If I learned anything during my time as an english major it was this: Don't be an english major, drop out and become a programmer. But I learned many things as an english major and one of them is how to read a text.
Let's start with the section, title and subtitle: The Capitalist Century Hard Times A Letter from 2035 You had the Depression, irrational exuberance, and Okies. It's just the same in 2035, except now the Okies have cell phones. Wow, it sure seems like this article is about capitalism and probably about capitalism from a historical perspective. I doubt Mr. Sterling was unaware that this was part of Fortune's the capitalist century. Looks like he's probably down on capitalism too. Another bit. But given that I'm up here in 2035 enduring a major economic depression, while you're back there in 2000 spewing your pollutants, smoking cigarettes, and having unprotected sex, I hope you don't mind if I frankly get a few things off my chest. What we have here is a classic "cranky old guy bitching about kids today" bit that we all recognize from talking to our grandfather. The purpose of this bit elevate the speaker into a position of moral authority. The message here is that pollution, nicotine and unprotected sex are immoral. (Not foolish or self-destructive mind you, but immoral) Go ahead, show me something from the article that indicates that either Mr. Sterling intended this in an ironic tone, or that he retracted it. Next bit: In the old days, a depression like this would have provoked a lot of extremism, maybe even a revolution. Fortunately, we're no longer aware of any alternative to capitalism. In fact, we don't even use the word. Capitalism dropped permanently out of fashion a couple of decades after its old enemy communism died off. Here in 2035 it feels old-fashioned even to say that you're "in business." The market has privatized everything privatizable, so everybody and his sister is in business. Business is so taken for granted that it has become invisible--like clocks or running water or forks. You only notice it when it's not going on. Mr. Sterling's assertion seems to be that modern capitalism is barren and soul destroying. Now come on. Tell me that this article isn't anti-capitalist. Now he may be critiquing the worship of money and the addictive drive to accelerate money making, but the word he uses is capitalism and it's not an accident. He's too competent to use a word he doesn't mean. And he's not proffering alternatives, he's not saying step back and enjoy the finer things, he's just saying capitalism will inevitably lead to a distopian society. It's a whiny rant. (not unlike mine) --Shoeboy
So in the case of MythicalCorp, Inc., if it's possible to save a buck by spewing pollutants into your local river, it's most efficient to do so! Ok, I'll bite. There's another aspect to pollution that I didn't address, and that's the issue of ownership. Nobody owns the local river, so the company doesn't have to pay to pollute. That's a problem. So what's the answer? Well government ownership sure isn't the answer. Let's take a look at two issues, logging and grazing permits. Timber companies don't care about clear cutting national forests, and ranchers don't care about overgrazing them. If anyone could buy either a) the land or b) a usage permit then the Sierra club could pay money for a plot and then not let anyone graze or cut. That would be great. I'd start contributing to the Sierra club if this were the case. Small ranching operations would go broke and the price of beef would go up, but that's ok since meat isn't all that healthy. Let's pick another example, air pollution. Most air pollution is caused by automobile traffic and not by big evil companies. If you had to pay for road construction and maintenance + traffic cops through gas taxes + vehicle taxes alone, you'd have a greater cost of transportation. This would make public transit profitable (or less unprofitable at any rate) and put a damper on both air pollution and suburban sprawl. Now lets take your example of the river dumping. Say that I buy an x% share of the fresh water in the area. (I want to drink, wash dishes and use the restroom after all) Then anyone who wanted to dump in the river would have to pay me for the reduction in value of my share. If they failed to do so, a class action lawsuit would get the attention of PoluterCorp's board of directors in a big #$%@ hurry. See, the market can solve these problems, but only if we can put a price on the environment, and only the market can determine the price of a good. And don't go saying that life, or clean air or a sunset is priceless. That's a load of crap. Price is a measure of value. If something doesn't have a price, it doesn't have value. --Shoeboy
I can whine in general unspecific terms about capitalism too. If I go several pages will "Fortune" publish me? I can whine about people smoking and drinking and having unprotected sex too. Like Mr. Sterling I'm not having enough sex (unprotected or otherwise) and I resent those who appear to be enjoying life more than I am. The environmental rants were nice too. Think about this: environmentalism is all about eliminating waste, buisness profitability is also about eliminating waste. Capitalism does not == environmental havoc. The problem is that companies and individuals are shielded from having to bear the cost of their inneficiency thanks to the government subsidizing polluting activities. Enough of this, I'm off to eliminate some waste. (unlike Mr. Sterling I do this in the restroom instead of a magazine article) --Shoeboy
Check out back issues of the Provo herald. Large lawsuit was filed over this back in '94. ACLU backed the guy who got evicted after BYU officials searched his room and found a poster of a chick in a bikini. BYU won. --Shoeboy
Fun Utah fact: In Provo Utah it is nearly impossible to find an apartment complex that is not BYU approved student housing. What "BYU approved" means is that officials from the mormon church will search your appartment without notifying you. If they find something they don't like (say the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue) you will be evicted. This is true whether or not you are a student of BYU. You simply can't get an appartment without agreeing to this in your lease. --Shoeboy
Fantasia bored the #$%^ out of me, and I don't intend to see fantasia 2000. What I would go see is a version of fantasia featuring an assortment of random 70's tunes. Here's a proposed song and animation list:
David Bowie John I'm Only Dancing Goofy makes homosexual overtures to Mickey.
Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant Hippos in tutus smash up an EMI office
Abba Dancing Queen Chip and Dale cover their ears and vomit
Parliament Funkadelic Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication Medley Daisy notices that Donald isn't wearing any pants and they do what comes naturally.
The Eagles (any song will do) Huey, Dooey and Louie sit around getting stoned.
Of course, the Timna sounds like a dead end technology (who would want graphics that you have to replace the chip to upgrade?), Lots of people. The buisness desktop market doesn't really care about 3d-graphics, neither does the email & web only segment of the market. What these people want is a dirt cheap system with decent 2d performance. SOC technology can help deliver that. I wouldn't buy one for myself, but for low-end systems... --Shoeboy
And do you db_high take this player badboybubba to frag and to shoot, in sickness and after picking up health paks as long as you both shall respawn? --Shoeboy
Since when does a company advocating openness only when they stand to gain == antitrust violations. Everyone has been hypocritical on the open standards issue for years now and nobody can seriously claim that Sun or HP has a monopoly of anything. Name me one major player in the computer industry (other than the FSF) that hasn't constantly shifted its position on open standards and free competition. Let me provide a translator for you:
Scott McNeally: We need an open and competitive marketplace. Translation: I want to be Bill Gates.
Larry Ellison: It's wrong for a company to monopolze standards and leverage its marketshare. Translation: It's wrong for Microsoft to leverage its market share, but when we do it, it's OK.
Steve Case: What we need is an environment where no company has an unfair advantage. Translation: What we need is an environment where only AOL has an unfair advantage.
RMS: Source code should be available to everyone. Translation: Source code should be available to everyone.
Did you watch episode I? Did you pay attention? Watch it again and then tell me that I shouldn't take an ultra-cynical view of lucas on race issues? (or plot/character development/scriptwriting issues for that matter) I'm not trolling, it's just that a lot of Episode I left a very bad taste in my mouth. --Shoeboy
The Variety article was completely false in reporting that we have roles for "a Native American character with a forceful, spiritual nature and an Asian character, possibly trained in martial arts." Am I reading too much into this, or is this saying that no asians need audition for episode II and any native americans cast will have meek, atheistic characters. I expect to hear this next from lucasfilms: "Sorry, we are only accepting muppets, Samuel L. Jackson, computer animations and caucasians for the next film. But we'll have more aliens with really bad japanese accents and are leafing through the protocols of the elders of zion for tips on how to present any jewish characters." --Shoeboy
I could use having the government pass eschelon info on to me. I don't have the money for it or nothing, but I'll do yardwork for any government official who's interested in hooking me up. Like I used to date this girl who started cheating on me with this guy who she thought was really deep cause he listened to the cure and shit like that. If I'd had eschelon access, I'd have known about it and wouldn't have had to spend a month wondering why all my friends were snickering at me. I'd also like to know why some girls think you're deep just because you listen to albums containing 72 straight minutes of non-stop whining. I don't know if eschelon could help with that problem, but it's much more of a national security (or personal insecurity at any rate) issue than whether or not people buy planes from boeing. Anyway, if there are NSA staffers or CIA operative who have access to eschelon data and need yardwork done, let me know. I have my own leaf blower. --Shoeboy
Here's step by step instructions on how to turn yourself into something that looks like a furry cow. 1. Get a job as a programmer or sysadmin. 2. Work at it for at least a year. 3. Visit/. regularly
As long as you start with sufficient body hair, I guarantee you'll be a 400lb furry beast that grazes constantly. If you visit/. enough you'll also develop a herd mentality. --Shoeboy
He's got to be kidding. It's waaay too early about the impact sledgehammer will have on merced. There is no sledgehammer. AMD hasn't taped it out. They certainly haven't sampled it. It's in the vapor stage. Admittedly the release date for the merced keeps slipping (making it the perfect processor for running win2k;) ) but sledgehammer isn't anywhere close to being released. Can anyone tell me of any active project to modify an OS to use sledgehammer's 64 bit instructions? All the sledgehammer hype sounds like wishfull thinking. --Shoeboy
You bought it. It's yours. You can sell it. It doesn't even matter why you bought it. A domain name is only what people will pay for it. Even if you have a name like redhats.com (haven't checked to see if that one's registered) you can auction it to the highest bidder with no qualms. The only way the buyer could make money with redhats.com would be to sell a linux distro, that would be illegal (the infringing on red hat, not the selling of linux), but if you use it legally, say for setting up a shoeboy fan page (hint hint) that would be moral, but wouldn't justify a high price. So if you find a sucker who wants to pay a lot for a domain, bill em for all they're worth and laugh as they either a) get sued by the company they're infringing on or b) spend 5 million on a domain that isn't worth more than the registration fee. --Shoeboy
If I was trolling I would have asserted that bob young was the grits guy. I actually run red hat (have done so for ~ 4 years) and I don't think this is news - for nerds or anybody else. It's not like this is an official beta, there might not actually be a 6.2 release. If redhat does announce the beta, you can bet there will be another/. story on it. --Shoeboy
Imagine someone sent this into slashdot: "I went to do an FTP install this morning and noticed a hidden folder under ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/sql containing tons of pre sp2 hotfixes for sql7.0. There is no official word yet from microsoft, but I'm downloading it right now. Might be nice to check out if you can grab it. " Would anyone care? Of course not. Cause it's not news. If you found a tcpdump log on the ftp server showing that bob young was the grits guy, that would be news. Finding a beta release 12 hours before a press release is issued isn't news. --Shoeboy
How do you think you would view the tech-head community if you had grown up after the PC revolution? Say you'd had an apple ][ when you where 8. Do you think you'd be a geek? Would you still be astonished by geeks or would you take them for granted? --Shoeboy
Being a girl is so much easier. All we have to do for fancy dinners is wear last year's halloween costume without the makeup. Black, slinky witch dresses always get attention. Hate to burst your bubble, but a boy in a black, slinky witch dress will get much more attention at a semi-formal event. It just won't be the same kind of attention. Not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything... --Shoeboy
Slashdot Mirror
oops. forgot to close the tag
I am a moron.
If I learned anything during my time as an english major it was this:
Don't be an english major, drop out and become a programmer.
But I learned many things as an english major and one of them is how to read a text.
Let's start with the section, title and subtitle:
The Capitalist Century
Hard Times A Letter from 2035 You had the Depression, irrational exuberance, and Okies. It's just the same in 2035, except now the Okies have cell phones.
Wow, it sure seems like this article is about capitalism and probably about capitalism from a historical perspective. I doubt Mr. Sterling was unaware that this was part of Fortune's the capitalist century. Looks like he's probably down on capitalism too.
Another bit.
But given that I'm up here in 2035 enduring a major economic depression, while you're back there in 2000 spewing your pollutants, smoking cigarettes, and having unprotected sex, I hope you don't mind if I frankly get a few things off my chest.
What we have here is a classic "cranky old guy bitching about kids today" bit that we all recognize from talking to our grandfather. The purpose of this bit elevate the speaker into a position of moral authority. The message here is that pollution, nicotine and unprotected sex are immoral. (Not foolish or self-destructive mind you, but immoral) Go ahead, show me something from the article that indicates that either Mr. Sterling intended this in an ironic tone, or that he retracted it.
Next bit:
In the old days, a depression like this would have provoked a lot of extremism, maybe even a revolution. Fortunately, we're no longer aware of any alternative to capitalism. In fact, we don't even use the word. Capitalism dropped permanently out of fashion a couple of decades after its old enemy communism died off. Here in 2035 it feels old-fashioned even to say that you're "in business." The market has privatized everything privatizable, so everybody and his sister is in business. Business is so taken for granted that it has become invisible--like clocks or running water or forks. You only notice it when it's not going on.
Mr. Sterling's assertion seems to be that modern capitalism is barren and soul destroying.
Now come on. Tell me that this article isn't anti-capitalist.
Now he may be critiquing the worship of money and the addictive drive to accelerate money making, but the word he uses is capitalism and it's not an accident. He's too competent to use a word he doesn't mean. And he's not proffering alternatives, he's not saying step back and enjoy the finer things, he's just saying capitalism will inevitably lead to a distopian society. It's a whiny rant. (not unlike mine)
--Shoeboy
So in the case of MythicalCorp, Inc., if it's possible to save a buck by spewing pollutants into your local river, it's most efficient to do so!
Ok, I'll bite. There's another aspect to pollution that I didn't address, and that's the issue of ownership. Nobody owns the local river, so the company doesn't have to pay to pollute. That's a problem. So what's the answer? Well government ownership sure isn't the answer. Let's take a look at two issues, logging and grazing permits. Timber companies don't care about clear cutting national forests, and ranchers don't care about overgrazing them. If anyone could buy either a) the land or b) a usage permit then the Sierra club could pay money for a plot and then not let anyone graze or cut. That would be great. I'd start contributing to the Sierra club if this were the case. Small ranching operations would go broke and the price of beef would go up, but that's ok since meat isn't all that healthy. Let's pick another example, air pollution. Most air pollution is caused by automobile traffic and not by big evil companies. If you had to pay for road construction and maintenance + traffic cops through gas taxes + vehicle taxes alone, you'd have a greater cost of transportation. This would make public transit profitable (or less unprofitable at any rate) and put a damper on both air pollution and suburban sprawl. Now lets take your example of the river dumping. Say that I buy an x% share of the fresh water in the area. (I want to drink, wash dishes and use the restroom after all) Then anyone who wanted to dump in the river would have to pay me for the reduction in value of my share. If they failed to do so, a class action lawsuit would get the attention of PoluterCorp's board of directors in a big #$%@ hurry.
See, the market can solve these problems, but only if we can put a price on the environment, and only the market can determine the price of a good.
And don't go saying that life, or clean air or a sunset is priceless. That's a load of crap. Price is a measure of value. If something doesn't have a price, it doesn't have value.
--Shoeboy
Seems to me you do it here... /. is?
What do you think
--Shoeboy
I can whine in general unspecific terms about capitalism too. If I go several pages will "Fortune" publish me? I can whine about people smoking and drinking and having unprotected sex too. Like Mr. Sterling I'm not having enough sex (unprotected or otherwise) and I resent those who appear to be enjoying life more than I am.
The environmental rants were nice too. Think about this: environmentalism is all about eliminating waste, buisness profitability is also about eliminating waste. Capitalism does not == environmental havoc. The problem is that companies and individuals are shielded from having to bear the cost of their inneficiency thanks to the government subsidizing polluting activities.
Enough of this, I'm off to eliminate some waste. (unlike Mr. Sterling I do this in the restroom instead of a magazine article)
--Shoeboy
Can't wait for the chance to register a domain in the .longtopleveldomainnameswillcausecarpaltunnelandth eniwillsuethatassholenader TLD.
-Shoeboy
Check out back issues of the Provo herald. Large lawsuit was filed over this back in '94. ACLU backed the guy who got evicted after BYU officials searched his room and found a poster of a chick in a bikini. BYU won.
--Shoeboy
Fun Utah fact:
In Provo Utah it is nearly impossible to find an apartment complex that is not BYU approved student housing. What "BYU approved" means is that officials from the mormon church will search your appartment without notifying you. If they find something they don't like (say the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue) you will be evicted. This is true whether or not you are a student of BYU. You simply can't get an appartment without agreeing to this in your lease.
--Shoeboy
- David Bowie John I'm Only Dancing Goofy makes homosexual overtures to Mickey.
- Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant Hippos in tutus smash up an EMI office
- Abba Dancing Queen Chip and Dale cover their ears and vomit
- Parliament Funkadelic Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication Medley Daisy notices that Donald isn't wearing any pants and they do what comes naturally.
- The Eagles (any song will do) Huey, Dooey and Louie sit around getting stoned.
I'd pay to see that. --ShoeboyOf course, the Timna sounds like a dead end technology (who would want graphics that you have to replace the chip to upgrade?),
Lots of people. The buisness desktop market doesn't really care about 3d-graphics, neither does the email & web only segment of the market. What these people want is a dirt cheap system with decent 2d performance. SOC technology can help deliver that. I wouldn't buy one for myself, but for low-end systems...
--Shoeboy
And do you db_high take this player badboybubba to frag and to shoot, in sickness and after picking up health paks as long as you both shall respawn?
--Shoeboy
Since when does a company advocating openness only when they stand to gain == antitrust violations. Everyone has been hypocritical on the open standards issue for years now and nobody can seriously claim that Sun or HP has a monopoly of anything. Name me one major player in the computer industry (other than the FSF) that hasn't constantly shifted its position on open standards and free competition. Let me provide a translator for you:
Scott McNeally: We need an open and competitive marketplace.
Translation: I want to be Bill Gates.
Larry Ellison: It's wrong for a company to monopolze standards and leverage its marketshare.
Translation: It's wrong for Microsoft to leverage its market share, but when we do it, it's OK.
Steve Case: What we need is an environment where no company has an unfair advantage.
Translation: What we need is an environment where only AOL has an unfair advantage.
RMS: Source code should be available to everyone.
Translation: Source code should be available to everyone.
I hope that clears things up for you.
--Shoeboy
My work here is done. I've added yet another torll to the flock. What the fuck is a torll anyway?
--Shoeboy
Did you watch episode I? Did you pay attention? Watch it again and then tell me that I shouldn't take an ultra-cynical view of lucas on race issues? (or plot/character development/scriptwriting issues for that matter)
I'm not trolling, it's just that a lot of Episode I left a very bad taste in my mouth.
--Shoeboy
The Variety article was completely false in reporting that we have roles for "a Native American character with a forceful, spiritual nature and an Asian character, possibly trained in martial arts."
Am I reading too much into this, or is this saying that no asians need audition for episode II and any native americans cast will have meek, atheistic characters. I expect to hear this next from lucasfilms:
"Sorry, we are only accepting muppets, Samuel L. Jackson, computer animations and caucasians for the next film. But we'll have more aliens with really bad japanese accents and are leafing through the protocols of the elders of zion for tips on how to present any jewish characters."
--Shoeboy
I could use having the government pass eschelon info on to me. I don't have the money for it or nothing, but I'll do yardwork for any government official who's interested in hooking me up. Like I used to date this girl who started cheating on me with this guy who she thought was really deep cause he listened to the cure and shit like that. If I'd had eschelon access, I'd have known about it and wouldn't have had to spend a month wondering why all my friends were snickering at me. I'd also like to know why some girls think you're deep just because you listen to albums containing 72 straight minutes of non-stop whining. I don't know if eschelon could help with that problem, but it's much more of a national security (or personal insecurity at any rate) issue than whether or not people buy planes from boeing. Anyway, if there are NSA staffers or CIA operative who have access to eschelon data and need yardwork done, let me know. I have my own leaf blower.
--Shoeboy
Here's step by step instructions on how to turn yourself into something that looks like a furry cow. /. regularly
/. enough you'll also develop a herd mentality.
1. Get a job as a programmer or sysadmin.
2. Work at it for at least a year.
3. Visit
As long as you start with sufficient body hair, I guarantee you'll be a 400lb furry beast that grazes constantly. If you visit
--Shoeboy
There's a great article on the hazards of asteroid exploration here
--Shoeboy
He's got to be kidding. It's waaay too early about the impact sledgehammer will have on merced. There is no sledgehammer. AMD hasn't taped it out. They certainly haven't sampled it. It's in the vapor stage. Admittedly the release date for the merced keeps slipping (making it the perfect processor for running win2k ;) ) but sledgehammer isn't anywhere close to being released. Can anyone tell me of any active project to modify an OS to use sledgehammer's 64 bit instructions? All the sledgehammer hype sounds like wishfull thinking.
--Shoeboy
You bought it. It's yours. You can sell it. It doesn't even matter why you bought it. A domain name is only what people will pay for it. Even if you have a name like redhats.com (haven't checked to see if that one's registered) you can auction it to the highest bidder with no qualms. The only way the buyer could make money with redhats.com would be to sell a linux distro, that would be illegal (the infringing on red hat, not the selling of linux), but if you use it legally, say for setting up a shoeboy fan page (hint hint) that would be moral, but wouldn't justify a high price.
So if you find a sucker who wants to pay a lot for a domain, bill em for all they're worth and laugh as they either a) get sued by the company they're infringing on or b) spend 5 million on a domain that isn't worth more than the registration fee.
--Shoeboy
If I was trolling I would have asserted that bob young was the grits guy. I actually run red hat (have done so for ~ 4 years) and I don't think this is news - for nerds or anybody else. It's not like this is an official beta, there might not actually be a 6.2 release. If redhat does announce the beta, you can bet there will be another /. story on it.
--Shoeboy
Imagine someone sent this into slashdot:
"I went to do an FTP install this morning and noticed a hidden folder under ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/sql containing tons of pre sp2 hotfixes for sql7.0. There is no official word yet from microsoft, but I'm downloading it right now. Might be nice to check out if you can grab it. "
Would anyone care? Of course not. Cause it's not news.
If you found a tcpdump log on the ftp server showing that bob young was the grits guy, that would be news. Finding a beta release 12 hours before a press release is issued isn't news.
--Shoeboy
How do you think you would view the tech-head community if you had grown up after the PC revolution? Say you'd had an apple ][ when you where 8. Do you think you'd be a geek? Would you still be astonished by geeks or would you take them for granted?
--Shoeboy
Hmm... what to call a cold blooded reptile.
How about naming it after Jack Valenti, spokesman for the MPAA.
--Shoeboy
Being a girl is so much easier. All we have to do for fancy dinners is wear last year's halloween costume without the makeup. Black, slinky witch dresses always get attention.
Hate to burst your bubble, but a boy in a black, slinky witch dress will get much more attention at a semi-formal event. It just won't be the same kind of attention. Not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything...
--Shoeboy