Time for me to shamelessly plug my new favorite book again... "The Transparent Society" by David Brin. The main question addressed in it is, how much of a right do I have to other people's personal info? How much of a right do they have to mine? Brin proposes that 'viewing rights' should be as symmetric as possible, and as open as can be agreed upon (i.e., most people probably don't want you reading their personal email). The additional condition goes something like this: the more power you're given, the more people should be able to keep an eye on you. Records, bookkeeping, etc. of the government should be open to everyone, easily. Internal records of corporations should be available to every employee. Etc. Basically, accountability to other people is proportional to your power to affect their lives.
Hmmm... am I the only 'geek' who thought Ringworld was a piece of crap?
As far as fantasy stuff goes (series that I've enjoyed include the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Rift War books, the first ~4 of the Wheel of Time books, and the Lovecraft stuff), I had fun, but I'm starting to think it's a bit silly. None of it even slightly compares to the amount of vision and talent that went into the Lord of the Rings (definitely a geek must-read), and I'm beginning to wonder if looking ahead to the future (in the grand old SF tradition) is just a fundamentally more interesting premise than the swords-and-sorcery thing.
In addition to most of what you listed, I recommend (some of) the work by Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Orson Scott Card, and Kim Stanley Robinson.
A book by Brin that's both preachy and interesting is The Transparent Society, which I'm now reading for the second time to make a bit more sense of it. Highly recommend it.
Yeah, the whole 'random drawing' angle sorta cuts out the feeling of accomplishment. Plus they give way too much time for the contest. They'll have TONS of entries to draw from. Oh well. Maybe _someday_ I'll get a Mindstorms kit... or I could just do 6.270:)
As far as counting words goes, try ^u-[number]-Meta-f for a better count than MSWord is giving you. (ahhh, emacs!)
Well, I had thought about this possibility. I still see it as a faint hope, but only just. I would be much more optimistic if this move to join together MIT and Microsoft had been done with the consent of everyone involved (and if there weren't _extremely_ sketchy provisions in the contract about who owns what intellectual property... *shudder*), but since it's a decision that's been made solely to get money, I fear Microsoft will have far more control over the situation than MIT will. I feel that MIT's nerd-powerhouse culture is being killed off in many ways. We're becoming more mainstream and more corporate. Despite all of the blathering by upper-level admin types about MIT being the "Stewards of the Future", I won't be surprised if we're a humourous footnote in 20 years.
I agree completely. Good professors are routinely punted in favor of professors who are utter failures in the classroom, but bring in the big bucks. This is just another step in that direction.
I'm currently a junior at MIT. As you might guess, this announcement is making me a little worried. What you're missing in your post is, Stallman and Berners-Lee and the rest have NO INPUT in these decisions. Financial soul-selling deals like this are made by our incredibly bloated, inept and indecisive administration, which has a significant track record of flailingly covering up their mistakes and being unwilling to listen to input from the people affected by their decisions (faculty, students, parents, etc).
There's a "Future Fest" party at MIT tonight (10/5), in Walker Memorial dining hall (check out the map at web.mit.edu or at http://web.mit.edu/jmorash/www/images/map.gif). It's sponsored by the Microsoft "Research" Propaganda Department, so if any Boston-area anti-M$ people feel like showing up, I highly encourage it.
I really enjoyed reading this book when I did, but I think that was about 4 years ago. It's a neat exploration of nanotech ideas at the time. Since then, things have gotten considerably more complicated (and better thought out). As another poster mentioned, it's also a bit too fawning over Drexler's ideas; a bit too much hype. Overall an enjoyable read, but not the best source of information available.
Somewhere on the page (actually, it may be on the 'technical details' page) it is mentioned that eternity.cs.umass.edu is catching all the http requests for hit-counting purposes, then bouncing them to the iPic.
As soon as this article appeared, I thought "Great merciful crap, he's at it again, time to filter JonKatz"... but then I read it. Surprisingly free of the usual grammatical/spelling errors, this article was also written in a much more rational tone than some of your previous work. Of course, I might think this just because I completely agree with you or because I haven't slept enough lately.;) The cheap trick of using "innocent children" as a ploy to pass censorship legislation is as disgusting as it is unAmerican. It's not just in the Linux community that information wants to be free; more info = better choices not just in operating systems but in all aspects of our lives. Arbitrarily preventing children from watching movies is not going to have any positive effect - all it does is try and cut people off from some aspect of human experience. No one is born with morals - they must be learned, by seeing what goes on in the world and being taught, and deciding for yourself, what's right and what's wrong. Two relevant urls: _The Parking Lot is Full_ on 'protecting' childrenSalon article on teens using the internet to make informed decisions about sex
Oh, how nice, another company trying to ride the IPO wave with a stupid gimmick that hasn't been tried yet. Hmmm, what have they done so far? *clicks link*
You make a good point that the job market varies regionally... it seems likely that most of the places where older programmers are being dropped are either in silicon valley, nyc, or boston, where there are plenty of worthless, IPO-inflated companies that (for now) can afford to do such things.
As far as job security and your family goes - this is rather OT, but why have another kid? This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately... why do people have so many children? There just isn't enough room for them...
Please be so kind as to avoid trying to speak for a group of people as diverse as/. readers. I'm getting sick of your self-promoting opportunism.
I think censorship is wrong. I think parents should be allowed to let their kids see what they want to, provided that the parents talk about it with their kids afterwards... the South Park movie is a great example of something that's disgusting, ridiculous, and violent, but also hilarious, clever, and thoughtful. Kids could learn more from it than just the words to "Uncle Fucka". But you're not addressing that at all. In your usual style, you're making vague, poorly-worded pronouncements and calls to arms - and in doing so, insulting the people you used to ride to fame.
What is it about "geeks" that you find so attractive? Why do you try to hard to wedge your way into this community despite your obvious lack of any of its defining qualities?
And why should only "geek" kids be taken to see supposedly inappropriate movies?
AOLServer is, as far as I can tell, a web server & ftp server. Enthusiastically endorsed by Philip Greenspun (who wrote Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, reviewed here a few days back), it seems to be pretty darn good. I haven't used it myself, so take all this with a bucket of salt, but Greenspun seems to think it's fast, efficient, plays nicely with databases and TCL, etc. etc. etc. So apparently open sourcing this is quite good news. I got this from http://photo.net/wtr/thebook/server.html
Yeah, I watched the "TV CF" (commercial?) on the Aibo page... it really doesn't walk very effectively. Rather wobbly.
Or is that supposed to be 'puppy-like' behavior?
I would be really impressed if it could walk well enough / fast enough to follow you around everywhere - who needs a pda when you have an electronic dog? Hook it up to wireless ethernet, give it voice recognition...
The only problem is a display. You'd need one of those eyepieces that projects directly on your retina with a scanning laser, or something.
No more laptops/pilots/wince-devices, just pets. That would be neat.
Uh, "Defence" is the extremely common alternate spelling in the UK. Notice that this article is from the British Sunday Times. I agree that trying to read stuff that's misspelled is hard to do, but it seems like you're overreacting a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
If Google _does_ decide to sell out, get a live band to webcast, etc., then the band should obviously be Moxy Fruvous.
Time for me to shamelessly plug my new favorite book again...
"The Transparent Society" by David Brin.
The main question addressed in it is, how much of a right do I have to other people's personal info? How much of a right do they have to mine?
Brin proposes that 'viewing rights' should be as symmetric as possible, and as open as can be agreed upon (i.e., most people probably don't want you reading their personal email). The additional condition goes something like this: the more power you're given, the more people should be able to keep an eye on you. Records, bookkeeping, etc. of the government should be open to everyone, easily. Internal records of corporations should be available to every employee. Etc. Basically, accountability to other people is proportional to your power to affect their lives.
But... but... it sounds so Star Trekky ... *shudder* (at least in the reviews)
Hmmm... am I the only 'geek' who thought Ringworld was a piece of crap?
As far as fantasy stuff goes (series that I've enjoyed include the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Rift War books, the first ~4 of the Wheel of Time books, and the Lovecraft stuff), I had fun, but I'm starting to think it's a bit silly. None of it even slightly compares to the amount of vision and talent that went into the Lord of the Rings (definitely a geek must-read), and I'm beginning to wonder if looking ahead to the future (in the grand old SF tradition) is just a fundamentally more interesting premise than the swords-and-sorcery thing.
In addition to most of what you listed, I recommend (some of) the work by Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Orson Scott Card, and Kim Stanley Robinson.
A book by Brin that's both preachy and interesting is The Transparent Society, which I'm now reading for the second time to make a bit more sense of it.
Highly recommend it.
Yeah, the whole 'random drawing' angle sorta cuts out the feeling of accomplishment. Plus they give way too much time for the contest. They'll have TONS of entries to draw from. :)
Oh well. Maybe _someday_ I'll get a Mindstorms kit... or I could just do 6.270
As far as counting words goes, try
^u-[number]-Meta-f
for a better count than MSWord is giving you.
(ahhh, emacs!)
Oops, sorry.
9pm-midnight.
Please moderate this up!
Well, I had thought about this possibility. I still see it as a faint hope, but only just. I would be much more optimistic if this move to join together MIT and Microsoft had been done with the consent of everyone involved (and if there weren't _extremely_ sketchy provisions in the contract about who owns what intellectual property... *shudder*), but since it's a decision that's been made solely to get money, I fear Microsoft will have far more control over the situation than MIT will.
I feel that MIT's nerd-powerhouse culture is being killed off in many ways. We're becoming more mainstream and more corporate. Despite all of the blathering by upper-level admin types about MIT being the "Stewards of the Future", I won't be surprised if we're a humourous footnote in 20 years.
I agree completely.
Good professors are routinely punted in favor of professors who are utter failures in the classroom, but bring in the big bucks. This is just another step in that direction.
*sigh*
So, you're an alum. What should I do?
I'm currently a junior at MIT. As you might guess, this announcement is making me a little worried. What you're missing in your post is, Stallman and Berners-Lee and the rest have NO INPUT in these decisions. Financial soul-selling deals like this are made by our incredibly bloated, inept and indecisive administration, which has a significant track record of flailingly covering up their mistakes and being unwilling to listen to input from the people affected by their decisions (faculty, students, parents, etc).
There's a "Future Fest" party at MIT tonight (10/5), in Walker Memorial dining hall (check out the map at web.mit.edu or at http://web.mit.edu/jmorash/www/images/map.gif). It's sponsored by the Microsoft "Research" Propaganda Department, so if any Boston-area anti-M$ people feel like showing up, I highly encourage it.
A bit more info about the quasi-famous MIT Swapfest:
MITERS page an article in the school newspaper More thorough info, from the MIT Ham pages
I really enjoyed reading this book when I did, but I think that was about 4 years ago. It's a neat exploration of nanotech ideas at the time. Since then, things have gotten considerably more complicated (and better thought out). As another poster mentioned, it's also a bit too fawning over Drexler's ideas; a bit too much hype.
Overall an enjoyable read, but not the best source of information available.
Somewhere on the page (actually, it may be on the 'technical details' page) it is mentioned that eternity.cs.umass.edu is catching all the http requests for hit-counting purposes, then bouncing them to the iPic.
I'm still skeptical, but this sure would be neat.
Arrgh, sorry the formatting sucks. Forgot I was in HTML mode.
As soon as this article appeared, I thought "Great merciful crap, he's at it again, time to filter JonKatz"... but then I read it. Surprisingly free of the usual grammatical/spelling errors, this article was also written in a much more rational tone than some of your previous work. Of course, I might think this just because I completely agree with you or because I haven't slept enough lately. ;) The cheap trick of using "innocent children" as a ploy to pass censorship legislation is as disgusting as it is unAmerican. It's not just in the Linux community that information wants to be free; more info = better choices not just in operating systems but in all aspects of our lives. Arbitrarily preventing children from watching movies is not going to have any positive effect - all it does is try and cut people off from some aspect of human experience. No one is born with morals - they must be learned, by seeing what goes on in the world and being taught, and deciding for yourself, what's right and what's wrong. Two relevant urls: _The Parking Lot is Full_ on 'protecting' children Salon article on teens using the internet to make informed decisions about sex
Wow, that didn't take long.
"Logon failure: user not allowed to log on to this computer."
I'm not too web-savvy... does this mean it's getting DOS'd/slashdotted, or is something more interesting happening?
Oops, my mistake. Most of those are domain names they have available.o lio.html
Their portfolio is at
http://www.virtualchemy.com/old/portfolio/portf
Oh, how nice, another company trying to ride the IPO wave with a stupid gimmick that hasn't been tried yet.
/.
Hmmm, what have they done so far?
*clicks link*
whoa!
amature-webcams.com
centerfold-webcams.com
find-webcams.com
hardcore-webcams.com
lesbian-webcams.com
pornstar-webcams.com
teen-webcams.com
teen-movies.com
supermodel-online.com
supermodel-photos.com
pornstars-online.com
amateurs-online.com
bondage-photos.com
buycgi.com
centerfolds-online.com
fetish-photos.com
find-amateurs.com
gowebcams.com
sweetyoungthings.com
daddys-girls.com
prettylittlethings.com
Well, that's quite a list. I'm so pleased that the antics of a team of morons who make pedophilic-sounding web sites merit mention on
You make a good point that the job market varies regionally... it seems likely that most of the places where older programmers are being dropped are either in silicon valley, nyc, or boston, where there are plenty of worthless, IPO-inflated companies that (for now) can afford to do such things.
As far as job security and your family goes - this is rather OT, but why have another kid? This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately... why do people have so many children? There just isn't enough room for them...
"Take a Geek Kid to a Restricted Movie Day"??
/. readers. I'm getting sick of your self-promoting opportunism.
Please be so kind as to avoid trying to speak for a group of people as diverse as
I think censorship is wrong. I think parents should be allowed to let their kids see what they want to, provided that the parents talk about it with their kids afterwards... the South Park movie is a great example of something that's disgusting, ridiculous, and violent, but also hilarious, clever, and thoughtful. Kids could learn more from it than just the words to "Uncle Fucka".
But you're not addressing that at all. In your usual style, you're making vague, poorly-worded pronouncements and calls to arms - and in doing so, insulting the people you used to ride to fame.
What is it about "geeks" that you find so attractive? Why do you try to hard to wedge your way into this community despite your obvious lack of any of its defining qualities?
And why should only "geek" kids be taken to see supposedly inappropriate movies?
Father of SIX?
This is rather OT, but, how can you justify having six children?
Too damn many people in the world already.
AOLServer is, as far as I can tell, a web server & ftp server.
Enthusiastically endorsed by Philip Greenspun (who wrote Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, reviewed here a few days back), it seems to be pretty darn good. I haven't used it myself, so take all this with a bucket of salt, but Greenspun seems to think it's fast, efficient, plays nicely with databases and TCL, etc. etc. etc. So apparently open sourcing this is quite good news.
I got this from http://photo.net/wtr/thebook/server.html
I seem to remember hearing somewhere that the mandelbrot set is not, technically, a fractal.
Can anyone back me up/refute this?
Yeah, I watched the "TV CF" (commercial?) on the Aibo page... it really doesn't walk very effectively. Rather wobbly.
Or is that supposed to be 'puppy-like' behavior?
I would be really impressed if it could walk well enough / fast enough to follow you around everywhere - who needs a pda when you have an electronic dog? Hook it up to wireless ethernet, give it voice recognition...
The only problem is a display. You'd need one of those eyepieces that projects directly on your retina with a scanning laser, or something.
No more laptops/pilots/wince-devices, just pets. That would be neat.
Uh, "Defence" is the extremely common alternate spelling in the UK. Notice that this article is from the British Sunday Times.
I agree that trying to read stuff that's misspelled is hard to do, but it seems like you're overreacting a bit.