While I am not as familiar with Extreme Programming as I would like, the basic principles sound like something that we all need.
I am sure we have all experienced the horror stories of pointy haired managers in the real world. Maybe one of these days, Stephen King will even do a story on it. Those needing examples can inspect this site, and also check out this column. Although there are many other examples easy to find around the net.
Sadly, the thing that worries me is that it takes more than a haircut cut to change a pointy haired manager.
The art of managing your managers is an arcane art indeed.
Each really big corporation dreams of owning there own chunk of the internet.
In a certain context, I can see the "Walled Garden" concept, for new users, for kids, etc.
but for experienced users and adults, NO.
There is a broader context for this.
Since my comments (in the message to which this is a reply) went over the head of the moderator, let me provide a simpler context.
There has been a long tradition of freedom in the US, and it has been romanticised in many places in Western literature. We have even seen it in Star Trek episodes, with Kirk spouting the need for freedom with his "best friend" Harry Mudd.
In most of these cases, the argument is made that the sheltered life where every need is taken care of is not the proper place for a real human being. That freedom requires the opportunity to explore beyond the walls. Other wise, it becomes a very pretty prison. An example of this in literature is found here. It is one of many.
So what does it matter if Yahoo is bought out, and the Internet becomes a collection of walled gardens?
The early settlers in the americas were terrified of the wilderness, and sought to bring it under control.
The major corporations and political forces are afraid of of the Wilderness that is the Internet, and seek desperately to bring it under control. These, in combination with other interests, also seek to make us jump through their hoops for their profit.
We thus eventually become the "two legged lab rats" of the article I posted prior. The article is in fact a very literate and sophisticated and artisitic view of the larger picture. It is a symptom of a much, much larger trend of the powers that be trying desperately to bring the planet under control. The only problem is who is in control when it is all send and done. and would you trust them? Who do you trust?
or maybe you are one of those that says "Who cares" if Yahoo and other resources are sold, so long as you have your right to your taste in prOn and the latest gaming addiction.
go ahead, be a happy lab rat for the social scientists at Microsoft (or other convenient corporate bogey man). You may deserve it.
There is always a need for places where a person can go outside of the main system. When there is even no more chance of this, watch out!
Each realy big corporation dreams of owning there own chunk of the internet.
In a certain context, I can see the "Walled Garden" concept, for new users, for kids, etc.
but for experienced users and adults, NO.
There is a broader context for this. I found the following recently, and feel it is important enough to share here:
Dreams Of The Two-Legged Lab Rats
By Diane Harvey
1-25-01
We who are being experimented on as a way of life certainly do have our dreams. Every day we are run through an increasingly complex labyrinth of genetically engineered food, undrinkable water, the steady deadly rain of unbreathable chemtrails, and the jangling pulses of electromagnetic chaos. The maze is getting smaller and smaller, with ever more invasive procedures being applied to manipulate all of our activities. Secret experiments, open experiments and everything in-between: all of it designed to force us into fear, dependency, weakness, stupification and stupidity.
The entire elaborate construction of the so-called civilized world is carefully and incessantly being modified to function as a more impenetrable, less obvious and ever-more-inescapable maze for conducting experiments in human and systemic engineering. The sheer scale of the maze, and the breadth and depth of the experiments is exhausting to try to keep up with, kept on the run as we are. We are kept so busy force-marched at top speed through the tiny pathways left to us inside toxic governments, toxic military programs, and the overall toxic global corporate grip, that nearly all we have left is our dreams. The chocolate sprinkles, those decorative treats of television and movies, bigger cars, bigger houses, cleverer electronics, and a rat race up the corporate ladder, are merely more debilitating aspects of the maze: just so much junk-food materialism for caged souls. Above our heads, behind our backs, beneath our feet, the predatory controlling mechanisms only get worse. So we dream.
We dream of freedom, of course. "The rat work suggests that dreams may be a rehearsal". Why yes, our best dreams, daydreams and night dreams alike, are definitely a rehearsal for an evolutionary revolution and mass escape from the degradations of lab rathood. We don't see a way out yet. Nevertheless in our dreams we know very well we are not born to serve as profitable and highly expendable lab rats for a relatively few demented groups of power-maddened greed-ridden experimenters. Under such deeply stressing and distressing conditions, we human lab rats are currently still chewing on ourselves, biting one another in sheer frustration, and in general, tending to blame each other or other groups of rats in adjacent cages, for our current genuinely miserable fate.
Yet the first dream of the sentient captives should be identifying who the real enemy is- those vague and blurry figures hovering just out of sight, moving in the shadows behind the dazzling lights of publicity. Mistakes will be made in the identification process- it's well to keep that in mind too. But from this investigation will come a necessary realization of the deep overriding mutual interest of all who are slaves to this same increasingly global totalitarian regime. The dreams of the two-legged lab rats are the very foundation of a future world of freedom, if such a world is to come into being at all. The single goal here is to dream well: to rehearse patiently, in general and in detail, the overthrow of the worldwide Culture of Death.
For those not Music literate, I believe C-Sharp and D-Flat are two ways of writing the same note (I don't know why, maybe someone who has more of a musical background can enlighten us).
Regarding C sharp, D flat, etc
The Name C sharp is obviously a pun based in music. So the alternate name of B flat is a pun, based on the idea of the musical note, and the idea of things falling flat on their face, etc.
C Hash is just calling the # symbol by the keyboard symbol name (obviously) and seems releated to "Making a hash out of it".
So all that is needed to be explained is the name D Flat, in the context of the musical angle. The angle of things falling flat is kinda obvious. Here we go:
The Natural scale of notes that you get from singing generates a series of tones or frequencies that are NOT evenly spaced as far as the proportions of the ratios of frequencies go. There are Big spaces and Small spaces.
There are hundreds of musical scale variants when you get very geeky about the math of it all, measuring the sizes, and all that. Some of them are interesting, but these are not important as far as explaing all of this for non musical types.
The important idea is that the spaces between the notes are uneven. Some are twice as wide as the others. Generally, two small spaces make one big space. Naturally, people did the natural thing, and filled in the spaces. That is what the black keys on the piano keyboard are. you wind up with a series of notes that are evenly spaced, but the ones you use in singing, etc are a specific subset of these.
I know that there is more to this, but the music geeks argued about this for at least 200 years, if not more. so we won't go into explaining the argument right now. (and you thought arguing about distros got bad!)
Now to explain what are and flat are:
Sharp is marking a note to be played one small space higher than normal
Flat is marking a note to be played one small space lower than normal
so you can have double sharps and triple sharps and double flats and triple flats, etc, but this makes the music very hard to read. That kind of stuff if for the high power music geek gods.
So now when you look at a piano and find the note "C" and find the note "D" there is a black key between them. The space between "C" and "D" is one big space made up of two small spaces. The black key in between them is one small space higher than "C" and one small space lower than "D".
So it has the names C sharp and D flat.
You can have other other wackier names for it as well, based on what note you are starting from. For example B double sharp, or E triple flat.
and that is the quick explanation on how C sharp and D flat are the same note, on a keyboard.
hmm one fruedian typo I had was typing C-Shard for C-Sharp. Interesting.
this is more of a matter of taking ownership of someone elses good work by copying it.
C hash is apparently the part of net that clones to some degree the java functionality. MS is obviously banking on its' dominance to make it succeed.
Although, as I 've mentioned before, it seems that the main MS idea is to turn the WEB into a NET.
This is taking something planetary, and trying to make it trivial. Do we really want an interent where the content is the equivalent of a macdonalds on every corner?
To some degree, I think that MS is to software as Macdonalds is to cuisine. We do not need to do that to the web.
I would think this might be a script kiddies dream. Couldn't it be used to exploit local variables?
Well, you know that if some other big company introduced it as a feature for their browser, everyone would be all over it in a heartbeat. Can you say "format c:"?
Fortunately, it is something that you have to actively seek out. It is not pre-packaged.
And you would suppose that developers would be up to speed on security and protection vs hackers and kiddies and industrial espionage
It is likely not to be broadly used by the public at large. Not until someone includes it in the public version of their browser.
Maybe MS will include it in the next version of their browser. One could only hope?
I remember thinking, as it lifted off,"Odd, that seems a little slow". It seemed just a touch less snappy compared to other launches.
But it got off the pad okay and I dismissed the thought.
Then a little bit later they showed a close up through thge telescope of the side of the ship, and I saw what I thought were unusual plumes from the sides of the boosters. Again, it was odd, but again I dismissed it. Somehow, through all this, I was not my usual cheery self. Something was bugging me.
Then it happened. boom. and I argued with the people around me about what I saw in the replays over the next day or two, until the analysts on the TV spotted the plumes.
well, sadly the allegations are not new. They have shown up in alternative press for years. For example, there is this item from June 1999. The parent website actually has a competent series of stories
Now we all know how honest and altruistic large companies are.
Heck, even Bill Gates has recently donated 100 million dollars to aids research. The obvious arguement is that we should not criticise them for the good they do. Bill Gates has obviously been a benefactor of the computer community, and so we should not criticise him for possible errors. He has done so much good.
That statement will obviously send people screaming out of the room.;-)
The real question is the question of the devils bargin: How much do we excuse in the way of possible errors or abuse because of the possible benefit?
an example from another area of life: a very elderly elderly person is placed into a nursing home. Someone is named as the guardian. the idea is to self off property to help make the remaining years comfortable, because they are beloved family. And the argument is made to loot the property for personal gain instead of helping this person. This is something that happens, I have seen an interesting varient of this.
How much should you be able to profit from the mis-fortune of others?
I have no problem with the meeting of costs, and even some small profit to help a little with future development. Sadly once in the coffers, the bean counter types take cover, and will disperse the funds according to other principles
So how often should we shoot the messenger? Even the infamous Evil Overlord's List has the famous rule:
"32.I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers
are hard to come by."
They are still quite ignorant about exactly what each letter of the genome means.
Since I've commented on this before, all I will say in passing is that I take it to be the equivalent to having successfully transcribed the alien equivalent of the dead sea scrolls. Now they got to figure out the language and find out what it is saying.
I suspect that, like all good code, the educational part will be in the comments.
A similar situation was the speculation about Egypt before the rosetta stone. The fantastic phantasies that were spun are incredible. And it turned out to be very different from what they imagined. So the scientists have a big job ahead of themselves.
as a side note, I do not think that they should be able to patent anything from that gene sequence until they can explain in full detail what each encoding means and how it encodes what it does.
Given the wide variety of rants and raves wew have seen over the years (!), I would imagine that a large numbers of participants would gladly bring their own pies (for throwing), as well as a large assortment of nerf weapons.
And then it would get worse, in a Monty Python sort of way.
well, the article advocates removal of the copyright system. I can see a flip side to this.
Imagine your proverbial Incredibly Rich Software Company (tm). Imagine that it spots a neat and useful idea that has been created by a bunch of Talented People(tm). With no copyright, the Incredibly Rich Company can become and Incredibly Bad Company and simple copy the ideas, reverse engineer it, and with the forces of Superior Marketing(tm) can produce it and out produce it take over the market, wiping out the competition.
Netscape is an historic example, even with the protection they had, because there was no copyright on the idea of browser. (I doubt that one could be arranged)
So the removal of the idea of copyright removes protection for the Little Guy. Some Big Bad Company with lots of big bucks can come in and steal people blind.
So Copyright might need to be kept around, but in a form that protects the little guy more than corporations.
off the top of my head, maybe copyrights by corporations could only be held for a shorter peroid of time than by an individual, so that the actual artist could profit vs corporations.
This certainly requires a certain talent and familiarity with practical engineering. and the ability to through away everything that is not essential to the job at hand.
Given how much code we have seen that shows just the opposite focus, I got to wonder how would this all work out.
Imagine a contest, for example, between the Microsoft team (the Shaft Warriors) and the "Penguinistas", or whatever.
what kind of designs would the various camps build?
the old satirical bits come to mind, "If OSs were airlines","if systems were beer", etc.
How would the different corporate teams refelct the philosophy of their companies, and how would this reflect in their success on the show?
well, there was a collection of tech novelties written up in the NY Times Last year. One of the things had to do with electric ink that would eventually shuffle itself on the paper.
So the idea of paper telephones is not outrageous.
Disposable communications pushes things in the direction of anonymous communications. This will be a good thing ofor the society, over all.
Politicians deserve to be nervous.
I sure as heck hope this are more better than the free phones they have know
"I'm getting sick of people going after eToys. They had a bad stay on the internet. It sickens me and just about anyone else on/. about people suing over names and such. Please just leave eToys alone. Their failure is enough punishment."
Well, what if some Big Company (tm) with Deep Pockets (tm) had bought out eToys? There is an important legal precedent that needs to be set here that will make it more difficult for corporate interests to abuse the system. And the legal interests should also be resolved so that it is perfectly clear to all concerned.
Leaving it fuzzy is what lawyers thrive on. Leaving it fuzzy will leave the door open for more stupid stuff like this in the future. Therefore, although eToys may be getting the short end of the stick, this is a stick they tried to use agains others. in this context we need to set an example and we need to close the door.
How do you address the ever changing future of the microsoft product line, as far as UWin is concerned?
[For example, MS.NET probably is not going to let you host your stuff there, even if you wanted . ..]
Given the variety of problems MS has had with their servers over the past few days, what is your opinion of the future/workability of that approach compared to your own?
Someone has patented crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
As seen here on Jerry Pournelle's website (when he moves this week to his archives, this will be here, but that will not be for a week or so.
(sorry, but the original story is available only via pay archives at Michigan Live, unless someone finds the original news service)
Last summer, the folks at Albie's Foods here started making crust-free peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches for their customers. Just before Christmas, a executive with an Ohio food company ordered Albie's to bag 'em.
Robert V. Vickers wrote to Albie's explaining that his company, Menusaver Inc., holds the patent for crustless PBJ and plans to preserve its
exclusive rights to the lunchtime staple. Now, Albie's has asked U.S. District Court in Bay City to resolve the legal jam.
Albie's, a food manufacturer and restaurant, is best known for its tasty pasties, with stores in Gaylord and Grayling. Company officials say they
hope the federal sandwich case can be resolved in a jiffy.
In December 1999, the Orrville, Ohio,-based food company Menusaver obtained the patent for the "sealed crustless sandwich." The product is the
invention of Len C. Kirtchman of Fergus Falls, Minn., and David Geske of Fargo, N.D., according to the patent on file with the U.S. Patent &
Trademark Office.
"The sandwich includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions,
a center filling sealed between the upper and lower fillings and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings
therebetween," states Patent No. 6,004,596.
Creamy or crunchy? Strawberry or grape? The patent doesn't get that specific. But:
"The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly," the patent declares. "The
center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly and into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter."
Albie's co-owner Regan Quaal, contacted by The Times, said he would prefer to smooth out the controversy privately and not spread it around in the
press.
United States Patent 6,004,596 Sealed crustless sandwich Abstract A sealed crustless sandwich for providing a convenient sandwich without an outer crust which can be stored for long periods of time without a central filling from leaking outwardly. The sandwich includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions, a center filling sealed between the upper and lower fillings, and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings therebetween. The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly. The center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter.
Inventors: Kretchman; Len C. (Fergus Falls, MN); Geske; David (Fargo, ND) Assignee: Menusaver, Inc. (Orrville, OH) Filed: December 8, 1997
U.S. Patent Documents 3083651 3690898 3767823 3769035 3862344 4382768 5853778
Other References "50 Great Sandwiches", Carole Handslip, pp. 81-84,86,95, 1994.
So we come to the needle in the hay stack,and how the databases that the search engines consult give priority to different terms, how they index the various sites, and how long it takes.
Of course, for the person truly expert in these things, these are trivial details. They are as obvious as a traffic jam. For the rest of us, it is more a matter of "where did all these cars come from?"
Unlike our computer, there is no central index for the full content of the web. It is a job that is done continously at a surface level, and takes a month or two or three.
In that context, of course last night's news will not get indexed while we wait.
Just like the tradition of game installation, search engines have been designed to be used by people who have a clue.
Sometimes I swear that until we get a system designed by geniuses to be used by idiots, we will need to have some sort of internet user license or something. Other wise it is simply a matter of designing systems that can obey the command:
"Do what I want, not what I say."
This is an interesting problem in programming, is it not?
Before we can really quibble about the right technology to apply to education, we sort of need to agree on the purpose of education.
This is more important that you might imagine at first glance. You would expect that everyone would agree on the purpose, etc.
But this is no true than the varied reasons to build a motor vehicle. You look around, and you see many models of motor vehicle, depending on the purpose. And sometimes are using the wrong vehicle for the the job. [Imagine using a jaguar to tow your yatch to the beach for example.]
It is really tied into the vision that you have for the society. What kind of society do you want to build?
a society of contented workers
a society of active citizens
a society of drug users
a society of happy consumers
a society of people competent in what they have studied
etc. etc. etc. you add to the list
as a side note: the level of expertize need to really understand something and be competent in a subject is different than merely being sortof familiar with it. (I heard about that once in school)
For example, I have seen education software that runs real world experiments such as physics and chemistry, etc in simulation. While this would be okay for a quick intro, can you really imagine someone becoming an expert guitar player merely by running a simulation on a computer?
and we also have the idea of subjects that are not meaningless to the students studying them
Education took place certainly in ancient times. [For example, check out this article on the information workers of 2500 B.C.E.] There are fundamentals of education that have been there regardless of culture and level of civilation. Failure to take advantadge of these fundamentals will doom an education enterprise, regardless of the bells and whistles and technology you employ. The ultimate failure is to not even know what these fundamentals are. From the results we see around us, despite what the education professionals tell us, these fundamentals are certainly missing in action
To a vary large extent, the hacking of the Direct TV system has been a game. Sortof like the "Spy vs Spy" comic you "used" to read in Mad Magazine (maybe you still do)
Now Obviously, alot of folks are going to be pissed off because they "lost" the game.
And I am sure that the fine folks at DirectTV are gleeful about the gnashing of teeth and their own clever victory.
Somehow I think this has to been kept quite separate from the other issues dealing with digital media.
People providing a service deserve enough to be able to cover the costs of their operation and to make a reasonable profit. Let those who are without sin cast the first stone. Who has not had dotcom phantasies of obscene wealth? Well how did you expect you would do this? by giving away the homeplanet? or do you want them to spent millions of dollars so that you can enjoy your right to the superbowl and free pr0n?
That being said there is ALSO the issue of fair and reasonable exchange for goods and services. DirectTV certainly has been on the wrong side of the issue as far as some aspects of copy protection, etc.
Some people would rather spend extraordinary effort and money to not not pay for goods and services. In the past, these people were called the 'rich'; it was part of their culture. and now this attitude has dribbled into the rest of society
In the past, much of what has passed for morality has been an effort to help keep people in their place, to help mold them into sheeple. This has been the main thrust of modern education since the education "reforms" at the beginning of the 20th century. All those immigrants had to be educated to be good workers, etc. NOT competitors to the status quo.
This ties in with the DirectTV game because the company, as such, naturally, and perhaps unwittingly, takes advantadge of the situation to impose conditions that are not fair exchange.
People instinctively react, at first, to situations that are not fair. They get mad. and they use this to justify their own attempts to get what they think they are due, and maybe a little bit more. It becomes a viscious circle.Unfortunately, some poeple will never be happy.
One of the arguements that made the most sense to me was the idea the "Source Code And Object Code Are Copyrightable And Thus Entitled To Full First Amendment Protection."
As noted further:
9. No legislation can diminish First Amendment rights, but the DMCA expressly provides for such rights. 17 U.S.C. 1201 (c)(4) states that "[n]othing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products."
This point is not only important, but has a broader relevance on other technology issues, such as the the push to leave out technology options for recording, time-shifting, etc.
The case continues to have a wider importance then we first imagined.
Slashdot Mirror
IBM, for example has the whole series of commercials about the value of IBM services and security.
The average joe gets easily paranoid about his money, and even imagined threats to it. The average Joe is very vulnerable to FUD.
Granted that an investment bank is not your local savings and loan. And this is just a developer toolkit.
but I look at the fud that goes on in other markets, and wonder if this could be exploited in this market.
and thus the question.
I am sure we have all experienced the horror stories of pointy haired managers in the real world. Maybe one of these days, Stephen King will even do a story on it. Those needing examples can inspect this site, and also check out this column. Although there are many other examples easy to find around the net.
Sadly, the thing that worries me is that it takes more than a haircut cut to change a pointy haired manager.
The art of managing your managers is an arcane art indeed.
Basically, do you believe (or whatever) in Open Source enough to bet your bank account on it?
Would you download the source code and inspect it first? or who would you look to, to validate and verify that the code was clean?
after all, it is only your money.
2)I wonder also about the copy protection stuff, based on the news we have seen recently. Could they say "Sorry, Game Over?"
3)It has a 40 gig HD, so what OS are they running? (again looking at upgrading the drive, or copying the drive content someplace else.
[sigh] so many possibilities.
In a certain context, I can see the "Walled Garden" concept, for new users, for kids, etc.
but for experienced users and adults, NO.
There is a broader context for this.
Since my comments (in the message to which this is a reply) went over the head of the moderator, let me provide a simpler context.
There has been a long tradition of freedom in the US, and it has been romanticised in many places in Western literature. We have even seen it in Star Trek episodes, with Kirk spouting the need for freedom with his "best friend" Harry Mudd.
In most of these cases, the argument is made that the sheltered life where every need is taken care of is not the proper place for a real human being. That freedom requires the opportunity to explore beyond the walls. Other wise, it becomes a very pretty prison. An example of this in literature is found here. It is one of many.
So what does it matter if Yahoo is bought out, and the Internet becomes a collection of walled gardens?
The early settlers in the americas were terrified of the wilderness, and sought to bring it under control.
The major corporations and political forces are afraid of of the Wilderness that is the Internet, and seek desperately to bring it under control. These, in combination with other interests, also seek to make us jump through their hoops for their profit.
We thus eventually become the "two legged lab rats" of the article I posted prior. The article is in fact a very literate and sophisticated and artisitic view of the larger picture. It is a symptom of a much, much larger trend of the powers that be trying desperately to bring the planet under control. The only problem is who is in control when it is all send and done. and would you trust them? Who do you trust?
or maybe you are one of those that says "Who cares" if Yahoo and other resources are sold, so long as you have your right to your taste in prOn and the latest gaming addiction.
go ahead, be a happy lab rat for the social scientists at Microsoft (or other convenient corporate bogey man). You may deserve it.
There is always a need for places where a person can go outside of the main system. When there is even no more chance of this, watch out!
In a certain context, I can see the "Walled Garden" concept, for new users, for kids, etc.
but for experienced users and adults, NO.
There is a broader context for this. I found the following recently, and feel it is important enough to share here:
Dreams Of The Two-Legged Lab Rats
By Diane Harvey
1-25-01
We who are being experimented on as a way of life certainly do have our dreams. Every day we are run through an increasingly complex labyrinth of genetically engineered food, undrinkable water, the steady deadly rain of unbreathable chemtrails, and the jangling pulses of electromagnetic chaos. The maze is getting smaller and smaller, with ever more invasive procedures being applied to manipulate all of our activities. Secret experiments, open experiments and everything in-between: all of it designed to force us into fear, dependency, weakness, stupification and stupidity.
The entire elaborate construction of the so-called civilized world is carefully and incessantly being modified to function as a more impenetrable, less obvious and ever-more-inescapable maze for conducting experiments in human and systemic engineering. The sheer scale of the maze, and the breadth and depth of the experiments is exhausting to try to keep up with, kept on the run as we are. We are kept so busy force-marched at top speed through the tiny pathways left to us inside toxic governments, toxic military programs, and the overall toxic global corporate grip, that nearly all we have left is our dreams. The chocolate sprinkles, those decorative treats of television and movies, bigger cars, bigger houses, cleverer electronics, and a rat race up the corporate ladder, are merely more debilitating aspects of the maze: just so much junk-food materialism for caged souls. Above our heads, behind our backs, beneath our feet, the predatory controlling mechanisms only get worse. So we dream.
We dream of freedom, of course. "The rat work suggests that dreams may be a rehearsal". Why yes, our best dreams, daydreams and night dreams alike, are definitely a rehearsal for an evolutionary revolution and mass escape from the degradations of lab rathood. We don't see a way out yet. Nevertheless in our dreams we know very well we are not born to serve as profitable and highly expendable lab rats for a relatively few demented groups of power-maddened greed-ridden experimenters. Under such deeply stressing and distressing conditions, we human lab rats are currently still chewing on ourselves, biting one another in sheer frustration, and in general, tending to blame each other or other groups of rats in adjacent cages, for our current genuinely miserable fate.
Yet the first dream of the sentient captives should be identifying who the real enemy is- those vague and blurry figures hovering just out of sight, moving in the shadows behind the dazzling lights of publicity. Mistakes will be made in the identification process- it's well to keep that in mind too. But from this investigation will come a necessary realization of the deep overriding mutual interest of all who are slaves to this same increasingly global totalitarian regime. The dreams of the two-legged lab rats are the very foundation of a future world of freedom, if such a world is to come into being at all. The single goal here is to dream well: to rehearse patiently, in general and in detail, the overthrow of the worldwide Culture of Death.
Regarding C sharp, D flat, etc
The Name C sharp is obviously a pun based in music. So the alternate name of B flat is a pun, based on the idea of the musical note, and the idea of things falling flat on their face, etc.
C Hash is just calling the # symbol by the keyboard symbol name (obviously) and seems releated to "Making a hash out of it".
So all that is needed to be explained is the name D Flat, in the context of the musical angle. The angle of things falling flat is kinda obvious. Here we go:
The Natural scale of notes that you get from singing generates a series of tones or frequencies that are NOT evenly spaced as far as the proportions of the ratios of frequencies go. There are Big spaces and Small spaces.
There are hundreds of musical scale variants when you get very geeky about the math of it all, measuring the sizes, and all that. Some of them are interesting, but these are not important as far as explaing all of this for non musical types.
The important idea is that the spaces between the notes are uneven. Some are twice as wide as the others. Generally, two small spaces make one big space. Naturally, people did the natural thing, and filled in the spaces. That is what the black keys on the piano keyboard are. you wind up with a series of notes that are evenly spaced, but the ones you use in singing, etc are a specific subset of these.
I know that there is more to this, but the music geeks argued about this for at least 200 years, if not more. so we won't go into explaining the argument right now. (and you thought arguing about distros got bad!)
Now to explain what are and flat are:
- Sharp is marking a note to be played one small space higher than normal
- Flat is marking a note to be played one small space lower than normal
so you can have double sharps and triple sharps and double flats and triple flats, etc, but this makes the music very hard to read. That kind of stuff if for the high power music geek gods.So now when you look at a piano and find the note "C" and find the note "D" there is a black key between them. The space between "C" and "D" is one big space made up of two small spaces. The black key in between them is one small space higher than "C" and one small space lower than "D".
So it has the names C sharp and D flat.
You can have other other wackier names for it as well, based on what note you are starting from. For example B double sharp, or E triple flat.
and that is the quick explanation on how C sharp and D flat are the same note, on a keyboard.
hmm one fruedian typo I had was typing C-Shard for C-Sharp. Interesting.
BTW, I know it is sharp, not hash, but I refuse to insult music that much by calling it the marketroid name of sharp.
C hash is apparently the part of net that clones to some degree the java functionality. MS is obviously banking on its' dominance to make it succeed.
Although, as I 've mentioned before, it seems that the main MS idea is to turn the WEB into a NET.
This is taking something planetary, and trying to make it trivial. Do we really want an interent where the content is the equivalent of a macdonalds on every corner?
To some degree, I think that MS is to software as Macdonalds is to cuisine. We do not need to do that to the web.
Like all great ideas, it is obvious once you state it and explain it well.
Of course, you realize that someone will announce a patent on this in a year or two
(Unless AltaVista decides that their previous patents cover this as well)
All that aside, I would encourage people to contribute to this.
Well, you know that if some other big company introduced it as a feature for their browser, everyone would be all over it in a heartbeat. Can you say "format c:"?
Fortunately, it is something that you have to actively seek out. It is not pre-packaged.
And you would suppose that developers would be up to speed on security and protection vs hackers and kiddies and industrial espionage
It is likely not to be broadly used by the public at large. Not until someone includes it in the public version of their browser.
Maybe MS will include it in the next version of their browser. One could only hope?
I remember thinking, as it lifted off,"Odd, that seems a little slow". It seemed just a touch less snappy compared to other launches.
But it got off the pad okay and I dismissed the thought.
Then a little bit later they showed a close up through thge telescope of the side of the ship, and I saw what I thought were unusual plumes from the sides of the boosters. Again, it was odd, but again I dismissed it. Somehow, through all this, I was not my usual cheery self. Something was bugging me.
Then it happened. boom. and I argued with the people around me about what I saw in the replays over the next day or two, until the analysts on the TV spotted the plumes.
Now we all know how honest and altruistic large companies are.
Heck, even Bill Gates has recently donated 100 million dollars to aids research. The obvious arguement is that we should not criticise them for the good they do. Bill Gates has obviously been a benefactor of the computer community, and so we should not criticise him for possible errors. He has done so much good.
That statement will obviously send people screaming out of the room. ;-)
The real question is the question of the devils bargin: How much do we excuse in the way of possible errors or abuse because of the possible benefit?
an example from another area of life: a very elderly elderly person is placed into a nursing home. Someone is named as the guardian. the idea is to self off property to help make the remaining years comfortable, because they are beloved family. And the argument is made to loot the property for personal gain instead of helping this person. This is something that happens, I have seen an interesting varient of this.
How much should you be able to profit from the mis-fortune of others?
I have no problem with the meeting of costs, and even some small profit to help a little with future development. Sadly once in the coffers, the bean counter types take cover, and will disperse the funds according to other principles
So how often should we shoot the messenger? Even the infamous Evil Overlord's List has the famous rule:
"32.I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by."
Since I've commented on this before, all I will say in passing is that I take it to be the equivalent to having successfully transcribed the alien equivalent of the dead sea scrolls. Now they got to figure out the language and find out what it is saying.
I suspect that, like all good code, the educational part will be in the comments.
A similar situation was the speculation about Egypt before the rosetta stone. The fantastic phantasies that were spun are incredible. And it turned out to be very different from what they imagined. So the scientists have a big job ahead of themselves.
as a side note, I do not think that they should be able to patent anything from that gene sequence until they can explain in full detail what each encoding means and how it encodes what it does.
Given the wide variety of rants and raves wew have seen over the years (!), I would imagine that a large numbers of participants would gladly bring their own pies (for throwing), as well as a large assortment of nerf weapons.
And then it would get worse, in a Monty Python sort of way.
Imagine your proverbial Incredibly Rich Software Company (tm). Imagine that it spots a neat and useful idea that has been created by a bunch of Talented People(tm). With no copyright, the Incredibly Rich Company can become and Incredibly Bad Company and simple copy the ideas, reverse engineer it, and with the forces of Superior Marketing(tm) can produce it and out produce it take over the market, wiping out the competition.
Netscape is an historic example, even with the protection they had, because there was no copyright on the idea of browser. (I doubt that one could be arranged)
So the removal of the idea of copyright removes protection for the Little Guy. Some Big Bad Company with lots of big bucks can come in and steal people blind.
So Copyright might need to be kept around, but in a form that protects the little guy more than corporations.
off the top of my head, maybe copyrights by corporations could only be held for a shorter peroid of time than by an individual, so that the actual artist could profit vs corporations.
I need to think on this more
Given how much code we have seen that shows just the opposite focus, I got to wonder how would this all work out.
Imagine a contest, for example, between the Microsoft team (the Shaft Warriors) and the "Penguinistas", or whatever.
what kind of designs would the various camps build?
the old satirical bits come to mind, "If OSs were airlines","if systems were beer", etc.
How would the different corporate teams refelct the philosophy of their companies, and how would this reflect in their success on the show?
So the idea of paper telephones is not outrageous.
Disposable communications pushes things in the direction of anonymous communications. This will be a good thing ofor the society, over all.
Politicians deserve to be nervous.
I sure as heck hope this are more better than the free phones they have know
Well, what if some Big Company (tm) with Deep Pockets (tm) had bought out eToys? There is an important legal precedent that needs to be set here that will make it more difficult for corporate interests to abuse the system. And the legal interests should also be resolved so that it is perfectly clear to all concerned.
Leaving it fuzzy is what lawyers thrive on. Leaving it fuzzy will leave the door open for more stupid stuff like this in the future. Therefore, although eToys may be getting the short end of the stick, this is a stick they tried to use agains others. in this context we need to set an example and we need to close the door.
[For example, MS .NET probably is not going to let you host your stuff there, even if you wanted . . .]
Given the variety of problems MS has had with their servers over the past few days, what is your opinion of the future/workability of that approach compared to your own?
Someone has patented crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
As seen here on Jerry Pournelle's website (when he moves this week to his archives, this will be here, but that will not be for a week or so. (sorry, but the original story is available only via pay archives at Michigan Live, unless someone finds the original news service)
Last summer, the folks at Albie's Foods here started making crust-free peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches for their customers. Just before Christmas, a executive with an Ohio food company ordered Albie's to bag 'em.
Robert V. Vickers wrote to Albie's explaining that his company, Menusaver Inc., holds the patent for crustless PBJ and plans to preserve its exclusive rights to the lunchtime staple. Now, Albie's has asked U.S. District Court in Bay City to resolve the legal jam.
Albie's, a food manufacturer and restaurant, is best known for its tasty pasties, with stores in Gaylord and Grayling. Company officials say they hope the federal sandwich case can be resolved in a jiffy.
In December 1999, the Orrville, Ohio,-based food company Menusaver obtained the patent for the "sealed crustless sandwich." The product is the invention of Len C. Kirtchman of Fergus Falls, Minn., and David Geske of Fargo, N.D., according to the patent on file with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
"The sandwich includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions, a center filling sealed between the upper and lower fillings and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings therebetween," states Patent No. 6,004,596.
Creamy or crunchy? Strawberry or grape? The patent doesn't get that specific. But:
"The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly," the patent declares. "The center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly and into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter."
Albie's co-owner Regan Quaal, contacted by The Times, said he would prefer to smooth out the controversy privately and not spread it around in the press.
United States Patent 6,004,596 Sealed crustless sandwich Abstract A sealed crustless sandwich for providing a convenient sandwich without an outer crust which can be stored for long periods of time without a central filling from leaking outwardly. The sandwich includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions, a center filling sealed between the upper and lower fillings, and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings therebetween. The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly. The center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter.
Inventors: Kretchman; Len C. (Fergus Falls, MN); Geske; David (Fargo, ND) Assignee: Menusaver, Inc. (Orrville, OH) Filed: December 8, 1997
U.S. Patent Documents 3083651 3690898 3767823 3769035 3862344 4382768 5853778
Other References "50 Great Sandwiches", Carole Handslip, pp. 81-84,86,95, 1994.
90% of everything is junk
In truth, it maybe more than that.
So we come to the needle in the hay stack,and how the databases that the search engines consult give priority to different terms, how they index the various sites, and how long it takes.
Of course, for the person truly expert in these things, these are trivial details. They are as obvious as a traffic jam. For the rest of us, it is more a matter of "where did all these cars come from?"
Unlike our computer, there is no central index for the full content of the web. It is a job that is done continously at a surface level, and takes a month or two or three.
In that context, of course last night's news will not get indexed while we wait.
Just like the tradition of game installation, search engines have been designed to be used by people who have a clue.
Sometimes I swear that until we get a system designed by geniuses to be used by idiots, we will need to have some sort of internet user license or something. Other wise it is simply a matter of designing systems that can obey the command:
"Do what I want, not what I say."
This is an interesting problem in programming, is it not?
This is more important that you might imagine at first glance. You would expect that everyone would agree on the purpose, etc.
But this is no true than the varied reasons to build a motor vehicle. You look around, and you see many models of motor vehicle, depending on the purpose. And sometimes are using the wrong vehicle for the the job. [Imagine using a jaguar to tow your yatch to the beach for example.]
It is really tied into the vision that you have for the society. What kind of society do you want to build?
- a society of contented workers
- a society of active citizens
- a society of drug users
- a society of happy consumers
- a society of people competent in what they have studied
- etc. etc. etc. you add to the list
as a side note: the level of expertize need to really understand something and be competent in a subject is different than merely being sortof familiar with it. (I heard about that once in school)For example, I have seen education software that runs real world experiments such as physics and chemistry, etc in simulation. While this would be okay for a quick intro, can you really imagine someone becoming an expert guitar player merely by running a simulation on a computer?
and we also have the idea of subjects that are not meaningless to the students studying them
Education took place certainly in ancient times. [For example, check out this article on the information workers of 2500 B.C.E.] There are fundamentals of education that have been there regardless of culture and level of civilation. Failure to take advantadge of these fundamentals will doom an education enterprise, regardless of the bells and whistles and technology you employ. The ultimate failure is to not even know what these fundamentals are. From the results we see around us, despite what the education professionals tell us, these fundamentals are certainly missing in action
Now Obviously, alot of folks are going to be pissed off because they "lost" the game.
And I am sure that the fine folks at DirectTV are gleeful about the gnashing of teeth and their own clever victory.
Somehow I think this has to been kept quite separate from the other issues dealing with digital media.
People providing a service deserve enough to be able to cover the costs of their operation and to make a reasonable profit. Let those who are without sin cast the first stone. Who has not had dotcom phantasies of obscene wealth? Well how did you expect you would do this? by giving away the homeplanet? or do you want them to spent millions of dollars so that you can enjoy your right to the superbowl and free pr0n?
That being said there is ALSO the issue of fair and reasonable exchange for goods and services. DirectTV certainly has been on the wrong side of the issue as far as some aspects of copy protection, etc.
Some people would rather spend extraordinary effort and money to not not pay for goods and services. In the past, these people were called the 'rich'; it was part of their culture. and now this attitude has dribbled into the rest of society
In the past, much of what has passed for morality has been an effort to help keep people in their place, to help mold them into sheeple. This has been the main thrust of modern education since the education "reforms" at the beginning of the 20th century. All those immigrants had to be educated to be good workers, etc. NOT competitors to the status quo.
This ties in with the DirectTV game because the company, as such, naturally, and perhaps unwittingly, takes advantadge of the situation to impose conditions that are not fair exchange.
People instinctively react, at first, to situations that are not fair. They get mad. and they use this to justify their own attempts to get what they think they are due, and maybe a little bit more. It becomes a viscious circle.Unfortunately, some poeple will never be happy.
As noted further:
This point is not only important, but has a broader relevance on other technology issues, such as the the push to leave out technology options for recording, time-shifting, etc.The case continues to have a wider importance then we first imagined.