12. concealed carry permits are something nice to have.
I'm not sure this was an entirely serious suggestion, but I'll treat it as such.
Unfortunately, even in states where a CCW is easy to get (e.g. Georgia), it's usually a felony to carry on a college campus.
That doesn't reduce the need for a personal defense weapon, particularly if you're in a large school. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman -- a campus draws muggers like a magnet. Get a can of pepper spray. If you need more stopping power, I highly recommend adding a Cobra spring baton to your arsenal (unless you live in MA, NY or CA). They're cheap and shatter kneecaps or teeth with ease. Even if the bad guy manages to block a blow, they hurt like hell.
Above all, don't be stupid. If somebody pulls a gun on you, stay calm and do what they say. You'll have plenty of time to deal with the feelings of personal violation later, hopefully while your assailant is doing 10-15 in pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison for aggravated assault and felony possession.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics maintains a lot of street data in its National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). It doesn't have all the streets, but it does have major routes &etc. They'll send you a CD for free if you're a US resident. Look under "Geospatial Information" in the above link.
You won't find free, alleyway-level data for the US. It's simply too much of a burden to keep such data updated, without doing so as a commercial enterprise.
From the ad copy, this film is selling itself hard to the indie theater crowd who normally look down their noses at science fiction.
I like the quote on the front page:
"... Following in the footsteps of Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling and Philip K. Dick rather than George Lucas, Pak returns to the tradition of intelligent, humanistic sci-fi and reminds us of the value of good genre fiction."
Translation: "If, during the wine and cheese portion of the dinner party, Kaitlyn and Rog look at you askance when you mention you went to see a movie called 'Robot Stories' down at the Brattle House Theatre last weekend, here are some literary / retropopcult names you can drop to reassure them of your continued hipness. Don't forget to contrast them with George Lucas, chief purveyor of the kind of mass-culture pablum they show on the SciFi channel, which you are so obviously and hiply above"
Not that there's anything WRONG with that. The more exposure scifi gets in different subdivisions of pop culture, the better. We need more people to start thinking seriously and honestly about our future, given how rapidly it seems to be approaching.
You can't plan to live at the level of your total family income in this wonderful, dynamic economy. Most family bankruptcies today occur when one parent has to go unemployed for a few months. Realistically, a family must be able to meet expenses (food, school supplies, mortgage, auto repairs, insurance, etc) using the lowest of their two incomes for several months. The other income goes towards college funds, retirement, and luxuries like cell phones and vacations.
These days, $45K isn't enough to keep a middle-class family going for that long without going into some serious debt. And once that happens, it's nearly impossible to claw your way back out these days.
Good article explaining this by a Harvard economist:
"The people who use IDEA typically have the money to counteract Swing's slow ass performance (this is a good assumption of someone that drops a couple grand for an IDE)."
The first time I started up IDEA, I couldn't believe it was Swing. The IntelliJ folks have done some serious dark magic to squeeze performance out of it.
I bought the most recent version of IDEA last January, when I was just starting out as a consultant and poor as dirt. IntelliJ had a deal for a "Personal" version (targeted at independent software developers like me) that ran for $200. It's about the same price as Windows XP, and five billion times more useful. Nowadays IDEA is $499, still less than Photoshop and a far cry from "a couple grand". I'd buy it at that price if I had to, and I'm planning on getting the upgrade when it comes out. It's that useful.
Personally, I've used both IDEA and Eclipse to develop on my 12" Powerbook. Neither is fantastic in terms of speed, but I've switched back to IDEA permanently. Under OS X, Eclipse is much slower to start up, build a project, and edit a file. SWT is slow and stodgy, and I have to use an external XML editor. It has half the refactoring support of IDEA and shoddy key binding. It has less semantic support in its syntax highlighting and it doesn't play nicely with other code management tools.
I've also compared Eclipse with IDEA on my workstation (XP Pro / P4 2.4 / 1Gig) which I built myself for about $1200. I don't really notice any performance difference, and Eclipse is lacking in terms of features.
I check back in with Eclipse every few months or so to see if it's acheived the speed and features I need, but it's not there yet. I benefit a lot from OSS in other contexts, and I try to support it whenever I can. But if shelling out $200 to a bunch of Czech code ninjas makes me more productive, then I do it.
I had a pretty horrible experience with TaxCut last year. There was a bug (triggered by my combination of being self-employed and renting my home) that refused to complete my taxes unless I filled out some fields that were non-applicable with values that satisfied TaxCut's constraints. Basically, it wouldn't let me file my taxes unless I filled them out with false and confusing information.
I call technical support, which of course is in India. All they could help me with were monkey steps involving turning on my computer, logging into Windows, etc. There was no process for escalating actual bugs to people that can help you work around or solve them. Classic horror story of outsourced tech support.
I wound up throwing TaxCut in the trash and filling out my forms by hand. I'm going to give TurboTax a shot this year -- hopefully I can work around the spyware.
Seems like ever time this issue comes up on Slashdot, people reply one of three ways.
1) "Screw you, you lazy bastards. It's Capitalism, compete or shut up. Just like I'm going to do as soon as I graduate from college with my CS degree. I can't wait!"
2) "Let's outsource the CEOs! nyuk nyuk" [about five or six times per thread, always ranked 5:Funny]
3) "Dammit, if they want to work for US tech companies, let 'em come here!"
None of these responses is an effective means of addressing the problem. The Western system of democratic capitalism has worked so far specifically because it harnesses capitalism to acheive wealth and social stability. Notice that I said "harness". Capitalism is a great tool, but left to its own devices it destroys the middle class.
Banning job exportation completely is stupid. The US will quickly lose its competitive edge in IT. Already we're seeing Indian companies churning out quality, high-margin software (such as Flexcube) that's making significant inroads into US markets. When the Chinese start getting warmed up, watch out.
Allowing the exporters free rein is also stupid. It will destroy the US IT industry, put millions out of work, and we'll lose critical mindshare (as all the bright kids who would've become engineers wind up as lawyers). And people with families and other responsibilities DON'T HAVE the resources or time to retrain, you knuckleheaded Objectivist brats. They'll drop out of the middle class and screw the rest of the economy, destroying jobs they might have otherwise tried to retrain for.
Really, what we need are measures to soften the blow of global capitalism. That's what governments are there for. We need controls (but not a ban) on job exports, perhaps a tax-credits-per-domestic-employee plan. We need federal retraining incentive program, giving out vouchers to unemployed people who can redeem them for tuition to get new job skills. And we can take a big chunk of the cash to do these things out of agribusiness subsidies. Fuck Monsanto, the US stopped being an agricultural economy about a hundred years ago. Let's keep our leadership role role where it really matters: in science and technology.
Grand Central seems like it would be appropriate for short emails, but the technique chosen for illustrating conversation threads (pretty much the same as the Sort Messages By Thread feature I use in Mozilla) depends on having both parent and child on the screen at the same time to illustrate a relationship. Most email conversations that I really care about are a much longer than a few sentences -- the entire body text of any two emails couldn't fit on the screen. Grand Central is trying to apply a visual structure better suited to IM conversations that take place a sentence at a time.
Now, Grand Central would be impressive if it could parse emails for quoted text, and use that to snip out sections of emails (since a paragraph of text below a quote is most likely to be a reply to that quote). Most of my business discussions tend to consist of point-by-point replies, replies to those replies, etc.
I've had the T610 for about a week and a half (T-Mobile, North America). It's a neat phone, and GPRS over Bluetooth with my 12" Powerbook is pretty swell (still much slower than a 56K modem though). The criticisms you'll read in the online reviews are pretty spot-on.
The screen is difficult to see in sunlight. You can actually get around this fairly easily, by picking a higher-contrast theme than the default one. Once I did that, I have no problem using the phone outdoors.
The reception is this phone's biggest flaw. It's flat-out lousy. I've stood directly under an antenna and gotten only three out of five bars. The major thing that seems to screw up the phone is being inside buildings -- sometimes I find myself having to sit by windows to use my phone. I've read that the T616 (the model offered by Cingular) has much better reception in the US, as it's calibrated for North American GSM.
The camera is also pretty terrible. I regularly see weird RGB "sprinkles" in my photographs. Also, forget about photos in darkened bars or nightclubs -- you'll only get decent pictures outdoors in good daylight. Don't get this if a camphone is high on your priority list.
Working from home definitely has disadvantages. Your people skills actually get rusty after a while, and you have to make a conscious effort to keep them fresh.
However, if you have a separate study in your home, it's doable. I think it took me about 6 months of working from home to get used to it and return to my former levels of productivity. Now I love it.
Also, yes you pay for it. However, you can get a federal and state tax deduction for a home office (although you must be meticulous about ensuring that your home office is EXCLUSIVELY for work -- you WILL get audited if they become suspicious).
Granted, you have to wait a while for them. And there's probably tariffs that you have to pay. But still, I know where my next book purchase is coming from.:)
I've been an EMusic subscriber for a couple years now, and have been an avid fan of their service the entire time. For me, the ENTIRE POINT of EMusic (over and above the iTunes store) was being able to try out new music without any penalty. I could download what I wanted, and if it sucked I could delete it without feeling remorse over wasting (money | download credits | whatever). Given the fact that EMusic's catalog consisted mostly of independent / unknown bands, this was a critically important aspect of their service.
EMusic was the means by which I discovered dozens of new bands to love. For that, I owe them thanks. But for the clueless greedy scum that have bought them, I have nothing but scorn. They can shove their download quotas and their ridiculously overpriced subscription plans. Subscription CANCELED.
I'd call the look of the Matrix a little more fetishy than goth -- still though, I guess if you're trying to present things that people will instantly identify...
SAD CLOWN KUNG-FU! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! SAD CLOWN KUNG-FU!!!!!!!!
Man, do NZ goth clubs REALLY look like that? Yikes.
Seriously though, aside from a bunch of dorky Crow-wannabes who seem to have mastered muy thai in between moping sessions, this is definitely worth the download. Much better Matrix-like fight choreography than I expected. Still a fan-film, but it shows what key elements fans can adopt (like light sabers in Star Wars) to capture the essence of a mythos' style.
There's a piece that centers around them in Vinge's excellent, excellent short story collection. Although the surprise around which the plot revolves is kinda ruined if you've already read Fire Upon the Deep.
The last story in this book ("Fast Times at Fairmont High") is a particularly well-thought-out portrait of what American education might evolve into, given another fifty or so years of the Internet and school privatization.
Implications for Phonics vs. Whole-word Debate?
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
My parents are both teachers, and one of the most tiresome quarrels in education is Phonics vs. Whole-Word debate. Do you teach someone to read by teaching them how to sound out syllables (phonemes)? Or do you teach them to recognize whole-word patterns by rote?
Experimentally, a pure-phonics approach has proven to have the highest success rate. However, these results would suggest that whole-word approach *does* map onto some important cognitive structure . Perhaps this means that, once past the basic level, whole-word techniques would prove to be valuable in turning beginning readers into advanced readers.
Actually, Paris has tons of cheapie Internet / international calling places, mostly serving the immigrant community. It's a cracker's paradise; NOTHING is locked down, and the guys operating them really don't care what you put on the machines. Same with most small towns.
The smaller / midsize cities, where there's a smaller market and less competition, tend to lock down their machines.
I've been enjoying EMusic for more than a year now -- dozens and dozens of indie labels put up albums and songs, for a flat rate of $21 / month, as non-DRM mp3s. I *love* this service -- it's helped me find a lot of new bands because it's subscription-based (and thus there's no risk when downloading a song by somebody new).
Indie labels stand to make a lot more money off of Apple than they do EMusic -- and I imagine they'll flock to it. While I support this in principle, Apple's DRM, lack of try-before-you-buy, and (lets face it) expense really rubs me the wrong way.
(disclaimer: I work for a company that made a proposal for TIA and lost)
I'm glad to see TIA making a comeback, because in my opinion it would be a shame to see it killed. Why? Because it's a program with some damn good ideas, hampered by technically savvy but politically-challenged leadership (Poindexter). He had NO CLUE that the logo would scare people, or that the wording of its mission statement would terrify a populace already weary from assaults on their civil liberties. And his difficulty grasping why some folks have privacy concerns about TIA may very well cripple the program.
TIA aims to create for databases what ARPANet did for computers -- develop common platforms and protocols for establishing relationships between disparate sources of information. It aims to enable queries and searches that make Google look like a random URL generator -- you'll be able to find bus schedules that'll take you to the bookstore where your favorite author is giving a reading, B&Bs in Amsterdam that have nonsmoking rooms with TVs that will be showing your favorite football team's game at 3pm next Tuesday, companies incorporated in Singapore whose CEOs went to U.Missouri with Kenneth Lay . . . all in a few clicks or keystrokes.
Yes, it's something that could be abused by the US government. However, that doesn't mean we should give in to blind Luddism and reject such a promising technology outright. Rather, TIA should address security and privacy concerns from the get-go (I'm particularly fond of Latanya Sweeney's research in this regard), as a layer of recommendations and best-practices atop the fundamental architecture that TIA aims to produce.
The DMCA represents a significant amount of time and money expended by the RIAA. Are you saying that anyone should be able to just invoke a law, when they never paid for it? That's un-American!
There was a time where shareware was a simple way to support independant closed-source software. Unfortunately the popup boxes, countdown timers and trial period expiration warning ruined it for everyone. All of a sudden it was as if someone who you had never met was demanding that you give them money.
Well, you're using a product, that they want to sell to you, for free. It's more like you're wandering through a store eating candy bars off the shelves, and while the owner is nice enough about it, he'd rather you settle your account after you scarf down twenty Milky Ways.
Naggers are a good idea for shareware, since otherwise not enough people would pay for it to allow the author to continue. Although a GOOD nagger is creative, and makes the user step back and evaluate just how valuable the software really is to them.
Escape Velocity had the best nagger EVER. A middling-powerful ship called "Captain Hector" would buzz you every couple of systems and radio in "Don't Forget To Register!".
If you "forgot" for 30 days or more, Captain Hector would get nasty. And it would turn out that Captain Hector is not just a piddling little Argosy, but an Argosy with buffed-up shields, proton torpedoes, heavy laser turrets, and a very bad attitude.
I just got a 12" powerbook, and registered my copy of EV: Nova. Because the storyline is getting interesting, my pilot is cool, and I could hear the quartz oscillating while Captain Hector gleefully polished his Gauss cannon . . .
This guy's site is not doing much to help those who are environmentally sensitive. He's got all the warning signs of an chronic hypochondriac (read his autobiography; he goes out of his way to portray himself as a martyr and a victim of pretty much everyone and everything he's ever encountered). I think he's got some serious attention issues, and will prejudice the casual viewer against against ES sufferers.
Another poster in this thread recommended the movie safe, and I couldn't agree more. ES syndrome is a complex, daunting problem that is often equal parts biology and psychology; you can't treat the psychological factors without giving some relief for the physical symptoms, but the problems will never truly go away until you address the mental component of the disorder. A patient often has some kind of severe sociopathology (extremely needy and demanding of attention, or fearful of social interaction), and attendant phobias or OC fixations. It's pretty amazing to see somebody break out in hives when you just *tell* them that there are painters in the other half of the building; this is a disorder of mind and body that Western medicine's reductionist approach is more or less powerless to address.
Slashdot Mirror
12. concealed carry permits are something nice to have.
I'm not sure this was an entirely serious suggestion, but I'll treat it as such.
Unfortunately, even in states where a CCW is easy to get (e.g. Georgia), it's usually a felony to carry on a college campus.
That doesn't reduce the need for a personal defense weapon, particularly if you're in a large school. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman -- a campus draws muggers like a magnet. Get a can of pepper spray. If you need more stopping power, I highly recommend adding a Cobra spring baton to your arsenal (unless you live in MA, NY or CA). They're cheap and shatter kneecaps or teeth with ease. Even if the bad guy manages to block a blow, they hurt like hell.
Above all, don't be stupid. If somebody pulls a gun on you, stay calm and do what they say. You'll have plenty of time to deal with the feelings of personal violation later, hopefully while your assailant is doing 10-15 in pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison for aggravated assault and felony possession.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics maintains a lot of street data in its National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). It doesn't have all the streets, but it does have major routes &etc. They'll send you a CD for free if you're a US resident. Look under "Geospatial Information" in the above link.
You won't find free, alleyway-level data for the US. It's simply too much of a burden to keep such data updated, without doing so as a commercial enterprise.
The more money you have, the more likely it is that the USPTO will invalidate inconvenient patents for you.
I like the quote on the front page:
Translation: "If, during the wine and cheese portion of the dinner party, Kaitlyn and Rog look at you askance when you mention you went to see a movie called 'Robot Stories' down at the Brattle House Theatre last weekend, here are some literary / retropopcult names you can drop to reassure them of your continued hipness. Don't forget to contrast them with George Lucas, chief purveyor of the kind of mass-culture pablum they show on the SciFi channel, which you are so obviously and hiply above"
Not that there's anything WRONG with that. The more exposure scifi gets in different subdivisions of pop culture, the better. We need more people to start thinking seriously and honestly about our future, given how rapidly it seems to be approaching.
You can't plan to live at the level of your total family income in this wonderful, dynamic economy. Most family bankruptcies today occur when one parent has to go unemployed for a few months. Realistically, a family must be able to meet expenses (food, school supplies, mortgage, auto repairs, insurance, etc) using the lowest of their two incomes for several months. The other income goes towards college funds, retirement, and luxuries like cell phones and vacations.
r upt_parents/
These days, $45K isn't enough to keep a middle-class family going for that long without going into some serious debt. And once that happens, it's nearly impossible to claw your way back out these days.
Good article explaining this by a Harvard economist:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/10/13/bank
"The people who use IDEA typically have the money to counteract Swing's slow ass performance (this is a good assumption of someone that drops a couple grand for an IDE)."
The first time I started up IDEA, I couldn't believe it was Swing. The IntelliJ folks have done some serious dark magic to squeeze performance out of it.
I bought the most recent version of IDEA last January, when I was just starting out as a consultant and poor as dirt. IntelliJ had a deal for a "Personal" version (targeted at independent software developers like me) that ran for $200. It's about the same price as Windows XP, and five billion times more useful. Nowadays IDEA is $499, still less than Photoshop and a far cry from "a couple grand". I'd buy it at that price if I had to, and I'm planning on getting the upgrade when it comes out. It's that useful.
Personally, I've used both IDEA and Eclipse to develop on my 12" Powerbook. Neither is fantastic in terms of speed, but I've switched back to IDEA permanently. Under OS X, Eclipse is much slower to start up, build a project, and edit a file. SWT is slow and stodgy, and I have to use an external XML editor. It has half the refactoring support of IDEA and shoddy key binding. It has less semantic support in its syntax highlighting and it doesn't play nicely with other code management tools.
I've also compared Eclipse with IDEA on my workstation (XP Pro / P4 2.4 / 1Gig) which I built myself for about $1200. I don't really notice any performance difference, and Eclipse is lacking in terms of features.
I check back in with Eclipse every few months or so to see if it's acheived the speed and features I need, but it's not there yet. I benefit a lot from OSS in other contexts, and I try to support it whenever I can. But if shelling out $200 to a bunch of Czech code ninjas makes me more productive, then I do it.
So says this PC World article
Which is good, because (as I whinged in another comment) I had a horrible experience with TaxCut last year.
I had a pretty horrible experience with TaxCut last year. There was a bug (triggered by my combination of being self-employed and renting my home) that refused to complete my taxes unless I filled out some fields that were non-applicable with values that satisfied TaxCut's constraints. Basically, it wouldn't let me file my taxes unless I filled them out with false and confusing information.
I call technical support, which of course is in India. All they could help me with were monkey steps involving turning on my computer, logging into Windows, etc. There was no process for escalating actual bugs to people that can help you work around or solve them. Classic horror story of outsourced tech support.
I wound up throwing TaxCut in the trash and filling out my forms by hand. I'm going to give TurboTax a shot this year -- hopefully I can work around the spyware.
Seems like ever time this issue comes up on Slashdot, people reply one of three ways.
1) "Screw you, you lazy bastards. It's Capitalism, compete or shut up. Just like I'm going to do as soon as I graduate from college with my CS degree. I can't wait!"
2) "Let's outsource the CEOs! nyuk nyuk" [about five or six times per thread, always ranked 5:Funny]
3) "Dammit, if they want to work for US tech companies, let 'em come here!"
None of these responses is an effective means of addressing the problem. The Western system of democratic capitalism has worked so far specifically because it harnesses capitalism to acheive wealth and social stability. Notice that I said "harness". Capitalism is a great tool, but left to its own devices it destroys the middle class.
Banning job exportation completely is stupid. The US will quickly lose its competitive edge in IT. Already we're seeing Indian companies churning out quality, high-margin software (such as Flexcube) that's making significant inroads into US markets. When the Chinese start getting warmed up, watch out.
Allowing the exporters free rein is also stupid. It will destroy the US IT industry, put millions out of work, and we'll lose critical mindshare (as all the bright kids who would've become engineers wind up as lawyers). And people with families and other responsibilities DON'T HAVE the resources or time to retrain, you knuckleheaded Objectivist brats. They'll drop out of the middle class and screw the rest of the economy, destroying jobs they might have otherwise tried to retrain for.
Really, what we need are measures to soften the blow of global capitalism. That's what governments are there for. We need controls (but not a ban) on job exports, perhaps a tax-credits-per-domestic-employee plan. We need federal retraining incentive program, giving out vouchers to unemployed people who can redeem them for tuition to get new job skills. And we can take a big chunk of the cash to do these things out of agribusiness subsidies. Fuck Monsanto, the US stopped being an agricultural economy about a hundred years ago. Let's keep our leadership role role where it really matters: in science and technology.
Grand Central seems like it would be appropriate for short emails, but the technique chosen for illustrating conversation threads (pretty much the same as the Sort Messages By Thread feature I use in Mozilla) depends on having both parent and child on the screen at the same time to illustrate a relationship. Most email conversations that I really care about are a much longer than a few sentences -- the entire body text of any two emails couldn't fit on the screen. Grand Central is trying to apply a visual structure better suited to IM conversations that take place a sentence at a time.
Now, Grand Central would be impressive if it could parse emails for quoted text, and use that to snip out sections of emails (since a paragraph of text below a quote is most likely to be a reply to that quote). Most of my business discussions tend to consist of point-by-point replies, replies to those replies, etc.
I've had the T610 for about a week and a half (T-Mobile, North America). It's a neat phone, and GPRS over Bluetooth with my 12" Powerbook is pretty swell (still much slower than a 56K modem though). The criticisms you'll read in the online reviews are pretty spot-on.
The screen is difficult to see in sunlight. You can actually get around this fairly easily, by picking a higher-contrast theme than the default one. Once I did that, I have no problem using the phone outdoors.
The reception is this phone's biggest flaw. It's flat-out lousy. I've stood directly under an antenna and gotten only three out of five bars. The major thing that seems to screw up the phone is being inside buildings -- sometimes I find myself having to sit by windows to use my phone. I've read that the T616 (the model offered by Cingular) has much better reception in the US, as it's calibrated for North American GSM.
The camera is also pretty terrible. I regularly see weird RGB "sprinkles" in my photographs. Also, forget about photos in darkened bars or nightclubs -- you'll only get decent pictures outdoors in good daylight. Don't get this if a camphone is high on your priority list.
Working from home definitely has disadvantages. Your people skills actually get rusty after a while, and you have to make a conscious effort to keep them fresh.
However, if you have a separate study in your home, it's doable. I think it took me about 6 months of working from home to get used to it and return to my former levels of productivity. Now I love it.
Also, yes you pay for it. However, you can get a federal and state tax deduction for a home office (although you must be meticulous about ensuring that your home office is EXCLUSIVELY for work -- you WILL get audited if they become suspicious).
I was curious, so I did a bit of searching. And proceeded to be flabbergasted.
:)
American publishing houses seem to operate secondary arms in India specifically for English-language technology books.
Check this out:
Introduction to Algorithms, 2nd ed: $79.95
Introduction to Algorithms, 2nd ed: $5.73
The C Programming Language [K&R]: $40.00
The C Programming Language [K&R]: $2.10
Design Patterns: $54.99
Design Patterns: $7.11
Granted, you have to wait a while for them. And there's probably tariffs that you have to pay. But still, I know where my next book purchase is coming from.
I've been an EMusic subscriber for a couple years now, and have been an avid fan of their service the entire time. For me, the ENTIRE POINT of EMusic (over and above the iTunes store) was being able to try out new music without any penalty. I could download what I wanted, and if it sucked I could delete it without feeling remorse over wasting (money | download credits | whatever). Given the fact that EMusic's catalog consisted mostly of independent / unknown bands, this was a critically important aspect of their service.
EMusic was the means by which I discovered dozens of new bands to love. For that, I owe them thanks. But for the clueless greedy scum that have bought them, I have nothing but scorn. They can shove their download quotas and their ridiculously overpriced subscription plans. Subscription CANCELED.
Oh man, I can imagine the pain. :)
...
I'd call the look of the Matrix a little more fetishy than goth -- still though, I guess if you're trying to present things that people will instantly identify
SAD CLOWN KUNG-FU!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
SAD CLOWN KUNG-FU!!!!!!!!
Man, do NZ goth clubs REALLY look like that? Yikes.
Seriously though, aside from a bunch of dorky Crow-wannabes who seem to have mastered muy thai in between moping sessions, this is definitely worth the download. Much better Matrix-like fight choreography than I expected. Still a fan-film, but it shows what key elements fans can adopt (like light sabers in Star Wars) to capture the essence of a mythos' style.
There's a piece that centers around them in Vinge's excellent, excellent short story collection. Although the surprise around which the plot revolves is kinda ruined if you've already read Fire Upon the Deep.
The last story in this book ("Fast Times at Fairmont High") is a particularly well-thought-out portrait of what American education might evolve into, given another fifty or so years of the Internet and school privatization.
My parents are both teachers, and one of the most tiresome quarrels in education is Phonics vs. Whole-Word debate. Do you teach someone to read by teaching them how to sound out syllables (phonemes)? Or do you teach them to recognize whole-word patterns by rote?
Experimentally, a pure-phonics approach has proven to have the highest success rate. However, these results would suggest that whole-word approach *does* map onto some important cognitive structure . Perhaps this means that, once past the basic level, whole-word techniques would prove to be valuable in turning beginning readers into advanced readers.
Actually, Paris has tons of cheapie Internet / international calling places, mostly serving the immigrant community. It's a cracker's paradise; NOTHING is locked down, and the guys operating them really don't care what you put on the machines. Same with most small towns.
The smaller / midsize cities, where there's a smaller market and less competition, tend to lock down their machines.
Ooops. Looks like I may have been grandfathered in on a higher-price plan (I'm month-to-month right now). Guess I better resubscribe. :)
I've been enjoying EMusic for more than a year now -- dozens and dozens of indie labels put up albums and songs, for a flat rate of $21 / month, as non-DRM mp3s. I *love* this service -- it's helped me find a lot of new bands because it's subscription-based (and thus there's no risk when downloading a song by somebody new).
Indie labels stand to make a lot more money off of Apple than they do EMusic -- and I imagine they'll flock to it. While I support this in principle, Apple's DRM, lack of try-before-you-buy, and (lets face it) expense really rubs me the wrong way.
(disclaimer: I work for a company that made a proposal for TIA and lost)
I'm glad to see TIA making a comeback, because in my opinion it would be a shame to see it killed. Why? Because it's a program with some damn good ideas, hampered by technically savvy but politically-challenged leadership (Poindexter). He had NO CLUE that the logo would scare people, or that the wording of its mission statement would terrify a populace already weary from assaults on their civil liberties. And his difficulty grasping why some folks have privacy concerns about TIA may very well cripple the program.
TIA aims to create for databases what ARPANet did for computers -- develop common platforms and protocols for establishing relationships between disparate sources of information. It aims to enable queries and searches that make Google look like a random URL generator -- you'll be able to find bus schedules that'll take you to the bookstore where your favorite author is giving a reading, B&Bs in Amsterdam that have nonsmoking rooms with TVs that will be showing your favorite football team's game at 3pm next Tuesday, companies incorporated in Singapore whose CEOs went to U.Missouri with Kenneth Lay . . . all in a few clicks or keystrokes.
Yes, it's something that could be abused by the US government. However, that doesn't mean we should give in to blind Luddism and reject such a promising technology outright. Rather, TIA should address security and privacy concerns from the get-go (I'm particularly fond of Latanya Sweeney's research in this regard), as a layer of recommendations and best-practices atop the fundamental architecture that TIA aims to produce.
The DMCA represents a significant amount of time and money expended by the RIAA. Are you saying that anyone should be able to just invoke a law, when they never paid for it? That's un-American!
There was a time where shareware was a simple way to support independant closed-source software. Unfortunately the popup boxes, countdown timers and trial period expiration warning ruined it for everyone. All of a sudden it was as if someone who you had never met was demanding that you give them money.
Well, you're using a product, that they want to sell to you, for free. It's more like you're wandering through a store eating candy bars off the shelves, and while the owner is nice enough about it, he'd rather you settle your account after you scarf down twenty Milky Ways.
Naggers are a good idea for shareware, since otherwise not enough people would pay for it to allow the author to continue. Although a GOOD nagger is creative, and makes the user step back and evaluate just how valuable the software really is to them.
Escape Velocity had the best nagger EVER. A middling-powerful ship called "Captain Hector" would buzz you every couple of systems and radio in "Don't Forget To Register!".
If you "forgot" for 30 days or more, Captain Hector would get nasty. And it would turn out that Captain Hector is not just a piddling little Argosy, but an Argosy with buffed-up shields, proton torpedoes, heavy laser turrets, and a very bad attitude.
I just got a 12" powerbook, and registered my copy of EV: Nova. Because the storyline is getting interesting, my pilot is cool, and I could hear the quartz oscillating while Captain Hector gleefully polished his Gauss cannon . . .
This guy's site is not doing much to help those who are environmentally sensitive. He's got all the warning signs of an chronic hypochondriac (read his autobiography; he goes out of his way to portray himself as a martyr and a victim of pretty much everyone and everything he's ever encountered). I think he's got some serious attention issues, and will prejudice the casual viewer against against ES sufferers.
Another poster in this thread recommended the movie safe, and I couldn't agree more. ES syndrome is a complex, daunting problem that is often equal parts biology and psychology; you can't treat the psychological factors without giving some relief for the physical symptoms, but the problems will never truly go away until you address the mental component of the disorder. A patient often has some kind of severe sociopathology (extremely needy and demanding of attention, or fearful of social interaction), and attendant phobias or OC fixations. It's pretty amazing to see somebody break out in hives when you just *tell* them that there are painters in the other half of the building; this is a disorder of mind and body that Western medicine's reductionist approach is more or less powerless to address.