Corporations never get get tried for antitrust violations until it's much too late and in many cases the decision is at least partially reversed just a few years later. The telephone companies and the power companies come to mind.
Any time a corporation is faced with the decision of whether or not to use it's size to unfairly influence the market it is always profitable to do so. Hence the antitrust laws don't even serve as a deterent.
Jerry Springer is about as real as WWF.
I personally know a couple a group of girls who got on some such talk show (I'm not sure if it was Jerry Springer in particular) with a completely fictional story about lesbian infedelity. The fight scenes are likewise staged. You don't think he could get away with airing a show where he regularly incited his guests to punch each other in the face, do you?
I'd much rather get ahold of a wearable. Does anyone know of any such plans? I've seen the PC104 based wearble that Charmed Technolgies makes but it's still a bit clunky. Maybe someday I can get a Microoptical display and set of datagloves, attached to a Transmeta wearable. Check out weracam for some really cool uses of wearables. Steve Mann has a system that let's you take notes on people and if the mounted camera recognizes them it automatically pops up the notes in overlay. He also has a high speed camera that lets him read the writing off the sides of tires on moving cars.
Have you ever seen a map of the great wall? It's over 6000 Kilometers long. There is no walking around it. The great wall sucessfully repelled many enemy invasions. Those that did get through were usually aided by Chinese traitors.
Did anyone find a pricetag for these things?
Also is seem to remember reading about Steve Mann having a highspeed camera attached to his wearable. Supposedly it allowed him to read the writing on the tires of passing cars. Anyone got a link?
Open source projects seem to need a critical mass before they can really take advantage of being open sourced. The mistake that the Mozilla team made was that they tried to cram in too much functionality instead of creating a small extensible browser that worked. So everyone took a look at it and said "This software really blows!" and moved on.
If M18 is reasonably stable many people will use it long enough to start coding rather than just submiting bug reports (which is important too).
As the number of people who have access to code increases the success of OSS projects will increase. There will probably still be a market for CSS but I think that will mostly be military work and extremely specific apps which can't draw the necessary number of users to take advantage of OSS (ie controller software for some fabulously expensive telescope).
Maybe this contest could be redone with everyone dating and signing their entries. Then the winner applies for the patent with the support of the community. I'll bet you can patent something if the earliest example of prior art is proveably your work. Lawers anyone? I'd contribute for this.
I never actually got to play with one of the mechanical turtles but we had Logo in grade school. We had C-64s with a little triangle that represented the turtle. I don't think I can remember a single Logo command anymore. go 30? left 45? lift pen? something like that.
There is a shortage of programmers in this country that's why so many of us are overpaid. Getting more programmers into the country is a good idea but I don't think H1-B's are the way to do it.
Having competition which can be forced to accept lower wages is unfair to american programmers. If foreign workers are going to be imported then they should be allowed to compete like everyone else.
If we're going to export software assignments to foreign programming houses, fine. If we're going to allow more people to emmigrate on the basis of having a usefull skill, fine.
But H1-B's are a farce. They solve only part of the problem, they're only a temporary fix, and they're extremely exploitive of the foreign workers.
Yes. Railroads and oil companies were world-transforming technologies. But there is something which sets information technology apart from these. Our interpretation of law is based on information (the constitution, amendments, precedents etc). A technology which alters the way we access such information is worthy of particular attention.
Also I don't think the concepts behind oil company and railroad monopolies are as difficult to understand. MS takem alot of anticompetitive actions which it can hide in the technology.
Does anyone know anything about the technical background of the judge? If doesn't understand the technology and given MS' history with the appelate courts they may actually be looking for a shorter trial.
Alot of the issues in this case take large amount of non-standard-legal background knowledge. If MS can arrange it so that there isn't enough time for the judge to really learn what's going on they may be able to get a decision in their favor based on ignorance.
Re:Good hackers are good. Bad hackers are bad.
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2 Views of Hackers
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· Score: 1
To be fair, alot of SysOps read bugtraq without posting so they can secure their systems.
I'm not one to bitch and moan about how much cooler things used to be. But sometimes I miss the days of being able to read every single post on slashdot every day and still have plenty of time to get all my work done.
With regard to the supernatural, the difference is that believing in something like evil deities controlling reality doesn't confer any practical benefit. These deities are presumably undetectable and can not be influenced by us. According to the adherants of many religions deities, whether good or evil, do have a practical effect on humans. While they may not manifest themselves in experimentaly verifieable ways our reactions to their wishes determine the fate of what religous people call our souls. Our inability to perceive such powers does not preclude their existance. For example, a person who was born blind cannot truly understand the concept of red or even color, nor could you explain it to them on the basis of anything other than faith. But when a piece of iron is red you probably shouldn't touch it.
But at least within the framework of science, there aren't the sorts of inconsistencies and fallacies How about Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, the dual nature of light, or the dead cat experiment?
I can believe I exist because I observe myself. I can believe certain properties of the universe are true for the context in which we can observe them. There is a valid, logical argument in favor of believing these things in the absence of data to the contrary. What is this valid, logical argument in favor of believing these thing in the absence of data to the contrary?
What are empirical observations based on? Whatever measurements we take come down to our senses; sight, sound, etc. But ultimately we must believe that our senses are a reflection of reality solely on the basis of faith.
I can hold a rock in my hand. I can feel the force that it exerts on my hand and it's texture. I can see the surface of the rock. When I drop it I can watch it fall and here the thunk when it hits the ground. But how can I know that these sensations are indicative of a rock? How can I know that they indicate anything at all? Would I have different sensations if I were disimbodied spirit being fed hallucinations by an evil deity?
Futhermore, what logical reason is there for believing that the rock will even fall the next time you drop it? Even if your senses do reflect an objective reality, you cannot logically assume that the rock will fall simply because you have seen it fall X times in the past.
If you can go on to believe a vastly compliated system of physical laws based on observations which really don't prove anything at all, what is weak minded about someone who believes that God created the world in 7 days, or that Cthulu is eteranlly attempting reentry into our world, simply on faith?
And then you have superstition, fantasy, and the supernatural. Here we have absolutely zero observation of these things. All we have is human assertion. But aren't alot of your beliefs based simply on human assertion? What your parents told you, what your teachers told you, what scientists tell you. You believe that you could go out and test these things but until you actually do test any given assertion such as "The sun is made mostly of hydrogen." you are just taking it on faith.
These assertions are not verifiable or observable. The assertion doesn't explain anything either: it doesn't explain where the universe came from, as it begs the question of where this supernatural force came from. True, but that neither proves they are wrong, nor does it indicate that the adherants of such beliefs are weak minded. Science does not indicate morality to us but that does not make scientists amoral. And science doesn't do a very good job of explaining where the universe came from either. Doesn't the big bang theory beg the question of what made it go bang? Even Hawking's theory of circular time begs the question of why this time circle exists.
I'm not sure. I'm neither a Budhist nor a Discordian.
But my brother once asked me "Is it farther to Chicago or by bus." and I answered, "Because ice cream has no bones." So what DOES that make me?
Grasping at beliefs for which one has no logical basis is something which every human must do. Logic itself is based on the concept of proofs. Proofs are ultimately based on axioms and definitions. A definition is when we all say "Let's agree this is so." An axiom is just a guess. Take any axiom and prove it's true. I dare you, I double dare you. If you don't believe me go buy a logic textbook.
Furthermore many people view the "supernatural" aspects of religion as SYMBOLS. Human language is pretty shitty in terms of what information it can convey and symbols are often a powerful way to convey large amounts of data between a speaker and a listener.
Zen has had a major effect in the East. The famous tea ceremony is a Zen ritual. Many martial arts, especially Aikido draw heavily on Zen. You should also realize that while Asians spent plenty of time killing each other it usually wasn't on the basis of religion. So you'll find that many Asians practice several different religions and several different forms of the same religion applying them where appropriate. Zen is a fairly intellectual "sect" of Budhism. Zen monks have been writing about it for hundreds of years and you probably recognize some of them. Does a dog have the Buddah nature? What is the sound of one hand clapping? These are examples of Koans which are phrases designed to confuse the mind and open the practitioner up to enlightenment (Snowcrash anyone ?)
If you're just looking to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible doint something you're already good at you probably don't need to go to college. As several people here have pointed out you can make plenty of money as an MCSE and never set foot in a university.
But that's not really what college is about.
In college you also get to meet the people who are creating the world wich everyone else is making money off of. I'm not talking about the guys who set up networks or add a nifty perl script to a web site. I'm talking about the people who design the networks, protocols, and algorithms the rest of the world is using.
In college you get to work with these people and if you decide to go on to get a masters degree or a PHD they will help you along the way.
As a PHD candidate or a university researcher you have access to great equipment and huge budgets. You don't have to work on projects that management thinks will make money, you work on projects that intrest you.
Yes, it is possible to contact these people via email and IRC. Yes it is possible to learn these things on your own. But as an academian you get to do this stuff full time. And in academia it's the people who really know their shit who call the shots, not the guys in the suits.
This is an oversimplification but my point is that college isn't just about landing a fat job.
Why do people still refer to cell phones as status symbols? Anything available for $10 at 7-11 can hardly be considered a status symbol. Face it, people have cell phones because they're damn usefull, not because they're trying to impress anyone.
Gene Kan's testimony was pretty funny. Yes he did make some points defending Napster, Gnutella, and file sharing in general. But did any one else get the feeling that there was also a good deal of "Nannie nannie boo boo. This is going to happen and there's nothing you, nor the government, nor anyone else, can do about it."
It boggles me how unimaginative people can be. I have lots of friends who have degrees in engineering and they're constantly knocking project ideas because they seem unfeasable (sp?) in their narrow perceptions. Nothing interesting ever came of people saying "That'll never work." or "Such and such isn't possible."
I can't remeber who said either but there are two quotes I've always liked.
"If a young scientist says something is possible, he's probably right. If an old scientist says something is impossible, he's probably wrong."
"Scientists don't change their theories, they die."
Whoever wrote the script did a reasonable ammoutn of misquoting. Genkhis Khan once said "The best thing in life is victory. To crush your enemies, ride their horses, and embrace their wives and daughters." The quote at the beggining of the movie is also wrong. Nietche was speaking in the first person singular when he was talking about what makes him stronger.
Slashdot Mirror
Corporations never get get tried for antitrust violations until it's much too late and in many cases the decision is at least partially reversed just a few years later. The telephone companies and the power companies come to mind.
Any time a corporation is faced with the decision of whether or not to use it's size to unfairly influence the market it is always profitable to do so. Hence the antitrust laws don't even serve as a deterent.
Jerry Springer is about as real as WWF.
I personally know a couple a group of girls who got on some such talk show (I'm not sure if it was Jerry Springer in particular) with a completely fictional story about lesbian infedelity. The fight scenes are likewise staged. You don't think he could get away with airing a show where he regularly incited his guests to punch each other in the face, do you?
I'd much rather get ahold of a wearable. Does anyone know of any such plans? I've seen the PC104 based wearble that Charmed Technolgies makes but it's still a bit clunky. Maybe someday I can get a Microoptical display and set of datagloves, attached to a Transmeta wearable. Check out weracam for some really cool uses of wearables. Steve Mann has a system that let's you take notes on people and if the mounted camera recognizes them it automatically pops up the notes in overlay. He also has a high speed camera that lets him read the writing off the sides of tires on moving cars.
Have you ever seen a map of the great wall? It's over 6000 Kilometers long. There is no walking around it. The great wall sucessfully repelled many enemy invasions. Those that did get through were usually aided by Chinese traitors.
Who is being sexist here? Heise? The readers of /.? Echelon?
Did anyone find a pricetag for these things?
Also is seem to remember reading about Steve Mann having a highspeed camera attached to his wearable. Supposedly it allowed him to read the writing on the tires of passing cars. Anyone got a link?
Open source projects seem to need a critical mass before they can really take advantage of being open sourced. The mistake that the Mozilla team made was that they tried to cram in too much functionality instead of creating a small extensible browser that worked. So everyone took a look at it and said "This software really blows!" and moved on.
If M18 is reasonably stable many people will use it long enough to start coding rather than just submiting bug reports (which is important too).
As the number of people who have access to code increases the success of OSS projects will increase. There will probably still be a market for CSS but I think that will mostly be military work and extremely specific apps which can't draw the necessary number of users to take advantage of OSS (ie controller software for some fabulously expensive telescope).
Maybe this contest could be redone with everyone dating and signing their entries. Then the winner applies for the patent with the support of the community. I'll bet you can patent something if the earliest example of prior art is proveably your work. Lawers anyone? I'd contribute for this.
I never actually got to play with one of the mechanical turtles but we had Logo in grade school. We had C-64s with a little triangle that represented the turtle. I don't think I can remember a single Logo command anymore. go 30? left 45? lift pen? something like that.
There is a shortage of programmers in this country that's why so many of us are overpaid. Getting more programmers into the country is a good idea but I don't think H1-B's are the way to do it.
Having competition which can be forced to accept lower wages is unfair to american programmers. If foreign workers are going to be imported then they should be allowed to compete like everyone else.
If we're going to export software assignments to foreign programming houses, fine. If we're going to allow more people to emmigrate on the basis of having a usefull skill, fine.
But H1-B's are a farce. They solve only part of the problem, they're only a temporary fix, and they're extremely exploitive of the foreign workers.
Yes. Railroads and oil companies were world-transforming technologies. But there is something which sets information technology apart from these. Our interpretation of law is based on information (the constitution, amendments, precedents etc). A technology which alters the way we access such information is worthy of particular attention.
Also I don't think the concepts behind oil company and railroad monopolies are as difficult to understand. MS takem alot of anticompetitive actions which it can hide in the technology.
Does anyone know anything about the technical background of the judge? If doesn't understand the technology and given MS' history with the appelate courts they may actually be looking for a shorter trial.
Alot of the issues in this case take large amount of non-standard-legal background knowledge. If MS can arrange it so that there isn't enough time for the judge to really learn what's going on they may be able to get a decision in their favor based on ignorance.
To be fair, alot of SysOps read bugtraq without posting so they can secure their systems.
I'm not one to bitch and moan about how much cooler things used to be. But sometimes I miss the days of being able to read every single post on slashdot every day and still have plenty of time to get all my work done.
Yellow.
With regard to the supernatural, the difference is that believing in something like evil deities controlling reality doesn't confer any practical benefit. These deities are presumably undetectable and can not be influenced by us.
According to the adherants of many religions deities, whether good or evil, do have a practical effect on humans. While they may not manifest themselves in experimentaly verifieable ways our reactions to their wishes determine the fate of what religous people call our souls. Our inability to perceive such powers does not preclude their existance. For example, a person who was born blind cannot truly understand the concept of red or even color, nor could you explain it to them on the basis of anything other than faith. But when a piece of iron is red you probably shouldn't touch it.
But at least within the framework of science, there aren't the sorts of inconsistencies and fallacies
How about Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, the dual nature of light, or the dead cat experiment?
I can believe I exist because I observe myself. I can believe certain properties of the universe are true for the context in which we can observe them. There is a valid, logical argument in favor of believing these things in the absence of data to the contrary.
What is this valid, logical argument in favor of believing these thing in the absence of data to the contrary?
What are empirical observations based on? Whatever measurements we take come down to our senses; sight, sound, etc. But ultimately we must believe that our senses are a reflection of reality solely on the basis of faith.
I can hold a rock in my hand. I can feel the force that it exerts on my hand and it's texture. I can see the surface of the rock. When I drop it I can watch it fall and here the thunk when it hits the ground. But how can I know that these sensations are indicative of a rock? How can I know that they indicate anything at all? Would I have different sensations if I were disimbodied spirit being fed hallucinations by an evil deity?
Futhermore, what logical reason is there for believing that the rock will even fall the next time you drop it? Even if your senses do reflect an objective reality, you cannot logically assume that the rock will fall simply because you have seen it fall X times in the past.
If you can go on to believe a vastly compliated system of physical laws based on observations which really don't prove anything at all, what is weak minded about someone who believes that God created the world in 7 days, or that Cthulu is eteranlly attempting reentry into our world, simply on faith?
And then you have superstition, fantasy, and the supernatural. Here we have absolutely zero observation of these things. All we have is human assertion.
But aren't alot of your beliefs based simply on human assertion? What your parents told you, what your teachers told you, what scientists tell you. You believe that you could go out and test these things but until you actually do test any given assertion such as "The sun is made mostly of hydrogen." you are just taking it on faith.
These assertions are not verifiable or observable. The assertion doesn't explain anything either: it doesn't explain where the universe came from, as it begs the question of where this supernatural force came from.
True, but that neither proves they are wrong, nor does it indicate that the adherants of such beliefs are weak minded. Science does not indicate morality to us but that does not make scientists amoral. And science doesn't do a very good job of explaining where the universe came from either. Doesn't the big bang theory beg the question of what made it go bang? Even Hawking's theory of circular time begs the question of why this time circle exists.
I'm not sure. I'm neither a Budhist nor a Discordian.
But my brother once asked me "Is it farther to Chicago or by bus." and I answered, "Because ice cream has no bones." So what DOES that make me?
Grasping at beliefs for which one has no logical basis is something which every human must do. Logic itself is based on the concept of proofs. Proofs are ultimately based on axioms and definitions. A definition is when we all say "Let's agree this is so." An axiom is just a guess. Take any axiom and prove it's true. I dare you, I double dare you. If you don't believe me go buy a logic textbook.
Furthermore many people view the "supernatural" aspects of religion as SYMBOLS. Human language is pretty shitty in terms of what information it can convey and symbols are often a powerful way to convey large amounts of data between a speaker and a listener.
Zen has had a major effect in the East. The famous tea ceremony is a Zen ritual. Many martial arts, especially Aikido draw heavily on Zen. You should also realize that while Asians spent plenty of time killing each other it usually wasn't on the basis of religion. So you'll find that many Asians practice several different religions and several different forms of the same religion applying them where appropriate. Zen is a fairly intellectual "sect" of Budhism. Zen monks have been writing about it for hundreds of years and you probably recognize some of them. Does a dog have the Buddah nature? What is the sound of one hand clapping? These are examples of Koans which are phrases designed to confuse the mind and open the practitioner up to enlightenment (Snowcrash anyone ?)
If you're just looking to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible doint something you're already good at you probably don't need to go to college. As several people here have pointed out you can make plenty of money as an MCSE and never set foot in a university. But that's not really what college is about. In college you also get to meet the people who are creating the world wich everyone else is making money off of. I'm not talking about the guys who set up networks or add a nifty perl script to a web site. I'm talking about the people who design the networks, protocols, and algorithms the rest of the world is using. In college you get to work with these people and if you decide to go on to get a masters degree or a PHD they will help you along the way. As a PHD candidate or a university researcher you have access to great equipment and huge budgets. You don't have to work on projects that management thinks will make money, you work on projects that intrest you. Yes, it is possible to contact these people via email and IRC. Yes it is possible to learn these things on your own. But as an academian you get to do this stuff full time. And in academia it's the people who really know their shit who call the shots, not the guys in the suits. This is an oversimplification but my point is that college isn't just about landing a fat job.
Why do people still refer to cell phones as status symbols? Anything available for $10 at 7-11 can hardly be considered a status symbol. Face it, people have cell phones because they're damn usefull, not because they're trying to impress anyone.
Gene Kan's testimony was pretty funny. Yes he did make some points defending Napster, Gnutella, and file sharing in general. But did any one else get the feeling that there was also a good deal of "Nannie nannie boo boo. This is going to happen and there's nothing you, nor the government, nor anyone else, can do about it."
It boggles me how unimaginative people can be. I have lots of friends who have degrees in engineering and they're constantly knocking project ideas because they seem unfeasable (sp?) in their narrow perceptions. Nothing interesting ever came of people saying "That'll never work." or "Such and such isn't possible."
I can't remeber who said either but there are two quotes I've always liked.
"If a young scientist says something is possible, he's probably right. If an old scientist says something is impossible, he's probably wrong."
"Scientists don't change their theories, they die."
Whoever wrote the script did a reasonable ammoutn of misquoting. Genkhis Khan once said "The best thing in life is victory. To crush your enemies, ride their horses, and embrace their wives and daughters." The quote at the beggining of the movie is also wrong. Nietche was speaking in the first person singular when he was talking about what makes him stronger.