Gentlemen with poor hygiene and sub-standard housing can be witnessed at these terminals surfing pr0n for much of the day. It got so bad that women on the otherwise largely liberal library staff complained to the board that it was creating a hostile work environment.
hmm
It appears that the only those with "morals" would be intimidated.
On the other hand, would the libraians be able to make a civil rights complaint and have the gentleman arrested, on the basis of the hostile work enviroment?
I don't know. IANAL
It almost seems that the civil rights are extended so much that we protect the abuser of these freedoms (for example, these guys creating the hostile work environment)
Do these guys have a fundamental *right* to Internet pr0n?
During the test, passengers will be able to send and receive e-mail and have access to the Internet via an Internet server onboard the aircraft. A LAN (Local Area Network) based on IEEE 802.11b technology, the first standard developed for wireless networks, will be installed in the cabin
Which, judging from the comments, many of us are quite familiar with.
The concerns I have are mostly practical. Philosophically there is no problem for me.
Things like security, reliability, speed.
Security, of course, depends on the encryption standards they use, if any. There could be a couple of good spy movies based on this somehow. [Insert plotline here]
Reliability. This is partly a simple hardware issue, the solution to which is 'trivial', because it is "merely" a matter of getting the right equipment. Some of it is not so trivial in terms of enviromental interference. Remember, this is in Sweden. For instance, there are reports in the far north of the Northern Lights being very intense and coming quite low into the atmosphere. As seen here, for example:
An intense auroral display can cause many problems on the ground, such as intense electric currents along electric power lines (causing blackouts) and oil pipelines (enhancing corrosion). The aurora can disturb the ionosphere and disrupt short wave communication. Auroral discharge electrons have even damaged the electronics and solar panels of communications and meteorological satellites, rendering them inoperable.
There is also this page, with many interesting articles.
There is this article about auroral effect at ground level. I even recall reading about aurora being *visible* at ground level, but that was long ago, and I cannot find the link. There is even this article about aurora being *audible*, however. So the effects of such enviromental factors on an aircraft at six miles up can be important.
Speed is not so much an issue internal to the aircraft, but again is a problem of interferance with the ground stations. Enviromental factors are again in play
Needless to say, I am going to be very interested with the results of these trials
They have to know that Filtering does as much harm as it does good.
A better solution is to have the computer out in the open where everyone can see it.
For kids at home, this would be in the family room. [the rule of thumb at home is that, if you can buy your own, then you can have it in your room. If mom and dad buy it, it is in the family room.]
For Libraries, this would be not in the side room, but in the main hall where every passer by can see. This being a public space, maybe the illusion of "privacy" in this very public space should be dispensed with. This thought has problems both ways tho.
But this would certainly enforce "community standards"
Now there is a issue as far as making sure that there is no one hacking the system. But that is a sysadmin security issue, not a filtering issue.
``The Microsoft.NET platform is the best way to build, deliver and aggregate Web Services, and Microsoft is committed to helping software developers build Web Services with whatever programming language is most appropriate for their particular needs.''
Well, this seems to be the party line for the forseeable future.
While the Technology looks promising, the big problem is their track record. Ultimately, the old saw of never buying version 1.0 of anything is very true of MS products.
This is just my opinion, based on my experience. Even if I want to trust that vision, I find that I cannot. I have been burned too often. In each case, it as a matter of a litte less value, for a little more money. Maybe I exagerate, but that is what it seems like.
and so I make a comment only slightly tongue in cheek when I saw that I am slightly concerned about the World Wide Web becoming Microsoft's fishing.NET
PBS had an excellent broadcast in December 2000 on the life of Tesla. (Website here) There is alot of good material there, and some of the stuff is downright spooky.
the page on patents is especially interesting. For example, he invented a radio remote control mechanism for a boat in 1898!
I tend to side with
Tesla on this as far as the radio question goes. These paragraphs from the soon to be slashed website on Tesla perhaps summarize it best:
Despite the fact that almost every book mentions Guglielmo Marconi as the inventor of radio, the only thing Marconi did seems to be nothing more than reproducing apparati Nikola Tesla had registered years ago. Marconi copied Tesla, made some modifications, built a large
industry producing radio devices in Europe and spent huge amounts to advertise his supposed invention.
Nine months after Tesla's death, the Supreme Patent Court of the USA decides that Nikola Tesla must be considered the father of wireless transmission and radio. Justifying its decision the court notes that in Marconi's related
Patent (Íï. 764772 of 1904) there is nothing new not having been earlier published and registered by Tesla. The Court considered Marconi's claim that he did not knew of Tesla's patents false
Excellent engineering practices as applied to software take time.
There is the old joke regarding delivery of cutome designed goods:
Pick Any Two:
High Quality
Low Cost
Fast Delivery
There is more truth to this than many folks like to admit. For example, here is this story recently posted on the Computer Stupidities webpage:
One thing that many will run into in the computer industry, is employers who are rather clueless and yet don't necessarily realize this. In 1996, a friend told me about a boss he had that needed a C program written for him. After a week, the boss complained that the program wasn't done, and he asked my friend what was taking so long.
Friend: "The program is written, and I'm debugging it."
Boss: "What's wrong with you people? You make programming more difficult than it needs to be. I have Frontpage Express to write web pages with, and when I write code with it, I never need to debug it. If you were as good of a programmer as me, you'd never need to debug either."
In any Case we have a lot of people who want things delivered in internet time. But the number of people who are profoundly expert in a particular software are rare. The result is that the competitive pressure forces the the balance towards fast delivery amd low cost.
High Quality goes out the window.
There is an interesting story of a gentleman who wrote perfect code for a particular project. You can find the story HERE The parent page is also interesting, and worth checking out.
The bottom line is that it is a stoty of a guy who knows something sufficiently well that he was able to spend most of his time designing it, and made sure that the design was correct and perfect from the start.
Most places would have a heart attack at any thought that your would approach it this way in the first place.
I am still thinking on the proper conclusions to draw from all this.
"There are still literally dozens of lawsuits from state attorneys generals and class-action litigants against DoubleClick," said Jason Catlett, president of privacy group Junkbusters.
"And they're not all going to give up just because the FTC closed their investigation."
The FTC's letter outlines steps that DoubleClick will take to update the next version of its privacy policy. The makeover will include information on the company's use of clear GIFs, or Web bugs; clarification on the opt-out cookie; and modifications to its Internet Address Finder Web site privacy policy that include more up-front guidelines on how data is sold.
I have no particular problem with demographics. but it is one of those things where "We must use for GOOD, not EVIL"
Who determines just what is good here? I swear, some marketers would not mind if we all tranced into being their trendy marketing slaves, or something, where you HAVE to purchase something as a matter of law?. Or Advertising becoming the next food group
"Make sure to get your daily dose of advertising today!" or "SPAM brand advertising is Better for YOU"
If we all become a slave of the marketeers (I Love Spam!), then everyone becomes a slave.
like the old song: "If you're happy and you know it, clink your chains...."
Mark Spearing, currently testing microturbines at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls the fan "ingenious", but says the speeds achieved are "rather slow".
"We're striving for in excess of one million rpm in our motor," he says.
Spearing has other concerns too. "I am not a big fan of frictional or sliding contacts in micro electro-mechanical devices," he says. "Friction and wear tend to be potential show-stoppers at these scales."
I can see the need for 1 meg rpm, because I don't know how much circulation you are going to get for cooling otherwise. Cooling does require a certain amount of air volume, or something, to do the job.
Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of an expanding population explosion.
I got distracted, and left an incomplete sentence when I hit the submit button.
As seen here at the Greening Earth Society website, there may other problems with Global Warming. If somebody with a clue could look at the satellite data given there, I would like to know if these guys at least have real data.
Now understand, I do think that Global warming might be a problem. But I do think that there may see people fear-mongering for fun and profit. Just like some people would muddy the waters to protect their interests.
If there is no global warming, then there are just the usual problems of politics as usual. If there is global warming, then we will have a problem, in addition to all of the usual problems of politics as usual.
Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of on an expanding popular.
So I see that it would be better in the long run to treat global warming as a real problem.
All one has to do is to check out the Dead Media website to get a sense of the huge variety of communication media and technologies that are no longer in use just on our planet alone.
Another element is that some forms of encryptions are designed to make your data look indistinguishable from noise. Granted that in certain situations (such as politics) this is a naturally occuring phenomena. But in any case, this make detection much more difficult.
Think of space aliens trying to decode all of those encrypted transmissions that we might be seeing from HDTV in a few years. it certainly would not show up in the clear.
Now we try to apply this to projects like SETI. We might have any number of very bright "noise" sources that are actually quantum transmitters for the Server planet of the Western Galactic Gamers Conglomerate (or whatever). and because we haven't paid our subscription fee, we do not get in to play the game.
Needless to say, we would have a long time trying to decode the transmission.This is without even hazarding a guess about what galactic politics is like. We could be in a back water that recently got wiped by some sort of war. We could be in some one's nuetral zone. etc etc etc
I wonder is somehow these restrictive contracts can be taken for litigation under some civil rights law action.
Or maybe extend the protections of a legal/illegal contract, so that the rights a person has cannot be signed away under a contract, effectively killing some of these contracts.
IANAL
it seems like there has to be some sort of large scale action against these commercial interests to put the hurt on these actions. But because of their large financial resources, this is sure not going to be easy.
IANAL, but there are days when I wish I knew it better than I do.
Like anything worthwhile, this is going to be a lot of work.
So make sure you do not get blind sided by the commitments you find yourself making.
That being said, even helping out a little would probably be appreciated. For example, maybe something like hosting a server or a slashcode site, etc. so that the front line troops can focus on the work at hand.
of course, it is best to check with them to see what is really needed and wanted.
Sounds like what they could use are a couple of extra assistant leaders
I found these parts fascinating [forgive the mild editing for the sake of clarity in this post]:
Cycles, disk space, and bandwidth are resources that get provisioned [paid for] up front and are used variably from then on. The way to get more such resources within a P2P system is to change the up-front costs -- not the ongoing costs -- since it is the up-front costs that determine the ceiling on available resources.
There are several sorts of up-front incentives that could raise this ceiling:
PeoplePC could take $100 off the price of your computer in return for your spare cycles.
AudioGalaxy could pay for the delta between 384- and 768-Kbps DSL in return for running the AudioGalaxy client in the background.
United Devices could pay your electricity bill in return for leaving your machine on 24/7.
the money off the cost of a new machine is meaningless to me since I build my own. The delta between the two bandwidth rates is more interesting, but that differance only costs me maybe 10 bucks a month (if that).
but the idea of someone paying my electric bill....
I gotta admit that I can see the potential for abuse on this one.
On the other hand, this comment tossed in at the end gives me the shivers:
(Of particular note here is Microsoft, who has access to more desktops than everyone else put together. A real P2P framework, run by Microsoft, could become the market leader in selling aggregated computing power.)
As a moment of paranoia sets in, I can see MS adding this element to there.NET "solution", that as a part of participating in.NET, they own your spare cpu cycles which they can they sell to someone else.
I do not know what it is, but I always seem to have this moment of distrust whenever I read something involving MS.
Then again, maybe the MS marketroids read Slashdot, checking it out for this kind of thinking, in order to get new marketing ideas that they can use.
If nothing else, it *might* retain a certain cult success in the rental market, just because of people with their DVDs going through the movie in slow motion just to see all of the details they missed.
Since many folks don't need a headache when going out to see a movie, the word of mouth will be mixed at best. It is all right to have an artistic success, but if you make it hard for people to enjoy your movie, this will limit your commercial success.
If HDTV becomes a mandated product (because of FCC's decision) and more of them hit the market, in no time will current VCR and DVD players become obsolete.
Well alot of people won't bother getting it, so the market pentration will be poor, especially if it is expensive.
For myself, if it comes to that, I won't get one. I do not have cable now, because for the cost. For the things I would watch, it is cheaper to go to the movies or a club once or twice a month.
If I really had a hankering I'll drop a tv tuner card into my system. That has to be cheaper.
If you add into it the utter and complete hassle of digital locking on HDTV with your HDTV VCR, then people will not but into it to begin with. People don't like getting scammed. or thoughts of the thought police in their bedroom
This will mean that alot of people will not have tv, and will be forced to do things like listen to the radio, or read a book. The TV media market cannot afford this, actually. They want market penetration.
I can recall an article some place talking about the market saturation levels of Computers vs other products, and how long it took to get there. Computers are reaching saturation after about 20 years, but are roughly 60% ofthe market. this compares to normal TV of 85% in a similar period of time. The market penetration seems to be much slower than computers, and due to cost it might take much longer to break 50%. Ity might not reach 50% after 20 years. People are used to the technology shuffle with computers, and won't by into it with HDTV.
Part of it is that if it gets too complex, the reaction will be, why should I do this? I have a computer that does that already.
So should we contact Pillsbury about this or do we even have a right to? Are we even qualified since we are all not lawyers and we do not have the "all" the facts?
I ask this because some upbraded my posting of Nintendo contact info in an earlier discussion this past week. Some did not like the idea of an executive get slash-dotted by all the people writing and sending email.
One comment made to me was:
And my other point which you failed to address: If anyone here is qualified to be sending their comments to Nintendo, they don't need you to help them get the address. You don't know enough about this case to be telling Nintendo that they are wrong. I don't know enough about this case to be telling them that they are right (though that is my opinion, based on what I have heard).
And My response was:
This walks in the interesting direction of saying that the consumers of a companies' product are inherently unqualified to communicate to the company about a product or a situation involving that product.
Now I'll grant you that *that* is likely *not* what you intended to say. But you can see how it can be taken that way, no?
And this does raise an interesting point of when do the consumers of a product have any right to communicate with the company that puts them out.
I'll grant you that it is less useful when it bears a marked resemblance to the jabbering of rabid monkeys.
But I *do* think that the consumer has an inherent right to communicate with the company that produces the product that they buy. Now it is up to each of us to cultivate the intelligence of the consumer.
The data, by itself, is not evil. The correct target is the cultivation of intelligence.
There was this reply:
My right to wave my hand around wildly ends at your face.
Your right to post contact info for Nintendo executives ends at Slashdot.
My position is stated clearly above. Although I could be wrong, I do believe that we all have the right to contact people in corporations based on what we do know and what we do believe. We should not be intimidated by the PR spin of some. Our freedom is based in large part on the ability to freely communicate.
I recall that a year or two ago that a large number of people tried to get refunds from MS, on the basis that although it came with their machines they were not going to use it anyhow.
If I recall right, it did not go anyplace. It was and is a sort of catch 22, that MS points to the OEMs, and the OEMs point to MS.
So the Germany solution of selling them off second hand is an elegant and sensible solution.
With the future MS rental licenses, this may be a problem. I can see a future market for English versions of Windows from Germany.
Well, companies have been pattentting gene sequences left and right.
Problem is, the doin't know what the genes actually do, for most of them.
So the extra computing power has to go into sorting this out, and figuring what they mean, the grammar of the genes.
The only thing I can think of, that would be like that, would be the old translating of the rosetta stone.
Now that was a political text. Now what if the text had actually be a discussion of the subatomic particle reactions that take place in a matter/antimatter reactor? The task of translating for Napoleons archeologists would have been much harder, even *if* the ancient greek had been in "clear text", because archeologists did not know higher mathematics, etc. Probably, it would have been seen as a *really* obscure alchemy or religious text.
So now we have a similar task. Knowing the letters and a few "words" of the genome does not mean anything like knowing the design principles that are incorporated into a strand of DNA. DNA is all compiled coded, and we are trying to manually de-compile it. Then reconstruct the source.
And my other point which you failed to address: If anyone here is qualified to be sending their comments to Nintendo, they don't need you to help them get the address. You don't know enough about this case to be telling Nintendo that they are wrong. I don't know enough about this case to be telling them that they are right (though that is my opinion, based on what I have heard).
This walks in the interesting direction of saying that the consumers of a companies' product are inherently unqualified to communicate to the company about a product or a situation involving that product.
Now I'll grant you that *that* is likely *not* what you intended to say. But you can see how it can be taken that way, no?
And this does raise an interesting point of when do the consumers of a product have any right to communicate with the company that puts them out.
I'll grant you that it is less useful when it bears a marked resemblance to the jabbering of rabid monkeys.
But I *do* think that the consumer has an inherent right to communicate with the company that produces the product that they buy. Now it is up to each of us to cultivate the intelligence of the consumer.
The data, by itself, is not evil. The correct target is the cultivation of intelligence.
"If you wish to let Nintendo know what your thoughts are about all this"
Not "Flame them"
Note that certain posts require the ability to read and understand concepts without the use of visual aids. An easy knee jerk reaction would imagine a flame, as commonly see in many forums.
A "Request For Comments" to be sent to these guys is not a Request for FLAME.
On the other hand, yours was an excellent troll. Don't worry, I don't bother taking such things personally.
This short passage brings up an interesting reflection of what might have been, could have been:
One person who watched the documentary was Texan H. Ross Perot, multi-millionaire founder of EDS and future US presidential candidate. Perot liked what he saw in NeXT, called Jobs and told him that if he ever needed money he should call him. So Jobs offered Perot a 16 per cent stake in the company for $20m. Over a handshake, Perot agreed.
This was an amazing stroke of luck for NeXT, but a financial gaffe of gargantuan proportions for Perot. His money dwarfed the money Jobs had put in ($7m) and valued the company at a bloated $126m. The effect on NeXT was like pouring gasoline on a fire, as they say in Texas.
"One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was to give those young people all that money," Perot would later say. But he also regretted his failure to buy Microsoft in 1979, when he had the opportunity. That failure would partly explain his leap of faith in NeXT.
The most startling element is the Idea of Perot buying Microsoft. Although it is not likely that things would have worked out the same if Gates were not there. Gates as a mere footnote to history is fascinating.
The other element in the whole article is how much Mac OSX is similar to the main vision of NeXT, just from a software viewpoint alone. Never mind the hardware angle.
Slashdot Mirror
hmm
It appears that the only those with "morals" would be intimidated.
On the other hand, would the libraians be able to make a civil rights complaint and have the gentleman arrested, on the basis of the hostile work enviroment?
I don't know. IANAL
It almost seems that the civil rights are extended so much that we protect the abuser of these freedoms (for example, these guys creating the hostile work environment)
Do these guys have a fundamental *right* to Internet pr0n?
Damn it, another can of worms to open.
Which, judging from the comments, many of us are quite familiar with.
The concerns I have are mostly practical. Philosophically there is no problem for me.
Things like security, reliability, speed.
Security, of course, depends on the encryption standards they use, if any. There could be a couple of good spy movies based on this somehow. [Insert plotline here]
Reliability. This is partly a simple hardware issue, the solution to which is 'trivial', because it is "merely" a matter of getting the right equipment. Some of it is not so trivial in terms of enviromental interference. Remember, this is in Sweden. For instance, there are reports in the far north of the Northern Lights being very intense and coming quite low into the atmosphere. As seen here, for example:
There is also this page, with many interesting articles.There is this article about auroral effect at ground level. I even recall reading about aurora being *visible* at ground level, but that was long ago, and I cannot find the link. There is even this article about aurora being *audible*, however. So the effects of such enviromental factors on an aircraft at six miles up can be important.
Speed is not so much an issue internal to the aircraft, but again is a problem of interferance with the ground stations. Enviromental factors are again in play
Needless to say, I am going to be very interested with the results of these trials
A better solution is to have the computer out in the open where everyone can see it.
For kids at home, this would be in the family room. [the rule of thumb at home is that, if you can buy your own, then you can have it in your room. If mom and dad buy it, it is in the family room.]
For Libraries, this would be not in the side room, but in the main hall where every passer by can see. This being a public space, maybe the illusion of "privacy" in this very public space should be dispensed with. This thought has problems both ways tho.
But this would certainly enforce "community standards"
Now there is a issue as far as making sure that there is no one hacking the system. But that is a sysadmin security issue, not a filtering issue.
``The Microsoft .NET platform is the best way to build, deliver and aggregate Web Services, and Microsoft is committed to helping software developers build Web Services with whatever programming language is most appropriate for their particular needs.''
Well, this seems to be the party line for the forseeable future.
While the Technology looks promising, the big problem is their track record. Ultimately, the old saw of never buying version 1.0 of anything is very true of MS products.
This is just my opinion, based on my experience. Even if I want to trust that vision, I find that I cannot. I have been burned too often. In each case, it as a matter of a litte less value, for a little more money. Maybe I exagerate, but that is what it seems like.
and so I make a comment only slightly tongue in cheek when I saw that I am slightly concerned about the World Wide Web becoming Microsoft's fishing .NET
It makes me nervous.
the page on patents is especially interesting. For example, he invented a radio remote control mechanism for a boat in 1898!
I tend to side with Tesla on this as far as the radio question goes. These paragraphs from the soon to be slashed website on Tesla perhaps summarize it best:
Despite the fact that almost every book mentions Guglielmo Marconi as the inventor of radio, the only thing Marconi did seems to be nothing more than reproducing apparati Nikola Tesla had registered years ago. Marconi copied Tesla, made some modifications, built a large industry producing radio devices in Europe and spent huge amounts to advertise his supposed invention.
Nine months after Tesla's death, the Supreme Patent Court of the USA decides that Nikola Tesla must be considered the father of wireless transmission and radio. Justifying its decision the court notes that in Marconi's related Patent (Íï. 764772 of 1904) there is nothing new not having been earlier published and registered by Tesla. The Court considered Marconi's claim that he did not knew of Tesla's patents false
There is the old joke regarding delivery of cutome designed goods:
There is more truth to this than many folks like to admit. For example, here is this story recently posted on the Computer Stupidities webpage: In any Case we have a lot of people who want things delivered in internet time. But the number of people who are profoundly expert in a particular software are rare. The result is that the competitive pressure forces the the balance towards fast delivery amd low cost.High Quality goes out the window.
There is an interesting story of a gentleman who wrote perfect code for a particular project. You can find the story HERE The parent page is also interesting, and worth checking out.
The bottom line is that it is a stoty of a guy who knows something sufficiently well that he was able to spend most of his time designing it, and made sure that the design was correct and perfect from the start.
Most places would have a heart attack at any thought that your would approach it this way in the first place.
I am still thinking on the proper conclusions to draw from all this.
Who determines just what is good here? I swear, some marketers would not mind if we all tranced into being their trendy marketing slaves, or something, where you HAVE to purchase something as a matter of law?. Or Advertising becoming the next food group
"Make sure to get your daily dose of advertising today!" or "SPAM brand advertising is Better for YOU"
If we all become a slave of the marketeers (I Love Spam!), then everyone becomes a slave.
like the old song: "If you're happy and you know it, clink your chains...."
feh
well the surface area of your standard industrial size heat sinks is many times the surface are of your standard cpu, for example.
The impression I got was that these would be surface mounted on the cpu itself. (I could be drastically wrong, of course)
Applying these to the heat sink would not be so bad, but I am not sure of the cost benefit angle.
Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of an expanding population explosion.
I got distracted, and left an incomplete sentence when I hit the submit button.
Now understand, I do think that Global warming might be a problem. But I do think that there may see people fear-mongering for fun and profit. Just like some people would muddy the waters to protect their interests.
If there is no global warming, then there are just the usual problems of politics as usual. If there is global warming, then we will have a problem, in addition to all of the usual problems of politics as usual.
Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of on an expanding popular.
So I see that it would be better in the long run to treat global warming as a real problem.
Another element is that some forms of encryptions are designed to make your data look indistinguishable from noise. Granted that in certain situations (such as politics) this is a naturally occuring phenomena. But in any case, this make detection much more difficult.
Think of space aliens trying to decode all of those encrypted transmissions that we might be seeing from HDTV in a few years. it certainly would not show up in the clear.
Now we try to apply this to projects like SETI. We might have any number of very bright "noise" sources that are actually quantum transmitters for the Server planet of the Western Galactic Gamers Conglomerate (or whatever). and because we haven't paid our subscription fee, we do not get in to play the game.
Needless to say, we would have a long time trying to decode the transmission.This is without even hazarding a guess about what galactic politics is like. We could be in a back water that recently got wiped by some sort of war. We could be in some one's nuetral zone. etc etc etc
the possiblities are endless.
I wonder is somehow these restrictive contracts can be taken for litigation under some civil rights law action.
Or maybe extend the protections of a legal/illegal contract, so that the rights a person has cannot be signed away under a contract, effectively killing some of these contracts.
IANAL
it seems like there has to be some sort of large scale action against these commercial interests to put the hurt on these actions. But because of their large financial resources, this is sure not going to be easy.
IANAL, but there are days when I wish I knew it better than I do.
So make sure you do not get blind sided by the commitments you find yourself making.
That being said, even helping out a little would probably be appreciated. For example, maybe something like hosting a server or a slashcode site, etc. so that the front line troops can focus on the work at hand.
of course, it is best to check with them to see what is really needed and wanted.
Sounds like what they could use are a couple of extra assistant leaders
;-)
but the idea of someone paying my electric bill....
I gotta admit that I can see the potential for abuse on this one.
On the other hand, this comment tossed in at the end gives me the shivers:
As a moment of paranoia sets in, I can see MS adding this element to thereI do not know what it is, but I always seem to have this moment of distrust whenever I read something involving MS.
Then again, maybe the MS marketroids read Slashdot, checking it out for this kind of thinking, in order to get new marketing ideas that they can use.
;-)
Since many folks don't need a headache when going out to see a movie, the word of mouth will be mixed at best. It is all right to have an artistic success, but if you make it hard for people to enjoy your movie, this will limit your commercial success.
Well alot of people won't bother getting it, so the market pentration will be poor, especially if it is expensive.
For myself, if it comes to that, I won't get one. I do not have cable now, because for the cost. For the things I would watch, it is cheaper to go to the movies or a club once or twice a month.
If I really had a hankering I'll drop a tv tuner card into my system. That has to be cheaper.
If you add into it the utter and complete hassle of digital locking on HDTV with your HDTV VCR, then people will not but into it to begin with. People don't like getting scammed. or thoughts of the thought police in their bedroom
This will mean that alot of people will not have tv, and will be forced to do things like listen to the radio, or read a book. The TV media market cannot afford this, actually. They want market penetration.
I can recall an article some place talking about the market saturation levels of Computers vs other products, and how long it took to get there. Computers are reaching saturation after about 20 years, but are roughly 60% ofthe market. this compares to normal TV of 85% in a similar period of time. The market penetration seems to be much slower than computers, and due to cost it might take much longer to break 50%. Ity might not reach 50% after 20 years. People are used to the technology shuffle with computers, and won't by into it with HDTV.
Part of it is that if it gets too complex, the reaction will be, why should I do this? I have a computer that does that already.
I ask this because some upbraded my posting of Nintendo contact info in an earlier discussion this past week. Some did not like the idea of an executive get slash-dotted by all the people writing and sending email.
One comment made to me was:
And My response was: There was this reply: My position is stated clearly above. Although I could be wrong, I do believe that we all have the right to contact people in corporations based on what we do know and what we do believe. We should not be intimidated by the PR spin of some. Our freedom is based in large part on the ability to freely communicate.If I recall right, it did not go anyplace. It was and is a sort of catch 22, that MS points to the OEMs, and the OEMs point to MS.
So the Germany solution of selling them off second hand is an elegant and sensible solution.
With the future MS rental licenses, this may be a problem. I can see a future market for English versions of Windows from Germany.
Problem is, the doin't know what the genes actually do, for most of them.
So the extra computing power has to go into sorting this out, and figuring what they mean, the grammar of the genes.
The only thing I can think of, that would be like that, would be the old translating of the rosetta stone.
Now that was a political text. Now what if the text had actually be a discussion of the subatomic particle reactions that take place in a matter/antimatter reactor? The task of translating for Napoleons archeologists would have been much harder, even *if* the ancient greek had been in "clear text", because archeologists did not know higher mathematics, etc. Probably, it would have been seen as a *really* obscure alchemy or religious text.
So now we have a similar task. Knowing the letters and a few "words" of the genome does not mean anything like knowing the design principles that are incorporated into a strand of DNA. DNA is all compiled coded, and we are trying to manually de-compile it. Then reconstruct the source.
This walks in the interesting direction of saying that the consumers of a companies' product are inherently unqualified to communicate to the company about a product or a situation involving that product.
Now I'll grant you that *that* is likely *not* what you intended to say. But you can see how it can be taken that way, no?
And this does raise an interesting point of when do the consumers of a product have any right to communicate with the company that puts them out.
I'll grant you that it is less useful when it bears a marked resemblance to the jabbering of rabid monkeys.
But I *do* think that the consumer has an inherent right to communicate with the company that produces the product that they buy. Now it is up to each of us to cultivate the intelligence of the consumer.
The data, by itself, is not evil. The correct target is the cultivation of intelligence.
not their messenger service, so much as all these folks trying to monopolize the internet for themselves.
The Internet started off as freely sharable resources. Now it is going in quite to opposite direction.
"If you wish to let Nintendo know what your thoughts are about all this"
Not "Flame them"
Note that certain posts require the ability to read and understand concepts without the use of visual aids. An easy knee jerk reaction would imagine a flame, as commonly see in many forums.
A "Request For Comments" to be sent to these guys is not a Request for FLAME.
On the other hand, yours was an excellent troll. Don't worry, I don't bother taking such things personally.
Unfortunately, there is nobody to come in and make them "share".
You can see parallels on a larger scale with other not so civilized types who come in and rip off people "for their own good".
"This reduction of service is by popular demand". etc.
a pox on all their houses.
The other element in the whole article is how much Mac OSX is similar to the main vision of NeXT, just from a software viewpoint alone. Never mind the hardware angle.
Talk about being ahead of the times.