Thank you for your erudite commentary. As it happened, I was only planning on trolling this away for the rest of the day or so -- as you can see from my posting history, I'm much more of a karma whore than a troll. (Though many would say that they're one in the same -- and I'm not inclined to disagree.)
The only reason that I have continued to post the link to Leisure Town is because I have received nothing but thanks for it. People genuinely seem to enjoy it as much as I do, and no, I had nothing to do with its creation.
tim, I still want to know why we weren't given the opportunity to question the microsoft engineers after IIS's fantastic performance in the mindcraft benchmarks. I can understand if they refused, but did you even ask? and was this interview with this ingo character offered by him, or requested by slashdot? thank you.
My god! I wrote this! Normally I'd be pissed if my Slashdot output was misappropriated (not that that's ever happened, right roblimo?) but I'm honored to know that someone felt my point was valid.
Hmm, as long as I'm posting at +2, I might as well implore you to check out Leisure Town. You will very closely identify, I assure you.
And a nickel's worth of free advice, McFly: Don't be too quick to judge (i.e. moderate) me for the apparent offtopic nature of my message. While I am willing -- nay, proud -- to bear the slings of outrageous moderation, I recommend that you do not waste your points on me. Trust me on that one.
yours,
john Trollin' for Art and Microsoft since 1992!
Whoops forgot to make fun of timothy. tim -- you're a gun nut. monster.
So I submitted this really cool site to Slashdot, knowing that everyone would immediately recognize (and love) the humor and brilliance and shattering insights made by the artiste. However, it was promptly rejected by timothy-the-gun-nut.
Therefore, in the spirit of the GPL which we all hold and cherish so highly, I bestow this link directly unto you, my Slashdot brethren.
I know very little about Tristan A. Farnon, the creator of Leisure Town. However, I believe he can be contacted at correspondence@leisuretown.com (or at least that is the contact provided on his DNS entry).
I can't tell you how much it means to me to know that someone enjoyed the link I provided (and timothy the gun nut rejected).
First off, it's more or less in our cosmic neighborhood. 10.5 lightyears!! We could quite conceivably send a probe in that direction well within the next century. Knowing that extrasolar planets exist this close to earth is a very good sign indeed.
The planet is also at a very moderate distance from its parent star -- although I see no data regarding the shape of its orbit. It might well be extremely elliptical, but we can always hope for something vaguely circular. In any case, it should make for some interesting viewing.
For more information about extrasolar planets, consult your local library. No, just kidding, try this site here.
To me, this is just a sign that whatever resurgence Apple might currently be enjoy is just the waning days of a once innovative company (even if their centerpiece was stolen from Xerox PARC).
I remember once upon a time when Apple employees used to actually care about the products, they made, and with good reason. Now, though, it looks like their rabid legal department is going after them. I can't wait to see what this will do to employee morale.
I can certainly appreciate Apple wanting to protect its trade secrets -- my company has an unfortunate number of these issues crop up from time to time -- but there is the right way to handle things, and then there is the dead-wrong way to handle things. Care to guess which this is?
Thanks for the memories, Apple. And who knows, maybe you'll retain a majority (or at least a plurality) of the desktop/graphics market share.
I think the guy who submitted this overreacted a bit. The fact of the matter is, it seems that there is at least one person out there who believes that the Mozilla project will give him the tools to build an office suite, and I have no doubt that he is at least going to take the first steps of this project.
Should it have made cnet? Why the hell not? All too often, it has been demonstrated that net-only publications are operating under an entirely new paradigm of journalistic responsibilities. This story wouldn't have made the New York Times (or the Hometown Gazette-Newsletter) but numerous times have we seen similarly insubstantiated articles on, say, slashdot.
While it is a fact that idle speculation on mailing lists should not be used as the basis for news articles, let's not make an example of this situation. There are much better ones to focus on.
Perhaps this would normally be posted anonymously, at 0, but I wanted to request that the parent post be moderated down. It contains a broken link and a totally uncalled-for perjorative. Oh well, at least Bowie managed to refrain from throwing in a link to Propaganda (outside of his sig, of course).
What the hell, might as well be a productive member of society. I think this is what Bowie was trying to link to.
Thanks for your attention.
Ahh, memories. (gambling and astronomy,)
on
Comet LINEAR Erupts
·
· Score: 2
I did a bit of my graduate work in astronomy and I remember one professor of mine who was especially fond of gambling and other sorts of oddsmaking. In any case, I remember working with him at one point in which he calculated the probability of directly observing any number of astronomical phenomena.
As I recall, an event of this nature from a space-based telescope was somewhere along the lines of 1 in 3.27e5 per year observed. A ground-based telescope would give you odds approximately one order of magnitude more favorable.
Incidentally, the chances of observing the start of a supernova in a local cluster star were approximately 1 in 6e9 per year observed via a space-based telescope. Hey, one never knows, it might happen:)
(Naturally, all previous calculations assume observation at the moment of local occurence. Of course, it's easy enough to reorient a telescope for a major event such as the ones mentioned.)
What is the most serious, and common, mistake that today's computer companies tend to make? The action can either be detrimental to the company or the industry at-large (or, preferably, both).
I'm not sure how well I'm going to be able to phrase this, but during the early days at Apple, did you at all foresee the lasting effect the company would have on computing? Is there anything you would have liked to see the company do differently (less emphasis on hardware, different technologies encouraged, etc.)?
Do you feel that the computer industry is less innovative today than when you started out? More specifically, do you feel anticompetitive practices by certain companies actively restricts new technologies, or are these current titans just one great idea away from becoming also-rans?
Since we can't always count on the government to do the right thing (if we even want them to something in the first place), don't forget about personal measures such as Doubleclick's OptO ut.
There are other measures you can take. Take privacy into your own hands.
In one instance (specifically microsoft.org, case summary) Microsoft won the case in large part because the domain holder failed to respond when contacted by the WIPO arbiters.
People, if you think you've got a right to a domain, defend it! If the possessor of microsoft.org had sought to use it as a "Microsoft sucks" site or something along those lines, he might have had a fighting chance at keeping it! (Of course, it seems that he may have been squatting on the domain, though we don't know since he never answered for himself.)
It's hard to complain about an 81% failure rate when the defendants are doing nothing.
This is cool and all, but I want to know when we'll have medium-sized, mid-priced very high-res digital cameras.
Storage space (and price) becomes less and less of an issue every day so even many dozens full (or very lightly) compressed images can be stored on an average camera. However, I've been less than impressed with the resolutions offered to consumers. I'd much rather have a camera that can hold 40 high-res images on a CF or smartmedia card than one that can hold 170 (like I often see).
I'm not saying that we don't want lower-res pictures as an option, but when are we going to see some more advanced sensors at consumer prices?
How dependent is the NSA on the outside world? Let me clarify: I see from the story that the NSA maintains an in-house silicon fab. So chip production is something that can be handled internally. What cannot be handled internally? I won't be specific, since I would like this question to be answered, but might a situation arise in which the NSA has to turn to industry or academia for assistance? If so, how would such such an incident be conducted (i.e., in the open, or with NDA's or more drastic measures)?
Obviously, and for very good reason, the NSA employs a great number of skills cryptographers and mathematicians. For equally good reason, the work that they produce and the problems that they solve are of utmost importance to national security, with the unfortunate consequence being that they must be kept secret. Has the NSA ever declassified mathematical or cryptographical information that has contributed significantly to the public body of knowledge? Is such a declassification a possibility for future discoveries or breakthroughs?
What, are some of the unsung achievements in cryptography during World War II? We all know about Turing and the Code Talkers, but who are some of the ones that history has glossed over, and what were their efforts during the war?
Sure, it was a well-written paper and it raises many interesting points. But I wonder just what this guy's grounding in the real world is?
Now first, a disclaimer. I like to think I've done my part for the world of Free software. I want this to go to show that I have no qualms giving away intellectual property that I have created, but I want it to be my choice when I decide to do that. That, friends, is the real meaning of intellectual freedom.
At more than one point in my life, I survived as a writer, and to tell you the truth, it scares me to think of a world where my copyright means nothing. Stephen King just recently said it quite well, as I attempt to paraphrase him: "Please respect my copyright; as a writer, it's all I've got." Not bad, coming from a no-talent hack:)
Free software and other works certainly have their place, but it isn't something that should be foisted upon every author and programmer and artist.
Windows users might find Napigator useful in the intertim. I do not know of a Mac/Linux/BSD alternative, though I suspect that on at least some of the open-source clones, one can manually enter a server that uses the Napster protocol. Here is a list of alternative servers.
If anyone is interested in the real world implications of this breakthrough, I suggest you check out Mother Earth, Mother Board. Written by Neal Stephenson, it is a rather lengthy article about the difficult process of laying undersea fiber. Part of that difficult is because of the imperfections of today's fiber and the need for signal amplification.
Technology such as this could eliminate the need for periodic repeaters and signal amplifiers, and quite possibly make cable-laying a less complicated proposition.
Who knows, one day soon, our only worries in accessing a trans-Pacific might be the latency inherent in the speed of light! yours, john
This is going to be great for Apple. The Powerbook has always been a cool line of computers (and the only Macintosh I would consider buying) but I almost wonder if this step is overdue. With the low heat production and (relatively) low energy consumption, I would have thought that we would have seen these long before, say, portable Pentium !!!'s (relative to their respective lifespans and product cycles, of course).
It would be even better, of course, if these could run without fans like in the G4 cube. I suspect not, since it won't have the benefiof the huge vent. Ah well, imagine.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for your erudite commentary. As it happened, I was only planning on trolling this away for the rest of the day or so -- as you can see from my posting history, I'm much more of a karma whore than a troll. (Though many would say that they're one in the same -- and I'm not inclined to disagree.)
The only reason that I have continued to post the link to Leisure Town is because I have received nothing but thanks for it. People genuinely seem to enjoy it as much as I do, and no, I had nothing to do with its creation.
Thank you again for your perspective.
yours,
john
tim, I still want to know why we weren't given the opportunity to question the microsoft engineers after IIS's fantastic performance in the mindcraft benchmarks. I can understand if they refused, but did you even ask? and was this interview with this ingo character offered by him, or requested by slashdot? thank you.
My god! I wrote this! Normally I'd be pissed if my Slashdot output was misappropriated (not that that's ever happened, right roblimo?) but I'm honored to know that someone felt my point was valid.
Hmm, as long as I'm posting at +2, I might as well implore you to check out Leisure Town. You will very closely identify, I assure you.
And a nickel's worth of free advice, McFly: Don't be too quick to judge (i.e. moderate) me for the apparent offtopic nature of my message. While I am willing -- nay, proud -- to bear the slings of outrageous moderation, I recommend that you do not waste your points on me. Trust me on that one.
yours,
john
Trollin' for Art and Microsoft since 1992!
Whoops forgot to make fun of timothy. tim -- you're a gun nut. monster.
So I submitted this really cool site to Slashdot, knowing that everyone would immediately recognize (and love) the humor and brilliance and shattering insights made by the artiste. However, it was promptly rejected by timothy-the-gun-nut.
Therefore, in the spirit of the GPL which we all hold and cherish so highly, I bestow this link directly unto you, my Slashdot brethren.
Leisure Town
Don't let timothy get you down.
yours,
john
Trollin' for Art since 1992!
Trollin' against timothy (the gun nut) since... somewhat more recently
I know very little about Tristan A. Farnon, the creator of Leisure Town. However, I believe he can be contacted at correspondence@leisuretown.com (or at least that is the contact provided on his DNS entry).
I can't tell you how much it means to me to know that someone enjoyed the link I provided (and timothy the gun nut rejected).
Leisure Town
yours,
john
Trollin' for Art since 1992!
This is great news, for two primary reasons.
First off, it's more or less in our cosmic neighborhood. 10.5 lightyears!! We could quite conceivably send a probe in that direction well within the next century. Knowing that extrasolar planets exist this close to earth is a very good sign indeed.
The planet is also at a very moderate distance from its parent star -- although I see no data regarding the shape of its orbit. It might well be extremely elliptical, but we can always hope for something vaguely circular. In any case, it should make for some interesting viewing.
For more information about extrasolar planets, consult your local library. No, just kidding, try this site here.
First one there gets to name it!
yours,
john
To me, this is just a sign that whatever resurgence Apple might currently be enjoy is just the waning days of a once innovative company (even if their centerpiece was stolen from Xerox PARC).
I remember once upon a time when Apple employees used to actually care about the products, they made, and with good reason. Now, though, it looks like their rabid legal department is going after them. I can't wait to see what this will do to employee morale.
I can certainly appreciate Apple wanting to protect its trade secrets -- my company has an unfortunate number of these issues crop up from time to time -- but there is the right way to handle things, and then there is the dead-wrong way to handle things. Care to guess which this is?
Thanks for the memories, Apple. And who knows, maybe you'll retain a majority (or at least a plurality) of the desktop/graphics market share.
Think different, my ass.
yours,
john
I think the guy who submitted this overreacted a bit. The fact of the matter is, it seems that there is at least one person out there who believes that the Mozilla project will give him the tools to build an office suite, and I have no doubt that he is at least going to take the first steps of this project.
Should it have made cnet? Why the hell not? All too often, it has been demonstrated that net-only publications are operating under an entirely new paradigm of journalistic responsibilities. This story wouldn't have made the New York Times (or the Hometown Gazette-Newsletter) but numerous times have we seen similarly insubstantiated articles on, say, slashdot.
While it is a fact that idle speculation on mailing lists should not be used as the basis for news articles, let's not make an example of this situation. There are much better ones to focus on.
yours,
john
Perhaps this would normally be posted anonymously, at 0, but I wanted to request that the parent post be moderated down. It contains a broken link and a totally uncalled-for perjorative. Oh well, at least Bowie managed to refrain from throwing in a link to Propaganda (outside of his sig, of course).
What the hell, might as well be a productive member of society. I think this is what Bowie was trying to link to.
Thanks for your attention.
I did a bit of my graduate work in astronomy and I remember one professor of mine who was especially fond of gambling and other sorts of oddsmaking. In any case, I remember working with him at one point in which he calculated the probability of directly observing any number of astronomical phenomena.
:)
As I recall, an event of this nature from a space-based telescope was somewhere along the lines of 1 in 3.27e5 per year observed. A ground-based telescope would give you odds approximately one order of magnitude more favorable.
Incidentally, the chances of observing the start of a supernova in a local cluster star were approximately 1 in 6e9 per year observed via a space-based telescope. Hey, one never knows, it might happen
(Naturally, all previous calculations assume observation at the moment of local occurence. Of course, it's easy enough to reorient a telescope for a major event such as the ones mentioned.)
yours,
john
What is the most serious, and common, mistake that today's computer companies tend to make? The action can either be detrimental to the company or the industry at-large (or, preferably, both).
I'm not sure how well I'm going to be able to phrase this, but during the early days at Apple, did you at all foresee the lasting effect the company would have on computing? Is there anything you would have liked to see the company do differently (less emphasis on hardware, different technologies encouraged, etc.)?
Do you feel that the computer industry is less innovative today than when you started out? More specifically, do you feel anticompetitive practices by certain companies actively restricts new technologies, or are these current titans just one great idea away from becoming also-rans?
Since we can't always count on the government to do the right thing (if we even want them to something in the first place), don't forget about personal measures such as Doubleclick's OptO ut.
There are other measures you can take. Take privacy into your own hands.
In one instance (specifically microsoft.org, case summary) Microsoft won the case in large part because the domain holder failed to respond when contacted by the WIPO arbiters.
People, if you think you've got a right to a domain, defend it! If the possessor of microsoft.org had sought to use it as a "Microsoft sucks" site or something along those lines, he might have had a fighting chance at keeping it! (Of course, it seems that he may have been squatting on the domain, though we don't know since he never answered for himself.)
It's hard to complain about an 81% failure rate when the defendants are doing nothing.
yours,
john
This is cool and all, but I want to know when we'll have medium-sized, mid-priced very high-res digital cameras.
Storage space (and price) becomes less and less of an issue every day so even many dozens full (or very lightly) compressed images can be stored on an average camera. However, I've been less than impressed with the resolutions offered to consumers. I'd much rather have a camera that can hold 40 high-res images on a CF or smartmedia card than one that can hold 170 (like I often see).
I'm not saying that we don't want lower-res pictures as an option, but when are we going to see some more advanced sensors at consumer prices?
yours,
john
Amend that "skills" in the first sentence to "skilled". Sorry.
How dependent is the NSA on the outside world? Let me clarify: I see from the story that the NSA maintains an in-house silicon fab. So chip production is something that can be handled internally. What cannot be handled internally? I won't be specific, since I would like this question to be answered, but might a situation arise in which the NSA has to turn to industry or academia for assistance? If so, how would such such an incident be conducted (i.e., in the open, or with NDA's or more drastic measures)?
Obviously, and for very good reason, the NSA employs a great number of skills cryptographers and mathematicians. For equally good reason, the work that they produce and the problems that they solve are of utmost importance to national security, with the unfortunate consequence being that they must be kept secret. Has the NSA ever declassified mathematical or cryptographical information that has contributed significantly to the public body of knowledge? Is such a declassification a possibility for future discoveries or breakthroughs?
yours,
john
What, are some of the unsung achievements in cryptography during World War II? We all know about Turing and the Code Talkers, but who are some of the ones that history has glossed over, and what were their efforts during the war?
yours,
john
Sure, it was a well-written paper and it raises many interesting points. But I wonder just what this guy's grounding in the real world is?
:)
Now first, a disclaimer. I like to think I've done my part for the world of Free software. I want this to go to show that I have no qualms giving away intellectual property that I have created, but I want it to be my choice when I decide to do that. That, friends, is the real meaning of intellectual freedom.
At more than one point in my life, I survived as a writer, and to tell you the truth, it scares me to think of a world where my copyright means nothing. Stephen King just recently said it quite well, as I attempt to paraphrase him: "Please respect my copyright; as a writer, it's all I've got." Not bad, coming from a no-talent hack
Free software and other works certainly have their place, but it isn't something that should be foisted upon every author and programmer and artist.
yours,
john
Err. MSNBC rather. I'll use the preview button next time, I promise :)
This is a direct link to the NBC story.
yours,
john
Windows users might find Napigator useful in the intertim. I do not know of a Mac/Linux/BSD alternative, though I suspect that on at least some of the open-source clones, one can manually enter a server that uses the Napster protocol. Here is a list of alternative servers.
yours,
john
If anyone is interested in the real world implications of this breakthrough, I suggest you check out Mother Earth, Mother Board. Written by Neal Stephenson, it is a rather lengthy article about the difficult process of laying undersea fiber. Part of that difficult is because of the imperfections of today's fiber and the need for signal amplification.
Technology such as this could eliminate the need for periodic repeaters and signal amplifiers, and quite possibly make cable-laying a less complicated proposition.
Who knows, one day soon, our only worries in accessing a trans-Pacific might be the latency inherent in the speed of light! yours,
john
This is going to be great for Apple. The Powerbook has always been a cool line of computers (and the only Macintosh I would consider buying) but I almost wonder if this step is overdue. With the low heat production and (relatively) low energy consumption, I would have thought that we would have seen these long before, say, portable Pentium !!!'s (relative to their respective lifespans and product cycles, of course).
It would be even better, of course, if these could run without fans like in the G4 cube. I suspect not, since it won't have the benefiof the huge vent. Ah well, imagine.
yours,
john