A lot of us protested the passage of the bill at the time, knowing that its prohibitive length and ridiculously short consideration period guaranteed there was no effective review by Congress even if there could be "good" ideas in it. Not enough, and nobody was listening in October 2001, but enough to knock that second number down a bit (and that said, Russ Feingold was admittedly on his own in Congress). Still, as someone who was downtown during 9/11 and then spent seven years vigorously protesting that administration's policies, you're welcome to make that "cowards" comment to my face and see what it gets you. But what's truly appalling is not the initial passage of the bill during a time when the whole country was traumatized, but the subsequent extensions of what were originally provisions supposed to sunset in 2005. The current administration's Patriot Act extensions in 2011 sailed by the Senate 72-23, with no discernible partisan division and little outcry from the public. For those who follow civil liberties, the "most open and transparent administration in history" has turned out to be worse in many ways than the previous one, which at least pretended that its wholesale revocation of the 4th Amendment was provisional.
From a restaurant window on a downtown corner, I recently viewed the following:
A large Jeep pulled up to the red light, followed by an SUV. I didn't see the first driver from my angle, but the SUV had a young woman who was texting something while waiting at the light. As the light changed, the Jeep began to move. It stopped abruptly because a late car from the cross street sailed through the intersection. Apparently cued only by peripheral vision, the woman in the SUV put her foot on the accelerator – without raising her head, while continuing to text. The SUV plowed into the back of the Jeep at a healthy speed, crumpling its own entire front end dramatically (but oddly, not doing any apparent damage to the Jeep, which had one of those large tires strapped to its back that I guess served as a buffer). Both vehicles pulled around the corner of the restaurant I was watching from, and I got to see the insurance information exchange. I found it interesting that the woman continued texting the instant the exchange was over and she had phoned for help.
Nominally, I suppose this was a moving accident but as its instigation happened when the SUV's driver was texting while motionless at a red light, I'm more sympathetic to the above article's cop's "unlawful communications" legal rationale than I might be otherwise. Although from the linked article and legality aside, the cop still sounds like a classic paper-dispensing jerk.
[O]ver-educating the population makes nearly everyone poor.
There is a hell of a lot more value in an educated populace than can be put in dollars, even if one accepts the zero-sum premise you are outlining here. For starters, an educated population is much more likely to be a functioning civic population; that is, one that keeps its government under scrutiny and actually fulfills its end of the social contract rather than allowing the mindless pulling of a lever every four years to serve as a substitute for real governed consent.
That said, the employment value of being "educated" is becoming increasingly meaningless in a future where traditional vocational jobs that haven't yet been outsourced are being systematically eradicated by automation and the potential for AI-type programming to squash still more traditional "educated" work is growing. Cf. recent article in Mother Jones for a depressing analysis of the logical employment outcomes advanced AI could bring.
Do you have an exact attribution or context for that quote? Googling for about 10 minutes yielded a bunch of right-wing sites citing the "Associated Press", one or two "ABC", and one individual claiming to have seen it that day on CSpan, but no newspaper citations. Given the nature of the statement, I find the lack of the latter renders it pretty suspect and am honestly curious to know the original source. FWIW, Snopes has declared another quote from the same time period (1994) to be bogus.
Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary, has spent years explicitly pushing Rapiscan in airports. His security consulting agency includes a client that makes the machines.
Try watching "Up With Chris Hayes." You may like or dislike the "liberal bias," but his approach is factual and empirically driven, and the guest selection reflects that. The comparatively long intervals spent examining single U.S. policy topics may not match industry magazines or white papers for depth, but they're probably as close as current American television will ever get. IMHO, a large step up from usual morning fare (and a big leap from the ice-pick lobotomy entries offered on Fox and Friends).
I get a 70s vibe too, but slightly different. Automated plant growth and geometric domes? Silent Running. Now if they can add Huey, Dewey and Louie, they've got a winner.
The Infoworld article is pretty funny, and confirms what many have long assumed. However, while I'm just as anxious as anyone else to see earlier iterations of IE get their deserved due, a wider breakout shows something else:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-daily-20120101-20120402
In linked three-month period by browser version, notice that IE9 also has the same corresponding spikes (albeit smaller) on weekends. Possibly that reflects no active choice on part of home users who just use the default install (while corporate continues to play catch-up). But it might also represent a segment that simply continues to prefer IE (the "web-compliant" kind).
The first link (filament/coronal sphere event) is apparently a wrong link and not what the poster is referring to. Try the second link for a flat photo, third link for the SDO interactive camera page. I tried the AIA settings; it shows up in a lot of them. This may be a "standard" event (I have no clue one way or the other), but it's monstrously large; I'd love an explanation or link to similar solar event if it's not totally anomalous.
However, no request for fantasy would be complete without a hat-tip to Ballantine's early 70s series. These were not like the latter-day watered-down Tolkein formulaic series that seem to litter the shelves now, but were resurrected and republished older works (many English) from a time when that decidedly less poetic paradigm hadn't yet gelled. Many formative hours were spent rooting through used bookstores looking for paperbacks with the backwards/forwards B logo and the fabulous, seminal cover art. Some I enjoyed or that at least left an impression: HP Lovecraft's "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", any of the Lord Dunsanys, a few of the Lin Carters (don't remember the names offhand), Cabell's "The Wood Beyond the World", David Lindsay's highly odd metaphysical and unresolved "A Voyage to Arcturus", and Peter Beagle's "The Last Unicorn" (yeah, I went there, deal with it... and for that matter, toss on "A Fine and Private Place" although it's really off-topic here). Along similar lines, Jack Vance's Dying Earth series is fun. Hell, I think Ballantine actually put out a version of "Orlando Furioso"; that and Spenser's "Faerie Queene" ought to still have some eyeballs looking at them. If I recall correctly, all the Ballantines go well with expensive imported Krautrock vinyl for ambiance and, um, mood-altering enhancers. But for some reason, those details get a little fuzzy.
Does the public have an expectation of high production values, or does Hollywood just insist that's what they want? I think there is an unaddressed hunger for story-telling that is not being met by Hollywood at any level. Laugh at Bollywood's production values if you like but somehow they address that need without the Department of Defense-level budgeting required in the latest craptastic American action flick. Bowfinger on the topic of movie expense: "That's after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash, every movie cost $2,184."
Typical Slashdot readers are probably not aware of what Burden is actually notorious for in fine arts circles. As a relatively early performance artist back in the 70s, he had his hands nailed to a VW Beetle crucifixion-style. Apocryphal variants regarding this performance piece when I was in art school had him being fully nailed and driven around LA that way, which would certainly have upped the fun level had it only been true. (Just in case you might be wondering if his current interest in cars is in any way... obsessive.)
A very fat book about structure in nature. Thompson saw not only typed similarities of form in nature but observed mechanical and physical constraints that create those forms. Now over 90 years old but still fascinating. (Well, to me at least!)
How many shoppers does it take to change a culture?
Yes, there is a world in which this is reasonable. That's one containing staggering ecological crises and clueless consumers, aka ours. Think WWII: a great part of what happened in the U.S.'s four-year-push was due to propaganda. Those recycling drives may have produced some substantial amounts of tin, but at least as big a component was the underlying message: "All hands on deck." That message was synergistic, and it forced a lot of naysayers to pitch in (or at minimum get out of the way) who never would have done so in less desperate circumstances.
We have an "all hands on deck" situation now. Unless you can prove that soy-based inks are actually more deleterious than regular inks for reasons beyond the technical ones already given (fading, etc.), I'm happy to take that "feel good tripe" because it keeps the idea of "green" in the minds of people who are completely surrounded by corporate interests feeding them disinformation for short-term gain. We can both laugh at soy-ink efficacy later – if we survive long enough.
I sneered the same way about BYOB (bring your own bag) to the supermarket when that started, and now other countries are demonstrating that when it's made universal, in addition to actually having an effect, the civic dialog sparked by debate about bag tax laws actually raised consciousness of general environmental issues in people who never used to give a shit.
and those with a vested interested (the proclaimer of this discovery is the "Chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust"), Shakespeare's identity itself continues to be hotly debated because there is precious little _real_ evidence for the traditional candidate. (Harpers Magazine had a good full-length feature interviewing proponents of different theories ten years ago, and AFAIK none of them have changed their minds since then.) If, like me, you are one of those poor individuals believing the evidence of who he was is both inadequate and unsettled (see upthread snark re Marlowe and Bacon), a face attached to a tenuous familial attribute to the wrong person is not exciting.
I disagree (viscerally) with Joseph Sobran on political issues, but found the book he wrote suggesting Edward de Vere as Shakespeare to contain both a well-researched, logical consideration of the available _factual_ evidence (vanishingly small despite the volumes that have been written) and a fair argument for his candidate.
Basically, Stanley Wells is bypassing the argument as presettled, and given his position, who could blame him? For all that, given the dating and general provenance, the picture might actually _be_ of Shakespeare, but it ain't based on anything more factual than the several other portraits with sketchy attributions from the same time period.
Some may argue the only reason he gives to charity is as a tax dodge, but if that's really true why does he do things like this? If it were a mere tax dodge, then there's no reason he'd need to waste his time.
Bill Gates Sr. is known for his philanthropy, is co-chair of Jr. and Melinda's foundation, and co-wrote a treatise defending the estate tax entitled Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes. After the last twenty years of Microsoft's behavior I'm not at all convinced that Bill Gates Jr. shares his father's stated values, but the argument is possibly more plausible knowing it wouldn't be coming from nowhere.
It figures that the rare time that I actually have mod points intersects with the need to say something. I am a graphics professional who just purchased the late-model MacBook Pro when it first came out, so I fit the theoretical profile pretty well. Although I do retouch as part of daily workflow and occasional freelance, I'm not a high-end retoucher; my meat-and-potatoes comes from InDesign/Illustrator/Office (shudder).
No graphic artist in their right mind who uses a screen all day long would get a glossy one voluntarily, and that plus the previously discussed Firewire rationing gave me some headaches in decision-making. I remember struggling with glossy CRTs very well (custom films and covers, anyone?) and knew exactly what I was getting. In some ways, the result has been exactly what you'd think it would be: tilting the damn thing forward and back, turning off lights, looking for seats in cafes at 90 degrees to windows, wiping off the more-obvious keyboard artifacts of my (apparently very oily) fingers with the provided rag, etc.
On the other hand, I love it. Once the concessions are made and it's set up in the right environment, it's the sharpest, brightest laptop screen I've ever used. (This is my third Mac laptop). I pulled two 12+ hour days over the weekend making the fussiest kind of pixel and point tweaking, with _no_ significant eye strain. Everything is razor-sharp compared to my previous Powerbook, which is a real boon to older eyes.
I understand Mr. Galbraith's concerns as a photographer, but as a "regular" graphics person, even though I find the screen somewhat annoying I am usually am working in environments where the glare can be minimized and its other qualities (brightness, sharpness) outweigh the problem. The model's other features (rigidity, magnetic clasp, trackpad scroll options and gestures) make it my favorite laptop ever (knock on... glass).
Virtualize: install XP to whatever SP and update level you're happy with... inside VMWare Fusion or Parallels on an Intel Mac. Run your virtual machine full-screen. Enjoy watching the Mac's firewall slap down any virus attempts to reach the virtual machine. Make a backup copy when you've configured and tweaked the image to the exact way you like your apps and desktop, so that when XP does get fubarred for some other reason you can simply copy your files out of it and replace the whole thing with the backup image.
Disclaimer: I've been completely satisfied working with the Office XP suite this way but I don't have high demands. The only snags I can come up with are 1) the full-screen environment still isn't quite the same as the "real" thing (because the Mac menubar still pops up when I mouse to the top), and 2) if your specialized PC applications are also using special ports that have to be opened up on the Mac side, obviously you'll encounter the same virus vulnerabilities as with a real PC. (And of course Bootcamp is no help here because it turns the Mac into a "real" PC.)
Plus you have the automatic option of running Linux once you've virtualized. Plus you have a Mac.
Actually, I think Comcast's move may be a PR move in response to the Senate Commerce Committee, which is looking at "The Future of the Internet" today (in advance of the FCC hearing).
The Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing on the future of the Internet, and a big part of that equation is net neutrality. I know net neutrality is important to a lot of you here, but Senators haven't heard from you in a while on the issue, and I want to make sure we keep this front and center - it's that important....
We can't allow companies to pick and choose what companies they allow to access their networks, and we certainly can't depend on overwhelming political pressure on every decision to keep the networks open. This is not good for the future of the Internet and, frankly, it's not good for anyone who uses it either.
We need to have clarity on these rules. The value of innovation on the Internet is just too high to have it affected by these kinds of messes. From the economic value of the Internet activity to the social value of the new models of organization (like this blog), the free flow of information on the Internet is a vital part of this nation's future. That's John Kerry, specifically targeting Comcast as an example of what's wrong now and putting out an appeal to everyone to call their senators today, to let Congress know that they think net neutrality is an important issue. (You can read his full arguments at firedoglake or dKos if you're interested.) Agree? Tell them. Disagree? Today's the day. Please excuse formatting because I don't know how to post a proper link, but the Commerce Committee listing is here: http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=4c66f979-3001-490a-a985-5be63951adb7
There's a crying need for better privacy safeguards that reflect today's world.
Hmm, when it was terrorists, unwashed radicals, or America-haters, we didn't hear much from the business community about privacy. But after the NSA's little scheme was exposed, the incidental question of who else could the government be listening to is suddenly interesting. Could it be some Enron-redux with a new scam? Halliburton? GE? Suddenly one of the leading American business publications finds privacy an interesting topic, if only out of self-interest? Actually, no:
In the end, though, all the fuss is much ado about not very much -- at least for longtime watchers of NSA, an arm of the Pentagon created to dig up foreign intelligence.... [Nixon's bugging led] to some severe restrictions to ensure that NSA respects the privacy rights enshrined in the Constitution. Of course, anticipating that an occupant of the White House would claim such rights can be ignored during a war on terrorism was as unforeseeable as the tragedy of September 11.
The only unforeseeable thing is the number of times that canard is served to the public. The article concludes by offering a false dichotomy: should FISA be changed to allow data-mining by the NSA, or would Americans want "much stricter" limits on the NSA? Hey Otis, how about no data-mining? Is that good for you? Anyone who reads the Fourth Amendment might notice the part about "probable cause", but you won't find that in this article or in the current administration's rationales.
Like many others in graphics, I loved the program Quark in the old days (say, version 3.32 up to 4.1.1) but loathed the company. Nowadays there's no need to make any distinction, since 6 is such a non-starter. There are so many reasons to actively despise the company, all revolving around their contempt for their users. Some of my faves:
* Pioneered 40+ alphanumeric registration code printed as a single block in highly condensed type. No, it's not a big thing, but a great introduction to their general attitude.
* When the Mac moved from 68k to the PowerPC chip, companies started producing fat binaries of programs that worked on both kinds of machines. ALL of the major Mac companies did this... except Quark, which released a separately priced PPC-alone version.
* In 2002 then-head of Quark Fred Ebrahimi said at a Quark "executive summary" that "the Macintosh platform is shrinking" and anyone dissatisfied with Quark's Mac commitment should "switch to something else" although moving to InDesign would be "suicide."
* Dragged their feet on an OS X version until Steve Jobs could joke about "holdouts" and everybody knew who he was talking about. They were dead last transitioning to OS X, and the 6.0 upgrade had nothing new from 5 other than OS X compatibility.
* Killed their own user-to-user forum around the time of the 6 release (it's back now)
* If you run a small LAN and can't afford site licensing, you'll love Quark 6's paranoid active registration. Beyond the arcane installation, the rights are for a single machine, not single user! The registration is hardware-specific: if your hard drive crashes, or if you clone your system to a new drive, you have to reactivate the software. For our group, using automated activation didn't work for three of five upgrades, and I wound up on the phone begging Bangalore for activation numbers. I now slate an hour of frustration for each upgrade or reinstall of this program.
* Quark 6 still doesn't play nice with PDFs. PDFs are now the industry standard, but we've experienced various strangeness in Quark's direct PDF output and can't trust it for high-end jobs.
So why are people still using it? In our case, backlog of files. We have InDesign CS and are using it for new work and pickups. Quark would be in the dumpster except for old jobs. Going back now because they might mend their ways? Too little, too late.
My boss knows my long-time disgust with Microsoft, and once asked which I hated more, Microsoft or Quark? It stopped me cold, and I finally just had to say "Yes."
I wasn't familiar with all of PKD's work when I first read A Scanner Darkly (think I'd only read MITHC, Do Androids...) and was frankly amazed by it. It's what led me to the rest of his books. Dick was intimately familiar with drugs and refused to romanticize them. Somewhat oddly, his lacerating rationality gives ASD a large emotional heft. I doubt Partnership for a Drug-Free America will ever approve of it, but it's still a great anti-drug book (even if, like me, you believe drug use is not a "moral" issue).
I really, really hope that Philip Dick's family and the producers give this project the respect it deserves (the article suggests they might). This novel is in some ways very different from the rest of his work. For all the signature Dick themes present (layered realities, oppressive/unassailable authoritarian regime, pitch-black humor) this also reads as a painful, personal memoir. In his poignant but clear-eyed afterword, he lists friends who died or were otherwise affected by drug use. Dick himself called A Scanner Darkly his "masterpiece." It deserves more consideration than other movie translations of his novels have offered.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of us protested the passage of the bill at the time, knowing that its prohibitive length and ridiculously short consideration period guaranteed there was no effective review by Congress even if there could be "good" ideas in it. Not enough, and nobody was listening in October 2001, but enough to knock that second number down a bit (and that said, Russ Feingold was admittedly on his own in Congress). Still, as someone who was downtown during 9/11 and then spent seven years vigorously protesting that administration's policies, you're welcome to make that "cowards" comment to my face and see what it gets you. But what's truly appalling is not the initial passage of the bill during a time when the whole country was traumatized, but the subsequent extensions of what were originally provisions supposed to sunset in 2005. The current administration's Patriot Act extensions in 2011 sailed by the Senate 72-23, with no discernible partisan division and little outcry from the public. For those who follow civil liberties, the "most open and transparent administration in history" has turned out to be worse in many ways than the previous one, which at least pretended that its wholesale revocation of the 4th Amendment was provisional.
From a restaurant window on a downtown corner, I recently viewed the following:
A large Jeep pulled up to the red light, followed by an SUV. I didn't see the first driver from my angle, but the SUV had a young woman who was texting something while waiting at the light. As the light changed, the Jeep began to move. It stopped abruptly because a late car from the cross street sailed through the intersection. Apparently cued only by peripheral vision, the woman in the SUV put her foot on the accelerator – without raising her head, while continuing to text. The SUV plowed into the back of the Jeep at a healthy speed, crumpling its own entire front end dramatically (but oddly, not doing any apparent damage to the Jeep, which had one of those large tires strapped to its back that I guess served as a buffer). Both vehicles pulled around the corner of the restaurant I was watching from, and I got to see the insurance information exchange. I found it interesting that the woman continued texting the instant the exchange was over and she had phoned for help.
Nominally, I suppose this was a moving accident but as its instigation happened when the SUV's driver was texting while motionless at a red light, I'm more sympathetic to the above article's cop's "unlawful communications" legal rationale than I might be otherwise. Although from the linked article and legality aside, the cop still sounds like a classic paper-dispensing jerk.
[O]ver-educating the population makes nearly everyone poor.
There is a hell of a lot more value in an educated populace than can be put in dollars, even if one accepts the zero-sum premise you are outlining here. For starters, an educated population is much more likely to be a functioning civic population; that is, one that keeps its government under scrutiny and actually fulfills its end of the social contract rather than allowing the mindless pulling of a lever every four years to serve as a substitute for real governed consent.
That said, the employment value of being "educated" is becoming increasingly meaningless in a future where traditional vocational jobs that haven't yet been outsourced are being systematically eradicated by automation and the potential for AI-type programming to squash still more traditional "educated" work is growing. Cf. recent article in Mother Jones for a depressing analysis of the logical employment outcomes advanced AI could bring.
Do you have an exact attribution or context for that quote? Googling for about 10 minutes yielded a bunch of right-wing sites citing the "Associated Press", one or two "ABC", and one individual claiming to have seen it that day on CSpan, but no newspaper citations. Given the nature of the statement, I find the lack of the latter renders it pretty suspect and am honestly curious to know the original source. FWIW, Snopes has declared another quote from the same time period (1994) to be bogus.
Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary, has spent years explicitly pushing Rapiscan in airports. His security consulting agency includes a client that makes the machines.
Try watching "Up With Chris Hayes." You may like or dislike the "liberal bias," but his approach is factual and empirically driven, and the guest selection reflects that. The comparatively long intervals spent examining single U.S. policy topics may not match industry magazines or white papers for depth, but they're probably as close as current American television will ever get. IMHO, a large step up from usual morning fare (and a big leap from the ice-pick lobotomy entries offered on Fox and Friends).
I get a 70s vibe too, but slightly different. Automated plant growth and geometric domes? Silent Running. Now if they can add Huey, Dewey and Louie, they've got a winner.
The Infoworld article is pretty funny, and confirms what many have long assumed. However, while I'm just as anxious as anyone else to see earlier iterations of IE get their deserved due, a wider breakout shows something else: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-daily-20120101-20120402
In linked three-month period by browser version, notice that IE9 also has the same corresponding spikes (albeit smaller) on weekends. Possibly that reflects no active choice on part of home users who just use the default install (while corporate continues to play catch-up). But it might also represent a segment that simply continues to prefer IE (the "web-compliant" kind).
The first link (filament/coronal sphere event) is apparently a wrong link and not what the poster is referring to. Try the second link for a flat photo, third link for the SDO interactive camera page. I tried the AIA settings; it shows up in a lot of them. This may be a "standard" event (I have no clue one way or the other), but it's monstrously large; I'd love an explanation or link to similar solar event if it's not totally anomalous.
However, no request for fantasy would be complete without a hat-tip to Ballantine's early 70s series. These were not like the latter-day watered-down Tolkein formulaic series that seem to litter the shelves now, but were resurrected and republished older works (many English) from a time when that decidedly less poetic paradigm hadn't yet gelled. Many formative hours were spent rooting through used bookstores looking for paperbacks with the backwards/forwards B logo and the fabulous, seminal cover art. Some I enjoyed or that at least left an impression: HP Lovecraft's "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", any of the Lord Dunsanys, a few of the Lin Carters (don't remember the names offhand), Cabell's "The Wood Beyond the World", David Lindsay's highly odd metaphysical and unresolved "A Voyage to Arcturus", and Peter Beagle's "The Last Unicorn" (yeah, I went there, deal with it ... and for that matter, toss on "A Fine and Private Place" although it's really off-topic here). Along similar lines, Jack Vance's Dying Earth series is fun. Hell, I think Ballantine actually put out a version of "Orlando Furioso"; that and Spenser's "Faerie Queene" ought to still have some eyeballs looking at them. If I recall correctly, all the Ballantines go well with expensive imported Krautrock vinyl for ambiance and, um, mood-altering enhancers. But for some reason, those details get a little fuzzy.
Does the public have an expectation of high production values, or does Hollywood just insist that's what they want? I think there is an unaddressed hunger for story-telling that is not being met by Hollywood at any level. Laugh at Bollywood's production values if you like but somehow they address that need without the Department of Defense-level budgeting required in the latest craptastic American action flick. Bowfinger on the topic of movie expense: "That's after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash, every movie cost $2,184."
Typical Slashdot readers are probably not aware of what Burden is actually notorious for in fine arts circles. As a relatively early performance artist back in the 70s, he had his hands nailed to a VW Beetle crucifixion-style. Apocryphal variants regarding this performance piece when I was in art school had him being fully nailed and driven around LA that way, which would certainly have upped the fun level had it only been true. (Just in case you might be wondering if his current interest in cars is in any way... obsessive.)
"Oh, Fry, I love you more than the moon, the stars, the..."
[monotone] "POETIC IMAGE #36 NOT FOUND."
men ... and women of ... Iran! Allahu Akbar!
And not sure which of the two I'd rather face in battle: those are fierce women.
On Growth and Form.
A very fat book about structure in nature. Thompson saw not only typed similarities of form in nature but observed mechanical and physical constraints that create those forms. Now over 90 years old but still fascinating. (Well, to me at least!)
How many shoppers does it take to change a culture?
Yes, there is a world in which this is reasonable. That's one containing staggering ecological crises and clueless consumers, aka ours. Think WWII: a great part of what happened in the U.S.'s four-year-push was due to propaganda. Those recycling drives may have produced some substantial amounts of tin, but at least as big a component was the underlying message: "All hands on deck." That message was synergistic, and it forced a lot of naysayers to pitch in (or at minimum get out of the way) who never would have done so in less desperate circumstances.
We have an "all hands on deck" situation now. Unless you can prove that soy-based inks are actually more deleterious than regular inks for reasons beyond the technical ones already given (fading, etc.), I'm happy to take that "feel good tripe" because it keeps the idea of "green" in the minds of people who are completely surrounded by corporate interests feeding them disinformation for short-term gain. We can both laugh at soy-ink efficacy later – if we survive long enough.
I sneered the same way about BYOB (bring your own bag) to the supermarket when that started, and now other countries are demonstrating that when it's made universal, in addition to actually having an effect, the civic dialog sparked by debate about bag tax laws actually raised consciousness of general environmental issues in people who never used to give a shit.
and those with a vested interested (the proclaimer of this discovery is the "Chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust"), Shakespeare's identity itself continues to be hotly debated because there is precious little _real_ evidence for the traditional candidate. (Harpers Magazine had a good full-length feature interviewing proponents of different theories ten years ago, and AFAIK none of them have changed their minds since then.) If, like me, you are one of those poor individuals believing the evidence of who he was is both inadequate and unsettled (see upthread snark re Marlowe and Bacon), a face attached to a tenuous familial attribute to the wrong person is not exciting.
I disagree (viscerally) with Joseph Sobran on political issues, but found the book he wrote suggesting Edward de Vere as Shakespeare to contain both a well-researched, logical consideration of the available _factual_ evidence (vanishingly small despite the volumes that have been written) and a fair argument for his candidate.
Basically, Stanley Wells is bypassing the argument as presettled, and given his position, who could blame him? For all that, given the dating and general provenance, the picture might actually _be_ of Shakespeare, but it ain't based on anything more factual than the several other portraits with sketchy attributions from the same time period.
Some may argue the only reason he gives to charity is as a tax dodge, but if that's really true why does he do things like this? If it were a mere tax dodge, then there's no reason he'd need to waste his time.
Bill Gates Sr. is known for his philanthropy, is co-chair of Jr. and Melinda's foundation, and co-wrote a treatise defending the estate tax entitled Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes. After the last twenty years of Microsoft's behavior I'm not at all convinced that Bill Gates Jr. shares his father's stated values, but the argument is possibly more plausible knowing it wouldn't be coming from nowhere.
It figures that the rare time that I actually have mod points intersects with the need to say something. I am a graphics professional who just purchased the late-model MacBook Pro when it first came out, so I fit the theoretical profile pretty well. Although I do retouch as part of daily workflow and occasional freelance, I'm not a high-end retoucher; my meat-and-potatoes comes from InDesign/Illustrator/Office (shudder).
No graphic artist in their right mind who uses a screen all day long would get a glossy one voluntarily, and that plus the previously discussed Firewire rationing gave me some headaches in decision-making. I remember struggling with glossy CRTs very well (custom films and covers, anyone?) and knew exactly what I was getting. In some ways, the result has been exactly what you'd think it would be: tilting the damn thing forward and back, turning off lights, looking for seats in cafes at 90 degrees to windows, wiping off the more-obvious keyboard artifacts of my (apparently very oily) fingers with the provided rag, etc.
On the other hand, I love it. Once the concessions are made and it's set up in the right environment, it's the sharpest, brightest laptop screen I've ever used. (This is my third Mac laptop). I pulled two 12+ hour days over the weekend making the fussiest kind of pixel and point tweaking, with _no_ significant eye strain. Everything is razor-sharp compared to my previous Powerbook, which is a real boon to older eyes.
I understand Mr. Galbraith's concerns as a photographer, but as a "regular" graphics person, even though I find the screen somewhat annoying I am usually am working in environments where the glare can be minimized and its other qualities (brightness, sharpness) outweigh the problem. The model's other features (rigidity, magnetic clasp, trackpad scroll options and gestures) make it my favorite laptop ever (knock on... glass).
Virtualize: install XP to whatever SP and update level you're happy with... inside VMWare Fusion or Parallels on an Intel Mac. Run your virtual machine full-screen. Enjoy watching the Mac's firewall slap down any virus attempts to reach the virtual machine. Make a backup copy when you've configured and tweaked the image to the exact way you like your apps and desktop, so that when XP does get fubarred for some other reason you can simply copy your files out of it and replace the whole thing with the backup image.
Disclaimer: I've been completely satisfied working with the Office XP suite this way but I don't have high demands. The only snags I can come up with are 1) the full-screen environment still isn't quite the same as the "real" thing (because the Mac menubar still pops up when I mouse to the top), and 2) if your specialized PC applications are also using special ports that have to be opened up on the Mac side, obviously you'll encounter the same virus vulnerabilities as with a real PC. (And of course Bootcamp is no help here because it turns the Mac into a "real" PC.)
Plus you have the automatic option of running Linux once you've virtualized. Plus you have a Mac.
We can't allow companies to pick and choose what companies they allow to access their networks, and we certainly can't depend on overwhelming political pressure on every decision to keep the networks open. This is not good for the future of the Internet and, frankly, it's not good for anyone who uses it either.
We need to have clarity on these rules. The value of innovation on the Internet is just too high to have it affected by these kinds of messes. From the economic value of the Internet activity to the social value of the new models of organization (like this blog), the free flow of information on the Internet is a vital part of this nation's future. That's John Kerry, specifically targeting Comcast as an example of what's wrong now and putting out an appeal to everyone to call their senators today, to let Congress know that they think net neutrality is an important issue. (You can read his full arguments at firedoglake or dKos if you're interested.) Agree? Tell them. Disagree? Today's the day. Please excuse formatting because I don't know how to post a proper link, but the Commerce Committee listing is here: http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=4c66f979-3001-490a-a985-5be63951adb7
The only unforeseeable thing is the number of times that canard is served to the public. The article concludes by offering a false dichotomy: should FISA be changed to allow data-mining by the NSA, or would Americans want "much stricter" limits on the NSA? Hey Otis, how about no data-mining? Is that good for you? Anyone who reads the Fourth Amendment might notice the part about "probable cause", but you won't find that in this article or in the current administration's rationales.
That's smart. Aibo will be jealous if it's larger than his.
* Pioneered 40+ alphanumeric registration code printed as a single block in highly condensed type. No, it's not a big thing, but a great introduction to their general attitude.
* When the Mac moved from 68k to the PowerPC chip, companies started producing fat binaries of programs that worked on both kinds of machines. ALL of the major Mac companies did this... except Quark, which released a separately priced PPC-alone version.
* In 2002 then-head of Quark Fred Ebrahimi said at a Quark "executive summary" that "the Macintosh platform is shrinking" and anyone dissatisfied with Quark's Mac commitment should "switch to something else" although moving to InDesign would be "suicide."
* Dragged their feet on an OS X version until Steve Jobs could joke about "holdouts" and everybody knew who he was talking about. They were dead last transitioning to OS X, and the 6.0 upgrade had nothing new from 5 other than OS X compatibility.
* Killed their own user-to-user forum around the time of the 6 release (it's back now)
* If you run a small LAN and can't afford site licensing, you'll love Quark 6's paranoid active registration. Beyond the arcane installation, the rights are for a single machine, not single user! The registration is hardware-specific: if your hard drive crashes, or if you clone your system to a new drive, you have to reactivate the software. For our group, using automated activation didn't work for three of five upgrades, and I wound up on the phone begging Bangalore for activation numbers. I now slate an hour of frustration for each upgrade or reinstall of this program.
* Quark 6 still doesn't play nice with PDFs. PDFs are now the industry standard, but we've experienced various strangeness in Quark's direct PDF output and can't trust it for high-end jobs.
So why are people still using it? In our case, backlog of files. We have InDesign CS and are using it for new work and pickups. Quark would be in the dumpster except for old jobs. Going back now because they might mend their ways? Too little, too late.
My boss knows my long-time disgust with Microsoft, and once asked which I hated more, Microsoft or Quark? It stopped me cold, and I finally just had to say "Yes."
I wasn't familiar with all of PKD's work when I first read A Scanner Darkly (think I'd only read MITHC, Do Androids...) and was frankly amazed by it. It's what led me to the rest of his books. Dick was intimately familiar with drugs and refused to romanticize them. Somewhat oddly, his lacerating rationality gives ASD a large emotional heft. I doubt Partnership for a Drug-Free America will ever approve of it, but it's still a great anti-drug book (even if, like me, you believe drug use is not a "moral" issue).
I really, really hope that Philip Dick's family and the producers give this project the respect it deserves (the article suggests they might). This novel is in some ways very different from the rest of his work. For all the signature Dick themes present (layered realities, oppressive/unassailable authoritarian regime, pitch-black humor) this also reads as a painful, personal memoir. In his poignant but clear-eyed afterword, he lists friends who died or were otherwise affected by drug use. Dick himself called A Scanner Darkly his "masterpiece." It deserves more consideration than other movie translations of his novels have offered.