That's a resort I'd rather visit. Or just clone any living supermodel, or clone sets of supermodels. I mean, is prostitution illegal if the woman is a clone?
And I would still rather have the '63 Mercedes. At least that's a car that's easily understood and not a tangle of wires, check engine lights for no reason, and frankly, was probably built like a tank compared to the paper-thin steel used today. If the "camshaft" breaks (the engine was more likely pushrod back then), and there's no source for a replacement (unlikely), then I have a machineshop make one of a lathe. Chances are the tolerances are not that tight, so as long as I come close, it'll work.
Boot time for my 8-core Lenovo Laptop == 20 minutes Boot time for my Apple IIe == about 1 second.
I know you're going to have a hard time groking this; but I can actually be productive in a shorter time period on an older machine. My word processor is 16k and loads in a fraction of the time of MS word -- for basically the same results.
Heck, I can boot a C=64 into GEOS faster than Windows loads these days -- and still get a complete WIMP/WYSIWYG operating environment.
Old doesn't necessarily mean useless. Check out the TRS-80 Model 100 -- still in use out in the field by journalists with limited access to electricity -- it will run for months on 4 AA batteries -- and provide you with BASIC,. a word processor, a telecommunications program (built-in modem), and a few other goodies. Negroponte should have looked at THAT when he was designing the OLPC. Hackers today are still finding uses for it.
That's why he hasn't released his tax returns... Still interested in voting for this crook? It turns out he's a member of the 49% of Americans that don't pay any taxes and freeload off the backs of Job Creators...
Remember these (for anyone on Slashdot over the age of 12) ? During the mid 70's into the mid 80's, people would talk trash on the radio all the time. I myself remember threatening some kid making racial slurs over the air. I told him I was tracking him down watching the signal meter.
And this was over the air, FCC-controlled airspace. For anyone with a receiver to hear.
Have we become so paranoid, so fearful, so concerned that everyone out there is a maniac, that we are now going to preemptively arrest any kid who trash-talks via the current equivalent of CB radio?
Has our world come to this? Pre-crime? Thought crime? Buttle/Tuttle? It's madness.
The vast majority of business meetings are now held virtually anyhow -- networked computers, adobe connect, PCanywhere, yadda yadda, a zillion software solutions now exist so that people with laptops just activate the built-in webcam and boom, they are part of a meeting taking place in no particular location.
Less people need to fly overnight now to shake hands and sign documents. FEDEX and the internet have changed the way we do business.
That said, I used to live a few miles from JFK airport in Queens, and loved to watch it fly in. It came in VERY regular times, it could never be in a holding pattern, so, at 8:15 exactly it would be flying over your head.
Standing on Hook Creek blvd in Rosedale, you'd see it come in at a high angle of attack, with the nose pointed down and the landing gear extended, it looked like some kind of bird of prey about to swoop down and grab a rodent off the ground.
The earth has never before had 7 Billion (and counting) people on it. Never before has so much beachfront land been built upon. Never before have so many depended upon man-made electricity to get through a normal day.
Oh sure, the Earth has gone through these cycles before, but NEVER when so many people rely on corn that's now shriveling in the field, NEVER when billions could die in flooding, or hurricanes, tornadoes, and other weather-related disasters, NEVER when a few weeks without electricity could cause widespread panic and collapse of 'civilization' as we currently understand it.
Our society has changed dramatically since the last time earth went through these cycles. Heck, it might explain how we went from the gleaming age of Rome and into the Dark Ages -- and we could be headed for another Dark Ages. Are you prepared to have your children living in mud huts, eating rat for breakfast?
People that *used* to spend their time on various internet websites (and maybe used to click on ads), now spend *all* their time on facebook.
Facebook has supplanted the rest of the commercial internet. People that hung out on Reddit or 4Chan or Digg or iWon.com now just spend all their time playing FarmWars on facebook.
Online advertising *depended* upon "dummies". People that actually would try to punch the money. People that believed you could get a Laptop for one dollar. People that were interested in a local housewife's anti-aging/diet formula that WORKS!!! and the big companies don't want anyone to know about.
Yes. Dummies. And now those dummies are on Facebook, sharing George Takei's silly pictures, posting lolcats, and piss-poor photoshops as "real images". That's why internet revenues are down -- those dummies are too busy with their lolcats to punch the monkey.
Seriously, we're now at the point where any fool can print a story and it gets accepted as truth by those willing to believe anything that fits their worldview/ideology.
Why don't these right wing nuts just combine their two religions into one and say "Private Companies Wrote the Bible and God is Private Companies" ?
Louis Uchitelle needs at attend a Maker Faire -- it was there that I regained hope in the American spirit of ingenuity and the ability to make anything out of anything.
Of course, that ability isn't limited to the USA, the net is littered with stories about African kids in poor villages that manage to make generators out of bike parts or have managed to turn junk into pieces that provide services for their community.
However, the hacker community is the one place where innovation is happening -- too bad the authorities frown on doing things your own way, and that laws are in place to prevent reverse engineering.
If anything, Louis Uchitelle should look to Congress to see where craftmanship is being stifled. Kids can no longer build plastic models because they can't buy glue, they can't whittle because they aren't allowed knives, they can't do anything except sit in front of the TV. It's all been made illegal -- to 'protect' the children.
That's why no one knows how to do anything anymore, because all the valuable skills you learn as a kid are now forbidden due to safety concerns. And then when you grow up, all you're left with is the Home Depot way of doing things.
Now that the WSJ says that Xerox invented the internet, get ready for the biggest IP lawsuit of all time, as Xerox sues the internet!.... For 21 Trillion Dollars!
Wait just a cottonpickin' minute... MS is developing WIndows 8 which is specifically geared towards Tablets -- so much so, that they are willing to piss off their desktop users.
Now comes Office 2013, geared towards Windows 8 -- except with those requirements, there's no way to run it on a Tablet.... so.... uh.... what exactly is the point?
Is this a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing? Why develop an office suite that requires you have the latest and greatest power-hungry desktop, and then say "but you have to run it under our tablet-oriented OS" ?
Ironically, things have changed in the last decade. Cons are now primarily about Cosplay, which girls are crazy into. There's now a higher precentage of cute chicks at cons than guys, which you would *think* makes getting laid easy, but alas, not if you're from the generation previous who attended cons in the 1990's. Now you're just the creepy old guy trying to pick up Sailormoon. Ah, I wish I was born in the 80's
First of all, where are you going to find girls that are interested in geeks? Are you going to import mail order brides from China or something? Half the hackers in the world are already in China!
Secondly, despite being overweight, unshaven, sloppy, smelly, ugly themselves, hackers have a very high self-opinion of themselves, and, after having watched a gazallion hours of pr0n on the internet, will be remarkably picky about the looks/abilities of the potential girlfriend. They aren't going to settle for just anybody. Ideally, this person needs to look like Jeri Ryan and should have the brains of Jeri Ellsworth (come on, I think that was a pretty clever match-up)...
And lastly, such girls don't exist, so, finding them, and then, what, paying them to date and have sex with these guys without blowing their cover? It just won't work, it will never work, and the whole idea just doesn't add up at all.
Popular Science magazine came up with all these grand predictions about how were were going to use personal computers. At the time, PC's were clunky 8-bit CPUs with blinky lights in front and had to be programmed by flipping switches on the front panels.
Needless to say, Popular Science Magazine got nearly every prediction wrong. They never figured on videogames, BBS's, graphic design, video editing, youtube or facebook. About all they got right was word processing.
This idiocy regarding Google is about as correct. It also assumes Google is even going to be here in 20 years. Furthermore, something will come along to shake up the entire computing paradigm so that when we look back on 2012, we'll wonder why things were so primitive.
How many Grid Compasses are still in use today? The TRS-80 Model 100 is a remarkably robust design that continues to be the preferred choice for writers "in the field" where access to electricity is limited -- a keyboard, an LCD screen, a full-travel keyboard, and it can run for months on 4 AA batteries -- only the Alphasmarts outclassed it for pure writing enjoyment and durability.
If I know any of those major ISPs, they'll be emailing you at the @comcast or @verizon email address that they assume you're monitoring, because they gave you that email address when they became your ISP.
They aren't going to assume that you've been using the same email address for decades, long before you signed up for their broadband, and that's the email address you monitor.
I can see it now, they shut you off claiming you haven't responded to any of their emails -- meanwhile you're unaware that a mailbox you've never checked in your life is where those emails are....
I very likely have a Verizon mailbox, but damn if I know what it is. Or how to access it. My email comes to me through a mom&pop ISP where I have my webserver, not through my broadband provider.
And I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- how many people have a Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail account as their primary email address?
I don't have to keep paying for your wars. I don't have to pay to subsidize your car accidents. I don't have to pay when your uncle who smokes, gets emphysema. I don't have to pay for secret government ops that do not directly benefit me. I don't have to pay to bail out banks that gamble with other people's money. I don't have to pay to subsidize roads that rich people drive on, nor the police and firemen that service the wealthy.
I mean after all, if you don't want to pay for other people's healthcare, then why should I pay for any of the above?
You are a marketable data point. That's all. You're not their customer, or even their consumer. You're their unpaid intern, creating content for their benefit, so that more marketable data-points join the hive-mind.
Wish I had mod points today. This post says everything you need to know about the stock market -- which is, if you're not the 1% you should GET OUT, lick your wounds and keep your money elsewhere.
First of all, I'll contribute to any project that gets reality TV stars off the planet, and then kills them.
My question is: Which reality stars are you shooting into space? Snooki? Kim Kardashian?
Or is it going to be a series like "Survivor", where 7 start out, and eventually at least 4 are voted out the airlock during the trip there? We all know reality TV is fake though, so is this really 'Capricorn One'?
Slashdot Mirror
That's a resort I'd rather visit. Or just clone any living supermodel, or clone sets of supermodels. I mean, is prostitution illegal if the woman is a clone?
And I would still rather have the '63 Mercedes. At least that's a car that's easily understood and not a tangle of wires, check engine lights for no reason, and frankly, was probably built like a tank compared to the paper-thin steel used today. If the "camshaft" breaks (the engine was more likely pushrod back then), and there's no source for a replacement (unlikely), then I have a machineshop make one of a lathe. Chances are the tolerances are not that tight, so as long as I come close, it'll work.
Hrmmm. Let's compare:
Boot time for my 8-core Lenovo Laptop == 20 minutes
Boot time for my Apple IIe == about 1 second.
I know you're going to have a hard time groking this; but I can actually be productive in a shorter time period on an older machine. My word processor is 16k and loads in a fraction of the time of MS word -- for basically the same results.
Heck, I can boot a C=64 into GEOS faster than Windows loads these days -- and still get a complete WIMP/WYSIWYG operating environment.
Old doesn't necessarily mean useless. Check out the TRS-80 Model 100 -- still in use out in the field by journalists with limited access to electricity -- it will run for months on 4 AA batteries -- and provide you with BASIC,. a word processor, a telecommunications program (built-in modem), and a few other goodies. Negroponte should have looked at THAT when he was designing the OLPC. Hackers today are still finding uses for it.
That's why he hasn't released his tax returns... Still interested in voting for this crook? It turns out he's a member of the 49% of Americans that don't pay any taxes and freeload off the backs of Job Creators...
And by "alternative", we are assuming you mean Michele Bachmann....
Remember these (for anyone on Slashdot over the age of 12) ? During the mid 70's into the mid 80's, people would talk trash on the radio all the time. I myself remember threatening some kid making racial slurs over the air. I told him I was tracking him down watching the signal meter.
And this was over the air, FCC-controlled airspace. For anyone with a receiver to hear.
Have we become so paranoid, so fearful, so concerned that everyone out there is a maniac, that we are now going to preemptively arrest any kid who trash-talks via the current equivalent of CB radio?
Has our world come to this? Pre-crime? Thought crime? Buttle/Tuttle? It's madness.
The vast majority of business meetings are now held virtually anyhow -- networked computers, adobe connect, PCanywhere, yadda yadda, a zillion software solutions now exist so that people with laptops just activate the built-in webcam and boom, they are part of a meeting taking place in no particular location.
Less people need to fly overnight now to shake hands and sign documents. FEDEX and the internet have changed the way we do business.
That said, I used to live a few miles from JFK airport in Queens, and loved to watch it fly in. It came in VERY regular times, it could never be in a holding pattern, so, at 8:15 exactly it would be flying over your head.
Standing on Hook Creek blvd in Rosedale, you'd see it come in at a high angle of attack, with the nose pointed down and the landing gear extended, it looked like some kind of bird of prey about to swoop down and grab a rodent off the ground.
Geeks now have the ability to get into your hotel room while changing into your bikini...
But why would a geek be changing into your bikini?
The earth has never before had 7 Billion (and counting) people on it. Never before has so much beachfront land been built upon. Never before have so many depended upon man-made electricity to get through a normal day.
Oh sure, the Earth has gone through these cycles before, but NEVER when so many people rely on corn that's now shriveling in the field, NEVER when billions could die in flooding, or hurricanes, tornadoes, and other weather-related disasters, NEVER when a few weeks without electricity could cause widespread panic and collapse of 'civilization' as we currently understand it.
Our society has changed dramatically since the last time earth went through these cycles. Heck, it might explain how we went from the gleaming age of Rome and into the Dark Ages -- and we could be headed for another Dark Ages. Are you prepared to have your children living in mud huts, eating rat for breakfast?
People that *used* to spend their time on various internet websites (and maybe used to click on ads), now spend *all* their time on facebook.
Facebook has supplanted the rest of the commercial internet. People that hung out on Reddit or 4Chan or Digg or iWon.com now just spend all their time playing FarmWars on facebook.
Online advertising *depended* upon "dummies". People that actually would try to punch the money. People that believed you could get a Laptop for one dollar. People that were interested in a local housewife's anti-aging/diet formula that WORKS!!! and the big companies don't want anyone to know about.
Yes. Dummies. And now those dummies are on Facebook, sharing George Takei's silly pictures, posting lolcats, and piss-poor photoshops as "real images". That's why internet revenues are down -- those dummies are too busy with their lolcats to punch the monkey.
Private Corporations wrote the Constitution.
Seriously, we're now at the point where any fool can print a story and it gets accepted as truth by those willing to believe anything that fits their worldview/ideology.
Why don't these right wing nuts just combine their two religions into one and say "Private Companies Wrote the Bible and God is Private Companies" ?
Louis Uchitelle needs at attend a Maker Faire -- it was there that I regained hope in the American spirit of ingenuity and the ability to make anything out of anything.
Of course, that ability isn't limited to the USA, the net is littered with stories about African kids in poor villages that manage to make generators out of bike parts or have managed to turn junk into pieces that provide services for their community.
However, the hacker community is the one place where innovation is happening -- too bad the authorities frown on doing things your own way, and that laws are in place to prevent reverse engineering.
If anything, Louis Uchitelle should look to Congress to see where craftmanship is being stifled. Kids can no longer build plastic models because they can't buy glue, they can't whittle because they aren't allowed knives, they can't do anything except sit in front of the TV. It's all been made illegal -- to 'protect' the children.
That's why no one knows how to do anything anymore, because all the valuable skills you learn as a kid are now forbidden due to safety concerns. And then when you grow up, all you're left with is the Home Depot way of doing things.
Now that the WSJ says that Xerox invented the internet, get ready for the biggest IP lawsuit of all time, as Xerox sues the internet! .... For 21 Trillion Dollars!
Wait just a cottonpickin' minute...
MS is developing WIndows 8 which is specifically geared towards Tablets -- so much so, that they are willing to piss off their desktop users.
Now comes Office 2013, geared towards Windows 8 -- except with those requirements, there's no way to run it on a Tablet.... so.... uh.... what exactly is the point?
Is this a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing? Why develop an office suite that requires you have the latest and greatest power-hungry desktop, and then say "but you have to run it under our tablet-oriented OS" ?
Seriously Microsoft... fuck you.
Ironically, things have changed in the last decade. Cons are now primarily about Cosplay, which girls are crazy into. There's now a higher precentage of cute chicks at cons than guys, which you would *think* makes getting laid easy, but alas, not if you're from the generation previous who attended cons in the 1990's. Now you're just the creepy old guy trying to pick up Sailormoon.
Ah, I wish I was born in the 80's
But I will only accept SLAVE LEIA.
Or Natalie Portman in Hot Grits. (this may be the oldest running joke in Slashdot history)
I get the feeling we're no longer talking about hacks.
First of all, where are you going to find girls that are interested in geeks? Are you going to import mail order brides from China or something? Half the hackers in the world are already in China!
Secondly, despite being overweight, unshaven, sloppy, smelly, ugly themselves, hackers have a very high self-opinion of themselves, and, after having watched a gazallion hours of pr0n on the internet, will be remarkably picky about the looks/abilities of the potential girlfriend. They aren't going to settle for just anybody. Ideally, this person needs to look like Jeri Ryan and should have the brains of Jeri Ellsworth (come on, I think that was a pretty clever match-up)...
And lastly, such girls don't exist, so, finding them, and then, what, paying them to date and have sex with these guys without blowing their cover? It just won't work, it will never work, and the whole idea just doesn't add up at all.
Popular Science magazine came up with all these grand predictions about how were were going to use personal computers. At the time, PC's were clunky 8-bit CPUs with blinky lights in front and had to be programmed by flipping switches on the front panels.
Needless to say, Popular Science Magazine got nearly every prediction wrong. They never figured on videogames, BBS's, graphic design, video editing, youtube or facebook. About all they got right was word processing.
This idiocy regarding Google is about as correct. It also assumes Google is even going to be here in 20 years. Furthermore, something will come along to shake up the entire computing paradigm so that when we look back on 2012, we'll wonder why things were so primitive.
How many Grid Compasses are still in use today? The TRS-80 Model 100 is a remarkably robust design that continues to be the preferred choice for writers "in the field" where access to electricity is limited -- a keyboard, an LCD screen, a full-travel keyboard, and it can run for months on 4 AA batteries -- only the Alphasmarts outclassed it for pure writing enjoyment and durability.
If I know any of those major ISPs, they'll be emailing you at the @comcast or @verizon email address that they assume you're monitoring, because they gave you that email address when they became your ISP.
They aren't going to assume that you've been using the same email address for decades, long before you signed up for their broadband, and that's the email address you monitor.
I can see it now, they shut you off claiming you haven't responded to any of their emails -- meanwhile you're unaware that a mailbox you've never checked in your life is where those emails are....
I very likely have a Verizon mailbox, but damn if I know what it is. Or how to access it. My email comes to me through a mom&pop ISP where I have my webserver, not through my broadband provider.
And I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- how many people have a Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail account as their primary email address?
I don't have to keep paying for your wars.
I don't have to pay to subsidize your car accidents.
I don't have to pay when your uncle who smokes, gets emphysema.
I don't have to pay for secret government ops that do not directly benefit me.
I don't have to pay to bail out banks that gamble with other people's money.
I don't have to pay to subsidize roads that rich people drive on, nor the police and firemen that service the wealthy.
I mean after all, if you don't want to pay for other people's healthcare, then why should I pay for any of the above?
You are a marketable data point. That's all. You're not their customer, or even their consumer. You're their unpaid intern, creating content for their benefit, so that more marketable data-points join the hive-mind.
Wish I had mod points today. This post says everything you need to know about the stock market -- which is, if you're not the 1% you should GET OUT, lick your wounds and keep your money elsewhere.
First of all, I'll contribute to any project that gets reality TV stars off the planet, and then kills them.
My question is: Which reality stars are you shooting into space? Snooki? Kim Kardashian?
Or is it going to be a series like "Survivor", where 7 start out, and eventually at least 4 are voted out the airlock during the trip there? We all know reality TV is fake though, so is this really 'Capricorn One'?