Meet the Super Ultra-Plaid Dark Side of the Force. Frankly, it's astonishing that it will take a WalMart to do what all the folks on this site and others haven't with three years of complaining. But in WalMart I trust on this one. They are many times more powerful that the RIAA, and will squash them like a bug.
With all due respect, this is not an insightful comment, but a naive one. There are not many third party candidates who have been elected to office of any kind because the two-party system controls every lever of power right down to the local dog catcher. In short, whichever party controls the local machinery of government blocks you at every single level. That's the heart of what I have to say. For more details, read on:
I live in Brooklyn, and have been deeply involved with politics since the primary campaign. I helped form an all-volunteer, grassroots organization of 15,000 people. As we citizen activists have learned more about our system of government, it has become clear that the legacy of the Tammany Hall patronage system is still very much with us.
For example, in each district there are these positions called district leaders. District leaders are elected, but largely selected by those who politically control the district. Voter turnout to elect district leaders is extremely low, and quite easily controlled by democratic clubs run by a mere handful of people.
Now, district leaders decide who works the polls on election day. Why is that important? Because the voting machines for the parts of the district that you know don't support you can suddenly stop working. Or the poll workers can tell you that you have to have five forms of picture ID in order to vote. Or they will go into the booth and "help" you vote. Any number of things.
On Sept. 14th, I was a poll watcher for a primary for the NY state senate in the 17th state senate district in North Brooklyn. There was a candidate backed by the local machine, run by the local boss Vito Lopez. Then there was a community activist challenging him. The local boss is the chair of the state housing committee and controls all the housing projects in the district. If he finds out that you didn't vote the way he wants, you may suddenly find yourself thrown out of your apartment.
Now, the local boss didn't need to cheat, but he did. He cheated as facilely as you and I breathe. Every sort of irregularity you can imagine. The two candidates for the state senate seat were members of the same party, but the challenger still got blanked by the political machine. Do you really think that a third party candidate would have a snowball's chance in hell in that kind of environment? Not bloody likely.
"Why don't third party candidates simply organize and run a concerted effort?" you say. Well, that is far harder than you think. Institutions made up of many people do not invent themselves overnight, and even without outside interference it is difficult to get even a like-minded bunch of people working together coherently. Whoever likened such a thing to herding cats was a wise, wise man.
Plus, there are all sorts of structural barriers to becoming a third party. In New York alone, there are very onerous requirements for getting on the ballot. There is this complex formula that is used to determine how many signatures you have to get, but basically you have to get approx. 1500 good signatures in one district to appear on the ballot in that one district.
You have to do the same to get on the ballot in every other district in the state, of which there are very, very many. The rule of thumb is to get at least three times as many signatures as you need, because your opponent might challenge your petitions and get names thrown out. That means 4500 signatures per district. On a good day, it takes one person 4 hours to get 50 signatures.
Do the math. That means 90 people committing one day in each district in order to gather the signatures. Now, multiply that number by the 31 districts in New York State, and suddenly you have 2790 people that you need across the state to commit 11,190 man-hours to getting you those signatures. That's a lot. If you can't inspire that many volunteers to gather signatures, then you have to pay someone to do it. The going rate is $10/hr. That means it could cos
Well, whatever. I personally really enjoy the rock solid stability of Linux, the utter absence of virii, spyware, popups, adware, and segmentation faults, as well as the vast array of software that enjoys near 100% compatibility with other OS'es. Sure it would be nice to have more games for Tux, but a person can always get a Playstation to scratch that particular itch.
But as far as getting most kinds of work done, Linux is great. I recommend it to all my clients. Most of them have spent enough hours sitting around getting further and further behind their deadlines because trojan horse x has taken down the MS network; it's an easy sell indeed.
I personally think this is a good idea. I know that there will be the usual folks who chime in that they only use the CLI, but for most people who need to use office software that's not really very practical (yes, I love vi too but most PHB's see a "txt" extension and go "huh?").
I would love to be able to gesture with my nose and move the cursor. The carpal from using the mouse I have leads to back and shoulder pain, not just tightness in the hands and arms.
There is Poltergeist-like evil in that place. Downtown's built on an Indian burial ground, BTW, similar to what triggered everything in the movie. I experienced the malevolence myself on many, many an occasion, but the best was when I bought my girlfriend some earrings at the Art Institute. The clerk put them in a box, taped it shut, then put it in a bag and stapled that shut at the top. I watched her do this. Then I walked out to the Planetarium and back to my hotel on Michigan Ave. I opened the box to see the earrings again, and they were gone. The box had still been taped, the bag stapled. They just vanished into thin air.
I'm telling you, there's something that just ain't right about that town, and no number of cameras will ever be able to capture it (except perhaps for a faint distortion somewhere in the images...)
The previous post by jsebrech was much closer to what actually happens: corporate execs and shareholders benefit from outsourcing, the average American does not. There is some benefit to a person holding a retirement plan, sure, but do you really think that a 2% rise in your well-diversified , oh, say, $70,000 stock portfolio due to outsourcing will offset the $90K job you just lost because they outsourced you? And I'm not even getting into externalities here, such as unemployment insurance to be paid, broken marriages because of increased stress, lost tax revenue for the government, etc. etc.
Losing lots of jobs is, I'm sorry to say, a big deal. Especially when no new jobs are being created to replace them, at the same general salary level. The only way for outsourcing to not be a zero-sum game is for them to be able to move to India to keep their same jobs. That's classical economic theory. In order for labor and capital to balance, they must be allowed to seek equilibrium. But while capital is allowed to move freely, labor is not. If your annual income is less than seven figures, outsourcing is most likely a zero-sum game for you at this point.
All the special effects and futuristic themes notwithstanding, what separates the neat from the incredible is what a sci-fi film says about the human condition. It's no surprise that Blade Runner is so highly placed--it deals with the question of what really makes us human. Likewise the other films in that poll pretty much do that too.
Perhaps one measure of a truly great sci-fi film is the extent to which it becomes a popular metaphor afterward. For that reason, unlike others here, I'm not surprised Matrix is on the list. I hear people make reference to it a lot.
anyone out there with the specs handy for how much helium/hydrogen(if you like to live dangerously) it would take to lift one 250 lb. person? i think it would be much cooler to have traffic floating around instead of the blast of a jet engine every morning when the neighbor takes off for work.
networked gaming is fine and all, but there was just something magical about D&D. the imagination is still the best form of entertainment there is. pre-packaged experience is not all it's cracked up to be.
lord landon, here's to you, my tight-wad paladin pal!
i cannot believe that this was modded up to 5. anyone arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that blue collar workers are just "human machines" and that white collar workers are somehow more intelligent and skilled either has a lot of growing up to do or desperately needs a visit from the down-sizing fairy.
the fact is, rare indeed is the employee who does not do the same task over and over again, white-collar/blue-collar be damned. my brother is an engineer with ford motor company. he graduated with honors from carnegie-mellon. know what he works on now, day in and day out? hood fasteners. they could just as easily replace him with another engineer to design hood fasteners as they could the union guy assembling them on the line. it is, my friend, the hallmark of working for corporate America. they do not want you to be indispensable, because then you are irreplaceable. they dedicate entire management training sessions to making sure that the enterprise is not exposed to that sort of risk.
unions protect their members against the amoral, artificial persons known as corporations. if you are not an executive with a high priced lawyer, or in a union that can protect your livelihood, then you are vulnerable. from the sound of it, your turn is long overdue, and mazeltov! redefining the meaning of "blue collar" and "white collar" to suit your current situation won't seem so cute then.
Personally, I'd rather see endogenous advances like developing Dune-like Mentat abilities or nanomachine-assisted improvements than trying to perfect external systems like computers or robots. My ideal combination would be something like the photo-synthesizing guy from the "Shadow of the Torturer" so I wouldn't have to worry about food; Mentat abilities so there wouldn't be concerns about hard-drive crashes, etc.; and Deus Ex style nano-upgrades.
Mechanical or Cloned Heart? Decisions,decisions...
on
Living Without a Pulse
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· Score: 2
I have a low LVEF (Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction). A couple years ago while jogging I suffered a tachycardia (extremely rapid heart rate) that had me at around 300 beats a minute for 45 minutes. They gave me a defibrillator, but said that it was possible that the drugs might not be able to stop the decline of my LVEF and would require a heart transplant. Heart transplants are extremely hard to get, btw. Basically, if you need one, you're screwed.
So to me, this device looks pretty darn cool. The cloned hearts grown from your own cells method is also pretty darn neat. The prospect of being an actual Borg is enticing, but the reservations about secondary effects of not having a pulse do give one pause. Yet if going with a cloned heart encourages the cloning of other organs, then perhaps that would be a better way to go. Decisions, decisions...
Downloading takes the critical distribution link in the music delivery chain away from the big companies. That alone gives the artist the biggest chance to break free that they've ever had. P2P file-sharing, not iTunes-style pay-per-download, weakens the promotion link in the music delivery chain to some extent as well. That is, it doesn't cost you anything to experiment.
Big promotions via radio and ad campaigns are a different matter. Pretty tough for the small artist to negotiate with ClearChannel for airtime. Also pretty tall order for them to finance a billboard in Times Square. But that's the case now, so perhaps we're looking at a future where small artists starting out have to look to viral marketing to get their name out there.
What must go is the big labels acting like dictators, oppressing artists and dumbing down music to fit their marketing models. They should shrink and shrink until they're like specialized ad agencies, marketing a product like every other firm on Madison Avenue does. Then successful artists can hire them just like they'd hire an accountant, retain a lawyer, or any other sort of specialized service.
It's still not easy for small artists to accomplish what a label does now, but with home-recording studios more affordable than ever, P2P file-sharing for free advertising, and accounting software like Quicken it's more possible now than it ever has been for the motivated indy artist to DYI their own success.
I was heavily involved with the Dean campaign here in Brooklyn and New York. The "many eyes poring over the code" aspect of OSS was very helpful to the campaign, not just in terms of the great ideas that were generated, but in the sense of personal investment in the process that resulted. That is, you felt like you, Joe Q. Public, knowing nothing about politics and never having been involved before, could show up at a campaign event, express a good idea, and have it be taken up and acted upon immediately. Likewise, bad ideas weren't. But at least they too were listened to. It was like a massive peer-review system, and that is why those who worked on the campaign were so excited about something that most Americans couldn't be bothered to think about: the democratic process. Of course, that same unique political culture that sprang up around the Dean campaign was also reflected on the technical side by the fact that 99% of all the software run was Linux/OSS, but that's really incidental to the point.
So, why did the campaign fail? If this OS-like culture was so great, then why did it not capture the nomination? There are two main reasons.
First, although there were hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the country, individual state campaigns were run by the same old-school political consultants who run traditional campaigns for every other candidate out there. They too had never seen anything like the Dean volunteers, and had no idea what to do with them. Scores of people would pour through their doors every day, wanting to do something terrific for their country, only to be told to go lick envelopes.
Soon volunteers figured out that working at the official campaign headquarters was not the best place to apply their energy, and they left to start their own grassroots groups. Thus they continued to operate with great enthusiasm, but with no or little informed training.
The paid political consultants perhaps did this out of confusion about what this grassroots thing was, but there was probably also a cynical component. To wit, political consultants make their living by being the gatekeepers to political involvement where they are. It does not pay to train hordes of regular citizens how to work the levers of power, because political candidates will shortly realize that they don't need you to get elected. To put it in tech terms, the political consultants were like the closed source Microsofts of the world who don't want you to understand how the source code works, but pay them handsomely to make the magic work.
Most tragically, the political consultants, while remaining MS in their souls, took up the rhetoric of Linux in that they eschewed building the working relationships with elected officials and other operators in the local political milieu, saying "they don't need them, because they have these ravening hoardes of volunteers." Thus they had neither the trained, effective legions of volunteers, nor the strength of the traditional players to get the job done.
This disconnect between the closed source political consultants and the open source volunteers converged disastrously in Iowa. The Iowa caucuses are manipulated and won by skilled political operators. They could also have been won with properly trained volunteers. The Dean campaign had neither, and Kerry, who went the old skill route with the paid political operators, walked away with the prize. In the end, the thousands upon thousands of Dean volunteers who travelled to Iowa were like a Formula 1 engine, racing at a million rpm, yet not engaged to the drive train.
The second factor in Dean's loss was that the media did a hatchet job on him. They tried and tried for months to find something, anything to render him unfit for office. All they could come up with that he was 'too angry.' That didn't really hurt him, though, because millions of Americans are also angry at the direction this country is headed in. So then they took to digging up closets in Toronto to find an old video of De
"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."
I would have liked to learn from Fox News that the Saudis have bankrolled W. from the beginning, but I didn't.
I would have liked for CNN to show me footage of W. reading 'My Pet Goat' instead of leaping up to deal with Sept. 11th, but I didn't.
I would prefer for the media to lay bare the backroom dealings of this administration, but they aren't.
In short, Moore is the only ones asking difficult questions of power in this age of craven, obsequious journalism. And I submit to you that doing so is the defining quality of the true patriot.
If you object to what Moore is saying, then ask yourself if you object because what he is saying is incorrect, or if you simply resent him pointing it out. If it's the latter, then perhaps you should take a long, hard look at yourself, my friend.
Are not News for Nerds either. Star Wars might be about space and aliens, but it's not really about technology. It's just something that nerds want to talk about from a nerd perspective.
For that matter, on 9/11 all the stories on/. were not about technology, nor was the Columbine aftermath. But/. still talked about it.
Please consider that/. is not just about technology but a place for nerds to talk to other nerds about things that concern them. If you want pure technology, go read Tom's Hardware. This is a community where occasionally people talk about things that are not directly related to technology.
is good for the gander. If CEO's are so excited about the savings of outsourcing workers' jobs to India, then by all means let's save ourselves as the shareholders another bundle of money by outsourcing the CEOs' jobs to India too. With video-conferencing there's absolutely no reason why a physical presence is required. Hell, fit 'em with networked gaming helmets and they can even play virtual golf together.
But if that solution doesn't sound fair, I'm all for tying all these CEOs up into a big bag and beating it with sticks, too...
Adam Smith would be appalled and horrified what his name and ideas have been attached to in today's American economy. It is far, far from being a free market. In a free market, there would be no such thing as patents and infinite copyright, and there would scarcely be licensing, trademarks, and all the many, many other implements the U.S. government uses to restrict free trade and reward current players in the economy.
No, what we have in the United States is crony capitalism, plain and simple. Even the blindest Miltonian economist can see that, and many of them have recently said so.
IAAE (I am an economist). See, the problem with free trade is that the people who tout it are really only talking about the free movement of capital. Free movement of labor does not really exist. If a U.S. company outsources your job to India, can you pick up and move to India to get it back? No. Foreign workers can come here (yes, it's a pain in the ass to get the visa, but it is done) and take jobs from Americans, and foreign workers can take jobs away from Americans through outsourcing. But can Americans go take away their jobs where they are? No.
So you get an imbalance in the global market. The Chicago School of Economics would say that given free movement of capital and labor that the market would seek a global equilibrium whereby the programmer in India would make the same wages as a programmer in America. But in reality there are significant barriers to entry, especially for the American worker trying to go elsewhere to take jobs away from the locals. So if you really are a free-trader, and not just an MBA trying to justify your ridiculously high bonus, then you'd push for the elimination of structural barriers to free labor flow. Then all kinds of neat things will happen like foreign MBAs coming to America to drive down the cost of executive pay, and you the American techie can go get yourself a good job in sunny Goa.
But somehow I don't think that the MBAs making these outsourcing decisions would like that kind of free trade.
Great movie, and very faithful to the Patrick O'Brien books. Anyone who loves the techno babble of Trek would love the nautical techno babble and minutiae in this one. Also great character development without any cloying romantic sidestory.
Well you learn something new everyday. Didn't even know that existed, but it does prove what vi users have been saying about emacs all along, don't it?;-)
for the Iraqis, maybe not so much for Bush. Unless all the attacks stop, flowers bloom in the desert, and sheep lie down with wolves. His buddies at Halliburton are still gouging the American taxpayer on the no-bid contracts they got. Unemployment is still really high in the US, fewer and fewer people have health insurance, and on and on. Bush will probably get a small bounce in his popularity, but not for long. The people that want him out of power won't change their minds because of this.
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Meet the Super Ultra-Plaid Dark Side of the Force. Frankly, it's astonishing that it will take a WalMart to do what all the folks on this site and others haven't with three years of complaining. But in WalMart I trust on this one. They are many times more powerful that the RIAA, and will squash them like a bug.
With all due respect, this is not an insightful comment, but a naive one. There are not many third party candidates who have been elected to office of any kind because the two-party system controls every lever of power right down to the local dog catcher. In short, whichever party controls the local machinery of government blocks you at every single level. That's the heart of what I have to say. For more details, read on:
I live in Brooklyn, and have been deeply involved with politics since the primary campaign. I helped form an all-volunteer, grassroots organization of 15,000 people. As we citizen activists have learned more about our system of government, it has become clear that the legacy of the Tammany Hall patronage system is still very much with us.
For example, in each district there are these positions called district leaders. District leaders are elected, but largely selected by those who politically control the district. Voter turnout to elect district leaders is extremely low, and quite easily controlled by democratic clubs run by a mere handful of people.
Now, district leaders decide who works the polls on election day. Why is that important? Because the voting machines for the parts of the district that you know don't support you can suddenly stop working. Or the poll workers can tell you that you have to have five forms of picture ID in order to vote. Or they will go into the booth and "help" you vote. Any number of things.
On Sept. 14th, I was a poll watcher for a primary for the NY state senate in the 17th state senate district in North Brooklyn. There was a candidate backed by the local machine, run by the local boss Vito Lopez. Then there was a community activist challenging him. The local boss is the chair of the state housing committee and controls all the housing projects in the district. If he finds out that you didn't vote the way he wants, you may suddenly find yourself thrown out of your apartment.
Now, the local boss didn't need to cheat, but he did. He cheated as facilely as you and I breathe. Every sort of irregularity you can imagine. The two candidates for the state senate seat were members of the same party, but the challenger still got blanked by the political machine. Do you really think that a third party candidate would have a snowball's chance in hell in that kind of environment? Not bloody likely.
"Why don't third party candidates simply organize and run a concerted effort?" you say. Well, that is far harder than you think. Institutions made up of many people do not invent themselves overnight, and even without outside interference it is difficult to get even a like-minded bunch of people working together coherently. Whoever likened such a thing to herding cats was a wise, wise man.
Plus, there are all sorts of structural barriers to becoming a third party. In New York alone, there are very onerous requirements for getting on the ballot. There is this complex formula that is used to determine how many signatures you have to get, but basically you have to get approx. 1500 good signatures in one district to appear on the ballot in that one district.
You have to do the same to get on the ballot in every other district in the state, of which there are very, very many. The rule of thumb is to get at least three times as many signatures as you need, because your opponent might challenge your petitions and get names thrown out. That means 4500 signatures per district. On a good day, it takes one person 4 hours to get 50 signatures.
Do the math. That means 90 people committing one day in each district in order to gather the signatures. Now, multiply that number by the 31 districts in New York State, and suddenly you have 2790 people that you need across the state to commit 11,190 man-hours to getting you those signatures. That's a lot. If you can't inspire that many volunteers to gather signatures, then you have to pay someone to do it. The going rate is $10/hr. That means it could cos
Well, whatever. I personally really enjoy the rock solid stability of Linux, the utter absence of virii, spyware, popups, adware, and segmentation faults, as well as the vast array of software that enjoys near 100% compatibility with other OS'es. Sure it would be nice to have more games for Tux, but a person can always get a Playstation to scratch that particular itch.
But as far as getting most kinds of work done, Linux is great. I recommend it to all my clients. Most of them have spent enough hours sitting around getting further and further behind their deadlines because trojan horse x has taken down the MS network; it's an easy sell indeed.
I personally think this is a good idea. I know that there will be the usual folks who chime in that they only use the CLI, but for most people who need to use office software that's not really very practical (yes, I love vi too but most PHB's see a "txt" extension and go "huh?").
I would love to be able to gesture with my nose and move the cursor. The carpal from using the mouse I have leads to back and shoulder pain, not just tightness in the hands and arms.
There is Poltergeist-like evil in that place. Downtown's built on an Indian burial ground, BTW, similar to what triggered everything in the movie. I experienced the malevolence myself on many, many an occasion, but the best was when I bought my girlfriend some earrings at the Art Institute. The clerk put them in a box, taped it shut, then put it in a bag and stapled that shut at the top. I watched her do this. Then I walked out to the Planetarium and back to my hotel on Michigan Ave. I opened the box to see the earrings again, and they were gone. The box had still been taped, the bag stapled. They just vanished into thin air.
I'm telling you, there's something that just ain't right about that town, and no number of cameras will ever be able to capture it (except perhaps for a faint distortion somewhere in the images...)
IAACSE (I am a Chicago School economist):
The previous post by jsebrech was much closer to what actually happens: corporate execs and shareholders benefit from outsourcing, the average American does not. There is some benefit to a person holding a retirement plan, sure, but do you really think that a 2% rise in your well-diversified , oh, say, $70,000 stock portfolio due to outsourcing will offset the $90K job you just lost because they outsourced you? And I'm not even getting into externalities here, such as unemployment insurance to be paid, broken marriages because of increased stress, lost tax revenue for the government, etc. etc.
Losing lots of jobs is, I'm sorry to say, a big deal. Especially when no new jobs are being created to replace them, at the same general salary level. The only way for outsourcing to not be a zero-sum game is for them to be able to move to India to keep their same jobs. That's classical economic theory. In order for labor and capital to balance, they must be allowed to seek equilibrium. But while capital is allowed to move freely, labor is not. If your annual income is less than seven figures, outsourcing is most likely a zero-sum game for you at this point.
All the special effects and futuristic themes notwithstanding, what separates the neat from the incredible is what a sci-fi film says about the human condition. It's no surprise that Blade Runner is so highly placed--it deals with the question of what really makes us human. Likewise the other films in that poll pretty much do that too.
Perhaps one measure of a truly great sci-fi film is the extent to which it becomes a popular metaphor afterward. For that reason, unlike others here, I'm not surprised Matrix is on the list. I hear people make reference to it a lot.
so basically you could have a cylindrical balloon about 10ft. long X 4 feet wide X 3.125 feet high.
doesn't seem too bad to me, seeing's how most commuters drive alone anyway.
anyone out there with the specs handy for how much helium/hydrogen(if you like to live dangerously) it would take to lift one 250 lb. person? i think it would be much cooler to have traffic floating around instead of the blast of a jet engine every morning when the neighbor takes off for work.
networked gaming is fine and all, but there was just something magical about D&D. the imagination is still the best form of entertainment there is. pre-packaged experience is not all it's cracked up to be.
lord landon, here's to you, my tight-wad paladin pal!
the second language i'll teach my kid is hexadecimal.
i cannot believe that this was modded up to 5. anyone arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that blue collar workers are just "human machines" and that white collar workers are somehow more intelligent and skilled either has a lot of growing up to do or desperately needs a visit from the down-sizing fairy.
the fact is, rare indeed is the employee who does not do the same task over and over again, white-collar/blue-collar be damned. my brother is an engineer with ford motor company. he graduated with honors from carnegie-mellon. know what he works on now, day in and day out? hood fasteners. they could just as easily replace him with another engineer to design hood fasteners as they could the union guy assembling them on the line. it is, my friend, the hallmark of working for corporate America. they do not want you to be indispensable, because then you are irreplaceable. they dedicate entire management training sessions to making sure that the enterprise is not exposed to that sort of risk.
unions protect their members against the amoral, artificial persons known as corporations. if you are not an executive with a high priced lawyer, or in a union that can protect your livelihood, then you are vulnerable. from the sound of it, your turn is long overdue, and mazeltov! redefining the meaning of "blue collar" and "white collar" to suit your current situation won't seem so cute then.
Personally, I'd rather see endogenous advances like developing Dune-like Mentat abilities or nanomachine-assisted improvements than trying to perfect external systems like computers or robots. My ideal combination would be something like the photo-synthesizing guy from the "Shadow of the Torturer" so I wouldn't have to worry about food; Mentat abilities so there wouldn't be concerns about hard-drive crashes, etc.; and Deus Ex style nano-upgrades.
I have a low LVEF (Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction). A couple years ago while jogging I suffered a tachycardia (extremely rapid heart rate) that had me at around 300 beats a minute for 45 minutes. They gave me a defibrillator, but said that it was possible that the drugs might not be able to stop the decline of my LVEF and would require a heart transplant. Heart transplants are extremely hard to get, btw. Basically, if you need one, you're screwed.
So to me, this device looks pretty darn cool. The cloned hearts grown from your own cells method is also pretty darn neat. The prospect of being an actual Borg is enticing, but the reservations about secondary effects of not having a pulse do give one pause. Yet if going with a cloned heart encourages the cloning of other organs, then perhaps that would be a better way to go. Decisions, decisions...
Downloading takes the critical distribution link in the music delivery chain away from the big companies. That alone gives the artist the biggest chance to break free that they've ever had. P2P file-sharing, not iTunes-style pay-per-download, weakens the promotion link in the music delivery chain to some extent as well. That is, it doesn't cost you anything to experiment.
Big promotions via radio and ad campaigns are a different matter. Pretty tough for the small artist to negotiate with ClearChannel for airtime. Also pretty tall order for them to finance a billboard in Times Square. But that's the case now, so perhaps we're looking at a future where small artists starting out have to look to viral marketing to get their name out there.
What must go is the big labels acting like dictators, oppressing artists and dumbing down music to fit their marketing models. They should shrink and shrink until they're like specialized ad agencies, marketing a product like every other firm on Madison Avenue does. Then successful artists can hire them just like they'd hire an accountant, retain a lawyer, or any other sort of specialized service.
It's still not easy for small artists to accomplish what a label does now, but with home-recording studios more affordable than ever, P2P file-sharing for free advertising, and accounting software like Quicken it's more possible now than it ever has been for the motivated indy artist to DYI their own success.
I was heavily involved with the Dean campaign here in Brooklyn and New York. The "many eyes poring over the code" aspect of OSS was very helpful to the campaign, not just in terms of the great ideas that were generated, but in the sense of personal investment in the process that resulted. That is, you felt like you, Joe Q. Public, knowing nothing about politics and never having been involved before, could show up at a campaign event, express a good idea, and have it be taken up and acted upon immediately. Likewise, bad ideas weren't. But at least they too were listened to. It was like a massive peer-review system, and that is why those who worked on the campaign were so excited about something that most Americans couldn't be bothered to think about: the democratic process. Of course, that same unique political culture that sprang up around the Dean campaign was also reflected on the technical side by the fact that 99% of all the software run was Linux/OSS, but that's really incidental to the point.
So, why did the campaign fail? If this OS-like culture was so great, then why did it not capture the nomination? There are two main reasons.
First, although there were hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the country, individual state campaigns were run by the same old-school political consultants who run traditional campaigns for every other candidate out there. They too had never seen anything like the Dean volunteers, and had no idea what to do with them. Scores of people would pour through their doors every day, wanting to do something terrific for their country, only to be told to go lick envelopes.
Soon volunteers figured out that working at the official campaign headquarters was not the best place to apply their energy, and they left to start their own grassroots groups. Thus they continued to operate with great enthusiasm, but with no or little informed training.
The paid political consultants perhaps did this out of confusion about what this grassroots thing was, but there was probably also a cynical component. To wit, political consultants make their living by being the gatekeepers to political involvement where they are. It does not pay to train hordes of regular citizens how to work the levers of power, because political candidates will shortly realize that they don't need you to get elected. To put it in tech terms, the political consultants were like the closed source Microsofts of the world who don't want you to understand how the source code works, but pay them handsomely to make the magic work.
Most tragically, the political consultants, while remaining MS in their souls, took up the rhetoric of Linux in that they eschewed building the working relationships with elected officials and other operators in the local political milieu, saying "they don't need them, because they have these ravening hoardes of volunteers." Thus they had neither the trained, effective legions of volunteers, nor the strength of the traditional players to get the job done.
This disconnect between the closed source political consultants and the open source volunteers converged disastrously in Iowa. The Iowa caucuses are manipulated and won by skilled political operators. They could also have been won with properly trained volunteers. The Dean campaign had neither, and Kerry, who went the old skill route with the paid political operators, walked away with the prize. In the end, the thousands upon thousands of Dean volunteers who travelled to Iowa were like a Formula 1 engine, racing at a million rpm, yet not engaged to the drive train.
The second factor in Dean's loss was that the media did a hatchet job on him. They tried and tried for months to find something, anything to render him unfit for office. All they could come up with that he was 'too angry.' That didn't really hurt him, though, because millions of Americans are also angry at the direction this country is headed in. So then they took to digging up closets in Toronto to find an old video of De
"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."
I would have liked to learn from Fox News that the Saudis have bankrolled W. from the beginning, but I didn't.
I would have liked for CNN to show me footage of W. reading 'My Pet Goat' instead of leaping up to deal with Sept. 11th, but I didn't.
I would prefer for the media to lay bare the backroom dealings of this administration, but they aren't.
In short, Moore is the only ones asking difficult questions of power in this age of craven, obsequious journalism. And I submit to you that doing so is the defining quality of the true patriot.
If you object to what Moore is saying, then ask yourself if you object because what he is saying is incorrect, or if you simply resent him pointing it out. If it's the latter, then perhaps you should take a long, hard look at yourself, my friend.
Are not News for Nerds either. Star Wars might be about space and aliens, but it's not really about technology. It's just something that nerds want to talk about from a nerd perspective.
/. were not about technology, nor was the Columbine aftermath. But /. still talked about it.
/. is not just about technology but a place for nerds to talk to other nerds about things that concern them. If you want pure technology, go read Tom's Hardware. This is a community where occasionally people talk about things that are not directly related to technology.
For that matter, on 9/11 all the stories on
Please consider that
is good for the gander. If CEO's are so excited about the savings of outsourcing workers' jobs to India, then by all means let's save ourselves as the shareholders another bundle of money by outsourcing the CEOs' jobs to India too. With video-conferencing there's absolutely no reason why a physical presence is required. Hell, fit 'em with networked gaming helmets and they can even play virtual golf together.
But if that solution doesn't sound fair, I'm all for tying all these CEOs up into a big bag and beating it with sticks, too...
Adam Smith would be appalled and horrified what his name and ideas have been attached to in today's American economy. It is far, far from being a free market. In a free market, there would be no such thing as patents and infinite copyright, and there would scarcely be licensing, trademarks, and all the many, many other implements the U.S. government uses to restrict free trade and reward current players in the economy.
No, what we have in the United States is crony capitalism, plain and simple. Even the blindest Miltonian economist can see that, and many of them have recently said so.
IAAE (I am an economist). See, the problem with free trade is that the people who tout it are really only talking about the free movement of capital. Free movement of labor does not really exist. If a U.S. company outsources your job to India, can you pick up and move to India to get it back? No. Foreign workers can come here (yes, it's a pain in the ass to get the visa, but it is done) and take jobs from Americans, and foreign workers can take jobs away from Americans through outsourcing. But can Americans go take away their jobs where they are? No.
So you get an imbalance in the global market. The Chicago School of Economics would say that given free movement of capital and labor that the market would seek a global equilibrium whereby the programmer in India would make the same wages as a programmer in America. But in reality there are significant barriers to entry, especially for the American worker trying to go elsewhere to take jobs away from the locals. So if you really are a free-trader, and not just an MBA trying to justify your ridiculously high bonus, then you'd push for the elimination of structural barriers to free labor flow. Then all kinds of neat things will happen like foreign MBAs coming to America to drive down the cost of executive pay, and you the American techie can go get yourself a good job in sunny Goa.
But somehow I don't think that the MBAs making these outsourcing decisions would like that kind of free trade.
Great movie, and very faithful to the Patrick O'Brien books. Anyone who loves the techno babble of Trek would love the nautical techno babble and minutiae in this one. Also great character development without any cloying romantic sidestory.
Well you learn something new everyday. Didn't even know that existed, but it does prove what vi users have been saying about emacs all along, don't it? ;-)
for the Iraqis, maybe not so much for Bush. Unless all the attacks stop, flowers bloom in the desert, and sheep lie down with wolves. His buddies at Halliburton are still gouging the American taxpayer on the no-bid contracts they got. Unemployment is still really high in the US, fewer and fewer people have health insurance, and on and on. Bush will probably get a small bounce in his popularity, but not for long. The people that want him out of power won't change their minds because of this.