"modern media is about making money, and that depends entirely on selecting stories that entertain, titillate, blow up or confront."
Like Slashdot, you mean?
In another article....
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
...MSNBC also stated that Microsoft is actually a charity set up by Mother Teresa just before her death, Windows is more robust than UNIX and Bill Gates is the Messiah.
In response to the ruling, the major TV networks released the following statement:
"Ok that's it. We've had enough with the public. Who do they think they are? Well, we have a plan.
All network TV will now be encrypted in a similar fashion to satellite TV. In order to be issued a decryption smartcard, customers will be forced to sit through 120 hours of non-stop commercials followed by back-to-back reruns of My Two Dads and Hart to Hart."
I'd love to know if Kastenmeier's response was as sarcastic as it sounded here:
[VALENTI:] I am going to stand, if you don't mind, Mr. Chairman, cause I have what is known as "visual aids." I know they are visual; whether they are aids or not is something you will have to determine later on.
Mr. KASTENMEIER. And whether they are copyrighted or not.
That is priceless, and Valenti just ignores him and presses on as if nothing happened!
If Ford were to say that they couldn't disclose their new transmission design because if they did it might get people killed, surely they would have to either redesign it, recall it or face a HUGE class-action lawsuit.
All we need is some documented evidence of a MS exploit resulting in injury or death.:)
\An"ge*lus\, n. [L.] (R. C. Ch.) (a) A form of devotion in which three Ave Marias are repeated. It is said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell.
"THE most unpredictable and certainly the most dangerous god in the Northern pantheon was Loki. His activities ran from the merely mischievous to the blatantly malicious. Supremely clever, Loki ensnared everyone in complicated problems."
I have to wonder if Scott Draeker sees himself as some kind of trickster and had some idea of all this beforehand. I don't know him, but the company name seems a little too apropos.
I wonder if EFF et al will be sending/. a Cease & Desist letter for a premeditated DOS attack on their web server?:)
Those opening paragraphs...
on
.NETly News
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
From the article:
"In 1454, Johann Gutenberg changed the world forever when the first of his Bibles rolled off the world's first printing press. Three centuries later, in 1791, Charles Babbage was born. Best known for his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, his work is widely acknowledged as providing the earliest steppingstones from which the modern computer would emerge. Again, the world would never be the same.
From the article:
William Henry Gates arrived on the planet in 1951. Whether you love him or detest him with every ounce of your moral fiber, there is no denying the contribution Bill has made to this earth. Without Microsoft, the PC we have today would be a very different beast."
Does anyone truly believe that Gates has made a positive contribution to "this earth", other than his (admittedly laudable) charitable works?
From a technological standpoint, the only thing you can really say he has helped (and I say helped because he certainly cannot claim sole credit) achieve is the positioning of computers in everyday non-geek life. Even that would have happened sooner or later has Gates not existed.
This type of melodramatic, snivelling hyperbole is starting to crop up all over the IT press, with reviews reading like commercials and biographies gushing with misplaced hero-worship.
"We are protected by enhancing our ability to see [the government], not by reducing [the government's] ability to see us."
Now this is something that needs echoing. What a great quote.
I think that Brin has hit the nail right on the head with this handful of words. It blows right though the empty, ranting rhetoric put forward by anti-government hacks. Certainly a candidate for many a Slashdotter's sig.
"When I went vegan over 10 years ago I chose to give up my darkroom (paper & film contain gelatine)."
Digital cameras use plastic in their construction. Many types of plastic use a milk protein in their composition. Do you write to camera manufacturers to ensure that they do not use milk protein in their plastic?
"But the task is not as simple as it sounds. The beam of light must hit the retroreflectors, each about the size of a suitcase, on the lunar surface.
This is made even trickier by the fact that the beam will be about 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) wide by the time it reaches the Moon."/I>
Oh-kay.... so it would be less tricky if your laser beam was, say, 2 millimeters wide by the time it reaches the moon?
Re:Unfortunately, an end to wars
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2
We may see the arrival of a technocracy who can effectively ignore the political demands of the masses because any violent unrest can be subdued without the massive loss of life and its consequent political fallout.
Ummm... If you're ignoring the political demands of the masses, why would you be concerned about any political fallout?
Americans yes, Afghans no
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2
Before Afghanistan, conventional military wisdom held that a war can't be won without substantial numbers of ground troops. Even as the Afghanistan campaign began, pundits flooded cable talk shows asserting that air power alone wasn't enough, that there would be substantial human sacrifice.
Substantial numbers of ground troops have been used in Afghanistan - the difference is that the US cleverly used the Afghan peoples' desire for freedom to ensure that American soldiers did not have to get involved in much combat. They largely played the roles of military advisors, tacticians, etc.
- If you had the screen adjusted in a low position (because of your seating position, setup or whatever), wouldn't you have to move the screen up every time you want to change disks in the drive?
- How are they cooling this thing? I can see a vent around the top, but if it has a fan surely two vents would be needed, intake and outflow?
- Apple should have made it an option to mount it upside-down, effectively hanging it from the top shelf of a workstation. The screen would need to be rotatable through 180 degrees and the drive would need to be capable of being remounted upside-down too. Maybe it's hackable.
- How long before we see the colors that the existing iMac demographic love so much?:)
The headline Public Money, Private Code would suggest that the principal objection here is that state schools might use taxpayers' money to develop applications for profit.
Or are we talking about using students' code for profit?
Either way it could be argued that the college is maximising its assets to bring in more money to increase the standard of education at that school. Idealistically, the more money a college makes, the less it has to charge for tuition, meaning more people can afford to study there.
It's standard practice in the corporate world that the employer owns the rights to employees' code if that code was developed on the company's dime. Does this principle stand for students' work, done on University computers during classes?
How does the/. community feel about a private school selling applications that were developed in-house by paid IT staff?
I'm curious because I work in the IT services department of a private school.
...the only reason anyone uses digital cameras is to take "those" kind of pics without getting a strange look from the photo shop clerk when you pick up your photos.:)
Er... no, that just looks like a well-buttered hamster... Wow... er, my neighbor must've borrowed the camera... no, I don't have any idea how that goat got in the shot.
Slashdot Mirror
Like Slashdot, you mean?
...MSNBC also stated that Microsoft is actually a charity set up by Mother Teresa just before her death, Windows is more robust than UNIX and Bill Gates is the Messiah.
Sheesh.
"Ok that's it. We've had enough with the public. Who do they think they are? Well, we have a plan.
All network TV will now be encrypted in a similar fashion to satellite TV. In order to be issued a decryption smartcard, customers will be forced to sit through 120 hours of non-stop commercials followed by back-to-back reruns of My Two Dads and Hart to Hart."
"It limits choice rather than increasing choice."
Yet another jaw-droppingly hypocritical statement from a Microsoft spokesperson.
BBC News Online covers the same story here and reminds us that Napster's assets are now owned by media giant Bertlesmenn.
[VALENTI:] I am going to stand, if you don't mind, Mr. Chairman, cause I have what is known as "visual aids." I know they are visual; whether they are aids or not is something you will have to determine later on.
Mr. KASTENMEIER. And whether they are copyrighted or not.
That is priceless, and Valenti just ignores him and presses on as if nothing happened!
If Ford were to say that they couldn't disclose their new transmission design because if they did it might get people killed, surely they would have to either redesign it, recall it or face a HUGE class-action lawsuit.
:)
All we need is some documented evidence of a MS exploit resulting in injury or death.
\An"ge*lus\, n. [L.] (R. C. Ch.) (a) A form of devotion in which three Ave Marias are repeated. It is said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell.
"Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years"
While in this story (On /. here):
"Fossil fuel supplies are plentiful"
Access retinal laser subsystem set laser_power==(laserpower*100); set boot_dialogue=="www.bigpenis.com - The natural way to male enhancement"; end
"THE most unpredictable and certainly the most dangerous god in the Northern pantheon was Loki. His activities ran from the merely mischievous to the blatantly malicious. Supremely clever, Loki ensnared everyone in complicated problems."
I have to wonder if Scott Draeker sees himself as some kind of trickster and had some idea of all this beforehand. I don't know him, but the company name seems a little too apropos.
I wonder if EFF et al will be sending /. a Cease & Desist letter for a premeditated DOS attack on their web server? :)
"In 1454, Johann Gutenberg changed the world forever when the first of his Bibles rolled off the world's first printing press. Three centuries later, in 1791, Charles Babbage was born. Best known for his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, his work is widely acknowledged as providing the earliest steppingstones from which the modern computer would emerge. Again, the world would never be the same. From the article:
William Henry Gates arrived on the planet in 1951. Whether you love him or detest him with every ounce of your moral fiber, there is no denying the contribution Bill has made to this earth. Without Microsoft, the PC we have today would be a very different beast."
Does anyone truly believe that Gates has made a positive contribution to "this earth", other than his (admittedly laudable) charitable works?
From a technological standpoint, the only thing you can really say he has helped (and I say helped because he certainly cannot claim sole credit) achieve is the positioning of computers in everyday non-geek life. Even that would have happened sooner or later has Gates not existed.
This type of melodramatic, snivelling hyperbole is starting to crop up all over the IT press, with reviews reading like commercials and biographies gushing with misplaced hero-worship.
Ick.
Now this is something that needs echoing. What a great quote.
I think that Brin has hit the nail right on the head with this handful of words. It blows right though the empty, ranting rhetoric put forward by anti-government hacks. Certainly a candidate for many a Slashdotter's sig.
1 billion Chinese can't be wong.
Digital cameras use plastic in their construction. Many types of plastic use a milk protein in their composition. Do you write to camera manufacturers to ensure that they do not use milk protein in their plastic?
Just how far do you take the vegan thing?
This is made even trickier by the fact that the beam will be about 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) wide by the time it reaches the Moon."/I>
Oh-kay.... so it would be less tricky if your laser beam was, say, 2 millimeters wide by the time it reaches the moon?
Ummm... If you're ignoring the political demands of the masses, why would you be concerned about any political fallout?
Substantial numbers of ground troops have been used in Afghanistan - the difference is that the US cleverly used the Afghan peoples' desire for freedom to ensure that American soldiers did not have to get involved in much combat. They largely played the roles of military advisors, tacticians, etc.
Just a few thoughts...
:)
- If you had the screen adjusted in a low position (because of your seating position, setup or whatever), wouldn't you have to move the screen up every time you want to change disks in the drive?
- How are they cooling this thing? I can see a vent around the top, but if it has a fan surely two vents would be needed, intake and outflow?
- Apple should have made it an option to mount it upside-down, effectively hanging it from the top shelf of a workstation. The screen would need to be rotatable through 180 degrees and the drive would need to be capable of being remounted upside-down too. Maybe it's hackable.
- How long before we see the colors that the existing iMac demographic love so much?
Yes I was joking, hence the *duck* after the comment. And no, it was not meant as a troll.
...can it run Windows XP?
*duck*
Or are we talking about using students' code for profit?
Either way it could be argued that the college is maximising its assets to bring in more money to increase the standard of education at that school. Idealistically, the more money a college makes, the less it has to charge for tuition, meaning more people can afford to study there.
It's standard practice in the corporate world that the employer owns the rights to employees' code if that code was developed on the company's dime. Does this principle stand for students' work, done on University computers during classes?
How does the /. community feel about a private school selling applications that were developed in-house by paid IT staff?
I'm curious because I work in the IT services department of a private school.
Er... no, that just looks like a well-buttered hamster... Wow... er, my neighbor must've borrowed the camera... no, I don't have any idea how that goat got in the shot.
What does this have to do with CmdrTaco? ;)