some of the first books printed when Ben Franklin invented the printing press were pornography... i thought Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1436...
This could be really pricey when it first comes out, y'know...
the bare-bones demonstration at Chapel Hill needed 60 megabits per second. High-quality tele-immersion will require even more-around 1.2 gigabits per second
I can just see people fight for priorities on this now.....
"Make sure you get your government mandated minimum daily requirements of PORN today"
Interesting as a proof of concept though.
I *really* doubt that there will be a tactile element to this, star trek gee whiz factors aside.
President Lyndon Johnson balanced the budget at one point by taking the Social Security revenues and including them as part of the main federal budget. This has been the practice ever since. What has been happening is that we have been skimming at least many billions per year from Social Security since the 1960's. Point to be made are:
1) If we had not been syphoning off these resources, Social Security would be okay for many more years than it is projected right now.
2) Without out the added revenues going into the Social Security trust find, the Governent would be and still is running a multi- billion dollar deficit rumored to be close to 60 billion dollars.
The questions are:
A) Should we stop borrowing from Social Security to prop up the rest of the government, so that it will remain solvent?
B) Given the actual government surplus is really a deficit, would it be wise to have a tax cut right now, and should we focus on reducing the real government deficit so that thge government does not have to live on loans from Social Security.
I think this would tend to expose the double talk that goes with government, to some degree. If everypart of government ran a truly balanced budget, then we would be far better off.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Huh?
Ok, lets say that after taxes you're making 40k a year. You then make 3300 a month. You expenses equal 1200 a month. Leaving 2100 a month in play money. Unless I'm missing something drastic, you have plenty of money. Live reasonably!?! You can support a family of four with the money you make! Easily!
You are missing something drastic:
The very small detail you miss is TAXES (state, federal, local, property), health care or insurance, FICA, etc.
This adds up to between 35 to 50 percent of the income. So the extra spendable cash might be as small as a few hundred per month. Remember: Extra free cash IS an oxymoron!
Never mind he might want to spend some money on a luxury/novelty like a computer. or other professional resources.
Of course, we know that all tech professionals use the free dial up access provided by AltaVista. But, working for MS, he probably can get the MSN dialup at half price, if he wants to spend a few bucks for a superior service.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
As someone involved in hiring for IT positions, I can tell you straight up - it's hard to find good people. And then when you do find them, they sometimes want a ping-pong table, video arcade, and six figures, which is unreasonable for our entry-level IT positions. If you don't price yourself out of the market, and you know your
stuff, you'll find a job very quickly.
This does have an element of truth to it, I know someone getting training at one of those shakey "take your money and run" certification "schools" who has one of those attitudes. They got educated into this by some of the news stories, misc movies, etc. Nevermind the sales agents.
[It was a bad day for that school when all of the management positions changed from geek to marketroid. They actually hired used car salesmen, among others.]
But it also reminds me of the actual newspaper ad I saw a while ago that said:
"Entry level position, 3 years experience required"
My memory is hazy, maybe it was 5 years.
I called them up and laughed at them. What they basically wanted was to hire an experienced person at entry level wages. This is the basic complaint that many competent people have here. It takes a long time to get really good at something, 5 to 10 years. Then your don't fit into the culture?
On the flip side, this reminds me of fast food places, with their armies of manager trainees as recently featured on The Onion.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Actually, Linux is probably a democracy of elites, similar to what you saw in certain countries in a variety of forms during the middle ages and slightly later.
The specific historic example is Poland, who also had the unfortunate element that all group decisions had to be unanimous. This was somewhat un-workable and un-fortunate. [The Linux community does not have this particular flaw.] It also deteriorated from a true brotherhood to a typical group of people trying protect their turf instead of the community, etc. [insert other political rants here]
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
In society, we have to act nice, play nice, etc. After all, there are consequences to what we say and do.
In Cyberspace, the consequences are more obscure. And it is somewhat easier to come up with a new persona.
The end result is that the social veneer is much thinner, and we tend to see the core of the person more directly, since they have a sense of safety in the appearance of being anonymous.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
I thought that the common procatice around the world was that if you were sold stolen property, that's your tough luck once it is found out.
They would have to go after the people who sold it to them for perpetrating a fraud or something. So for them to say that they won't return it without compensation is to hold the wrong people responsible. And it could be considered blackmail.
never mind jail terms if britain has laws against destruction of national treasures, historical artifacts, etc.
This sound suspiciously like something the original crooks would do, but that is pure speculation on my part.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
that aside, Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts (named for founder Lee Berk) doesn't have a psych department. Berkeley in California might, although their Music Dept, it seems, does not even list such a class
Of course, we all know about the importance of the japanese to pearl
;-)
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
DR: It is a common understanding among those who play videogames regularly that you think violent games should be regulated or banned. Is that an accurate assessment of your position? If not, what role should the federal government play
in this issue?
JL: That is a common MISunderstanding. I have never proposed having the government ban games or regulate game content. I am a devout believer in the First Amendment, and have consistently opposed resorting to censorship to address the growing public concern about media violence and indecency -- for example I was one of just 16 senators who voted against the Communications Decency Act. Instead, I have simply called for better citizenship by the entertainment industry and the videogame makers, and urged them to accept
greater responsibility for the influence they wield in our society. More specifically, I have asked them to set higher standards for their products and to draw basic lines they will not cross in order to make an extra dollar. And, short of that, I have asked them to do a better job of helping parents shield their children from
inappropriate and potentially harmful products, providing them with useful tools like content-based ratings and blocking technology like the V-chip.
There are many constructive steps, though, the government can take to help parents and reduce the risk of media violence. Elected leaders can and should give voice to the values and concerns of the parents they represent and use the public platform they are afforded to demand more responsibility from media producers and retailers. In addition they can hold hearings and forums to raise public awareness about the threat of media violence and educate parents about things they can do to better protect their children.
so far he is taking a good game.....
and there is a legitimate question here.
Do game makers wield *any* influence on society at all? and should they care about the effects that they create if they do?
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
it seems that it would difficult to ensure that articles are posted that are relevant to the stated subject matter of the site. Slashdot is somewhat Linux/Unix centric. With this moderation system, I do not see how to make sure it does not drift into a sea of noise.
The Early Days (tm) of the web come to mind, where the community culture was set one way, and then all these new folks (outsiders, etc) got into the act. Not bad really, but you see what happened to usenet. The signal to noise ratio has deteriorated badly into tidal pools of spam, etc. It would be very easy for a message board base on this to go the same route. This seems to be the primary flaw.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
So far it is not bad at all. Being a technology type, I presume that you are used to reading books without pictures, etc. This definitely requires at least that level of literacy. Also, there is a specialized vocabulary that needs to be sorted out.
Since this is "regular english", people do not realise that the fancy words used there form a jargon of their own. In a tech manual, you know how to handle this. But in this context it is easy to blank out, and watch your eyes glaze over. Snap out of it and grab yourself a philosophy tech manual so that you can at least get a hold on the jargon. [smile]
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
NPR's Talk of the Nation recently did a show on this. It seems that everyone is saying that high-tech companies are pro and all the programmers are anti this bill. That seems to tbe what I am finding around town as it were.
It seems that the companies recognize this as a source of cheaper labor, compared to the economics of training/retraining people previously not expert in the field.
On the other hand, I know some folks getting training in various schools who are excellent examples of the MCSE urban legends [insert smirk] - have the cert, but can't even format a disk from the command line. One I talked to the other day who is going for an A+ cert didn't see why they needed to know about electricity basics. (I have stopped banging my head over these folks. Cuts down on my aspirin bills.) This of course contrasts with the actual ad I saw a while back that advertised for a "Entry Level position, 5 years Experience Required".
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Actually, the guys at MP3 should get patents on the idea/business method of music lockers online. Then, if RIAA members want to use the idea after it is "legalized", they get nailed.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
I guess there are superficial resemblances between the logos (the lower case "u" and "o", and how they are located in the words). Since Fast Company started in 1995 it is easy to see how F*cked Company sort of spun off from the original name in a weekend party after a few drinks. One of those crazy net ideas that goes someplace. All said, it looks like F*cked Company is not now a specific parody/satire of Fast Company, but has developed a life of its' own as a legitimate web-info tool. This compared to GWBush.com, a legitimate and obvious parody site in the political campaign.
Of course, the question now becomes, how would you get from Fast Company to F*cked Company while looking at the first site. It is obvious how someone could get to the Bush satire site. But it seems like you would have to make too many typos to mistake F*cked Company for Fast Company. Similarity of graphics aside.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
I keep wondering about a proper UI for these things. You have an inherent conflict of interest in the basic size of the screen, the demand for extreme ease of use, and the irresistable urge for more bells and whistles. At the very least, it is an interesting design problem.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Once again, I know these are small issues but I just wouldn't want anyone to get the idea you can run newer OS's on older hardware.
as an aside, a former newbie I know decided to put win95 on an original 386 (which was equal to a 386dx). Because it was (actually is, I still have the board and case from the guy) an original 386, it was basically based on suped up 286 architecture. This means the following: a) chip memory (no simms!), with a maximum of 4 megs of ram - - b) Clock speed of 8 mhz. Fortunately, it did have a ide drive (80 meg). this was done, of course, because windows 3.11 was running too slow, and the guy had heard the 95 would speed up the computer.
It actually booted, and you could sort of play solitaire. but it was tough.
so this was very educational to all concerned, especially as that box actually meets the original minumum requirements of win95.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
I can remeber trackballs embedded into the tops of radar workstations on navy ships. They were the size of bowling balls, but maybe only exposed 60 degrees of surface area. I actually like them alot, and everything else has seemed to be way too small for my taste since then. In this context, this type of technology embedded into an arm rest or desktop might be interesting.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
[joke]Well, I suppose you could always put your ram disk in your virtual memory. or your virtual memory in your ram disk [/joke] as one psuedo geek tried to get me to do.....
:P
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Especially useful and entertaining is this Solar System Impact Calculator, where you if you are lucky, you can help Marvin the Martian get rid of the pesky planet blocking his view of Venus.:) You can check out effects of impacts on other planets as well. Just don't make Marvin mad...
:)
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
I would be fascinated to see your copies of the wiring diagrams to the 5th century Cray computers used by the Athenian government to run their social engineering efforts, along with their ICBM program.
I would also be interested in Aristotle's treatise on the design principles of twelve tone harmony as practiced by his teachers, comparing it to those social anachists who insisted on introducing rock and roll to the celebrations honoring Athena in her temple.
The problem is, of course, that innovation can take place, and does all of the time, in bits and pieces. Otherwise Linus should have never bothered developing Linux, since that pesky operating system idea had been done already by fine companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Xerox, etc.
As horrifying as it may seem, there may be a fundamental flaw in the argument that everything has been done before, merely due to a blindspot in the imagination of the author.
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Slashdot Mirror
"Make sure you get your government mandated minimum daily requirements of PORN today"
Interesting as a proof of concept though.
I *really* doubt that there will be a tactile element to this, star trek gee whiz factors aside.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
The very small detail you miss is TAXES (state, federal, local, property), health care or insurance, FICA, etc.
This adds up to between 35 to 50 percent of the income. So the extra spendable cash might be as small as a few hundred per month. Remember: Extra free cash IS an oxymoron!
Never mind he might want to spend some money on a luxury/novelty like a computer. or other professional resources.
Of course, we know that all tech professionals use the free dial up access provided by AltaVista. But, working for MS, he probably can get the MSN dialup at half price, if he wants to spend a few bucks for a superior service.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
This does have an element of truth to it, I know someone getting training at one of those shakey "take your money and run" certification "schools" who has one of those attitudes. They got educated into this by some of the news stories, misc movies, etc. Nevermind the sales agents.
[It was a bad day for that school when all of the management positions changed from geek to marketroid. They actually hired used car salesmen, among others.]
But it also reminds me of the actual newspaper ad I saw a while ago that said:
My memory is hazy, maybe it was 5 years.I called them up and laughed at them. What they basically wanted was to hire an experienced person at entry level wages. This is the basic complaint that many competent people have here. It takes a long time to get really good at something, 5 to 10 years. Then your don't fit into the culture?
On the flip side, this reminds me of fast food places, with their armies of manager trainees as recently featured on The Onion.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Microsoft = Fascism (?)
Actually, Linux is probably a democracy of elites, similar to what you saw in certain countries in a variety of forms during the middle ages and slightly later.
The specific historic example is Poland, who also had the unfortunate element that all group decisions had to be unanimous. This was somewhat un-workable and un-fortunate. [The Linux community does not have this particular flaw.] It also deteriorated from a true brotherhood to a typical group of people trying protect their turf instead of the community, etc. [insert other political rants here]
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
In Cyberspace, the consequences are more obscure. And it is somewhat easier to come up with a new persona.
The end result is that the social veneer is much thinner, and we tend to see the core of the person more directly, since they have a sense of safety in the appearance of being anonymous.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
They would have to go after the people who sold it to them for perpetrating a fraud or something. So for them to say that they won't return it without compensation is to hold the wrong people responsible. And it could be considered blackmail.
never mind jail terms if britain has laws against destruction of national treasures, historical artifacts, etc.
This sound suspiciously like something the original crooks would do, but that is pure speculation on my part.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
For Those who haven't had to chance to discover it, and for those who may get nostalgic about it, here is a link to The Story of Mel from the Hacker Folklore section of the Jargon Dictionary.
that aside, Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts (named for founder Lee Berk) doesn't have a psych department. Berkeley in California might, although their Music Dept, it seems, does not even list such a class
Of course, we all know about the importance of the japanese to pearl
;-)
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
but then, someone with a testosterone overdose will get into it "yes we were!", "No we were", etc.
[sigh]
Let's just give credit where it is due....
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
and there is a legitimate question here.
Do game makers wield *any* influence on society at all? and should they care about the effects that they create if they do?
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Now imagine if this was not late sunday night, but some other time that was prone to more traffic, and count your blessings.
You did say you wanted a stress test, didn't you?
:P
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
The Early Days (tm) of the web come to mind, where the community culture was set one way, and then all these new folks (outsiders, etc) got into the act. Not bad really, but you see what happened to usenet. The signal to noise ratio has deteriorated badly into tidal pools of spam, etc. It would be very easy for a message board base on this to go the same route. This seems to be the primary flaw.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Since this is "regular english", people do not realise that the fancy words used there form a jargon of their own. In a tech manual, you know how to handle this. But in this context it is easy to blank out, and watch your eyes glaze over. Snap out of it and grab yourself a philosophy tech manual so that you can at least get a hold on the jargon. [smile]
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
On the other hand, I know some folks getting training in various schools who are excellent examples of the MCSE urban legends [insert smirk] - have the cert, but can't even format a disk from the command line. One I talked to the other day who is going for an A+ cert didn't see why they needed to know about electricity basics. (I have stopped banging my head over these folks. Cuts down on my aspirin bills.) This of course contrasts with the actual ad I saw a while back that advertised for a "Entry Level position, 5 years Experience Required".
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Of course, the question now becomes, how would you get from Fast Company to F*cked Company while looking at the first site. It is obvious how someone could get to the Bush satire site. But it seems like you would have to make too many typos to mistake F*cked Company for Fast Company. Similarity of graphics aside.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
It actually booted, and you could sort of play solitaire. but it was tough.
so this was very educational to all concerned, especially as that box actually meets the original minumum requirements of win95.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
Especially useful and entertaining is this Solar System Impact Calculator, where you if you are lucky, you can help Marvin the Martian get rid of the pesky planet blocking his view of Venus. :) You can check out effects of impacts on other planets as well. Just don't make Marvin mad ...
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
I would also be interested in Aristotle's treatise on the design principles of twelve tone harmony as practiced by his teachers, comparing it to those social anachists who insisted on introducing rock and roll to the celebrations honoring Athena in her temple.
The problem is, of course, that innovation can take place, and does all of the time, in bits and pieces. Otherwise Linus should have never bothered developing Linux, since that pesky operating system idea had been done already by fine companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Xerox, etc.
As horrifying as it may seem, there may be a fundamental flaw in the argument that everything has been done before, merely due to a blindspot in the imagination of the author.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
hmmmm . . .
hey, wait a minute .....
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"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."