I know they are nice chairs, but they won't be worth much to you if you try them and can't see much of a difference. It's all about the value of the product to the individual in question.
My BMW is worth a lot more to me than I paid for it, but to someone else who likes their Mustang my BMW may be "dumb".
I tried one of the Aerons for a week and went back to a normal desk chair (a real one, not a secretary's chair). I don't get "sore" from sitting in a chair for 5-15 hours, but that's just me -- I sit on a lightly carpetted concrete floor for hours at home while playing video games before I need to go stretch my legs.
The bottom line is this: to a lot of people like me the Aeron chairs just plain suck because they seem so overpriced. Sell the same chair for $150, and we'll call it a great chair...
There are zero known viruses for Mac OS X, none, nada, zippity-do-da. There are about 60 viruses for OS 9, as well as a few that macro viruses that infect MS Office (which runs on both Windows and Mac)
OK, let's get real here:
If there are macro viruses that affect MS Office on the Mac, then Mac OS X has known viruses.
If there are viruses affecting OS 9, and you use Classic compatibility in OS X without shutting it down after you're done, then those viruses affect Mac OS X since they share a common filesystem.
Here is an example of a virus that appears to use AppleScript and would directly affect Mac OS X similar to the MyDoom virus -- do you know that it doesn't?
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Mac-hater (I used the Mac for 9 years, left for Windows and Linux for 3-4 years, then came back last year), but you can't say silly things like "there are zero known viruses for Mac OS X" when Symantec lists some including the one above -- that's fairly public information.
Also, remember that viruses aren't necessarily limited to the traditional ones in e-mails or on the Mac's local storage, they include the ones that remotely exploit vulnerabilities, some of which Mac OS X has in common with many other *NIXes.
Answer: Lotus Notes (or some groupware alternative)
Between laserprinters, online (local replicas or server replicas) forms, and workgroup communication, we've completely eliminated multipart NCR forms in our company (300+ people). With a good, secure groupware solution (we use Lotus Notes), a digital signature is just as good as a physical signature.
One downside of NCR forms is how toxic they are -- once your company gets to a large enough size, you want to recycle them like other paper, but you can't. It gets very costly.
We live in the Silcon Valley (Milpitas, CA, on the northeast border of San Jose), and we had Primestar from the beginning when we bought our house 6 1/2 years ago. After a couple of years, DirecTV bought Primestar and upgraded our equipment (receivers and dish) for FREE. Over the years, we continue to get better and better service (on the TV, on the phone, and in person) at absolutely no additional cost over what we pay monthly.
The DirecTV/Tivo integration is the absolute best because it's direct digital recording of the MP2 DirecTV feed. I haven't seen anything close to as good as when you get a combo DirecTV/Tivo device.
On the weather question, it's funny that this came up on Slashdot now because we're having a severe rainstorm here this morning. The only time we *momentarily* lose signal is when we have extremely heavy rain (the kind where if you walk outside for 10 seconds, you're utterly soaked). By "momentarily", I mean it periodically pops in and out digitally while you have that extremely heavy rain.
Otherwise, normal rain and wind don't affect the reception whatsoever -- after all, we're not talking about an old fashioned roof-mounted TV antenna, the technology is quite a bit better than that.
On Comcast digital cable, I can only repeat what my long-time friends at work have to say -- it's generally better than older cable service, but they have much more frequent digital glitches (similar to what we get on DirecTV during heavy rain) than we do with DirecTV. Also, remember that Comcast is still the same cable company with horrible service (i.e. GLACIALLY slow). DirecTV service is always there to help quickly partly due to the fact that their customers have far fewer problems to complain about.
Grow up and what, take our beating "like a man"???
Nobody doubts that we helped Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Noriega, and others when it was in our interest, but that's just part of a little game called "foreign policy". Everybody plays the game including France, Germany, and Russia, but the difference with the U.S.A. is that we don't stick with friends who turn on us!!! We don't avoid war to protect debts owed us like some cravin' little coward.
If you want to be friends with us, you have to EARN it -- Germany is beginning to understand that, France has yet to learn, and Russia is mixing things up in an effort to convince the rest of the world that they really are still a global superpower.
I have no problem with our government playing hardball with other countries, and I have no problem taking the consequences -- because it's a mean fucking world out there and not as nice and warm as it is in your little corner!
The bottom line is if you are a good, I want you on our side, but if you are a fucking asshole, I want you to fear us. After 9/11, that IS the reality for most REAL Americans...
"c) Limit your involvement in core business tasks, so when you quit, nobody will notice or care."
Limit the involvement of an employee in core business tasks by sticking him in the SERVER ROOM??? I understand what you're saying, but in his case that's the stupidest thing they could've been doing.
The server room is the LAST place you want a candidate for "de-hiring" to be all day long...
How can you be sure that this can wait another 30-40 years? Are you sure the Earth won't be completely screwed for one reason or another (global warming, polution, overcrowding, war, etc.) in 30-40 years?
How many people do you think said the same exact thing 30 years ago, and here we are today no closer than we were then? I think this is exactly why we are still where we are today because we haven't been driving toward this goal like we all thought we would back then. Who didn't think as a kid in the 60's or 70's that we'd be on the moon or Mars at LEAST, by the year 2000?
There already exist REAL plans today to get us to Mars and back ALIVE, but they require a time investment up-front -- a resource that we've wasted for the last 30 years. Now you're saying to waste another 30-40 years in the hope that a plan will appear out of nowhere?
I seriously suggest that you read this book, since you sound like you think we don't already have plans that would get us to Mars and back:
Even the original NY Times article referenced by this Slashdot story we're all replying to isn't saying that the trip would be a one-way trip to Mars with the absolute understanding that you would die 2-4 weeks after landing (or hours after). The idea is that you would be a pioneer with all the associated risks and die sooner rather than later if things don't go well, i.e. if the continuous shipment of supplies and your ingenuity don't allow you to survive for as long as expected. There's no guarantee that there wouldn't be a return flight later.
If you read the book above (yes, I've read it), it proposes sending the materials for a settlement/colony 10 years in advance of the actual human trip. It details how to include a self-contained and automated "factory" that would slowly mine the Mars surface and produce the resources necessary for the human colonists to survive when they arrive 10 years later. It would not only refine the resources for their survival, but also refine the fuel necessary to get them back to Earth. This is all using present-day technology.
I can't detail the entire book, so you should read it to fully understand -- when I say it goes into the details of doing this, I really mean it!
It's interesting how we're all assuming the story poster initiated the vulnerability audit. The fact is that often these audits are initiated by high level executives in the company who already have suspicions -- they just cover it up by calling it a "security vulnerability audit". For exactly that reason, the vast majority of audits like this are brought in and sold to the executives long before anyone in I.T. hears about it. Most executives are honestly scared of the power that I.T. and finance people have, and these companies play to that fear.
I know because I was involved in something like this before from the management side. When you're in a situation where you have to investigate and possibly terminate an I.T. employee or manager who could do you a HUGE amount of harm if they find out, you don't TELL them.
I'd be willing to bet that this guy was either doing something that crossed the line or he was incompetent (imagine an I.T. guy trying to do a competent job while being drunk off his ass; I've seen it before), and the management called in the audit while making sure he bought into it so he wouldn't suspect his job depended on the results because they don't want him to go postal before they can safely jettison him from the company. I've seen this happen at least two times in the ten years I've been with my current company.
The bottom line is there's nothing immoral about investigating powerful people in your company while trying to prevent damage to your company. AND, there's nothing wrong with always following the straight-and-narrow when it comes to your job, because if you're in a powerful position in I.T., you don't need suspicions to make the execs think they need to strike first. In my company, I.T. people need to be as clean and trustworthy as any finance person because we have access to even more sensitive information than any Controller or CFO.
Why don't you try thousands of them on an eMAME install and then come back and tell us they don't? That's the only way you know for sure -- FUD like your statement doesn't tell us anything, the only thing that does is real-world testing.
I've run MAME on a helluva lot of different platforms and almost all of the ROM's work on every platform because MAME is that good of an emulator. Granted, some of the most recent ROM's (from 2001-2003, for example) may have problems, especially on a low-end platform like a Symbian OS phone, but I consider running a large number of arcade games on my PHONE to be really damn cool...
I have a CS degree, too, so I can relate to what you're saying. That part from that scene was perfectly clear to me, but now I understand how a lot of "regular" people may have interpreted it as complete gibberish. I never thought of that before, I just couldn't understand why some of my non-CS friends didn't get that scene.
Also, don't count all of us I.T. guys out so easily, some of us actually have CS degrees (although sometimes I find myself wondering why I'm in I.T. when I have a full C.S. degree).:-)
If I had mod points, I'd give you a ++1 Insightful...
Sorry, I've been using my PowerBook G4 12" for 5 months on a 98% Windows network, and this has never happened to me using either OS X v10.2.x or v10.3. After I open it up, it just says the share was disconnected unexpectedly (or sometimes it reconnects or asks if you want to disconnect, I think it depends on the connection type).
Maybe that happened on an early version of 10.2x? I didn't use 10.2.x earlier than 10.2.5...
I know I've seen NASA projects testing a NASA Ion engine in space. I think it was Deep Space 1, which looks like it was started and finished years ago. They also made a flyby of a comet 2 years ago similar to this European probe's flyby of the moon. Seems to me that the moon is an easier target to fly by than a comet. So, this doesn't look like anything new to NASA.
Here's a FAQ on what they're doing with it and why most NASA projects don't want to use it:
It could be simply a question of money -- if you can afford to use tried-and-true technologies, why use slower, riskier technologies when you really REALLY have to produce results? But, like they say in the FAQ, if they can prove the technology for long haul missions, that's where it makes sense. They even say specifically that for short missions like to the moon it doesn't make sense (look at how long it'll take that European probe to get to the moon -- 2005?).
Hmm, I don't remember seeing Deep Space 1 news like this on Slashdot -- I had to see it on PBS. Could it be bias or just ignorance? (correct me if I'm wrong, but even a search for "Deep Space 1" on Slashdot didn't produce anything relevent)
So, you're saying your computer will come out of sleep mode in 2 seconds like a modern-day Mac?
Tell me which one, because I haven't seen it. All our PC laptops take 15-30 seconds to go into and come out of sleep mode, and these are Dells, Toshibas, and Sonys from the past year. That's TRUE sleep mode, not just turning off the display.
Both my 17" iMac and my 12" PowerBook G4 go into and come out of sleep in LITERALLY 2 seconds. And, I mean after 2 seconds, everything is working and ready to go, not just that the display came on like in Windows XP.
Not only that, but I can literally cut the power to either of those Macs (by holding down the power key) without a single problem because of the journalling in Mac OS X. I can't do that with any PC we have except my Linux PC's (which also use journalling).
However, if you do that to Redhat Linux 9, you risk corrupting critical OS files -- I tested this three times and every time I had a kernel panic that could only be fixed by restoring the kernel from a backup.
No, as a VP at Apple has said in the past, all you have to do is:
1. Burn the m4p music file to a normal CD (one that you can play in any CD player). 2. Rip the song off of that CD to an m4a music file (m4a is a Dolby AAC file just like the m4p file except it has no DRM restrictions) or if you want, rip it to any other format you want. 3. Delete the original m4p file (and the CD, I assume). 4. Send the m4a (or whatever format) music file to the buyer.
It's that simple. I've used iTunes since day one, I've tested this, and it works with no hitches.
This still gives the end user full control over the music they purchased because once you burn it to a normal CD, it's like any other CD you would buy at a music store. You can rip the songs off of that burned CD and make as many copies of that burned CD as you want.
With iTunes, Apple has really given the end user the role of a CD mastering facility the way Pagemaker gave end users the role of a graphic design or print shop. Once you burn that master CD from the original DRM-protected music files you purchased, you can do anything you want with it. But, if you want to share that music on Kazaa or some other P2P app, you have to take the extra steps of making that master CD and then ripping the songs off of that CD. Also, iTunes will only let you burn 10 master CD's from each playlist.
So, it facilitates electronic distribution of music, while putting up roadblocks (however effective you think they are) to help deter pirates. To me, it really is as close to a happy middle-ground as I've seen for the music industry and end users.
Isn't this all a non-issue if the the guy who originally requested the GPL'd code wrote in his weblog that he got the location for it and it appears to have been there all along?
http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp
I don't want to sound like one of the other broken records, but if Slashdot is more out of sync with reality than a company like Linksys (admittedly not large, but definitely not a small company), the quality of content here is really going downhill. I mean, the issue is resolved before I even get to read and reply to the article at the top of Slashdot???
You're over-simplifying the entire question the same way the article is in order to draw it's ridiculous conclusions.
1) Will computer/robot technology EVER reach the point where "most" "basic" service jobs can be "almost" entirely automated?
Boy, you're really pushing the envelope here! Nobody can say no to this, but this is the exact opposite of what the article is stating, which is what the original poster is trying to refute. In the entire future of mankind, will we reach the point where most *basic* service jobs are *almost* entirely automated? Of course!
The problem is your idea of a "basic service job" is different from others (including the guy who wrote the article). To me, "most basic service jobs" being "almost entirely automated" is limited to the performance of repetitive tasks that ATM's and other similar machines perform. But does that mean that the entire construction workforce will be unemployed? No, not even close!
2) Will the technology remain too costly or inconvenient for businesses to adopt it?
No, because luckily question #1 limits the impact to a very small percentage of tasks. We're already implementing the technology today.
3) Will business adopt the technology to increase profits?
Again, because question #1 limits the impact of what you are predicting to a tiny percentage of repetitive tasks, the obvious answer is "Yes".
The statement the article is making is:
By 2055:
1) *All* restaurant jobs will employ robots, including "cooking, cleaning, and order taking". 2) *All* jobs at construction sites will employ robots, including "pouring the concrete, laying brick, building the home's frame, putting in the windows and doors, siding the house, roofing it, plumbing it, wiring it, hanging the drywall, painting it, etc." 3) In airports, malls, trucking services, and amusement parks, all but management jobs will employ robots.
In the 3rd point, this is detailed more in the article, so you could argue that by 2055 those specific jobs he mentioned could be performed by robots, but you could also argue that it would take much longer to develop robots sufficiently complex enough.
This is really one of those 1950's-like articles predicting that we'd have cities on Mars by 1990-2001. It didn't happen because "progress" is not linear -- it comes in fits and starts. So, to say we'll even get most basic service jobs replaced by 2055 is probably possible, but to replace more than half of *ALL* service jobs could easily take hundreds of years IF it is even possible.
Like other people have stated, there are many other factors including human acceptance of such change. Do you EVER talk to a bank teller? If so, why? Think about it. Even today when people my age (33) and younger have grown up with ATM's, we still usually want humans at the bank.
If grocery stores ever become completely automated the way some/most Albertson's fast lane checkouts have, then why should I go there any more? Will the next step be a jump to giant ATM-like grocery stores where you simply use a touch-screen to enter your order and pay for it, then the machinery spits out your groceries bagged on the warehouse rollers?
Human beings are social by nature. If progress starts taking away large amounts of human interaction (as the Internet "revolution" tried to), the vast majority of humans will reject it or *need* to find a replacement for the social interaction. If anyone is suggesting that humans will just stop needing all that social interaction in a matter of years, they are ignorant -- it could take hundreds or thousands of years for such change to take place. That human interaction could be replaced by something else -- my typing this message is an example. But even though I'm communicating with other Slashdot users in this way, I still joke and talk to real human beings all over the place -- it didn't and won't replace my interaction with humans.
The bottom line is that this article is a nice conversation piece, but it's really nothing more than that...
As a dad with two VERY active sons (2 and 4 years old), and as a dad who has had to take care of those sons ALONE ALL DAY at least one day a week because my wife works 6 days a week, I say BULLSHIT.
You either WATCH your kids or you don't. You either TEACH your kids or you don't. There is NO technological substitute for EITHER of those things, and at least one of those things will pretty much always keep your kid from doing something stupid and/or fatal.
I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for people like the original poster. I work with a guy who allowed (through his own negligence) his 2-3 year old son to die in his pool last year. The "cover" was on the pool but someone didn't notice him going out to play near the pool and subsequently slipping under the cover and drowning. Does that mean you get a tracking system like this and come up with an elaborate setup to alarm you when your kids get near the pool??? NO!!! It means you actually fucking watch your kids!!!
People like that don't care enough about the wellbeing of their kids to avoid buying a house with a pool or to refuse to install one in their back yard -- THAT's the bottom line. Now, how this original poster's 2 year old son can POSSIBLY unlock the deadbolt on their front door is beyond me, and I have relatively tall kids (they look like they are 4 and 6 instead of 2 and 4). Then getting 2 blocks away takes time no matter how fast the 2 year old is -- that kid was neglected for a good 10-20 minutes, which is inexcusable.
You can call me sick, but I CARE enough about my sons to take them into the bathroom with me when I'm taking a shit or shower. And, as a side benefit, both of them understand how to take a piss like daddy and how to take a shower like daddy! At that age, keeping them at arm's length ABSOLUTELY ALL the time is the only foolproof way to keep them safe. And it also helps me to keep involved in my kid's lives.
As Americans, we have GOT to stop ignoring this kind of negligence -- it is NOT okay!
IMNSHO, you don't have any kids (as in, your own biological offspring, not adopted kids or kids you babysit -- it's not the same), so you should STFU until you do!
I actually read the article, and it's not talking really about I.T. jobs. I'm in I.T., and what this article is talking about is strictly programming jobs (not really even I.T. programming jobs) and tech "creation" jobs. In fact pretty much all of the article focuses on out-of-work programmers -- these are not I.T. people.
I.T. is more a service industry while programming is a creation industry -- two very different beasts if you want to outsource to foreign workers.
When a guy in our California office has a problem creating a document in a database on our Notes server is he going to call/wait for an I.T. guy in the UK? No way.
When we need to make a programming change to our back-end server in California, do we care whether the guy making the change is in California, Nevada, or the U.K.? No, of course not.
There are two fundamentally different situations here -- the tech industry is simply going through a shift from a creation-oriented focus to a service-oriented focus. This is not very different from the change a lot of other industries have gone through, but it seems scary because it's now hitting our beloved tech industry.
The fact is I'm essentially a programmer with a computer science degree, and I have a good, solid, well-paying job in the I.T. sector where I'm programming only a small percentage of the time. I'm a director, so I hire I.T. people pretty often. The applicants I see are either I.T.-oriented, or they're programming-oriented.
The bottom line is that if you aren't able to adapt to a more service-oriented role in the U.S. tech industry, you will have more and more of a problem getting a job because you'll be competing for an ever-shrinking pool of jobs...
Comparing a chapter of a book to a single song is absolutely IDIOTIC.
Tell me this, if albums are complete works that shouldn't be separated, then why are they created separately in the first place??? Do you seriously think writers write chapters of a book separately and out of order??? Come on, most of us here have IQ's over 70.
If an artist wants to make the decision to only sell songs as full albums, then why don't they just make entire albums with one huge track on each album??? Because they would PISS off their customers. You know why they can't do that? Because they need money to live and eat. Most people won't pay for stupidity like that because most people aren't hardcore fans who keep giving you money no matter how hard you smack them.
What would happen if a writer wrote his book with no chapters? Page numbers and bookmarks would continue to work. I actually have books with no chapters -- doesn't screw me up. Would I buy a CD if I have to fast-forward through 45 minutes of music to FIND the song I want to listen to? Hell no. Oh, but that's the key, nobody buys a book and then starts on Chapter 10. How often do you buy a CD and start on Track 10? Most of us do it often because that song is the hit we want to listen to.
Most of us don't listen to music in the order it is presented on the CD -- we rip and mix the tracks up or in the very least press the "Random" button on our CD player. Are you seriously telling us it's more enjoyable to read a favorite old book in random chapter order???
How about this, is there a list of the top 40 book chapters in the USA??? No, because songs are INDIVIDUAL WORKS OF ART, and book chapters are NOT. Albums are like book compendiums and nothing more. If you're going to tell me that I should be forced to buy the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book series instead of only one of the books, you're crazy.
That's exactly their problem, any artist can only make so many "good" songs and they have to live off of the profits of their work like everyone else. There are so many artists that it's always been very competitive in the U.S., and now the market is shrinking and becoming more competitive because the consumers (including me) are demanding better quality for their money. To me, that's a perfect example of a market economy.
I think artists need to face the fact that we are witnessing an evolution of modern music and if they can't change with it, then they won't survive -- that's what we're talking about here, survival of the fittest. We already have so many great artists here in the U.S. that never get heard (it's surprising, but true), and I know of quite a few "unknowns" who deserve to make a living at it more than some "stars" do.
Super-mega-stars *need* to go the way of the dinosaurs to make way for artists who serve their individual niche's listeners better than they ever can. Some artists like Green Day will only get me to buy their hits because I just don't like the rest of their music enough to buy it. Other more niche artists like Norah Jones will get me to buy every song in their entire album because every song is just that good.
I'm not saying that Green Day isn't good, but the question is do they make consistently good music? In the new music market, can they sell enough music to enough people to make a living at it? That's the only question that matters to the music stars and you know it's scaring the living sh*t out of them. I don't think I've heard the same fears/complaints from relatively unknown musicians.
Oh, and a note to any "stars" out there who refuse to sell me their product when and how I want it:
If I can't get it my way, I'M NOT BUYING.
Star Wars Episode I was purposely delayed for years from DVD. Too late, you lost a sale. The Indiana Jones movies are FINALLY coming out on DVD? Too late, you lost a sale. When will Madonna sell her music on iTunes or a similar service? Sorry, not only did you lose a sale, but you lost a long-time fan.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for stars who can't compete to make a living like everyone else in the world has to...
I'll bet today they are VERY sorry they gave their good name to Caldera -- it looks like Caldera took over the operating systems and, I guess, the SCO name in 2001. It's usually been portrayed here and on other sites that the Santa Cruz Operation (who I know as SCO since I live in the SF Bay Area and we actually used SCO XENIX and OpenServer way back when) is the same as the SCO group and they (the current bad guys) bought UNIX from Novell in 1995.
According to the above link, the original SCO bought UNIX from Novell in 1995, then in 2001 Caldera bought the "operating systems divisions" or UNIX from the original SCO. I assume the purchase included the purchase of the SCO name since the original SCO renamed themselves Tarantella in that same year when the purchase was made and Caldera renamed themselves SCO Group.
So, it seems that this B.S. from the "SCO Group" has only started in the past 1-2 years, and it was probably completely initiated by those scumbags currently calling themselves SCO. They don't deserve to wear that name, IMHO...
I've been reading and contributing responses to Slashdot for years, but this is by far the worst article I've ever seen posted here. I can't believe whoever posted the article on the "front page" of Slashdot actually read the article -- they couldn't have even read the first page.
Right on the first page of the article, the "journalist" who wrote it describes disk storage as "memory". In the "Summary" of the article posted on every page, current file systems are described as wasting "memory". This reminds me of every-day users who confuse their computer running slowly (or literally telling them they don't have enough memory) with the need to delete files from the hard drive -- two completely separate things in most situations. This is all aside from the fact that the article doesn't actually tell you much that anybody who's used computers for more than six months doesn't already know. This guy sounds like some of the kids who come to me interviewing for I.T. positions thinking they've got a leg-up on everyone else because they've got some basic experience with PC's and Windows.
The bottom line is that the guy who wrote this article doesn't have any business writing tech articles without heavy supervision from someone who KNOWS tech, and I don't just mean someone who knows enough to rattle off performance numbers for CPU comparisons (read some other articles on the site). Lastly, Slashdot has no business posting amateurish and misinforming articles like this for the rest of us to waste our time on.
Most of these quotes look like the kind of crap I remember from the 70's glorifying television like it was going to be some kind of educational revolution. They talked about and treated television like we've treated computers in the past 15-20 years -- how soon we forget the mistakes we make. Most people wouldn't say it out loud today, but I don't think you could find anyone today who has the same optimism about television's educational influence like you found back then.
I remember growing up and spending plenty of time watching educational television and films in schools. Most of it didn't teach me anything and I think most people today know that is reality. With that in mind, it seems incredibly stupid for anyone to think that in four years television is "teaching" a formerly isolated population to "go bad".
Believe this: if you are weak-minded, any passive or weak source will influence you, regardless of your culture or ethnicity.
The problem with this old argument from anti-TV/movie/video-game freaks is that most people are NOT weak-minded. So, the only possible reasonable conclusions to this article are either culture-shock made a larger-than-normal percentage of the Bhutanese population weak-minded or this problem is the result of one of many other "invisible" variables at work in any human population.
But, she didn't lie, she said he was not the One right now, that he was waiting for something. I don't remember the exact words, but I've watched the Matrix quite a few times and I remember when I see that part how much sense her exact words make (from a logical machine) after seeing the rest of the movie.
She had some sense of what was going to happen, but not exactly how or when it would happen, hence she's the Oracle. When I saw the Matrix the first time, I automatically thought the same thing that Neo was thinking -- he's not the One, how could that be?? But how most people reacted to that scene -- selectively ignoring the crucial part that he's waiting for something that will trigger him to become the One -- demonstrates to me what it is to be human. Humans don't analyze every bit of input the way that a computer does.
Hmm, 6-7 million iTunes 4 users and you don't know how they could sell 500,000 $0.99 songs per week? That doesn't seem that unreasonable to me -- I don't buy much music (maybe 5 CD's per year), but I've already purchased 94 songs from iTunes, as of today (maybe 40% of those were full album purchases).
To me, iTunes is like the 7-11 -- CONVENIENT. I have two sons (aged 2 and 4) and a full-time job, so I don't often have time to go wandering around a store browsing for music usually not able to find what I want. I can count half a dozen purchases (maybe half of all the 94 songs) since I started buying music from iTunes that I never would've bought if I didn't have access to iTunes -- I'm stuck at home with the sick kids because my wife has to work, I'm watching a music awards show or music video at 8pm on a weeknight, I see during lunch at work that a hot new artist just released a new album I can get without leaving work, and on and on and on...
I think this is just a revolution of convenience that the music industry needed very badly. Or maybe this is just proof that the Mac market IS actually viable -- you know some people will just refuse to like or accept THAT!
Slashdot Mirror
I know they are nice chairs, but they won't be worth much to you if you try them and can't see much of a difference. It's all about the value of the product to the individual in question.
My BMW is worth a lot more to me than I paid for it, but to someone else who likes their Mustang my BMW may be "dumb".
I tried one of the Aerons for a week and went back to a normal desk chair (a real one, not a secretary's chair). I don't get "sore" from sitting in a chair for 5-15 hours, but that's just me -- I sit on a lightly carpetted concrete floor for hours at home while playing video games before I need to go stretch my legs.
The bottom line is this: to a lot of people like me the Aeron chairs just plain suck because they seem so overpriced. Sell the same chair for $150, and we'll call it a great chair...
There are zero known viruses for Mac OS X, none, nada, zippity-do-da. There are about 60 viruses for OS 9, as well as a few that macro viruses that infect MS Office (which runs on both Windows and Mac)
OK, let's get real here:
If there are macro viruses that affect MS Office on the Mac, then Mac OS X has known viruses.
If there are viruses affecting OS 9, and you use Classic compatibility in OS X without shutting it down after you're done, then those viruses affect Mac OS X since they share a common filesystem.
Here is an example of a virus that appears to use AppleScript and would directly affect Mac OS X similar to the MyDoom virus -- do you know that it doesn't?
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Mac-hater (I used the Mac for 9 years, left for Windows and Linux for 3-4 years, then came back last year), but you can't say silly things like "there are zero known viruses for Mac OS X" when Symantec lists some including the one above -- that's fairly public information.
Also, remember that viruses aren't necessarily limited to the traditional ones in e-mails or on the Mac's local storage, they include the ones that remotely exploit vulnerabilities, some of which Mac OS X has in common with many other *NIXes.
Answer: Lotus Notes (or some groupware alternative)
Between laserprinters, online (local replicas or server replicas) forms, and workgroup communication, we've completely eliminated multipart NCR forms in our company (300+ people). With a good, secure groupware solution (we use Lotus Notes), a digital signature is just as good as a physical signature.
One downside of NCR forms is how toxic they are -- once your company gets to a large enough size, you want to recycle them like other paper, but you can't. It gets very costly.
We live in the Silcon Valley (Milpitas, CA, on the northeast border of San Jose), and we had Primestar from the beginning when we bought our house 6 1/2 years ago. After a couple of years, DirecTV bought Primestar and upgraded our equipment (receivers and dish) for FREE. Over the years, we continue to get better and better service (on the TV, on the phone, and in person) at absolutely no additional cost over what we pay monthly.
The DirecTV/Tivo integration is the absolute best because it's direct digital recording of the MP2 DirecTV feed. I haven't seen anything close to as good as when you get a combo DirecTV/Tivo device.
On the weather question, it's funny that this came up on Slashdot now because we're having a severe rainstorm here this morning. The only time we *momentarily* lose signal is when we have extremely heavy rain (the kind where if you walk outside for 10 seconds, you're utterly soaked). By "momentarily", I mean it periodically pops in and out digitally while you have that extremely heavy rain.
Otherwise, normal rain and wind don't affect the reception whatsoever -- after all, we're not talking about an old fashioned roof-mounted TV antenna, the technology is quite a bit better than that.
On Comcast digital cable, I can only repeat what my long-time friends at work have to say -- it's generally better than older cable service, but they have much more frequent digital glitches (similar to what we get on DirecTV during heavy rain) than we do with DirecTV. Also, remember that Comcast is still the same cable company with horrible service (i.e. GLACIALLY slow). DirecTV service is always there to help quickly partly due to the fact that their customers have far fewer problems to complain about.
Grow up and what, take our beating "like a man"???
Nobody doubts that we helped Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Noriega, and others when it was in our interest, but that's just part of a little game called "foreign policy". Everybody plays the game including France, Germany, and Russia, but the difference with the U.S.A. is that we don't stick with friends who turn on us!!! We don't avoid war to protect debts owed us like some cravin' little coward.
If you want to be friends with us, you have to EARN it -- Germany is beginning to understand that, France has yet to learn, and Russia is mixing things up in an effort to convince the rest of the world that they really are still a global superpower.
I have no problem with our government playing hardball with other countries, and I have no problem taking the consequences -- because it's a mean fucking world out there and not as nice and warm as it is in your little corner!
The bottom line is if you are a good, I want you on our side, but if you are a fucking asshole, I want you to fear us. After 9/11, that IS the reality for most REAL Americans...
"c) Limit your involvement in core business tasks, so when you quit, nobody will notice or care."
Limit the involvement of an employee in core business tasks by sticking him in the SERVER ROOM??? I understand what you're saying, but in his case that's the stupidest thing they could've been doing.
The server room is the LAST place you want a candidate for "de-hiring" to be all day long...
How can you be sure that this can wait another 30-40 years? Are you sure the Earth won't be completely screwed for one reason or another (global warming, polution, overcrowding, war, etc.) in 30-40 years?
How many people do you think said the same exact thing 30 years ago, and here we are today no closer than we were then? I think this is exactly why we are still where we are today because we haven't been driving toward this goal like we all thought we would back then. Who didn't think as a kid in the 60's or 70's that we'd be on the moon or Mars at LEAST, by the year 2000?
There already exist REAL plans today to get us to Mars and back ALIVE, but they require a time investment up-front -- a resource that we've wasted for the last 30 years. Now you're saying to waste another 30-40 years in the hope that a plan will appear out of nowhere?
I seriously suggest that you read this book, since you sound like you think we don't already have plans that would get us to Mars and back:
The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet by Robert Zubrin, Richard Wagner
Even the original NY Times article referenced by this Slashdot story we're all replying to isn't saying that the trip would be a one-way trip to Mars with the absolute understanding that you would die 2-4 weeks after landing (or hours after). The idea is that you would be a pioneer with all the associated risks and die sooner rather than later if things don't go well, i.e. if the continuous shipment of supplies and your ingenuity don't allow you to survive for as long as expected. There's no guarantee that there wouldn't be a return flight later.
If you read the book above (yes, I've read it), it proposes sending the materials for a settlement/colony 10 years in advance of the actual human trip. It details how to include a self-contained and automated "factory" that would slowly mine the Mars surface and produce the resources necessary for the human colonists to survive when they arrive 10 years later. It would not only refine the resources for their survival, but also refine the fuel necessary to get them back to Earth. This is all using present-day technology.
I can't detail the entire book, so you should read it to fully understand -- when I say it goes into the details of doing this, I really mean it!
It's interesting how we're all assuming the story poster initiated the vulnerability audit. The fact is that often these audits are initiated by high level executives in the company who already have suspicions -- they just cover it up by calling it a "security vulnerability audit". For exactly that reason, the vast majority of audits like this are brought in and sold to the executives long before anyone in I.T. hears about it. Most executives are honestly scared of the power that I.T. and finance people have, and these companies play to that fear.
I know because I was involved in something like this before from the management side. When you're in a situation where you have to investigate and possibly terminate an I.T. employee or manager who could do you a HUGE amount of harm if they find out, you don't TELL them.
I'd be willing to bet that this guy was either doing something that crossed the line or he was incompetent (imagine an I.T. guy trying to do a competent job while being drunk off his ass; I've seen it before), and the management called in the audit while making sure he bought into it so he wouldn't suspect his job depended on the results because they don't want him to go postal before they can safely jettison him from the company. I've seen this happen at least two times in the ten years I've been with my current company.
The bottom line is there's nothing immoral about investigating powerful people in your company while trying to prevent damage to your company. AND, there's nothing wrong with always following the straight-and-narrow when it comes to your job, because if you're in a powerful position in I.T., you don't need suspicions to make the execs think they need to strike first. In my company, I.T. people need to be as clean and trustworthy as any finance person because we have access to even more sensitive information than any Controller or CFO.
Why don't you try thousands of them on an eMAME install and then come back and tell us they don't? That's the only way you know for sure -- FUD like your statement doesn't tell us anything, the only thing that does is real-world testing.
I've run MAME on a helluva lot of different platforms and almost all of the ROM's work on every platform because MAME is that good of an emulator. Granted, some of the most recent ROM's (from 2001-2003, for example) may have problems, especially on a low-end platform like a Symbian OS phone, but I consider running a large number of arcade games on my PHONE to be really damn cool...
I have a CS degree, too, so I can relate to what you're saying. That part from that scene was perfectly clear to me, but now I understand how a lot of "regular" people may have interpreted it as complete gibberish. I never thought of that before, I just couldn't understand why some of my non-CS friends didn't get that scene.
:-)
Also, don't count all of us I.T. guys out so easily, some of us actually have CS degrees (although sometimes I find myself wondering why I'm in I.T. when I have a full C.S. degree).
If I had mod points, I'd give you a ++1 Insightful...
Sorry, I've been using my PowerBook G4 12" for 5 months on a 98% Windows network, and this has never happened to me using either OS X v10.2.x or v10.3. After I open it up, it just says the share was disconnected unexpectedly (or sometimes it reconnects or asks if you want to disconnect, I think it depends on the connection type).
Maybe that happened on an early version of 10.2x? I didn't use 10.2.x earlier than 10.2.5...
I know I've seen NASA projects testing a NASA Ion engine in space. I think it was Deep Space 1, which looks like it was started and finished years ago. They also made a flyby of a comet 2 years ago similar to this European probe's flyby of the moon. Seems to me that the moon is an easier target to fly by than a comet. So, this doesn't look like anything new to NASA.
Here's a FAQ on what they're doing with it and why most NASA projects don't want to use it:
NASA FAQ About Ion Propulsion
It could be simply a question of money -- if you can afford to use tried-and-true technologies, why use slower, riskier technologies when you really REALLY have to produce results? But, like they say in the FAQ, if they can prove the technology for long haul missions, that's where it makes sense. They even say specifically that for short missions like to the moon it doesn't make sense (look at how long it'll take that European probe to get to the moon -- 2005?).
Hmm, I don't remember seeing Deep Space 1 news like this on Slashdot -- I had to see it on PBS. Could it be bias or just ignorance? (correct me if I'm wrong, but even a search for "Deep Space 1" on Slashdot didn't produce anything relevent)
So, you're saying your computer will come out of sleep mode in 2 seconds like a modern-day Mac?
Tell me which one, because I haven't seen it. All our PC laptops take 15-30 seconds to go into and come out of sleep mode, and these are Dells, Toshibas, and Sonys from the past year. That's TRUE sleep mode, not just turning off the display.
Both my 17" iMac and my 12" PowerBook G4 go into and come out of sleep in LITERALLY 2 seconds. And, I mean after 2 seconds, everything is working and ready to go, not just that the display came on like in Windows XP.
Not only that, but I can literally cut the power to either of those Macs (by holding down the power key) without a single problem because of the journalling in Mac OS X. I can't do that with any PC we have except my Linux PC's (which also use journalling).
However, if you do that to Redhat Linux 9, you risk corrupting critical OS files -- I tested this three times and every time I had a kernel panic that could only be fixed by restoring the kernel from a backup.
No, as a VP at Apple has said in the past, all you have to do is:
1. Burn the m4p music file to a normal CD (one that you can play in any CD player).
2. Rip the song off of that CD to an m4a music file (m4a is a Dolby AAC file just like the m4p file except it has no DRM restrictions) or if you want, rip it to any other format you want.
3. Delete the original m4p file (and the CD, I assume).
4. Send the m4a (or whatever format) music file to the buyer.
It's that simple. I've used iTunes since day one, I've tested this, and it works with no hitches.
This still gives the end user full control over the music they purchased because once you burn it to a normal CD, it's like any other CD you would buy at a music store. You can rip the songs off of that burned CD and make as many copies of that burned CD as you want.
With iTunes, Apple has really given the end user the role of a CD mastering facility the way Pagemaker gave end users the role of a graphic design or print shop. Once you burn that master CD from the original DRM-protected music files you purchased, you can do anything you want with it. But, if you want to share that music on Kazaa or some other P2P app, you have to take the extra steps of making that master CD and then ripping the songs off of that CD. Also, iTunes will only let you burn 10 master CD's from each playlist.
So, it facilitates electronic distribution of music, while putting up roadblocks (however effective you think they are) to help deter pirates. To me, it really is as close to a happy middle-ground as I've seen for the music industry and end users.
Isn't this all a non-issue if the the guy who originally requested the GPL'd code wrote in his weblog that he got the location for it and it appears to have been there all along?
http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp
I don't want to sound like one of the other broken records, but if Slashdot is more out of sync with reality than a company like Linksys (admittedly not large, but definitely not a small company), the quality of content here is really going downhill. I mean, the issue is resolved before I even get to read and reply to the article at the top of Slashdot???
You're over-simplifying the entire question the same way the article is in order to draw it's ridiculous conclusions.
1) Will computer/robot technology EVER reach the point where "most" "basic" service jobs can be "almost" entirely automated?
Boy, you're really pushing the envelope here! Nobody can say no to this, but this is the exact opposite of what the article is stating, which is what the original poster is trying to refute. In the entire future of mankind, will we reach the point where most *basic* service jobs are *almost* entirely automated? Of course!
The problem is your idea of a "basic service job" is different from others (including the guy who wrote the article). To me, "most basic service jobs" being "almost entirely automated" is limited to the performance of repetitive tasks that ATM's and other similar machines perform. But does that mean that the entire construction workforce will be unemployed? No, not even close!
2) Will the technology remain too costly or inconvenient for businesses to adopt it?
No, because luckily question #1 limits the impact to a very small percentage of tasks. We're already implementing the technology today.
3) Will business adopt the technology to increase profits?
Again, because question #1 limits the impact of what you are predicting to a tiny percentage of repetitive tasks, the obvious answer is "Yes".
The statement the article is making is:
By 2055:
1) *All* restaurant jobs will employ robots, including "cooking, cleaning, and order taking".
2) *All* jobs at construction sites will employ robots, including "pouring the concrete, laying brick, building the home's frame, putting in the windows and doors, siding the house, roofing it, plumbing it, wiring it, hanging the drywall, painting it, etc."
3) In airports, malls, trucking services, and amusement parks, all but management jobs will employ robots.
In the 3rd point, this is detailed more in the article, so you could argue that by 2055 those specific jobs he mentioned could be performed by robots, but you could also argue that it would take much longer to develop robots sufficiently complex enough.
This is really one of those 1950's-like articles predicting that we'd have cities on Mars by 1990-2001. It didn't happen because "progress" is not linear -- it comes in fits and starts. So, to say we'll even get most basic service jobs replaced by 2055 is probably possible, but to replace more than half of *ALL* service jobs could easily take hundreds of years IF it is even possible.
Like other people have stated, there are many other factors including human acceptance of such change. Do you EVER talk to a bank teller? If so, why? Think about it. Even today when people my age (33) and younger have grown up with ATM's, we still usually want humans at the bank.
If grocery stores ever become completely automated the way some/most Albertson's fast lane checkouts have, then why should I go there any more? Will the next step be a jump to giant ATM-like grocery stores where you simply use a touch-screen to enter your order and pay for it, then the machinery spits out your groceries bagged on the warehouse rollers?
Human beings are social by nature. If progress starts taking away large amounts of human interaction (as the Internet "revolution" tried to), the vast majority of humans will reject it or *need* to find a replacement for the social interaction. If anyone is suggesting that humans will just stop needing all that social interaction in a matter of years, they are ignorant -- it could take hundreds or thousands of years for such change to take place. That human interaction could be replaced by something else -- my typing this message is an example. But even though I'm communicating with other Slashdot users in this way, I still joke and talk to real human beings all over the place -- it didn't and won't replace my interaction with humans.
The bottom line is that this article is a nice conversation piece, but it's really nothing more than that...
As a dad with two VERY active sons (2 and 4 years old), and as a dad who has had to take care of those sons ALONE ALL DAY at least one day a week because my wife works 6 days a week, I say BULLSHIT.
You either WATCH your kids or you don't. You either TEACH your kids or you don't. There is NO technological substitute for EITHER of those things, and at least one of those things will pretty much always keep your kid from doing something stupid and/or fatal.
I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for people like the original poster. I work with a guy who allowed (through his own negligence) his 2-3 year old son to die in his pool last year. The "cover" was on the pool but someone didn't notice him going out to play near the pool and subsequently slipping under the cover and drowning. Does that mean you get a tracking system like this and come up with an elaborate setup to alarm you when your kids get near the pool??? NO!!! It means you actually fucking watch your kids!!!
People like that don't care enough about the wellbeing of their kids to avoid buying a house with a pool or to refuse to install one in their back yard -- THAT's the bottom line. Now, how this original poster's 2 year old son can POSSIBLY unlock the deadbolt on their front door is beyond me, and I have relatively tall kids (they look like they are 4 and 6 instead of 2 and 4). Then getting 2 blocks away takes time no matter how fast the 2 year old is -- that kid was neglected for a good 10-20 minutes, which is inexcusable.
You can call me sick, but I CARE enough about my sons to take them into the bathroom with me when I'm taking a shit or shower. And, as a side benefit, both of them understand how to take a piss like daddy and how to take a shower like daddy! At that age, keeping them at arm's length ABSOLUTELY ALL the time is the only foolproof way to keep them safe. And it also helps me to keep involved in my kid's lives.
As Americans, we have GOT to stop ignoring this kind of negligence -- it is NOT okay!
IMNSHO, you don't have any kids (as in, your own biological offspring, not adopted kids or kids you babysit -- it's not the same), so you should STFU until you do!
I actually read the article, and it's not talking really about I.T. jobs. I'm in I.T., and what this article is talking about is strictly programming jobs (not really even I.T. programming jobs) and tech "creation" jobs. In fact pretty much all of the article focuses on out-of-work programmers -- these are not I.T. people.
I.T. is more a service industry while programming is a creation industry -- two very different beasts if you want to outsource to foreign workers.
When a guy in our California office has a problem creating a document in a database on our Notes server is he going to call/wait for an I.T. guy in the UK? No way.
When we need to make a programming change to our back-end server in California, do we care whether the guy making the change is in California, Nevada, or the U.K.? No, of course not.
There are two fundamentally different situations here -- the tech industry is simply going through a shift from a creation-oriented focus to a service-oriented focus. This is not very different from the change a lot of other industries have gone through, but it seems scary because it's now hitting our beloved tech industry.
The fact is I'm essentially a programmer with a computer science degree, and I have a good, solid, well-paying job in the I.T. sector where I'm programming only a small percentage of the time. I'm a director, so I hire I.T. people pretty often. The applicants I see are either I.T.-oriented, or they're programming-oriented.
The bottom line is that if you aren't able to adapt to a more service-oriented role in the U.S. tech industry, you will have more and more of a problem getting a job because you'll be competing for an ever-shrinking pool of jobs...
Comparing a chapter of a book to a single song is absolutely IDIOTIC.
Tell me this, if albums are complete works that shouldn't be separated, then why are they created separately in the first place??? Do you seriously think writers write chapters of a book separately and out of order??? Come on, most of us here have IQ's over 70.
If an artist wants to make the decision to only sell songs as full albums, then why don't they just make entire albums with one huge track on each album??? Because they would PISS off their customers. You know why they can't do that? Because they need money to live and eat. Most people won't pay for stupidity like that because most people aren't hardcore fans who keep giving you money no matter how hard you smack them.
What would happen if a writer wrote his book with no chapters? Page numbers and bookmarks would continue to work. I actually have books with no chapters -- doesn't screw me up. Would I buy a CD if I have to fast-forward through 45 minutes of music to FIND the song I want to listen to? Hell no. Oh, but that's the key, nobody buys a book and then starts on Chapter 10. How often do you buy a CD and start on Track 10? Most of us do it often because that song is the hit we want to listen to.
Most of us don't listen to music in the order it is presented on the CD -- we rip and mix the tracks up or in the very least press the "Random" button on our CD player. Are you seriously telling us it's more enjoyable to read a favorite old book in random chapter order???
How about this, is there a list of the top 40 book chapters in the USA??? No, because songs are INDIVIDUAL WORKS OF ART, and book chapters are NOT. Albums are like book compendiums and nothing more. If you're going to tell me that I should be forced to buy the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book series instead of only one of the books, you're crazy.
That's exactly their problem, any artist can only make so many "good" songs and they have to live off of the profits of their work like everyone else. There are so many artists that it's always been very competitive in the U.S., and now the market is shrinking and becoming more competitive because the consumers (including me) are demanding better quality for their money. To me, that's a perfect example of a market economy.
I think artists need to face the fact that we are witnessing an evolution of modern music and if they can't change with it, then they won't survive -- that's what we're talking about here, survival of the fittest. We already have so many great artists here in the U.S. that never get heard (it's surprising, but true), and I know of quite a few "unknowns" who deserve to make a living at it more than some "stars" do.
Super-mega-stars *need* to go the way of the dinosaurs to make way for artists who serve their individual niche's listeners better than they ever can. Some artists like Green Day will only get me to buy their hits because I just don't like the rest of their music enough to buy it. Other more niche artists like Norah Jones will get me to buy every song in their entire album because every song is just that good.
I'm not saying that Green Day isn't good, but the question is do they make consistently good music? In the new music market, can they sell enough music to enough people to make a living at it? That's the only question that matters to the music stars and you know it's scaring the living sh*t out of them. I don't think I've heard the same fears/complaints from relatively unknown musicians.
Oh, and a note to any "stars" out there who refuse to sell me their product when and how I want it:
If I can't get it my way, I'M NOT BUYING.
Star Wars Episode I was purposely delayed for years from DVD. Too late, you lost a sale. The Indiana Jones movies are FINALLY coming out on DVD? Too late, you lost a sale. When will Madonna sell her music on iTunes or a similar service? Sorry, not only did you lose a sale, but you lost a long-time fan.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for stars who can't compete to make a living like everyone else in the world has to...
It's interesting to read their company history:
http://www.tarantella.com/about/history.html
I'll bet today they are VERY sorry they gave their good name to Caldera -- it looks like Caldera took over the operating systems and, I guess, the SCO name in 2001. It's usually been portrayed here and on other sites that the Santa Cruz Operation (who I know as SCO since I live in the SF Bay Area and we actually used SCO XENIX and OpenServer way back when) is the same as the SCO group and they (the current bad guys) bought UNIX from Novell in 1995.
According to the above link, the original SCO bought UNIX from Novell in 1995, then in 2001 Caldera bought the "operating systems divisions" or UNIX from the original SCO. I assume the purchase included the purchase of the SCO name since the original SCO renamed themselves Tarantella in that same year when the purchase was made and Caldera renamed themselves SCO Group.
So, it seems that this B.S. from the "SCO Group" has only started in the past 1-2 years, and it was probably completely initiated by those scumbags currently calling themselves SCO. They don't deserve to wear that name, IMHO...
I've been reading and contributing responses to Slashdot for years, but this is by far the worst article I've ever seen posted here. I can't believe whoever posted the article on the "front page" of Slashdot actually read the article -- they couldn't have even read the first page.
Right on the first page of the article, the "journalist" who wrote it describes disk storage as "memory". In the "Summary" of the article posted on every page, current file systems are described as wasting "memory". This reminds me of every-day users who confuse their computer running slowly (or literally telling them they don't have enough memory) with the need to delete files from the hard drive -- two completely separate things in most situations. This is all aside from the fact that the article doesn't actually tell you much that anybody who's used computers for more than six months doesn't already know. This guy sounds like some of the kids who come to me interviewing for I.T. positions thinking they've got a leg-up on everyone else because they've got some basic experience with PC's and Windows.
The bottom line is that the guy who wrote this article doesn't have any business writing tech articles without heavy supervision from someone who KNOWS tech, and I don't just mean someone who knows enough to rattle off performance numbers for CPU comparisons (read some other articles on the site). Lastly, Slashdot has no business posting amateurish and misinforming articles like this for the rest of us to waste our time on.
Most of these quotes look like the kind of crap I remember from the 70's glorifying television like it was going to be some kind of educational revolution. They talked about and treated television like we've treated computers in the past 15-20 years -- how soon we forget the mistakes we make. Most people wouldn't say it out loud today, but I don't think you could find anyone today who has the same optimism about television's educational influence like you found back then.
I remember growing up and spending plenty of time watching educational television and films in schools. Most of it didn't teach me anything and I think most people today know that is reality. With that in mind, it seems incredibly stupid for anyone to think that in four years television is "teaching" a formerly isolated population to "go bad".
Believe this: if you are weak-minded, any passive or weak source will influence you, regardless of your culture or ethnicity.
The problem with this old argument from anti-TV/movie/video-game freaks is that most people are NOT weak-minded. So, the only possible reasonable conclusions to this article are either culture-shock made a larger-than-normal percentage of the Bhutanese population weak-minded or this problem is the result of one of many other "invisible" variables at work in any human population.
But, she didn't lie, she said he was not the One right now, that he was waiting for something. I don't remember the exact words, but I've watched the Matrix quite a few times and I remember when I see that part how much sense her exact words make (from a logical machine) after seeing the rest of the movie.
She had some sense of what was going to happen, but not exactly how or when it would happen, hence she's the Oracle. When I saw the Matrix the first time, I automatically thought the same thing that Neo was thinking -- he's not the One, how could that be?? But how most people reacted to that scene -- selectively ignoring the crucial part that he's waiting for something that will trigger him to become the One -- demonstrates to me what it is to be human. Humans don't analyze every bit of input the way that a computer does.
Damn, these movies are brilliant...
Hmm, 6-7 million iTunes 4 users and you don't know how they could sell 500,000 $0.99 songs per week? That doesn't seem that unreasonable to me -- I don't buy much music (maybe 5 CD's per year), but I've already purchased 94 songs from iTunes, as of today (maybe 40% of those were full album purchases).
To me, iTunes is like the 7-11 -- CONVENIENT. I have two sons (aged 2 and 4) and a full-time job, so I don't often have time to go wandering around a store browsing for music usually not able to find what I want. I can count half a dozen purchases (maybe half of all the 94 songs) since I started buying music from iTunes that I never would've bought if I didn't have access to iTunes -- I'm stuck at home with the sick kids because my wife has to work, I'm watching a music awards show or music video at 8pm on a weeknight, I see during lunch at work that a hot new artist just released a new album I can get without leaving work, and on and on and on...
I think this is just a revolution of convenience that the music industry needed very badly. Or maybe this is just proof that the Mac market IS actually viable -- you know some people will just refuse to like or accept THAT!