time anyway. As long as your manager's not a total jerk, you should be fine.
Sometimes I think we give colonial Americans too much credit. Would they really have raised such an uproar about random searches if those searches hadn't been physically intrusive and bothersome? I tend to think that the inconvenience and disruption of a physical search had a lot to do with the outrage that was felt.
Modern wiretapping allows the government to 'search' without disruption. Does it really hurt us to let law enforcement eavesdrop on our conversations? Only if they jump to conclusions too quickly. Rather than preventing wiretaps, how about holding agencies accountable for abusing them? If these agencies were more accountable, many of the concerns over persecution would fall away.
As has been discussed before, the modern 'right' of privacy in most peoples' minds is really the privilege of anonymity. People in this century have become so used to being able to do things in public without their friends/bosses/cops knowing about it, that they've come to feel entitled. The Internet is just an extension of this.
Prior to this century, however, most people lived in small towns where everyone was well known by the other residents. In such a setting, it is nearly impossible to conduct business in public without relevant people hearing about it. That's one reason why the sanctity of the private residence was so important; it was the only place where people could feel safe from prying eyes.
People need to realize that communication over a public network is not the same as private communication within the home. To me, there's a big difference between raiding someone's home computer files and intercepting their net traffic at the ISP. One is an invasion of the home; the other is not. This is not to say that we have to eliminate all expectations of privacy, but we do need to be more realistic about it.
True story:
.edu was, or why MIT would be one. Unfortunately, a lot of internet users, especially the recent ones, are just like this. If they want to go to a site, they'll type yadayada.com without thinking. They probably don't even realize that other domains exist; and this goes double for the new domains. It's no wonder no one wants these alternates; they might as well have a gobbledygook URL, since people will only find .biz sites with a search engine anyway.
During a meeting, one of our senior office admins comes in all PO'd, because she was asked for some info and couldn't find it. Apparently she was trying to get to MIT's website and couldn't find it. "I kept trying www.mit.com, but it says host not found!" (emphasis added, of course)
She had no clue what a
As a general rule, don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell.
.sigs, but yours is unusually appropriate for this discussion. Kinda sums it all up.
I usually don't comment on
Yep, definitely a Type Thirteen.
I'll have to go back and his book again. Doesn't it seem like this process should work both ways? If you can relocate a particle outside with an antiparticle falling in, couldn't you also relocate a particle inside with the normal particle falling in, and the anti. annihilating a particle somewhere else? Unless there's some reason why the one process is favored over the other (ie. more probable), the two should balance out evenly.
Anybody know the answer to this?
Uhh, yeah. It's called .NET
.NET was started with the intention of creating a new monopoly platform, just in case the court sanctions caused them to lose their Windows monopoly (eg. a breakup; .NET would have been an "application", and would have been in the same spinoff as their other monopoly, M$ Office).
Seriously, I've always said that
Once Dubya came into office, they started getting ambitious, expanding and modifying their original strategy. Given the sudden increase in blatently anti-competitive behavior and strategies, I'm guessing Bill and Dubya had a nice long chat in private sometime after the inauguration.
Difference is, M$ already allows third party applications. They don't require M$ hardware or media. So how does this apply? The only analogy I can see is with browser integration, and the DoJ has already said that they're going to drop that issue.