Have you considered a man-servant? As the commercials used to say, just Ask Jeeves.
This might sound foolish, but I have, and am actively looking for someone to be my personal assistant. In the old days, businessmen took on younger entrepreneurs to mentor to in exchange for assistant services (don't read into that). From laundry to note-taking to writing thank-you cards, the assistant did a lot.
I looked into hiring a driver/assistant and realized that the cost (US$30,000 a year) would pay for itself quickly. If you bill at a reasonable rate (let's just throw out US$150 per hour), you'd make up their salary in 200 hours, or 4 hours saved a week! VERY well worth it.
That being said, US$30K sounds cheap until you realize that you're also teaching and mentoring and eventually helping them become what you are.
I know you were joking, but it is a great idea that shouldn't be ignored.
I know it's a minor point, but why on Earth do you need a Day-Timer if you have a PDA? Or, to look at it the other way around, why the hell do you have a PDA if you are already carrying a notebook PC and a Day-Timer?
Actually, I converted my Day-Timer to an uber-PostIt/mega-notepad. My PDA is great for leaving notes to myself, but terrible for leaving notes to someone else (in paper form). I am an appointment-afficionado, and I write many thank-you notes and "Don't Forget" notes that I hand out as needed. The little Day-Timer leather-bound system works great because I can take it with me to meetings where a bag won't do, and a PDA is a bit too attention-grabbing.
For me, something that can be broken down to individual, smaller parts is key. I forgot to mention that I also carry a D50 with me at all times, so having a bag within a bag within a bag works best.
(That was a lot of hypenated words, but it was necessary.)
That is awesome, I'll order one tomorrow. I was hoping for a messenger bag made of more spandex than fabric, but this looks like it might work. The messenger bag has more panache (especially the one I linked to at Bluefly), which can gain points with the customers, but I think a backpack-like bag like you linked to would do fine.
You'd be surprised, actually. For me, my laptop is mostly for keeping track of everything I need, while the PDA just doesn't accomplish as much on the tiny screen. My PDA and laptop are very well sync'd (Bluetooth and WiFi), but they both are unique and separate entities. If someone needs to tell me something, I jot it on my PDA and follow-up on my laptop.
My current phone (Samsung t809) works great but it isn't there yet. I'm awaiting the Nokia N80 to arrive to see if I can replace my PDA and phone in one fell swoop. Until then, the laptop is a necessity for about 40% of my work.
Whenever I see a big mainstream news headline and read the story, I'll usually hit Google News to see what opposing views there are. Lately I've typed in some headlines and found 200 newspapers using the exact same wire article, verbatim. After wading through that junk, I'll slowly find opposing views -- views that were impossible to find just a few years ago.
I'm not sure that any news is really news anymore; more and more news is colored by opinion. That is fine with me, but I would like to see more sources given tribute and more news reporters coming up with unique news rather than regurgitating the same stories over and over again. I figure why don't these major news outlets just run an RSS feed of the AP and be done with it?
For me, I prefer the news that was normally marginalized out of existance. It gives me a dose of unique opinions, and it also helps create interesting debate topics that help in relationship at home and my relationships with friends and customers.
I think more and more people are starting to think outside the box -- and the Internet is a great place to find every opinion. Are all of them newsworthy? Probably not.
With companies like BlogBurst.com bringing amateur news and opinions to large mainstream media outlets, we'll see more and more integration of the sidestream media, and maybe we'll see less and less need to rely on sources such as CNN and FoxNN.
There is a big difference between the roads (regulated by the State) and the information avenues (so far not really regulated all that much): one would be paternalism (a subsidized company: GM and a regulated road), one would be preferentialism.
For me, I don't see a problem with ISPs who give preferential treatment to traffic -- just as your grocery store gets paid for better shelf placement by hundreds of product manufacturers, I think the same should be true for any free market good. In the long run, the market will decide what it favors -- balanced traffic or privately subsidized traffic. As long as the government stays out of the decision and lets the market decide, I think it will work out just fine.
The big problem is where government is already sticking their nose in my business, such as where certain providers get monopoly status (within the village or the state). In this case, there is cause for concern, but that is already the problem with government regulation: it tends to create monopolies out of preferred enterprises and really hurts the competitive market. I'm already starting a village debate over getting rid of the Comcast franchise fee (which gets dropped into hands of my local government). In just 10 weeks I have about 60% of the village angry that they're paying US$4 a month to the village so Comcast can have a monopoly over cable services. We're lucky to have not 2 but 6 different broadband providers in our tiny village of 3000 people, so it isn't a huge concern, but US$48 a year is still a lot to pay so a monopoly can have access.
For those of you with villages that monopolize just one ISP, you need to do what I've done: tell your neighbors and everyone around you that the village needs to stop. There is no reason for monopolized communications anymore, and dumping the monopoly will give you much more choice. The entire state of Illinois is being harmed by the telephone unions who are harping about the idea of opening up the entire market to competition by many ISPs. This is where we have to be really scared, not if one company gives preferential treatment over the data streams.
If there is open competition for ISPs, you will get a choice of service. Maybe it is possible that one big ISP can give preferential bandwidth for a fee to someone, and this will bring your utility costs down. For some, this is a big benefit. I'd rather pay more for equal service, but it should not be mandated by law or by "right." For now, you're using their line, and if you complain that your tax dollars paid for the line to be installed, you should see already that the fault is with the monopolizing effect of telecom regulation, not with the competitive marketplace.
I do believe we'll see a bifurcated Internet of varying ISPS offering varying levels of service for varying prices. This is good, this is how competition figures out what the consumer wants and needs at what price. It also allows the market to change at whim, depending again on what users want and need. Maybe some people want to pay per kilobyte, maybe some people want their bandwidth to their preferred sites subsidized by the sites, who knows? Let the market decide.
E-mail will have been dead for close to a decade in 3 years. Yes, we all still use it. Yes, it is a primary form of communications for anything over 30 miles. And yes, the horse is dead but we'll still beat it.
I stopped using e-mail as my primary form of communications almost 7 years ago (about the time I started using SMS en masse, combined with instant messaging when available). For me, e-mail is no different than TV, radio and telephone -- all technologies that should have been replaced eons ago but for whatever reason have been held back from evolving.
I agree that e-mail is a terrible collaboration tool, but considering when it was "invented" and how few real iterations of change we've seen with in, I don't expect it to ever blossom into a truly useful tool for productivity. I would have to guess that while e-mail is more efficient than a fax or a letter, it is not a telephone replacement, nor is it a replacement for even a simple post-it note. The only collaboration-friendly element of e-mail is the idea that it leaves a log or an audit trail of exchanges, but it is missing all the other important elements for group-think or idea creation.
I believe the future of connecting everyone within a group to one another plus incorporating outside groups into the "conversation" will likely come out of a different technology than e-mail. I see great possibilities in RSS and XML as a platform for long term collaboration, and the Wiki idea is a step in the right direction. Combine both with a tagging feature and incorporate more than just text, and you have a mess of protocols that together can really make a difference for building and sharing ideas. Maybe a little slashdot-style user-modifiable open-view moderation, too. Before any protocol or format can be created that really is the end-all solution, we need the underlying platform to be finalized. We need the Net available all the time, everywhere, at low cost (commodity-priced) and at high speed. I believe that the EDGE/3G networks are getting us closer (I am typing over an EDGE-connected T-Mobile link now), but we're not there yet. When information can be accessed immediately, when notifications can become part of the data stream, and when the ability stream your thought into a final product with anyone else, I think we'll see that product that many of us are waiting for without knowing it.
I've given a lot of thought to collaboration tools of the future, and I know exactly what I want. I just know that even if I implemented it today, most of my workers, friends, co-writers and readers would not be able to mesh with the Wiki-XML-SMS-Slashdot-tagging tree with the speed that I would think is necessary to make that collaboration better than a simple whiteboard and a boardroom.
Actually, becoming calmer on caffeeine means you have the neurological wiring for ADD.
I do. The most productive years of my life were when I had a personal assistant helping me stay on track with my tasks and to-do lists. In recent years I've considered hiring a "Gentleman's gentleman" not just to drive me around and tend to me as a butler, but to be a personal assistant in my daily responsibilities. The added income I'd make just by staying on track would likely offset the costs of hiring a good assistant.
I've always been ADD, but I don't consider it a penalty, really. It helps me think outside the box on nearly everything, but when I discover something unique or insightful that is different than my competition, I find I can focus nearly completely on it until I come up with a marketable idea. Surely a sign of deep ADD, but the solution isn't drugs or medicating, just pay a little more for someone with OCD to help me focus.
Because Google is (one of the?) most popular search engine, I am finding it less and less relevant when I do searches. The top 10-20 results are more spam than relevant and good information. MSN, on the other hand, is starting to be my preferred search tool because it doesn't seem as "keyword stuffed" as the Google responses. I know this isn't the case for everyone, but almost all the geeks I know are starting to shift away from Google en masse. I much prefer Google as a company, of course, but just being #1 (or close to it) seems to make it a target for the spammers, sploggers and Made-for-CPC websites.
I'm not hoping for a shift for anyone to Microsoft's search technology but if Google continues to lose the battle to PageRank chasers, they'll find themselves slipping as users automatically attach Google to spam sites rather than relevant sites.
My home page is still Google (due to the customized interface), but I am more often using other search engines to combat the spammers. Is Amazon seeing a similar problem?
I'm a pot-a-day kind of man, and I loved my Senseo which runs overtime every morning. I have to think and type up to 2000 words every morning, and the days I am out of coffee are the days I don't think straight. It might be an addiction, but who knows.
I would have to say that coffee does NOT make me a yes-man, as I've always been anti-authority and loved playing Devil's advocate. Maybe the article writer is confused; coffee might bring out our most consistent opinion or process. Does coffee make leaders more leader-like, and followers more follower-like? I'd say so.
When I have performed public speaknig engagements recently, the coffee buzz always makes me a better speaker (and calmer, actually). I wonder if caffeine, the drug, just puts us into our most comfortable role as many drugs do (including following others if that is how we're designed).
I have T-Mobile's EDGE and GPRS through my Samsung t809 cell phone. Over the past 4 months my speeds have gotten faster and faster (upwards of 20K/s downloads), and some days I forget to log off before jumping on my WiFi at home. I'm very happy with the speed and the phone (even with many downsides).
I've been thinking of getting a separate EDGE PC-Card so my laptop always has access, but then I realized it is more of a hassle and a cost than necessary. I think this laptop will have similar problems.
First of all, you need a second SIM card, which usually means a second plan through your phone company. This could also mean a second contract and all that good stuff (depending on your provider). Also, this virtually locks you in to just that one PC. With my Samsung t809, I just link up via Bluetooth (automatic) from my laptop, my HP PDA, or even my home PC (my MCE box has bluetooth in case my home network is down). The benefit of being able to connect however I want is a great benefit.
I've even used my t809 to hook up from a customer's office when they had a T1 outage. I didn't realize that their traffic routed through the dial-up connection until the office thanked me for fixing their problem. Here's something that wouldn't have worked very well if the laptop integrated it.
I'm all for more integration, but Bluetooth really has made almost everything I used to desire pretty useless. I print via BT, connect to the web, even transfer files over WiFi (better battery life through BT).
Who here could actually use this over a BT cell with EDGE/3G?
After reading through 350 posts twice, why has no one blamed the real problem behind laws like this?
It has nothing to do with Republicans (Democrats have always voted for anything that expands the power of government).
It has nothing to do with campaign finance (most campaign finance laws were written to either keep incumbents powerful, or limit the financial activity of 3rd parties).
It has nothing to do with protecting the artists (as copyright grew from 7 year to lifetimes, the power was offered to fewer and fewer people, leading to a cartelization of the distribution avenues).
It has nothing to do with terrorism (one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. The US has killed more people with car bombs than any militant organization).
It has nothing to do with money. Money can be gained for the politician already through the massive spending bills -- just title the law in a way that the people don't read it but love the name and you can extract almost any amount of cash for your friends, family and other cronies.
It has to do with power. Congress, the Executive Branch and the Supreme Court all have taken way too much power into their hands since FDR. The slide started with Lincoln. Nothing will stop these power-mongers, no voting, no campaigns, no third parties, no phone calls. Until the individual states realize that they're weaker from promoting such a large centralizing government, nothing will change. Every third party is just a fundamentalist version of one of the two big parties, and every third party candidate that wins ends up being no different than the regular politicians.
The taste of power is enough to corrupt anyone, and there is no hope as long as we continue to let these politicians take over more and more management of a country that was better managed when states competed with one another for the best citizens.
Psst. The budget was never balanced. He stole from Social Security to pay for the continued growth of government, and worked with Greenspan to print more dollars than ever -- a hidden tax on the average American.
I thought NASA was having financial difficulties and no real direction in where they'll "lead" us in the future. This seems like an terrible waste of taxpayer dollars.
What is the actual outcome from this research? Will this help create more energy-efficiency in the world? Will it help us find technology that humanity can actually use to make a better society? Will it increase our safety, or decrease power of madmen and dictators?
Stories like this make me feel sad that many people feel we need public funding for research that seems to have no real gain for those paying for it. Sure, I love physics and astrophysics, but I would rather voluntarily give a few hundred greenbacks a year to a private research company that see it wasted on publicans who get paid no matter what they're doing.
Uh... huh? How has technology replaced, say, monitoring content on public broadcasts?(1) How has technology eliminated the need to regulate the radio spectrum so devices dont stomp all over each other? How has technology ensured that every manufacturer will somehow produce devices which accept interference?
There is no need to monitor content on public broadcasts -- the government is not a parent. Let the parents return to monitoring their children. That's the reason for a parent to stay home and parent rather than both working to overspend and live beyond their means. When government parents, I have to pay even though I have no kids. No thanks.
As for interference, we have coding hopping software radios that can pick the right spectrum. It is financially impossible to shred the entire spectrum with one antenna -- the costs to transmit are huge (power, antenna, labor, etc). If you sent random bursts across various specturms, software radios that freqhop can adjust and get around it -- you'll MAYBE intrude on 1% of the spectrum at a given time, and they'll just retransmit on a freq that you won't know until its too late.
If you don't regulate the spectrum, there will be nothing stopping someone using the same frequencies as air traffic controllers. Disbanding the FCC has got to be one of the most idiotic ideas I've ever read on slashdot. Restructure it, sure. Fire everyone working there, fine. Try to remove the corruption, absolutely. But to suggest we don't need any regulation of the radio spectrum is absolutely ludicrous.
The FAA already has ways around the interference that is already generated in their spectrum. If you study the systems they use, they already have enough processes in place to punch through the "problems." With software-freq-hopping, it won't be a concern. In fact, I've been on two airplanes already that allow WiFi and have Internet access and they're great -- my bandwidth was excellent. This wasn't due to FCC regulation, this was due to the free market providing what we want.
The idea that someone would spend trillions a year to block transmissions is a straw-man style argument. We only THINK we need the FCC, but look at Somalia, a country without a government, and they have a ton of communications infrastructure -- cell phone companies running in anarchy, satellite comm, satellite broadcasts, digital radio. They have ZERO regulation in their broadcasts and it works very well. They don't even have publicly regulated power distribution, so the telcom companies put generators on every tower, and they're working just fine. Somailia has a ton of other problems, but they're growing in leaps and bounds without a problem, considering they've been in a government-induced civil war for decades.
I agree with your note that DRM=control. So does copyright. Copyright was thought to drive creativity, but people were creative before copyright, and the web has exploded with information regardless of copyright (look at the average blogger who would never have the cash to sue someone for infringement).
Copyright is now about the control of distribution, not control of information. If you can't distribute, you couldn't profit. The web has destroyed the distribution avenues (or soon will).
I write, I write freely, and I write for public consumption, editing, and redistribution. I openly allow people to take my words, verbatim, stick their own name on them, and republish. Why? As more consumers read those words, my own value goes up -- I was writing the same topics first (and Google cache's and other caching engines can prove it).
Copyright is now useless -- it keeps only a handful of bands making millions, it keeps only a handful of actors making millions and it keeps only a handful of artists making millions. The rest of us had no option to distribute our art, now we can, and we don't need copyright to generate income or interest.
DRM is a noose around the neck of anyone who believes in freedom. In a free market, DRM is acceptable as long as the laws aren't preferential for those who create content over those who buy content.
I'm a firm anti-copyright believer, I see no reason for copyright anymore now that information is so readily available (high supply, low demand, zero price). DRM is merely an attempt at the media distribution cartels to try to strangehold the market of the various media.
The FCC is no longer useful. I don't believe it is even Constitutional. Technology has completely replaced EVERYTHING that the FCC is mandated to regulate, but because of the regulations, we can't let technology grow to meet the needs of the hundreds of millions of citizens in the U.S.
If we want to be at the forefront of technology, it is time to disband the FCC and let companies find ways to take advantage of all the bandwidth being wasted on analog TV, radio, HAM, CB, and other ancient/antiquated technologies. Re-read the Constitution, see that the FCC is merely a pawn of the media cartels, and dump it along with every outdated law that they provided input on.
I don't need them, and I fail to see a need to continue to pay for them.
If they want to noose my data, I just want an equal opportunity with my noose.
This is a very important point and a huge reason why we'll see regulations brought up against Internet broadcasting (via BitTorrent).
I'm working on producing two "TV" shows that will be distributed 100% as a torrent. We have a decent budget, great equipment, a studio space, and the right people for the camera. Our topics aren't mainstream, but there are hundreds of thousands of interested viewers worldwide.
Why would I bother with old technology? The Torrent protocol is perfect for what I want to do -- if people ARE interested, then more will seed. If people aren't interested, then it will be only us. A perfect policy of accepting supply and demand, and if the product is decent, I am sure people will pay for more episodes.
Only time will tell, but someone has to step up and try something new, right?
Let IPTV die if its based on any media distribution cartel such as AT&T.
Regulations by the government have nothing to do with protecting the consumers or enabling the market to produce a quality product. All regulations are created to do is protect the favored companies (paternalism) and created an artificially high barrier to entry (protectionism).
In this situation, of course the government wants to regulate new media -- it will let them tax it, censor it, and prevent it from pushing the pro-State media companies into oblivion, where they should go.
Don't be surprised if everything is eventually owned by the largest media cartels, the kings of distribution. They've realized the mistake of investing in the online market, the most free and most anonymous place for people to interact. I look at the web as an anarcho-capitalist haven, a place that even when touched by ridiculous white market laws allows everyone to instantly circumvent them to the free black market.
The citizens here won't care, they'll see it is "for the children" or "against terrorism" and they'll bend over and accept it. Thankfully we have enough geeks around the world who will continue to work on new ways to transport information beneath the radar of the monsters in office.
It would be fun to find the absolute worst CSS on MySpace and substitute it on slashdot using Firefox's custom CSS feature. Talk about making the dot even more annoying, who's up for it?
The thing about talking to people who share your own views is that you tend to not explore dissenting ideas.
Maybe 20 years ago. Now with the Net much of what government was supposed to protect us from can be replaced with feedback systems, proper contract and tort law, and a healthy freedom of speech online. Also, I would rather NOT explore dissenting ideas than see those ideas and actions criminalized as is the case in every democracy. Dissent is criminal, so is performing non-violent mutually-consenting actions with other adults.
Are you saying the total number of elected officials should be capped at 60k or that governments shouldn't govern populations larger than 60k?
Maximum constituents under an elected official is capped at somewhere between 20K and 60K people. Preferably with representatives rather than one king.
The first is when the Constitution was written the nation was tiny and no one envisioned it ballooning to 290 million people.
So? If the Constitution was followed, the Federal government would still be tiny, taking in less than 1% of GDP. State governments would be more powerful and give people more choice -- letting people with similar interests live together. The way it is today, the US is not a Constitutional Republic, it is a Democracy, the worst form of government.
Also our nation is more efficient this way. With one federal government and only 50 state governments things get done much faster than they would then if there were say a few thousand micro-governments.
I think the democracy in the US is terribly inefficient -- instead of having freedom of choice, we criminalize many non-violent fully-consenting actions in order to maintain "integrity" and "harmony." Why is drug use or sale illegal? Why is prostitution illegal? Why is self-defense illegal on your property? Our country is an inefficient, paternal cronyist country, nowhere near as efficient as the states in Switzerland or many other countries where Federalism is prefered to Nationalism.
People don't want to deal with that level of beauracracy and red tape....something I assumed an anti-statist would instinctively recognize. It would be crazy for a company to have to deal with a thousand different laws just to work across the nation.
So? This would reduce the chances of there being paternally approved megacorporations, and it would increase the ability of people to buy what the want to buy by living in a government created by like people. The Independent State of Potistan might have maryjane legal, where the Independent State of Holistan might make skirts illegal. Let the people decide. Much more efficient dealing with a local representative government than one who ignores the people completely, even in voting.
About Marx, I don't understand how our republic has been weakened by democracy. The most successful states in the world today are democracies, republic or parlimentary or whatever.
I disagree, I believe the biggest failures were democracies. The Third Reich was a democracy.
Hans Herman Hoppe wrote a great book called "Democracy: The God that Failed" and it is a worthy read. Here's a link to an essay by him. Even some Congresspeople realize that democracy is failure.
Democracy, IMHO, is the worst form of government -- the so called "two wolves and a sheep voting for what to have for dinner."
I am anti-State, but I do believe that there can be a balance of harmony and government as long as the government is limited to a very small populace. I've been debating it with my anarcho-capitalist and libertarian friends, and I think the number falls somewhere in the area of 20,000-60,000 people. Limiting government to this number would increase freedom, decrease tyranny, and uphold the sanctity of voting with your feet. I'd say the only government I'd want above this micro-government would be one with only one command and power: the dissolve governments over the limit. Nothing is wrong with governments working with one another, but I don't want "cover-all" laws like the US has become because of Democracy. Democracy was never the intended result of the Constitution, unfortunately Marx was very bright about how to dilute the power of a republic by introducing democracy, the end result being the socialism he wanted to see so badly.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you considered a man-servant? As the commercials used to say, just Ask Jeeves.
This might sound foolish, but I have, and am actively looking for someone to be my personal assistant. In the old days, businessmen took on younger entrepreneurs to mentor to in exchange for assistant services (don't read into that). From laundry to note-taking to writing thank-you cards, the assistant did a lot.
I looked into hiring a driver/assistant and realized that the cost (US$30,000 a year) would pay for itself quickly. If you bill at a reasonable rate (let's just throw out US$150 per hour), you'd make up their salary in 200 hours, or 4 hours saved a week! VERY well worth it.
That being said, US$30K sounds cheap until you realize that you're also teaching and mentoring and eventually helping them become what you are.
I know you were joking, but it is a great idea that shouldn't be ignored.
I know it's a minor point, but why on Earth do you need a Day-Timer if you have a PDA? Or, to look at it the other way around, why the hell do you have a PDA if you are already carrying a notebook PC and a Day-Timer?
Actually, I converted my Day-Timer to an uber-PostIt/mega-notepad. My PDA is great for leaving notes to myself, but terrible for leaving notes to someone else (in paper form). I am an appointment-afficionado, and I write many thank-you notes and "Don't Forget" notes that I hand out as needed. The little Day-Timer leather-bound system works great because I can take it with me to meetings where a bag won't do, and a PDA is a bit too attention-grabbing.
For me, something that can be broken down to individual, smaller parts is key. I forgot to mention that I also carry a D50 with me at all times, so having a bag within a bag within a bag works best.
(That was a lot of hypenated words, but it was necessary.)
That is awesome, I'll order one tomorrow. I was hoping for a messenger bag made of more spandex than fabric, but this looks like it might work. The messenger bag has more panache (especially the one I linked to at Bluefly), which can gain points with the customers, but I think a backpack-like bag like you linked to would do fine.
Appreciate the link!
You'd be surprised, actually. For me, my laptop is mostly for keeping track of everything I need, while the PDA just doesn't accomplish as much on the tiny screen. My PDA and laptop are very well sync'd (Bluetooth and WiFi), but they both are unique and separate entities. If someone needs to tell me something, I jot it on my PDA and follow-up on my laptop.
My current phone (Samsung t809) works great but it isn't there yet. I'm awaiting the Nokia N80 to arrive to see if I can replace my PDA and phone in one fell swoop. Until then, the laptop is a necessity for about 40% of my work.
Whenever I see a big mainstream news headline and read the story, I'll usually hit Google News to see what opposing views there are. Lately I've typed in some headlines and found 200 newspapers using the exact same wire article, verbatim. After wading through that junk, I'll slowly find opposing views -- views that were impossible to find just a few years ago.
I'm not sure that any news is really news anymore; more and more news is colored by opinion. That is fine with me, but I would like to see more sources given tribute and more news reporters coming up with unique news rather than regurgitating the same stories over and over again. I figure why don't these major news outlets just run an RSS feed of the AP and be done with it?
For me, I prefer the news that was normally marginalized out of existance. It gives me a dose of unique opinions, and it also helps create interesting debate topics that help in relationship at home and my relationships with friends and customers.
I think more and more people are starting to think outside the box -- and the Internet is a great place to find every opinion. Are all of them newsworthy? Probably not.
With companies like BlogBurst.com bringing amateur news and opinions to large mainstream media outlets, we'll see more and more integration of the sidestream media, and maybe we'll see less and less need to rely on sources such as CNN and FoxNN.
There is a big difference between the roads (regulated by the State) and the information avenues (so far not really regulated all that much): one would be paternalism (a subsidized company: GM and a regulated road), one would be preferentialism.
For me, I don't see a problem with ISPs who give preferential treatment to traffic -- just as your grocery store gets paid for better shelf placement by hundreds of product manufacturers, I think the same should be true for any free market good. In the long run, the market will decide what it favors -- balanced traffic or privately subsidized traffic. As long as the government stays out of the decision and lets the market decide, I think it will work out just fine.
The big problem is where government is already sticking their nose in my business, such as where certain providers get monopoly status (within the village or the state). In this case, there is cause for concern, but that is already the problem with government regulation: it tends to create monopolies out of preferred enterprises and really hurts the competitive market. I'm already starting a village debate over getting rid of the Comcast franchise fee (which gets dropped into hands of my local government). In just 10 weeks I have about 60% of the village angry that they're paying US$4 a month to the village so Comcast can have a monopoly over cable services. We're lucky to have not 2 but 6 different broadband providers in our tiny village of 3000 people, so it isn't a huge concern, but US$48 a year is still a lot to pay so a monopoly can have access.
For those of you with villages that monopolize just one ISP, you need to do what I've done: tell your neighbors and everyone around you that the village needs to stop. There is no reason for monopolized communications anymore, and dumping the monopoly will give you much more choice. The entire state of Illinois is being harmed by the telephone unions who are harping about the idea of opening up the entire market to competition by many ISPs. This is where we have to be really scared, not if one company gives preferential treatment over the data streams.
If there is open competition for ISPs, you will get a choice of service. Maybe it is possible that one big ISP can give preferential bandwidth for a fee to someone, and this will bring your utility costs down. For some, this is a big benefit. I'd rather pay more for equal service, but it should not be mandated by law or by "right." For now, you're using their line, and if you complain that your tax dollars paid for the line to be installed, you should see already that the fault is with the monopolizing effect of telecom regulation, not with the competitive marketplace.
I do believe we'll see a bifurcated Internet of varying ISPS offering varying levels of service for varying prices. This is good, this is how competition figures out what the consumer wants and needs at what price. It also allows the market to change at whim, depending again on what users want and need. Maybe some people want to pay per kilobyte, maybe some people want their bandwidth to their preferred sites subsidized by the sites, who knows? Let the market decide.
E-mail will have been dead for close to a decade in 3 years. Yes, we all still use it. Yes, it is a primary form of communications for anything over 30 miles. And yes, the horse is dead but we'll still beat it.
I stopped using e-mail as my primary form of communications almost 7 years ago (about the time I started using SMS en masse, combined with instant messaging when available). For me, e-mail is no different than TV, radio and telephone -- all technologies that should have been replaced eons ago but for whatever reason have been held back from evolving.
I agree that e-mail is a terrible collaboration tool, but considering when it was "invented" and how few real iterations of change we've seen with in, I don't expect it to ever blossom into a truly useful tool for productivity. I would have to guess that while e-mail is more efficient than a fax or a letter, it is not a telephone replacement, nor is it a replacement for even a simple post-it note. The only collaboration-friendly element of e-mail is the idea that it leaves a log or an audit trail of exchanges, but it is missing all the other important elements for group-think or idea creation.
I believe the future of connecting everyone within a group to one another plus incorporating outside groups into the "conversation" will likely come out of a different technology than e-mail. I see great possibilities in RSS and XML as a platform for long term collaboration, and the Wiki idea is a step in the right direction. Combine both with a tagging feature and incorporate more than just text, and you have a mess of protocols that together can really make a difference for building and sharing ideas. Maybe a little slashdot-style user-modifiable open-view moderation, too. Before any protocol or format can be created that really is the end-all solution, we need the underlying platform to be finalized. We need the Net available all the time, everywhere, at low cost (commodity-priced) and at high speed. I believe that the EDGE/3G networks are getting us closer (I am typing over an EDGE-connected T-Mobile link now), but we're not there yet. When information can be accessed immediately, when notifications can become part of the data stream, and when the ability stream your thought into a final product with anyone else, I think we'll see that product that many of us are waiting for without knowing it.
I've given a lot of thought to collaboration tools of the future, and I know exactly what I want. I just know that even if I implemented it today, most of my workers, friends, co-writers and readers would not be able to mesh with the Wiki-XML-SMS-Slashdot-tagging tree with the speed that I would think is necessary to make that collaboration better than a simple whiteboard and a boardroom.
Another few months, maybe. A few years, for sure.
The world's largest pyramid is soon to be discovered. I believe the link to this pyramid is here.
Whoops.
Actually, becoming calmer on caffeeine means you have the neurological wiring for ADD.
I do. The most productive years of my life were when I had a personal assistant helping me stay on track with my tasks and to-do lists. In recent years I've considered hiring a "Gentleman's gentleman" not just to drive me around and tend to me as a butler, but to be a personal assistant in my daily responsibilities. The added income I'd make just by staying on track would likely offset the costs of hiring a good assistant.
I've always been ADD, but I don't consider it a penalty, really. It helps me think outside the box on nearly everything, but when I discover something unique or insightful that is different than my competition, I find I can focus nearly completely on it until I come up with a marketable idea. Surely a sign of deep ADD, but the solution isn't drugs or medicating, just pay a little more for someone with OCD to help me focus.
Because Google is (one of the?) most popular search engine, I am finding it less and less relevant when I do searches. The top 10-20 results are more spam than relevant and good information. MSN, on the other hand, is starting to be my preferred search tool because it doesn't seem as "keyword stuffed" as the Google responses. I know this isn't the case for everyone, but almost all the geeks I know are starting to shift away from Google en masse. I much prefer Google as a company, of course, but just being #1 (or close to it) seems to make it a target for the spammers, sploggers and Made-for-CPC websites.
I'm not hoping for a shift for anyone to Microsoft's search technology but if Google continues to lose the battle to PageRank chasers, they'll find themselves slipping as users automatically attach Google to spam sites rather than relevant sites.
My home page is still Google (due to the customized interface), but I am more often using other search engines to combat the spammers. Is Amazon seeing a similar problem?
I'm a pot-a-day kind of man, and I loved my Senseo which runs overtime every morning. I have to think and type up to 2000 words every morning, and the days I am out of coffee are the days I don't think straight. It might be an addiction, but who knows.
I would have to say that coffee does NOT make me a yes-man, as I've always been anti-authority and loved playing Devil's advocate. Maybe the article writer is confused; coffee might bring out our most consistent opinion or process. Does coffee make leaders more leader-like, and followers more follower-like? I'd say so.
When I have performed public speaknig engagements recently, the coffee buzz always makes me a better speaker (and calmer, actually). I wonder if caffeine, the drug, just puts us into our most comfortable role as many drugs do (including following others if that is how we're designed).
I have T-Mobile's EDGE and GPRS through my Samsung t809 cell phone. Over the past 4 months my speeds have gotten faster and faster (upwards of 20K/s downloads), and some days I forget to log off before jumping on my WiFi at home. I'm very happy with the speed and the phone (even with many downsides).
I've been thinking of getting a separate EDGE PC-Card so my laptop always has access, but then I realized it is more of a hassle and a cost than necessary. I think this laptop will have similar problems.
First of all, you need a second SIM card, which usually means a second plan through your phone company. This could also mean a second contract and all that good stuff (depending on your provider). Also, this virtually locks you in to just that one PC. With my Samsung t809, I just link up via Bluetooth (automatic) from my laptop, my HP PDA, or even my home PC (my MCE box has bluetooth in case my home network is down). The benefit of being able to connect however I want is a great benefit.
I've even used my t809 to hook up from a customer's office when they had a T1 outage. I didn't realize that their traffic routed through the dial-up connection until the office thanked me for fixing their problem. Here's something that wouldn't have worked very well if the laptop integrated it.
I'm all for more integration, but Bluetooth really has made almost everything I used to desire pretty useless. I print via BT, connect to the web, even transfer files over WiFi (better battery life through BT).
Who here could actually use this over a BT cell with EDGE/3G?
After reading through 350 posts twice, why has no one blamed the real problem behind laws like this?
It has nothing to do with Republicans (Democrats have always voted for anything that expands the power of government).
It has nothing to do with campaign finance (most campaign finance laws were written to either keep incumbents powerful, or limit the financial activity of 3rd parties).
It has nothing to do with protecting the artists (as copyright grew from 7 year to lifetimes, the power was offered to fewer and fewer people, leading to a cartelization of the distribution avenues).
It has nothing to do with terrorism (one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. The US has killed more people with car bombs than any militant organization).
It has nothing to do with money. Money can be gained for the politician already through the massive spending bills -- just title the law in a way that the people don't read it but love the name and you can extract almost any amount of cash for your friends, family and other cronies.
It has to do with power. Congress, the Executive Branch and the Supreme Court all have taken way too much power into their hands since FDR. The slide started with Lincoln. Nothing will stop these power-mongers, no voting, no campaigns, no third parties, no phone calls. Until the individual states realize that they're weaker from promoting such a large centralizing government, nothing will change. Every third party is just a fundamentalist version of one of the two big parties, and every third party candidate that wins ends up being no different than the regular politicians.
The taste of power is enough to corrupt anyone, and there is no hope as long as we continue to let these politicians take over more and more management of a country that was better managed when states competed with one another for the best citizens.
Psst. The budget was never balanced. He stole from Social Security to pay for the continued growth of government, and worked with Greenspan to print more dollars than ever -- a hidden tax on the average American.
I thought NASA was having financial difficulties and no real direction in where they'll "lead" us in the future. This seems like an terrible waste of taxpayer dollars.
What is the actual outcome from this research? Will this help create more energy-efficiency in the world? Will it help us find technology that humanity can actually use to make a better society? Will it increase our safety, or decrease power of madmen and dictators?
Stories like this make me feel sad that many people feel we need public funding for research that seems to have no real gain for those paying for it. Sure, I love physics and astrophysics, but I would rather voluntarily give a few hundred greenbacks a year to a private research company that see it wasted on publicans who get paid no matter what they're doing.
Uh... huh? How has technology replaced, say, monitoring content on public broadcasts?(1) How has technology eliminated the need to regulate the radio spectrum so devices dont stomp all over each other? How has technology ensured that every manufacturer will somehow produce devices which accept interference?
There is no need to monitor content on public broadcasts -- the government is not a parent. Let the parents return to monitoring their children. That's the reason for a parent to stay home and parent rather than both working to overspend and live beyond their means. When government parents, I have to pay even though I have no kids. No thanks.
As for interference, we have coding hopping software radios that can pick the right spectrum. It is financially impossible to shred the entire spectrum with one antenna -- the costs to transmit are huge (power, antenna, labor, etc). If you sent random bursts across various specturms, software radios that freqhop can adjust and get around it -- you'll MAYBE intrude on 1% of the spectrum at a given time, and they'll just retransmit on a freq that you won't know until its too late.
If you don't regulate the spectrum, there will be nothing stopping someone using the same frequencies as air traffic controllers. Disbanding the FCC has got to be one of the most idiotic ideas I've ever read on slashdot. Restructure it, sure. Fire everyone working there, fine. Try to remove the corruption, absolutely. But to suggest we don't need any regulation of the radio spectrum is absolutely ludicrous.
The FAA already has ways around the interference that is already generated in their spectrum. If you study the systems they use, they already have enough processes in place to punch through the "problems." With software-freq-hopping, it won't be a concern. In fact, I've been on two airplanes already that allow WiFi and have Internet access and they're great -- my bandwidth was excellent. This wasn't due to FCC regulation, this was due to the free market providing what we want.
The idea that someone would spend trillions a year to block transmissions is a straw-man style argument. We only THINK we need the FCC, but look at Somalia, a country without a government, and they have a ton of communications infrastructure -- cell phone companies running in anarchy, satellite comm, satellite broadcasts, digital radio. They have ZERO regulation in their broadcasts and it works very well. They don't even have publicly regulated power distribution, so the telcom companies put generators on every tower, and they're working just fine. Somailia has a ton of other problems, but they're growing in leaps and bounds without a problem, considering they've been in a government-induced civil war for decades.
I agree with your note that DRM=control. So does copyright. Copyright was thought to drive creativity, but people were creative before copyright, and the web has exploded with information regardless of copyright (look at the average blogger who would never have the cash to sue someone for infringement).
Copyright is now about the control of distribution, not control of information. If you can't distribute, you couldn't profit. The web has destroyed the distribution avenues (or soon will).
I write, I write freely, and I write for public consumption, editing, and redistribution. I openly allow people to take my words, verbatim, stick their own name on them, and republish. Why? As more consumers read those words, my own value goes up -- I was writing the same topics first (and Google cache's and other caching engines can prove it).
Copyright is now useless -- it keeps only a handful of bands making millions, it keeps only a handful of actors making millions and it keeps only a handful of artists making millions. The rest of us had no option to distribute our art, now we can, and we don't need copyright to generate income or interest.
DRM is a noose around the neck of anyone who believes in freedom. In a free market, DRM is acceptable as long as the laws aren't preferential for those who create content over those who buy content.
I'm a firm anti-copyright believer, I see no reason for copyright anymore now that information is so readily available (high supply, low demand, zero price). DRM is merely an attempt at the media distribution cartels to try to strangehold the market of the various media.
The FCC is no longer useful. I don't believe it is even Constitutional. Technology has completely replaced EVERYTHING that the FCC is mandated to regulate, but because of the regulations, we can't let technology grow to meet the needs of the hundreds of millions of citizens in the U.S.
If we want to be at the forefront of technology, it is time to disband the FCC and let companies find ways to take advantage of all the bandwidth being wasted on analog TV, radio, HAM, CB, and other ancient/antiquated technologies. Re-read the Constitution, see that the FCC is merely a pawn of the media cartels, and dump it along with every outdated law that they provided input on.
I don't need them, and I fail to see a need to continue to pay for them.
If they want to noose my data, I just want an equal opportunity with my noose.
This is a very important point and a huge reason why we'll see regulations brought up against Internet broadcasting (via BitTorrent).
I'm working on producing two "TV" shows that will be distributed 100% as a torrent. We have a decent budget, great equipment, a studio space, and the right people for the camera. Our topics aren't mainstream, but there are hundreds of thousands of interested viewers worldwide.
Why would I bother with old technology? The Torrent protocol is perfect for what I want to do -- if people ARE interested, then more will seed. If people aren't interested, then it will be only us. A perfect policy of accepting supply and demand, and if the product is decent, I am sure people will pay for more episodes.
Only time will tell, but someone has to step up and try something new, right?
Let IPTV die if its based on any media distribution cartel such as AT&T.
Regulations by the government have nothing to do with protecting the consumers or enabling the market to produce a quality product. All regulations are created to do is protect the favored companies (paternalism) and created an artificially high barrier to entry (protectionism).
In this situation, of course the government wants to regulate new media -- it will let them tax it, censor it, and prevent it from pushing the pro-State media companies into oblivion, where they should go.
Don't be surprised if everything is eventually owned by the largest media cartels, the kings of distribution. They've realized the mistake of investing in the online market, the most free and most anonymous place for people to interact. I look at the web as an anarcho-capitalist haven, a place that even when touched by ridiculous white market laws allows everyone to instantly circumvent them to the free black market.
The citizens here won't care, they'll see it is "for the children" or "against terrorism" and they'll bend over and accept it. Thankfully we have enough geeks around the world who will continue to work on new ways to transport information beneath the radar of the monsters in office.
It would be fun to find the absolute worst CSS on MySpace and substitute it on slashdot using Firefox's custom CSS feature. Talk about making the dot even more annoying, who's up for it?
You mean like the feudal city-states of Europe way back when?
No, closer to Medieval Iceland than anything else.
The thing about talking to people who share your own views is that you tend to not explore dissenting ideas.
Maybe 20 years ago. Now with the Net much of what government was supposed to protect us from can be replaced with feedback systems, proper contract and tort law, and a healthy freedom of speech online. Also, I would rather NOT explore dissenting ideas than see those ideas and actions criminalized as is the case in every democracy. Dissent is criminal, so is performing non-violent mutually-consenting actions with other adults.
Are you saying the total number of elected officials should be capped at 60k or that governments shouldn't govern populations larger than 60k?
Maximum constituents under an elected official is capped at somewhere between 20K and 60K people. Preferably with representatives rather than one king.
The first is when the Constitution was written the nation was tiny and no one envisioned it ballooning to 290 million people.
So? If the Constitution was followed, the Federal government would still be tiny, taking in less than 1% of GDP. State governments would be more powerful and give people more choice -- letting people with similar interests live together. The way it is today, the US is not a Constitutional Republic, it is a Democracy, the worst form of government.
Also our nation is more efficient this way. With one federal government and only 50 state governments things get done much faster than they would then if there were say a few thousand micro-governments.
I think the democracy in the US is terribly inefficient -- instead of having freedom of choice, we criminalize many non-violent fully-consenting actions in order to maintain "integrity" and "harmony." Why is drug use or sale illegal? Why is prostitution illegal? Why is self-defense illegal on your property? Our country is an inefficient, paternal cronyist country, nowhere near as efficient as the states in Switzerland or many other countries where Federalism is prefered to Nationalism.
People don't want to deal with that level of beauracracy and red tape....something I assumed an anti-statist would instinctively recognize. It would be crazy for a company to have to deal with a thousand different laws just to work across the nation.
So? This would reduce the chances of there being paternally approved megacorporations, and it would increase the ability of people to buy what the want to buy by living in a government created by like people. The Independent State of Potistan might have maryjane legal, where the Independent State of Holistan might make skirts illegal. Let the people decide. Much more efficient dealing with a local representative government than one who ignores the people completely, even in voting.
About Marx, I don't understand how our republic has been weakened by democracy. The most successful states in the world today are democracies, republic or parlimentary or whatever.
I disagree, I believe the biggest failures were democracies. The Third Reich was a democracy.
Hans Herman Hoppe wrote a great book called "Democracy: The God that Failed" and it is a worthy read. Here's a link to an essay by him. Even some Congresspeople realize that democracy is failure.
Democracy, IMHO, is the worst form of government -- the so called "two wolves and a sheep voting for what to have for dinner."
I am anti-State, but I do believe that there can be a balance of harmony and government as long as the government is limited to a very small populace. I've been debating it with my anarcho-capitalist and libertarian friends, and I think the number falls somewhere in the area of 20,000-60,000 people. Limiting government to this number would increase freedom, decrease tyranny, and uphold the sanctity of voting with your feet. I'd say the only government I'd want above this micro-government would be one with only one command and power: the dissolve governments over the limit. Nothing is wrong with governments working with one another, but I don't want "cover-all" laws like the US has become because of Democracy. Democracy was never the intended result of the Constitution, unfortunately Marx was very bright about how to dilute the power of a republic by introducing democracy, the end result being the socialism he wanted to see so badly.
when the 5 nines fails.