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.
Probably a bit exaggerated when it comes to weblogs, which are hardly a life-or-death proposition; but still, it shows she believes enough in the collaborative technology to use it as the centerpiece of her campaign. (Not to mention the fact that as a Libertarian, she probably has only enough funds for her 56K modem Internet account to get the campaigning done!)
I had an argument the other day with one of the telemarketers. I had made a point of saying, "Please add me to your Do Not Call list," but the rep seemed not to know the difference. He kept repeating that he would take me off his call list.
AFIK, they are NOT the same thing. The call list is not federally mandated, it is just what they use. The Do Not Call list is required by Federal law, and must be maintained for 10 years.
The key to success for a scheme like this would be for responder websites to be not just inocuous, but also very popular in their own right. Since by design you have to block ALL traffic from the responder to stop the Infranet traffic, you'd get a huge outcry from the user base. Plus these sites have very dynamic content, so seeing the same URL come across with different content would not in itself be suspicious.
In the case of corporate proxy filtering, news and financial sites like CNN and the Wall Street Journal would be useful. In the case of foreign country censorship, you'd have to use non-news sites because objective reporting is exactly what they're trying to block.
I live in Washington state, and run several domains with my own mailserver. It seems to me that because the WHOIS information clearly identifies the registrant as being at a Washington address, anyone who sends email to those domains has reason to know its location. So, I should be able to sue them under Washington's anti-spam law, RCW 19.190.020. But is it worth it?
Sure, the $500 per offense will help offset the cost of my home computer lab. But I'm not sure I want to go down that road. Will I just become a bigger target? Will the time spent gradually spiral out of control, until I become known as the "guy who has no life, so he spends his time suing spammers"? You know, like the guys who sue places that offer free admission to women on Happy Hours nights?
I remember growing up a classic social science experiment. A group of Boy Scouts took a modernized paraphrase of the Declaration, including the passage cited above, and circulated it at shopping malls as if it were an Initiative petition. Most people not only refused to sign the thing, but called the boys Communist sympathizers.
I've seen it in the 70's with the notion of a Corporate Data Base, in the 80's with Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems, and in the 90's with Data Warehouses. It's nice to think of a single source of information providing all the answers, but it inevitably turns out too expensive to build and impossible to keep current. I see no evidence that such a system would have prevented the attacks on 9/11. But some IT infrastructure companies are going to get rich on this boondoggle.
As a professor of mine in college once said; "Computers make great filing cabinets, but lousy guessers."
To me, the thing that makes Survivor watchable is that it's a laboratory of power dynamics. Who has power resources (strength, attractiveness, skill at catching food, skill at not pissing people off) this week? Who's working on acquiring some, how are they doing it, and did it work? Who's made mistakes that cost them power?
Any laboratory is a contrived situation; in fact, in science you TRY to put controls on the situation so that you can better study the subject without too many variables. Just think of Survivor as "power lab 101".
If you took "Six Feet Under" (cool) and crossed it with Junkyard Wars (cool), you get what? Undertakers who take pieces from several corpses and create something new. Ah! Frankenstein! It's been done.:-)
Right, of course. (Which is why I didn't major in math.)
The INTENT of my statement holds, though. Assuming that every 100 days or so, bandwidth would double, without taking into account market conditions speeding up / slowing down that growth, is the part I was taking exception with.
The problem with this article, as well as the original Worldcom estimate, is that they assume linear growth. In reality, the demand for Internet bandwidth grows and shrinks with the economy in general. We're in a slump right now, so growth has slowed down. In the next boom, more people will want to download rich content such as video, which will in turn increase the demand for bandwidth.
Like the stock market, the bandwidth market has its up times and its down times. When you invest in the stock market, you invest for the long-term trend which historically has been up. In the same way, the need for bandwidth will continue to grow over the long term as we continue to find new and cool things to do with it.
I had a real world (i.e., non-code) experience with this recently. I started a project with a certain vision that was too big for me to implement alone. As I found partners willing to work with me on it, there was a clash of ideas as to where we should go. I gave in sometimes, stood my ground sometimes, and the result turned out pretty well.
I'm convinced (now) that had I held true to my original vision, it would not have turned out nearly as well as the team's vision did.
Okay, I guess I could stand to lose some karma, so here goes:
The problem with "free" is that it doesn't scale well. Communism is a great idea for communes, with maybe 20 members. But sized up to the state level it fails.
Free works best in conjunction with fee. So, have a web site with free content on it, but sell subscriptions for "added value" or use it to promote offline services. Or if you're a bricks and mortar company like REI, put the catalog online for free and use it to drive customers to your physical locations.
I predict the pendulum will swing too far to the fee side, companies will lose customers, then swing back to the free side until they lose money, and so on until an optimum middle ground is found.
In the past when there was a well-publicized hijacking, the airlines added restrictions or took other actions to maximize their profits, using the incident as an excuse. The restriction on non-transferable tickets is a case in point: theoretically, it shouldn't matter who sits in the seat and who pays for the seat. Except to the airlines, which can increase profits by eliminating the public market in air tickets which had evolved in response to their labyrinth of pricing levels. Can you imagine what eBay would look like today if they hadn't done this?
Likewise, the huge numbers of layoffs after 9/11 were far out of proportion to the real need of the airlines (and associated air industry companies) to shed people. But they had wanted to do that anyway, to improve profits, and this provided a cover story.
In each case, they have rather shamelessly used terrorism in a opportunistic way to increase their bottom line.
"Quite a few of the magazines in the U.S. have to run their covers and editorial content past Walmart for approval before they can go to press."
Got a link to back that up? Since when does ANY publication routinely submit its content to outsiders before it will publish? Most editors and journalists would rather die first.
More likely, WalMart makes its guidelines for carrying a publication known, and editors have a choice whether its mission is compatible with that.
But wouldn't it be a bit arrogant of a company to impose its values (i.e., information wants to be free, no filters = good filters) on other cultures that may see things differently?
The thing the Internet seems to lack is a Prime Directive, that says it will not interfere in the local decisions of people. Instead, it has to be one size fits all.
Not defending China's record on human rights, but isn't SOME internet access better than NO internet access? Filters are notoriously "leaky" anyway, if citizens have access they'll find a way around the filters.
Just creating a pool of open source applications doesn't guarantee that a specific country's administration will decide to use applications in the pool. There is always a "not-invented-here" factor to consider in any human endeavor.
There is also the matter of recouping the cost of development. Which country will want to spend money creating applications, if the rest get them for free? A chargeback/share model of some kind would have to be developed to provide an incentive for countries to contribute to the pool.
As usual, the biggest problems to solve are not technical ones, but human ones.
"For each person who clicks on the e-mail to visit the travel company's website, the company earns $1 - a fee roughly in line with industry norms."
Maybe we're going about this all wrong. If every time we click through it costs the sponsor $1, maybe we should ALL click through. Then not buy the product. If the ratio of costs to purchases drops, business won't consider email a viable form of promotion.
Like everyone else here, kudos for a truly useful and fun utility.
Google seems to be a classic case of fast growth. What have you been doing to try to maintain Google's unique culture as you grow? In particular, as you add more services to Google and the interface becomes more complex, so too will your internal organization. Will a big Google become a Dilbert-like Google-plex?
I don't know if this is a viable idea or not, but in your business plan (you ARE writing one, I hope?) be sure to budget for replacing the computers and software every 2-3 years on a rotating basis. The membership fees have to account not only for the cost of running the co-op but for upgrades.
"The most optimistic interpretation would be that the JSF represents the introduction of the best, real parts of the New Economy to the messy business of building military machines. Talking to Tom Burbage in Washington and in Fort Worth, I kept being surprised by how much he sounded like the high-tech executives I have interviewed in recent years."
If this project was done according to the New Economy model, each competitor would have created a separate startup to develop their prototypes, hired engineers by promising them stock options, and run them separately from their main companies. The winning company would have been "acquired" by its sponsor, and the losing one would have gone away. This seems to be the main contribution of the New Economy IMHO, that companies are created not to endure for decades, but to bring products to market. After that, the exit strategies are well known: aquisition, IPO, or bankruptcy court.
If the cost of a used book, plus shipping, minus the income from resale is a good deal, then I'm bullish on the transport companies that are going to be shipping these books all over the place!
A good e-Book reader would take a bite out of that I'm sure.
Slashdot Mirror
Your version may be correct; I've not read the book.
My source of info is The Word Spy, a fascinating site and one that's usually trustworthy with etymologies.
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.
Probably a bit exaggerated when it comes to weblogs, which are hardly a life-or-death proposition; but still, it shows she believes enough in the collaborative technology to use it as the centerpiece of her campaign. (Not to mention the fact that as a Libertarian, she probably has only enough funds for her 56K modem Internet account to get the campaigning done!)
how about:
for the love of ${deity:='Mike'}
if the parameter doesn't exist or is not set, substitute the default value.
I had an argument the other day with one of the telemarketers. I had made a point of saying, "Please add me to your Do Not Call list," but the rep seemed not to know the difference. He kept repeating that he would take me off his call list.
AFIK, they are NOT the same thing. The call list is not federally mandated, it is just what they use. The Do Not Call list is required by Federal law, and must be maintained for 10 years.
On my home phone, I get telemarketing calls maybe 2-3 per day. On my cell phone, I don't get any. In my inbox, I get 40-100.
Seems to me we've crested the peak and are heading down the other side of the spam curve.
The key to success for a scheme like this would be for responder websites to be not just inocuous, but also very popular in their own right. Since by design you have to block ALL traffic from the responder to stop the Infranet traffic, you'd get a huge outcry from the user base. Plus these sites have very dynamic content, so seeing the same URL come across with different content would not in itself be suspicious.
In the case of corporate proxy filtering, news and financial sites like CNN and the Wall Street Journal would be useful. In the case of foreign country censorship, you'd have to use non-news sites because objective reporting is exactly what they're trying to block.
I live in Washington state, and run several domains with my own mailserver. It seems to me that because the WHOIS information clearly identifies the registrant as being at a Washington address, anyone who sends email to those domains has reason to know its location. So, I should be able to sue them under Washington's anti-spam law, RCW 19.190.020. But is it worth it?
Sure, the $500 per offense will help offset the cost of my home computer lab. But I'm not sure I want to go down that road. Will I just become a bigger target? Will the time spent gradually spiral out of control, until I become known as the "guy who has no life, so he spends his time suing spammers"? You know, like the guys who sue places that offer free admission to women on Happy Hours nights?
I remember growing up a classic social science experiment. A group of Boy Scouts took a modernized paraphrase of the Declaration, including the passage cited above, and circulated it at shopping malls as if it were an Initiative petition. Most people not only refused to sign the thing, but called the boys Communist sympathizers.
Yep, that democracy thing is heavy stuff...
I've seen it in the 70's with the notion of a Corporate Data Base, in the 80's with Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems, and in the 90's with Data Warehouses. It's nice to think of a single source of information providing all the answers, but it inevitably turns out too expensive to build and impossible to keep current. I see no evidence that such a system would have prevented the attacks on 9/11. But some IT infrastructure companies are going to get rich on this boondoggle.
As a professor of mine in college once said; "Computers make great filing cabinets, but lousy guessers."
Okay, flame away.
To me, the thing that makes Survivor watchable is that it's a laboratory of power dynamics. Who has power resources (strength, attractiveness, skill at catching food, skill at not pissing people off) this week? Who's working on acquiring some, how are they doing it, and did it work? Who's made mistakes that cost them power?
Any laboratory is a contrived situation; in fact, in science you TRY to put controls on the situation so that you can better study the subject without too many variables. Just think of Survivor as "power lab 101".
Having said that, I much prefer another Mark Barnett production, Eco-Challenge: The Expedition Race.
This is harder than it "sims".
:-)
If you took "Six Feet Under" (cool) and crossed it with Junkyard Wars (cool), you get what? Undertakers who take pieces from several corpses and create something new. Ah! Frankenstein! It's been done.
I may be missing the point here, but what good is a honeypot if you TELL people it's one? Won't the crackers just avoid them?
Right, of course. (Which is why I didn't major in math.)
The INTENT of my statement holds, though. Assuming that every 100 days or so, bandwidth would double, without taking into account market conditions speeding up / slowing down that growth, is the part I was taking exception with.
The problem with this article, as well as the original Worldcom estimate, is that they assume linear growth. In reality, the demand for Internet bandwidth grows and shrinks with the economy in general. We're in a slump right now, so growth has slowed down. In the next boom, more people will want to download rich content such as video, which will in turn increase the demand for bandwidth.
Like the stock market, the bandwidth market has its up times and its down times. When you invest in the stock market, you invest for the long-term trend which historically has been up. In the same way, the need for bandwidth will continue to grow over the long term as we continue to find new and cool things to do with it.
I had a real world (i.e., non-code) experience with this recently. I started a project with a certain vision that was too big for me to implement alone. As I found partners willing to work with me on it, there was a clash of ideas as to where we should go. I gave in sometimes, stood my ground sometimes, and the result turned out pretty well.
I'm convinced (now) that had I held true to my original vision, it would not have turned out nearly as well as the team's vision did.
Okay, I guess I could stand to lose some karma, so here goes:
The problem with "free" is that it doesn't scale well. Communism is a great idea for communes, with maybe 20 members. But sized up to the state level it fails.
Free works best in conjunction with fee. So, have a web site with free content on it, but sell subscriptions for "added value" or use it to promote offline services. Or if you're a bricks and mortar company like REI, put the catalog online for free and use it to drive customers to your physical locations.
I predict the pendulum will swing too far to the fee side, companies will lose customers, then swing back to the free side until they lose money, and so on until an optimum middle ground is found.
In the past when there was a well-publicized hijacking, the airlines added restrictions or took other actions to maximize their profits, using the incident as an excuse. The restriction on non-transferable tickets is a case in point: theoretically, it shouldn't matter who sits in the seat and who pays for the seat. Except to the airlines, which can increase profits by eliminating the public market in air tickets which had evolved in response to their labyrinth of pricing levels. Can you imagine what eBay would look like today if they hadn't done this?
Likewise, the huge numbers of layoffs after 9/11 were far out of proportion to the real need of the airlines (and associated air industry companies) to shed people. But they had wanted to do that anyway, to improve profits, and this provided a cover story.
In each case, they have rather shamelessly used terrorism in a opportunistic way to increase their bottom line.
More likely, WalMart makes its guidelines for carrying a publication known, and editors have a choice whether its mission is compatible with that.
But wouldn't it be a bit arrogant of a company to impose its values (i.e., information wants to be free, no filters = good filters) on other cultures that may see things differently?
The thing the Internet seems to lack is a Prime Directive, that says it will not interfere in the local decisions of people. Instead, it has to be one size fits all.
Not defending China's record on human rights, but isn't SOME internet access better than NO internet access? Filters are notoriously "leaky" anyway, if citizens have access they'll find a way around the filters.
Just creating a pool of open source applications doesn't guarantee that a specific country's administration will decide to use applications in the pool. There is always a "not-invented-here" factor to consider in any human endeavor.
There is also the matter of recouping the cost of development. Which country will want to spend money creating applications, if the rest get them for free? A chargeback/share model of some kind would have to be developed to provide an incentive for countries to contribute to the pool.
As usual, the biggest problems to solve are not technical ones, but human ones.
Maybe we're going about this all wrong. If every time we click through it costs the sponsor $1, maybe we should ALL click through. Then not buy the product. If the ratio of costs to purchases drops, business won't consider email a viable form of promotion.
Like everyone else here, kudos for a truly useful and fun utility.
Google seems to be a classic case of fast growth. What have you been doing to try to maintain Google's unique culture as you grow? In particular, as you add more services to Google and the interface becomes more complex, so too will your internal organization. Will a big Google become a Dilbert-like Google-plex?
I don't know if this is a viable idea or not, but in your business plan (you ARE writing one, I hope?) be sure to budget for replacing the computers and software every 2-3 years on a rotating basis. The membership fees have to account not only for the cost of running the co-op but for upgrades.
If this project was done according to the New Economy model, each competitor would have created a separate startup to develop their prototypes, hired engineers by promising them stock options, and run them separately from their main companies. The winning company would have been "acquired" by its sponsor, and the losing one would have gone away. This seems to be the main contribution of the New Economy IMHO, that companies are created not to endure for decades, but to bring products to market. After that, the exit strategies are well known: aquisition, IPO, or bankruptcy court.
If the cost of a used book, plus shipping, minus the income from resale is a good deal, then I'm bullish on the transport companies that are going to be shipping these books all over the place!
A good e-Book reader would take a bite out of that I'm sure.