I've seen things about Watergate, and most of the dirty tricks I've heard of the Nixon crew pulling, I get. The guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers is seeing a shrink? Let's figure out how crazy and try to use it to our advantage.
But I don't get Watergate. The phone they should've been bugging, had it been political, was on the other side of the room. The best theory I've seen is that John Dean's SO was a high-priced call girl, being pimped out of that office, with that phone being the contact phone. I can't remember the source, but it was one of those "Everything's a conspiracy" books, so I don't hold that to be as factual as a Schwartzian Transform, but as I said, that is the only explanation that makes sense to me. Both sides being in bed together. Literally. Minor political players using Constitution-bending power for personal reasons and it going bad for those above them. That's drama.
I interned in DC one summer for an environmental group, and one of the first things I was asked to do was get an internal phonebook for the Department of the Interior. I got it. It took me playing the clueless intern card a little, but I got it. I believe my boss used it to try to shake loose whistleblowers on a minor political appointee, who, last I heard, was escorted out by security on his last day there. Looking back and thinking about it, I wonder if that's the open Windows share of 1992.
Entrapment is a law thing, only coming to play when law enforcement is involved. If I'm a cop pretending to be a killer, and I come to you saying "Give me a couple grand and I'll kill your boss", there's nothing to say that you'd have tried to have your boss killed if it wasn't for me asking, and I have thus brought you into a felony you wouldn't have otherwise committed.
Then again, I Ain't A Lawyer. Mileage Varies. Don't Taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Italy has one of those. It has had a change of government each year since the end of the Second World War. I think I'd rather have something a bit more stable.
I'm sitting here at work, doing some minor coding with ASP and nursemaiding a system with many heisenbugs, thinking "What am I doing to contribute?" Should I just die, too?
Re:What about ads you can only see here?
on
10 Ads The US Won't See
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· Score: 2, Informative
The best commercial is one that comes off as news to you. Not "presents itself as news", but comes off as news.
I was told this by a journalism prof, thought it was bullshit, then picked up a copy of Maximum Rock'n'Roll, saw that there was a new Fugazi album coming out (because Dischord put in an ad to tell me) and I was enlightened.
It could just be me ....
on
CNet on WinFS
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· Score: 1
But it sounds like a Windows Explorer replacement rather than a significant change. Of course, I got sick of the buzzwords and lack of specifics. Bolting a rdb on the side of a file system? Be did that and backed off, didn't they?
We understand it - we just don't think it's helpful (in the sense of constructive) at all.
Pomo's don't want to be constructive. They're into deconstruction, which is not to be confused with reverse engineering. The point of reverse engineering is to find out how something works so you can make use of it. Deconstruction seems to be the act of taking something apart so you can dismiss it.
Fun, sure; pretty even, sometimes; but constructive? sorry, no. (It's even called "deconstruction" explicitly!)
Oh. I see you get it.
Postmodernism has nothing constructive to offer humanity beyond reminding them of the core of the scientific method: that the theories you construct to explain phenomena, or to predict the outcome of future experiments, could be falsified by the very next observation you make. And that every theory you make is meaningless without a context. Nothing is certain.
It depends on which take on postmodernism you use. The repurposing of the past for contemporary use is post-modern, and that points to Hip-Hop and the PT Cruiser. Not the high-water marks of American Culture, but not bad things. And unrelated to your (well-argued) point.
I just took some training about.Net from MS, and the central concept is that the software, when compiled, is in an architecture-independant form, with a code section and a data section (I won't say "fork") that get used when you try to run the program. At that time, it is JIT compiled (meaning, of course, that the first time is slow) but then run via the executable generated by the JIT compiler. This gets rid of DLL hell and allows distribution of software by just plain copying it.
There are two main benefits to this: platform diversity and programming unity. You write the runtime environment to run on the different platforms and you can therefore write (more or less) to one platform and run it everywhere the runtime is running. (I know, java java java java.) The key at this point is that, when Java came out, MS had PCs and slightly beefier PCs running as servers. Now, we have PocketPCs running 3 processers, XBoxen, car computers, and 2 separate PC processors. The Open Source solutions to this are 1) everybody can get GCC, and 2) interpreted languages don't need fancy stuff, they just need an interpreter. MS can't and won't do that, so they do this.
Right now, to write to PocketPCs and embedded systems, you need to use embedded Visual Studio. I've been using VB on a project for a while. I learned the language doing a sample implementation on Win32 because the clients didn't have PocketPCs, and found that there are large differences between VB 6.0 and eVB, including stupid syntax differences! With (most) everything coming from VB.Net, you can write your applications in whatever can be put out by VB.Net, and Activestate has Visual Perl which outputs to.Net. And if I simply had Perl, I could've had it done a long time ago.
Linus' point reminds me of stories of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Whenever it was possible, the dissidents would not recognize their authorities that governed their lives, and since authorities are only authorities when you grant them authority, eventually they had no authority. I believe it was Vaclav Havel who wrote that manifesto, and I'd link to it if I could. We work and ignore the patents, the public sees the innovation resultant, the patent-holders begin trying to chill that innovation with suits, the public feels that chill and reacts against it, and the authority residing in the patent is lessened.
Ignoring patents lessens their power. It isn't just because lawyers understand patents and geeks don't.
MIB MIB II
Take a look. Tommy Lee Jones is K, or "Kay". Will Smith is J, or "Jay". Linda Fiorentino was L, or "Elle". They're choosing letters which are pronounced like names, so it is "Zed" for Z!!!!
Most of the cost represented by the price of 20$ for a cd is not related to the music creation process (i.e. the artist's work). Instead it is related to the production, marketing & distribution of plastic discs containing the music.
But, the cost of creating cassettes is lower than creating plastic discs, yet the cost is higher. This is one of the biggest arguments that the industry gouges.
A War Without Sacrifice?`
on
The Drone War
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· Score: 1
After WWII, the US Army was seriously cut back, as we tend to do, with the thought that should a war ever need be fought, you'd use the Air Force to nuke the place that needed nuking, and then a few soldiers would march in with rad suits to plant the flag. Then came the Korean conflict, and we knew that this wouldn't work.
The drones are useful as part of a whole strategy. But you need other information sources (Special Forces, allied forces, etc.) to tell you if what you are seeing is a target or not. We're not in the Age of Intelligent Machines yet.
I'd have to do some checking, but most CDs run closer to the half-hour mark. Take the classic double-album format of Quadraphrenia, The Wall and Metal Machine Music and you find ~15 minute sides, so you're dealing with at most 60 minutes of music.
And personally, there are few artists that I can think of that I want to hear 74 minutes of at a time. They may have that much music in 'em, but all too many albums are padded to get to the 30-45 minute mark.
That thought makes DVD-Audio a VERY SCARY thought to me.
Hollywood doesn't understand computers, but they understand the Mac aura and the call to "Think Differently". Mac ad geeks have worked long and hard to make Hollywood to think Mac when it thinks computers.
Remind me, when I make my movie, to use all Dells or Suns, just to spite them.
The key to advertising is to show you something you want to know. Among a focused audience, this is easy. Look in Computer Shopper and you see computers and computer parts. Why? People who want to sell computer parts know that people who are shopping for computers read Computer Shopper. A properly-focused ad should read like news. The thing is, what is properly-focused for general audience?
Science with Computers !~ Computer Science. A physicist might only be able to interface the large piece of technology he or she uses to do research, but the core piece of computer science research (algorithms) is either a minor element of the work or none at all. Same with so many other computer-enhanced works.
I read The Big U this way, in the dark with my wife sleeping next to me, and found it perfectly easy. The main problem was I finished it about 10 minutes after my alarm clock went off, and I was pretty much wasted the next day, but that was a lack-of-sleep issue, not a novels-on-Visor problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen things about Watergate, and most of the dirty tricks I've heard of the Nixon crew pulling, I get. The guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers is seeing a shrink? Let's figure out how crazy and try to use it to our advantage.
But I don't get Watergate. The phone they should've been bugging, had it been political, was on the other side of the room. The best theory I've seen is that John Dean's SO was a high-priced call girl, being pimped out of that office, with that phone being the contact phone. I can't remember the source, but it was one of those "Everything's a conspiracy" books, so I don't hold that to be as factual as a Schwartzian Transform, but as I said, that is the only explanation that makes sense to me. Both sides being in bed together. Literally. Minor political players using Constitution-bending power for personal reasons and it going bad for those above them. That's drama.
I interned in DC one summer for an environmental group, and one of the first things I was asked to do was get an internal phonebook for the Department of the Interior. I got it. It took me playing the clueless intern card a little, but I got it. I believe my boss used it to try to shake loose whistleblowers on a minor political appointee, who, last I heard, was escorted out by security on his last day there. Looking back and thinking about it, I wonder if that's the open Windows share of 1992.
Dirty tricks? That's barely dusty tricks.
Who are you to tell a redneck, or anyone, for that matter, what his interests are?
Entrapment is a law thing, only coming to play when law enforcement is involved. If I'm a cop pretending to be a killer, and I come to you saying "Give me a couple grand and I'll kill your boss", there's nothing to say that you'd have tried to have your boss killed if it wasn't for me asking, and I have thus brought you into a felony you wouldn't have otherwise committed.
Then again, I Ain't A Lawyer. Mileage Varies. Don't Taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Italy has one of those. It has had a change of government each year since the end of the Second World War. I think I'd rather have something a bit more stable.
Well, it works so successfully that the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House, right? Right?
I'm sitting here at work, doing some minor coding with ASP and nursemaiding a system with many heisenbugs, thinking "What am I doing to contribute?" Should I just die, too?
The best commercial is one that comes off as news to you. Not "presents itself as news", but comes off as news.
I was told this by a journalism prof, thought it was bullshit, then picked up a copy of Maximum Rock'n'Roll, saw that there was a new Fugazi album coming out (because Dischord put in an ad to tell me) and I was enlightened.
But it sounds like a Windows Explorer replacement rather than a significant change. Of course, I got sick of the buzzwords and lack of specifics. Bolting a rdb on the side of a file system? Be did that and backed off, didn't they?
We understand it - we just don't think it's helpful (in the sense of constructive) at all.
Pomo's don't want to be constructive. They're into deconstruction, which is not to be confused with reverse engineering. The point of reverse engineering is to find out how something works so you can make use of it. Deconstruction seems to be the act of taking something apart so you can dismiss it.
Fun, sure; pretty even, sometimes; but constructive? sorry, no. (It's even called "deconstruction" explicitly!)
Oh. I see you get it.
Postmodernism has nothing constructive to offer humanity beyond reminding them of the core of the scientific method: that the theories you construct to explain phenomena, or to predict the outcome of future experiments, could be falsified by the very next observation you make. And that every theory you make is meaningless without a context. Nothing is certain.
It depends on which take on postmodernism you use. The repurposing of the past for contemporary use is post-modern, and that points to Hip-Hop and the PT Cruiser. Not the high-water marks of American Culture, but not bad things. And unrelated to your (well-argued) point.
I just took some training about .Net from MS, and the central concept is that the software, when compiled, is in an architecture-independant form, with a code section and a data section (I won't say "fork") that get used when you try to run the program. At that time, it is JIT compiled (meaning, of course, that the first time is slow) but then run via the executable generated by the JIT compiler. This gets rid of DLL hell and allows distribution of software by just plain copying it.
.Net. And if I simply had Perl, I could've had it done a long time ago.
There are two main benefits to this: platform diversity and programming unity. You write the runtime environment to run on the different platforms and you can therefore write (more or less) to one platform and run it everywhere the runtime is running. (I know, java java java java.) The key at this point is that, when Java came out, MS had PCs and slightly beefier PCs running as servers. Now, we have PocketPCs running 3 processers, XBoxen, car computers, and 2 separate PC processors. The Open Source solutions to this are 1) everybody can get GCC, and 2) interpreted languages don't need fancy stuff, they just need an interpreter. MS can't and won't do that, so they do this.
Right now, to write to PocketPCs and embedded systems, you need to use embedded Visual Studio. I've been using VB on a project for a while. I learned the language doing a sample implementation on Win32 because the clients didn't have PocketPCs, and found that there are large differences between VB 6.0 and eVB, including stupid syntax differences! With (most) everything coming from VB.Net, you can write your applications in whatever can be put out by VB.Net, and Activestate has Visual Perl which outputs to
Exactly.
Yet Another Fucktarded Loser Dude.
They have a term for that already: Anonymous Coward
This is desperately needed: YAFLD.
Linus' point reminds me of stories of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Whenever it was possible, the dissidents would not recognize their authorities that governed their lives, and since authorities are only authorities when you grant them authority, eventually they had no authority. I believe it was Vaclav Havel who wrote that manifesto, and I'd link to it if I could. We work and ignore the patents, the public sees the innovation resultant, the patent-holders begin trying to chill that innovation with suits, the public feels that chill and reacts against it, and the authority residing in the patent is lessened.
Ignoring patents lessens their power. It isn't just because lawyers understand patents and geeks don't.
MIB
MIB II
Take a look. Tommy Lee Jones is K, or "Kay". Will Smith is J, or "Jay". Linda Fiorentino was L, or "Elle". They're choosing letters which are pronounced like names, so it is "Zed" for Z!!!!
Most of the cost represented by the price of 20$ for a cd is not related to the music creation process (i.e. the artist's work). Instead it is related to the production, marketing & distribution of plastic discs containing the music.
But, the cost of creating cassettes is lower than creating plastic discs, yet the cost is higher. This is one of the biggest arguments that the industry gouges.
After WWII, the US Army was seriously cut back, as we tend to do, with the thought that should a war ever need be fought, you'd use the Air Force to nuke the place that needed nuking, and then a few soldiers would march in with rad suits to plant the flag. Then came the Korean conflict, and we knew that this wouldn't work.
The drones are useful as part of a whole strategy. But you need other information sources (Special Forces, allied forces, etc.) to tell you if what you are seeing is a target or not. We're not in the Age of Intelligent Machines yet.
I'd have to do some checking, but most CDs run closer to the half-hour mark. Take the classic double-album format of Quadraphrenia, The Wall and Metal Machine Music and you find ~15 minute sides, so you're dealing with at most 60 minutes of music.
And personally, there are few artists that I can think of that I want to hear 74 minutes of at a time. They may have that much music in 'em, but all too many albums are padded to get to the 30-45 minute mark.
That thought makes DVD-Audio a VERY SCARY thought to me.
Hollywood doesn't understand computers, but they understand the Mac aura and the call to "Think Differently". Mac ad geeks have worked long and hard to make Hollywood to think Mac when it thinks computers.
Remind me, when I make my movie, to use all Dells or Suns, just to spite them.
The key to advertising is to show you something you want to know. Among a focused audience, this is easy. Look in Computer Shopper and you see computers and computer parts. Why? People who want to sell computer parts know that people who are shopping for computers read Computer Shopper. A properly-focused ad should read like news. The thing is, what is properly-focused for general audience?
He was talking from the POV of a Microsoftie Monopolist. For everyone else, competition is good.
It sounds like a partial restatement of the Cluetrain manifesto. At least the first point is 100% cluetrain.
Science with Computers !~ Computer Science. A physicist might only be able to interface the large piece of technology he or she uses to do research, but the core piece of computer science research (algorithms) is either a minor element of the work or none at all. Same with so many other computer-enhanced works.
I read The Big U this way, in the dark with my wife sleeping next to me, and found it perfectly easy. The main problem was I finished it about 10 minutes after my alarm clock went off, and I was pretty much wasted the next day, but that was a lack-of-sleep issue, not a novels-on-Visor problem.