Tools like that are not so much for your day to day repairs. I carry a full toolkit with me when I am on the job, has everything I need and then some. But for those occasions I do not have my kit, a screwdriver on a knife or a quick way to transfer files can be very handy. Meetings where I do not want to carry everything but need to copy some data, a quick repair to something that screws in, etc.
This article, to me, smacks of nothing more than Linux advocacy. While advocacy is not bad in and of itself, when it has misleading information it is as bad as Microsoft or whomever else's FUD.
How exactly does learning the Linux command line help these people move forward in an increasingly connected workplace? The article specifically stated that as one of the main goals of the class, however almost nothing that was taught will actually be of any use. Basic fact, if these people are going to be using a computer in the workplace, it will have a GUI, most likely Windows.
While it is great they have started to lose their fear of computers and have learned some useful skills, this teaching method does nothing to help them with a GUI. IMO, the energy expended to create metaphors for the CLI would have been much better spent creating metaphors for the GUI.
Just a quick question, exactly what fuel would this be?
You mention "where cheap solar energy is farmed". AFAIK, We do not currently have magical reactionless thrusters that can make use of stored solar energy, or any other energy for that matter, or anything that appears in scifi novels where people flot around the galaxy like birds. The current level of technology available to us requires a thrust agent to get something moving.
So how exactly would a solar energy farm/station help us actually move materiel to Mars?
I never really got this feeling with his books. I always felt that he wrote a world in which technology was so pervasive that it wasn't a big thing any more, kind of like us never noticing our shoes or the chairs we sit in. People in his universe are so used to tech being in every fact of their lives they don't ever have the "Wow" factor that we get from a new widget.
Gibson's books, IMO, have always been people dramas, dark worlds in which people do what they have to to survive, and tech is just a tool they use.
Why? Are Indians fundamentally less deserving of well paid jobs than Americans?
While I am very worried for my career, I just can't bring myself to think, "I was born an American and therefore deserve a higher standard of living, even at the expense of others." Reports are claiming that these $11,000 a year jobs are creating a healthy middle class who enjoys roughly the same sort of lifestyle I do. While I do see the specific appeal of "I would rather have a good job than someone else," it's harder to say, "I would rather my country has jobs instead of your country having jobs." Ultimately we're all on the same planet and we're all human beings.
It's really simple to reverse that question to you and ask "Are Indians fundamentally more deserving of well paid jobs than Americans, and why?".
You are ascribing motives to the outsourcing rush that do not exist. You are praising it based on altruistic means, when this is simply a financial move meant to increase the bottom line for American companies, unfortunately at the expense of the American worker.
You sound like someone that has a good job, someone that may not have a family, and probably has a fallback position if you do get laid off. I wonder what you will do when all your options are exhausted, and when you are unemployed and living on minimum wage because there is someone in another country who is doing your old job for less than half your old salary.
I admit it must be nice to be able to live with blinders on, looking at everything through the rosy glow of universal love and brotherhood, but someday (probably soon) you are going to have to wake up to reality.
I am currently working my way through Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. When reading this pdf of the letter to congress, I could have sworn I was reading a somewhat backward excerpt from the book. True that Darl is promoting capitalism instead of the other way around, but the fact that he attempting to get congress to place restrictions on this free software simply as a means to further his business is a rather interesting parallel. Also interesting is that when a better and more widely accepted product becomes available he litigates instead of innovates. I believe in the terms of AS he would be a looter.
This is what I always think of as the "Star Trek Effect". People don't have any real idea of what is involved in feasable, commercial exploration/exploitation of space. Most assume it will be easy and we can just leap to the correct conclusion with a few sensor scans and judicious application of technology. I have always imagined people in the know (planetologists, rocket scientists, astronauts) just kind of smirking and laughing at these kind of assumptions. This is the same kind of experience as a user calling you up and saying "I want!" with no real understanding of just how much money and work it may take to get them that shiny new 500GB mail server or the ability to VPN from home so they don't actually have to come to work when they don't want to.
The one thing that Star Trek never showed was just how much money something like a starship, a colony, the technology to make them work, and all sorts of other things they might use would actually cost. For comparison let's use sending a probe to check the composition of a planet's atmosphere. In the fantasy world, you just say "Launch a probe" and it is done. No muss, no fuss, no auditors. In the real world, it would cost you several billion dollars just to get one designed and into space.
Another factor in this is the "huge amounts of cheap computing power that make it possible" statement. This is also part of the Star Trek Effect. People grew up watching the shows and had it drummed into them week after week that more computers, more technology, more technobabble make anything possible. Most don't realize that processing power will not do a damn thing when you need to figure out how to create a self-sustaining livable habitat on a planet with wildly different characteristics than our own.
Actually, according to an article I just read on WebMD, the brain has plenty of the chemical responsible, dopamine. The problem is that certain molecules in the brain of ADHD diagnosed children use too much dopamine, leaving too little for it to do what it needs to. Ritalin slows down the rate of dopamine absorption by certain areas of the brain so dopamine can get to where it needs to in order to do it's job.
He makes a very good point. When I was a child, I had the same sensitivity to red food color. It was bad enough that I was not allowed to have any food that was red; no Kool-Aid, no Jello, nothing at all that might contain red food dye. I am not sure what the specific chemical was, my parents never tried to figure out exactly what it was.
The effects on me would be dramatic, especially for liquids. Within half an hour I would be a hyperactive bundle of joy (that my parents would want to lock in a closet), and it would not go away for quite a while. When I stopped consuming anything red, I would have very few hyperactivity episodes.
I am also ADHD, not sure how severe any more since I learned coping mechanisms long ago. I was on Ritalin when I was in elementary school, but have not been on it in over 15 years. I do have some symptoms still, the most annoying being sleeping problems, but due to willpower and little tricks I have learned I do not have a problem with it. I still don't eat or drink anything red unless I want that hyperactive energy boost (if I am at a party or something).
Here are some ideas for texts you might try to deconstruct, once you are ready to attempt it yourself, graded by approximate level of difficulty:
Beginner:
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers this article James Cameron's The Terminator issue #1 of Wired anything by Marx
Excellent! You have deconstructed the one of the Beginner assignments! Care to go for the rest?
You'd have to have a team of Navy Seals to get into our plant unnoticed, and even if you did, the worst you could do would be to irreprably damage the plant- not harm the public.
How about one single well-aimed, fully-fueled passenger liner? No harm to the public then?!?
Well, assuming you are running that passenger liner into one of those new floating ocean-going nuclear power stations, you might have a point.
A Slashdotter analyzing the denegration of women in a diet coke ad featuring a woman topless?
Just watch the boobies and smile.
And FYI, the "abandon dignity" threshold is far lower than 1 million dollars. Most of the women I know will gladly show some boobs for as little as $50. Most people are not quite as uptight about their bodies as you seem to believe, and actually enjoy shaking things up from time to time. The only people that would probably be offended would be the post-feminist activist types or the christian right. But then they are no fun anway.
There is an assumption that when you are talking about an HTPC, you are not going to be using TV/SVGA outputs to deliver a signal to your monitor of choice. Most people who are into HTPC are using high end HDTV and plasma units, so they will be using Component and Digital inputs for the monitor option. HTPC really isn't ready for something like this IMO, there are too many variables in the signal going to the monitor, which video card will work with your monitor, proper adjustments for horizontal/vertical sync, etc. I would not buy a package that claimed to work like this one does at this point, unless you wanted a lowest common denominator system.
As for them using "Microsoft Chat" or whatever they called it, that's just plain irresponsible. If people have trouble using computers for simple email every day then why on God's (sandy) earth do they think those same technologies will hold up in much more mission-critical military conditions?
Well, first off, your average user doesn't usually have problems with programs like chat because of technical difficulties but because of user error and basically being unable to comprehend what is going on with the program. The training of the military would ensure that every soldier knows how to use those tools before entering combat, just like they know how to use their rifle or airplane.
Second, these applications would be tested and hardened for years before they are deployed in a real time combat scenario, drastically reducing the chances of any kind of technical failure within the program itself. The military is just as aware of problems (ie: someone getting killed because of a system crash) as we all are, and they would ensure that it meets a minimum level of reliability.
Not to mention, a unit in a front line combat situation would have backups; radios, maps, etc, basically all the equipment they had before the new technology came along.
This actually happens with a number of games and quite a few people. I have friends that identify completely with their Evercrack characters; one of my more socially inhibited friends actaully introduced himself as his character name at a bar one night. His web page has pictures labeled with his name; only problem is they are screenshots of his character.
Some other friends of mine had to stop playing Grand Theft Auto 3 when they noticed how agressively they were driving. They would be going to work or something and have thoughts about driving on sidewalks and through parks to cut some time off the trip, and started getting very dangerous to other drivers on the road.
I have never been one to fall into the trap of blaming video games for real-life problems, but when certain people or personality types identify so closely with a game, what does that mean for society? I can imagine people hurrying to get home after work so they don't miss sim-happyhour at the sim-pub on TSOL, instead of going with friends or co-workers for a real-life happyhour.
This is the biggest load of bullshit I think I have ever read on Slashdot, and there is quite a bit of manure that floats around on here.
Who gives a shit what other people stole? Who cares that your morals were firmly in place when you did not retaliate against this exec?
The plain fact here is you broke the law. You rifled the company books, you stole equipment from this company, and now you are attempting to justify it by saying "Yeah, but look what they did to me! And look what other people did!" You are the reason nobody trusts anyone any more; there are so few people who are actually deserving of trust.
Why can't you simply accept responsibility for the actions you took?
This really has nothing to to with the main topic, but I just could not help responding.
On the main subject, these people are guilty of breach of contract. IANAL, but that is a civil offense, something they can only be sued for. The only reason they are facing criminal charges and being harassed by the FBI is because the people in control have strong political connections.
Actually, the scariest thing for me was the daily poll on the Searchking site: "Should convicted terrorist be automatically given the death penalty?". 37% of people who responded said yes!
I think a lot of people are missing the point of this, or at least what I saw as the point.
The author of the article is talking about the damage potential to the EQ economy. Now, I am not an EQ player, so I could not care less, but I have seen what the damage to an MMORPG can be with Ultima Online.
I thought the point behind the article, or at least the direction my thoughts ran in, was that you could come into this game, use a few accounts, and make some real world money. After going through some numbers (those in the article and a few posted here), you can make a good living from this.
Using one slashdot poster's numbers (1k pp per hour selling arrows), you could make (real world) $5 USD per hour. Burger King rates.
Using the numbers from the article (4500 pp per hour), you could make $22.50 USD per hour. Skilled technician rates.
Using some of my own numbers, inflating slightly but IMO not unreasonably to 6000 pp to 8000 pp per hour, you could make $30 - $40 USD per hour. Administrator/Engineer rates.
For most people, that is damn good money.
These were all calculated assuming an 8 hour day, constantly playing and making pp, and using an average from www.playerauctions.com of $50 USD per 10,000 platinum. Overtime would of course make you more, but not at time-and-a-half.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Tools like that are not so much for your day to day repairs. I carry a full toolkit with me when I am on the job, has everything I need and then some. But for those occasions I do not have my kit, a screwdriver on a knife or a quick way to transfer files can be very handy. Meetings where I do not want to carry everything but need to copy some data, a quick repair to something that screws in, etc.
This article, to me, smacks of nothing more than Linux advocacy. While advocacy is not bad in and of itself, when it has misleading information it is as bad as Microsoft or whomever else's FUD.
How exactly does learning the Linux command line help these people move forward in an increasingly connected workplace? The article specifically stated that as one of the main goals of the class, however almost nothing that was taught will actually be of any use. Basic fact, if these people are going to be using a computer in the workplace, it will have a GUI, most likely Windows.
While it is great they have started to lose their fear of computers and have learned some useful skills, this teaching method does nothing to help them with a GUI. IMO, the energy expended to create metaphors for the CLI would have been much better spent creating metaphors for the GUI.
Just a quick question, exactly what fuel would this be?
You mention "where cheap solar energy is farmed". AFAIK, We do not currently have magical reactionless thrusters that can make use of stored solar energy, or any other energy for that matter, or anything that appears in scifi novels where people flot around the galaxy like birds. The current level of technology available to us requires a thrust agent to get something moving.
So how exactly would a solar energy farm/station help us actually move materiel to Mars?
I never really got this feeling with his books. I always felt that he wrote a world in which technology was so pervasive that it wasn't a big thing any more, kind of like us never noticing our shoes or the chairs we sit in. People in his universe are so used to tech being in every fact of their lives they don't ever have the "Wow" factor that we get from a new widget.
Gibson's books, IMO, have always been people dramas, dark worlds in which people do what they have to to survive, and tech is just a tool they use.
Come on now, where have you been? It's not Yoda the weight is pushing down on, it's the midichlorians!
And since there are thousands or millions of them, they can easily support the weight. Sheesh!
It's really simple to reverse that question to you and ask "Are Indians fundamentally more deserving of well paid jobs than Americans, and why?".
You are ascribing motives to the outsourcing rush that do not exist. You are praising it based on altruistic means, when this is simply a financial move meant to increase the bottom line for American companies, unfortunately at the expense of the American worker.
You sound like someone that has a good job, someone that may not have a family, and probably has a fallback position if you do get laid off. I wonder what you will do when all your options are exhausted, and when you are unemployed and living on minimum wage because there is someone in another country who is doing your old job for less than half your old salary.
I admit it must be nice to be able to live with blinders on, looking at everything through the rosy glow of universal love and brotherhood, but someday (probably soon) you are going to have to wake up to reality.
I am currently working my way through Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. When reading this pdf of the letter to congress, I could have sworn I was reading a somewhat backward excerpt from the book. True that Darl is promoting capitalism instead of the other way around, but the fact that he attempting to get congress to place restrictions on this free software simply as a means to further his business is a rather interesting parallel. Also interesting is that when a better and more widely accepted product becomes available he litigates instead of innovates. I believe in the terms of AS he would be a looter.
This is what I always think of as the "Star Trek Effect". People don't have any real idea of what is involved in feasable, commercial exploration/exploitation of space. Most assume it will be easy and we can just leap to the correct conclusion with a few sensor scans and judicious application of technology. I have always imagined people in the know (planetologists, rocket scientists, astronauts) just kind of smirking and laughing at these kind of assumptions. This is the same kind of experience as a user calling you up and saying "I want!" with no real understanding of just how much money and work it may take to get them that shiny new 500GB mail server or the ability to VPN from home so they don't actually have to come to work when they don't want to.
The one thing that Star Trek never showed was just how much money something like a starship, a colony, the technology to make them work, and all sorts of other things they might use would actually cost. For comparison let's use sending a probe to check the composition of a planet's atmosphere. In the fantasy world, you just say "Launch a probe" and it is done. No muss, no fuss, no auditors. In the real world, it would cost you several billion dollars just to get one designed and into space.
Another factor in this is the "huge amounts of cheap computing power that make it possible" statement. This is also part of the Star Trek Effect. People grew up watching the shows and had it drummed into them week after week that more computers, more technology, more technobabble make anything possible. Most don't realize that processing power will not do a damn thing when you need to figure out how to create a self-sustaining livable habitat on a planet with wildly different characteristics than our own.
Space is not easy. Space is not cheap.
Hmmm, a recursive patent rejection. I like.
Actually, according to an article I just read on WebMD, the brain has plenty of the chemical responsible, dopamine. The problem is that certain molecules in the brain of ADHD diagnosed children use too much dopamine, leaving too little for it to do what it needs to. Ritalin slows down the rate of dopamine absorption by certain areas of the brain so dopamine can get to where it needs to in order to do it's job.
:)
And no, I am not a bio-chemist
He makes a very good point. When I was a child, I had the same sensitivity to red food color. It was bad enough that I was not allowed to have any food that was red; no Kool-Aid, no Jello, nothing at all that might contain red food dye. I am not sure what the specific chemical was, my parents never tried to figure out exactly what it was.
The effects on me would be dramatic, especially for liquids. Within half an hour I would be a hyperactive bundle of joy (that my parents would want to lock in a closet), and it would not go away for quite a while. When I stopped consuming anything red, I would have very few hyperactivity episodes.
I am also ADHD, not sure how severe any more since I learned coping mechanisms long ago. I was on Ritalin when I was in elementary school, but have not been on it in over 15 years. I do have some symptoms still, the most annoying being sleeping problems, but due to willpower and little tricks I have learned I do not have a problem with it. I still don't eat or drink anything red unless I want that hyperactive energy boost (if I am at a party or something).
Here are some ideas for texts you might try to deconstruct, once you are ready to attempt it yourself, graded by approximate level of difficulty:
Beginner:
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea
Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers
this article
James Cameron's The Terminator
issue #1 of Wired
anything by Marx
Excellent! You have deconstructed the one of the Beginner assignments! Care to go for the rest?
You'd have to have a team of Navy Seals to get into our plant unnoticed, and even if you did, the worst you could do would be to irreprably damage the plant- not harm the public.
How about one single well-aimed, fully-fueled passenger liner? No harm to the public then?!?
Well, assuming you are running that passenger liner into one of those new floating ocean-going nuclear power stations, you might have a point.
A Slashdotter analyzing the denegration of women in a diet coke ad featuring a woman topless?
Just watch the boobies and smile.
And FYI, the "abandon dignity" threshold is far lower than 1 million dollars. Most of the women I know will gladly show some boobs for as little as $50. Most people are not quite as uptight about their bodies as you seem to believe, and actually enjoy shaking things up from time to time. The only people that would probably be offended would be the post-feminist activist types or the christian right. But then they are no fun anway.
I am fairly certain it was borrowed from The Onion. I could be wrong of course, but the style just felt so familiar.
As for the TV in/out...
There is an assumption that when you are talking about an HTPC, you are not going to be using TV/SVGA outputs to deliver a signal to your monitor of choice. Most people who are into HTPC are using high end HDTV and plasma units, so they will be using Component and Digital inputs for the monitor option. HTPC really isn't ready for something like this IMO, there are too many variables in the signal going to the monitor, which video card will work with your monitor, proper adjustments for horizontal/vertical sync, etc. I would not buy a package that claimed to work like this one does at this point, unless you wanted a lowest common denominator system.
I could use my tranquilizer now please.
Funny, "The State" seems to disagree with you...
You know, I am loving this whole thread, but this absolutely has to be the most useless discussion I have ever read on Slashdot :)
Well, first off, your average user doesn't usually have problems with programs like chat because of technical difficulties but because of user error and basically being unable to comprehend what is going on with the program. The training of the military would ensure that every soldier knows how to use those tools before entering combat, just like they know how to use their rifle or airplane.
Second, these applications would be tested and hardened for years before they are deployed in a real time combat scenario, drastically reducing the chances of any kind of technical failure within the program itself. The military is just as aware of problems (ie: someone getting killed because of a system crash) as we all are, and they would ensure that it meets a minimum level of reliability.
Not to mention, a unit in a front line combat situation would have backups; radios, maps, etc, basically all the equipment they had before the new technology came along.
Who said you have to even step out of your house?
This actually happens with a number of games and quite a few people. I have friends that identify completely with their Evercrack characters; one of my more socially inhibited friends actaully introduced himself as his character name at a bar one night. His web page has pictures labeled with his name; only problem is they are screenshots of his character.
Some other friends of mine had to stop playing Grand Theft Auto 3 when they noticed how agressively they were driving. They would be going to work or something and have thoughts about driving on sidewalks and through parks to cut some time off the trip, and started getting very dangerous to other drivers on the road.
I have never been one to fall into the trap of blaming video games for real-life problems, but when certain people or personality types identify so closely with a game, what does that mean for society? I can imagine people hurrying to get home after work so they don't miss sim-happyhour at the sim-pub on TSOL, instead of going with friends or co-workers for a real-life happyhour.
This is the biggest load of bullshit I think I have ever read on Slashdot, and there is quite a bit of manure that floats around on here.
Who gives a shit what other people stole? Who cares that your morals were firmly in place when you did not retaliate against this exec?
The plain fact here is you broke the law. You rifled the company books, you stole equipment from this company, and now you are attempting to justify it by saying "Yeah, but look what they did to me! And look what other people did!" You are the reason nobody trusts anyone any more; there are so few people who are actually deserving of trust.
Why can't you simply accept responsibility for the actions you took?
This really has nothing to to with the main topic, but I just could not help responding.
On the main subject, these people are guilty of breach of contract. IANAL, but that is a civil offense, something they can only be sued for. The only reason they are facing criminal charges and being harassed by the FBI is because the people in control have strong political connections.
Actually, the scariest thing for me was the daily poll on the Searchking site: "Should convicted terrorist be automatically given the death penalty?". 37% of people who responded said yes!
People are so damn clueless...
I think a lot of people are missing the point of this, or at least what I saw as the point.
:)
The author of the article is talking about the damage potential to the EQ economy. Now, I am not an EQ player, so I could not care less, but I have seen what the damage to an MMORPG can be with Ultima Online.
I thought the point behind the article, or at least the direction my thoughts ran in, was that you could come into this game, use a few accounts, and make some real world money. After going through some numbers (those in the article and a few posted here), you can make a good living from this.
Using one slashdot poster's numbers (1k pp per hour selling arrows), you could make (real world) $5 USD per hour. Burger King rates.
Using the numbers from the article (4500 pp per hour), you could make $22.50 USD per hour. Skilled technician rates.
Using some of my own numbers, inflating slightly but IMO not unreasonably to 6000 pp to 8000 pp per hour, you could make $30 - $40 USD per hour. Administrator/Engineer rates.
For most people, that is damn good money.
These were all calculated assuming an 8 hour day, constantly playing and making pp, and using an average from www.playerauctions.com of $50 USD per 10,000 platinum. Overtime would of course make you more, but not at time-and-a-half.