Seems fairly clear to me that Enoch is a extraterrestrial being who is trying to drive human society and technology in the direction that will allow him to build himself a new spaceship and go home. Things must be getting worse for him though because in Confusion he only needed a few hundred kg of a particular isotope of gold. He should be able to get that post-1940 but he is still working on.... something.
This is not the case. In fact, I always write the endings that I want to, and am as satisfied with my endings as I am with any other aspect of my writing. I just have an opinion about what constitutes a good ending that is at variance with some of my readers.
OK then, what exactly did you intend with the ending of "The Diamond Age"? Everyone I know who enjoyed that book screamed and threw it against the wall when they realized that there was, would be, and could be no ending reasonable or unreasonable, classical, modern, or post-modern.
Since I know this to be true, can anybody explain a situation where one might logically want to do this? Or is it just crazy people? I'm curious.
It isn't "crazy"; it is just an example of how true human nature doesn't match up to microeconomic theory.
Personally, if offered chocolate ice cream or vanilla I will take chocolate. If offered chocolate or strawberry I will take strawberry. But, if offered strawberry or vanilla I will sometimes take vanilla. That's just the way I am.
Got you! scream the libertarians who got an A+ in micro: I will set up a "money pump" where I offer you a choice of ice cream at a cost of $x or a different choice at $x+1 until I use your non-transitive preferences to suck all the money out of your wallet!
My response? "Sounds like a money pump to me. I will decline to play. Thanks for the vanilla cone". And whereas I think the observations of the economists that most people are not good at making intuitive judgements of economic problems is quite true, I think that people are generally quite good at spotting everyday scams (not those run by professional con artists) and avoiding money pumps.
This by the way is one of the reasons why it is almost impossible for a group of more than 3 to decide where to go out to dinner without some sort of random lottery.
Except that corporate entitles are also legally considered to be "individuals", so are you saying any politician who takes "political contribution" should be executed?
Texas law prohibits campaign contributions by non-living entities in both state and federal elections (reference prosecution of associates of Tom DeLay).
No reason why that rule couldn't be passed by all states.
I would also like to see a limit on contributions from outside the politician's district. Say a limit of $3000 for residents and $1000 for non-residents. And if corporate contributions are allowed, then each corporation has to choose one and only one district to be its "home".
Also, Bill Buckley is famous for noting that you'd getter better government out of the first 200 names in the Cambridge phone book than you would from the faculty at Harvard. These two things got me thinking -- Could you really construct a workable modern system around that concept?
Phillip K. Dick wrote several novels based on that theme.
he only standard that will get accepted will be an open, patentfree one supported by the free software community.
You are insufficiently paranoid;-(
How about an FTC regulation banning the use of any MTA which does not have commercial indemnification guaranteed by a licensed reinsurance firm? Because clearly in these dangerous times we cannot trust our e-mail to software written by Communist hippies who might even be from other countries.
That is the kind of thing FOSS will be facing in the next four years.
I would be willing to wager a small sum that the only invitees to this meeting will be representative of large, commercial, for-profit software vendors and ISPs. That there will be no representation of/by the Free Software community. And that the FTC will reject any comment not from a commercial software vendor/ISP as having "no standing".
Any technology pitch with the words "solution", "rich", or "exciting" and I automatically check to see if my pocket has been picked. "Rich" - now that's rich!
However, many people took this scene to mean that Han offed a guy who wasn't an imminent threat to him. Those people probably liked the idea, and thus they think that Lucas somehow changed Han's character by clarifying the scene.
Lucas realized that this was clearly ambiguous to the audience. Sometimes you want ambiguity: Why did Obi Wan allow himself to be struck down? What did Shmi really mean when she said Anakin had no father? Why did Darth Vader stop Boba Fett from shooting Chewie? Why were the Ewoks so fucking ANNOYING??...ahem. Anyway...
In this case, Lucas did not want this ambiguity. He did not want people to think that Han was a murderer. So Lucas made a change to remove the ambiguity.
Sigh. Except that changing Hans' character to remove the ambiguity also removes the relief and excitment when Han and Chewbacca return at the last minute to cover Luke's back in the run on the Death Star. Even though the audience should have been able to foresee that coming over 20,000 years of human dramatic art, I still remember the roar of excitment and approval when I saw it the first time.
If you are looking for a FOSS calendar solution, don't forget to take a look at Chandler. They have had some project difficulties, but they are well-funded.
As I understand it, they made an astonishing scientific claim. That claim, while it might be absolutely true, was not substantiated by the experiment they describe.
Understood and mostly agreed. But it is instructive to read Enrico Fermi's account of how he and his team missed out on a second Nobel prize because they couldn't reproduced the results of one experiment. Turned out that the original experiment was done on a lab table made of wood and the attempts to reproduce were done on a lab table made of granite. The wood had a much higer index of neutron moderation, but they didn't know that and never thought that such a factor might affect the experiment.
It would effectively end the fission power-based business aswell as fossil fuel generated electricity.
As I have posted before, the two funding agencies that did NOT give up on cold fusion research for at least 5 years after the first brew-ha-ha were the Electric Power Research Institute (funded by a consortium of electric utilities) and EPRI's counterpart in Japan. Electric utilities would like nothing better than a source of energy to replace coal, and they doubted (as I doubt) that any source involving any nuclear effect would ever be "distributed".
sPh
Just the logical outcome of the RAND debate
on
Apache Rejects Sender ID
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I hope Apache wins the day here. However, the entire reason for the RAND proposal in the first place was to allow commerical interest to capture open Internet standards. I don't think they will be easily deflected.
This never occured to me before, but I wonder if anyone has ever looked into insuring the shuttle against natural disaster?
You might want to read up a bit on the philosophy of what insurance is. It really isn't possible for an entity the size of the United States Government to "insure" anything. To whom would the risk be spread?
There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Shuttle program (and yes, I use the article "the") and NASA, but this is pure fear mongering by someone with an agenda.
Sure, IF a large meteor slams into the Golden Gate Bridge it probably won't be rebuilt exactly as it was before.
Think about that for just a minute, Excel doesn't do all of this and this looks fairly easy to use.
You are assuming that there are no other tools like this on the market, and if they are, they have failed to become the "next Google" due to inherent flaws.
I saw my first such "simplified data visualization tool" around, oh, 1982. And I have seen dozens since, ranging from $129 to $20,000/seat.
Many of them have been simple and easy to use. Problem is, the underlying business logic behind the data is not simple or easy to manipulate. If you have a prebuilt data warehouse, incorporating all your business rules and assumptions, you can use Excel, Crystal, or anything you want to mine it.
But if you don't, no amount of tool simplification will allow 99% of business dudes to build the model themselves. And I don't mean that they are clueless; they just don't have the training and natural ability to do that. Most people don't.
sPh
Eric Schmidt.... hmm, where have I heard that name
on
Yet More Google Gazing
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· Score: 4, Interesting
From the Cringley piece:
Remember, Google's CEO is Eric Schmidt, who used to be Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, so technology doesn't scare these guys.
I like the leaving out of the part where Schmidt was CEO of Novell, failed entirely to figure out a strategy to counter Microsoft, and ran one of the world's great technology companies into the groud. Nope, nothing important there.
Thanks for the references. I had stopped checking Kapor's blog around May (04) since he had stated it would no longer be updated.
I seem to recall Linus saying "release usable code as fast as possible". I think the Chandler people are well-intentioned, and having struggled with the whole small business/groupware/Exchange/Notes problem that Kapor discusses I had high hopes for the project. But at this point they seem to be a bit bogged down.
I realize that Microsoft no more than IBM can afford to be seen as an easy mark by patent litigators, but in fighting this battle they are developing techniques which would certainly be used to defend Linux from Microsoft patent lawsuits. I can't believe it is a right hand/left hand issue either: Gates and Ballmer must know what is going on.
When considering Free calendaring applications, don't forget to look at Chandler from the OSA Foundation. I wish they were moving a bit faster with usable releases though.
Slashdot Mirror
sPh
sPh
You do know that Southwest Airlines had to spend about $2 million defending itself from a lawsuit over that rhyme?
sPh
Personally, if offered chocolate ice cream or vanilla I will take chocolate. If offered chocolate or strawberry I will take strawberry. But, if offered strawberry or vanilla I will sometimes take vanilla. That's just the way I am.
Got you! scream the libertarians who got an A+ in micro: I will set up a "money pump" where I offer you a choice of ice cream at a cost of $x or a different choice at $x+1 until I use your non-transitive preferences to suck all the money out of your wallet!
My response? "Sounds like a money pump to me. I will decline to play. Thanks for the vanilla cone". And whereas I think the observations of the economists that most people are not good at making intuitive judgements of economic problems is quite true, I think that people are generally quite good at spotting everyday scams (not those run by professional con artists) and avoiding money pumps.
This by the way is one of the reasons why it is almost impossible for a group of more than 3 to decide where to go out to dinner without some sort of random lottery.
sPh
No reason why that rule couldn't be passed by all states.
I would also like to see a limit on contributions from outside the politician's district. Say a limit of $3000 for residents and $1000 for non-residents. And if corporate contributions are allowed, then each corporation has to choose one and only one district to be its "home".
sPh
sPh
How about an FTC regulation banning the use of any MTA which does not have commercial indemnification guaranteed by a licensed reinsurance firm? Because clearly in these dangerous times we cannot trust our e-mail to software written by Communist hippies who might even be from other countries.
That is the kind of thing FOSS will be facing in the next four years.
sPh
I would be willing to wager a small sum that the only invitees to this meeting will be representative of large, commercial, for-profit software vendors and ISPs. That there will be no representation of/by the Free Software community. And that the FTC will reject any comment not from a commercial software vendor/ISP as having "no standing".
Just a guess.
sPh
> Five I find insightful
>> Maybe one of them would be insightful enough to
>> teach you how to count to six...sorry, I couldn't
>> resist.
"I definately deserved that"
sPh
Washington Monthly (by Kevin Drum)
Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall)
Atrios
Matthew Yglesias
Digby's Blog
Any technology pitch with the words "solution", "rich", or "exciting" and I automatically check to see if my pocket has been picked. "Rich" - now that's rich!
sPh
>> Big whip.
> I thought we were discussing Star Wars, not
> Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Wondered if anyone would figure that out.
sPh
Now? Han is an unambigious good guy. Big whip.
sPh
sPh
sPh
sPh
I hope Apache wins the day here. However, the entire reason for the RAND proposal in the first place was to allow commerical interest to capture open Internet standards. I don't think they will be easily deflected.
sPh
Another hint: LTCM.
sPh
Same with aircraft and spacecraft.
sPh
There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Shuttle program (and yes, I use the article "the") and NASA, but this is pure fear mongering by someone with an agenda.
Sure, IF a large meteor slams into the Golden Gate Bridge it probably won't be rebuilt exactly as it was before.
If.
sPh
I saw my first such "simplified data visualization tool" around, oh, 1982. And I have seen dozens since, ranging from $129 to $20,000/seat.
Many of them have been simple and easy to use. Problem is, the underlying business logic behind the data is not simple or easy to manipulate. If you have a prebuilt data warehouse, incorporating all your business rules and assumptions, you can use Excel, Crystal, or anything you want to mine it.
But if you don't, no amount of tool simplification will allow 99% of business dudes to build the model themselves. And I don't mean that they are clueless; they just don't have the training and natural ability to do that. Most people don't.
sPh
sPh
Thanks for the references. I had stopped checking Kapor's blog around May (04) since he had stated it would no longer be updated.
I seem to recall Linus saying "release usable code as fast as possible". I think the Chandler people are well-intentioned, and having struggled with the whole small business/groupware/Exchange/Notes problem that Kapor discusses I had high hopes for the project. But at this point they seem to be a bit bogged down.
sPh
I realize that Microsoft no more than IBM can afford to be seen as an easy mark by patent litigators, but in fighting this battle they are developing techniques which would certainly be used to defend Linux from Microsoft patent lawsuits. I can't believe it is a right hand/left hand issue either: Gates and Ballmer must know what is going on.
Puzzling.
sPh
sPh