This articles lead paragraph sets an excellent precedent for slashdot political article design.
It has: 1) A new issue 2) It's Supporters 3) Links to the supporter's conflict-of-interest funding sources 4) Links to their past conflict-of-interest track records.
This is the model to follow. If nothing else, if all politic-journalism made issues and $$$ this clear, politicians might start get nervous and represent their constituents again, instead of just representing their wallets.
Trying hard to get through to the site, as new/wacky interfaces are a great fetish. And the Japanese are doubly good with coming up with new and strange ways to communicate with your computer.
What are some of the best / goofiest interfaces that you have for your pc/game systems?
So far, I've collected (and love):
The Taiko Drum Controller ( for PS2s "Taiko No Tatsujin" )
The Fishing Reel Controller ( for Dreamcast's Sega Bass Fishing / marine Fishing )
The Ultrasonic Maraccas Controller ( for Dreamcast's "Samba De Amigo" )
and of course, dance pads, guns...
What else is out there that you can get your hands on?
It's silly to think that the only/best way to talk to your machine is the qwerty/mouse.
Even if the local laws are easily overruled by federal mandates, a city-wide and state-wide act of civil disobedience sends a powerful message to the elected federal officials.
Keep in mind, most national senate/house members are profoundly out of touch with the communities they are supposed to represent. If, all of a sudden, the majority of your constituents demonstrate that they do not want the oppressive law you enacted to remain on the books, you might consider proposing a revocation, if you wish to be re-elected.
This is important. Even though the ill-concieved act was passed by a fear/power mad congress, it's critical to continue to publicly voice opposition to it, for as long as it takes to return the American fed to a sane level of checks and balance of power. If you are a freedom-loving American, it is your patriotic duty to publicly protest this foolish act before it does significant harm to our country and our culture.
But in a free and Democratic society, it is us. It had better be us. If not us, then the democracy will fail.
This is an excellent step towards accountability in profoundly corrupt times. Another site that can help you "Follow the Money" is http://www.opensecrets.org
To find out where your tax billions are going, try searching on: Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown & Root on either and both sites.
It's not surprising when you think about how much the price gap between laptops and comparably equipped desktops (with a 15"-17" monitor) cost.
As a recent p-4 2.4ghz with 15" screen laptop only runs about $1100, a comparable desktop (retail) runs close to $1000, why not get it in a portable package?
( OK, a hardcore gamer who wants to swap in a $400 graphics card would not want this... But somtimes you just need to use a machine to accomplish work, learn, communicate, etc. honest...)
What sort of mechanism/design could they be using to make an uncopyable single-use token to give to the content sites?
A Single-Use keypair? A cookie could be easily intercepted and copied/published. Passwords, etc. as well.
It'd be an interesting gambit if this took off. For better or for worse ( Imagine your online bank charging you $.25 every time you ask them a question... )
This sort of thing will continue unchecked until a law can be written stating that an individual owns the exclusive rights to their personal data and information, and may lease or sell a portion of those to a company only by their explicit consent.
Think of the industry that could result from that! A consumer that made a dime, or a dollar even!, every time some company wanted to use his name in a database, would be a happy and informed consumer indeed.
-is that it at least keeps a record of which police are asking for what on whom. In the event of inevitable abuse of a system, at least there is a paper trail leading back to the abuser.
A court order can be had with nothing more than a phone call, and are very rarely ever refused.
Why, except for a burning desire for a police-state, would anyone "gladly" open all records to random police inspections? What would motivate a profit-driven company to do this?
I talked to a friend who designed part of the Danger's software, and the closed nature of the system is pretty much how Danger makes money, unfortunately.
Danger's real business is the online PIM / account mmangement software fees ( it recieved mostly from t-mobile. ) The phone hardware was only designed as a reference platform to sell the online services.
So, bad news, but not that surprising. It was envisioned as a closed platform from the beginning. Now the market share is too small to support lotsa nifty pay services.
Here's to hoping someone learns from their mistakes!
Even though it's hard to swallow having the government dictate the operating conditions of a company (and include / disavow specific portions and products ) it's important to remember that this is/was a *penalty* for serious antitrust/anticometitive behavior.
It was a light "slap on the wrist that doesnt really cost much of anything" penalty too.
Guilt without punishment, well, isn't going to hinder them from this sort of behavior in the future is it.
I guess there is always justice for those that can afford it.
No sense in bemoaning a company using a bad law to their advantage. Sure, nobody likes a bully. And that's all this is. But prolonged moaning about the problem won't help.
What we need to do as consumers is to either:
a) Get a poorly written / overly zealous set of laws changed
or
b) Work on convincing the fools at the RIAA that fan-driven file sharing leads to more people discovering their artists, catalog, similar interests, and generates additional CD sales.
Now that MS is dropping IE support for Mac entirely, and has never offered anything workable for linux,.net component interoperability issues for non-windows systems should be a glaring problem for enterprise deployment.
I mean, if you're using.net for what.net does best (prebuilt rapid deploy compenents), there are *lots* of.net components that just won't work without ie.
Java isn't a perfect language, but at least it supports linux, mac, solaris, atari, commodore, ti-99, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
For the referrence:
(The goofiest flash jet-bike cartoon ever)
http://atomo.com/stuntmasters
"Lemme tell ya hank, it's all about guts... The bugs in your teeth, the wind in your face.... Bugs and wind and guts....yup."
Kremvax
This articles lead paragraph sets an excellent precedent for slashdot political article design.
It has:
1) A new issue
2) It's Supporters
3) Links to the supporter's conflict-of-interest funding sources
4) Links to their past conflict-of-interest track records.
This is the model to follow. If nothing else, if all politic-journalism made issues and $$$ this clear, politicians might start get nervous and represent their constituents again, instead of just representing their wallets.
From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,
Kremvax
Trying hard to get through to the site, as new/wacky interfaces are a great fetish. And the Japanese are doubly good with coming up with new and strange ways to communicate with your computer.
What are some of the best / goofiest interfaces that you have for your pc/game systems?
So far, I've collected (and love):
The Taiko Drum Controller ( for PS2s "Taiko No Tatsujin" )
The Fishing Reel Controller ( for Dreamcast's Sega Bass Fishing / marine Fishing )
The Ultrasonic Maraccas Controller ( for Dreamcast's "Samba De Amigo" )
and of course, dance pads, guns...
What else is out there that you can get your hands on?
It's silly to think that the only/best way to talk to your machine is the qwerty/mouse.
Kremvax
Even if the local laws are easily overruled by federal mandates, a city-wide and state-wide act of civil disobedience sends a powerful message to the elected federal officials.
Keep in mind, most national senate/house members are profoundly out of touch with the communities they are supposed to represent. If, all of a sudden, the majority of your constituents demonstrate that they do not want the oppressive law you enacted to remain on the books, you might consider proposing a revocation, if you wish to be re-elected.
This is important. Even though the ill-concieved act was passed by a fear/power mad congress, it's critical to continue to publicly voice opposition to it, for as long as it takes to return the American fed to a sane level of checks and balance of power. If you are a freedom-loving American, it is your patriotic duty to publicly protest this foolish act before it does significant harm to our country and our culture.
Kremvax - Citizen, Patriot.
Well, in the Alan Moore Book it was Rorschach.
But in a free and Democratic society, it is us.
It had better be us. If not us, then the democracy will fail.
This is an excellent step towards accountability in profoundly corrupt times. Another site that can help you "Follow the Money" is http://www.opensecrets.org
To find out where your tax billions are going, try searching on: Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown & Root on either and both sites.
Kremvax
It's not surprising when you think about how much the price gap between laptops and comparably equipped desktops (with a 15"-17" monitor) cost.
As a recent p-4 2.4ghz with 15" screen laptop only runs about $1100, a comparable desktop (retail) runs close to $1000, why not get it in a portable package?
( OK, a hardcore gamer who wants to swap in a $400 graphics card would not want this... But somtimes you just need to use a machine to accomplish work, learn, communicate, etc. honest...)
Kremvax
What sort of mechanism /design could they be using to make an uncopyable single-use token to give to the content sites?
A Single-Use keypair? A cookie could be easily intercepted and copied/published. Passwords, etc. as well.
It'd be an interesting gambit if this took off. For better or for worse ( Imagine your online bank charging you $.25 every time you ask them a question... )
Kremvax...
I thought they represented big-oil on capitol hill!
Kremvax
This sort of thing will continue unchecked until a law can be written stating that an individual owns the exclusive rights to their personal data and information, and may lease or sell a portion of those to a company only by their explicit consent.
Think of the industry that could result from that! A consumer that made a dime, or a dollar even!, every time some company wanted to use his name in a database, would be a happy and informed consumer indeed.
Kremvax - lifelong consumer of goods and services
-is that it at least keeps a record of which police are asking for what on whom. In the event of inevitable abuse of a system, at least there is a paper trail leading back to the abuser.
A court order can be had with nothing more than a phone call, and are very rarely ever refused.
Why, except for a burning desire for a police-state, would anyone "gladly" open all records to random police inspections? What would motivate a profit-driven company to do this?
Kremvax
- Police States are Bad for Business!
"They've already The Biggest Step "
-- Of course it's more than a little embarrasing to laud China with my own Engrish Headline....
Kremvax
which is, to quoute Dr. Strangelove:
"In order to build such a device, you must first have the will to do so."
They do.
The leaders of a very shame/reputation-conscious society have committed to some very bold statements about technology and progress. Good for them!
For all our wealth and WMD's, it's more than the US has been willing to ventur in decades.
Kremvax
I talked to a friend who designed part of the Danger's software, and the closed nature of the system is pretty much how Danger makes money, unfortunately.
Danger's real business is the online PIM / account mmangement software fees ( it recieved mostly from t-mobile. ) The phone hardware was only designed as a reference platform to sell the online services.
So, bad news, but not that surprising. It was envisioned as a closed platform from the beginning. Now the market share is too small to support lotsa nifty pay services.
Here's to hoping someone learns from their mistakes!
Kremvax
Everything but wifi and GPS....
Which lends itself to a tough choice..
The new palm/Garmin iQue 3600 has palm os, integrated GPS, mp3 player, etc... And should be able to chew on an sd-wifi card
And Amazon is taking pre-orders now!
What a fantastic year, just to have choices like that though.
Kremvax
Even though it's hard to swallow having the government dictate the operating conditions of a company (and include / disavow specific portions and products ) it's important to remember that this is/was a *penalty* for serious antitrust/anticometitive behavior.
It was a light "slap on the wrist that doesnt really cost much of anything" penalty too.
Guilt without punishment, well, isn't going to hinder them from this sort of behavior in the future is it.
I guess there is always justice for those that can afford it.
Kremvax
No sense in bemoaning a company using a bad law to their advantage. Sure, nobody likes a bully. And that's all this is. But prolonged moaning about the problem won't help.
What we need to do as consumers is to either:
a) Get a poorly written / overly zealous set of laws changed
or
b) Work on convincing the fools at the RIAA that fan-driven file sharing leads to more people discovering their artists, catalog, similar interests, and generates additional CD sales.
If it wasn't for spam I never would've gotten hooked up with that excellent Nigerian thing...
It's coming together now, any day now....
Kremvax
I mean, if you're using
Java isn't a perfect language, but at least it supports linux, mac, solaris, atari, commodore, ti-99, etc.
Does anyone have a link to the new X11 support features, version, description, etc? Much obliged, Kremvax
When I was a boy...
Well, back in college,
You could sync 3 computers running doom and get the same fine looking effect.
These kids today with their 15 monitors, and their automatic weapons and such....
Kremvax