The fact that the information was already given, I used a generic object ("this guy") means that you were being unnecessarily pedantic and your statement did absolutely nothing for the topic except derail me into this conversation here.
Wrong. On both counts.
Pesce's name was previously mentioned. Who he is and why his involvement is important was not.
My response did not "derail" you into this pointless exchange. YOU did that, all by yourself.
In what fantasy world do I need your permission to respond to one of your comments? Your behavior in this exchangereveals you to be either:
What's your point? (not to be snarky, but I fail to see how this is relevant to anything else in my little thread here)
Context?
The story mentions Pesce by name. I provided a thumbnail bio because I've written about him in the past, because he's been involved in 3D stuff for a long time, and because, at one time, VRML was supposedly going to change the way we all interacted with the Web.
It didn't, but the same is true of a lot of gee-whiz technology that didn't quite measure up to its early hype.
"This guy" is Mark Pesce, was the co-creator of VRML, and has developed and taught courses in 3D development at the university level for most of a couple of decades now.
In US 50 years ago a family of 4 could have actual health insurance (covering of up to $50,000 of expenses, which was enough for everything) for a year for $25 dollars (payment for an entire year!) with a $500 deductible.
Basic problem is the government giving out public funding for any sort of endeavor. This leads to very rapid price increases. Before Nixon, a day in a hospital could cost $100, today it could cost up to 100 times that much. Obviously this has nothing to do with inflation. Costs to treat cancer could go as high as up to 20,000 dollars before then, now it could easily reach between 500,000 to a cool million.
Another ranting Rand-ite with no actual understanding of the problem.
Look, idiot, 50 years ago, virtually every hospital was run on a not-for-profit basis. Because there were no shareholders to have to provide quarter-over-quarter profits to - and essentially no MBAs to pander to them - nearly every dollar spent on hospitalization went to actual medical care. Likewise, medical insurance was MUCH less paperwork-intensive, which meant that overhead costs for medical billing were a whole lot lower than they are today. And finally (and utterly crucially), medical technology was barely getting started in 1960: no MRIs, no monoclonal antibodies, no gamma knives, no transplants. In fact, the only real high-tech devices were "iron lungs", developed to keep polio victims alive. If you got cancer then, surgery and whole-body radiation were pretty much the only options. Cisplatin-based chemotherapy didn't become commonplace until the 70's. So, no high-tech drugs and devices meant that treatment costs were quite modest by today's standards - and so were survival rates. It's a pretty straightforward tradeoff.
Free-market fanatics like you want to make government spending the culprit for all financial ills, because that makes understanding the world so much simpler for you. The problem is that your underlying assumptions are simply wrong, so your worldview is full of shit. The fact is that medical costs are out of control in this country not because of Medicare/Medicaid spending, but because of proliferating treatment costs and the rise of the for-profit medical insurance economy (whose overhead costs run ~30% - as opposed to Medicare/Medicaid, whose overhead is ~1.5%).
Oh, and Medicare/Medicaid wouldn't be facing the deficit problem that's looming, if Congress had had the sack to increase Medicare premiums and payroll taxes by a relatively tiny percent 25 years ago, when the impending problem first became apparent. Or, to put it in terms your tiny mind will reject: the problem isn't government spending, it's the government's cowardly unwillingness to raise taxes to levels sufficient to fund its spending mandates that's the problem.
I'm not surprised I have to explain this to you, because you're obviously too blinded by your free-market dogma to grasp the actual causes of the medical economic bubble we're experiencing in this country.
If by "great" you mean "iconic", sure. And in TV land the two are probably synonymous. But back in my day, you had to conquer Asia-Minor to be considered "great".
If he made better investments he could have spent more time with his kids and give them a better a life.
You are a moron. All investments entail risk - even U.S. Treasury notes. And Twain's children enjoyed a life of fabulous privilege - they met and mingled with celebrities from every field from royalty to captains of industry to artists. They lived in luxury, especially by the standards of the time. They adored Twain, and he them. Because he wrote for a living, and thus worked from home, they had his company 24x7 whenever he was not touring as a lecturer. And they often went on tour with him during summer vacations.
Livy insisted this only because he neglected the stability of his family for high risk investing on himself rather than focusing on his kids.
You are as full of shit as a Thanksgiving turkey. You obviously have never read Twain's correspondence with his wife, nor the parts of his extant autobiography that deal with his financial problems and Livy's part in his decision to tour to repay them. Likewise, you seem not to grasp that Twain had made a good part of his income as a touring speaker from the time he first became a superstar journalist, after reporting on the fire that swept the clipper ship Hornet, and scooping every other reporter by more than a week.
People need to relearn this moral as many are losing their homes by record numbers!
You need to learn to shut the fuck up about subjects where you betray your deep, abiding ignorance with every character you type. You know nothing about Mark Twain. Your sole source is a statement somebody recalls as having been mentioned in "some documentary". You are clearly a pinwit, whose opinion is of no value to anyone other than you.
My argument is true.
Your "argument" is utter, complete, and comprehensive horseshit. Your grasp of the facts would need to improve by several orders of magnitude to achieve "tenous" status. Your imbecilic moralizing reveals your intellectual depth as approximating that of a paper plate.
If he was a good father he would not have to to do the tour to pay his debts. It seems he picked the lesser of 2 evils to try to prevent his kids from starving, but he had to abandon his family to keep the banks off his ass from decisions he made prior.
What in the fuck are you talking about?
In what twisted worldview does picking bad investments have to do with the quality of one's parenthood? You are an illiterate troll, and your argument is utter bullshit.
Twain did not "abandon his family in order to keep the banks off his ass", you ass. Did you even read what I posted? His wife Livy INSISTED he pay off 100 cents on the dollar (because it was the honorable thing to do), rather than take refuge in bankruptcy and simply walk away from his debts.
Why don't you go back to sticking crayons up your nose and leave the discussion to adults?
Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens was a person who came from a humble background and married into wealth, but his appetite for the fine things that money could bring exceeded whatever came his way by way of his wife's family.
Having worked as a newspaper "printer's devil", he saw his path to the riches required for the life style to which he had become accustomed in the Paige Compositor -- essentially a Victorian Era version of MS-Word implemented largely in hardware, making "leveraged" investments in this invention.
The Paige compositor failed in the marketplace, more sophisticated than its competitor the Linotype -- kind of like the tale of a "death march" failed software or computer hardware project some 100 years later. Twain lost all of his money and then money he didn't have. To make good on his debts, he went on a worldwide lecture tool, essentially doing impressions of Hal Holbrooke pretending to be Mark Twain.
Not only did the speaking fees from this grueling tour pay back his debts in full and then some, it made him immortal. Were it not for the fame of the speaking tour and connecting with audiences around the world with his personal appearances in a day before TV and cable and talk shows, he may as well been forgetten as many a 19'th century humorist.
So remember, what made Mark Twain a household word even into the 21'st Century was one, the man's greed, and two, an antecedant to the personal computer.
Uh... no, not really. Not at all, in fact.
True, Twain put most the considerable wealth he had gained into the development of the Compositor (he himself estimated he spent $150,000 on it, but his biographer A. B. Paine estimated his investment at $190,000, and his friend William Dean Howells put the figure at $3000,000 - and these estimate are all in 19th century dollars). He believed there was both a demand and a need for it, based on his early career as a printer's devil. It did not "fail in the marketplace", however. In fact, only two prototypes were ever built, and the machine "collapsed" prior to its only demonstration before a group of investors in 1890.
It wasn't greed that motivated him. Like modern Internet billionaires investing in private space travel, he believed in the technology, and put his money where his mouth was.
As for the allegations of his being a "poor husband and neglectful father", nothing could be further from the truth. He adored his wife Livy, worshipped his daughters, and was devastated when his only son Langdon died of diptheria at age two. It was at Livy's insistence that he undertook a worldwide lecture tour to repay 100 cents on the dollar of the debts from his various bad investments (Paige's Compositor wasn't the only one), particularly the collapse of his publishing house, The Charles L. Webster Company. And, after their daughter Susy died of meningitis on a visit to their mansion in Hartford, Connecticut while Twain was on tour in Europe, he and Livy were so overcome with grief that they were never able to bring themselves to return to Hartford.
"Poor husband and neglectful father?" I don' theeng so, Quickstraw...
This patent would be much less necessary if cities would install intelligent traffic lights that allowed traffic to flow and thus minimized idling engines.
The problem is that traffic planners work (in the US, at least) for town and city councils, county commissions, and other local government entities, whose elected representatives get to make the final decisions on things like optimizing traffic flow vs making cars stop in retail districts as long as possible, as many times as possible. And local Chambers of Commerce and other merchant associations and individual (Walmart) heavy hitters exert strong influence on these pipsqueak lawmakers to persuade them to favor the latter over the former. Thus, the bustling Ohio metropolis of Chillicothe (population ~ 21,000) enjoys absolute gridlock during rush hours, because the Bridge Street merchants leaned on the County Commissioners to keep the traffic lights unsynchronized through the retail district - and the hell with the inconvenience to the commuters, the additional pollution, and the impact on emergency response times.
This is why I so love the American version of representative democracy.
Not only has the communication become parodically terse, but it has also become imperative to answer as quickly as possible. If you actually re-read what you wrote, take time to correct errors, and perhaps add a new point or two, i.e. spend some time on improving your post, it won't be seen by many if any.
Whoa... for a second there, I thought you were talking about/.'s article submission policy! (It's just like newspapers, folks: getting it first is WAY more important than getting it right!)
The FCC could just, you know, respect the fact that we live in a representative democracy and that as unelected bureaucrats that don't get to invent new laws restricting the free behavior of the people. The FCC could lobby Congress to write a law implementing what they want, instead of trying to tyrannically decide for us what they think is best.
The problem, as/.ers from time out of mind have pointed out, is that Congress is bought and paid for by the telecom and cable TV industries - who are the very folks you're proposing the FCC ask them to regulate here. So - good luck with that.
It's important to understand that the American system of checks and balances is tripodal, and that the FCC is a quasi-independent function of the executive leg of that tripod. Congress makes the laws, but, by design, the executive branch implements those laws. One of the most important ways in which the executive branch performs that duty is by creating a regulatory framework that defines the specifics of how the laws Congress passes will be implemented. And it's absolutely vital to understand that the executive branch is not subordinate to Congress in this regard - and, for the checks and balances system to actually work, all three legs of the tripod have to push against each other. Congress must assert its authority to make law, the executive branch must assert its authority to parse and implement those laws, and the judicial branch must asset its authority to test the validity of those laws. When one branch allows itself to become subordinate to another - as happened with Congress during the Bush years - disaster inevitably ensues (Patriot Act, anyone?). So, in the absence of specific direction from Congress to the contrary, the FCC is absolutely within its mandate to change its mind about how to regulate a particular segment of the communications market in this country, just as Congress would be within its mandate to provide specific direction on the issue (and note my point above about who would most likely dictate Congress' lawmaking in this regard), and the judiciary would most definitely be within its mandate to rule on one, the other, or both assertions of authority.
It's messy, it's frustrating to observe, and it's inefficient as all hell, but it's the system we've got. And, bellyaching from those who dislike its outcomes in specific cases on specific issues, short of a serious Constitutional revamp, the system will continue to sort-of-work this way for the foreseeable future.
As I said, my only impression that he's quite delusional kind of person.
Having met him in person, that was not my impression at all. He was the guest of honor at Octocon II in Santa Rosa, CA, in 1978, and I happened to recognize him as we passed one another, him on his way back to his hotel room, me on my way to the convention floor. I stopped him by saying, "Excuse me. I hope I'm not bothering you, but you're Phillip K. Dick, aren't you?" He admitted that he was and stood there fidgeting slightly, as if impatient to get this little unwanted intrusion into his privacy over with, so he could be on his way. "Again, I don't want to impose on you," I told him, "but I've always wanted to ask you, 'Where did you come up with the plot to "Ubik"?' It always seemed to me as though you started out to tell one story and wound up with quite a different tale than the one you set out to write."
PKD's eyes lit up, he became quite animated, and his tone of voice indicated that he was actually enjoying himself, as he replied, "You're right. I set out to write about a society where psionic powers - specifically telepathy - were developed to the point that they were routinely used in business for espionage and negotiation, and what the consequences of that would be. How they'd be regulated and licensed and so on. And then, about a dozen or so pages in, the typewriter just developed a mind of its own. It was automatic writing, really. I had no idea what was coming next, or how it would all turn out - I just sat there and let the story channel itself through me. I'd never experienced anything like that before, and it was really a very odd thing to witness!"
I told him that "Ubik" was probably my favorite of his books, because it was so surreal, and so unique among his works, and he confided that it was one of his personal favorites, too. I think I mentioned that I felt John Carpenter should have credited Ubik for inspiring the scene in "Dark Star" where the acting Captain consults the frozen corpse of the ship's original Captain, and I probably could have stood and talked to him for another hour or so, if I'd cared to push it, but I really didn't want to impose on him, so I thanked him for his time and for the insight into his novel and went on my way.
I'm an atheist, and I DO openly mock religious faiths fairly regularly (I have a strong belief that religions in general are dangerous and detrimental to society and that by mocking them, it leads to open debate, which may cause at least some to question their beliefs).
I'm not an atheist - but, like you, I "openly mock religious faiths" on a regular basis.
See, I believe that the Universe is a single entity, so I tend to use the terms "god" and "universe" interchangeably. In my view, we are, all of us - every atom, every quantum of energy, every single place and thing - inextricably bound together into the same, self-contained entity. And we - intelligent life in general, not just humans - are its organs of self-awareness. As I see it, you can't plead for special treatment by the Universe - so prayer is useless - nor is there any prospect of an afterlife - which is unnecessary, in any event, because information can neither be gained nor lost, so your life is always going to be part of the Universe's "permanent record". But that's just my understanding of an epiphany I experienced once, while walking my dog along a country road, and have never again been fortunate enough to repeat.
The thing is, I reject the idea that anyone can mediate or interpret the immanence of that experience for anyone else - which is why, when pressed, I define myself as a gnostic pantheist. You either experience that epiphany for yourself - in which case no interpretation is required - or you don't, in which case no intercession is possible. So I don't preach about my belief, because that would just waste my time, as well as that of my audience.
And that's the very thing I despise and revile in organized religions of all varieties - but especially the evangelistic ones. It's their conviction that they have the right and duty to thrust their dogma and scripture-based morality on everyone else that so offends me. It's okay with me that they believe in their one true Prophet, or their dead god on a stick, or the cycle of karma, or pouring sake on the graves of their ancestors to appease their spirits, or whatever other malarkey they find comforting. What I object to is their insistence that I accept Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster into my life, too - that, and their attempts to use law and politics to enforce my adherence to their beliefs.
Now, certainly the modern Catholic Church is far from the worst offender in that regard - it no longer routinely tortures heretics and unbelievers into submission to its doctrines - but historically it was among the vilest for a very long time. So - again, in my personal view - it has long since lost whatever moral authority it pretended to, and it, like every other organized religion, is now entirely about using faith as a pretext to accumulate temporal wealth and power. That's why its metaphor of the priesthood as shepherds and lay persons as sheep is so instructive: because a shepherd doesn't tend his flock for the benefit of the sheep, he tends it so that he can exploit those sheep for his own benefit.
And that's why I, personally, mock and criticize organized religion - because organized religion is ALL about control and manipulation of the laiety by the clerical class, for the benefit of the clerical class, regardless of what they might profess their motivation to be. And the Catholic church's sufferance of priestly pedophilia is an absolutely logical and predictable consequence of that model - because shepherds are, in the final analysis, always predators upon their own flocks.
My favorite part is the flashback sequence where he's interviewing the woman who will become his private secretary - but it's his interaction with, and obvious doting affection for, his dog that makes the scene so powerful, because it humanizes him without resorting to any heavy-handed, "Now we're going to show the insane, demonic dictator's softer side," manipulativeness.
Great scene, great movie, lousy translation of the title. Were it me, I'd've called it, "Going Under", which is a more literal translation of the German, and which preserves the pun, too. (The film is about Hitler's last days in his underground bunker during the siege of Berlin by the Red Army.) Anyway...
Legislator: Duh, say what? I don't write no contradictory laws.
DA: See you in court!
If only...
Unfortunately, as happens far too often, the legislators themselves don't go to jail for BS like this. Instead, we have random Joes just trying to do their jobs who now have to choose which of two laws to break
What, exactly, have you two been smoking? Sarah Palin's crack?
The villain here is publicity-whore DA Scott Southworth, not the legislators of Wisconsin. If you bothered to RTFA, then you saw this quote from one of the co-authors of the bill in question: "Using condoms isn't a crime for anyone," said Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison. "This guy is not a credible legal source on this matter, I'm sorry to say. His purpose is to intimidate and create enough panic in the minds of school administrators that they'll turn their backs on young people and their families."
Rep Roys is unquestionably correct. Southworth - a Republican, it is worth noting - sent his warning letter to one school district that, according to TFA, "said it had not taught sex ed for years." So Southworth is just trying to stir up headlines in an election year (District Attorney is an elective office), and playing to his political base in a rural Wisconsin county. It's the vilest kind of trolling for conservative Christian votes, and if there were any actual justice in the world, the voters of Juneau County would launch a recall election against this asshole and send him back to chasing ambulances for a living.
Slashdot Mirror
The execution of the majority of government policy is left to unelected bureacrats.
and, just for a moment, saw it as:
"The execution of the majority of government,"
and thought, "Damn! What a good idea!"
The fact that the information was already given, I used a generic object ("this guy") means that you were being unnecessarily pedantic and your statement did absolutely nothing for the topic except derail me into this conversation here.
Wrong. On both counts.
Pesce's name was previously mentioned. Who he is and why his involvement is important was not.
My response did not "derail" you into this pointless exchange. YOU did that, all by yourself.
In what fantasy world do I need your permission to respond to one of your comments? Your behavior in this exchangereveals you to be either:
a paranoid megalomaniac,
a drooling cretin, or
both.
I suspect the answer is 3.
What part of "context" was unclear to you?
What's your point? (not to be snarky, but I fail to see how this is relevant to anything else in my little thread here)
Context?
The story mentions Pesce by name. I provided a thumbnail bio because I've written about him in the past, because he's been involved in 3D stuff for a long time, and because, at one time, VRML was supposedly going to change the way we all interacted with the Web.
It didn't, but the same is true of a lot of gee-whiz technology that didn't quite measure up to its early hype.
So, yeah: context.
Good thing this guy remembered!
"This guy" is Mark Pesce, was the co-creator of VRML, and has developed and taught courses in 3D development at the university level for most of a couple of decades now.
Y'know what I find frustratingly unfair about virtually ALL Internet comment-posting systems?
They all have a "submit" button, but there's never a "dominate" button ...
Holey Marscape, Batman!
In US 50 years ago a family of 4 could have actual health insurance (covering of up to $50,000 of expenses, which was enough for everything) for a year for $25 dollars (payment for an entire year!) with a $500 deductible.
Basic problem is the government giving out public funding for any sort of endeavor. This leads to very rapid price increases. Before Nixon, a day in a hospital could cost $100, today it could cost up to 100 times that much. Obviously this has nothing to do with inflation. Costs to treat cancer could go as high as up to 20,000 dollars before then, now it could easily reach between 500,000 to a cool million.
Another ranting Rand-ite with no actual understanding of the problem.
Look, idiot, 50 years ago, virtually every hospital was run on a not-for-profit basis. Because there were no shareholders to have to provide quarter-over-quarter profits to - and essentially no MBAs to pander to them - nearly every dollar spent on hospitalization went to actual medical care. Likewise, medical insurance was MUCH less paperwork-intensive, which meant that overhead costs for medical billing were a whole lot lower than they are today. And finally (and utterly crucially), medical technology was barely getting started in 1960: no MRIs, no monoclonal antibodies, no gamma knives, no transplants. In fact, the only real high-tech devices were "iron lungs", developed to keep polio victims alive. If you got cancer then, surgery and whole-body radiation were pretty much the only options. Cisplatin-based chemotherapy didn't become commonplace until the 70's. So, no high-tech drugs and devices meant that treatment costs were quite modest by today's standards - and so were survival rates. It's a pretty straightforward tradeoff.
Free-market fanatics like you want to make government spending the culprit for all financial ills, because that makes understanding the world so much simpler for you. The problem is that your underlying assumptions are simply wrong, so your worldview is full of shit. The fact is that medical costs are out of control in this country not because of Medicare/Medicaid spending, but because of proliferating treatment costs and the rise of the for-profit medical insurance economy (whose overhead costs run ~30% - as opposed to Medicare/Medicaid, whose overhead is ~1.5%).
Oh, and Medicare/Medicaid wouldn't be facing the deficit problem that's looming, if Congress had had the sack to increase Medicare premiums and payroll taxes by a relatively tiny percent 25 years ago, when the impending problem first became apparent. Or, to put it in terms your tiny mind will reject: the problem isn't government spending, it's the government's cowardly unwillingness to raise taxes to levels sufficient to fund its spending mandates that's the problem.
I'm not surprised I have to explain this to you, because you're obviously too blinded by your free-market dogma to grasp the actual causes of the medical economic bubble we're experiencing in this country.
To call anything running on a computer today "intelligent" is to undermine the word itself. You might as well call a rock an airplane.
Well, there WAS an Airplane that rocked. Does that count?
I wanted to sign up but the page doesn't seem to work.
That's because you haven't completed the quest, yet.
If by "great" you mean "iconic", sure. And in TV land the two are probably synonymous. But back in my day, you had to conquer Asia-Minor to be considered "great".
Your day was 2300-some-odd years ago?
Dude, you're old!
If he made better investments he could have spent more time with his kids and give them a better a life.
You are a moron. All investments entail risk - even U.S. Treasury notes. And Twain's children enjoyed a life of fabulous privilege - they met and mingled with celebrities from every field from royalty to captains of industry to artists. They lived in luxury, especially by the standards of the time. They adored Twain, and he them. Because he wrote for a living, and thus worked from home, they had his company 24x7 whenever he was not touring as a lecturer. And they often went on tour with him during summer vacations.
Livy insisted this only because he neglected the stability of his family for high risk investing on himself rather than focusing on his kids.
You are as full of shit as a Thanksgiving turkey. You obviously have never read Twain's correspondence with his wife, nor the parts of his extant autobiography that deal with his financial problems and Livy's part in his decision to tour to repay them. Likewise, you seem not to grasp that Twain had made a good part of his income as a touring speaker from the time he first became a superstar journalist, after reporting on the fire that swept the clipper ship Hornet, and scooping every other reporter by more than a week.
People need to relearn this moral as many are losing their homes by record numbers!
You need to learn to shut the fuck up about subjects where you betray your deep, abiding ignorance with every character you type. You know nothing about Mark Twain. Your sole source is a statement somebody recalls as having been mentioned in "some documentary". You are clearly a pinwit, whose opinion is of no value to anyone other than you.
My argument is true.
Your "argument" is utter, complete, and comprehensive horseshit. Your grasp of the facts would need to improve by several orders of magnitude to achieve "tenous" status. Your imbecilic moralizing reveals your intellectual depth as approximating that of a paper plate.
And you smell like an elephant's butt.
If he was a good father he would not have to to do the tour to pay his debts. It seems he picked the lesser of 2 evils to try to prevent his kids from starving, but he had to abandon his family to keep the banks off his ass from decisions he made prior.
What in the fuck are you talking about?
In what twisted worldview does picking bad investments have to do with the quality of one's parenthood? You are an illiterate troll, and your argument is utter bullshit.
Twain did not "abandon his family in order to keep the banks off his ass", you ass. Did you even read what I posted? His wife Livy INSISTED he pay off 100 cents on the dollar (because it was the honorable thing to do), rather than take refuge in bankruptcy and simply walk away from his debts.
Why don't you go back to sticking crayons up your nose and leave the discussion to adults?
Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens was a person who came from a humble background and married into wealth, but his appetite for the fine things that money could bring exceeded whatever came his way by way of his wife's family.
Having worked as a newspaper "printer's devil", he saw his path to the riches required for the life style to which he had become accustomed in the Paige Compositor -- essentially a Victorian Era version of MS-Word implemented largely in hardware, making "leveraged" investments in this invention.
The Paige compositor failed in the marketplace, more sophisticated than its competitor the Linotype -- kind of like the tale of a "death march" failed software or computer hardware project some 100 years later. Twain lost all of his money and then money he didn't have. To make good on his debts, he went on a worldwide lecture tool, essentially doing impressions of Hal Holbrooke pretending to be Mark Twain.
Not only did the speaking fees from this grueling tour pay back his debts in full and then some, it made him immortal. Were it not for the fame of the speaking tour and connecting with audiences around the world with his personal appearances in a day before TV and cable and talk shows, he may as well been forgetten as many a 19'th century humorist.
So remember, what made Mark Twain a household word even into the 21'st Century was one, the man's greed, and two, an antecedant to the personal computer.
Uh ... no, not really. Not at all, in fact.
True, Twain put most the considerable wealth he had gained into the development of the Compositor (he himself estimated he spent $150,000 on it, but his biographer A. B. Paine estimated his investment at $190,000, and his friend William Dean Howells put the figure at $3000,000 - and these estimate are all in 19th century dollars). He believed there was both a demand and a need for it, based on his early career as a printer's devil. It did not "fail in the marketplace", however. In fact, only two prototypes were ever built, and the machine "collapsed" prior to its only demonstration before a group of investors in 1890.
It wasn't greed that motivated him. Like modern Internet billionaires investing in private space travel, he believed in the technology, and put his money where his mouth was.
As for the allegations of his being a "poor husband and neglectful father", nothing could be further from the truth. He adored his wife Livy, worshipped his daughters, and was devastated when his only son Langdon died of diptheria at age two. It was at Livy's insistence that he undertook a worldwide lecture tour to repay 100 cents on the dollar of the debts from his various bad investments (Paige's Compositor wasn't the only one), particularly the collapse of his publishing house, The Charles L. Webster Company. And, after their daughter Susy died of meningitis on a visit to their mansion in Hartford, Connecticut while Twain was on tour in Europe, he and Livy were so overcome with grief that they were never able to bring themselves to return to Hartford.
"Poor husband and neglectful father?" I don' theeng so, Quickstraw ...
This patent would be much less necessary if cities would install intelligent traffic lights that allowed traffic to flow and thus minimized idling engines.
The problem is that traffic planners work (in the US, at least) for town and city councils, county commissions, and other local government entities, whose elected representatives get to make the final decisions on things like optimizing traffic flow vs making cars stop in retail districts as long as possible, as many times as possible. And local Chambers of Commerce and other merchant associations and individual (Walmart) heavy hitters exert strong influence on these pipsqueak lawmakers to persuade them to favor the latter over the former. Thus, the bustling Ohio metropolis of Chillicothe (population ~ 21,000) enjoys absolute gridlock during rush hours, because the Bridge Street merchants leaned on the County Commissioners to keep the traffic lights unsynchronized through the retail district - and the hell with the inconvenience to the commuters, the additional pollution, and the impact on emergency response times.
This is why I so love the American version of representative democracy.
Not only has the communication become parodically terse, but it has also become imperative to answer as quickly as possible. If you actually re-read what you wrote, take time to correct errors, and perhaps add a new point or two, i.e. spend some time on improving your post, it won't be seen by many if any.
Whoa ... for a second there, I thought you were talking about /.'s article submission policy! (It's just like newspapers, folks: getting it first is WAY more important than getting it right!)
More like succeeding by not having a hand crank on the front of your car. Most people don't miss that.
I do. Back in the 1970's, my Renault R-10 had a hand crank - and it came in handy when the battery unexpectedly died on me.
And, despite the crappy French engineering, that car got 45mpg on the highway. In the 1970s.
Take that, Prius, etc.
The FCC could just, you know, respect the fact that we live in a representative democracy and that as unelected bureaucrats that don't get to invent new laws restricting the free behavior of the people. The FCC could lobby Congress to write a law implementing what they want, instead of trying to tyrannically decide for us what they think is best.
The problem, as /.ers from time out of mind have pointed out, is that Congress is bought and paid for by the telecom and cable TV industries - who are the very folks you're proposing the FCC ask them to regulate here. So - good luck with that.
It's important to understand that the American system of checks and balances is tripodal, and that the FCC is a quasi-independent function of the executive leg of that tripod. Congress makes the laws, but, by design, the executive branch implements those laws. One of the most important ways in which the executive branch performs that duty is by creating a regulatory framework that defines the specifics of how the laws Congress passes will be implemented. And it's absolutely vital to understand that the executive branch is not subordinate to Congress in this regard - and, for the checks and balances system to actually work, all three legs of the tripod have to push against each other. Congress must assert its authority to make law, the executive branch must assert its authority to parse and implement those laws, and the judicial branch must asset its authority to test the validity of those laws. When one branch allows itself to become subordinate to another - as happened with Congress during the Bush years - disaster inevitably ensues (Patriot Act, anyone?). So, in the absence of specific direction from Congress to the contrary, the FCC is absolutely within its mandate to change its mind about how to regulate a particular segment of the communications market in this country, just as Congress would be within its mandate to provide specific direction on the issue (and note my point above about who would most likely dictate Congress' lawmaking in this regard), and the judiciary would most definitely be within its mandate to rule on one, the other, or both assertions of authority.
It's messy, it's frustrating to observe, and it's inefficient as all hell, but it's the system we've got. And, bellyaching from those who dislike its outcomes in specific cases on specific issues, short of a serious Constitutional revamp, the system will continue to sort-of-work this way for the foreseeable future.
As I said, my only impression that he's quite delusional kind of person.
Having met him in person, that was not my impression at all. He was the guest of honor at Octocon II in Santa Rosa, CA, in 1978, and I happened to recognize him as we passed one another, him on his way back to his hotel room, me on my way to the convention floor. I stopped him by saying, "Excuse me. I hope I'm not bothering you, but you're Phillip K. Dick, aren't you?" He admitted that he was and stood there fidgeting slightly, as if impatient to get this little unwanted intrusion into his privacy over with, so he could be on his way. "Again, I don't want to impose on you," I told him, "but I've always wanted to ask you, 'Where did you come up with the plot to "Ubik"?' It always seemed to me as though you started out to tell one story and wound up with quite a different tale than the one you set out to write."
PKD's eyes lit up, he became quite animated, and his tone of voice indicated that he was actually enjoying himself, as he replied, "You're right. I set out to write about a society where psionic powers - specifically telepathy - were developed to the point that they were routinely used in business for espionage and negotiation, and what the consequences of that would be. How they'd be regulated and licensed and so on. And then, about a dozen or so pages in, the typewriter just developed a mind of its own. It was automatic writing, really. I had no idea what was coming next, or how it would all turn out - I just sat there and let the story channel itself through me. I'd never experienced anything like that before, and it was really a very odd thing to witness!"
I told him that "Ubik" was probably my favorite of his books, because it was so surreal, and so unique among his works, and he confided that it was one of his personal favorites, too. I think I mentioned that I felt John Carpenter should have credited Ubik for inspiring the scene in "Dark Star" where the acting Captain consults the frozen corpse of the ship's original Captain, and I probably could have stood and talked to him for another hour or so, if I'd cared to push it, but I really didn't want to impose on him, so I thanked him for his time and for the insight into his novel and went on my way.
That was such a great convention.
I'm sure our politicians would never be so careless....
Then you must grow 'em smarter over there than we do over here.
Could we borrow some of your breeding stock?
I'm an atheist, and I DO openly mock religious faiths fairly regularly (I have a strong belief that religions in general are dangerous and detrimental to society and that by mocking them, it leads to open debate, which may cause at least some to question their beliefs).
I'm not an atheist - but, like you, I "openly mock religious faiths" on a regular basis.
See, I believe that the Universe is a single entity, so I tend to use the terms "god" and "universe" interchangeably. In my view, we are, all of us - every atom, every quantum of energy, every single place and thing - inextricably bound together into the same, self-contained entity. And we - intelligent life in general, not just humans - are its organs of self-awareness. As I see it, you can't plead for special treatment by the Universe - so prayer is useless - nor is there any prospect of an afterlife - which is unnecessary, in any event, because information can neither be gained nor lost, so your life is always going to be part of the Universe's "permanent record". But that's just my understanding of an epiphany I experienced once, while walking my dog along a country road, and have never again been fortunate enough to repeat.
The thing is, I reject the idea that anyone can mediate or interpret the immanence of that experience for anyone else - which is why, when pressed, I define myself as a gnostic pantheist. You either experience that epiphany for yourself - in which case no interpretation is required - or you don't, in which case no intercession is possible. So I don't preach about my belief, because that would just waste my time, as well as that of my audience.
And that's the very thing I despise and revile in organized religions of all varieties - but especially the evangelistic ones. It's their conviction that they have the right and duty to thrust their dogma and scripture-based morality on everyone else that so offends me. It's okay with me that they believe in their one true Prophet, or their dead god on a stick, or the cycle of karma, or pouring sake on the graves of their ancestors to appease their spirits, or whatever other malarkey they find comforting. What I object to is their insistence that I accept Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster into my life, too - that, and their attempts to use law and politics to enforce my adherence to their beliefs.
Now, certainly the modern Catholic Church is far from the worst offender in that regard - it no longer routinely tortures heretics and unbelievers into submission to its doctrines - but historically it was among the vilest for a very long time. So - again, in my personal view - it has long since lost whatever moral authority it pretended to, and it, like every other organized religion, is now entirely about using faith as a pretext to accumulate temporal wealth and power. That's why its metaphor of the priesthood as shepherds and lay persons as sheep is so instructive: because a shepherd doesn't tend his flock for the benefit of the sheep, he tends it so that he can exploit those sheep for his own benefit.
And that's why I, personally, mock and criticize organized religion - because organized religion is ALL about control and manipulation of the laiety by the clerical class, for the benefit of the clerical class, regardless of what they might profess their motivation to be. And the Catholic church's sufferance of priestly pedophilia is an absolutely logical and predictable consequence of that model - because shepherds are, in the final analysis, always predators upon their own flocks.
It is, indeed.
My favorite part is the flashback sequence where he's interviewing the woman who will become his private secretary - but it's his interaction with, and obvious doting affection for, his dog that makes the scene so powerful, because it humanizes him without resorting to any heavy-handed, "Now we're going to show the insane, demonic dictator's softer side," manipulativeness.
Great scene, great movie, lousy translation of the title. Were it me, I'd've called it, "Going Under", which is a more literal translation of the German, and which preserves the pun, too. (The film is about Hitler's last days in his underground bunker during the siege of Berlin by the Red Army.) Anyway ...
Satellite is little better than 3G with the amount of monthly transfer you get for the price
Actually, 3G is better than satellite, because your satellite data transfer rate plunges to near-zero during heavy rain or snow.
When I first saw this headline, I immediately thought, "Oh, NO! Billgatus of Borg has finally assimilated /.!"
Then I realized that the view was from the Marin headlands, not Redmond.
Legislator: Duh, say what? I don't write no contradictory laws.
DA: See you in court!
If only...
Unfortunately, as happens far too often, the legislators themselves don't go to jail for BS like this. Instead, we have random Joes just trying to do their jobs who now have to choose which of two laws to break
What, exactly, have you two been smoking? Sarah Palin's crack?
The villain here is publicity-whore DA Scott Southworth, not the legislators of Wisconsin. If you bothered to RTFA, then you saw this quote from one of the co-authors of the bill in question: "Using condoms isn't a crime for anyone," said Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison. "This guy is not a credible legal source on this matter, I'm sorry to say. His purpose is to intimidate and create enough panic in the minds of school administrators that they'll turn their backs on young people and their families."
Rep Roys is unquestionably correct. Southworth - a Republican, it is worth noting - sent his warning letter to one school district that, according to TFA, "said it had not taught sex ed for years." So Southworth is just trying to stir up headlines in an election year (District Attorney is an elective office), and playing to his political base in a rural Wisconsin county. It's the vilest kind of trolling for conservative Christian votes, and if there were any actual justice in the world, the voters of Juneau County would launch a recall election against this asshole and send him back to chasing ambulances for a living.