Really? I've never heard of anybody dying from one drink, unless it interacted really badly with something else they were taking (a perscription, for example).
Yes, people can keep drinking alcohol until it poisons them. Yes, people can drink enough alcohol over time to destroy their livers. Yes, people make bad judgments and such when using alcohol that may lead to death. But that's not the same as drugs that are damaging each time you use them, are very easy to overdose on, or are often mixed incorrectly with fatal results.
> 2) Techno-thrillers have a veneer of scintific versmilitude -- part of the fun is seeing where the author starts making stuff up.
Of course. It's also been said that you can get people to suspend their disbelief for one big difference between the real world and the fictional world. There are a couple things you could point to in State of Fear as this; none of them are the footnoted, referenced environmental arguments.
> "Environmentalist-sponsored!" How much money do you think environmentalists have? Research is paid for by either governments or large corporations.
You don't think there are rich environmentalist philanthropists funding research? You don't think the permanent bureaucrats who are part of the "International Council on Climate Change" might be just a little biased towards saying the climate is changing so they'll keep their jobs? You don't think the EPA is biased towards saying there's a problem to expand their power? (Okay, the EPA is caught between its own interests and the administration's, but still.) And you don't think the scientists themselves might be willing (though probably not happy) to say "inconclusive" when a study goes the way the sponsor doesn't want, so that they can get the next grant too?
You don't think the fact that many publications' editorial boards have taken stances on global warming might discourage scientists whose research diagrees with that stance from publishing in them?
In the current system, there is no such thing as an unbiased study, because there's no such thing as an unbiased source of money. To me, the most interesting studies are the ones that are said to be "inconclusive". If you read the data, many "inconclusive" studies are sometimes "didn't go the way I wanted" studies.
(In another field, a panel put together by Clinton to review the effectiveness of gun-control laws recently said they weren't sure, and more research was needed. But if you look at the actual data, it's pretty clear that the answer is that they're ineffective, and the mostly pro-gun-control panel just didn't want to say that.)
You do realize that temperatures were trending down between 1940 and 1970, while carbon dioxide was rising, don't you? (A few scientists at that time were worried that they might be seeing the beginning of an ice age!) And that average US temperatures have barely risen since 1880? (This is significant because the U.S. has had a consistently high-quality system of weather records spread over a large geographic area, something fairly unique in the world.) And that many weather stations in small towns, or in the middle of nowhere, are showing little to no rise--or even a decrease--while urban stations in energy-consuming cities are showing very significant warming? (Scientists try to adjust for the effects of urbanization, but there have been papers published suggesting that they aren't adjusting it enough.)
There's data pointing both ways, and questions about both sets of data, in a scientific environment that's arguably biased towards global warming. I don't consider that a very convincing situation.
While an excellent novel (and the first "grown-up" novel I read, back in the fourth grade), Jurassic Park didn't have footnotes, lists of references, graphs from real data, or an extensive bibliography listing works on both sides of the debate. State of Fear has all of these things. It is very thoroughly researched, and lists its sources so you can check them out yourself.
A good author produces his or her books from thorough, accurate research. This is especially true of someone writing techno-thrillers like Chrichton--he has to get things pretty much right or his fans will rip the book apart.
Besides, what makes you think the oil company-sponsored studies are any less accurate than the environmentalist-sponsored ones? Environmentalist groups need that research to show that there's global warming, or bad pollution, or extinction, or whatever they're harping on; otherwise they'll lose their contributions. And scientists are perfectly aware of who is paying for their funding, and that if they don't come to the "right" conclusions they may not get their next grant. The fact is, nobody is unbiased. Nobody.
Are these the same kind of computer models that predicted a devestating increase in temperature by the beginning of the century?
A computer model is a guess--a somewhat educated guess, yes, but still a guess. There's a reason meterologists don't try to forecast more than a few days in advance--it's too unpredictable. Computer models can't prove Earth is getting warmer any more than Doom 3 can prove Mars is infested with cacodemons. If I see proof that temperature is rising--not a computer model, not a guess, but hard data showing a consistent global trend towards warmer temperatures--we can start talking about whether the miniscule amount of carbon dioxide humans release really causes changes in global climate. But I have yet to even see any proof that temperatures are changing much, or changing in any particular direction.
> Human activity could easily completely upset the natural cycles and create a runaway greenhouse effect. If it does the planet could end up uninhabitable like Venus.
Do you really believe a couple billion bags of cells with delusions of intelligence can change the weather of an entire planet? Personally, I find such claims to be the height of arrogance.
Earth constantly changes. It changed before we existed, and will keep changing once we are gone. Imagining that humanity can affect that is as preposterous as imagining that an ant can build a rocket.
To me, the issue here isn't whether or not somebody has an expectation of privacy about where they're driving; it's whether this makes it too easy for the police to track a person.
Much has been made of the analogy of an unmarked car tailing you. But the difference is that having an unmarked car tail you is a significant commitment of resources. If you think you might have seen a guy with a hooker last week, you're not going to assign two cops and a car to follow him around for the next month in case he picks up another one.
But if all it takes is to attach a GPS tag to the bottom of his car and a computer in HQ will pop up a message if he visits a motel, well, why not? Meanwhile, this innocent guy is having his every move watched by the cops--and risking a police raid if a friend flies into town and asks for a ride from the motel to his room.
This is another step towards wholesale surveillance, which I truly consider to be one of the most troubling possibilities of our time. Wholesale surveillance would waste everybody's time, destroy privacy, and likely turn people into even dumber sheep than they already are.
Torrents have never been a good way to distribute illegal content. They're basically a step above Napster in the "hard to shut down" department (multiple independent servers, but it's still fairly centralized), and no better than it in the "plausible deniability" and "track-covering" departments.
Anybody who seriously believed that BitTorrent was a long-term tool for piracy was kidding themselves; even its author, Bram Cohen, notes that "distributing stuff that is clearly illegal with BitTorrent is a really dumb idea."
"They're not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."
"Yes, the American troops have advanced further. This will only make it easier for us to defeat them."
"They are not in Baghdad. They are not in control of any airport. I tell you this. It is all a lie. They lie. It is a Hollywood movie. You do not believe them."
Google's speciality isn't in coming up with way-cool technologies from left field. Their trick is that they look at an everyday task that everybody thinks is "good enough", think really hard about what people really want to do with it--and want it to do for them--and write that, with as little regard as possible for what their competition does.
Google Search reflects the "do it for you" principle in PageRank (people want the software to tell them which sources are likely to be good) and the "what you really want" princple in numerous little features like the calculator and spell checker. Gmail reflects the "what you really want" principle in labels, and the "do it for you" principle in conversations. Just about the only Google products I'm aware of that don't have this general principle behind them are Google Groups (and Groups 2 is fixing this) and the Google Toolbar (which is largely a marketing tool).
In that sense, Google's something like the way I've always considered Japan, technologically speaking. America makes stuff; Japan makes it smaller (or faster, or better, or cheaper, or flasher, or...). Similarly, other people make stuff; Google makes it smarter (or easier, or automatic, or...).
Re:If You Want a Serious Answer... Don't Get Cute
on
Rob Pike Responds
·
· Score: 1
hacker: n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]
Considering that not long ago someone stumbled across a domain name that suggested Google might be getting into browsers, I don't give this theory much credibility.
Actually, I'm starting to suspect that Google plants clues about products that'll never be written just to keep its competitors off balance. If Microsoft is worried about Gbrowser, it won't see Google Desktop coming. So the right question might be, what's Google really got up its sleeve that GIM is distracting us from?
The Library of Congress is a lot more than just a collection of government documents. When you register a copyright in the United States, you have to send two copies of the work to the LOC. Many of those works are then sent to regional libraries around the country, but the LOC keeps the cream of the crop, so it has a collection of what it considers to be the best books, audio recordings, movies, and videos in the US.
Digitizing the LOC would be a boon to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem likely to happen...
He uploads it to the CIC database--the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means. And even the word "library" is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeroes. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering.
Congress did not formally declare war on Iraq in the sense that it declared war on the Axis powers in 1941--in the sense that the Constitution calls for it to. In fact, Congress has never declared war since World War II. The Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars were all undeclared. So was the invasion of Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq.
Congress did pass resolutions in support of the President using the military in those places, to greater or lesser degree. But a resolution isn't a declaration of war, and the assumption in all cases was that the President didn't really need that permission, when in fact the Constitution says that Congress is supposed to decide if we go to war and declare it if we do.
I assume he means that the current battle between P2P and DRM will eventually settle things on its own, as either people give up and stop pirating, or record companies give up and change their business model. Other than repealing the more offensive bits of recent laws, there's no need for the government to step in for either side until the consumers and producers shake things out.
I can't speak for Badnarik specifically, but the general libertarian stance on intellectual property is for, with limitations. Few will support the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions or the perpetual extensions, and most who are aware of the issues aren't happy with the current state of the patent system, but the idea of giving authors temporary exclusive rights to their work is thought to be fundamentally sound.
(Of course, the ones who lean towards the anarchist side of libertarianism have an idea of how to do it privately--essentially by having authors sign a contract saying "I won't steal if the other people in my copyright company don't"--but they don't represent the majority.)
It's not true--you're allowed to distribute GPL and non-GPL programs on the same medium, as long as they aren't linked (in the compiler/linker sense). The GPL specifically allows that. This is just a case of Microsoft believing their own FUD.
I think that the thing he's missing is that some black hats are more dangerous than others. Some of them craft the tools, while others just know how to run Uberhack 2.1.
In particular, any black hat competent enough to discover a serious vulneurability is likely to know how to exploit it properly. He'll know that you don't want to crash or mirror your pr0n v1d30z onto the compromised box--you want to be patient, sniff network traffic, grab encryption keys and passwords, hold the machine in reserve for DDoS attacks or for masking your identity when trying to crack other targets. The friends they disclose the vulneurability to will likely be the same way.
A black hat discovery is much, much, much more dangerous than a white-hat discovery, because the sort of black hats who would find out about a vulneurability before it went public are exactly the sort that you don't want having a back door into every box on the Internet.
So, he writes up some stuff about his new box, and then posts it on Slashdot to stress-test the thing? Clever, clever...
Re:Keyboard update suggestions
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Also, one thing I'd like to see is a mouse where, instead of a scroll wheel (or two wheels), there was a mini-trackball, that could be used to scroll both vertically and horizontally. I'm surprised no-one has come up with this yet (at least I've never seen one).
Some models of Microsoft mice allow you to rock the scroll wheel left or right to scroll in the appropriate direction. Weird, but useful.
Disclaimer: I have not yet entered the work force.
I'm the child of a programmer. (Yeah, I've ended up as a programmer too--or will end up as one, once I finish school.) I don't really have a baseline to compare it to, but I think my father does fairly well.
He's technically a consultant, although he's been working eight-to-five at the same job for several years. Being a consultant gave him the flexibility to find time to coach most of my sports teams (a couple years of Little League and AYSO, plus nearly a decade of roller hockey). The few hockey teams he didn't coach, he was involved at the school or even league level.
Consultancy doesn't give you the benefits--health, retirement, etc.--of a normal job, but it makes the trade-off more explicit: each hour you take off from work has a specific dollar amount attached to it. The decision is simple: is it worth $30 or $60 or whatever it is you make per hour to see your kid sing or play or do whatever (s)he is doing? Your schedule is yours to determine, as long as you make sure you get your contracts done.
My father's division used to belong to a large non-technical corporation; recently, some of its employees bought the division from the corporation it belonged to. My father was one of the investors, so he's changed from a consultant to a salaried worker. (His job duties have also changed--they're having him dabble in managing other programmers while still doing most of the design work. He isn't a suit--yet--as most of his time is still consumed by interacting with the computer and designing various parts of the program he works on.)
Since that change, he's been spending more time at work; he still seems to find time for actual events, but he's been missing dinner more often, and stuff like that. I can't tell if the change is because he's working for a salary now, or if it's because he's now working for a small company instead of a large corporation, or if it's because of his new job duties--there are no control groups in life.
I get the sense that my father's situation was somewhat unusual, so you may want to take this whole thing with a bit of NaCl, but it's something to think about.
I will say this, though: if any of your kids are technical types, they will idolize you. And even fi they aren't, they'll be glad to have the kind of dad who can fix all the gadgets around the house.
Am I just reading an old copy? I just noticed that there's no "as" operator. I seem to recall Larry recently mentioning "as" for casting. Am I wrong?
Not old per se--just one the author missed. You are right--the 'as' operator ("(expr) as (class)") was introduced with Apocalypse 12, along with the entire type system and classes and objects.
Perl 5 OO is being thrown out in favor of a more developed system:
#Derived is a subclass of Base; it imports members from # the role Role (sort of like a Ruby mixin) class Derived is Base does Role {
#Read-only accessor automatically generated
has $.publicvar;
#Read-write accessor generated
has $.pulicwritevar is rw;
#No accessor at all
has $:privatevar;
Slashdot Mirror
Really? I've never heard of anybody dying from one drink, unless it interacted really badly with something else they were taking (a perscription, for example).
Yes, people can keep drinking alcohol until it poisons them. Yes, people can drink enough alcohol over time to destroy their livers. Yes, people make bad judgments and such when using alcohol that may lead to death. But that's not the same as drugs that are damaging each time you use them, are very easy to overdose on, or are often mixed incorrectly with fatal results.
Next thing you know, they're going to be warning of the threat of global climate constancy...
> 2) Techno-thrillers have a veneer of scintific versmilitude -- part of the fun is seeing where the author starts making stuff up.
Of course. It's also been said that you can get people to suspend their disbelief for one big difference between the real world and the fictional world. There are a couple things you could point to in State of Fear as this; none of them are the footnoted, referenced environmental arguments.
> "Environmentalist-sponsored!" How much money do you think environmentalists have? Research is paid for by either governments or large corporations.
You don't think there are rich environmentalist philanthropists funding research? You don't think the permanent bureaucrats who are part of the "International Council on Climate Change" might be just a little biased towards saying the climate is changing so they'll keep their jobs? You don't think the EPA is biased towards saying there's a problem to expand their power? (Okay, the EPA is caught between its own interests and the administration's, but still.) And you don't think the scientists themselves might be willing (though probably not happy) to say "inconclusive" when a study goes the way the sponsor doesn't want, so that they can get the next grant too?
You don't think the fact that many publications' editorial boards have taken stances on global warming might discourage scientists whose research diagrees with that stance from publishing in them?
In the current system, there is no such thing as an unbiased study, because there's no such thing as an unbiased source of money. To me, the most interesting studies are the ones that are said to be "inconclusive". If you read the data, many "inconclusive" studies are sometimes "didn't go the way I wanted" studies.
(In another field, a panel put together by Clinton to review the effectiveness of gun-control laws recently said they weren't sure, and more research was needed. But if you look at the actual data, it's pretty clear that the answer is that they're ineffective, and the mostly pro-gun-control panel just didn't want to say that.)
You do realize that temperatures were trending down between 1940 and 1970, while carbon dioxide was rising, don't you? (A few scientists at that time were worried that they might be seeing the beginning of an ice age!) And that average US temperatures have barely risen since 1880? (This is significant because the U.S. has had a consistently high-quality system of weather records spread over a large geographic area, something fairly unique in the world.) And that many weather stations in small towns, or in the middle of nowhere, are showing little to no rise--or even a decrease--while urban stations in energy-consuming cities are showing very significant warming? (Scientists try to adjust for the effects of urbanization, but there have been papers published suggesting that they aren't adjusting it enough.)
There's data pointing both ways, and questions about both sets of data, in a scientific environment that's arguably biased towards global warming. I don't consider that a very convincing situation.
While an excellent novel (and the first "grown-up" novel I read, back in the fourth grade), Jurassic Park didn't have footnotes, lists of references, graphs from real data, or an extensive bibliography listing works on both sides of the debate. State of Fear has all of these things. It is very thoroughly researched, and lists its sources so you can check them out yourself.
A good author produces his or her books from thorough, accurate research. This is especially true of someone writing techno-thrillers like Chrichton--he has to get things pretty much right or his fans will rip the book apart.
Besides, what makes you think the oil company-sponsored studies are any less accurate than the environmentalist-sponsored ones? Environmentalist groups need that research to show that there's global warming, or bad pollution, or extinction, or whatever they're harping on; otherwise they'll lose their contributions. And scientists are perfectly aware of who is paying for their funding, and that if they don't come to the "right" conclusions they may not get their next grant. The fact is, nobody is unbiased. Nobody.
Are these the same kind of computer models that predicted a devestating increase in temperature by the beginning of the century?
A computer model is a guess--a somewhat educated guess, yes, but still a guess. There's a reason meterologists don't try to forecast more than a few days in advance--it's too unpredictable. Computer models can't prove Earth is getting warmer any more than Doom 3 can prove Mars is infested with cacodemons. If I see proof that temperature is rising--not a computer model, not a guess, but hard data showing a consistent global trend towards warmer temperatures--we can start talking about whether the miniscule amount of carbon dioxide humans release really causes changes in global climate. But I have yet to even see any proof that temperatures are changing much, or changing in any particular direction.
> Human activity could easily completely upset the natural cycles and create a runaway greenhouse effect. If it does the planet could end up uninhabitable like Venus.
Do you really believe a couple billion bags of cells with delusions of intelligence can change the weather of an entire planet? Personally, I find such claims to be the height of arrogance.
Earth constantly changes. It changed before we existed, and will keep changing once we are gone. Imagining that humanity can affect that is as preposterous as imagining that an ant can build a rocket.
I suspect that if a cop sees you parked at a red curb, that's "probable cause" enough for him to be able to put a ticket under your wiper.
To me, the issue here isn't whether or not somebody has an expectation of privacy about where they're driving; it's whether this makes it too easy for the police to track a person.
Much has been made of the analogy of an unmarked car tailing you. But the difference is that having an unmarked car tail you is a significant commitment of resources. If you think you might have seen a guy with a hooker last week, you're not going to assign two cops and a car to follow him around for the next month in case he picks up another one.
But if all it takes is to attach a GPS tag to the bottom of his car and a computer in HQ will pop up a message if he visits a motel, well, why not? Meanwhile, this innocent guy is having his every move watched by the cops--and risking a police raid if a friend flies into town and asks for a ride from the motel to his room.
This is another step towards wholesale surveillance, which I truly consider to be one of the most troubling possibilities of our time. Wholesale surveillance would waste everybody's time, destroy privacy, and likely turn people into even dumber sheep than they already are.
Torrents have never been a good way to distribute illegal content. They're basically a step above Napster in the "hard to shut down" department (multiple independent servers, but it's still fairly centralized), and no better than it in the "plausible deniability" and "track-covering" departments.
Anybody who seriously believed that BitTorrent was a long-term tool for piracy was kidding themselves; even its author, Bram Cohen, notes that "distributing stuff that is clearly illegal with BitTorrent is a really dumb idea."
"They're not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion ... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."
"Yes, the American troops have advanced further. This will only make it easier for us to defeat them."
"They are not in Baghdad. They are not in control of any airport. I tell you this. It is all a lie. They lie. It is a Hollywood movie. You do not believe them."
Google's speciality isn't in coming up with way-cool technologies from left field. Their trick is that they look at an everyday task that everybody thinks is "good enough", think really hard about what people really want to do with it--and want it to do for them--and write that, with as little regard as possible for what their competition does.
Google Search reflects the "do it for you" principle in PageRank (people want the software to tell them which sources are likely to be good) and the "what you really want" princple in numerous little features like the calculator and spell checker. Gmail reflects the "what you really want" principle in labels, and the "do it for you" principle in conversations. Just about the only Google products I'm aware of that don't have this general principle behind them are Google Groups (and Groups 2 is fixing this) and the Google Toolbar (which is largely a marketing tool).
In that sense, Google's something like the way I've always considered Japan, technologically speaking. America makes stuff; Japan makes it smaller (or faster, or better, or cheaper, or flasher, or...). Similarly, other people make stuff; Google makes it smarter (or easier, or automatic, or...).
Considering that not long ago someone stumbled across a domain name that suggested Google might be getting into browsers, I don't give this theory much credibility.
Actually, I'm starting to suspect that Google plants clues about products that'll never be written just to keep its competitors off balance. If Microsoft is worried about Gbrowser, it won't see Google Desktop coming. So the right question might be, what's Google really got up its sleeve that GIM is distracting us from?
The Library of Congress is a lot more than just a collection of government documents. When you register a copyright in the United States, you have to send two copies of the work to the LOC. Many of those works are then sent to regional libraries around the country, but the LOC keeps the cream of the crop, so it has a collection of what it considers to be the best books, audio recordings, movies, and videos in the US.
Digitizing the LOC would be a boon to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem likely to happen...
He uploads it to the CIC database--the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means. And even the word "library" is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeroes. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering.
--Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Congress did not formally declare war on Iraq in the sense that it declared war on the Axis powers in 1941--in the sense that the Constitution calls for it to. In fact, Congress has never declared war since World War II. The Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars were all undeclared. So was the invasion of Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq.
Congress did pass resolutions in support of the President using the military in those places, to greater or lesser degree. But a resolution isn't a declaration of war, and the assumption in all cases was that the President didn't really need that permission, when in fact the Constitution says that Congress is supposed to decide if we go to war and declare it if we do.
I assume he means that the current battle between P2P and DRM will eventually settle things on its own, as either people give up and stop pirating, or record companies give up and change their business model. Other than repealing the more offensive bits of recent laws, there's no need for the government to step in for either side until the consumers and producers shake things out.
I can't speak for Badnarik specifically, but the general libertarian stance on intellectual property is for, with limitations. Few will support the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions or the perpetual extensions, and most who are aware of the issues aren't happy with the current state of the patent system, but the idea of giving authors temporary exclusive rights to their work is thought to be fundamentally sound.
(Of course, the ones who lean towards the anarchist side of libertarianism have an idea of how to do it privately--essentially by having authors sign a contract saying "I won't steal if the other people in my copyright company don't"--but they don't represent the majority.)
It's not true--you're allowed to distribute GPL and non-GPL programs on the same medium, as long as they aren't linked (in the compiler/linker sense). The GPL specifically allows that. This is just a case of Microsoft believing their own FUD.
I think that the thing he's missing is that some black hats are more dangerous than others. Some of them craft the tools, while others just know how to run Uberhack 2.1.
In particular, any black hat competent enough to discover a serious vulneurability is likely to know how to exploit it properly. He'll know that you don't want to crash or mirror your pr0n v1d30z onto the compromised box--you want to be patient, sniff network traffic, grab encryption keys and passwords, hold the machine in reserve for DDoS attacks or for masking your identity when trying to crack other targets. The friends they disclose the vulneurability to will likely be the same way.
A black hat discovery is much, much, much more dangerous than a white-hat discovery, because the sort of black hats who would find out about a vulneurability before it went public are exactly the sort that you don't want having a back door into every box on the Internet.
So, he writes up some stuff about his new box, and then posts it on Slashdot to stress-test the thing? Clever, clever...
Disclaimer: I have not yet entered the work force.
I'm the child of a programmer. (Yeah, I've ended up as a programmer too--or will end up as one, once I finish school.) I don't really have a baseline to compare it to, but I think my father does fairly well.
He's technically a consultant, although he's been working eight-to-five at the same job for several years. Being a consultant gave him the flexibility to find time to coach most of my sports teams (a couple years of Little League and AYSO, plus nearly a decade of roller hockey). The few hockey teams he didn't coach, he was involved at the school or even league level.
Consultancy doesn't give you the benefits--health, retirement, etc.--of a normal job, but it makes the trade-off more explicit: each hour you take off from work has a specific dollar amount attached to it. The decision is simple: is it worth $30 or $60 or whatever it is you make per hour to see your kid sing or play or do whatever (s)he is doing? Your schedule is yours to determine, as long as you make sure you get your contracts done.
My father's division used to belong to a large non-technical corporation; recently, some of its employees bought the division from the corporation it belonged to. My father was one of the investors, so he's changed from a consultant to a salaried worker. (His job duties have also changed--they're having him dabble in managing other programmers while still doing most of the design work. He isn't a suit--yet--as most of his time is still consumed by interacting with the computer and designing various parts of the program he works on.)
Since that change, he's been spending more time at work; he still seems to find time for actual events, but he's been missing dinner more often, and stuff like that. I can't tell if the change is because he's working for a salary now, or if it's because he's now working for a small company instead of a large corporation, or if it's because of his new job duties--there are no control groups in life.
I get the sense that my father's situation was somewhat unusual, so you may want to take this whole thing with a bit of NaCl, but it's something to think about.
I will say this, though: if any of your kids are technical types, they will idolize you. And even fi they aren't, they'll be glad to have the kind of dad who can fix all the gadgets around the house.