In the beginning, humans knew that they were only one bad mood from the gods before they met with death and destruction. Disease, famine, injury, war - all these and more could maim or kill you. In in an era where leveraged force was more the exception than the rule, even a minor injury could put you out of the game and possibly kill you and yours.
So people made sacrifices to the gods and hoped for the best, knowing that even the most benign gods were prone to go on the occasional rampage.
In the last few centuries, however, we've abandoned the gods. We think we have made ourselves masters of our own fates, because we can cure many diseases and injuries, have exterminated or reduces many of the external threats, learned to grow crops more efficiently and formed into nations and trading units extensive enough that one part of the country can keep others fed when local conditions such as drought would have previously wrought havoc on the population.
In other words, we've come to think that peace and plenty are the natural state of all civilized beings.
But not all humans are civilized, either individually or in groups. And while it helps if you're not a member of a targeted group, ultimately just about any group can be targeted. And, thanks to the incredible leverage that modern humans possess, a single person can kill hundreds with little effort. So paradoxically, the safer we get overall, the more we fear. As in many cases, the closer you get to perfection, the more it costs you. And the fewer the everyday fears, the more impact the extra-ordinary fears have.
I am oversimplifying things a bit, but application servers combined with the language, is used to create web services, which is a web form of remote procedures.
So you can code a procedure such as public String getname() {return "your name" } The app server will get all your procedures marked as a web service and their parameters and give a handy dandy XML file to the receiver so they know what to call. Also when you call the web service it formats the XML string to follow a particular standard.
This allows for better scailing of your apps, so you can have web services split across multiple servers so no particular process can slow everything down.
You're oversimplifying a LOT. Web Services may be this year's shiny, but they're far from the only thing that application servers provide.
Aside from that, web services aren't really expected to be simple remote procedure calls. They tried that with SOAP and found the overhead to be punitive. Web services work best when they are powerful abstract controls, not as simple function implementations.
This is an interesting change from the book, because the scene is almost exactly the same but the meaning is totally changed (once you get another chapter in they diverge to the extent that it's impossible to tell they they're even similar stories). In the book, he's in the recruiting office to discourage people from signing up with any rosy view of what they're getting in to. When he leaves, he puts on prosthetics that make him seem completely normal - the mutilated veteran appearance is just for show.
There's a good reason why the film diverged from the book - the book just isn't that good. The film is a satire of what Heinlein wrote in total seriousness. His books are a mixture of cult-of-the-individual libertarianism and characters travelling back in time so that they can fuck their mother[1]. It must be incredibly hard to write a screenplay based on his work that isn't satire, because there's no way you can take it seriously.
[1] Yes, he really did write two books about this.
Actually, even the book has been something that read like a satire to me. I am confidently assured that Heinlein really meant all of the medal-jangling death-and-glory jingoism, but it's so over-the-top that it comes across as ingenuous. Ironic considering that he always like to portray his heroes as hard-headed realistic common-sense folks in a fuzzy world.
As for his story "All you Zombies", don't forget that not only did the narrator do his mother, he was his mother!
Unless you're on the other side, then you are the evil.
If you ever find yourself uttering:
"We are the free ones." "We are the good ones." "We are the peaceful ones."
Remember that you're saying exactly what the other team believe about themselves. And I'm sure you'll be able to explain how that's not true, and in fact you REALLY ARE the Chosen Team. Just like the other team will be able to explain that. But you're wrong. Because it's the same as it's always been, no matter which side you're on: man exploiting man, with the powerful minority fucking over everyone else.
And, if you're part of the powerful minority, you're the problem, and you're the cunt - no matter where you are. No, being part of "this team" doesn't mean that your power is more legitimate than if you were part of "that team".
More importantly, 49% are always losers in any democratic system. Whether it is a two party system, or N party system.
In a nutshell, what's wrong with this country today. The idea that there can only be "winners" and "losers". Brought to its ultimate expression by the Tea Party.
In a democratic system, there exists this concept called compromise. You concede so that you can receive. Nobody gets everything that they want, but nobody gets totally obliterated either.
When it's strictly "win-or-lose" where there's nothing left for the loser, democracy itself is the loser.
Quicly looking at comment section of Telegraph article I see that it propably didn't succeed in indoctrinating anyone. Therefore I'm curious why such a piece of crap has been published at all. Maybe it is not directed to unwashed masses. Maybe it is directed to corporate/bankster/military/intelligence estabullshitment, not ordinary people. Maybe it is some kind of message sent by puppet government and puppet media saying something like: "See, we're (still) loyal. We'll go with you everywhere and we're ready to defend your (dirty) business even to our own detriment. We'll do anything, just give us some convenient, well paid position in your corporations when people throw us out.". I see this as a dangerous precedence. Politicians not afraid of what people think about them will not hesitate to send police or military to beat everyone "to the fuck'n skull" or "disappear" people if ordered so by TPTBs. The same with media: seeing journalists producing such crap without any signs of hesitation I smell crappy soviet-style system of propaganda (which I still remeber as I've spent my childhood in communist Poland).
More likely it's just the Big Lie. Repeat often enough and people will start to believe it (so they hope). Especially when you load it with all sorts of right-minded emotional terms.
After all, you're either with us or you're with the paedophiles.
Back in the 70s and 80s, a Democratic Senator used to give out Golden Fleece Awards. It went pretty much as one would expect, with a lot of "fleecings" turning out to be useful programs and one liable case that went to the Supreme Court, where the Senator lost and eventually settled out of court.
I don't know his party or state for sure, but you're referring to William Proxmire. Supposedly one of the Golden Fleece winners was a study on how barnacles stick to boats. Aside from the obvious benefit if you're a boat owner, the story goes that the end result was something called SuperGlue.
Proxmire wasn't giving his awards out in 1948, I don't think, and Bell Labs was a private concern (though probably raking in some government funding), but once they invented the laser, it took literally decades to find commercial utility. It was famously touted as a "solution in search of a problem". Well, we've found problems that lasers solve. Lots of them.
Wonderfully put! An argument and example a lawyer (like the Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology) would love...wait a minute, why is there a lawyer heading my science committee?
You're talking about a faction that thinks that Government should be run like a Business.
Think about that. Do you really WANT your government to be making a profit? That's what businesses are supposed to to. If government makes a profit, it's likely either doing on something that could be offloaded to a business or they're up to something questionable. And in any event, unless they're one of those unusual places with negative taxes, they're doing so at the expense of taxpayers.
Once upon a time, businesses operated for the long term and "blue-sky" R&D was something they routinely did themselves. More recently, however, business is all about shuffling subsidiaries in and out for fun and profit and anything longer than 6 months ahead of today is virtually unthinkable.
There aren't too many other places these days that can finance pure research. Unless we bring back the old nobility. Which does seem to be possible at the rate we've been going.
And Netflix loves to send their version of the DVD that has all the cool extras stripped out.
I think it's more that the studios cracked down on Netflix (and Redbox) and coerced them into buying special crippled rental editions so that they could make $$$ on selling the deluxe DVDs at retail outlets.
I haven't completely broken the habit of bookstores. But if there was an app that would allow me to easily scan a UPC code and wish/purchase an eBook, it would be a convenience
This is one of the main features of the Amazon app for Android (and I assume iOS as well). You can scan the barcode on anything to look it up on Amazon.
Well, A) I don't shop Amazon anymore, between "Animal Farm", their acting as a front for the US Government and various other misdemeanors. B) I don't want to "look it up", I want to put it someplace where my ebookstore of choice (not Amazon) can stuff it into an online purchase if I want or put it on my wish list.
Yeah, 10% seems low, especially when once customers discover the ease of buying books online, they might stop being customers.
On the other hand, I might actually -go- to a book store again if I knew the book purchases through my Kindle would help 'em out a bit...
I haven't completely broken the habit of bookstores. But if there was an app that would allow me to easily scan a UPC code and wish/purchase an eBook, it would be a convenience. I mostly don't buy physical books anymore because I flat ran out of storage space - the exceptions being "art" books, cookbooks, technical tomes and (the few remaining) magazines. But having "display models" of the electronically-available works would help make sales. For one thing, I rarely use the ebook preview feature, since it leaves lint behind on the reader device if I decide not to buy the book.
Never gonna happen. The resulting AC will be another camel deigned by committee. It will over-budget, over-weight and a decade late in delivery. It will also be designed for a 20th century mindset where human pilots actually flew the planes.
The only way it will get through congress is if the manufacturer can find a way to have its parts made in all 50 states.
The T38 with all its flaws is simple and effective.
I'd agree with you, but experience is that it only takes one pork-spreading Congressthing to foist an overpriced under-performing piece of military junk upon the nation. After all, anyone opposes it, not only do they hate Freedom, they're against people back in the home district having jobs!
Infrared currently is used as a point-to-point connection where (most of the time) there has to be a clear (as in: only air) path from one node to the other. It's mostly used as a device-to-device type of connection, not as a network of devices.
Li-Fi should integrate into the lighting plan of rooms, should be capable of operation using reflections instead of direct point-to-point. Of course, reflections and re-transmissions probably cause signal degradation if no filter capability exists so the software protocols should be able to compensate or, if unable, scale back to lower network speeds. The same for 'foreign' light sources (the sun included). Individual light points should act as repeaters with one point in a room connected to the 'regular' network being enough to provide the entire room (however large it may be) with full network access. At least, those are the 'promises' I heard about Li-Fi.
And, indeed, being unable to penetrate walls can be an advantage.
Precisely. Instead of setting up a separate funny-looking wart on the ceiling or some such, the room light itself is a transceiver. As a bonus, for room illumination it would draw about 1/4 the power of equivalent incandescents, based on what I've seen for sale lately.
Even with IR, I routinely bounce off a wall or mirror for my remotes. Unless the room is painted black, chances are that a visible frequency will reflect even better. Of course, that also means that it will go through windows, so keep the shrubbery patrolled!
What a great idea. Fuel cells produce no nasty carbon emissions. So as long as you ignore how the hydrogen that feeds them is produced in the first place (generally from an extremely dirty and wasteful natural gas extraction process) and the pollution involved in actually making extremely expensive fuel cells in the first place, this makes perfect sense.
Or... they could use solar cells to do it when the sun is out. Somehow you sound like one of those people who are always whingeing about how solar only works when the sun is out. Maybe it's the "eco idiots".
Well, doing away corporations won't work out in the end... the next one should give us the separation of state and economy.
How do you square these two claims? Corporations are creations of a government.
No. Corporations create themselves. They're chartered by government. That's how a business operating out of Georgia can be a "Delaware Corporation".
A corporation is supposed to operate in support of the goals stated in its charter. Which may or may not include making a profit, and often are made fuzzy enough to encompass almost any imaginable activity. It is the chartering government's responsibility to determine that the corporation operates within the confines of its charter. It is also the responsibility of government to regulate commerce within and between other states and nations. Said regulation mostly operates regardless of whether the commerce is conducted by publicly-traded corporations, privately-held corporations, sole proprietorships, partnerships, or whatever. Not all businesses are corporations. In fact, some of the biggest and best-known of all are not corporations, or are at most privately incorporated within a family.
Slashdot Mirror
In the beginning, humans knew that they were only one bad mood from the gods before they met with death and destruction. Disease, famine, injury, war - all these and more could maim or kill you. In in an era where leveraged force was more the exception than the rule, even a minor injury could put you out of the game and possibly kill you and yours.
So people made sacrifices to the gods and hoped for the best, knowing that even the most benign gods were prone to go on the occasional rampage.
In the last few centuries, however, we've abandoned the gods. We think we have made ourselves masters of our own fates, because we can cure many diseases and injuries, have exterminated or reduces many of the external threats, learned to grow crops more efficiently and formed into nations and trading units extensive enough that one part of the country can keep others fed when local conditions such as drought would have previously wrought havoc on the population.
In other words, we've come to think that peace and plenty are the natural state of all civilized beings.
But not all humans are civilized, either individually or in groups. And while it helps if you're not a member of a targeted group, ultimately just about any group can be targeted. And, thanks to the incredible leverage that modern humans possess, a single person can kill hundreds with little effort. So paradoxically, the safer we get overall, the more we fear. As in many cases, the closer you get to perfection, the more it costs you. And the fewer the everyday fears, the more impact the extra-ordinary fears have.
I am oversimplifying things a bit, but application servers combined with the language, is used to create web services, which is a web form of remote procedures.
So you can code a procedure such as
public String getname() {return "your name" }
The app server will get all your procedures marked as a web service and their parameters and give a handy dandy XML file to the receiver so they know what to call. Also when you call the web service it formats the XML string to follow a particular standard.
This allows for better scailing of your apps, so you can have web services split across multiple servers so no particular process can slow everything down.
You're oversimplifying a LOT. Web Services may be this year's shiny, but they're far from the only thing that application servers provide.
Aside from that, web services aren't really expected to be simple remote procedure calls. They tried that with SOAP and found the overhead to be punitive. Web services work best when they are powerful abstract controls, not as simple function implementations.
7.3V of energy? USB provides 5V of power? Arggh. I think my head just asploded.
7.3V isn't power. It's electromotive force. To be power, you have to back it up with some amperage.
The question then becomes, how many amps? Do you need appartus the size of a mobile home to get enough to charge your cellphone?
Because nothing screams "FREEDOM" in America like brandishing your own home-made weapon.
Except brandishing a whole ARSENAL of home-made weapons. Automatic weapons with self-reloading hi-capacity magazine.
Screw that. I want to print a drone fleet. Hand-held weapons are SO 1776.
And all along I'd been thinking they were doing it all for free.
Glad to see my tax dollars are supporting it!
This is an interesting change from the book, because the scene is almost exactly the same but the meaning is totally changed (once you get another chapter in they diverge to the extent that it's impossible to tell they they're even similar stories). In the book, he's in the recruiting office to discourage people from signing up with any rosy view of what they're getting in to. When he leaves, he puts on prosthetics that make him seem completely normal - the mutilated veteran appearance is just for show.
There's a good reason why the film diverged from the book - the book just isn't that good. The film is a satire of what Heinlein wrote in total seriousness. His books are a mixture of cult-of-the-individual libertarianism and characters travelling back in time so that they can fuck their mother[1]. It must be incredibly hard to write a screenplay based on his work that isn't satire, because there's no way you can take it seriously.
[1] Yes, he really did write two books about this.
Actually, even the book has been something that read like a satire to me. I am confidently assured that Heinlein really meant all of the medal-jangling death-and-glory jingoism, but it's so over-the-top that it comes across as ingenuous. Ironic considering that he always like to portray his heroes as hard-headed realistic common-sense folks in a fuzzy world.
As for his story "All you Zombies", don't forget that not only did the narrator do his mother, he was his mother!
It's all in the name of fighting evil.
Unless you're on the other side, then you are the evil.
If you ever find yourself uttering:
"We are the free ones."
"We are the good ones."
"We are the peaceful ones."
Remember that you're saying exactly what the other team believe about themselves. And I'm sure you'll be able to explain how that's not true, and in fact you REALLY ARE the Chosen Team. Just like the other team will be able to explain that. But you're wrong. Because it's the same as it's always been, no matter which side you're on: man exploiting man, with the powerful minority fucking over everyone else.
And, if you're part of the powerful minority, you're the problem, and you're the cunt - no matter where you are. No, being part of "this team" doesn't mean that your power is more legitimate than if you were part of "that team".
"We are Good"
"We are Pure"
"We are Holy"
"They are Evil"
"They are Satan"
"They are Liars"
Quick - was that the USA or the Taliban?
The French don't hate Americans. They just aren't helplessly enamoured by them. Americans don't understand the difference.
'Murica! you either love us or you're hatin' us!
More importantly, 49% are always losers in any democratic system. Whether it is a two party system, or N party system.
In a nutshell, what's wrong with this country today. The idea that there can only be "winners" and "losers". Brought to its ultimate expression by the Tea Party.
In a democratic system, there exists this concept called compromise. You concede so that you can receive. Nobody gets everything that they want, but nobody gets totally obliterated either.
When it's strictly "win-or-lose" where there's nothing left for the loser, democracy itself is the loser.
A necktie is topologically equivalent to both a collar/leash and a noose.
This cannot be a coincidence.
A turkey is also the only animal I know of other than humans that has a necktie.
That cannot be a coincidence, either.
I mean, if Isaac Asimov is alive today, how would NSA view him ?
Or more importantly, how would Isaac Asimov view the unconstitutional activities NSA has carried out under the name of "National Security" ?
As one of millions of people worth monitoring.
Quicly looking at comment section of Telegraph article I see that it propably didn't succeed in indoctrinating anyone. Therefore I'm curious why such a piece of crap has been published at all. Maybe it is not directed to unwashed masses. Maybe it is directed to corporate/bankster/military/intelligence estabullshitment, not ordinary people. Maybe it is some kind of message sent by puppet government and puppet media saying something like: "See, we're (still) loyal. We'll go with you everywhere and we're ready to defend your (dirty) business even to our own detriment. We'll do anything, just give us some convenient, well paid position in your corporations when people throw us out.". I see this as a dangerous precedence. Politicians not afraid of what people think about them will not hesitate to send police or military to beat everyone "to the fuck'n skull" or "disappear" people if ordered so by TPTBs. The same with media: seeing journalists producing such crap without any signs of hesitation I smell crappy soviet-style system of propaganda (which I still remeber as I've spent my childhood in communist Poland).
More likely it's just the Big Lie. Repeat often enough and people will start to believe it (so they hope). Especially when you load it with all sorts of right-minded emotional terms.
After all, you're either with us or you're with the paedophiles.
It worked for Iraq.
Back in the 70s and 80s, a Democratic Senator used to give out Golden Fleece Awards.
It went pretty much as one would expect, with a lot of "fleecings" turning out to be useful programs
and one liable case that went to the Supreme Court, where the Senator lost and eventually settled out of court.
I don't know his party or state for sure, but you're referring to William Proxmire. Supposedly one of the Golden Fleece winners was a study on how barnacles stick to boats. Aside from the obvious benefit if you're a boat owner, the story goes that the end result was something called SuperGlue.
Proxmire wasn't giving his awards out in 1948, I don't think, and Bell Labs was a private concern (though probably raking in some government funding), but once they invented the laser, it took literally decades to find commercial utility. It was famously touted as a "solution in search of a problem". Well, we've found problems that lasers solve. Lots of them.
Wonderfully put! An argument and example a lawyer (like the Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology) would love...wait a minute, why is there a lawyer heading my science committee?
You're talking about a faction that thinks that Government should be run like a Business.
Think about that. Do you really WANT your government to be making a profit? That's what businesses are supposed to to. If government makes a profit, it's likely either doing on something that could be offloaded to a business or they're up to something questionable. And in any event, unless they're one of those unusual places with negative taxes, they're doing so at the expense of taxpayers.
Once upon a time, businesses operated for the long term and "blue-sky" R&D was something they routinely did themselves. More recently, however, business is all about shuffling subsidiaries in and out for fun and profit and anything longer than 6 months ahead of today is virtually unthinkable.
There aren't too many other places these days that can finance pure research. Unless we bring back the old nobility. Which does seem to be possible at the rate we've been going.
Redbox red, you mean.
Yep. At least until they merge. My bad.
And Netflix loves to send their version of the DVD that has all the cool extras stripped out.
I think it's more that the studios cracked down on Netflix (and Redbox) and coerced them into buying special crippled rental editions so that they could make $$$ on selling the deluxe DVDs at retail outlets.
The put a blue kiosk unit in my local grocery store. One day I looked over and it had turned Netflix red.
I haven't completely broken the habit of bookstores. But if there was an app that would allow me to easily scan a UPC code and wish/purchase an eBook, it would be a convenience
This is one of the main features of the Amazon app for Android (and I assume iOS as well). You can scan the barcode on anything to look it up on Amazon.
Well, A) I don't shop Amazon anymore, between "Animal Farm", their acting as a front for the US Government and various other misdemeanors. B) I don't want to "look it up", I want to put it someplace where my ebookstore of choice (not Amazon) can stuff it into an online purchase if I want or put it on my wish list.
Yeah, 10% seems low, especially when once customers discover the ease of buying books online, they might stop being customers.
On the other hand, I might actually -go- to a book store again if I knew the book purchases through my Kindle would help 'em out a bit...
I haven't completely broken the habit of bookstores. But if there was an app that would allow me to easily scan a UPC code and wish/purchase an eBook, it would be a convenience. I mostly don't buy physical books anymore because I flat ran out of storage space - the exceptions being "art" books, cookbooks, technical tomes and (the few remaining) magazines. But having "display models" of the electronically-available works would help make sales. For one thing, I rarely use the ebook preview feature, since it leaves lint behind on the reader device if I decide not to buy the book.
Never gonna happen. The resulting AC will be another camel deigned by committee. It will over-budget, over-weight and a decade late in delivery. It will also be designed for a 20th century mindset where human pilots actually flew the planes.
The only way it will get through congress is if the manufacturer can find a way to have its parts made in all 50 states.
The T38 with all its flaws is simple and effective.
I'd agree with you, but experience is that it only takes one pork-spreading Congressthing to foist an overpriced under-performing piece of military junk upon the nation. After all, anyone opposes it, not only do they hate Freedom, they're against people back in the home district having jobs!
Way to wrest air superiority from those feathered commie bastards!
We need a higher military budget to match their numbers for airborne crafts!
R&D for Deflector Shields!
Infrared currently is used as a point-to-point connection where (most of the time) there has to be a clear (as in: only air) path from one node to the other. It's mostly used as a device-to-device type of connection, not as a network of devices.
Li-Fi should integrate into the lighting plan of rooms, should be capable of operation using reflections instead of direct point-to-point. Of course, reflections and re-transmissions probably cause signal degradation if no filter capability exists so the software protocols should be able to compensate or, if unable, scale back to lower network speeds. The same for 'foreign' light sources (the sun included). Individual light points should act as repeaters with one point in a room connected to the 'regular' network being enough to provide the entire room (however large it may be) with full network access. At least, those are the 'promises' I heard about Li-Fi.
And, indeed, being unable to penetrate walls can be an advantage.
Precisely. Instead of setting up a separate funny-looking wart on the ceiling or some such, the room light itself is a transceiver. As a bonus, for room illumination it would draw about 1/4 the power of equivalent incandescents, based on what I've seen for sale lately.
Even with IR, I routinely bounce off a wall or mirror for my remotes. Unless the room is painted black, chances are that a visible frequency will reflect even better. Of course, that also means that it will go through windows, so keep the shrubbery patrolled!
You can declare bribes, and I'm sure some people do. No point exposing yourself to the penalties for tax evasion.
I'm pretty sure that there's actually an IRS form for that, in fact.
What a great idea. Fuel cells produce no nasty carbon emissions. So as long as you ignore how the hydrogen that feeds them is produced in the first place (generally from an extremely dirty and wasteful natural gas extraction process) and the pollution involved in actually making extremely expensive fuel cells in the first place, this makes perfect sense.
Or... they could use solar cells to do it when the sun is out. Somehow you sound like one of those people who are always whingeing about how solar only works when the sun is out. Maybe it's the "eco idiots".
Well, doing away corporations won't work out in the end ... the next one should give us the separation of state and economy.
How do you square these two claims? Corporations are creations of a government.
No. Corporations create themselves. They're chartered by government. That's how a business operating out of Georgia can be a "Delaware Corporation".
A corporation is supposed to operate in support of the goals stated in its charter. Which may or may not include making a profit, and often are made fuzzy enough to encompass almost any imaginable activity. It is the chartering government's responsibility to determine that the corporation operates within the confines of its charter. It is also the responsibility of government to regulate commerce within and between other states and nations. Said regulation mostly operates regardless of whether the commerce is conducted by publicly-traded corporations, privately-held corporations, sole proprietorships, partnerships, or whatever. Not all businesses are corporations. In fact, some of the biggest and best-known of all are not corporations, or are at most privately incorporated within a family.