You're right! Can you imagine the damage 19 suicide Segway-riding terrorists could do smacking into a pedestrian?
Seriously, though, I can see these as useful for the mobility-impaired who can stand, for riding around in huge warehouses, and for moving over difficult terrain. But as fellow/.ers have pointed out, a bicycle is a lot cheaper than $5,000. Want a smaller footprint? Try a unicycle.
Not to be a troll, but just pop $8.50 for LimeWire Pro(warning: annoying pop-ups on site). No damned pop-ups or stealthware (that I'm aware of anyway) and they have it for every platform we're likely to use: Linux, OS X, MacOS, and Microsoft Windows(TM).
Or you could just go with IRC (obligatory link for newbies) and screw all that schmansy luser "p2p" crap.:)
Deciding whether someone's "really" part of a community or not based on their UID number is just silly. What does a low UID tell you, other than someone created that particular account aeons ago? Is a user with a UID1000? Does he/she/it have mad l33t skilz compared to someone with a higher UID?
Copying tracks off a CD and burning a compilation is not analagous to copying a friend's term paper and turning it in with your name on it. You're not representing that you created the music, hence you're not plagiarizing the music. It's a stupid analogy.
Spamming /. !=Grassroots Marketing
on
Dog Bites Website
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Point taken - yeah, there are effective grassroots means of marketing stuff (books, pr0n, whatever) online. However, spamming mailing lists, blogs, newsgroups, and other places you work ain't one of them.
It would have been a news story if someone else posted something like "Hey, JonKatz wrote a book" - but using your position as an editor to post a story hyping your book ain't news. It's spam.
Making a point about grassroots marketing is all fine and dandy, but not when the book is *yours*. There's a blatant conflict of interest, something you thought about but ignored.
This could have been done better by:
a. Making your in-print book available - in its entirety - online in PDF or some other readable format.
b. Putting links to places where people can go buy your book.
c. Having *someone else* note that you published a book and that it's available online. Y'know, mebbe an interview where you talk about grassroots marketing.
Yeah, people would still have a problem with this because you're an editor on this site. However, it would have a skitch more journalistic integrity.
I'm not JonKatz slamming here - I don't have the "despise JonKatz" intolerance that many others are fond of expressing. But dude, you really should have known better.
Anyway, we all make mistakes - learn from the heat of this one.
Yeah, Louisiana politicians pulled a classic bait-and-switch routine on voters in the late 80's. The legislature and governor promised that x% of lottery proceeds would be used solely for education. When the issue passed, they put the lottery money into education AND cut the budget by the amount the lottery added. Zero sum.
Except now anti-lottery people are painted as anti-education since the budget now totally depends on the lottery. And the rest of the lottery proceeds? Well, they went into this giant slush fund...
Sure, PhotoShop is nice - if you're running a Mac or Microsoft Windows(TM) box and a grand laying around. Paint Shop Pro is pretty nice, does most of what PhotoShop does for a tenth the price - if you're suffering under a MS OS. But hey, you can download GIMP for FREE. Heck, they even have a Microsoft Windows(TM) port. Sure, you can't save GIFs or dick with TIFFs, nor can you do a lot of stuff you can do in PhotoShop.
However, GIMP is great for most image manipulation needs.
Okay, I understand not making pr0n flicks of someone without their knowledge and consent. And not making flicks of kids involved in sexual behavior (aren't there already laws for that?).
But trying to force everyone off of.com is just ridiculous. I don't think Landrieu groks this Internet thing.
First, someone please mod primenerd's post up. He makes excellent points, which I'll address below:
I assume you are refering to Western Europe or the United States in you weapons argument. There are several international bans on biological weapons...
I was referring to the United States military, primarily. I was raised in a military family, and played soldier for a while. If something is weaponable it will be used. In the early 80's I was into RC planes in a big way. We had a squadron of planes - mostly junior NCO GIs and brats - and discussed military applications of the technology. I should have wrapped the whole post in <rant></rant> tags.:)
(the United States has not engaged in offensive microbiological weapons since the Nixon administration)
Uh, right.
Also I must ask what you mean by "targeted" bioweapons. We do not posess the technology to "target" a weapon beyond the scope of what species it effects (which is usually a trait inherited from the natural stock microbe). It is (and will remain) impossible to target a virus or bacterium to kill one man or nationality.
Thanks, I didn't now that. I'm not a microbiologist so I will defer to your expertise. I had assumed that it would eventually be possible to target specific individuals via a DNA fingerprint of some sort.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for stem cell research. I'm happy and amazed that Rhys Evans aka "Bubble Boy"was cured. I hope it advances medical science by an order of magnitude on the technology scale.
However, I do believe that if it's practical to weaponize something, it will be done. Technology in and of itself is neither good, nor bad. Ethics can only be applied to how it is used.
No doubt, we will do great good with biotech. Hopefully we will avoid any potential catasrophes along the way.
I do believe that the reason Sadam Hussein is the enemy of the year is HIS desire to develop bioweapons.
Yes, that and other things. Saddam Hussein is not a warm and fuzzy teddy bear. He's an asshole, but an effective and powerful dictator. He stood up against the United States and a "coalition army" and remains in power. He's well-respected for that - even if he's not loved.
There were political reasons why we didn't knock him out the last time. We would have pissed off his neighbors who are already massively supsicious and resentful of our military presence where they live.
We're not going to use this technology responsibly - we don't use any technology responsibly. Of course, we'll develop "good" uses for the technology - treat and cure diseases, discover new forensic techniques, grow new organs, and blah blah blah.
But we'll also develop targeted bioweapons to kill "terrorists","Dangerous Radicals", Saddam Hussein, or other enemy-of-the-year. We'll do horrible shit with this, possibly doomsday our species along with our environment.
Another April fool's, another day on Slashdot. I have to say that I enjoyed it. It gave me several laughs - from both stories and posts. There were some grimaces too, but one thing that put it in perspective was today was a co-worker's birthday.
Don't worry, I'm not going to get all corny and weepy. Yeah, the guy really was born on April 1st. If you met him, you'd know how well it fits. Happy Birthday, Kurt!
<rant>
For the groaners: waah. Slashdot isn't Democracy Now, The Progressive, and sure the hell isn't CNN, NPR, MSNBC or whatever "hard news" site you've been looking for. It's a pretty cool blog - it keeps me (and you) coming back. </rant>
Anyway, at least there's one day a year everyone can act a fool - even better if it's your birthday!
Dude, Yoga and processors aren't even in the same meat space, much less the same business. Claiming that you Foo Inside is absolutely ridiculous. There's not even a remote possibility that Joe Consumer could confuse the two.
Next they'll go after little "Evil Inside" logos that constitute fair use in free speech (as satire, political protest) as laid down by Falwell v. Flint and the First Amendment. Heck, one can make a completely valid argument that the same would apply to "Linux Inside. How can someone own a trademark on the expression of one object being within another?
"Yoga Inside" has no chance of diluting the Intel brand; however, Intel's behaviour does. Nobody's going to run around and say that they're computer is a "Yoga Inside". Your rant is spurrious.
I'm deeply suspicious of changes to trademark law. Got to love the recent changes that have been made to copyright law.
<sarcasm>Thanks, Disney!</sarcasm>. If this trademark stuff gets as out-of-whack, maybe we'll be using XPortholes instead of XWindows a few years down the road.
I would argue that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to ensure that citizens have a means to resist an oppressive government and take up arms against it. I'm not alone in this opinion, hell it's in the Federalist Papers, written by the same dudes who wrote the Constitution.
Of course one could argue that P2P software and networks are a similar struggle - of freedom to compute versus the tyrannical licensing of megacorps. But it's only true if the individual user is using P2P to trade in OSS or freeware. It doesn't hold water if you're using it to fill up your 120GB drive with mp3s you don't have albums for or to grab an image of the corporate edition of Windows XP Professional.
Now if you're serving up ISOs of Mandrake 8.2, distributing your band's songs, grabbing artist-released films, or sharing your amateur pr0n photo shoot, more power to you.
The court hit the nail on the head there. I can hear the MPAA and MIAA screaming all the way from the Netherlands.
First, I haven't read The MouseDriver Chronicles, but I'll keep an eye out for it next time I'm in a massively huge bookstore to do a bit of flip and read.
It's about a modestly successful startup whose mission was to build a product and sell it at a profit, a concept that seemed almost obscene when Lusk and Harrison launched their business in mid-1999.
Okay, I have to take issue with this. I'm sure there were a few companies that wanted to do nothing more than hype, pump, IPO, and dump. However, for the most part, these companies had products to sell or services to offer. The biggest reasons why most "hot" startups tanked was because of:
Unrealistic Expectations - Assuming the cost of acquiring customers could be reclaimed via customer loyalty. If it costs $60 to get a customer, but you only make a total of $20 from that customer then you're gonna tank.
Poor Regulation - letting companies that underwrite an IPO act as cheerleaders, having their "analysts" offering buy recommendations on CNNfi (without disclosing their relationships). A lot of deregulation fueled the monster.
Members Only IPO - Sweetheart IPO deals for the "select few" that were little more than baldfaced bribes (e.g. offering stock at IPO prices for quid-pro-quo when the stock has already increased 500%). Locking out small investors from IPOs and ensuring that only favorites get IPO allocations.
It wasn't because companies weren't built around capitalist ideals like selling services or products at a profit. Investors expected to get a return - day traders and most VCs were looking to cash in on the trading action.
Yeah, there was a lot of mismanagement and foolish spending going on to fuel balloon-like expansion, building out infrastructure to support an anticipated emerging market, and other silly stuff. These activities keep the company busy doing everything except serving customers and bringing in revenue. If your company is growing so fast that you're busting ass just to keep up with the expansion, then you're not minding the store. Yeah, there might be a flurry of activity, but it's just wheel-spinning. Do it right and get rich slow.
Exactly. Women represent a huge untapped market, not only in PC games, but in console games as well. I don't think I've seen a non-sports, non-smash-up, non-arcade, non-gore, non-RTS game for consoles. Maxis hit the nail on the head with the Sims - of course they've come out with lame stuff too (e.g. SimTower).
I'm not saying that women don't/can't enjoy games popular with men, just that most women I know don't care for them. When I picked up a copy of the Sims for my brother, a friend of mine gushed over the box and said she'd buy a PC just to play the game and its expansions. Hot Date was a popular birthday gift among women friends.
Perhaps a romance-style adventure, heavy on the character-interactive, would appeal to many women. I don't know - I'm a guy, so my clue factor is pretty low when in comes to games-that-appeal-to-women.
Most programmers/game designers are men - I think it's probably pretty obvious that a game company that wants to cater to women should go woman-heavy in recruiting designers/coders.
Man, that's really reasonable. Heck, those prices are equivalent to fast food joints right off my Alma Mater's campus. Plus entertainment (well, for a ticket)?
I don't hit the theatres often - not really convenient here, but stray out for LOTR or similar fare.
Schweeeeet! But if dinner prices are anything like what you pay for a bag of popcorn and a soda...OUCH!
Still, this a great idea. A wired theatre-restaurant, digital screen projector, and wireless. What more could a geek ask for? Well, 3D positional sound headphones, so you can get the ppl behind you to shut the crap up. Better yet, message the maitre d' - or start a vote to boot Table 4 for being loud and obnoxious.
Be nice to watch a flick with a steak and some beer or wine.
Wish there were something like this in my town. I live in rural Louisiana - we have a crappy little 4-screen theatre with a potholed parking lot, poor sound, and ancient projectors. A decent theatre is about 75 miles away. It's sad when I get better quality on my desktop box than I can get in my hometown theatre.
But yes, you're right. In my experience, most users are comfortable with the Windows GUI. They have no particular interest in Microsoft®Windows(TM), computing, or software in general. To them, Linux is a crappy old refurb box that sits under their desktop. They just want to do their work, listen to some tunes, and not have their applications tank.
Users don't really comment much on their Linux box, except to ask how to resize their desktopresolution or use a theme. They don't remember the last time it was rebooted. But they can certainly remember the last time they rebooted Microsoft®Windows(TM).
{rant}
Again, I think it's a really bad idea to copy and paste an article into a/. post, even if it's been slashdotted. Whatever you think of copyright laws (generally, I think they're heinous) it's not ethical, nor is it legal.
Mod this how you like, but it's already gotten/. into trouble over Scientology and will probably get it in trouble with the New York Times and other sites at some point.
{/rant}
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, though, I can see these as useful for the mobility-impaired who can stand, for riding around in huge warehouses, and for moving over difficult terrain. But as fellow /.ers have pointed out, a bicycle is a lot cheaper than $5,000. Want a smaller footprint? Try a unicycle.
Or you could just go with IRC (obligatory link for newbies) and screw all that schmansy luser "p2p" crap. :)
Deciding whether someone's "really" part of a community or not based on their UID number is just silly. What does a low UID tell you, other than someone created that particular account aeons ago? Is a user with a UID1000? Does he/she/it have mad l33t skilz compared to someone with a higher UID?
Copying tracks off a CD and burning a compilation is not analagous to copying a friend's term paper and turning it in with your name on it. You're not representing that you created the music, hence you're not plagiarizing the music. It's a stupid analogy.
It would have been a news story if someone else posted something like "Hey, JonKatz wrote a book" - but using your position as an editor to post a story hyping your book ain't news. It's spam.
Making a point about grassroots marketing is all fine and dandy, but not when the book is *yours*. There's a blatant conflict of interest, something you thought about but ignored.
This could have been done better by:
a. Making your in-print book available - in its entirety - online in PDF or some other readable format.
b. Putting links to places where people can go buy your book.
c. Having *someone else* note that you published a book and that it's available online. Y'know, mebbe an interview where you talk about grassroots marketing.
Yeah, people would still have a problem with this because you're an editor on this site. However, it would have a skitch more journalistic integrity.
I'm not JonKatz slamming here - I don't have the "despise JonKatz" intolerance that many others are fond of expressing. But dude, you really should have known better.
Anyway, we all make mistakes - learn from the heat of this one.
Except now anti-lottery people are painted as anti-education since the budget now totally depends on the lottery. And the rest of the lottery proceeds? Well, they went into this giant slush fund...
Assuming you don't care about the patent issues, sure.
Sure, PhotoShop is nice - if you're running a Mac or Microsoft Windows(TM) box and a grand laying around. Paint Shop Pro is pretty nice, does most of what PhotoShop does for a tenth the price - if you're suffering under a MS OS. But hey, you can download GIMP for FREE. Heck, they even have a Microsoft Windows(TM) port. Sure, you can't save GIFs or dick with TIFFs, nor can you do a lot of stuff you can do in PhotoShop.
However, GIMP is great for most image manipulation needs.
Okay, I understand not making pr0n flicks of someone without their knowledge and consent. And not making flicks of kids involved in sexual behavior (aren't there already laws for that?).
But trying to force everyone off of .com is just ridiculous. I don't think Landrieu groks this Internet thing.
I assume you are refering to Western Europe or the United States in you weapons argument. There are several international bans on biological weapons...
I was referring to the United States military, primarily. I was raised in a military family, and played soldier for a while. If something is weaponable it will be used. In the early 80's I was into RC planes in a big way. We had a squadron of planes - mostly junior NCO GIs and brats - and discussed military applications of the technology. I should have wrapped the whole post in <rant></rant> tags. :)
(the United States has not engaged in offensive microbiological weapons since the Nixon administration)
Uh, right.
Also I must ask what you mean by "targeted" bioweapons. We do not posess the technology to "target" a weapon beyond the scope of what species it effects (which is usually a trait inherited from the natural stock microbe). It is (and will remain) impossible to target a virus or bacterium to kill one man or nationality.
Thanks, I didn't now that. I'm not a microbiologist so I will defer to your expertise. I had assumed that it would eventually be possible to target specific individuals via a DNA fingerprint of some sort.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for stem cell research. I'm happy and amazed that Rhys Evans aka "Bubble Boy"was cured. I hope it advances medical science by an order of magnitude on the technology scale.
However, I do believe that if it's practical to weaponize something, it will be done. Technology in and of itself is neither good, nor bad. Ethics can only be applied to how it is used.
No doubt, we will do great good with biotech. Hopefully we will avoid any potential catasrophes along the way.
I do believe that the reason Sadam Hussein is the enemy of the year is HIS desire to develop bioweapons.
Yes, that and other things. Saddam Hussein is not a warm and fuzzy teddy bear. He's an asshole, but an effective and powerful dictator. He stood up against the United States and a "coalition army" and remains in power. He's well-respected for that - even if he's not loved.
There were political reasons why we didn't knock him out the last time. We would have pissed off his neighbors who are already massively supsicious and resentful of our military presence where they live.
But we'll also develop targeted bioweapons to kill "terrorists","Dangerous Radicals", Saddam Hussein, or other enemy-of-the-year. We'll do horrible shit with this, possibly doomsday our species along with our environment.
Don't worry, I'm not going to get all corny and weepy. Yeah, the guy really was born on April 1st. If you met him, you'd know how well it fits. Happy Birthday, Kurt!
<rant>
For the groaners: waah. Slashdot isn't Democracy Now, The Progressive, and sure the hell isn't CNN, NPR, MSNBC or whatever "hard news" site you've been looking for. It's a pretty cool blog - it keeps me (and you) coming back.
</rant>
Anyway, at least there's one day a year everyone can act a fool - even better if it's your birthday!
As for the other 364 days...
I suggest that Yassar Arafat take over guiding the kernel.
CmdrTaco, that was cruel. :) I salute you. Poor Hemos, I'm sure what 90% of his email is going to be today...
Intel might as well go after pr0n sites that entice users to Cum Inside®.
Next they'll go after little "Evil Inside" logos that constitute fair use in free speech (as satire, political protest) as laid down by Falwell v. Flint and the First Amendment. Heck, one can make a completely valid argument that the same would apply to "Linux Inside. How can someone own a trademark on the expression of one object being within another?
"Yoga Inside" has no chance of diluting the Intel brand; however, Intel's behaviour does. Nobody's going to run around and say that they're computer is a "Yoga Inside". Your rant is spurrious.
I'm deeply suspicious of changes to trademark law. Got to love the recent changes that have been made to copyright law.
<sarcasm>Thanks, Disney!</sarcasm>. If this trademark stuff gets as out-of-whack, maybe we'll be using XPortholes instead of XWindows a few years down the road.
Of course one could argue that P2P software and networks are a similar struggle - of freedom to compute versus the tyrannical licensing of megacorps. But it's only true if the individual user is using P2P to trade in OSS or freeware. It doesn't hold water if you're using it to fill up your 120GB drive with mp3s you don't have albums for or to grab an image of the corporate edition of Windows XP Professional.
Now if you're serving up ISOs of Mandrake 8.2, distributing your band's songs, grabbing artist-released films, or sharing your amateur pr0n photo shoot, more power to you.
The court hit the nail on the head there. I can hear the MPAA and MIAA screaming all the way from the Netherlands.
First, I haven't read The MouseDriver Chronicles, but I'll keep an eye out for it next time I'm in a massively huge bookstore to do a bit of flip and read.
It's about a modestly successful startup whose mission was to build a product and sell it at a profit, a concept that seemed almost obscene when Lusk and Harrison launched their business in mid-1999.
Okay, I have to take issue with this. I'm sure there were a few companies that wanted to do nothing more than hype, pump, IPO, and dump. However, for the most part, these companies had products to sell or services to offer. The biggest reasons why most "hot" startups tanked was because of:
It wasn't because companies weren't built around capitalist ideals like selling services or products at a profit. Investors expected to get a return - day traders and most VCs were looking to cash in on the trading action.
Yeah, there was a lot of mismanagement and foolish spending going on to fuel balloon-like expansion, building out infrastructure to support an anticipated emerging market, and other silly stuff. These activities keep the company busy doing everything except serving customers and bringing in revenue. If your company is growing so fast that you're busting ass just to keep up with the expansion, then you're not minding the store. Yeah, there might be a flurry of activity, but it's just wheel-spinning. Do it right and get rich slow.
I'm not saying that women don't/can't enjoy games popular with men, just that most women I know don't care for them. When I picked up a copy of the Sims for my brother, a friend of mine gushed over the box and said she'd buy a PC just to play the game and its expansions. Hot Date was a popular birthday gift among women friends.
Perhaps a romance-style adventure, heavy on the character-interactive, would appeal to many women. I don't know - I'm a guy, so my clue factor is pretty low when in comes to games-that-appeal-to-women.
Most programmers/game designers are men - I think it's probably pretty obvious that a game company that wants to cater to women should go woman-heavy in recruiting designers/coders.
Just like the fantasy story where a scruffy revolutionary fed five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread.
I don't hit the theatres often - not really convenient here, but stray out for LOTR or similar fare.
Still, this a great idea. A wired theatre-restaurant, digital screen projector, and wireless. What more could a geek ask for? Well, 3D positional sound headphones, so you can get the ppl behind you to shut the crap up. Better yet, message the maitre d' - or start a vote to boot Table 4 for being loud and obnoxious.
Be nice to watch a flick with a steak and some beer or wine.
Wish there were something like this in my town. I live in rural Louisiana - we have a crappy little 4-screen theatre with a potholed parking lot, poor sound, and ancient projectors. A decent theatre is about 75 miles away. It's sad when I get better quality on my desktop box than I can get in my hometown theatre.
It was an attempt at humour.
But yes, you're right. In my experience, most users are comfortable with the Windows GUI. They have no particular interest in Microsoft®Windows(TM), computing, or software in general. To them, Linux is a crappy old refurb box that sits under their desktop. They just want to do their work, listen to some tunes, and not have their applications tank.
Users don't really comment much on their Linux box, except to ask how to resize their desktopresolution or use a theme. They don't remember the last time it was rebooted. But they can certainly remember the last time they rebooted Microsoft®Windows(TM).
</offtopic>
At this point is it even possible to think any less of Microsoft?
Again, I think it's a really bad idea to copy and paste an article into a
Mod this how you like, but it's already gotten /. into trouble over Scientology and will probably get it in trouble with the New York Times and other sites at some point.
{/rant}