In reality clueless CEOs very frequently put random complex looking software boxes on the shelves in their offices. They think it gives them "street cred". It's much like the high end computer on their desk that never gets turned on.
Yes, yes. +5 funny maybe, but at least -2 not insiteful. He's "a semi-famous author of the written word" but if you have read any amount of his work you would probably agree that he's also deeply interested in ethics. Ethics and ethical behaviour are at the core of most of his writing. I don't always agree with his opinions, but he thnks about these things clearly and usually not unduly influenced by his Mormon worldview. The postulates he start with are not mine, but he reason well from them.
Point being, I'll grant him some expertise in this area. He's thought about these issues long and hard. I doubt that Mr. Coleman has thought long and hard on any subject of more depth than why Todd got all the punany and he didn't.
The RIAA may be Evil, but they are not stupid. They will not sue her. They will settle out of court in a hurry. Get the girl and her mother to sign the "I promise to be good" form and an "undisclosed cash payment" which in this case will be $1. Then they will continue to sift through their nets for someone that they can make a good PR case against. Someone who is easier to portray as a bad guy. Ideally someone who is not only sharing mp3s, but kiddie porn or somethin they can link with terrorism.
"the average IQ is about room temperature, but everyone's happy with their "futuristic" speeders (which are cars that do 30 mph), their television is vapid, and there's a small elite running the world - they're the only ones with a real IQ."
I don't need to read it - I'm living in it!
"they're the only ones with a real IQ." OK, except that part. That and I first read the Kornbluth story ~35 years ago. But other than that...
Actually the fine (cough) folks at NBC answered my question for me:
'Georgy Russell, Santa Clara, sells "Georgy For Governor" thong underwear'
God Bless America! And I missed an entire class of entrants, the "you know, my name is similar enough to x that dumbass Californians will probably get confused and vote for me":
Dan Feinstein, San Francisco, no relation to the Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Edward Thomas Kennedy, Trinity, not of that Kennedy family
Michael Jackson, Los Angeles, electrical engineer and not a pop music star
Richard J. Simmons, Los Angeles, not the weight-loss guru
The 1st 200 or so posts on this are various whines about Davis or the Recall process. Computer people should at least understand that the rules is the rules. Complaining about the "fairness" of the process makes as much sense at this point as complaining about the "fairness" of using using { and } as 'begin' and 'end' placeholders in C. The rules are laid out, now the game is to win.
Given that - what game are you trying to win? You know you aren't going to be elected Governor. Are you just hoping to get your issues addressed? Looking for a book deal? Did someone double dog dare you? Do you, perhaps, actually want to run for Governor 15 years years from now and are just laying a little very early groundwork? Do you just have an excess of zeal?
I can understand why most of the runners are in it. for the has been actors and such - $3500 is a chump change investment for the amoun of PR they generated. Some (Arianna) are obviously looking at writing a book. Arnold thinks he can actually win. Flynt probably sees it as paying $3500 to fart loudly and publicly at The Establisment.
Virtually everyone in law enforcement takes the statement " We feel strongly that everyone should comply with the requirements of all laws" as a basic part of the world view - much like a christian or jew would take the 10 commandments. Law breakers == evil, law obeyers == good.
I don't feel that way and doubt the majority of people feel that way if they really thought about it. The civil rights point that you mention is a good example, but it trickles down much further than that.
"Obey the law" is one half of a contractual agreement. Obey the law OR suffer the consequences. The law says I can't drive even slightly more than 65 MPH of the freeway OR I risk a speeding ticket. I don't attach any moral high ground to the person driving 64 MPH versus the person driving 66 MPH. If I drive 66 MPH I am accepting some (small) risk that I will get a ticket. If I drive 90 I am accepting a greater risk of a greater ticket. The sign says that the max fine for violating the HOV lane is $272. I can imagine cases where I would be more than willing to pay that fine if it means being on time to a very critical appointment.
Moral Relativism? Probably, but even taken to extremes it works for me. If I were a religious zealot that gunned down a doctor that performs abortions and kill him I would be accepting the virtual certainty that I would be arrested, convicted of 1st degree murder and put to death. To the zealot perhaps that is a perfectly acceptable price to pay.
If you don't need forward bases, you don't need allies. America becomes the uncontested ruler of the entire world. We retire into a "fortress America" that becomes more decadent, insular, despotic and xenophobic with every passing year. Eventually our empire, like all empires, falls. In the eyes of the current administration all but the last are Good Things and the end will be too far in the future for them to care about.
He didn't need to say it - he did it. He took a processor that could address 1MB and chopped 384k off the top for hardware RAM/ROM use. To this he added an operating system that couldn't address non contiguous memory addresses. It was his design decision and he needs to get over it.
It could have been done other ways and the implicit assumption in the design decision is that 640K is all anyone will ever need.
In California the allowed "Special Clean Fuel" are only all electric cars or other "zero emission". Hybrids are not allowed. Add to that he fact that all electric or other "zero emissions" cars no longer available to buy or lease - and that exemption is dead. Maybe if there is ever a fuel cell vehicle available it would count.
E-rate discounts are the funding they get collected from the taxes that you and I pay on phone service. Without that funding they wouldn't have Internet access in any but the richest communities. If they opt out of the program they not only lose the funding, but they have to repay the fed for any and all funding they have received == bankrupcy.
Are these the only federal funds that libraries receive? I don't think so. I think they get Title 1 funding in poor areas, but I'm not positive. I recall reading somewhere that this virally attached to other sources of funding as well. I don't have a specific citation though.
My congrescritter is a staunch neocon with a brain full of porridge in a safe district that has record companies and movie studios in it. Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon. A complete tool. He cares less than nothing what I or anyones else without a wagonload of dollars thinks. All I can do is continue to support and vote for anything with a pulse that runs against him, but it's a very safe seat.
" It does not ban anything, it simply funds certain libraries who agree to certain rules."
Not exactly. It makes this a contingency in order to receive existing federal library funds. It's not some new pile of $$ that has been allocated to libraries that will implement filters. If you don't implement filters you will lose all federal funding $$.
Kennedy, Breyer opinion was that the filter requirement was constitutional as long as library patrons (adult ones I assume) could easily have the blocker turned off for their Internet session.
In the real world, yes you do. This is simply because the goal is not to block these sites, it's not to save children from the Internet Pedophile, etc. The purpose is to show a "good faith effort" that you have tried to do that. If some good christian mommy complains to the library that their darling was exposed to witchcraft and demonology (a Harry Potter site say) and threatens to sue the library - they will be safe as long as a court decides that they made that good faith effort (the library was not negligent).
You just point to the blocking software company and tell the mommies to send the URL to them. Once you are no longer using the default block list - you are taking that respponsibility onto yourself. The library is now much more vulnerable to suits.
Same goes for corporations and their block software. They are more likely to get hit with a sexual harrasment suit (creating a hostile work environment), but the rationale is the same - don't change the default block list
We've been steeped in all these 19th century concepts of art that we don't realize that most art has been made by normal people that are just trying to get a job done. The idea that art is only created by tortured souls suffering and pondering the meaning of the universe is as silly as the comment a bit further down that if it isn't made from the artists feces it isn't art.
Trash novels, cheap sci-fi and pseudo philosophy? Sounds like most of the world's religious books to me - and you know how much "art" those have spawned.
"Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world."
And they were right - they did. Not then, and not in the laser death ray way they thought back then, but now. I read a compelling article a while back (probably here) that proposed that the tech boom of the 90's was not the result of computer, the Internet or anything else. It was about lasers becomming cheap enough to be put in everything. Lasers are in millions of things. We don't even think about them - CD, DVD, fibre networks, SP/DIF..etc.
The transformations don't happen until the price point comes down. Nanotech is more like the way people think about the Internet - it starts inexspensivley from the get go (wouldn't have without those cheap lasers though). Once the first practical molecular assemblers are created (assuming they can be) it will boom very very quickly.
*They* will certainly care about a hijacked proxy achiving account numbers and sniffing passwords. Now, when they call your ISP - I bet they would take immediate notice.
"I really wish the so-called "environmentalists" would stick to actually doing something to help the environment, like supporting lumbering (since they will replant the trees)"
They cut down a diverse woodland. They replant with monoclonal trees that will be quick/easy to harvest next time. It's a tree farm, not a forest. It's probably better than clear cutting, but not much.
There already is one. It was made as a documentary, I think. It's extremely funny - if you liked Bunuel's "The Land Without Bread" or "Spinal Tap" check it out.
"And that is the scenario that worries British aquarium enthusiasts. 'One idea being explored is to add genes - taken from cold water fish - that will allow tropical fish to live in unheated aquarium,' said Derek Lambert, editor of Today's Fishkeeper. 'Just imagine what would happen if they got released. You could end up with strange coloured GM tropical fish in our waters.'"
In the context of these glow in the dark fish this seems like nonsense. They would be at a huge competitive disatvantage and wouldn't last a week. May as well have the glow spell out EAT ME.
Sure, it's a general consideration but not a very big one. In most cases it would be about as likely as someone's chihuahuas getting loose and displacing the timber wolf population....
"on average, the human ear can hear up to the 22khz-ish (25khz or so for gifted people) range"
It's no gift, mate. There's not much up there that you want to hear. UV light fixtures, misc machinery noises. Difference tones from student string players that make a high school orchestra truly painful to experience. There was a dept. store when I was a kid that I literally couldn't enter. Something in the escalator machines screeched really loudly and since they couldn't hear it they never fixed it.
I got a wicked ear infection in my 20s that wiped most of the extra high frequency hearing. It's now more the normal 17khz range that most people have - and I don't really miss it.
Re:What the CIA needs:
on
IT at the CIA
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Or to use a more modern example - Iraq. How many WMD have been found there? None. So either someone's lying to the American people or the CIA's intello is faulty."
Actually the CIA had been telling the executive branch for a long time that Iraq didn't have any WMD, or at least not any significant weapons stockpile. They got so sick of hearing such "unpatriotic" talk in the white house that they stopped listening to the CIA a couple of years ago. Rumsfeld and Cheney run their own little "mini CIA" out of the DOD that tells them what they want to hear. CIA intel is largely ignored.
Slashdot Mirror
In reality clueless CEOs very frequently put random complex looking software boxes on the shelves in their offices. They think it gives them "street cred". It's much like the high end computer on their desk that never gets turned on.
Yes, yes. +5 funny maybe, but at least -2 not insiteful. He's "a semi-famous author of the written word" but if you have read any amount of his work you would probably agree that he's also deeply interested in ethics. Ethics and ethical behaviour are at the core of most of his writing. I don't always agree with his opinions, but he thnks about these things clearly and usually not unduly influenced by his Mormon worldview. The postulates he start with are not mine, but he reason well from them.
Point being, I'll grant him some expertise in this area. He's thought about these issues long and hard. I doubt that Mr. Coleman has thought long and hard on any subject of more depth than why Todd got all the punany and he didn't.
The RIAA may be Evil, but they are not stupid. They will not sue her. They will settle out of court in a hurry. Get the girl and her mother to sign the "I promise to be good" form and an "undisclosed cash payment" which in this case will be $1. Then they will continue to sift through their nets for someone that they can make a good PR case against. Someone who is easier to portray as a bad guy. Ideally someone who is not only sharing mp3s, but kiddie porn or somethin they can link with terrorism.
"the average IQ is about room temperature, but everyone's happy with their "futuristic" speeders (which are cars that do 30 mph), their television is vapid, and there's a small elite running the world - they're the only ones with a real IQ."
I don't need to read it - I'm living in it!
"they're the only ones with a real IQ."
OK, except that part. That and I first read the Kornbluth story ~35 years ago. But other than that...
I thought immediately of Card, but her too.
Actually the fine (cough) folks at NBC answered my question for me:
'Georgy Russell, Santa Clara, sells "Georgy For Governor" thong underwear'
God Bless America! And I missed an entire class of entrants, the "you know, my name is similar enough to x that dumbass Californians will probably get confused and vote for me":
Dan Feinstein, San Francisco, no relation to the Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Edward Thomas Kennedy, Trinity, not of that Kennedy family
Michael Jackson, Los Angeles, electrical engineer and not a pop music star
Richard J. Simmons, Los Angeles, not the weight-loss guru
The 1st 200 or so posts on this are various whines about Davis or the Recall process. Computer people should at least understand that the rules is the rules. Complaining about the "fairness" of the process makes as much sense at this point as complaining about the "fairness" of using using { and } as 'begin' and 'end' placeholders in C. The rules are laid out, now the game is to win.
Given that - what game are you trying to win? You know you aren't going to be elected Governor. Are you just hoping to get your issues addressed? Looking for a book deal? Did someone double dog dare you? Do you, perhaps, actually want to run for Governor 15 years years from now and are just laying a little very early groundwork? Do you just have an excess of zeal?
I can understand why most of the runners are in it. for the has been actors and such - $3500 is a chump change investment for the amoun of PR they generated. Some (Arianna) are obviously looking at writing a book. Arnold thinks he can actually win. Flynt probably sees it as paying $3500 to fart loudly and publicly at The Establisment.
Whay are you in this race?
Virtually everyone in law enforcement takes the statement " We feel strongly that everyone should comply with the requirements of all laws" as a basic part of the world view - much like a christian or jew would take the 10 commandments. Law breakers == evil, law obeyers == good.
I don't feel that way and doubt the majority of people feel that way if they really thought about it. The civil rights point that you mention is a good example, but it trickles down much further than that.
"Obey the law" is one half of a contractual agreement. Obey the law OR suffer the consequences. The law says I can't drive even slightly more than 65 MPH of the freeway OR I risk a speeding ticket. I don't attach any moral high ground to the person driving 64 MPH versus the person driving 66 MPH. If I drive 66 MPH I am accepting some (small) risk that I will get a ticket. If I drive 90 I am accepting a greater risk of a greater ticket. The sign says that the max fine for violating the HOV lane is $272. I can imagine cases where I would be more than willing to pay that fine if it means being on time to a very critical appointment.
Moral Relativism? Probably, but even taken to extremes it works for me. If I were a religious zealot that gunned down a doctor that performs abortions and kill him I would be accepting the virtual certainty that I would be arrested, convicted of 1st degree murder and put to death. To the zealot perhaps that is a perfectly acceptable price to pay.
If you don't need forward bases, you don't need allies. America becomes the uncontested ruler of the entire world. We retire into a "fortress America" that becomes more decadent, insular, despotic and xenophobic with every passing year. Eventually our empire, like all empires, falls. In the eyes of the current administration all but the last are Good Things and the end will be too far in the future for them to care about.
"Yeah and Bill definitely said that."
He didn't need to say it - he did it. He took a processor that could address 1MB and chopped 384k off the top for hardware RAM/ROM use. To this he added an operating system that couldn't address non contiguous memory addresses. It was his design decision and he needs to get over it.
It could have been done other ways and the implicit assumption in the design decision is that 640K is all anyone will ever need.
In California the allowed "Special Clean Fuel" are only all electric cars or other "zero emission". Hybrids are not allowed. Add to that he fact that all electric or other "zero emissions" cars no longer available to buy or lease - and that exemption is dead. Maybe if there is ever a fuel cell vehicle available it would count.
E-rate discounts are the funding they get collected from the taxes that you and I pay on phone service. Without that funding they wouldn't have Internet access in any but the richest communities. If they opt out of the program they not only lose the funding, but they have to repay the fed for any and all funding they have received == bankrupcy.
Are these the only federal funds that libraries receive? I don't think so. I think they get Title 1 funding in poor areas, but I'm not positive. I recall reading somewhere that this virally attached to other sources of funding as well. I don't have a specific citation though.
My congrescritter is a staunch neocon with a brain full of porridge in a safe district that has record companies and movie studios in it. Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon. A complete tool. He cares less than nothing what I or anyones else without a wagonload of dollars thinks. All I can do is continue to support and vote for anything with a pulse that runs against him, but it's a very safe seat.
" It does not ban anything, it simply funds certain libraries who agree to certain rules."
Not exactly. It makes this a contingency in order to receive existing federal library funds. It's not some new pile of $$ that has been allocated to libraries that will implement filters. If you don't implement filters you will lose all federal funding $$.
Kennedy, Breyer opinion was that the filter requirement was constitutional as long as library patrons (adult ones I assume) could easily have the blocker turned off for their Internet session.
"YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE THE DEFAULT BLOCK LIST!"
In the real world, yes you do. This is simply because the goal is not to block these sites, it's not to save children from the Internet Pedophile, etc. The purpose is to show a "good faith effort" that you have tried to do that. If some good christian mommy complains to the library that their darling was exposed to witchcraft and demonology (a Harry Potter site say) and threatens to sue the library - they will be safe as long as a court decides that they made that good faith effort (the library was not negligent).
You just point to the blocking software company and tell the mommies to send the URL to them. Once you are no longer using the default block list - you are taking that respponsibility onto yourself. The library is now much more vulnerable to suits.
Same goes for corporations and their block software. They are more likely to get hit with a sexual harrasment suit (creating a hostile work environment), but the rationale is the same - don't change the default block list
nope. Reverse engineering net nanny tools/blockers is one of the specific exemptions from the DMCA.
We've been steeped in all these 19th century concepts of art that we don't realize that most art has been made by normal people that are just trying to get a job done. The idea that art is only created by tortured souls suffering and pondering the meaning of the universe is as silly as the comment a bit further down that if it isn't made from the artists feces it isn't art.
Trash novels, cheap sci-fi and pseudo philosophy? Sounds like most of the world's religious books to me - and you know how much "art" those have spawned.
"Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world."
And they were right - they did. Not then, and not in the laser death ray way they thought back then, but now. I read a compelling article a while back (probably here) that proposed that the tech boom of the 90's was not the result of computer, the Internet or anything else. It was about lasers becomming cheap enough to be put in everything. Lasers are in millions of things. We don't even think about them - CD, DVD, fibre networks, SP/DIF..etc.
The transformations don't happen until the price point comes down. Nanotech is more like the way people think about the Internet - it starts inexspensivley from the get go (wouldn't have without those cheap lasers though). Once the first practical molecular assemblers are created (assuming they can be) it will boom very very quickly.
*They* will certainly care about a hijacked proxy achiving account numbers and sniffing passwords. Now, when they call your ISP - I bet they would take immediate notice.
"I really wish the so-called "environmentalists" would stick to actually doing something to help the environment, like supporting lumbering (since they will replant the trees)"
They cut down a diverse woodland. They replant with monoclonal trees that will be quick/easy to harvest next time. It's a tree farm, not a forest. It's probably better than clear cutting, but not much.
There already is one. It was made as a documentary, I think. It's extremely funny - if you liked Bunuel's "The Land Without Bread" or "Spinal Tap" check it out.
From the article
"And that is the scenario that worries British aquarium enthusiasts. 'One idea being explored is to add genes - taken from cold water fish - that will allow tropical fish to live in unheated aquarium,' said Derek Lambert, editor of Today's Fishkeeper. 'Just imagine what would happen if they got released. You could end up with strange coloured GM tropical fish in our waters.'"
In the context of these glow in the dark fish this seems like nonsense. They would be at a huge competitive disatvantage and wouldn't last a week. May as well have the glow spell out EAT ME.
Sure, it's a general consideration but not a very big one. In most cases it would be about as likely as someone's chihuahuas getting loose and displacing the timber wolf population....
"on average, the human ear can hear up to the 22khz-ish (25khz or so for gifted people) range"
It's no gift, mate. There's not much up there that you want to hear. UV light fixtures, misc machinery noises. Difference tones from student string players that make a high school orchestra truly painful to experience. There was a dept. store when I was a kid that I literally couldn't enter. Something in the escalator machines screeched really loudly and since they couldn't hear it they never fixed it.
I got a wicked ear infection in my 20s that wiped most of the extra high frequency hearing. It's now more the normal 17khz range that most people have - and I don't really miss it.
"Or to use a more modern example - Iraq. How many WMD have been found there? None. So either someone's lying to the American people or the CIA's intello is faulty."
Actually the CIA had been telling the executive branch for a long time that Iraq didn't have any WMD, or at least not any significant weapons stockpile. They got so sick of hearing such "unpatriotic" talk in the white house that they stopped listening to the CIA a couple of years ago. Rumsfeld and Cheney run their own little "mini CIA" out of the DOD that tells them what they want to hear. CIA intel is largely ignored.