Actually, being the technical director of ad ops for a dot-com I feel obligated to go OT for a sec: we've been getting mercilessly flamed for sending out an email ad campaign the morning of the tragedy. People don't realise that these things are booked in advance, frequently happen overnight, and aren't easy to shut off (especially when the company hosting our email delivery servers was in NY and was understandably unresponsive). The same goes for ads on a website - we're all running around taking care of business (and reading slashdot as a brief escape) and something like a rich media ad on the site can be easily over-looked. I mean, my company is having to take care of things like adding tons of news content, taking down the British Airways campaign that just went live, putting up Red Cross ads, etc, etc. Cut them some slack. TechTV is located in SF but as they were a client I can tell you for a fact that a lot of their employees are New Yorkers - the ad is probably low on their thoughts right now.
Aargh. It needs a real-time list, with all the people seeing that news I bet items are being fulfilled already. I just got our peoples to try and get them the Citrix and PC Anywhere licenses but by the time it's done they may no longer be needed. It's got to be worse for people scrambling to gather and transport hardware to find out the need has already been met. Well, just a thought and certainly insignificant in the big picture but it would be nice.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
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Hey, evil and self-interest are two entirely different things. One is Hilter/Nazi-ism and one is Kissinger/realpolitik. But you have to be incredibly unread to believe that a large part of American foreign policy is purely benevolent. Start your reading with the Phillipine-American War and work your way up to the present.
Re:The towers collapsed for a simple reason!
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I happened to have drinks with several architect friends tuesday night and this came up in the conversation - since it's far too costly to build a disaster-proof building, skyscrapers are designed to last for an hour-and-a-half after a catastrophe. They are built to resist disasters, but if it fails, the structural integrity should hold long enough for the occupants to escape. And they figured it was the fire melting the steel too.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
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You are absolutely right! That's why I prefaced it with the comment that I hadn't a chance to look up everything I was about to say - I knew I'd screw up at least one factoid. Thanks!
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
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I think coping with the bad guys when they are terrorizing America is fix and not a solution. This has to have some sort of root cause - you do not become the Great Satan for no reason whatsoever. (And if the only reason you can think of is Israel then please keep your mouth shut. I am not in the least an expert in the Middle East but I do know for a fact that there is a lot more to this antagonism than just Israel.)
I get the feeling that Bin Laden is like Edison. Edison invents the lightbulb among other things and is a genius for it, but at the same time, he's completely irrelevant. There were 20 other people on the immediate verge of inventing it and hundreds not far behind. The lightbulb was the product of numerous social, cultural, political, and economic events - it just manifested with Edison first. I think Bin Laden or whoever is the same thing - a manifestation of something bigger and deeper.
Yes, somehow or another the immediate threat needs to be dealt with but I suspect America is reaping what it's sown in it's Middle-Eastern foreign policy. An accumulation of resentment from being pawns in the Cold War, of having leaders overthrown and politics manipulated behind the scenes, Israel, etc... Probably much more. I'm sure the inequalities of wealth don't help. When I was travelling in Turkey for a month, I kept noticing how jealous they were of American wealth - and not nearly so jealous as the politicians who are mind-bogglingly corrupt and make fortunes at their expense! (note: that is no excuse for global inequalities of wealth) I can only imagine how that perception could be further misdirected in a less-democratic environment.
Otherwise - yes. I agree that pilot/pilot's compartment shouldn't be so accessable. Banks have armed guards, why not planes? In fact, why not give the flight attendants tasers or something? It'd also help with obnoxious drunks on the flight too.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
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Mod this guy UP!
Lemme preface my own response with the fact that I am not an expert, and that I'm at work and haven't had the chance to look up everything. However:
I really, really, really hate to have to be a cynic at a time like this. But... it's not like we did all the things that Sinclair mentions out of generousity, there was blatent self-interest. The same time we were propping up the French government we were preparing to overthrow the prime minister of Iran. After we "pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries" should we be surprised that "newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war mongering Americans" when you realize how much of that American money went into the pockets of brutal totalitarian regimes? Suharto, Saddam Hussein, Noriega, etc, etc... While we forgiving international debts we were arming and indebting various middle eastern factions against the Soviet Union. Many of the same factions that now hate the US for abandoning or manipulating them. Hell, we trained many of them. It's not like these people just started hating us for no reason whatsoever. We're reaping the rewards of about 60 years of a really nasty foreign policy in the Middle-East.
I don't want to be the bad guy when we need to be united - but what I hope comes out of this tragedy is a better understanding among American citizens as to why a sizeable portion of the world hates them. I hope to see guilt and redemption, not self-congradulatory patriotic pandering - we are not nor have ever been a "Good Neighbor". But it's about time we were.
I'm sure out of all these people somebody must have said it, but I'll reiterate - The Neverhood. Great game. Puzzles are challenging and entertaining. The humour is great for children of all ages. I dig the music too but others beg to differ (what is there not to like about 'The Doi-Doi Song'?). The claymation aspect also makes it very entertaining.
Mindrover is a terrific game that really helps build concrete skills. And fun too! But the rocket launchers prolly count as 'violence'. Hmmm.
What about Civilization II? At the mid to high levels the difficulty is challenging and requires planning and strategy. And of course it's fun as hell. I guess you could call it "violence" when two armies fight in CivII, but in the way that two chesspieces fight.
Yeah this has come up at least once before on Slashdot. On one of the prior occasions, someone had argued that the practise of selling game items was odd but legitimate. It comes down to use value. How is buying a magic sword in DiabloII any different than buying better cleats for softball? Things that are bought for large sums of money that have no use other than image (like $$$ Nikes) scare me far worse.
The addiction aspect is what trips me out though. 12 hours a day. Yeesh.
Uh, they have about $800 million in cash, just bought 3 of their competitors (and will be cherry-picking for a while more), are a global company, have diversified products in every digital space from wireless to iTV (they ain't delivering just banner ads folks!), and Abacus's direct marketing (ie - junk mail/catalogue division) alone makes an impressive profit. If DC's days are numbered, it's in larg digits. DoubleClick isn't going anywhere for a long time, for better or worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, being the technical director of ad ops for a dot-com I feel obligated to go OT for a sec: we've been getting mercilessly flamed for sending out an email ad campaign the morning of the tragedy. People don't realise that these things are booked in advance, frequently happen overnight, and aren't easy to shut off (especially when the company hosting our email delivery servers was in NY and was understandably unresponsive). The same goes for ads on a website - we're all running around taking care of business (and reading slashdot as a brief escape) and something like a rich media ad on the site can be easily over-looked. I mean, my company is having to take care of things like adding tons of news content, taking down the British Airways campaign that just went live, putting up Red Cross ads, etc, etc. Cut them some slack. TechTV is located in SF but as they were a client I can tell you for a fact that a lot of their employees are New Yorkers - the ad is probably low on their thoughts right now.
Aargh. It needs a real-time list, with all the people seeing that news I bet items are being fulfilled already. I just got our peoples to try and get them the Citrix and PC Anywhere licenses but by the time it's done they may no longer be needed. It's got to be worse for people scrambling to gather and transport hardware to find out the need has already been met. Well, just a thought and certainly insignificant in the big picture but it would be nice.
Hey, evil and self-interest are two entirely different things. One is Hilter/Nazi-ism and one is Kissinger/realpolitik. But you have to be incredibly unread to believe that a large part of American foreign policy is purely benevolent. Start your reading with the Phillipine-American War and work your way up to the present.
I happened to have drinks with several architect friends tuesday night and this came up in the conversation - since it's far too costly to build a disaster-proof building, skyscrapers are designed to last for an hour-and-a-half after a catastrophe. They are built to resist disasters, but if it fails, the structural integrity should hold long enough for the occupants to escape. And they figured it was the fire melting the steel too.
You are absolutely right! That's why I prefaced it with the comment that I hadn't a chance to look up everything I was about to say - I knew I'd screw up at least one factoid. Thanks!
I get the feeling that Bin Laden is like Edison. Edison invents the lightbulb among other things and is a genius for it, but at the same time, he's completely irrelevant. There were 20 other people on the immediate verge of inventing it and hundreds not far behind. The lightbulb was the product of numerous social, cultural, political, and economic events - it just manifested with Edison first. I think Bin Laden or whoever is the same thing - a manifestation of something bigger and deeper.
Yes, somehow or another the immediate threat needs to be dealt with but I suspect America is reaping what it's sown in it's Middle-Eastern foreign policy. An accumulation of resentment from being pawns in the Cold War, of having leaders overthrown and politics manipulated behind the scenes, Israel, etc... Probably much more. I'm sure the inequalities of wealth don't help. When I was travelling in Turkey for a month, I kept noticing how jealous they were of American wealth - and not nearly so jealous as the politicians who are mind-bogglingly corrupt and make fortunes at their expense! (note: that is no excuse for global inequalities of wealth) I can only imagine how that perception could be further misdirected in a less-democratic environment.
Otherwise - yes. I agree that pilot/pilot's compartment shouldn't be so accessable. Banks have armed guards, why not planes? In fact, why not give the flight attendants tasers or something? It'd also help with obnoxious drunks on the flight too.
Lemme preface my own response with the fact that I am not an expert, and that I'm at work and haven't had the chance to look up everything. However:
I really, really, really hate to have to be a cynic at a time like this. But... it's not like we did all the things that Sinclair mentions out of generousity, there was blatent self-interest. The same time we were propping up the French government we were preparing to overthrow the prime minister of Iran. After we "pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries" should we be surprised that "newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war mongering Americans" when you realize how much of that American money went into the pockets of brutal totalitarian regimes? Suharto, Saddam Hussein, Noriega, etc, etc... While we forgiving international debts we were arming and indebting various middle eastern factions against the Soviet Union. Many of the same factions that now hate the US for abandoning or manipulating them. Hell, we trained many of them. It's not like these people just started hating us for no reason whatsoever. We're reaping the rewards of about 60 years of a really nasty foreign policy in the Middle-East.
I don't want to be the bad guy when we need to be united - but what I hope comes out of this tragedy is a better understanding among American citizens as to why a sizeable portion of the world hates them. I hope to see guilt and redemption, not self-congradulatory patriotic pandering - we are not nor have ever been a "Good Neighbor". But it's about time we were.
I'm sure out of all these people somebody must have said it, but I'll reiterate - The Neverhood. Great game. Puzzles are challenging and entertaining. The humour is great for children of all ages. I dig the music too but others beg to differ (what is there not to like about 'The Doi-Doi Song'?). The claymation aspect also makes it very entertaining.
Mindrover is a terrific game that really helps build concrete skills. And fun too! But the rocket launchers prolly count as 'violence'. Hmmm.
What about Civilization II? At the mid to high levels the difficulty is challenging and requires planning and strategy. And of course it's fun as hell. I guess you could call it "violence" when two armies fight in CivII, but in the way that two chesspieces fight.
Yeah this has come up at least once before on Slashdot. On one of the prior occasions, someone had argued that the practise of selling game items was odd but legitimate. It comes down to use value. How is buying a magic sword in DiabloII any different than buying better cleats for softball? Things that are bought for large sums of money that have no use other than image (like $$$ Nikes) scare me far worse.
The addiction aspect is what trips me out though. 12 hours a day. Yeesh.
Yes, they do. Geeks hafta work somewhere don't they?
Uh, they have about $800 million in cash, just bought 3 of their competitors (and will be cherry-picking for a while more), are a global company, have diversified products in every digital space from wireless to iTV (they ain't delivering just banner ads folks!), and Abacus's direct marketing (ie - junk mail/catalogue division) alone makes an impressive profit. If DC's days are numbered, it's in larg digits. DoubleClick isn't going anywhere for a long time, for better or worse.