Just because there's a newer version doesn't mean it's better for an individual's purpose than what is currently being run. It could even break a mission-critical application.
Just what we need -- another group of folks making decisions they have no reason, right or responsibility to make.
Write software, let the users who deploy it take the responsibility for making changes. Or is individual choice and responsibility no longer important?
There is digital cable and Digital Cable...if you live in some parts of Sacramento you can get Winfirst fiber-optic service for your broadband (REAL broadband) digital, television (HDTV and analog), as well as local and long distance telephone.
It's a HUGE fiberoptic pipe. Their center of operation is at MacClellan AFB and it's darn impressive.
The documentary by the same name is playing around the country. Featuring the motion picture film shot on the voyage, and some stunning new photography, you get a vivid feel for the conditions the crew had to endure and the heroic feat of leadership Shackleton displayed by saving his entire crew. When it would have been possible to despair he found a way.
I saw this film on Saturday. Almost needed a parka when it was over - damn it was cold.
Coupled with The American Experience: Return with Honor about the American Vietnam POWs the two films provide ample evidence of what resources human beings have at their disposal with which to survive.
Not the same as shoplifting or driving off without paying?
BULLSHIT
It's exactly the same. That you don't see the difference is a manifestation of the "new-think" displayed daily here were all sorts of rationalizations for taking what you haven't paid for are the norm.
I've been surprised that Apple hasn't made a simple TV tuner thingie that would plug into modern Macs through the FireWire port. Coupled with some even better TiVo software it would make a logical addition to the "digital hub" concept that Apple has been pushing.
You could watch personal TV on your PowerBook or iMac I suppose. Or you could mirror to a regular TV. A Cinema Display would make a darn nice HDTV.
I mean should Aunt Millie be allowed to chop and channel her Chevy? Sure if she's up to it. That's what Linux is all about - a computer replacement for making hotrods. Not many Millies did this - but hey a few did I'm sure. More now-a-days than ever before.
Apple set out, from the start, to make machines that were easy to use - putting the geekiness on the inside and the ease-of-use on the outside: an approachable computer that was among the first consumer machines to see computers as tools for expression.
It's time we gave thought to making the tools we use beautiful, elegant and useful. Sure a dumb beige box will work. But does it make our workspace nicer? Does seeing it bring a bit of joy? Of course not.
Same for GUI. You can claim that Aqua is "eye candy." I've always hated this because it says there shouldn't be beauty in our lives. You may fault how it looks, and rightfully fault how it works, but it's not a bad thing to want to be better and more elegant. It's a good thing.
I've often compared Macs to my BMW 540i, a car I truly love, the most perfect machine I've ever owned and at 50+ I've owned a couple of cars. When I quibble about how the door locks work and the stability of the cup holders -- and this after owning the car for five years -- well that says something about elegant design. Its superb engineering saved my bacon when I was run off the road by a truck in Wyoming at 80+ MPH. A fine machine.
Apple, esp since the return of Steve Jobs, has tried to deliver a computer that works as well as my BMW. They aren't there yet. Maybe they're where BMW was with the 2002. But at least they are trying. In doing so they raise the bar for the other guys.
Apple says commodity products don't have to shlock that disrespects the owner. I feel Apple wants to make better products so I'll buy another one - not products which lock me in so I HAVE to buy another one. That's Microsoft think.
It's also the kind of thought that drives innovation away -- from companies, from NASA: don't fail, be very conservative.
Give me Apple any day. At least someone there is passionate about a product from the ground up!
Companies like Apple share advance information with publications all the time - it's "embargoed" by agreement. That lets the publication get all the facts and prepare a story so it can be complete and be timely for a magazine printing.
Breaking an embargo is a Bad Thing.
I have to figure this was a screw-up. I hear people at Apple are just this side of coniption fits.
Cassini Weekly Significant Eventsfor 12/06/01 - 12/12/01The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstonetracking station on Wednesday, December 12. The Cassini spacecraft is in anexcellent state of health and is operating normally. "Present Position" webpage, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/.Recent instrument activities included two Radio and Plasma Wave Science HighFrequency Receiver calibrations. Engineering activities taking place onboardthe spacecraft this week include an Attitude Control Subsystem high-watermark clear and the uplink of the Mission Sequence Subsystem (MSS) D7.6.1Modules.
An important novel - but under feminist attack
on
The Left Hand of Darkness
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It's curious that today this fine novel is under attack as being a "sell out." LeGuin, the critics argue, was unable to be bold enough in her depiction of Winter and so the novel fails because it does not go far enough.
I find these criticisms, coming long after "The Left Hand of Darkness" was written, to be a crock. This was an earthquake of a novel. It changed the way many of us viewed gender when we first read it.
I took this novel, along with the later "Dispossessed" to sea with me and it made its way around a good part of the submarine's crew. We argued about it for much of the patrol. It had REAL impact in 1975. It has real impact in 2001.
Just don't let the radical feminists tell you it's a cop-out.
Well I guess I look at science fiction and literature a bit differently. So here are my authors whose work will be read and appreciated 50 years from now.
JACK VANCE - Crossing science fiction and fantasy Vance writes great stories which are not tied to science closely. His stories of the Gaien Reach are wonderful. And "The Last Castle" is a true classic.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON - I'm thinking less here of his Mars trilogy than his Orange County Trilogy and "A Memory of Whiteness." Again, not too closely tied to any given technology.
LARRY NIVEN - One work: "Ringworld" because it will last. No galactic core explosion but who cares? Perhaps it's a bit too '60s.
URSULA LEGUIN - for "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "Earthsea" if nothing else. She writes very well indeed.
GREGORY BENFORD - this one is riskier but Benford is more than a "hard science" writer.
GREG BEAR - just for "Blood Music" if nothing else.
I have a few picks that are sort of "off the beaten path"
LUCIOUS SHEPARD for "Life During Wartime"
CONNIE WILLIS for her short stories. I think "At the Rialto" will appear in many anthologies.
THOMAS PYNCHON for "Gravity's Rainbow"
and the staples:
ALFRED BESTER for "The Stars my Destination"
ROBERT HEINLEIN - the early juveniles were well done. His later work was self-indulgent crap and he desperately needed to be edited - hard - as he was in his early career.
I'm not sure about Arthur Clark. I don't think his work has legs.
I got my first erector set when I was sick with the chicken pox. My uncle brought it to me along with a copy of Dr Seus "On Beyond Zebra." It had multi-colored parts and some great things to be built.
A few years later I got a HUGE Erector Set for Christmas that would let me build the parachute drop from Coney Island or a replica of of steam engine. It was great because they showed you how things fit - but you had to figure out how to really MAKE it and assemble it.
It's a perfect example of a toy that teaches.
This was, by the way, in the 50s. I think I got that monster erector set in 1960.
I kept imagining that, perhaps, I'd get the great channel meld and somehow "The West Wing" and "Wolf Lake" would be morphed with "Enterprise".
Command Deck of ENTERPRISE
Captain: Has anyone seen Ruby?
Vulcan (eyes glowing): No. (wiggles ears) I think she was written out in an earlier episode.
Engineer: Polls are in. Mammet-speak required.
Teenager runs in
Teeniebooper: I'm SOOOO fed up with you Daddy. (pushes up glasses) you won't let me do ANYTHING. The drug dealer down at the Transporter just wants me So BAD!
Captain, morphs into Donner:
Donner: Go take orders in the crews mess - and stop piddling on the floor while you're at it.
Vulcan morphs into Ruby whose eyes glow as the view of the bridge does funny colored transitions.
RUBY: I'm glad you mentioned that!
RUBY transforms into wolf, piddles on DONNERS feet and flees the room in herky-jerk motions of hyper-color.
ENGINEER: Offers wise Native American saying.
Secret Service appears: Mr President you're standing in dog piddle.
POTIS: Why yes, it was forseen in Revelations (cites chapter/verse in Greek). Now get me some Klingons, I'm gonna do something....
----------
"The past isn't dead. It's not even past!"
Quentin Compson
I think it's time for all these things to be embargoed and protected by the kind of organization Greg Bear describes In "Queen of Angles" and "Slant" where you have to prove you have a pretty darn good reason in order to be able to search surveillance records. When I first read it 8 or 9 years ago it seemed a bit far-fetched.
I just watched two on DVD this weekend that completely blow this apart:
"You Can Count on Me"
"Third and Main"
Now there IS a love interest in both of these films but if you're searching for a quality drama and a wry David Mammet comedy then these films work just fine.
Once special effects get involved the quality of films plummets.
"When anything is possible, nothing is interesting"
Fowler's Law
Where's the meat of these reports? It's interesting to note that in all cases safety systems worked as required. No nuclear events were recorded although contamination did occur when the casings of weapons were breached and the material spread over the area of the accident. Some of the accidents cited are EXTREME events that push the maximum credible accident design limits.
I'm wondering if the lack of recent incidents is the result of reports still being classified or if we have increased our safeguards.
My experience aboard fast attack submarines has always left me with a good feeling about the degree of paranoia the military holds for these devices. They were treated with enormous respect and the security precautions surrounding them always impressed me. It sure was a pain in the butt. I felt the people whose job involved the care of these weapons understood the meaning of what they were doing and carried out the extreme work rules because, ultimately, they made sense.
Even looking over the history of the Naval nuclear power program you can see that, as our understanding of the dangers of radiation became more sophisticated we also became increasingly diligent in the handling of radioactive materials and in the reduction of radiation exposure. I looked at my old service records and I note that my total radiation exposure while in the service was under 50 mili-REM. Granted, I picked up the Parche in new construction, but I still did maintenance in the Reactor Compartment for years after criticality. We worked VERY hard to limit radiation exposure.
My feeling on the report cited is that the people who wrote it were fundamentally anti-nuclear and wanted to use existing reports to make things look bad/incompetent.
Accidents happen, even in zero-defects programs. (Maybe BECAUSE of the zero-defect program psychology). It's good to see that safeguards designed into the weapons worked.
Yes! Lets build a renewable energy rocket with big windmill vanes and solar cells to power it! And we'll design this rocket to use less energy too so it only takes 100 pounds of thrust to lift 2000 pounds to orbit.
Ahem....Microsoft would like a word with you...a new feature soon to come to XP.
Avoid cliches like the plague!
Of course it's ultimately about us...
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 1
Remember first that David was created to fulfill a need in a culture that had witnessed a billion deaths; a culture whose emotional disconnect makes sex with machines preferable to sex with humans.
So watch the film and ask yourself how we might be different from Dr. Hobby. Would we make the same fundamental mistake and see our creation only as lines of code and a research breakthrough?
David's journey is ultimately a human one - a machine seeking the humane.
This is brilliant film-making with a single instance of what Joe would deem magic, in a fairy tale for all of us who may be lost in our machines.
Offer your own self to the film and you will receive back in kind, many times over.
Tune into A&E and watch the biography of the Impressionists. Their critics were just as blunt and just as wrong.
In some ways computers make it too easy - in other ways too hard: you have to learn bits and bytes and stuff which always seems to alarm the art crowd who worry about selling their souls to the machine gods.
Photography has only been recognized as an art in the last half of the 20th Century.
So keep up the work, screw the critics, and go to town! You have my respect if you can.
Those of us who use Final Cut Pro often use FireWire drives on our G4s or PowerBooks. Not all FW drives DO work properly, however. The bridge hardware between the IDE drive and the firewire interface is the key. Promax and LaCie sell drives that work just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
>Wait, on the other channel, they are showing grass grow. I think I'll rather watch that.
That's a pot farmer's security camera you're watching, dolt! Put down the pipe and engage man, engage!!!
Of course you're also right...
Just because there's a newer version doesn't mean it's better for an individual's purpose than what is currently being run. It could even break a mission-critical application.
Just what we need -- another group of folks making decisions they have no reason, right or responsibility to make.
Write software, let the users who deploy it take the responsibility for making changes. Or is individual choice and responsibility no longer important?
There is digital cable and Digital Cable...if you live in some parts of Sacramento you can get Winfirst fiber-optic service for your broadband (REAL broadband) digital, television (HDTV and analog), as well as local and long distance telephone.
It's a HUGE fiberoptic pipe. Their center of operation is at MacClellan AFB and it's darn impressive.
AB
The documentary by the same name is playing around the country. Featuring the motion picture film shot on the voyage, and some stunning new photography, you get a vivid feel for the conditions the crew had to endure and the heroic feat of leadership Shackleton displayed by saving his entire crew. When it would have been possible to despair he found a way.
I saw this film on Saturday. Almost needed a parka when it was over - damn it was cold.
Coupled with The American Experience: Return with Honor about the American Vietnam POWs the two films provide ample evidence of what resources human beings have at their disposal with which to survive.
Not the same as shoplifting or driving off without paying?
BULLSHIT
It's exactly the same. That you don't see the difference is a manifestation of the "new-think" displayed daily here were all sorts of rationalizations for taking what you haven't paid for are the norm.
Theft is theft.
I've been surprised that Apple hasn't made a simple TV tuner thingie that would plug into modern Macs through the FireWire port. Coupled with some even better TiVo software it would make a logical addition to the "digital hub" concept that Apple has been pushing.
You could watch personal TV on your PowerBook or iMac I suppose. Or you could mirror to a regular TV. A Cinema Display would make a darn nice HDTV.
This sig space for rent.
...in geosynchronous orbit. They're big. Of course they're 23,000 miles up, too.
Sheesh - THINK.
I mean should Aunt Millie be allowed to chop and channel her Chevy? Sure if she's up to it. That's what Linux is all about - a computer replacement for making hotrods. Not many Millies did this - but hey a few did I'm sure. More now-a-days than ever before.
Get out those torches and chop away!
Apple set out, from the start, to make machines that were easy to use - putting the geekiness on the inside and the ease-of-use on the outside: an approachable computer that was among the first consumer machines to see computers as tools for expression.
It's time we gave thought to making the tools we use beautiful, elegant and useful. Sure a dumb beige box will work. But does it make our workspace nicer? Does seeing it bring a bit of joy? Of course not.
Same for GUI. You can claim that Aqua is "eye candy." I've always hated this because it says there shouldn't be beauty in our lives. You may fault how it looks, and rightfully fault how it works, but it's not a bad thing to want to be better and more elegant. It's a good thing.
I've often compared Macs to my BMW 540i, a car I truly love, the most perfect machine I've ever owned and at 50+ I've owned a couple of cars. When I quibble about how the door locks work and the stability of the cup holders -- and this after owning the car for five years -- well that says something about elegant design. Its superb engineering saved my bacon when I was run off the road by a truck in Wyoming at 80+ MPH. A fine machine.
Apple, esp since the return of Steve Jobs, has tried to deliver a computer that works as well as my BMW. They aren't there yet. Maybe they're where BMW was with the 2002. But at least they are trying. In doing so they raise the bar for the other guys.
Apple says commodity products don't have to shlock that disrespects the owner. I feel Apple wants to make better products so I'll buy another one - not products which lock me in so I HAVE to buy another one. That's Microsoft think.
It's also the kind of thought that drives innovation away -- from companies, from NASA: don't fail, be very conservative.
Give me Apple any day. At least someone there is passionate about a product from the ground up!
Companies like Apple share advance information with publications all the time - it's "embargoed" by agreement. That lets the publication get all the facts and prepare a story so it can be complete and be timely for a magazine printing.
Breaking an embargo is a Bad Thing.
I have to figure this was a screw-up. I hear people at Apple are just this side of coniption fits.
This is from the report sent out:
.Recent instrument activities included two Radio and Plasma Wave Science HighFrequency Receiver calibrations. Engineering activities taking place onboardthe spacecraft this week include an Attitude Control Subsystem high-watermark clear and the uplink of the Mission Sequence Subsystem (MSS) D7.6.1Modules.
Cassini Weekly Significant Eventsfor 12/06/01 - 12/12/01The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstonetracking station on Wednesday, December 12. The Cassini spacecraft is in anexcellent state of health and is operating normally. "Present Position" webpage, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/
It's curious that today this fine novel is under attack as being a "sell out." LeGuin, the critics argue, was unable to be bold enough in her depiction of Winter and so the novel fails because it does not go far enough.
I find these criticisms, coming long after "The Left Hand of Darkness" was written, to be a crock. This was an earthquake of a novel. It changed the way many of us viewed gender when we first read it.
I took this novel, along with the later "Dispossessed" to sea with me and it made its way around a good part of the submarine's crew. We argued about it for much of the patrol. It had REAL impact in 1975. It has real impact in 2001.
Just don't let the radical feminists tell you it's a cop-out.
Well I guess I look at science fiction and literature a bit differently. So here are my authors whose work will be read and appreciated 50 years from now.
JACK VANCE - Crossing science fiction and fantasy Vance writes great stories which are not tied to science closely. His stories of the Gaien Reach are wonderful. And "The Last Castle" is a true classic.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON - I'm thinking less here of his Mars trilogy than his Orange County Trilogy and "A Memory of Whiteness." Again, not too closely tied to any given technology.
LARRY NIVEN - One work: "Ringworld" because it will last. No galactic core explosion but who cares? Perhaps it's a bit too '60s.
URSULA LEGUIN - for "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "Earthsea" if nothing else. She writes very well indeed.
GREGORY BENFORD - this one is riskier but Benford is more than a "hard science" writer.
GREG BEAR - just for "Blood Music" if nothing else.
I have a few picks that are sort of "off the beaten path"
LUCIOUS SHEPARD for "Life During Wartime"
CONNIE WILLIS for her short stories. I think "At the Rialto" will appear in many anthologies.
THOMAS PYNCHON for "Gravity's Rainbow"
and the staples:
ALFRED BESTER for "The Stars my Destination"
ROBERT HEINLEIN - the early juveniles were well done. His later work was self-indulgent crap and he desperately needed to be edited - hard - as he was in his early career.
I'm not sure about Arthur Clark. I don't think his work has legs.
I got my first erector set when I was sick with the chicken pox. My uncle brought it to me along with a copy of Dr Seus "On Beyond Zebra." It had multi-colored parts and some great things to be built.
A few years later I got a HUGE Erector Set for Christmas that would let me build the parachute drop from Coney Island or a replica of of steam engine. It was great because they showed you how things fit - but you had to figure out how to really MAKE it and assemble it.
It's a perfect example of a toy that teaches.
This was, by the way, in the 50s. I think I got that monster erector set in 1960.
Wish I still had it.
I kept imagining that, perhaps, I'd get the great channel meld and somehow "The West Wing" and "Wolf Lake" would be morphed with "Enterprise".
Command Deck of ENTERPRISE
Captain: Has anyone seen Ruby?
Vulcan (eyes glowing): No. (wiggles ears) I think she was written out in an earlier episode.
Engineer: Polls are in. Mammet-speak required.
Teenager runs in
Teeniebooper: I'm SOOOO fed up with you Daddy. (pushes up glasses) you won't let me do ANYTHING. The drug dealer down at the Transporter just wants me So BAD!
Captain, morphs into Donner:
Donner: Go take orders in the crews mess - and stop piddling on the floor while you're at it.
Vulcan morphs into Ruby whose eyes glow as the view of the bridge does funny colored transitions.
RUBY: I'm glad you mentioned that!
RUBY transforms into wolf, piddles on DONNERS feet and flees the room in herky-jerk motions of hyper-color.
ENGINEER: Offers wise Native American saying.
Secret Service appears: Mr President you're standing in dog piddle.
POTIS: Why yes, it was forseen in Revelations (cites chapter/verse in Greek). Now get me some Klingons, I'm gonna do something....
----------
"The past isn't dead. It's not even past!"
Quentin Compson
The correct response is against ALL terrorist organizations not just ONE. A big time response against an organization we can finger is required.
But all terrorists should now be targeted by all governments: Basque, IRA, you name it: if they can be identified they should be hit VERY VERY soon.
I think it's time for all these things to be embargoed and protected by the kind of organization Greg Bear describes In "Queen of Angles" and "Slant" where you have to prove you have a pretty darn good reason in order to be able to search surveillance records. When I first read it 8 or 9 years ago it seemed a bit far-fetched.
Now I think it's necessary. NOW.
"Heck, by this logic, we're only 50 years away from using computers to do integer addition!"
Well....I think the real important concept is that we might be 50 years away from computers who can invent FOR THEMSELVES how to do integer addition.
That's the key for AI.
I just watched two on DVD this weekend that completely blow this apart:
"You Can Count on Me"
"Third and Main"
Now there IS a love interest in both of these films but if you're searching for a quality drama and a wry David Mammet comedy then these films work just fine.
Once special effects get involved the quality of films plummets.
"When anything is possible, nothing is interesting"
Fowler's Law
Where's the meat of these reports? It's interesting to note that in all cases safety systems worked as required. No nuclear events were recorded although contamination did occur when the casings of weapons were breached and the material spread over the area of the accident. Some of the accidents cited are EXTREME events that push the maximum credible accident design limits.
I'm wondering if the lack of recent incidents is the result of reports still being classified or if we have increased our safeguards.
My experience aboard fast attack submarines has always left me with a good feeling about the degree of paranoia the military holds for these devices. They were treated with enormous respect and the security precautions surrounding them always impressed me. It sure was a pain in the butt. I felt the people whose job involved the care of these weapons understood the meaning of what they were doing and carried out the extreme work rules because, ultimately, they made sense.
Even looking over the history of the Naval nuclear power program you can see that, as our understanding of the dangers of radiation became more sophisticated we also became increasingly diligent in the handling of radioactive materials and in the reduction of radiation exposure. I looked at my old service records and I note that my total radiation exposure while in the service was under 50 mili-REM. Granted, I picked up the Parche in new construction, but I still did maintenance in the Reactor Compartment for years after criticality. We worked VERY hard to limit radiation exposure.
My feeling on the report cited is that the people who wrote it were fundamentally anti-nuclear and wanted to use existing reports to make things look bad/incompetent.
Accidents happen, even in zero-defects programs. (Maybe BECAUSE of the zero-defect program psychology). It's good to see that safeguards designed into the weapons worked.
Yes! Lets build a renewable energy rocket with big windmill vanes and solar cells to power it! And we'll design this rocket to use less energy too so it only takes 100 pounds of thrust to lift 2000 pounds to orbit.
Wow - Great thinking!
We ARE talking about nuclear rockets, right?
Ahem....Microsoft would like a word with you...a new feature soon to come to XP.
Avoid cliches like the plague!
Remember first that David was created to fulfill a need in a culture that had witnessed a billion deaths; a culture whose emotional disconnect makes sex with machines preferable to sex with humans.
So watch the film and ask yourself how we might be different from Dr. Hobby. Would we make the same fundamental mistake and see our creation only as lines of code and a research breakthrough?
David's journey is ultimately a human one - a machine seeking the humane.
This is brilliant film-making with a single instance of what Joe would deem magic, in a fairy tale for all of us who may be lost in our machines.
Offer your own self to the film and you will receive back in kind, many times over.
Tune into A&E and watch the biography of the Impressionists. Their critics were just as blunt and just as wrong.
In some ways computers make it too easy - in other ways too hard: you have to learn bits and bytes and stuff which always seems to alarm the art crowd who worry about selling their souls to the machine gods.
Photography has only been recognized as an art in the last half of the 20th Century.
So keep up the work, screw the critics, and go to town! You have my respect if you can.
Those of us who use Final Cut Pro often use FireWire drives on our G4s or PowerBooks. Not all FW drives DO work properly, however. The bridge hardware between the IDE drive and the firewire interface is the key. Promax and LaCie sell drives that work just fine.