Re:Good service, Great people - but trouble is com
on
PayPal Goes Public
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· Score: 2
As far as regulation goes, I'd be happy if I could be guaranteed the following:
1) No amount of money in my account will ever be frozen for any reason other than suspicion of fraud
2) No amount greater than an amount suspected of involvement in fraud will ever be frozen.
3) Full details of fraud claims must be given within 48 hours of freezing
4) Fraud cases must be thoroughly investigated and resolved inside 30 days, or all account assetts are returned and the case is turned over to the legal system.
It'd also be nice if they were backed by the FDIC, but that's sortof impossible until they become an official bank.
Other than that, tho', I can take the risk of knowing they might go away. I just want to know they can't arbitrarily freezy my money.
Re:Pegging currency to the dollar can cause proble
on
PayPal Goes Public
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· Score: 2
So what is a paypal dollar backed by? I want to short the paypal, is there a secondary market where I can do this?
The PayPal dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of PayPal, of course.
It's the same with the Visa and MasterCard dollar. They've been printing their own currency for YEARS, and selling its convenience and availability. PayPal is doing the same. The difference is that most Credit Card companies I've ever dealt with guarantee the integrity of the currency much better. Reversing charges? Not too hard. Even waiving a late fee can be done if you've got a good reason. Part of this is probably due to the fact that if a customer gets too fed up with them, they have options other than settling their debt (like Bankruptcy or just accepting the black credit mark) and they realize that reputation is important to a currency. PayPal is great in its niche for convenience and availability; confidence is obviously sortof shaky.
And what makes these things "real" money anymore than green paper?
Sure, they have a higher physical scarcity level, but all you're really doing is trading one monetary token for another. In neither case would your currency have any inherent value for most people. You can't eat it, live in it, drive it, compute with it, or be entertained by it -- it has no utility whatsoever except its capacity to be freely exchanged for some other good or service. And that takes just as much mass delusion for gold or silver as it does for FRNs.
I voted for Nader, but I'm not so sure I'd actually want to see him as president, despite my dislike for GWB.:| But I also see your point -- and I think that's how the last election would have played out, assuming that Nader would have run on the democratic ticket.
Still, there's no guarantee that we'd have somone even as nice as Nader running on the left side. I see it as more likely is that over time, the democratic party would start fielding more and more far left candidates. We'd eventually have quasi-Lenins running against quasi-Nazis. This is not better than the bland (if bought) centrists we get at the moment.
Mostly, I just think there are some inherent problems with open primaries, and that they're no panacea. The "strategic voting" problem is chiefest among them, but it's not the only one. Do we really want to regulate how/who a political party can nominaate for office?
You're assuming that the most likely choice for a party's nomination (by actual members of the party) is the worst case scenario for the country. This isn't necessarily the case. Strategic voting in open primaries would give us nominations farther away from center. We'd have Pat Buchanans running against Ralph Naders, rather than Bushs against Gores.
Take, for example, a hypothetical Republican Primary in which we have John McCain, George W. Bush, Alan Keyes, and Pat Buchanan (listed in order from center to right). The most viable candidate is McCain, with Bush as a close second. Because Bush is a bit more to the right, he wins in the primary.
Now, if the primary was open and everyone voted their conscience, McCain would be more likely to win. But if the primary was open, and people voted _strategically_ (that is, with their special interests), people supporting other parties would want to vote for the LEAST viable candidate, the one farthest away from center. Pat Buchanan, the farthest right of the right.
They're allowed to build whatever they darn well please. What they're definitely not allowed to do is make ridiculous claims about the inseperability of what they build.
They'd even be allowed to bundle together whatever their customers (be they OEM or End-User) -- if they hadn't been walking on the shady side of anti-trust law. The reason anyone is even looking at restricting their freedom is that they've shown a tendancy to use that freedom to behave in a way that looked criminal -- and, in fact, in a way the courts have determined was indeed criminal.
The fact that they try to intentionally obfuscate relatively clear points like the boundary between system and application doesn't give them much credibility.
This isn't about what they have the freedom to build. This is about their criminal behavior, and how to check it.
The only problem I see with approval voting is, sad to say, the average person wouldn't understand it.
Confusion is a concern which I'm not altogether sure how to address, but I think it'd be minimal. Which we already apparently have.
Balot wording could make it easy: "Please place a punch beside EACH candidate you endorse for office". Worse case scenario is that a confused individual would vote only for the candidate they wanted most.
I think you missed my point with the primaries, tho' -- not letting them ask your party affiliation wouldn't solve the problem of letting people intentionally screwing up primaries of parties they oppose by voting for candidates farthest from center. Opening primaries opens them for that risk.
One possible solution would be runoff style elections, like some people do for city councils...
If a component the application relies on can be used w/o invoking the application, then it's fair to argue it's not part of the application. Where a component starts life isn't particularly relevant except as history/philology.
I remember the days where some PC apps had their own TCP/IP implementations built-in. Then, a bit later, most of them started to use winsock, which became a dll eventually. Now it's a system wide resource.
Or to continue the car analogy: many of the electrical components of a car could have their own battery, but didn't -- because the battery/alternator system that supported the electric ignition was already there. This served as a good platform for adding other electric/electronic devices to the car. And yet replacing the starter motor does not mean that I have to replace anything else. Can you say the battery/alternator is PART of the starter motor? Or Headlamps? Dashboard electronics? Radio?
Generally useful pieces of applications will tend to migrate outside the app -- because programmers know it's better to reuse rather than reinvent (if you can understand the API, anyway). The HTML renderer is an important system component now. The IE application is not. If the analogy doesn't demonstrate that clearly, the actions of the 98Lite team do.
Except for the parts that would DAMANGE THE OPERATING SYSTEM.
If removing it would damage the operating system, then it's no longer part of the application. It's a system resource.
This whole fiasco is a lot like saying "In order to remove the radio from a car, you have to take out the car battery, and that would hurt the operation of the car, so we can't remove the radio." This analogy was developed at length in this article almost 4 years ago, but it's still true.
When you talk about removing apps, you can't fairly talk about removing all the libraries they depend on. They're not part of the application, any more than libc is.
I think there are some other ideas that might prove more effective than the ones you mentioned.
Open primaries are a cool idea. The problem is that strategic-minded individuals can actually throw a primary. Don't want the Republicans to win? Do you realize that McCain will steal a lot of moderate democratic votes from Gore (and you're already losing the far left to Nader)? Go to the Republican Primary! Vote for Bush! Not to mention the primaries are run by semi-private entities (the parties).
I think a better option than a NOTA vote would be an "Approval Voting" system. That is, you can cast a vote of approval for as many candidates as you like. The candidate with the highest number of approval votes wins (or, for president, the candidate with the highest number of approval votes within a state takes the electoral college votes).
Finally, I think we need to start seeing more media-savvy grass roots candidates. Slashdot readers need to run for office.
Ok, folks. OF COURSE artists have always used emerging technologoes to create their works. Yes, yes, Edgar Varese predated the Chemical Brothers by decades, and Da Vinci would have loved Photoshop. And he -- or someone else -- might have been able to write the software, too, given a decent compiler, because there's always been creative spirits with technical abilities, and people with technical abilities with creative impulses, and so on. I don't think Katz for a moment beleived that the last half-century has brought the first uses of technology with art. What he is saing is that the advent of the personal computer and mass media (especially the internet) add points of confluence that haven't been there before. Let me repeat that: this is not just a new combination of art and technology -- this stuff is a new point of confluence.
Think about the following:
1) The last century has made more forms of mass media than the rest of human development combined. It was the newspaper or word-of-mouth 100 years ago. Radio, TV, and the Internet are here. "The Media" is a product of focusing on using technology in delivery as well as production. This has not only had great results in actual effectiveness of delivery, it has brought a new level technological involvement. If you beleive that people pick up knowledge in neighboring/associated domains, this makes sense.
2) The proliferation of the computer as a household device and the pace of development in the software industry makes new technology widely available to the layman (motivated layman) very quickly.
3) There is, however, definitely a split between the humanities and the sciences in the academic worldview, and I would characterize it as greater 30 years ago. This split wanders down to the everyday human being level, to some degree. It's the split that Robert Pirsig talks about in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and labels "classical" vs. "romantic". It's true that Pirsig spends a lot of his book trying to mend the rift with the "Metaphysics of Quality", but he does a good job of characterizing the split. It's real, especially as an artifact of the time when he wrote it.
4) Try this out in your own personal experience. How many people do you know are surprised when you, as a "techie",can play the guitar, write a poem or an essay, read Doestevsky or Steinbeck, and can tell which French Impressionist painted something on sight? How many times are you surprised when an Humanities major does a bang-up job of statistical analysis for a sleep research clinic, compiles a kernel, or really does teach himself Java in a few months or ? Why is this? Because our culture conditions people to beleive in specialization.
In short, I think there have (and are) cultural forces at work that conspire to seperate the two domains. I think there's also always been smart people who care more about their creative impulses and technical abilities than these forces, and work around them. But -- one more time now -- the advent of the personal computer and mass media (especially the internet) add points of confluence that haven't been there before.
Re:In 10 years you'll be glad your Mac runs Linux
on
Linux on the iMac G4
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· Score: 2
I think you missed the point. Sure, a 1989 Mac has utility. But it won't run anything later than MacOS 8.0.
No... the part about a 1989 Mac having utility was only an afterthought. My main point was that Apple actually has a fair history of longevity when it comes to supporting their hardware. 1989 Mac Hardware was being actively supported by Apple operating systems up until 1998. Nine years is pretty good.
Mind you, I'm aware that the SE/30 was probably the high point there. And I also gave the nod to OSS software -- because the source is available, continued support is always available to any maniac or business who wants to provide it. But my main point was to refute the poster who claimed Apple doesn't give their hardware a decent life cycle of support. It has. It does.
A 386 or 486 box frim 1989 will run Linux 2.4.18
There were 486 boxen in 1989? I'm not even sure 386's were widespread then. Most everyone I knew had a 286, and they were proud of it.
Plus, keep in mind that even if they'll run the kernel, running the desktops (KDE/Gnome) that are now part and parcel with Linux would challenge the limits of 1989 Hardware... something to take into account if you want to keep the contest truly fair. I was running XFree86 and fvwm on Linux on a 486 6 years ago (Some slackware version of 1.2 kernel, I think), and THAT was taxing the hardware.
Your original post considers the fact that there is a lower supply for used Mac hardware than used PC harder, but failes to consider (or at least, mention) the lower demand -- which is probably roughly proportional, unless for some reason Macintosh owners hang on to their old machines longer than PC owners (which would support the theory they hold use value longer).
LarsT was bit rude to you, but you've now demonstrated that you're at least his equal in that regard, and still not satisfactorily addressed his point.
I'm mentioning squeak because I don't see it in the list yet, not because I think it's the panacea you're looking for. But it's pleasant, smalltalk-ish, and (tautology alert) its adherents like it.
Re:In 10 years you'll be glad your Mac runs Linux
on
Linux on the iMac G4
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· Score: 5, Informative
Since Apple have a propensity to obsolete their hardware, and OSes rather quickly.
"Quickly" is relative -- it depends on if you're trying to compare with other proprietary systems or open source.
If you're talking Linux, well, any OSS software beats the hell out of anything else for longevity on HW, of course. Anyone who wants to can port to any HW and maintain it
But at the moment, I'm typing this on a five+ year old PowerMac 9500. Running Mac OS 9.2 on 48 MB ram rather smoothly. Some pages render badly in Netscape, but it's a very serviceable machine that would be MORE serviceable if I threw gobs o' ram in. Try running Windows ME or 2000 on a Pentium II 200 with 48 MB RAM.
(The 9500 will run OS X with some tweaking if I put a G3/G4 upgrade in it, BTW).
Look at 68k macs - no longer supported by any current version of the MacOS.
68030 Macs (last off the line sometime around 93/94) lost OS support in OS 8 (Fall 1998). Again, that's 4-5 years of support. 68040 Macs (dropped about 1995) lost support in OS 9 (2000) -- again about 5 years. And this is only time from when they CEASE manufacturing the old models... if you go from the time they start, it's phenomenal. Take the venerable SE/30... off the line in '89, finally dropped from support in 1998. That's 9 years of support. Not too shabby.
The other angles is that if you use the contemporary software, most Macs run quite well. I have an SE/30 that's still knockout for Word Processing, basic spreadsheet, music sequencing/notation, and checking email. You can argue the same for any hardware, but in terms of utility, beats the hell out of any 1989 intel hardware I've seen.
My boss gave me the assignment to find the best religion. Some requirements that he gave me are:
<UL>
<LI>Should keep one from everlasting suffering and torment in next life
<LI>Should help one eventually pass to nirvana-like existence, eternal increase and well-being, perhaps even an all-powerful/omniscient state
<LI> Should help one to acheive balance, peace of mind, and a strong feeling of being alive within this imperfect world
<LI> Should enable the occasional performance of miracles when called for
<LI> Should improve behavior of followers (make them charitable and courteous but zealous in good causes), and help them improve the world
<LI> Should have limited numbers of flawed adherents
<LI> Should have a consitent theology that makes total sense to rational minds and mystics alike, yet is accesable to the common man
<LI> Should provide insurance against armageddon-like scenarios
<LI> Should have a finite (yea, even small) set of clear, detailed, and consistent directions for acheiving all positive results (Goedel's theorem notwithstanding). Not to mention avoiding bad results.
<LI> Should be in line with the will of the universe's most powerful entity.
</UL>
I've looked at Christianity (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Melkite, Coptic, Protestants of several stripes), Islam, Buddhism, Hindu-ish faiths, and primitive animism, Kibology, Shirley Maclain, Scientology, Wiccan groups, secular humanism, and both U.S. political parties, but they all seem to be missing something. Can you point me in the right direction?
What if no one else in the office knows Prolog? You end up with read-only code
Prolog syntax should take about 15 minutes to pick up. Programming patterns should take another half day by anyone who's done functional programming -- i.e., anyone who really knows their CS. After that, it's just a matter unraveling someone elses code, and possibly mastering a specific library or API -- no easy task in ANY language. Code in general writes easier than it reads.
In general, I think it's very odd that people look for programmers experienced in a particular language. Once you've learned to solve problems using a few programming paradigms, most of your stuttering is going to be syntactical, and in using libraries/frameworks. I can appreciate that an employer might want someone who knows and API or library or protocol backwards and forwards -- that would save some time. But there's a lot of jobs I've seen calling for years of language specific experience when any competent programmer could do the job with a good manual (whether good manuals exist is another story, but hey...).
Finally, there probably are more people out there who know Prolog/ML/Haskell/name-your-favorite-minority-lang uage than you might think. I picked up Prolog as an undergrad working on some projects over summers. No big deal. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
What is a flower?
It is a kiss from the earth to the sky
a child of sugar and sunlight
low brown loam and God's bright and braided dye
love returned for love and light
long, warm, and high.
I don't know about that. Having lived in LA for 2 years and near SLC for a long time, my judgement is that it DOES get "LA kind of bad" sometimes. "Hazy Shade of Winter" must have been written for Utah between November and March.
The only difference is LA is hazier in the summer, and Utah is hazier in the winter. Solution: live in So. Cal in winter, Utah in Summer. Yep.
I'm probably asking the wrong people here, because I'm sure most of the slashdot crowd thinks that corps being upset about this is ridiculous.
But if the corps are planning to sue, exactly what laws can they sue under? Is there really some branch of law that says the gov't has to take responsibility if change in policy hurts any segment of industry?
I wrote a two-page well-reasoned response that took the better part of an afternoon. All because of the article slashdot linked to by the WINE guy about a month ago. I also forwarded the info to about 50 of my friends, 2 of which I know responded, 1 of which forwarded on to their friends.
Slashdot was therefore responsible for at least 3 of those 15,000 responses, and at least 1 substantive response.
I'm not saying that we aren't pitiful sometimes as activists. I forget to mail in my donation to the EFF, or do the work on how to run for Congress (and run a mean campaign) that I've been meaning to do for a while. I can't even get my grad school apps together and finish my resume for a new job. On the other hand, I'm also helping to run a volunteer non-profit, trying to keep my web development business afloat in hostile times, doing a website for charity for free, and also trying to speak with friends sometimes. We're all busy. We can do better, but I'd guess most slashdot readers do something. Just not the cohesive efforts that money has bought for the opposition.
If the technology came 60-80 years ago, we might see a big chance of the "media giant" collapse. The only media giants that really existed back then were the newspapers, and the "what's good for big business is good for everyone" doctrine hadn't become quite so popular as it is today. And it's the meme that needs to be fought (into a more balanced and tempered form, at the very least) if this sort of thing is going to happen.
Most slashdot readers realize this; what I don't think many know is that is has to be fought diplomatically and carefully. The status quo is powerful and has the mic; simply creating the technology and declaring the days of profit from media over will only create a harsh backlash. This is shaping up to be a battle precisely because it was framed as a revolution. Middle ground technology, serious activism, smart compromises, and thoroughly polite and ethical behavior might get us the result we're looking for.
do you think it would be possible to post links to google cache in the main story?
Or perhaps institute a "slashCache"?
(nice ring to it, eh?:)
Either way, the cool thing to do would be to have some sort of relay resource that would check to see if the site was up, and if it wasn't, then display the google/slash cache.
Of course, it will be implemented probably about the time I submit a patch, and I've got too many other things to work on....
Slashdot Mirror
As far as regulation goes, I'd be happy if I could be guaranteed the following:
1) No amount of money in my account will ever be frozen for any reason other than suspicion of fraud
2) No amount greater than an amount suspected of involvement in fraud will ever be frozen.
3) Full details of fraud claims must be given within 48 hours of freezing
4) Fraud cases must be thoroughly investigated and resolved inside 30 days, or all account assetts are returned and the case is turned over to the legal system.
It'd also be nice if they were backed by the FDIC, but that's sortof impossible until they become an official bank.
Other than that, tho', I can take the risk of knowing they might go away. I just want to know they can't arbitrarily freezy my money.
So what is a paypal dollar backed by? I want to short the paypal, is there a secondary market where I can do this?
The PayPal dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of PayPal, of course.
It's the same with the Visa and MasterCard dollar. They've been printing their own currency for YEARS, and selling its convenience and availability. PayPal is doing the same. The difference is that most Credit Card companies I've ever dealt with guarantee the integrity of the currency much better. Reversing charges? Not too hard. Even waiving a late fee can be done if you've got a good reason. Part of this is probably due to the fact that if a customer gets too fed up with them, they have options other than settling their debt (like Bankruptcy or just accepting the black credit mark) and they realize that reputation is important to a currency. PayPal is great in its niche for convenience and availability; confidence is obviously sortof shaky.
gold, silver, platinum or palladium
And what makes these things "real" money anymore than green paper?
Sure, they have a higher physical scarcity level, but all you're really doing is trading one monetary token for another. In neither case would your currency have any inherent value for most people. You can't eat it, live in it, drive it, compute with it, or be entertained by it -- it has no utility whatsoever except its capacity to be freely exchanged for some other good or service. And that takes just as much mass delusion for gold or silver as it does for FRNs.
Money is a useful work of fiction. Yep.
I voted for Nader, but I'm not so sure I'd actually want to see him as president, despite my dislike for GWB. :| But I also see your point -- and I think that's how the last election would have played out, assuming that Nader would have run on the democratic ticket.
Still, there's no guarantee that we'd have somone even as nice as Nader running on the left side. I see it as more likely is that over time, the democratic party would start fielding more and more far left candidates. We'd eventually have quasi-Lenins running against quasi-Nazis. This is not better than the bland (if bought) centrists we get at the moment.
Mostly, I just think there are some inherent problems with open primaries, and that they're no panacea. The "strategic voting" problem is chiefest among them, but it's not the only one. Do we really want to regulate how/who a political party can nominaate for office?
You're assuming that the most likely choice for a party's nomination (by actual members of the party) is the worst case scenario for the country. This isn't necessarily the case. Strategic voting in open primaries would give us nominations farther away from center. We'd have Pat Buchanans running against Ralph Naders, rather than Bushs against Gores.
Take, for example, a hypothetical Republican Primary in which we have John McCain, George W. Bush, Alan Keyes, and Pat Buchanan (listed in order from center to right). The most viable candidate is McCain, with Bush as a close second. Because Bush is a bit more to the right, he wins in the primary.
Now, if the primary was open and everyone voted their conscience, McCain would be more likely to win. But if the primary was open, and people voted _strategically_ (that is, with their special interests), people supporting other parties would want to vote for the LEAST viable candidate, the one farthest away from center. Pat Buchanan, the farthest right of the right.
They're allowed to build whatever they darn well please. What they're definitely not allowed to do is make ridiculous claims about the inseperability of what they build.
They'd even be allowed to bundle together whatever their customers (be they OEM or End-User) -- if they hadn't been walking on the shady side of anti-trust law. The reason anyone is even looking at restricting their freedom is that they've shown a tendancy to use that freedom to behave in a way that looked criminal -- and, in fact, in a way the courts have determined was indeed criminal.
The fact that they try to intentionally obfuscate relatively clear points like the boundary between system and application doesn't give them much credibility.
This isn't about what they have the freedom to build. This is about their criminal behavior, and how to check it.
The only problem I see with approval voting is, sad to say, the average person wouldn't understand it.
Confusion is a concern which I'm not altogether sure how to address, but I think it'd be minimal. Which we already apparently have.
Balot wording could make it easy: "Please place a punch beside EACH candidate you endorse for office". Worse case scenario is that a confused individual would vote only for the candidate they wanted most.
I think you missed my point with the primaries, tho' -- not letting them ask your party affiliation wouldn't solve the problem of letting people intentionally screwing up primaries of parties they oppose by voting for candidates farthest from center. Opening primaries opens them for that risk.
One possible solution would be runoff style elections, like some people do for city councils...
If a component the application relies on can be used w/o invoking the application, then it's fair to argue it's not part of the application. Where a component starts life isn't particularly relevant except as history/philology.
I remember the days where some PC apps had their own TCP/IP implementations built-in. Then, a bit later, most of them started to use winsock, which became a dll eventually. Now it's a system wide resource.
Or to continue the car analogy: many of the electrical components of a car could have their own battery, but didn't -- because the battery/alternator system that supported the electric ignition was already there. This served as a good platform for adding other electric/electronic devices to the car. And yet replacing the starter motor does not mean that I have to replace anything else. Can you say the battery/alternator is PART of the starter motor? Or Headlamps? Dashboard electronics? Radio?
Generally useful pieces of applications will tend to migrate outside the app -- because programmers know it's better to reuse rather than reinvent (if you can understand the API, anyway). The HTML renderer is an important system component now. The IE application is not. If the analogy doesn't demonstrate that clearly, the actions of the 98Lite team do.
Except for the parts that would DAMANGE THE OPERATING SYSTEM.
If removing it would damage the operating system, then it's no longer part of the application. It's a system resource.
This whole fiasco is a lot like saying "In order to remove the radio from a car, you have to take out the car battery, and that would hurt the operation of the car, so we can't remove the radio." This analogy was developed at length in this article almost 4 years ago, but it's still true.
When you talk about removing apps, you can't fairly talk about removing all the libraries they depend on. They're not part of the application, any more than libc is.
I'd agree: campaing reform is necessary.
I think there are some other ideas that might prove more effective than the ones you mentioned.
Open primaries are a cool idea. The problem is that strategic-minded individuals can actually throw a primary. Don't want the Republicans to win? Do you realize that McCain will steal a lot of moderate democratic votes from Gore (and you're already losing the far left to Nader)? Go to the Republican Primary! Vote for Bush! Not to mention the primaries are run by semi-private entities (the parties).
I think a better option than a NOTA vote would be an "Approval Voting" system. That is, you can cast a vote of approval for as many candidates as you like. The candidate with the highest number of approval votes wins (or, for president, the candidate with the highest number of approval votes within a state takes the electoral college votes).
Finally, I think we need to start seeing more media-savvy grass roots candidates. Slashdot readers need to run for office.
Can you cite? This would be really interesting.....
:)
And who says it's good for children above 7?
Ok, folks. OF COURSE artists have always used emerging technologoes to create their works. Yes, yes, Edgar Varese predated the Chemical Brothers by decades, and Da Vinci would have loved Photoshop. And he -- or someone else -- might have been able to write the software, too, given a decent compiler, because there's always been creative spirits with technical abilities, and people with technical abilities with creative impulses, and so on. I don't think Katz for a moment beleived that the last half-century has brought the first uses of technology with art. What he is saing is that the advent of the personal computer and mass media (especially the internet) add points of confluence that haven't been there before. Let me repeat that: this is not just a new combination of art and technology -- this stuff is a new point of confluence.
Think about the following:
1) The last century has made more forms of mass media than the rest of human development combined. It was the newspaper or word-of-mouth 100 years ago. Radio, TV, and the Internet are here. "The Media" is a product of focusing on using technology in delivery as well as production. This has not only had great results in actual effectiveness of delivery, it has brought a new level technological involvement. If you beleive that people pick up knowledge in neighboring/associated domains, this makes sense.
2) The proliferation of the computer as a household device and the pace of development in the software industry makes new technology widely available to the layman (motivated layman) very quickly.
3) There is, however, definitely a split between the humanities and the sciences in the academic worldview, and I would characterize it as greater 30 years ago. This split wanders down to the everyday human being level, to some degree. It's the split that Robert Pirsig talks about in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and labels "classical" vs. "romantic". It's true that Pirsig spends a lot of his book trying to mend the rift with the "Metaphysics of Quality", but he does a good job of characterizing the split. It's real, especially as an artifact of the time when he wrote it.
4) Try this out in your own personal experience. How many people do you know are surprised when you, as a "techie",can play the guitar, write a poem or an essay, read Doestevsky or Steinbeck, and can tell which French Impressionist painted something on sight? How many times are you surprised when an Humanities major does a bang-up job of statistical analysis for a sleep research clinic, compiles a kernel, or really does teach himself Java in a few months or ? Why is this? Because our culture conditions people to beleive in specialization.
In short, I think there have (and are) cultural forces at work that conspire to seperate the two domains. I think there's also always been smart people who care more about their creative impulses and technical abilities than these forces, and work around them. But -- one more time now -- the advent of the personal computer and mass media (especially the internet) add points of confluence that haven't been there before.
I think you missed the point. Sure, a 1989 Mac has utility. But it won't run anything later than MacOS 8.0.
No... the part about a 1989 Mac having utility was only an afterthought. My main point was that Apple actually has a fair history of longevity when it comes to supporting their hardware. 1989 Mac Hardware was being actively supported by Apple operating systems up until 1998. Nine years is pretty good.
Mind you, I'm aware that the SE/30 was probably the high point there. And I also gave the nod to OSS software -- because the source is available, continued support is always available to any maniac or business who wants to provide it. But my main point was to refute the poster who claimed Apple doesn't give their hardware a decent life cycle of support. It has. It does.
A 386 or 486 box frim 1989 will run Linux 2.4.18
There were 486 boxen in 1989? I'm not even sure 386's were widespread then. Most everyone I knew had a 286, and they were proud of it.
Plus, keep in mind that even if they'll run the kernel, running the desktops (KDE/Gnome) that are now part and parcel with Linux would challenge the limits of 1989 Hardware... something to take into account if you want to keep the contest truly fair. I was running XFree86 and fvwm on Linux on a 486 6 years ago (Some slackware version of 1.2 kernel, I think), and THAT was taxing the hardware.
Your original post considers the fact that there is a lower supply for used Mac hardware than used PC harder, but failes to consider (or at least, mention) the lower demand -- which is probably roughly proportional, unless for some reason Macintosh owners hang on to their old machines longer than PC owners (which would support the theory they hold use value longer).
LarsT was bit rude to you, but you've now demonstrated that you're at least his equal in that regard, and still not satisfactorily addressed his point.
I'm mentioning squeak because I don't see it in the list yet, not because I think it's the panacea you're looking for. But it's pleasant, smalltalk-ish, and (tautology alert) its adherents like it.
Since Apple have a propensity to obsolete their hardware, and OSes rather quickly.
"Quickly" is relative -- it depends on if you're trying to compare with other proprietary systems or open source.
If you're talking Linux, well, any OSS software beats the hell out of anything else for longevity on HW, of course. Anyone who wants to can port to any HW and maintain it
But at the moment, I'm typing this on a five+ year old PowerMac 9500. Running Mac OS 9.2 on 48 MB ram rather smoothly. Some pages render badly in Netscape, but it's a very serviceable machine that would be MORE serviceable if I threw gobs o' ram in. Try running Windows ME or 2000 on a Pentium II 200 with 48 MB RAM.
(The 9500 will run OS X with some tweaking if I put a G3/G4 upgrade in it, BTW).
Look at 68k macs - no longer supported by any current version of the MacOS.
68030 Macs (last off the line sometime around 93/94) lost OS support in OS 8 (Fall 1998). Again, that's 4-5 years of support. 68040 Macs (dropped about 1995) lost support in OS 9 (2000) -- again about 5 years. And this is only time from when they CEASE manufacturing the old models... if you go from the time they start, it's phenomenal. Take the venerable SE/30... off the line in '89, finally dropped from support in 1998. That's 9 years of support. Not too shabby.
The other angles is that if you use the contemporary software, most Macs run quite well. I have an SE/30 that's still knockout for Word Processing, basic spreadsheet, music sequencing/notation, and checking email. You can argue the same for any hardware, but in terms of utility, beats the hell out of any 1989 intel hardware I've seen.
what is the best religion?
Dear Slashdot,
My boss gave me the assignment to find the best religion. Some requirements that he gave me are:
<UL>
<LI>Should keep one from everlasting suffering and torment in next life
<LI>Should help one eventually pass to nirvana-like existence, eternal increase and well-being, perhaps even an all-powerful/omniscient state
<LI> Should help one to acheive balance, peace of mind, and a strong feeling of being alive within this imperfect world
<LI> Should enable the occasional performance of miracles when called for
<LI> Should improve behavior of followers (make them charitable and courteous but zealous in good causes), and help them improve the world
<LI> Should have limited numbers of flawed adherents
<LI> Should have a consitent theology that makes total sense to rational minds and mystics alike, yet is accesable to the common man
<LI> Should provide insurance against armageddon-like scenarios
<LI> Should have a finite (yea, even small) set of clear, detailed, and consistent directions for acheiving all positive results (Goedel's theorem notwithstanding). Not to mention avoiding bad results.
<LI> Should be in line with the will of the universe's most powerful entity.
</UL>
I've looked at Christianity (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Melkite, Coptic, Protestants of several stripes), Islam, Buddhism, Hindu-ish faiths, and primitive animism, Kibology, Shirley Maclain, Scientology, Wiccan groups, secular humanism, and both U.S. political parties, but they all seem to be missing something. Can you point me in the right direction?
What if no one else in the office knows Prolog? You end up with read-only code
g uage than you might think. I picked up Prolog as an undergrad working on some projects over summers. No big deal. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Prolog syntax should take about 15 minutes to pick up. Programming patterns should take another half day by anyone who's done functional programming -- i.e., anyone who really knows their CS. After that, it's just a matter unraveling someone elses code, and possibly mastering a specific library or API -- no easy task in ANY language. Code in general writes easier than it reads.
In general, I think it's very odd that people look for programmers experienced in a particular language. Once you've learned to solve problems using a few programming paradigms, most of your stuttering is going to be syntactical, and in using libraries/frameworks. I can appreciate that an employer might want someone who knows and API or library or protocol backwards and forwards -- that would save some time. But there's a lot of jobs I've seen calling for years of language specific experience when any competent programmer could do the job with a good manual (whether good manuals exist is another story, but hey...).
Finally, there probably are more people out there who know Prolog/ML/Haskell/name-your-favorite-minority-lan
What is a flower?
It is a kiss from the earth to the sky
a child of sugar and sunlight
low brown loam and God's bright and braided dye
love returned for love and light
long, warm, and high.
-- Weston Cann
(yeah, flowers usually work just fine)
Not L.A. kind of bad
I don't know about that. Having lived in LA for 2 years and near SLC for a long time, my judgement is that it DOES get "LA kind of bad" sometimes. "Hazy Shade of Winter" must have been written for Utah between November and March.
The only difference is LA is hazier in the summer, and Utah is hazier in the winter. Solution: live in So. Cal in winter, Utah in Summer. Yep.
I'm probably asking the wrong people here, because I'm sure most of the slashdot crowd thinks that corps being upset about this is ridiculous.
But if the corps are planning to sue, exactly what laws can they sue under? Is there really some branch of law that says the gov't has to take responsibility if change in policy hurts any segment of industry?
So they have to respond to each comment? Does that mean they have to give a response to the judge? Or that they have to mail/email ME a response?
I wrote a two-page well-reasoned response that took the better part of an afternoon. All because of the article slashdot linked to by the WINE guy about a month ago. I also forwarded the info to about 50 of my friends, 2 of which I know responded, 1 of which forwarded on to their friends.
Slashdot was therefore responsible for at least 3 of those 15,000 responses, and at least 1 substantive response.
I'm not saying that we aren't pitiful sometimes as activists. I forget to mail in my donation to the EFF, or do the work on how to run for Congress (and run a mean campaign) that I've been meaning to do for a while. I can't even get my grad school apps together and finish my resume for a new job. On the other hand, I'm also helping to run a volunteer non-profit, trying to keep my web development business afloat in hostile times, doing a website for charity for free, and also trying to speak with friends sometimes. We're all busy. We can do better, but I'd guess most slashdot readers do something. Just not the cohesive efforts that money has bought for the opposition.
Yet.
If the technology came 60-80 years ago, we might see a big chance of the "media giant" collapse. The only media giants that really existed back then were the newspapers, and the "what's good for big business is good for everyone" doctrine hadn't become quite so popular as it is today. And it's the meme that needs to be fought (into a more balanced and tempered form, at the very least) if this sort of thing is going to happen.
Most slashdot readers realize this; what I don't think many know is that is has to be fought diplomatically and carefully. The status quo is powerful and has the mic; simply creating the technology and declaring the days of profit from media over will only create a harsh backlash. This is shaping up to be a battle precisely because it was framed as a revolution. Middle ground technology, serious activism, smart compromises, and thoroughly polite and ethical behavior might get us the result we're looking for.
Just my $.02.
do you think it would be possible to post links to google cache in the main story?
:)
Or perhaps institute a "slashCache"?
(nice ring to it, eh?
Either way, the cool thing to do would be to have some sort of relay resource that would check to see if the site was up, and if it wasn't, then display the google/slash cache.
Of course, it will be implemented probably about the time I submit a patch, and I've got too many other things to work on....