Hmmm. Wouldn't uber-geeks want to go to LBJ in Houston instead of Kennedy Space Center since that is where all the real geeks monitor the US Space program?
Oooh! Or what about JPL? They always seem to have really cool stuff going on there. Of course the geek would annoy the hell out of his significant other by fawning over their rack-mounted clusters and robots... so I guess going to Kennedy is best.
I have just finished reading "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azerrad which details the creation of the American independent music scene from 1981 to 1991 (when Nirvana "Nevermind" went #1 on the Billboard charts). In it there are many examples of independent artists (those not affiliated with the Big Six) trying to move up to a major label.
However there is also a strong segement of the underground that is vehemently independent: Steve Albini for one and his diatribe against the majors (The Problem With Music) or Ian MacKaye and Fugazi who assure all their products cost at most ten dollars and who have concerts for five. It seems that there has been a long standing (at least twenty years) of a "shadow industry" that stands for all the virtues of music making.
My question is this: what do you think causes the majority of the music buying public to only purchase from the Big Six (99% of all music I believe)? And what would the underground have to do to bite into that? Or should they even bother (the idea being someone who buys music from the mainstream isn't worth the effort)?
Why is Slashdot posting tripe like Buffy's New Season [slashdot.org] when it could be posting real news
Easy! Because/. isn't a news site. It is a gossip forum for nerds with the topics carefully selected by the Queen Bees... er, editors. Topics are "carefully screened" as to what is "important" (Buffy) and what isn't (RIAA getting hacked). But then you could just read CNN all day.
Slashot: Rumors for Nerds, Stuff that Only Matters in our Little Social Circle.
Inevitability of "Resource" Wars? I have to say that wars for resources are the only sort of war. Ok so its not as easy as Persian Gulf == Oil War but war comes from two societies' sharing a border. To keep the growth of their "lifestyle" both jockey for position with each other. Trade, culture, politics. At its most extreme extension is war. It is foolish to think that a society will every be so self-sufficient that it will no longer feel the need to expand. As its population grows so does its hunger for territory.
Of course what is a society and what is a border are up to debate. Usually the rule of thumb is that if it can be broken down to an Us and Them scenario.
It is an implicit delcaration of war every time you gas up your car or go for a drive. Your right to drive at 10 MPG is worth fighting for.
Polls == who gives a shit?
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
Ok why is everyone getting their panties in a twist over some polls? I mean c'mon! Just because they asked some morons around the office doesn't translate to anything.
Actually that's my problem with all of the posts of this genre: where's the substance at? "People might do this!" "People say they would be willing to do this!"
How about some "Government/Corporations doing this." topics. And not only that, but how about some constructive solutions to what can be done instead of sitting around beating off.
Things like the DMCA I can understand: that is law. It exists. It matters. But all this hypothetical FUD and backlash is so fucking Junior High. The same damn quotes from Ben Franklin. The same damn stuff about capitalism or the evils of the Bush Empire. Hell, why not throw in some Microsoft trolling while your at it?
Man, I wish for more people like Bruce Perens. At least he actively tried... something that the other 99.9% of/. seem incapable of doing.
Read some of the articles at Sirlin.net on competitive game design.
The gist is that the best games, although accessible to a wide audience, cater to the gamer by rewarding his time and interest with an even higher level of gameplay.
A game where the boundaries of experience are hard and fast die quickly. Great graphics. Cool storyline. But no replay value. And here we are talking about replay value in terms of multiplayer. The Quakes, Starcrafts, and Street Fighters of the world.
You can see how this is the same with hardware. The more you invest... in tweaking, prodding, learning... the more you can get out of your machine. The better the performance and the more rewarding of the experience. Sure, 99.9% of the population will never do that to their machine... but they will follow where the gamer has gone.
Well that was the "not going to a meeting with a supervisor or external exec." Dresscode.
The purpose of a dresscode is this: the way you dress reflects what you think of those you work with.
It's the God's honest truth. Why do you think you go to an interview in a suit? Or a date in a clean pair of Underoos? To get a positive reaction from the other party. "Wow! We're just this little start up and I'm only just the senior engineer but this guy came in wearing a suit! Today I feel like a big man..." Dress has little to do with comfort but with providing a pleasing presenation.
In our corp as long as you are wearing long pants and a non-profane shirt most managers didn't care.
But if an exec was touring the building or you had to go to a meeting, you were expected to not look like an idiot.
People subconsciously rationalize that the amount of attention someone puts into their appearance equates to the commitment to the relationship.
Well in the corp I work for, a dress code is mandatory. Sure, it's business casual but that does imply collered shirts and pressed slacks.
Sure, some of those dudes have the classic pony-tail and guru beard, but the clothing doesn't make the man. Hawaiian shirt or not, the guy in the polo and dockers is just as big of a loser as the rest of us.
The phrase "drank the Kool-Aid" is a reference to the cults whose followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid to commit suicide, because they were true believers in the cult and its charismatic leader. So to "drink the Kool-Aid" means you believe enough to stake your life on that belief.
Of course you are completely wrong in this coloquialism. It is not a reference to the People's Temple suicide pact but Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
I think you are comparing apples and oranges. The ruling you mentioned was to uphold the right of citizens to encryption (being that privately held belief and thus encrypted data are a subclass of Free Speech).
This however is bypassing a patent for no other reason that they wish to. Think of these software patents as literature: with an author copyrights their work. To then go out and plagerize this work (and possibly use it for profit) is illegal. Just as you wouldn't take Tom Sawyer, slap your name on it, and sell it to people on the street, you can't take someone else's patented software technique and resell it. You can read Tom Sawyer, you can quote it, and you can give it to your friends. But you can't earn a dollar and a cent off of it.
Of course I have my own problems with software patents: specifically due to completeness and relative hardness of CS problems. The fact that, if you develop an algorithm that maps P=NP, by the nature of NP does that not mean your patent not only cover's your algorithm but everything in the equivalence class (in this case, all of NP)?
Naturally Slashdot has covered this topic before... according to this previous/. article China had banned the import of U.S. Electronic trash.
Also here is a previous article on recycling costs added onto PCs.
Nothing like spending the few extra minutes to search your own website for a topic. On the other hand, this is a more important, concrete, and immediate problem than hypothetical flame wars associated with the DMCA/RIAA/MPAA that are the meat of most/. threads.
I found that asking impossible questions or riddles works best. And not for the reasons you expect. I don't want them to answer... I want to see how they deal with pressure and problem solving.
You might try standard stuff... OO concepts, SE questions or some of those interesting riddles (like the one with the three lights and the three switches in the different rooms).
Now if they can easily answer the questions, fine, find ones they can't (at least not right away).
See how they go about it... how they attack the problems, what questions they ask you, how frustrated they get, how well they take being stumped, if they are willing to ask questions or be defeated.
The best ones are those who come up with interesting ways of attacking the problem... and who can appreciate a novel solution.
Trust me, it really reflects on how it is to work with them and how willing they are to learn. It is easy to teach a good worker a new skill, it is more difficult to work with a prick who just happens to know everything.
There is an interesting back and forth between Roger Ebert and Peter Donen (a Visual Effects Supervisor) on the effects of The Bourne Identity.
It seems that during "Ebert & Roeper at the Movies", Roeper said that "no computer effects are as good as a well-shot movie in Paris" to which Ebert responded "this movie is a convincing argument for really photographing real things happening on real locations."
Then Doren responded (as he had worked on The Bourne Identity) saying that there were actually over 150 special effect shots "includ[ing] miniatures, blue screen, wire removal, time manipulation, 3D character animation and background replacement for starters."
His take on his job: "I come from the school that says if I do my job well, my work will not be noticed by the audience."
The main reason for all of this concern about the violence of children is this:
Children spend more time at home, indoors than they ever had.
What is the primary effect of this? Put much closer to parental supervision than they ever had.
And the effect of this? Parents now get to see how violent children are.
I forget the study but this ends up being cyclic. Parents are then concerned about who "taught" their child this. TV supplies the answer: the world is now more "violent" (which, in truth, it probably isn't... it is just more visible in this media saturation). So parents force their kids to not go out. But kids still have the same drives. If it wasn't chucking rocks at cars or getting into fights, you now do some Tekken 3 or Quake. But now the activity is well within maternal awareness (unlike before where children were wise enough to stay out of sight).
Mothers now just see more of the activity that has always been going on.
But the assumption is that a) kids are too stupid to try and hide things from their parents so b) they must be getting more violent.
So the best solution for all? Let the kids outside: get them some exercise and they will get into the same trouble although now you don't need to see it. Funny how self-deception seems to be the best course of action (as compared to over-parenting).
This doesn't sound surprising in the least. Talk shows have never been about arguments but about arguing. The key is to slam the other person into submission... like in a rap battle.
Example: His opponent first mentions she is a concerned mother right? And he is a father too? His answer should have been "Listen, if any parent was so stupid as to by a game called Grand Theft Auto for their children without even giving a second thought to the age 17 and up warning we should probably be more concerned that so many retards are breeding in our fine country."
Other examples I would have used: "Outlawing video games is like making war illegal 'cause some children might see the highlights on this fine station!!!"
"Hmmm, it seems you let the computer do a lot of the parenting for you... maybe we should call children's services."
Talk shows are about personal attacks. And although mildly interesting (like a bar fight) it really doesn't hold your interest. Why do you think they change topics every 5 minutes?
If you want real thought provoking discussions... watch PBS. Frontline is the best.
Learn you some Haiku
on
Haiku vs Spam
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· Score: 4, Informative
A common mistake among English speakers is that in English, haiku would still be composed of seventeen syllables. It is not.
It comes down to the semantics of English versus Japanese. Under English there is a much more constrictive syntax, thus the meaning of a phrase can change just by resorting the words (Japanese, OTOH, is more resilient). Why is this important? 17 syllables in English can carry much more meaning than 17 syllables in Japanese.
Most haiku authors agree that the rough mean in English should be 12 in three phrases. Of course that is just a starting point at best. One of Ezra Pound's better known haiku is 18 syllables in two lines. In the end haiku creation is not a rote process.
If you can take them down and not have them track you... how is this now an invasion of privacy? I mean you could just not have one (or do as another user suggested and ride a bike).
I mean it must be such an inconvenience to do a way with this convenience but c'mon!
A person can't blame invasion of privacy on such a blatant example of laziness.
Why does this just strike me as more techno-geek technophilia? "I'm going to have my body cryogenically frozen" has the same nerd chest pounding tone as talk of CPU clocks, net-enabled everything, and naming children after esoteric SF novels.
Of course that 133 Pentium doesn't seem so much like a Tiny God anymore, some kid keeps on h4x0ring the AC to 5 degrees C, and your neighbors hit the deck everytime they see Undómiel throw on his black trenchcoat.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm. Wouldn't uber-geeks want to go to LBJ in Houston instead of Kennedy Space Center since that is where all the real geeks monitor the US Space program?
Oooh! Or what about JPL? They always seem to have really cool stuff going on there. Of course the geek would annoy the hell out of his significant other by fawning over their rack-mounted clusters and robots... so I guess going to Kennedy is best.
I have just finished reading "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azerrad which details the creation of the American independent music scene from 1981 to 1991 (when Nirvana "Nevermind" went #1 on the Billboard charts). In it there are many examples of independent artists (those not affiliated with the Big Six) trying to move up to a major label.
However there is also a strong segement of the underground that is vehemently independent: Steve Albini for one and his diatribe against the majors (The Problem With Music) or Ian MacKaye and Fugazi who assure all their products cost at most ten dollars and who have concerts for five. It seems that there has been a long standing (at least twenty years) of a "shadow industry" that stands for all the virtues of music making.
My question is this: what do you think causes the majority of the music buying public to only purchase from the Big Six (99% of all music I believe)? And what would the underground have to do to bite into that? Or should they even bother (the idea being someone who buys music from the mainstream isn't worth the effort)?
Don't know. Maybe you should ask Jon Katz?
Easy! Because
Slashot: Rumors for Nerds, Stuff that Only Matters in our Little Social Circle.
"Isn't it difficult to tell everyone apart when everything is called Marklar?"
"Oh, no. Hey Marklar?"
"Yeah?"
"You see?"
Inevitability of "Resource" Wars? I have to say that wars for resources are the only sort of war. Ok so its not as easy as Persian Gulf == Oil War but war comes from two societies' sharing a border. To keep the growth of their "lifestyle" both jockey for position with each other. Trade, culture, politics. At its most extreme extension is war. It is foolish to think that a society will every be so self-sufficient that it will no longer feel the need to expand. As its population grows so does its hunger for territory.
Of course what is a society and what is a border are up to debate. Usually the rule of thumb is that if it can be broken down to an Us and Them scenario.
It is an implicit delcaration of war every time you gas up your car or go for a drive. Your right to drive at 10 MPG is worth fighting for.
Ok why is everyone getting their panties in a twist over some polls? I mean c'mon! Just because they asked some morons around the office doesn't translate to anything.
/. seem incapable of doing.
Actually that's my problem with all of the posts of this genre: where's the substance at? "People might do this!" "People say they would be willing to do this!"
How about some "Government/Corporations doing this." topics. And not only that, but how about some constructive solutions to what can be done instead of sitting around beating off.
Things like the DMCA I can understand: that is law. It exists. It matters. But all this hypothetical FUD and backlash is so fucking Junior High. The same damn quotes from Ben Franklin. The same damn stuff about capitalism or the evils of the Bush Empire. Hell, why not throw in some Microsoft trolling while your at it?
Man, I wish for more people like Bruce Perens. At least he actively tried... something that the other 99.9% of
What about Red Bull? And mix it with a little vodka... mmm, sounds good... gee I'm thirsty... nobody'll mind if I pop a few of these back right now.
Who says 9:51 am is too early to drink?
Read some of the articles at Sirlin.net on competitive game design.
The gist is that the best games, although accessible to a wide audience, cater to the gamer by rewarding his time and interest with an even higher level of gameplay.
A game where the boundaries of experience are hard and fast die quickly. Great graphics. Cool storyline. But no replay value. And here we are talking about replay value in terms of multiplayer. The Quakes, Starcrafts, and Street Fighters of the world.
You can see how this is the same with hardware. The more you invest... in tweaking, prodding, learning... the more you can get out of your machine. The better the performance and the more rewarding of the experience. Sure, 99.9% of the population will never do that to their machine... but they will follow where the gamer has gone.
Well that was the "not going to a meeting with a supervisor or external exec." Dresscode.
The purpose of a dresscode is this: the way you dress reflects what you think of those you work with.
It's the God's honest truth. Why do you think you go to an interview in a suit? Or a date in a clean pair of Underoos? To get a positive reaction from the other party. "Wow! We're just this little start up and I'm only just the senior engineer but this guy came in wearing a suit! Today I feel like a big man..." Dress has little to do with comfort but with providing a pleasing presenation.
In our corp as long as you are wearing long pants and a non-profane shirt most managers didn't care.
But if an exec was touring the building or you had to go to a meeting, you were expected to not look like an idiot.
People subconsciously rationalize that the amount of attention someone puts into their appearance equates to the commitment to the relationship.
Or that is what Esquire says anyway.
Just like in movies... "Hey, I know its a tough life as a cop... how about a delicious Dunkin' Donut's brand doughnut?"
Or then they can just do the computer overlay ads... like what you see done on ESPN Classic.
"Hey dad! Reggie Jackson is wearing a Pets.com hat!"
I think it will just make the shows even that more annoying IMHO.
Well in the corp I work for, a dress code is mandatory. Sure, it's business casual but that does imply collered shirts and pressed slacks.
Sure, some of those dudes have the classic pony-tail and guru beard, but the clothing doesn't make the man. Hawaiian shirt or not, the guy in the polo and dockers is just as big of a loser as the rest of us.
Wait a minute...
Ok, I assume you meant to be talking about Jim Jones and the People's Temple.
Of course you are completely wrong in this coloquialism. It is not a reference to the People's Temple suicide pact but Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
How am I so damn sure? Because Jim Jones and the People's Temple did not drink Grape Kool-Aid, but cyanide laced Flavor-Aid, a cheap Kool-Aid rip off.
Moral of this story: Do some research before making up facts.
I think you are comparing apples and oranges. The ruling you mentioned was to uphold the right of citizens to encryption (being that privately held belief and thus encrypted data are a subclass of Free Speech).
This however is bypassing a patent for no other reason that they wish to. Think of these software patents as literature: with an author copyrights their work. To then go out and plagerize this work (and possibly use it for profit) is illegal. Just as you wouldn't take Tom Sawyer, slap your name on it, and sell it to people on the street, you can't take someone else's patented software technique and resell it. You can read Tom Sawyer, you can quote it, and you can give it to your friends. But you can't earn a dollar and a cent off of it.
Of course I have my own problems with software patents: specifically due to completeness and relative hardness of CS problems. The fact that, if you develop an algorithm that maps P=NP, by the nature of NP does that not mean your patent not only cover's your algorithm but everything in the equivalence class (in this case, all of NP)?
Naturally Slashdot has covered this topic before... according to this previous /. article China had banned the import of U.S. Electronic trash.
/. threads.
Also here is a previous article on recycling costs added onto PCs.
Nothing like spending the few extra minutes to search your own website for a topic. On the other hand, this is a more important, concrete, and immediate problem than hypothetical flame wars associated with the DMCA/RIAA/MPAA that are the meat of most
I found that asking impossible questions or riddles works best. And not for the reasons you expect. I don't want them to answer... I want to see how they deal with pressure and problem solving.
You might try standard stuff... OO concepts, SE questions or some of those interesting riddles (like the one with the three lights and the three switches in the different rooms).
Now if they can easily answer the questions, fine, find ones they can't (at least not right away).
See how they go about it... how they attack the problems, what questions they ask you, how frustrated they get, how well they take being stumped, if they are willing to ask questions or be defeated.
The best ones are those who come up with interesting ways of attacking the problem... and who can appreciate a novel solution.
Trust me, it really reflects on how it is to work with them and how willing they are to learn. It is easy to teach a good worker a new skill, it is more difficult to work with a prick who just happens to know everything.
This technology was mentioned in this month's Technology Review. Sadly it only seems that it was in the print version.
There is an interesting back and forth between Roger Ebert and Peter Donen (a Visual Effects Supervisor) on the effects of The Bourne Identity.
It seems that during "Ebert & Roeper at the Movies", Roeper said that "no computer effects are as good as a well-shot movie in Paris" to which Ebert responded "this movie is a convincing argument for really photographing real things happening on real locations."
Then Doren responded (as he had worked on The Bourne Identity) saying that there were actually over 150 special effect shots "includ[ing] miniatures, blue screen, wire removal, time manipulation, 3D character animation and background replacement for starters."
His take on his job: "I come from the school that says if I do my job well, my work will not be noticed by the audience."
The main reason for all of this concern about the violence of children is this:
Children spend more time at home, indoors than they ever had.
What is the primary effect of this? Put much closer to parental supervision than they ever had.
And the effect of this? Parents now get to see how violent children are.
I forget the study but this ends up being cyclic. Parents are then concerned about who "taught" their child this. TV supplies the answer: the world is now more "violent" (which, in truth, it probably isn't... it is just more visible in this media saturation). So parents force their kids to not go out. But kids still have the same drives. If it wasn't chucking rocks at cars or getting into fights, you now do some Tekken 3 or Quake. But now the activity is well within maternal awareness (unlike before where children were wise enough to stay out of sight).
Mothers now just see more of the activity that has always been going on.
But the assumption is that a) kids are too stupid to try and hide things from their parents so b) they must be getting more violent.
So the best solution for all? Let the kids outside: get them some exercise and they will get into the same trouble although now you don't need to see it. Funny how self-deception seems to be the best course of action (as compared to over-parenting).
This doesn't sound surprising in the least. Talk shows have never been about arguments but about arguing. The key is to slam the other person into submission... like in a rap battle.
Example: His opponent first mentions she is a concerned mother right? And he is a father too? His answer should have been "Listen, if any parent was so stupid as to by a game called Grand Theft Auto for their children without even giving a second thought to the age 17 and up warning we should probably be more concerned that so many retards are breeding in our fine country."
Other examples I would have used: "Outlawing video games is like making war illegal 'cause some children might see the highlights on this fine station!!!"
"Hmmm, it seems you let the computer do a lot of the parenting for you... maybe we should call children's services."
Talk shows are about personal attacks. And although mildly interesting (like a bar fight) it really doesn't hold your interest. Why do you think they change topics every 5 minutes?
If you want real thought provoking discussions... watch PBS. Frontline is the best.
A common mistake among English speakers is that in English, haiku would still be composed of seventeen syllables. It is not.
Here is a very good article on it (featuring my favorite haiku BTW).
It comes down to the semantics of English versus Japanese. Under English there is a much more constrictive syntax, thus the meaning of a phrase can change just by resorting the words (Japanese, OTOH, is more resilient). Why is this important? 17 syllables in English can carry much more meaning than 17 syllables in Japanese.
Most haiku authors agree that the rough mean in English should be 12 in three phrases. Of course that is just a starting point at best. One of Ezra Pound's better known haiku is 18 syllables in two lines. In the end haiku creation is not a rote process.
If you can take them down and not have them track you... how is this now an invasion of privacy? I mean you could just not have one (or do as another user suggested and ride a bike).
I mean it must be such an inconvenience to do a way with this convenience but c'mon!
A person can't blame invasion of privacy on such a blatant example of laziness.
And this is different from the "evil" Chinese creating their own Internet... how?
Why does this just strike me as more techno-geek technophilia? "I'm going to have my body cryogenically frozen" has the same nerd chest pounding tone as talk of CPU clocks, net-enabled everything, and naming children after esoteric SF novels.
Of course that 133 Pentium doesn't seem so much like a Tiny God anymore, some kid keeps on h4x0ring the AC to 5 degrees C, and your neighbors hit the deck everytime they see Undómiel throw on his black trenchcoat.
I am talking about the in-theater film releases hacks not consumer hacks.
The concern is that the film the director passes to the studio will not be the one he sees it opening night or what will be passed to Blockbuster.