The problem is that some of us old-time hackers think it is our job to make the Internet work. The fact is that it's not anymore, and it's up to the companies like Google and Yahoo and Microsoft that have stepped at and taken control to make it work.
The Internet still works. The tools provided by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft still work pretty much the way they've been designed to work. They all have a sufficient concentration of brainpower to handle attempts to game their systems. If not, there are alternatives. Google isn't the Internet.
So when people Google for 'Beatles,' they're going to get his site Considering that the alternative would be the site of a crappy yet paradoxically popular and massively overplayed band, Google is doing it's users a favour.
First of all, USABILITY MATTERS. This is no longer 1986, or 1994 for that matter. We know now that the usability of a system is a key to its successful deployment.
AMEN. I would go a step further and say that most technological revolutions are effectuated more so by usability breakthroughs than pure technology. The rise of the Internet was precipitated by the web browser. The widespread availibility of a graphical interface drove the adoption of personal computers. MP3's weren't even on the RIAA's radar before Napster made finding and downloading them easy.
Usability and accessibility are FAR more important that most geeks realize, probably because most of them want to use their knowledge of technology as a social lever, rather than as a boon to others.
your argument (that because many popular magazines feature pictures of only certain types of women this means that women value that too) is not logically valid. Economics is driving what's on the magazine
"Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work -- whereas economics represents how it actually DOES work."
That would be a good start, but that wouldn't stop someone from posting bins in a different group. Which, I guess, relates back to the article's contention that Usenet provides no protection or controls against such a thing. Even democracy, as the article says, still needs laws after all.
I suspect the quickest, easiest and most brutal solution would be to place a limit on message size, posting frequency and/or total group storage space. That wouldn't be without it's problems - lots of potential for legitimate postings to be blocked or lost. A storage space limit could also possibly allow an individual to prematurely 'age out' good posts by creating lots of large junk ones. However, how that would be distiguishable from the status quo is beyond me.
Transmitting binaries through Usenet is what make Usenet such a bandwidth and storage hog. The actual text conversations are pretty small, compared to the rest. Moving a binary file through Usenet requires a hack on top of a kludge, forcing a system to do something it wasn't intended for, nor designed to do. We now have far better ways to do that - HTTP, FTP, P2P - pick an acronym.
However, rather than dumping the entire system, let it do what it was designed to do. Prevent posting binaries, and Usenet will become manageable again.
You can argue that the government will spend the dollar in a more beneficial manner than the taxpayer would have And in the same vein you could also argue that Steven Hawking could beat Mike Tyson in a boxing match. Common sense, observation and evidence would be against you, but hey - you could argue it.
A pure electric car properly designed works very VERY well for the average city commuter Really? If that's the case, I have yet to see one. The ones I've seen so far seemed to be aimed at single people who rarely, if ever, leave a metropolitan area. Sorry, but that doesn't fit me, or anyone I know. I need more cargo space than a few bags of groceries. I don't know anyone who doesn't drive on a highway at least every now and again. And I don't know of anyone who never wants to give someone else a ride somewhere.
The problem with the single-seater, hyper-efficient vehicle concept is that people do much more with their cars than commute. They go out with friends. They go on vacation. They haul stuff around. A vehicle that is not capable of doing any of this simply will not be considered by most people.
an escalade XL with 3rd axle Really? I haven't seen those. Got a link to the product page? I'd love to check them out.
"The solution is to restrict the power available to those people in the first place."
Oops, how do you do that without power?
By spreading it around. By leaving as much in the hands of your average law-abiding citizen as possible. By recognizing that self-focused rule (whether by government, corporations, unions or special interest groups) is bad and fighting against it.
Campaigns should only be able to be financed by individuals and non-profit groups.
And that would result in a government beholden to unions and special interest groups, neither of which are suitable for running a country as they will only push their own interests and agenda . The teamsters pretty much wrote the book on corruption, bribes and kickbacks and activist groups are currently authoring their own volume on spin, creative storytelling, deciet and outright lies.
Generally speaking, in a competitive environment you don't have to give your money to any corporation you don't like. If you don't like Ford, buy a Honda. If Wal-mart screwed you, go to Zellers, or Target or whatever. However, if you're in a union and you don't agree with something they did, you have two options: put up with it or go find another job.
Here's a hint: people with power will always use that power to quash opposition, no matter where that power comes from. The solution is not to elect who promise not to use that power - they always do. The solution is to restrict the power available to those people in the first place.
The parent post (Money = Expression = Speech) by dada21 was right.
If you don't pay your taxes the IRS might put a lien on any property you own and they might garnish part of your wages
Consider yourself lucky to live in such a benevolent country. Up here in Canada, if you run afoul of Revenue Canada you can look forward to having police show up on your doorstep, and under threat of arms, confiscate anything and everything of value they can find, including property belonging to your spouse and children. We had a case not too long ago where medals that children had won at school were siezed in a tax case.
But let's see. Taxes are required for any functioning society. Seat belt laws have an economic basis -- namely an accident that you might have walked away from could wind up costing some insurance company a shitload of money. Jay-walking laws likewise exist (presumably) for safety considerations of vehicles and traffic.
The problem is that, at least in Canada anyways, laws and taxes have loooong since surpassed that purpose. These days it's more about protecting the status quo (and the government bureaucracy that goes along with it). Why is health care such a huge issue in every Canadian election? Why can't doctors offer services without going through the government? Because there are thousands of people who depend on things staying they way they are and they have a powerful and very vocal union lobbying the government to neutralize any potential threats, like privatization. Why can't a farmer sell his own wheat to anyone he wants, or even process it himself? Because there is another block of people who depend on the status quo and work through the government to actively resist change. Why is margarine in Quebec white? Why don't I have a choice in basic auto insurance? Because laws and taxation have gone far beyond what is required for a safe, functioning society.
Things may be different where you're from. I don't know - it's all I can stand to keep up with the crock of shit that passes for politics in my own country.
bin Laden family members and other Saudi nationals were flown out of the country after 9/11 on flights provided by the FBI. That is an irrefutable fact, and there have never been any answers from the government about those flights.
Sorry, but that is simply not true. I suggest you look at the 9/11 Commission report, page 329.
Here's an executive summary for you: 1. The Saudis left after the national airspace was re-opened on the morning of Sept. 13, 2001. 2. There was no political intervention. The highest government official involved in the decision to let the Saudis leave is a man named Richard Clark, who chaired an interagency group. 3. The FBI screened all the Saudi nationals who left and were satisified that none of them had anything to do with the 9/11 tragedy.
This is gaming's golden age. The games being released - Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, GTA3, World of Warcraft, etc. deliver a great experience - far beyond what we thought was possible a few years ago. There are many different games genres, with sub-genres within each. Anyone who says that today's games are all alike simply isn't looking very hard (unless there are similarities between Doom and BeJeweled that I've missed) There is an incredible variety of games available - just check the many Flash/Shockwave/Java games sites.
Frequently in the gaming industry, a sequel is better than the original. Half-Life 2, Halo 2, the Unreal Tournament series. All these games got better with each successive release.
Of course, Doom 3 shows that this is a trend, not a rule:-)
Forget using this on humans - think about getting this into production with animals. Imagine having a farm where you don't kill the cows for beef, you just keep lopping the legs off after they've grown back. Perhaps with enough genetic engineering, animals could be convinced to grow great slabs of useless muscle tissue, which could be 'harvested' when the time is right.
I could also imagine the barricades and machine-gun emplacements that would be needed to keep the PETA activists out.
why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency?
Phone networks are engineered for predicted average demand. This level is occasionally exceeded during regular use. The demand for communications during an event such as hurricane Katrina skyrockets. To build a network capable of satisfying these peak demands would multiply the average user's bill, and few people would sign up.
a lot of people rightly believe that nobody is 'entitled' to obscene wealth
By knowing how to read and write and having access to a computer capable of posting that comment, you have put yourself in the top 2% in the world. From the viewpoint of 95% below you, you are obscenely rich.
Yes that's a great idea... let me just set up my web files all in one folder... Do you want to overwrite 'c:\index.html' (size 4509 bytes) with 'c:\index.html' (size 16735 bytes)? Hmmm... there's still a few technical issues remaining. I think folders will be with us for a while longer;)
Well, if you were using a filesystem such as the one under discussion, I presume that the index would be something other than the file name. You would end up with 2 index.html files and you would have to differentiate between the two based on other metadata. (Pure speculation on my part) The problem here is your expectation of how the filesystem should work, not the behavior of the filesystem itself.
Yes, there is still work that needs to be done, just not for the reasons you gave.:-)
It means the community got together and a majority decided that they wanted to live in an area with certain rules.
Awww - they're so cute when they're young and idealistic, aren't they?
These days, rules aren't decided by the majority. Rules (laws) are passed in order to pacify small groups who are very adept at making a lot of noise and attracting attention to themselves and their cause. The majority of people just want everyone else to leave them alone.
Easy - a little facet of human nature called self-validation. If you can convince someone else to make the same choices as you, the feedback it provides validates those choices. Plus you get to feel superior because you were there first. It's really the same thing that drives much of religion, political viewpoints, sports team preference and preferred vehicle brand.
I'll take a hovertank (a la Hammer's Slammers) over a mech any day. Much more practical. A lower profile means it's harder to hit. It can get knocked around and it won't topple over. No knees that can be taken out with a single shot.
While all of you mech fanatics are rolling around on the ground like a octegenarian with a busted hip, I'll be safe and sound in my tank, busy putting you out of your misery.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahem.
He's still an idiot.
That is all.
The problem is that some of us old-time hackers think it is our job to make the Internet work. The fact is that it's not anymore, and it's up to the companies like Google and Yahoo and Microsoft that have stepped at and taken control to make it work.
The Internet still works. The tools provided by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft still work pretty much the way they've been designed to work. They all have a sufficient concentration of brainpower to handle attempts to game their systems. If not, there are alternatives. Google isn't the Internet.
So when people Google for 'Beatles,' they're going to get his site
Considering that the alternative would be the site of a crappy yet paradoxically popular and massively overplayed band, Google is doing it's users a favour.
First of all, USABILITY MATTERS. This is no longer 1986, or 1994 for that matter. We know now that the usability of a system is a key to its successful deployment.
AMEN. I would go a step further and say that most technological revolutions are effectuated more so by usability breakthroughs than pure technology. The rise of the Internet was precipitated by the web browser. The widespread availibility of a graphical interface drove the adoption of personal computers. MP3's weren't even on the RIAA's radar before Napster made finding and downloading them easy.
Usability and accessibility are FAR more important that most geeks realize, probably because most of them want to use their knowledge of technology as a social lever, rather than as a boon to others.
Riiight.
... zwo-pah ... zwo-pah
What's a qubit?
Zwo-pah
(apologies to Bill Cosby)
your argument (that because many popular magazines feature pictures of only certain types of women this means that women value that too) is not logically valid. Economics is driving what's on the magazine
"Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work -- whereas economics represents how it actually DOES work."
- Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakanomics
That would be a good start, but that wouldn't stop someone from posting bins in a different group. Which, I guess, relates back to the article's contention that Usenet provides no protection or controls against such a thing. Even democracy, as the article says, still needs laws after all.
I suspect the quickest, easiest and most brutal solution would be to place a limit on message size, posting frequency and/or total group storage space. That wouldn't be without it's problems - lots of potential for legitimate postings to be blocked or lost. A storage space limit could also possibly allow an individual to prematurely 'age out' good posts by creating lots of large junk ones. However, how that would be distiguishable from the status quo is beyond me.
Transmitting binaries through Usenet is what make Usenet such a bandwidth and storage hog. The actual text conversations are pretty small, compared to the rest. Moving a binary file through Usenet requires a hack on top of a kludge, forcing a system to do something it wasn't intended for, nor designed to do. We now have far better ways to do that - HTTP, FTP, P2P - pick an acronym.
However, rather than dumping the entire system, let it do what it was designed to do. Prevent posting binaries, and Usenet will become manageable again.
You can argue that the government will spend the dollar in a more beneficial manner than the taxpayer would have
And in the same vein you could also argue that Steven Hawking could beat Mike Tyson in a boxing match. Common sense, observation and evidence would be against you, but hey - you could argue it.
A pure electric car properly designed works very VERY well for the average city commuter
Really? If that's the case, I have yet to see one. The ones I've seen so far seemed to be aimed at single people who rarely, if ever, leave a metropolitan area. Sorry, but that doesn't fit me, or anyone I know. I need more cargo space than a few bags of groceries. I don't know anyone who doesn't drive on a highway at least every now and again. And I don't know of anyone who never wants to give someone else a ride somewhere.
The problem with the single-seater, hyper-efficient vehicle concept is that people do much more with their cars than commute. They go out with friends. They go on vacation. They haul stuff around. A vehicle that is not capable of doing any of this simply will not be considered by most people.
an escalade XL with 3rd axle
Really? I haven't seen those. Got a link to the product page? I'd love to check them out.
"The solution is to restrict the power available to those people in the first place."
Oops, how do you do that without power?
By spreading it around. By leaving as much in the hands of your average law-abiding citizen as possible. By recognizing that self-focused rule (whether by government, corporations, unions or special interest groups) is bad and fighting against it.
Maybe not a complete solution, but a good start.
Campaigns should only be able to be financed by individuals and non-profit groups.
And that would result in a government beholden to unions and special interest groups, neither of which are suitable for running a country as they will only push their own interests and agenda . The teamsters pretty much wrote the book on corruption, bribes and kickbacks and activist groups are currently authoring their own volume on spin, creative storytelling, deciet and outright lies.
Generally speaking, in a competitive environment you don't have to give your money to any corporation you don't like. If you don't like Ford, buy a Honda. If Wal-mart screwed you, go to Zellers, or Target or whatever. However, if you're in a union and you don't agree with something they did, you have two options: put up with it or go find another job.
Here's a hint: people with power will always use that power to quash opposition, no matter where that power comes from. The solution is not to elect who promise not to use that power - they always do. The solution is to restrict the power available to those people in the first place.
The parent post (Money = Expression = Speech) by dada21 was right.
If you don't pay your taxes the IRS might put a lien on any property you own and they might garnish part of your wages
Consider yourself lucky to live in such a benevolent country. Up here in Canada, if you run afoul of Revenue Canada you can look forward to having police show up on your doorstep, and under threat of arms, confiscate anything and everything of value they can find, including property belonging to your spouse and children. We had a case not too long ago where medals that children had won at school were siezed in a tax case.
But let's see. Taxes are required for any functioning society. Seat belt laws have an economic basis -- namely an accident that you might have walked away from could wind up costing some insurance company a shitload of money. Jay-walking laws likewise exist (presumably) for safety considerations of vehicles and traffic.
The problem is that, at least in Canada anyways, laws and taxes have loooong since surpassed that purpose. These days it's more about protecting the status quo (and the government bureaucracy that goes along with it). Why is health care such a huge issue in every Canadian election? Why can't doctors offer services without going through the government? Because there are thousands of people who depend on things staying they way they are and they have a powerful and very vocal union lobbying the government to neutralize any potential threats, like privatization. Why can't a farmer sell his own wheat to anyone he wants, or even process it himself? Because there is another block of people who depend on the status quo and work through the government to actively resist change. Why is margarine in Quebec white? Why don't I have a choice in basic auto insurance? Because laws and taxation have gone far beyond what is required for a safe, functioning society.
Things may be different where you're from. I don't know - it's all I can stand to keep up with the crock of shit that passes for politics in my own country.
bin Laden family members and other Saudi nationals were flown out of the country after 9/11 on flights provided by the FBI. That is an irrefutable fact, and there have never been any answers from the government about those flights.
Sorry, but that is simply not true. I suggest you look at the 9/11 Commission report, page 329.
Here's an executive summary for you:
1. The Saudis left after the national airspace was re-opened on the morning of Sept. 13, 2001.
2. There was no political intervention. The highest government official involved in the decision to let the Saudis leave is a man named Richard Clark, who chaired an interagency group.
3. The FBI screened all the Saudi nationals who left and were satisified that none of them had anything to do with the 9/11 tragedy.
I'm sorry, but was that a comment or a press release? It's a little hard to judge from here.
Not that I'd be one to accuse the indefectible Apple of astroturfing, no, nothing like that.
This is gaming's golden age. The games being released - Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, GTA3, World of Warcraft, etc. deliver a great experience - far beyond what we thought was possible a few years ago. There are many different games genres, with sub-genres within each. Anyone who says that today's games are all alike simply isn't looking very hard (unless there are similarities between Doom and BeJeweled that I've missed) There is an incredible variety of games available - just check the many Flash/Shockwave/Java games sites.
Frequently in the gaming industry, a sequel is better than the original. Half-Life 2, Halo 2, the Unreal Tournament series. All these games got better with each successive release.
:-)
Of course, Doom 3 shows that this is a trend, not a rule
Forget using this on humans - think about getting this into production with animals. Imagine having a farm where you don't kill the cows for beef, you just keep lopping the legs off after they've grown back. Perhaps with enough genetic engineering, animals could be convinced to grow great slabs of useless muscle tissue, which could be 'harvested' when the time is right.
I could also imagine the barricades and machine-gun emplacements that would be needed to keep the PETA activists out.
why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency?
Phone networks are engineered for predicted average demand. This level is occasionally exceeded during regular use. The demand for communications during an event such as hurricane Katrina skyrockets. To build a network capable of satisfying these peak demands would multiply the average user's bill, and few people would sign up.
Quite simple, really.
a lot of people rightly believe that nobody is 'entitled' to obscene wealth
By knowing how to read and write and having access to a computer capable of posting that comment, you have put yourself in the top 2% in the world. From the viewpoint of 95% below you, you are obscenely rich.
It's all a matter of perspective.
Tuesday?!?!? You told me Wednesday!
Yes that's a great idea... let me just set up my web files all in one folder... ;)
:-)
Do you want to overwrite 'c:\index.html' (size 4509 bytes) with 'c:\index.html' (size 16735 bytes)?
Hmmm... there's still a few technical issues remaining. I think folders will be with us for a while longer
Well, if you were using a filesystem such as the one under discussion, I presume that the index would be something other than the file name. You would end up with 2 index.html files and you would have to differentiate between the two based on other metadata. (Pure speculation on my part) The problem here is your expectation of how the filesystem should work, not the behavior of the filesystem itself.
Yes, there is still work that needs to be done, just not for the reasons you gave.
It means the community got together and a majority decided that they wanted to live in an area with certain rules.
Awww - they're so cute when they're young and idealistic, aren't they?
These days, rules aren't decided by the majority. Rules (laws) are passed in order to pacify small groups who are very adept at making a lot of noise and attracting attention to themselves and their cause. The majority of people just want everyone else to leave them alone.
I suggest you open your eyes and look around. Getting your perspective on religion from Slashdot is like asking the KKK for information on blacks.
Easy - a little facet of human nature called self-validation. If you can convince someone else to make the same choices as you, the feedback it provides validates those choices. Plus you get to feel superior because you were there first. It's really the same thing that drives much of religion, political viewpoints, sports team preference and preferred vehicle brand.
I'll take a hovertank (a la Hammer's Slammers) over a mech any day. Much more practical. A lower profile means it's harder to hit. It can get knocked around and it won't topple over. No knees that can be taken out with a single shot.
While all of you mech fanatics are rolling around on the ground like a octegenarian with a busted hip, I'll be safe and sound in my tank, busy putting you out of your misery.