This really has to do, in part, with where you feel the future of technology is.
Let's face it, even though print media was invented over 500 years ago, there are still billions of people who read print media from time to time. The glib catch phrase that it is *so* 20th century (for example) when applied to print media makes it sound that there are maybe three people left on the planet would read print media. When in fact the people on the cutting edge are not the majority by any means.
Long ago, and far away, when I lived on another planet and worked in retail repair shop, I would often tell customers hungry for the latest gadget that "If you can buy it, it is already obsolete".
Point being that 1) you can get into an endless treadmill trying to keep uyp with the technology and every new toy; and 2) even tho plenty of new tech toys will being coming out, the vast majority of technologies will stay around in some form for a very long time to come. Alot of folks will not change out a working solution to a problem just because of razzle by a technology spin doctor. Yes, there are problems in waiting too long, but on the other hand there are still lots of businesses who are **still** running on a paper system, never mind something as archaic as a dos boook keeping system on a 286
So this worry about the technology edge has some truth, but it is not nearly as dire as panic would suggest.
This planet may be the slums, but the rest of the local places are just burned out wrecks.
I mean there is nothing decent until you get *past* the asteroid belt. and that used to be a cool party planet until that one weekend blast that got out of hand...
and let's face it, for the most part, we are way out in the middle of nowhere. sort of like the interstellar equivalent of Las Vegas in the desert before there were hotels, etc.... No-one visits except for the equivalent of UFO teenagers out on a road trip stoned out of their gourds, and playing mind games with the local natives.
"hey man, watch them freak out when I turn on the flashing lights!"
During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.
This of course would be a real bummer.
now if you are running an Olde Dos System (TM), you might run into a virus that plays a happy melody, but your antivirus would have to be about 5 years out of date, to say the least.
Internal to a company, you can certainly modularize your work to some degree, so you DO have a fighting chance. But things have to be designed from the ground up that way.
Otherwise the terrors of spaghetti code await you.
and spaghetti design, and spaghetti management, and spaghetti specifications....
My own expereince is that there are many general procedures used in the creation of databases, but that when you get down to the specific demands of a customer or user, it is all fine tuned to specific requirements.
As a general simple example, a basic invoicing system would include a customer table, a saleperson table, an invoice table, a line item table, a partnumber table, an inventory table, etc, etc, etc.
Now we add to this the specific demands of the company such as auto-calculation of local and regional taxes, preferances for data entry screens, the exact data that the user desires to be stored, ease of use issues so that the sales geeks can actually use the system, requirements of suppliers in terms of ordering a variety of items, etc....
It becomes a bloody mess because of the intense customization required. There is no standardized way of running a business. Each CEO/CIO/CFO etc has their own ideas regarding the specific details on how things should be set up.
Thus we have the market for companies that provide business solutions for specific markets and business types. Each one requires a specific expert knowledge of the demands of that particular industry, with all of the quirks that go with it. Within that industry you can something stand could serve as a standard, but it would likely be promoted by a single dominant solution provider of some sort.
well will we have the tried and true changed man because
the aliens are all good (the goodie two shoes option),
the Aliens are all bad (the paranoia option)?
Or something like out of babylon five where you are careful about what you ask for because the answers surpass all your dreams and nightmares. (surprise option)
Considering everything, SlashDot becomes another way to take out a slow server on a site:
submit a story that was interesting, but is slightly stale. Watch it make the front page watch the site get slash dotted. Presto chango! instant DDOS!
the poor guys trying to run the site probably haven't even figured out what is going on yet - They just know it looks like legit traffic, and they likely have an account that that charges big bucks for heavy traffic.
so for them they are likely just standing back in awe at an attack that looks like it is coming in from maybe 100,000 sites.
Imagine if the site is hosted on some kids home machine?
Actually the best medium would be to store it into the DNA.
A human, for example, has so much redundant DNA that using a large chunk of it for extra storage would not be a hassle. And if the humans got to the point of decoding it, well, they would be sufficiently advanced to handle it. The degeneration over generations would be handled by redundancies, etc.
Wait a minute . . .
this sounds suspiciously like something some nutcase came up with once - - it can't be true, it can't be true.....
Imagine centuries from now, scholars and archeologists trying to sort out the lost knowledge in thousands of microsoft word documents, and excel spreadsheets, etc.; all encrypted by the latest Bill Gates Monstrosity.
"But sir, there is no sense or reason to it! the whole system is crazy!"
"That may very well be one of the reasons that the whole culture collapsed, y'know..."
"No one will be able to understand the lost secrets of Microsoft! It's hopeless... hopeless... "
Senior Manager: "... and another thing is that we are all going to have to play "nice" now. Is there anyone who knows the definition of this word?"
{a few seconds pass with muted mumbling}
Senior Manager: "Not a problem I had to look it up my self. Let me read it to you from the dictionary."
"nice (ns) adj. nicer, nicest."
"Pleasing and agreeable in nature: had a nice time."
"Having a pleasant or attractive appearance: a nice dress; a nice face."
"Exhibiting courtesy and politeness: a nice gesture."
"Of good character and reputation; respectable."
"Overdelicate or fastidious; fussy."
"Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle: a nice distinction; a nice sense of style."
"Done with delicacy and skill: a nice bit of craft."
"Used as an intensive with and: nice and warm. "
"Obsolete definitions:" "a. Wanton; profligate: "For when mine hours/Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives/Of me for jests" (Shakespeare). " "b. Affectedly modest; coy: "Ere . . ./The nice Morn on th' Indian steep,/From her cabin'd loop-hole peep" (John Milton)."
Senior Manager: "After discussing it with the other manager we all agreed that the most appropriate definition to use is this one:
Wanton; profligate: as in "For when mine hours/Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives/Of me for jests" (Shakespeare).
"What this means in this case is that we should be even more bold and brazen than ever! Any Questions? Good! Let's do it!"
We now have the classic conflict generated by criminal thought on both sides of the issue.
Protection from criminal actions by governments, and more specifically criminals in governments, big business, financial instituations, etc. who use and write the "law" to protect their own limited criminal interests is vitally important. Equally, protection from individuals who use such protection to justify and protect their own individual thievery and rape of the creative elements in the society is important as well.
What we have is a war between the criminal elements that make up and contribute to the current internet and global culture. It is a war between criminal organisations who want to maintain their monopolies, and individuals who have been driven to criminal behavior by the rip offs in the world around them. It becomes a part of the culture. It is extraordinarily difficult to treat everyone you deal with with some sort of "code of ethics" or "code of honor" if you run into the argument that "only losers pay full price", as noted in a recent Salon Article; or you are trapped in the culture of "Net Slaves"
Maybe we will start seeing Red china harassing windows users as being Members of the Evil Microsoft Cult.
"Members claim to be taken where they want to go today. This is an obvious lie, and a feeble attempt at brain washing"
Instead of burning books, thousands of computers and MS CDroms are collected together in public places for burning in bon-fires.
A new and special trade treaty between Haiti and Red China leads to a new research breakthrough, and the practice of acupunture on a doll stuffed with the shredded pages of a windows manual is used to render the health of Bill Gates more suitable to chinese policy aims.
A picture of Tux in a mao suit is paraded the Tienemen square
PayPal is a way to send money over the internet, it is a nice little operation, and convenient.
Just Web It is a free ecommerce/estore site, just right for the entry band selling some albums and an occasional t-shirt, etc.
These may not be the best options, but they help someone who doesn't have coding expertise to set up a web page.
Now we get to the morons who do not see what their little misstep does on the broader scale. I am reminded of the apocryphal story of Atari Computer. Supposedly, they ultimately went under in part because the games for the Atari computer were so popular that everyone hacked them, and the developers ultimately went broke, throwing in the towel. (Anyone remember copy protection?)
of course the hackers were pissed that the company went broke, and didn't connect what they did to the fate of the company.
ultimately, the company got sold and resold many times (history here, and here), and now is a subsidiary of Hasbro.
Officially, there were other market forces at work. But I can not help wondering if these wise fools contributed to the downfall.
I imagine that there are going to be all kinds of ideas that will be tried out. Some kinda flaky.
I am reminded of the april fools joke that was offering free cars if you accepted advertising on the side of the car, etc. It has since made the news as a legit business idea in California. Not that I am surprised.
People would have to treat kids with respect instead of bulls****ing them
We couldn't dominate them by keeping them locked up, lying to them, etc. We would have to come up with a system of education based on the fundamentals of human communication We would have to educate them based on the realities of the world instead of our agenda We would have to brainwash them hard and fast, instead of having the luxury of taking our time. We would have to teach them how to evaluate data (on the basis of the old Garbage In, Garbage Out theory) It is too much effort to make the effort for individual education We would rather spoon feed them our junque in large rooms with small windows. We don't want to take the blame for getting caught with our pants down. we do not want to be the outsiders in their world
nuclear winter being the generic term for the effect of exceptionally large dust clouds that form after certain catastrophic events, such as nuclear bombs, and in this case, asteroid strikes.
although there has not been alot of work in the field of archeology regarding excavation of sites of pre-human nuclear explosions
I still think that Lucas messed it up by not having Anakin be twins.
it would have messed with alot of peoples minds, especially if both had potential, but only one went to get training. Even if they were not identical twins.
the arguments and potential for speculation would be outrageous.
As it is, the basic plot points are known, and there is no mystery beyond the usual details. [BOOM!]
Unless something unusal comes up in the movie, there really isn't anything to look forward to except for the usual star wars stuff. He told a basic story, and left nothing basically unresolved to make people nervous. In this kind of situation, nervous is good.
Slashdot Mirror
sort of sound similar to what we have now....
Let's face it, even though print media was invented over 500 years ago, there are still billions of people who read print media from time to time. The glib catch phrase that it is *so* 20th century (for example) when applied to print media makes it sound that there are maybe three people left on the planet would read print media. When in fact the people on the cutting edge are not the majority by any means.
Long ago, and far away, when I lived on another planet and worked in retail repair shop, I would often tell customers hungry for the latest gadget that "If you can buy it, it is already obsolete".
Point being that 1) you can get into an endless treadmill trying to keep uyp with the technology and every new toy; and 2) even tho plenty of new tech toys will being coming out, the vast majority of technologies will stay around in some form for a very long time to come. Alot of folks will not change out a working solution to a problem just because of razzle by a technology spin doctor. Yes, there are problems in waiting too long, but on the other hand there are still lots of businesses who are **still** running on a paper system, never mind something as archaic as a dos boook keeping system on a 286
So this worry about the technology edge has some truth, but it is not nearly as dire as panic would suggest.
This planet may be the slums, but the rest of the local places are just burned out wrecks.
I mean there is nothing decent until you get *past* the asteroid belt. and that used to be a cool party planet until that one weekend blast that got out of hand...
and let's face it, for the most part, we are way out in the middle of nowhere. sort of like the interstellar equivalent of Las Vegas in the desert before there were hotels, etc.... No-one visits except for the equivalent of UFO teenagers out on a road trip stoned out of their gourds, and playing mind games with the local natives.
Talk about annoying....As posted on the Microsoft link:
This of course would be a real bummer.now if you are running an Olde Dos System (TM), you might run into a virus that plays a happy melody, but your antivirus would have to be about 5 years out of date, to say the least.
add the headphones and the eye gear, and away you go ...
Internal to a company, you can certainly modularize your work to some degree, so you DO have a fighting chance. But things have to be designed from the ground up that way.
Otherwise the terrors of spaghetti code await you.
and spaghetti design, and spaghetti management, and spaghetti specifications ....
As a general simple example, a basic invoicing system would include a customer table, a saleperson table, an invoice table, a line item table, a partnumber table, an inventory table, etc, etc, etc.
Now we add to this the specific demands of the company such as auto-calculation of local and regional taxes, preferances for data entry screens, the exact data that the user desires to be stored, ease of use issues so that the sales geeks can actually use the system, requirements of suppliers in terms of ordering a variety of items, etc....
It becomes a bloody mess because of the intense customization required. There is no standardized way of running a business. Each CEO/CIO/CFO etc has their own ideas regarding the specific details on how things should be set up.
Thus we have the market for companies that provide business solutions for specific markets and business types. Each one requires a specific expert knowledge of the demands of that particular industry, with all of the quirks that go with it. Within that industry you can something stand could serve as a standard, but it would likely be promoted by a single dominant solution provider of some sort.
You could even set them up on a web site with your out of country friend doing the same. A fan website showing the rising skyline of shanghai.
go to the website to see the new picture, and then pull it from the cache to decode.
the aliens are all good (the goodie two shoes option),
the Aliens are all bad (the paranoia option)?
Or something like out of babylon five where you are careful about what you ask for because the answers surpass all your dreams and nightmares. (surprise option)
Or does he go to the loony bin?
Or does he get abducted and dis-appear into the great beyond?
Or what?
submit a story that was interesting, but is slightly stale.
Watch it make the front page
watch the site get slash dotted.
Presto chango! instant DDOS!
the poor guys trying to run the site probably haven't even figured out what is going on yet - They just know it looks like legit traffic, and they likely have an account that that charges big bucks for heavy traffic.
so for them they are likely just standing back in awe at an attack that looks like it is coming in from maybe 100,000 sites.
Imagine if the site is hosted on some kids home machine?
A human, for example, has so much redundant DNA that using a large chunk of it for extra storage would not be a hassle. And if the humans got to the point of decoding it, well, they would be sufficiently advanced to handle it. The degeneration over generations would be handled by redundancies, etc.
Wait a minute . . .
this sounds suspiciously like something some nutcase came up with once - - it can't be true, it can't be true .....
Senior Manager: " ... and another thing is that we are all going to have to play "nice" now. Is there anyone who knows the definition of this word?"
{a few seconds pass with muted mumbling}
Senior Manager: "Not a problem I had to look it up my self. Let me read it to you from the dictionary."
Senior Manager: "After discussing it with the other manager we all agreed that the most appropriate definition to use is this one: "What this means in this case is that we should be even more bold and brazen than ever! Any Questions? Good! Let's do it!"Protection from criminal actions by governments, and more specifically criminals in governments, big business, financial instituations, etc. who use and write the "law" to protect their own limited criminal interests is vitally important. Equally, protection from individuals who use such protection to justify and protect their own individual thievery and rape of the creative elements in the society is important as well.
What we have is a war between the criminal elements that make up and contribute to the current internet and global culture. It is a war between criminal organisations who want to maintain their monopolies, and individuals who have been driven to criminal behavior by the rip offs in the world around them. It becomes a part of the culture. It is extraordinarily difficult to treat everyone you deal with with some sort of "code of ethics" or "code of honor" if you run into the argument that "only losers pay full price", as noted in a recent Salon Article; or you are trapped in the culture of "Net Slaves"
Let's see:
...
07/09/00 21:50:32 whois !NETBLK-PBI-CUSTNET-4056@whois.arin.net
whois -h whois.arin.net !netblk-pbi-custnet-4056
BRE Properties (NETBLK-PBI-CUSTNET-4056)
1700 Promontory Lane
San Ramon, CA 94583
USA
Netname: PBI-CUSTNET-4056
Netblock: 216.100.51.0 - 216.100.51.255
Coordinator:
Campillo, Doug (DC199-ARIN) DCAMPILLO@BREPROPERTIES.COM
415 445-6575
Record last updated on 12-Feb-1999.
Database last updated on 7-Jul-2000 17:53:46 EDT.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
HEY! Spam is ILLEGAL in California!!!!!
contact your local attorney general!
"Members claim to be taken where they want to go today. This is an obvious lie, and a feeble attempt at brain washing"
Instead of burning books, thousands of computers and MS CDroms are collected together in public places for burning in bon-fires.
A new and special trade treaty between Haiti and Red China leads to a new research breakthrough, and the practice of acupunture on a doll stuffed with the shredded pages of a windows manual is used to render the health of Bill Gates more suitable to chinese policy aims.
A picture of Tux in a mao suit is paraded the Tienemen square
then again, maybe not .........
this might not be a good idea after all?????
checkout for example PayPal, and Just Web It.
PayPal is a way to send money over the internet, it is a nice little operation, and convenient.
Just Web It is a free ecommerce/estore site, just right for the entry band selling some albums and an occasional t-shirt, etc.
These may not be the best options, but they help someone who doesn't have coding expertise to set up a web page.
Now we get to the morons who do not see what their little misstep does on the broader scale. I am reminded of the apocryphal story of Atari Computer. Supposedly, they ultimately went under in part because the games for the Atari computer were so popular that everyone hacked them, and the developers ultimately went broke, throwing in the towel. (Anyone remember copy protection?)
of course the hackers were pissed that the company went broke, and didn't connect what they did to the fate of the company.
ultimately, the company got sold and resold many times (history here, and here), and now is a subsidiary of Hasbro.
Officially, there were other market forces at work. But I can not help wondering if these wise fools contributed to the downfall.
That never stopped Microsoft!
But I suppose.......
I imagine that there are going to be all kinds of ideas that will be tried out. Some kinda flaky.
I am reminded of the april fools joke that was offering free cars if you accepted advertising on the side of the car, etc. It has since made the news as a legit business idea in California. Not that I am surprised.
Microsoft Freedom to Innovate Network
16625 Redmond Way Ste, M-447
Redmond, WA
98052-9724
email at msfin@microsoft.com
call at 1-888-321-3999
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Personally, I would want us to call them up, not email. It's on their nickel!
I would suggest that we ask for them to come clean, and tell us who the founders are and the sponsors, etc.
Ask them all of the embaressing questions. Tell them that you are a juornalist for an email newsletter, etc. and ask hostile questions.
Sound professional, but stick it to them.
For Example:"In light of the facts of the the case (blah blah blah) how do you justify the following crimes under the "freedom to innovate"?"
and if they dis-agree, ask them how they can dis-agree with Facts? Don't let them weasel!
although there has not been alot of work in the field of archeology regarding excavation of sites of pre-human nuclear explosions
it would have messed with alot of peoples minds, especially if both had potential, but only one went to get training. Even if they were not identical twins.
the arguments and potential for speculation would be outrageous.
As it is, the basic plot points are known, and there is no mystery beyond the usual details. [BOOM!]
Unless something unusal comes up in the movie, there really isn't anything to look forward to except for the usual star wars stuff. He told a basic story, and left nothing basically unresolved to make people nervous. In this kind of situation, nervous is good.