> Hey, I actually found SmarterChild kind of useful. I added it to Trillian the other day, and it made it really easy and quick to find a movie time near me.
Yeah, I caught one in the wild a couple of weeks back, and I've enslaved it to respond to my spam.
Now I'm trying to train it to do my CS homework assignments -- the rules don't say anything about consulting adbots.
> It's a shame that AMD, that has long battled uphill against the market dominance of Intel, has bowed under like this.
It might be nice to be privy to communications between Microsoft and AMD on the antitrust case. I mean, it would be a real shame if the next version of Windows didn't work on AMD processors, kind of thing.
Any states' antitrust staffers reading Slashdot? If so, take a hint and have your boss go for the subpoena.
Of course, any MS/AMD staffers reading Slashdot might also take a hint and recommend that their boss start shredding e-mail. (Though I specifically advise not doing that, unless you want Ken Lay for a roommate.)
> The recording companies has costs.... gifts to radiostations and mtv to get their music played...
AKA "payola", long illegal in the USA, still done under a pretense of it being something else.
In addition to being illegal, payola is commonly believed to be the major cause of crap being played on the radio.
Add in the problem of having one company own nearly every radio station in the USA, and switching stations between formats at the drop of a hat if they think it will earn them a dollar more next year, and you start getting a picture of an industry that's very, very sick.
> ... would have to change. So should the music industry.
I said essentially the following about proprietary software in one of my very first posts to Slashdot:
The music industry is suffering the same phenomenon that got a certain part of the USA labeled "the Rust Belt". Technology changes; sometimes the window of economic exploitation opens, sometimes it closes. There was a time when you could become a zillionaire by covering your continent with railroads, but in much of the world that opportunity has passed, and in some places tracks are being removed. Technology makes things possible; technology makes things obsolete.
For half a century the music industry was needed by the artists: studios were expensive, pressing masses of vinyl was expensive, shipping stacks of vinyl all over the country/planet was expensive, racking it in stores was expensive. This needed middlemen with lots of money, and it was only right (IMO) that they made a profit off it.
But times have changed. A band that can afford a drum kit can afford a multi-track digital recorder; the internet can bypass the rest of the infrastructure. Bands don't need middlemen who have turned into fat cats. (At least not to get their music out; they may still need them if they want to be superstars and appear on the cover of magazines.)
As GauteL says, the music industry should be required to adapt to the changed environment. Instead, they want the USCongress to assure them their profits as an entitlement. Why should they be allowed that? What antiquated industry is it going to be next? Why should voting consumers put up with it?
This is nothing but trade protectionism, but in this case the USCongress is trying to 'protect' the US music industry from US citizens. Hey, Congress -- whose side are you on?
> The island is called Thera - "Fear" in Greek according to the TLC Documentry. One problem is that the explosion occurred 900 instead of 9000 years prior to Plato's original story. This however can be explained by difference in number systems, or clerical errors.
Or maybe Atlantis didn't exist at all?
Just because some myths have historical underpinnings doesn't mean that all myths have historical underpinnings.
And when you have to start twisting the myth around a lot to make it match the "evidence", then you should really stop and wonder why you're trying so hard to make it match.
Moreover, Plato isn't exactly a good source of mythology. He was neither a historian nor a mythographer. He was a philosopher, and not a very deep one at that. (IMO he operated on about a 10th grade mentality.) He liked to write stories about things like how the ideal state would be constituted, and he used an idealized Socrates as a sock puppet in his writings.
Plato tells the Atlantis story in his Timaeus . In particular, Plato tells a made-up story about a conversation between Socrates, Critias, and a couple of others, and in that story Critias tells a story he heard from another guy named Critias, and in that story the second Critias tells that he heard it from Solon, and in that story Solon tells that heard it from the Egyptian priests (along with a bunch of other drek). So we the recursively embedded stories Plato(Critias1(Critias2(Solon(Egyptians)))) -- and we know that the outermost story was a work of fiction (one of Plato's so-called dramatic dialogues). This is not a source that inspires a lot of confidence.
Once you get beyond that it makes a lot more sense to try to figure out what role the story played in whatever point Plato was trying to make with his polemic than it does exploring the world trying to find something that can be stretched to fit the story.
The story doesn't even appear to be real mythology, let alone real history.
<uncle>One more thing!</uncle> "Thera" doesn't mean "fear", it means "the hunt", "the chase", "pursuit", "the catch", or "hunting ground". And the name of the island may not even be the same word; Liddel and Scott list it under a separate entry.
Hopefully this gives everyone an idea why scientists and historians tend to scoff at claims that lost civilizations have been discovered, until verifiable evidence is in hand.
> The Minoan capital was Knossos, not Minoa. Knossos is located on the island of Crete. Minoa is located on the island of Amorgos, in the Cyclades island group.
Also, the Minoan civilization is named after Minos, mythical king of Crete, not after any city. (The name is modern, plucked from an appropriate mythology.)
> Wow, really? Do you have a source or URI for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's news to me and I'd like to read up on it;)
I'm not very expert at knowing which Web archaeology sites are real and which are loonie-sites, and google turns up zillions of hits for sites of the fans of a certain religion that doesn't want to acknowledge that the world existed that long ago, but here is a timeline site that looks reasonable.
You can also find out about it in lots of books; next time you're in a bookstore look in a historical atlas (but not in the religious section) and you'll almost certainly find mention of it.
> The case against seems to be that (a) the earliest settlements accepted by most archeologists go back perhaps 6000 or 7000 years, and these are flimsy houses built of wood, reeds, thatch etc - not monolithic dressed stone covering many thousands of acres.
Dunno about that last part, but regular sane archaeologists know that Jericho had stone walls almost 10,000 years ago.
> Thats what they want! They *never ever* expected this bill to pass. This is merely mis-direction so they can get what they want when no one is looking.
If that was their plan then it was pretty fscking stupid. They have essentially mobilized a new political issue group that didn't exist (as a group) previously, and now that group will be playing watchdog at every step they try to take in the future.
> There is no ministry of disinformation at Microsoft, and there is no over-reaching scheme to screw customers and lie to them until they beleive they arne't being screwed.
> While for you free online support is good (and often better than tech monkies) it may not be the best for your company. If you get hit by a bus what is the likelyhood of them being able to drop in a replacement with comperable knowledge and skill?
If you get hit by a bus, do you really care what happens to your company afterward?
The thing to understand about Micorsoft is that they don't do anything unless they think it will pump up their stock prices or help with world conquest (and even the latter may just be something to aid the former). They wouldn't be talking about security at all if they hadn't been getting so much bad media attention over it.
However, it's not like Micorsoft to actually do something about anything without trying to bullshit their way through it first. So the "big security push" is in all likelihood just a PR announcement with no actual effort to back it up. They'll watch how the media -- and their share prices -- react, and if things keep getting worse then they'll start doing something about it.
And of course, when (or if) they start actually doing something about it they'll follow their usual vaporware strategy, and start announcing the results before they have ever actually done anything.
> Microsoft's greatest strengths have always been the ability to see which way the ship is headed, and when it turns out they're going in the wrong direction, to turn on a dime.
Rather, Micorsoft's biggest problem is that they don't see what everyone else is doing until several years later, and then they turn on a dime and follow along cluelessly, wreaking havoc in their wake.
> I seriously don't understand this. Why would ANYONE (and I mean ANYONE) even consider migrating his webservices to IIS? IMHO you must either be blind, deaf and mute or REALLY very incredibly unbelievably stupid!
Lessee... Who makes the decision, a PHB or the sukka who has to keep things running? And who wines and dines the most PHBs, Micorsoft or the Apache developers?
The only surprise is that Apache is being used at all.
> I think people here are missing an important point... what are the limits of space and time shifting?
I think people here are missing an even more important point... namely that corporate profits are not a constitutional right either.
For that matter, even copyright isn't a constitutional right -- the constitution merely authorizes the Congress to establish a system of copyrights -- limited copyrights, at that.
The problem is that the framers of the constitution weren't omniscient, and they apparently didn't see the day when so many legislators would be 0wn3d by means of corporate funding.
At any rate, the battle isn't lost yet. We just need to get in the habit of voting for legislators who will legislate to protect the citizens' traditional rights and privileges. Once they realize that even the biggest pile of donations doesn't guarantee re-election, legislators will come around on this kind of issue.
> Could this be a little more vague? I still have honestly no idea what the heck these novels are about in any way whatsoever. Saying "the character goes on adventures and meets new people in amazing places" describes about 75% of the books in existence.
I've narrowed it down to a review of either Scooby Doo or Pokémon, but I can't refine it any further than that.
Slashdot Mirror
> Hey, I actually found SmarterChild kind of useful. I added it to Trillian the other day, and it made it really easy and quick to find a movie time near me.
Yeah, I caught one in the wild a couple of weeks back, and I've enslaved it to respond to my spam.
Now I'm trying to train it to do my CS homework assignments -- the rules don't say anything about consulting adbots.
>
Like... homework assignments that look just like someone else's?
> We shoot girls who like to wear their hair in pigtails.
Oooo Baybee! Nothing like a 30-year-old with crows' feet, pigtails, a teddy bear and a lolipop!
Not.
> It's a shame that AMD, that has long battled uphill against the market dominance of Intel, has bowed under like this.
It might be nice to be privy to communications between Microsoft and AMD on the antitrust case. I mean, it would be a real shame if the next version of Windows didn't work on AMD processors, kind of thing.
Any states' antitrust staffers reading Slashdot? If so, take a hint and have your boss go for the subpoena.
Of course, any MS/AMD staffers reading Slashdot might also take a hint and recommend that their boss start shredding e-mail. (Though I specifically advise not doing that, unless you want Ken Lay for a roommate.)
> The recording companies has costs.
AKA "payola", long illegal in the USA, still done under a pretense of it being something else.
In addition to being illegal, payola is commonly believed to be the major cause of crap being played on the radio.
Add in the problem of having one company own nearly every radio station in the USA, and switching stations between formats at the drop of a hat if they think it will earn them a dollar more next year, and you start getting a picture of an industry that's very, very sick.
>
I said essentially the following about proprietary software in one of my very first posts to Slashdot:
The music industry is suffering the same phenomenon that got a certain part of the USA labeled "the Rust Belt". Technology changes; sometimes the window of economic exploitation opens, sometimes it closes. There was a time when you could become a zillionaire by covering your continent with railroads, but in much of the world that opportunity has passed, and in some places tracks are being removed. Technology makes things possible; technology makes things obsolete.
For half a century the music industry was needed by the artists: studios were expensive, pressing masses of vinyl was expensive, shipping stacks of vinyl all over the country/planet was expensive, racking it in stores was expensive. This needed middlemen with lots of money, and it was only right (IMO) that they made a profit off it.
But times have changed. A band that can afford a drum kit can afford a multi-track digital recorder; the internet can bypass the rest of the infrastructure. Bands don't need middlemen who have turned into fat cats. (At least not to get their music out; they may still need them if they want to be superstars and appear on the cover of magazines.)
As GauteL says, the music industry should be required to adapt to the changed environment. Instead, they want the USCongress to assure them their profits as an entitlement. Why should they be allowed that? What antiquated industry is it going to be next? Why should voting consumers put up with it?
This is nothing but trade protectionism, but in this case the USCongress is trying to 'protect' the US music industry from US citizens. Hey, Congress -- whose side are you on?
> The island is called Thera - "Fear" in Greek according to the TLC Documentry. One problem is that the explosion occurred 900 instead of 9000 years prior to Plato's original story. This however can be explained by difference in number systems, or clerical errors.
Or maybe Atlantis didn't exist at all?
Just because some myths have historical underpinnings doesn't mean that all myths have historical underpinnings.
And when you have to start twisting the myth around a lot to make it match the "evidence", then you should really stop and wonder why you're trying so hard to make it match.
Moreover, Plato isn't exactly a good source of mythology. He was neither a historian nor a mythographer. He was a philosopher, and not a very deep one at that. (IMO he operated on about a 10th grade mentality.) He liked to write stories about things like how the ideal state would be constituted, and he used an idealized Socrates as a sock puppet in his writings.
Plato tells the Atlantis story in his Timaeus . In particular, Plato tells a made-up story about a conversation between Socrates, Critias, and a couple of others, and in that story Critias tells a story he heard from another guy named Critias, and in that story the second Critias tells that he heard it from Solon, and in that story Solon tells that heard it from the Egyptian priests (along with a bunch of other drek). So we the recursively embedded stories Plato(Critias1(Critias2(Solon(Egyptians)))) -- and we know that the outermost story was a work of fiction (one of Plato's so-called dramatic dialogues). This is not a source that inspires a lot of confidence.
Once you get beyond that it makes a lot more sense to try to figure out what role the story played in whatever point Plato was trying to make with his polemic than it does exploring the world trying to find something that can be stretched to fit the story.
The story doesn't even appear to be real mythology, let alone real history.
<uncle>One more thing!</uncle> "Thera" doesn't mean "fear", it means "the hunt", "the chase", "pursuit", "the catch", or "hunting ground". And the name of the island may not even be the same word; Liddel and Scott list it under a separate entry.
Hopefully this gives everyone an idea why scientists and historians tend to scoff at claims that lost civilizations have been discovered, until verifiable evidence is in hand.
> I think you might be correct if you're mentioning his earlier books, but his more recent books are better-rooted in decent scientific research.
Yeah, lots of nutters turn into top-notch scientists after a bit of practice.
> The Minoan capital was Knossos, not Minoa. Knossos is located on the island of Crete. Minoa is located on the island of Amorgos, in the Cyclades island group.
Also, the Minoan civilization is named after Minos, mythical king of Crete, not after any city. (The name is modern, plucked from an appropriate mythology.)
> Wow, really? Do you have a source or URI for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's news to me and I'd like to read up on it
I'm not very expert at knowing which Web archaeology sites are real and which are loonie-sites, and google turns up zillions of hits for sites of the fans of a certain religion that doesn't want to acknowledge that the world existed that long ago, but here is a timeline site that looks reasonable.
You can also find out about it in lots of books; next time you're in a bookstore look in a historical atlas (but not in the religious section) and you'll almost certainly find mention of it.
> Funny that the egyptians and the Sumerians never seemed to notice it!
They were too busy treading water.
> The case against seems to be that (a) the earliest settlements accepted by most archeologists go back perhaps 6000 or 7000 years, and these are flimsy houses built of wood, reeds, thatch etc - not monolithic dressed stone covering many thousands of acres.
Dunno about that last part, but regular sane archaeologists know that Jericho had stone walls almost 10,000 years ago.
> I coulda sworn that the Bhavad Gita was about 5000 years old, dating back to near Mesopotamian age.
If you do decide to swear that, don't swear it on your yarbles or anything else you hold dear.
<bender>Cheer up or I'll kick your ass!</bender>
> Thats what they want! They *never ever* expected this bill to pass. This is merely mis-direction so they can get what they want when no one is looking.
If that was their plan then it was pretty fscking stupid. They have essentially mobilized a new political issue group that didn't exist (as a group) previously, and now that group will be playing watchdog at every step they try to take in the future.
> There is no ministry of disinformation at Microsoft, and there is no over-reaching scheme to screw customers and lie to them until they beleive they arne't being screwed.
So... what exactly do you do at Microsoft?
> While for you free online support is good (and often better than tech monkies) it may not be the best for your company. If you get hit by a bus what is the likelyhood of them being able to drop in a replacement with comperable knowledge and skill?
If you get hit by a bus, do you really care what happens to your company afterward?
> > I love this quote; it's _so_ MS.
> Yup. Classic spin.
The thing to understand about Micorsoft is that they don't do anything unless they think it will pump up their stock prices or help with world conquest (and even the latter may just be something to aid the former). They wouldn't be talking about security at all if they hadn't been getting so much bad media attention over it.
However, it's not like Micorsoft to actually do something about anything without trying to bullshit their way through it first. So the "big security push" is in all likelihood just a PR announcement with no actual effort to back it up. They'll watch how the media -- and their share prices -- react, and if things keep getting worse then they'll start doing something about it.
And of course, when (or if) they start actually doing something about it they'll follow their usual vaporware strategy, and start announcing the results before they have ever actually done anything.
> Microsoft's greatest strengths have always been the ability to see which way the ship is headed, and when it turns out they're going in the wrong direction, to turn on a dime.
Rather, Micorsoft's biggest problem is that they don't see what everyone else is doing until several years later, and then they turn on a dime and follow along cluelessly, wreaking havoc in their wake.
> Hell, where's the DoJ nailing this bastard for violation of civil liberties?
Can't do that -- all their resources are tied up defending Micorsoft right now.
> Exept they have a BIG warning sticker on the front.
And besides... someone might see you in the check-out line with a CD CD in your hand.
> I seriously don't understand this. Why would ANYONE (and I mean ANYONE) even consider migrating his webservices to IIS? IMHO you must either be blind, deaf and mute or REALLY very incredibly unbelievably stupid!
Lessee... Who makes the decision, a PHB or the sukka who has to keep things running? And who wines and dines the most PHBs, Micorsoft or the Apache developers?
The only surprise is that Apache is being used at all.
> I think people here are missing an important point
I think people here are missing an even more important point... namely that corporate profits are not a constitutional right either.
For that matter, even copyright isn't a constitutional right -- the constitution merely authorizes the Congress to establish a system of copyrights -- limited copyrights, at that.
The problem is that the framers of the constitution weren't omniscient, and they apparently didn't see the day when so many legislators would be 0wn3d by means of corporate funding.
At any rate, the battle isn't lost yet. We just need to get in the habit of voting for legislators who will legislate to protect the citizens' traditional rights and privileges. Once they realize that even the biggest pile of donations doesn't guarantee re-election, legislators will come around on this kind of issue.
> Could this be a little more vague? I still have honestly no idea what the heck these novels are about in any way whatsoever. Saying "the character goes on adventures and meets new people in amazing places" describes about 75% of the books in existence.
I've narrowed it down to a review of either Scooby Doo or Pokémon, but I can't refine it any further than that.