The United States was founded by people who wouldn't take NO for an answer. Bollocks to those who say that we Americans are too complacent, that we must give in to the corporate masters of our private data!
We will take it back by brute force, by hacker attacks, by whatever means we can. And Jon Katz shall be the first at the point of our bayonetts - for he encourages us to wait for our supposed Tech UberGeek Saviours, who will remain as gutless as the day is long. It won't be the technological elites that will save our privacy, it will be the everyday man, woman, and child in the streets; it won't be the scriptkiddies of last century, it will be the Net Appliance using street kids who don't give a darn what the tool is called that they use to pry back their privacy from the grasping hands of corporate and government control.
And all praise the corporate greedmeisters who foisted Bush upon us, because we would not rebel against Gore, as he slipped away our holds on our personal data, but we shall rebel against the 19th Century ideas and ideals of the old-fogey Bush crowd.
Wait not for the clarion call, wait not for the right time, there never shall be a right time, and the call to arms is now!
a Chrysler PT Cruiser (4 star crash rating) or a Honda X car (unrated, but 2004 model will have a hybrid gas/electric engine, so the mileage will be killer, probably 50+ mpg).
That said, note the supplier is using the Red Hat distro, according to recent PR Newswire articles (which dropped out of my cache, but occurred on Monday or Tuesday this week).
Does that mean you can't get a DVD player for it?
on
Linux Powered Dodge
·
· Score: 2
Seriously, if it's a Linux OS car, does that mean we can't get the drivers for the DVD player? Or can we take the firmware for the DVD player in the new Linux powered Dodge and use it in other systems?
Hey, it's a hack. An expensive one, but just claim someone stole your DVD player that you ordered and get a new one through the dealer. After a few months, they'll probably notice, but it will be too late.
Look, the whole problem with micropayments is:
1. must have an audit trail
2. must trust all along payment and receipt trail
3. must let them access big bucket of cash
4. pay extra for processor to glob together electronic payments into large transfer
The solution is a Bucket of Goop. You buy a bucket of goop somewhere (Amazon, Slashdot) with a secure payment authority ONCE. You then spend until the Bucket of Goop is gone. During that time, micropayments are from that site or network of sites alone. E.g. AT&T sells a Big Bell Bucket of Goop usable for Cable Service, Long Distance, ESPN rentals, whatever - on their VPN with their security. They show you how much more goop you have. If you decide to bogart from AT&T (you like AOL), you have them pay back the remainder of the Bucket of Goop.
Note: this cannot be patented, because I already copyrighted it and have prior working models. So tell Bill G to get his slimy hands off my patent, which is public domain.
The problem is that out-of-the-box OOP is not the same as well-crafted OOP. An example might be SQLWindows/Centura. Great concept - drill down to the API. Lousy method - so hard to do real, effective OOP that it just gets in the way.
Look, we always have tradeoffs. Full #DEFINE statements for reused constants versus readability of code. Use of statics over globals. Full polymorphism over time to code.
The trick is to use those OOP features that give you the most bang for the buck. Yes, most OOP is vastly overhyped, but that's because PHBs read trade mags which do feature checklist comparisons. That's why MSFT sells so much dreck, and why things like Word have way to much code in a release.
But, that does not mean that OOP is useless. Where you do have many programmers reusing many objects, where those objects are well-crafted and not overly static but flexible, then it can really help you get robust code out the door, code that can adapt to the changes that always occur.
But where you use a non-OOP-optimized method of programming, you're wasting your time.
If you're wondering where it will appear next, I should mention that most people believe that Monoliths like beach parties, especially those where sacrifices occur.
The point of placing it in the middle of a park was to let people walk up to it and check it out. Now it's unavailable to everyone except those willing to trespass into a bird sanctuary.
Who said the Monolith had appeared for humankind?
There are other living forms on this planet, human, and they have a greater need.
Here in Seattle, we love our art. The best art IMHO is the art that the people love and interact with. Often, the "authorities" are clueless and the artists are smart. Great art.
You should see our troll, and wait for the Fremont bus (it passes within a block of the center of the universe, so why should we be suprised about a silly black monolith lounging around?)
Be careful telling them the mysteries of the Fremont Troll and the Signs That One Has Entered The Center of the Universe. Those who moderate on/. are known to penalize that which they do not understand, for they have not yet been illuminated and cannot understand the Meaning of the Monolith.
And let not us reveal the presence of the Great God Lenin, he who wears the Santa Hat, as he faces to the West in Fremont. For this would cause them to be afeared, and they are not yet one with the Universe.
That said, I'm kind of peeved, cause I had planned a copycat hack, but once Spike told me that the mysteries were more involved, my plans for the Rose Garden on Jan. 20th were deferred.
We tried to use BSD, but every time we did that it turned red from embarassment.
So it uses Linux to run the prime webserver, using high-speed radio Net connections.
Some of the Canada geese complained of the radiation, but after it was pointed out that this was the point of the Monolith, they settled down quietly to hatch their new and improved offspring.
Exactly, and as practised on the Eastside (MSFT)
on
Racism At Microsoft?
·
· Score: 2
I've worked on the Eastside of Lake Washington. I've worked with African and African-American tech people, even managers (no, they're not the same, someone who came here from Uganda has very different values than someone from Chicago).
And, I can say that, IMHO, most of the firms on the Eastside (Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland) subconsciously discriminate against African-Americans, especially in management. It's actually easier to be female than male, because people can cope with you better.
Note that I'm what looks like Caucasian, even though I'm mixed like virtually any American; but I'm not blind. I notice the silent pauses, even when it's someone dressed up nicely in a suit with a proper "English" accent, when they show up at meetings or at lunch places.
And I'm not confusing it with those that dress the bad boy image, or talk with an urban African-American accent.
So, to survive, you have to be twice the manager that a white man or woman does. It's not fair, but it is true. And you have to watch who visits you at work, who you go to lunch with, and even when your kids visit you at work. Because the stereotypes, and the unconscious fears, are there.
That said, I doubt MSFT is doing this consciously. But their HR should be noticing the effect on African-American managers and questioning harsh evaluations for behaviour ("not a team player; gets angry easily") that would not be noticed if the manager was Caucasian.
is because they're bored silly after reading Jon's article.
That plus US society makes it way to easy for kids to get weapons of mass destruction, small arms (what civilians call rifles, guns, or handguns), and other explosives.
I say, let's train them all in shooting galleries with pictures of George "Cheater" Bush as targets. That will get something done at least...
After all, they have the Internet Privacy Act, rank higher in Amnesty International annual reports, have multi-party elections, and are way more advanced on rights than we are.
Let me respectfully say that you don't speak for all of Seattle. Quit pretending to.
By definition, Microserfs from across the lake are not Seattleites. Therefore, they are not members of the class which is Seattle, and are hence second-class citizens.
Note that you can be a Microserf and live in Seattle. These are first class citizens, and include many of my friends, neighbors, and acquantances. They know metric.
It's just the wannabees who live on the Eastside who don't know metric.
Ahem. I used to live in Capital Hill. It's neither gay nor bohemian, only certain clusters of it are.
Well, sweetie, you just haven't been paying attention. It's flamin' gay, or lesbian. After all Seattle has the second highest lesbian percentage of population of any major US city, and a lot of them live on Capitol Hill.
Note I didn't include Pill Hill or Montlake or any of the adjacent neighborhoods.
Since the story comes from the Seattle Times, which is on strike, one should point out that the alternative is to visit the replacement paper put out by the striking newspaper workers, the Seattle Union Record and then use their PHP driven (non-MSFT) search engine to find the story there. Again, www.unionrecord.com is the site.
And, one should point out, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is also on strike.
I've cancelled my subscription to both papers and buy the Union Record at Bulldog News in Fremont myself, and get the New York Times on Sundays.
Look, ads that annoy me too much, like Java downloads that slow my page reads or pop-up ads that keep popping up, or animated GIFs that take too long to load do succeed.
They succeed in making me NOT buy the product. I go out of my way to think bad thoughts about the company that does such ads.
That said, I love the animated penguin squishing Redmond HQ. But that's because it's topical, interesting, and very funny.
Interesting article about this on slashback - I have to agree with the article writer, after my recent trip to Guadeloupe in the French West Indies, where I saw more Internet cafes than I've seen in all of Seattle, though for different reasons.
Perhaps starting in French territories they could put those Linux terminals, with MinitelPlus connections, in all public facilities and maybe one per every 200 people in a small village or town? Then other countries could piggyback off their system... I know that all French public schools are slated for T1 or DSL with Linux servers, to be put in by France Telecom, so this wouldn't be that hard.
While it's nice to have WordPerfect for Linux and all that, and I doubt MSFT really forced the issue, the thing is that Corel caused more harm than good to Linux.
I'm not saying they had a bad distro, I'm just saying that their jerking around and cash flow concerns about them tarnished the whole Linux industry. If we only had companies like Red Hat and VA Linux Systems involved, the industry would be regarded as far more stable, and the recent add-on of mainstream companies like IBM, HP, and Compaq would be regarded by Wall Street as much better news. But Corel has dragged it all down.
As a former SMOF and SMOG, back in my Worldcon days in the 80s and early 90s, I find the actions of Fandom.com highly offensive, especially since domain rights should go to Jane's Fighting SMOFs for prior usage.
On the other hand, I know that defending a copyright and/or trademark means you have to write and send highly offensive lawyer letters, or you lose you copyright and/or trademark.
The best solution is for Fandom.com to lease the other versions for $1 for a 20 year lease, provided they remain trufan sites and not commercial enterprises competing with them.
And to clarify, what I said was "as we did with Linux", not "as we did to Linux".
So the point is that, just as MSFT and Sun and all that jazz wants to make proprietary XML deliverables, we should just make an Open Source XML deliverable and cut the rug out from under them.
But, it's not like I haven't seen trolls before - I do live in Fremont, Center of the Universe, the coolest neighborhood in Seattle, where we have a giant troll under the Aurora Bridge and just recently had Father Troll and his Troll helpers (nimble little minxes) celebrate the lighting of the Fremont Winter Solstice Tree in the plaza next to Adobe.
Slashdot Mirror
[beastie boys riff as you read this]
The United States was founded by people who wouldn't take NO for an answer. Bollocks to those who say that we Americans are too complacent, that we must give in to the corporate masters of our private data!
We will take it back by brute force, by hacker attacks, by whatever means we can. And Jon Katz shall be the first at the point of our bayonetts - for he encourages us to wait for our supposed Tech UberGeek Saviours, who will remain as gutless as the day is long. It won't be the technological elites that will save our privacy, it will be the everyday man, woman, and child in the streets; it won't be the scriptkiddies of last century, it will be the Net Appliance using street kids who don't give a darn what the tool is called that they use to pry back their privacy from the grasping hands of corporate and government control.
And all praise the corporate greedmeisters who foisted Bush upon us, because we would not rebel against Gore, as he slipped away our holds on our personal data, but we shall rebel against the 19th Century ideas and ideals of the old-fogey Bush crowd.
Wait not for the clarion call, wait not for the right time, there never shall be a right time, and the call to arms is now!
a Chrysler PT Cruiser (4 star crash rating) or a Honda X car (unrated, but 2004 model will have a hybrid gas/electric engine, so the mileage will be killer, probably 50+ mpg).
That said, note the supplier is using the Red Hat distro, according to recent PR Newswire articles (which dropped out of my cache, but occurred on Monday or Tuesday this week).
Seriously, if it's a Linux OS car, does that mean we can't get the drivers for the DVD player? Or can we take the firmware for the DVD player in the new Linux powered Dodge and use it in other systems?
Hey, it's a hack. An expensive one, but just claim someone stole your DVD player that you ordered and get a new one through the dealer. After a few months, they'll probably notice, but it will be too late.
Look, the whole problem with micropayments is:
1. must have an audit trail
2. must trust all along payment and receipt trail
3. must let them access big bucket of cash
4. pay extra for processor to glob together electronic payments into large transfer
The solution is a Bucket of Goop. You buy a bucket of goop somewhere (Amazon, Slashdot) with a secure payment authority ONCE. You then spend until the Bucket of Goop is gone. During that time, micropayments are from that site or network of sites alone. E.g. AT&T sells a Big Bell Bucket of Goop usable for Cable Service, Long Distance, ESPN rentals, whatever - on their VPN with their security. They show you how much more goop you have. If you decide to bogart from AT&T (you like AOL), you have them pay back the remainder of the Bucket of Goop.
Note: this cannot be patented, because I already copyrighted it and have prior working models. So tell Bill G to get his slimy hands off my patent, which is public domain.
The problem is that out-of-the-box OOP is not the same as well-crafted OOP. An example might be SQLWindows/Centura. Great concept - drill down to the API. Lousy method - so hard to do real, effective OOP that it just gets in the way.
Look, we always have tradeoffs. Full #DEFINE statements for reused constants versus readability of code. Use of statics over globals. Full polymorphism over time to code.
The trick is to use those OOP features that give you the most bang for the buck. Yes, most OOP is vastly overhyped, but that's because PHBs read trade mags which do feature checklist comparisons. That's why MSFT sells so much dreck, and why things like Word have way to much code in a release.
But, that does not mean that OOP is useless. Where you do have many programmers reusing many objects, where those objects are well-crafted and not overly static but flexible, then it can really help you get robust code out the door, code that can adapt to the changes that always occur.
But where you use a non-OOP-optimized method of programming, you're wasting your time.
And, for inquiring minds, here's a local Seattle P-I columnist's article on the Monolith.
Here's the story in the P-I with a better pic of the Monolith.
This reminds me of the story of the stolen garden gnome that went on a trip around the world
There's a group calling themselves Gnomes Sans Frontieres assisting in the rescue and relocation of garden gnomes, especially those in France.
Every gnome needs a vacation.
If you're wondering where it will appear next, I should mention that most people believe that Monoliths like beach parties, especially those where sacrifices occur.
As shall be revealed soon.
The point of placing it in the middle of a park was to let people walk up to it and check it out. Now it's unavailable to everyone except those willing to trespass into a bird sanctuary.
Who said the Monolith had appeared for humankind?
There are other living forms on this planet, human, and they have a greater need.
Here in Seattle, we love our art. The best art IMHO is the art that the people love and interact with. Often, the "authorities" are clueless and the artists are smart. Great art.
/. are known to penalize that which they do not understand, for they have not yet been illuminated and cannot understand the Meaning of the Monolith.
You should see our troll, and wait for the Fremont bus (it passes within a block of the center of the universe, so why should we be suprised about a silly black monolith lounging around?)
Be careful telling them the mysteries of the Fremont Troll and the Signs That One Has Entered The Center of the Universe. Those who moderate on
And let not us reveal the presence of the Great God Lenin, he who wears the Santa Hat, as he faces to the West in Fremont. For this would cause them to be afeared, and they are not yet one with the Universe.
That said, I'm kind of peeved, cause I had planned a copycat hack, but once Spike told me that the mysteries were more involved, my plans for the Rose Garden on Jan. 20th were deferred.
We tried to use BSD, but every time we did that it turned red from embarassment.
So it uses Linux to run the prime webserver, using high-speed radio Net connections.
Some of the Canada geese complained of the radiation, but after it was pointed out that this was the point of the Monolith, they settled down quietly to hatch their new and improved offspring.
I've worked on the Eastside of Lake Washington. I've worked with African and African-American tech people, even managers (no, they're not the same, someone who came here from Uganda has very different values than someone from Chicago).
And, I can say that, IMHO, most of the firms on the Eastside (Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland) subconsciously discriminate against African-Americans, especially in management. It's actually easier to be female than male, because people can cope with you better.
Note that I'm what looks like Caucasian, even though I'm mixed like virtually any American; but I'm not blind. I notice the silent pauses, even when it's someone dressed up nicely in a suit with a proper "English" accent, when they show up at meetings or at lunch places.
And I'm not confusing it with those that dress the bad boy image, or talk with an urban African-American accent.
So, to survive, you have to be twice the manager that a white man or woman does. It's not fair, but it is true. And you have to watch who visits you at work, who you go to lunch with, and even when your kids visit you at work. Because the stereotypes, and the unconscious fears, are there.
That said, I doubt MSFT is doing this consciously. But their HR should be noticing the effect on African-American managers and questioning harsh evaluations for behaviour ("not a team player; gets angry easily") that would not be noticed if the manager was Caucasian.
[caveat - I own MSFT stock (and RHAT too)]
is because they're bored silly after reading Jon's article.
...
That plus US society makes it way to easy for kids to get weapons of mass destruction, small arms (what civilians call rifles, guns, or handguns), and other explosives.
I say, let's train them all in shooting galleries with pictures of George "Cheater" Bush as targets. That will get something done at least
There's a story on Yahoo about the Monolith in Seattle drawing crowds. With quotes from locals.
After all, they have the Internet Privacy Act, rank higher in Amnesty International annual reports, have multi-party elections, and are way more advanced on rights than we are.
Sadly, they have a lousy exchange rate.
Let me respectfully say that you don't speak for all of Seattle. Quit pretending to.
By definition, Microserfs from across the lake are not Seattleites. Therefore, they are not members of the class which is Seattle, and are hence second-class citizens.
Note that you can be a Microserf and live in Seattle. These are first class citizens, and include many of my friends, neighbors, and acquantances. They know metric.
It's just the wannabees who live on the Eastside who don't know metric.
Hurry, pour me another half-caf soy latte before pass out from excitement about pool halls and internet cafes.
Sorry, we gave up soy lattees for the Druidic Solstice. You'll have to get a Silk lattee instead.
That said, Seattle may have Monoliths, but it has fewer Internet cafes than any town in the French West Indies does.
Not to mention fewer pool halls than in the South of France.
Ahem. I used to live in Capital Hill. It's neither gay nor bohemian, only certain clusters of it are.
Well, sweetie, you just haven't been paying attention. It's flamin' gay, or lesbian. After all Seattle has the second highest lesbian percentage of population of any major US city, and a lot of them live on Capitol Hill.
Note I didn't include Pill Hill or Montlake or any of the adjacent neighborhoods.
Since the story comes from the Seattle Times, which is on strike, one should point out that the alternative is to visit the replacement paper put out by the striking newspaper workers, the Seattle Union Record and then use their PHP driven (non-MSFT) search engine to find the story there. Again, www.unionrecord.com is the site.
And, one should point out, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is also on strike.
I've cancelled my subscription to both papers and buy the Union Record at Bulldog News in Fremont myself, and get the New York Times on Sundays.
Look, ads that annoy me too much, like Java downloads that slow my page reads or pop-up ads that keep popping up, or animated GIFs that take too long to load do succeed.
They succeed in making me NOT buy the product. I go out of my way to think bad thoughts about the company that does such ads.
That said, I love the animated penguin squishing Redmond HQ. But that's because it's topical, interesting, and very funny.
Interesting article about this on slashback - I have to agree with the article writer, after my recent trip to Guadeloupe in the French West Indies, where I saw more Internet cafes than I've seen in all of Seattle, though for different reasons.
... I know that all French public schools are slated for T1 or DSL with Linux servers, to be put in by France Telecom, so this wouldn't be that hard.
Perhaps starting in French territories they could put those Linux terminals, with MinitelPlus connections, in all public facilities and maybe one per every 200 people in a small village or town? Then other countries could piggyback off their system
While it's nice to have WordPerfect for Linux and all that, and I doubt MSFT really forced the issue, the thing is that Corel caused more harm than good to Linux.
I'm not saying they had a bad distro, I'm just saying that their jerking around and cash flow concerns about them tarnished the whole Linux industry. If we only had companies like Red Hat and VA Linux Systems involved, the industry would be regarded as far more stable, and the recent add-on of mainstream companies like IBM, HP, and Compaq would be regarded by Wall Street as much better news. But Corel has dragged it all down.
[caveat - I own Red Hat stock, so I'm biased]
As a former SMOF and SMOG, back in my Worldcon days in the 80s and early 90s, I find the actions of Fandom.com highly offensive, especially since domain rights should go to Jane's Fighting SMOFs for prior usage.
On the other hand, I know that defending a copyright and/or trademark means you have to write and send highly offensive lawyer letters, or you lose you copyright and/or trademark.
The best solution is for Fandom.com to lease the other versions for $1 for a 20 year lease, provided they remain trufan sites and not commercial enterprises competing with them.
And to clarify, what I said was "as we did with Linux", not "as we did to Linux".
So the point is that, just as MSFT and Sun and all that jazz wants to make proprietary XML deliverables, we should just make an Open Source XML deliverable and cut the rug out from under them.
But, it's not like I haven't seen trolls before - I do live in Fremont, Center of the Universe, the coolest neighborhood in Seattle, where we have a giant troll under the Aurora Bridge and just recently had Father Troll and his Troll helpers (nimble little minxes) celebrate the lighting of the Fremont Winter Solstice Tree in the plaza next to Adobe.