Genetic Diversity and Lois McMaster Bujold
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 1
There are powerful forces at work biologically that counteract any human tendency toward nominating "good" and "bad" genes. Genetic diversity is valuable. It will probably take time for the population at large to see this, but if some particular narrow strand gets really popular among the elite, how long before there is a virus (genetically engineered or naturally occurring) that attacks only that strand?
Boy, talk about darkly ironic, to see the power elite grubbing around for previously "undesirable" genes such as African, or Jewish, or whatever, that are resistant to some new disease.
One of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, writes of the planet Barrayar where sex selection of babies, newly introduced, results in an imbalance. Many more parents opt for male children in Barrayar's male-dominated culture, only to find, a generation later, that all those males can't find wives, and that females quickly become highly valued. Some of those (now adult) females find very interesting way to use the power of their own gender's scarcity.
To me this highlights the powerful biological laws that hold sway. To be sure, a disaster is possible, perhaps even probable. But humans are pretty good at adapting to changing conditions.
Finally, I think it's a mistake to think you have to have it all mapped out ahead of time, that one must have anticipated all the problems, and must prevent them all. We need some forethought and caution, to be sure, but clearly some of the possibilities offered by the HGP are worth a lot.
Linux is looking like one of the "Official" or "Intel Supported" OSs for this platform. Therefor people will be buying $50K to $500K machines from VALinux and running Linux on them.
Linux will be supported on IA64 by SGI and HP, and maybe some others that I don't know about. Does anybody out there have more info on Compaq, IBM, Sun, etc.?
The point being that VA Linux is going to have some pretty stiff competition in this high-end market.
Linux makes very good sense for this market because the people who want this big iron typically want to do special things with it. Linux gives them the opportunity to tweak things to their hearts content, while coalescing around a single OS, instead of all the different proprietary OSes.
In the high-end, I'd have to say Linux has a big edge on Windows NT. Microsoft would love to get into the high end, because it's very profitable. But in the high end, their patronizing "so simple your mother could use it" design philosophy works against them, as does the closedness.
But that's a lot different than the desktop, where I still give them the edge.
I like this comment because, for me, it underlines one of the issues about intellectual property that is threatened. Under current law, when you buy a piece of software, a game, or M/S Office, or Red Hat, you own it. That means you can do almost anything you want with it.
In particular, you can create a library and loan it out to your friends. You can rent it, as Blockbuster does. Nintendo tried to stop them from doing it in the courts. There are a few things you can't do with it legally, though, like sell copies, or give them away.
But the software industry doesn't like even this state of affairs. They want to say that you only license the software, and that under the license, you can't resell the software when you're done, and you can't rent it out. After all, that's lost revenue.
And the movie industry wants to shut down reverse engineering of DVDs. I have every reason to hope that they will not prevail in court, but we should expect them to pursue their interests vigorously.
I find I can't muster the same enthusiasm for the free flow of MP3s. Katz makes two arguments for legalization of pirated recordings.
The first is that laws against them are effectively blue laws. That violations are so widespread, that any attempt to enforce the law could be construed as selective enforcement, which we don't allow according to the laws of the US.
This doesn't wash, because those same laws apply in many, many other situations, where violations are not widespread. Honestly, I don't really like the way the music industry works, but I like the idea of somebody stealing my work and calling it their own even less.
The other arguement is that the copyright laws are the tools that big media uses to control what we listen to, and control what we watch. This is to some extent true as well, but it cuts both ways. Copyright laws are what created GNU and Linux as well. Copyright laws are the tool that can be used to undermine big media.
Furthermore, it is possible for an individual to lessen the control big media has on his life. Buy second-hand CD's through eBay or elsewhere. Listen to the radio, listen to the Net radio. Go to the library. Turn off the television and read.
If you were distributing a filer that said "How to make LSD in your basement, for fun and profit", wouldn't you expect the cops to come and arrest you?
I think you raise a very pertinent issue. However, I think you come to the wrong conclusion. There is no such thing as "thought crime" It is not illegal to know how to do something, what is illegal is actually doing it.
This is at the heart of so many of of these technical cases from encryption export to DVD ripping, to emulation, to nuclear bomb recipes, to Steve Jackson Games.
I have friends who find it interesting to know how to pick locks and descramble cable signals. They don't do it in an illegal context, they are just curious. And frankly, I think there's a value to society in having them know how to do it.
There are lots of people in this country that know how to kill other people with their bare hands or with weapons, too. That seems a lot more serious, but you don't see the government confiscating martial arts manuals or shutting down gun training websites.
You say that this is the way things are, there's no changing it, why are you complaining. I say, why does it have to be that way, and I'm curious, why do you seem to have an interest in keeping it that way?
You say that the community is very critical of the technical correctness. I say that if you want to be part of a community and have a connection with others, you must learn to distinguish between criticisms and complaints.
A complaint is specific in time and content, e.g. "you were wrong when you said X" or "You mispelled three words in the first paragraph" or even "I think that's a cowardly attitude"
A criticism is a broadband smear, lacking focus, and boundaries: "You're a coward", "You can't spell", "You're a moron", and the classic "You suck" Criticisms have a very toxic effect on the community, and on relationships.
Even more toxic than criticism is the expression of contempt. Contempt is mostly a matter of "tone of voice" but certainly sarcasm is typically an expression of contempt.
But perhaps you don't want Katz to be a member of the community. You wish he would go away, and never post again. This is exactly what he's saying, that it's an attempt to censor him by people who feel otherwise powerless.
What I can't figure out is why. What's he saying that's got the flamers all riled up? I don't get it. Could one of you please stop, check in with yourself, figure out what's making you so angry, and tell us?
From what I can see, the Y2K issues were all too real, and I believe we should celebrate the success of those individuals who worked to fix them all.
For instance, a friend of mine in financial services told me yesterday about all the problems his company had, and fixed. It is clear that power stations had problems. Apparently nearly all of these problems got fixed, which isn't too surprising, since the problem was easy to anticipate, and easy to test, for the most part.
The list of engineering failures from Wired is interesting and helps to illustrate a point. Serious problems are always caused by the stuff you didn't think about, the stuff you ignored.
So, those engineers and programmers with the responsibility for dealing with Y2K related issues, knowing that, were fairly cautious in their pronouncements, on the nature of, "we've solved all the problems we know about, but we don't have the hubris to say we've got it all, don't worry."
Given that, a simple cost-benefit analysis shows the wisdom of stocking up on a a few things, since, after all, if there isn't a problem, you can just spend the cash. If the water doesn't get contaminated, you can still drink the bottled water you bought.
Unfortunately, this is a complex message, probably too complex for the media at large to convey to the general populous. So, we get a predictable cycle of hype "Better watch out for Y2K", then backlash "What was all the fuss about?" in the media, often from the same sources.
In my book the job done was done about as well as it could have been.
I don't quite agree with everything Jon said in the article, but I think this could maybe be legitimately called censorship, since there's more than one party involved.
Warner Brothers and its employees, did not write, cast, act, direct, shoot, edit, or otherwise have creative input into the content of Buffy's finale. The production company for Buffy did this under contract with WB.
WB paid for the privilege of "first broadcast rights" -- the production company gets the money for reruns down the line, should it materialize. So they make a decision, for whatever reason, to not air an episode right away.
Technically, this could be called censorship, since there are two parties involved. But it's probably the least onerous kind around. Sometimes individual stations will refuse to air particular episodes of shows. The more obnoxious form was from the network department of "Standards and Practices", where they'd snip out scenes or phrases or demand re-editing.
I think I must be the only person in America who, though I won't say I liked Jar-Jar, felt the character worked in the Phantom Menace, and enhanced the movie rather than detracted from it.
One of Lucas' favorite themes is to contrast the primitive, the overlooked, and the dismissed, with the efficient, the mechanical, the soulless. This was supposed to be how the Ewoks worked in ROTJ, only the Ewoks turned out way too cute and cuddly. He didn't make that mistake this time.
This is the same theme as Aesop's fable about the lion and the mouse. A lion catches a mouse and is about to have a rather small snack, when the mouse proposes, "If you let me go I'll do you a favor sometime". The lion finds the idea that the mouse could help him highly amusing, but figures the laugh is worth the loss of an admittedly small morsel so figures, "what the hell", and lets the mouse go. Some time later, the lion becomes caught in a hunter's trap, consisting of some heavy netting. Who should come along but the mouse, who repays the favor by gnawing through the netting, saving the lion from certain death at the hand of the hunter.
So then, Jar-Jar's "job" in The Phantom Menace is to seem useless and annoying for most of the movie and to provide help at a critical time, which is exactly what he does, twice in fact. He helps Qui-Gon and Obiwan get to the Capital City despite the invasion, by introducing them to his hidden city and boss man (whose voice was provided by one of my favorite character actors Brian "Forward my Hawkmen!" Blessed).
And then he takes the party to the Gungan temple where he knows they'll be, so Amidala can bargain with them. And then the entire Gungan army takes on the "tanks" and "missles" of the Trade Federation, evoking the Zulu warriors who took on, and often bested the best and brightest of the British Empire. I can't think of a better metaphor for how I felt about IBM in the '70s or M/S in the 90s than the scene where the racks of robots come out of the carriers and slowly unfold all in perfect, mindless, horrible synchrony. (I hasten to add that I know some people who work, or have worked for Microsoft and I generally like them. So I mean no offense to them.) Lined up against them is a motley crew of Gungans with their spears and shields (well they're enhanced, to be sure, but we're not supposed to think that they can stand up to the Trade Federation.)
In effect, the Gungans in general, and Jar-Jar in particular, are geeks.
Most of us here at/. are, or were, or will be geeks. So I find it a little discouraging that most of us geeks are more than happy to dump on Jar-Jar in just the way the rest of the world dumps on us. I think George Lucas has found a way to make us confront the sources of prejudice that exist in all of us.
I remember that when I was young, the way I was taught that black people are "just the same as us under the skin". But that's a bit misleading, since there are other differences between people, and between subcultures, and those differences are often substantial. If people weren't different in some way, there would be no prejudice.
My personal prejudice is against Frenchmen. I would never have felt this way if I hadn't shared a house with a Parisian for a year. He had a snooty attitude, and he left smelly anchovies and cheese around the house and just generally annoyed me. It was the difference in manners and habits that I found annoying.
Of course, he wasn't really such a bad guy. My other housemate, who had spent some time in Tunisia, which has strong ties to the French, got along with him well. It didn't help that in those days, I had a certain amount of closed-mindedness about me.
Anyway, the key to defeating prejudice is in seeing differences as valuable, and in seeing people who are different as valuable, whether that's because of the differences or in spite of them. And I can't think of a better demonstration of that in popular culture than Jar-Jar and the Gungans.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm employed by SGI, and have been for eight years. There's a rumor that when you scratch me, I bleed purple, but that is yet to be confirmed.
I see this initiative as aimed at SGI/Cray. The article mentioned that IBM has over 100 of the top 400 supercomputing sites. SGI with both Cray products and Origin 2000's has probably 250 of the rest, not to mention the installations that we own that don't count, since, by the rules of the list, we can't have more than ~3 entries on the list.
So, IBM has a small piece of a shrinking pie, and they are losing to a company that has a pretty compelling scientific visualization story. So what do they do? They give away some computers that they're having a hard time selling. (Don't get me wrong, they're still useful. I'd take one if it were free.) This, they hope, will increase their mindshare and presence. Then they give away some visualization software to try to undermine the SGI visualization market power.
Is sexism an issue among geeks?
on
LinuxExpo Report
·
· Score: 1
While I tend to agree that sexism is a non-issue among geeks, I'm also a male. We aren't necessarily all that aware of this kind of thing. I wonder how many of you female geeks out there would agree with the premise that sexism is a non-issue among geeks?
It's always a serious mistake to underestimate the capabilities of your opponent. They aren't devoid of engineering talent, in spite of sneers on/. to the contrary. They have plenty of marketing smarts, and very deep pockets. Plus they'll be fighting for their survival, at least, the NT business will be. I'd have to say that Linux is still the underdog, though it has considerable assets too.
I hate the hype too, but mostly I've been ignoring it. However, I think this article misses the mark for two reasons:
First, Lucas is not responsible for the hype. Most of the hype is for merchandising tie-ins, people trying to sell toys, books, calendars, what-have-you. As the originator and copyright owner, he has only three choices that I can see. 1. Don't license the stuff at all. This is the "non-sellout" position. Probably there would be Taiwanese knockoffs and a black market if he took this position. 2. License exclusively. Possible, but probably throws a big windfall in the direction of a few corporations, and limits accessibility. Not Lucas' style. 3. License to whomever will pay at roughly the same royalty. Retain approval over what gets put out there so they don't push stuff that you don't want associated with your movie. No inflatable Amidala sex dolls, for example.
Given this he chose 3. I would too. All the licensees now shamelessly try to cash in on the public's expectations *before* the movie, just in case it's a stinker, or more likely, a yawner.
This machine works way too well for us to be comfortable with it, I agree. But how does this make Lucas a sellout?
The other way this misses the mark is that John compares the actual movie (Ep 4) on the one hand to the hype on the other. This is clearly not an apples to apples comparison, not really relevant. Star Wars: A New Hope had no hype, but Return of the Jedi had plenty... At the time, I believed that the Ewoks were there simply to sell more toys; I've since learned different.
In the original story they were supposed to be Wookies, but he cut the story back to fit into one movie, and gave Han a Wookie sidekick. But it turned tout to be big, so Endor goes back in ROTJ, only now he can't use Wookies. So instead he makes the big furry savages into little furry savages. He's said they didn't quite work out like he wanted, he didn't want them to be so cute.
I'll judge him based on the movie he made, remembering that there's a lot of stuff in SW:ANH that isn't all that good.
I read these comments, and recall my experiences, (which pale compared to those related to Katz) the thought struck me that this is exactly a description of discrimination. This can't be that far different to what Black Americans experience now or have experienced.
My reading suggests that it is very difficult to change predjudiced attitudes. However, it is considerably easier to change discriminitory behavior. There is no reason that I as a parent should accept violence against my children as "part of growing up". There is no reason any young person in school should accept this, either.
Frankly, I don't know why the police isn't called in more frequently to schools. My experience is that bullying is more psychological than physical, but it can get physical. This should stop, it must stop, it will stop!
Not all schools turn a blind eye to violence/bullying. Some have given up, others have not. All I can do is to act locally, get involved in my local school.
Part of what this is about is dominance, pure and simple. The dominant will act to preserve their position against any threat. Students who ignore the power of the dominant are as much a threat, perhaps more, than those who defy them. Also, those who are at the bottom make easy targets, since there is little chance that others will stand up for them, or that they will be able to resist effectively.
Therefore, the geeks need to understand that they are involved in a power struggle and either leave or find courage to make a stand somehow. I wonder what Ghandi would have done in an American HS?
Accepting the notion that one is inferior is the deepest hurt of all. Do not accept it!
This message contains a misunderstanding of the situation. Virtually all system vendors who ship systems with NT installed get to look at the Microsoft source already. They just don't get to change anything (and then ship it) except that part called the HAL (hardware abstraction layer)
I believe Muth said as much in the article, that they give, er, license (money is usually involved) their source to people including system vendors and university types. They've done that in the past, they do that now, they'll continue to do that, AFAIK. I doubt that was what Ballmer was referring to.
Indeed this was because many popular old flavors of FORTRAN mandate only the first 6 characters (or perhaps 8) are significant. When I first learned FORTRAN in the 70's it was done that way. So to be compatible with legacy code and compilers FORTRAN symbols must be 6 chars. However, this restriction was relaxed in FORTRAN 77, I believe, and certainly doesn't exist in FORTRAN 90 either.
On the other hand, that isn't why it's called strcmp. That has far more to do with Ken Thompson's love of short, obscure names, such as sed, grep, cd, as well as printf and strcmp (and strcpy). I've never known there to be a linkage restriction on any UNIX I've used beginning in about 1982. But, remember, it was written in 1969. Does anybody know any more about this bit of ancient history?
Very few "middle aged or older ladies" who live in an urban or suburban setting would dream of opening the door of their home before checking through a peephole to see if they were willing to trust the knocker. I think they are capable of learning to do the equivalent with email, but it will take a while.
I find I must take exception the the author's thesis that intellectual property is "a system of law in which access to inventions and creative output is limited in order to reward their creator".
In the first place, intellectual property rights are not "inherent" or "natural" rights they were invented with a purpose. That purpose was to promote sharing by allowing the inventor to benefit from his/her invention in some other way than keeping that invention secret. Patents can protect the small and weak from the large and powerful.
For example, I can invent a better carrot-slicer. What prevents Megtronics Corp. from simply stealing my invention and selling millions of them with no compensation to me? Patent law. By allowing me to retain ownership of my invention, innovation is encouraged.
Rewarding the creator is only a means to an end, not the end itself.
Second, without intellectual property of a different kind (copyrights) we would never have had a GPL. My life personally would be much poorer, since I've been an Emacs user for nearly 20 years. This use of copyright law to perpetuate the sharing of his work is something I deeply respect RMS for, it's a really clever hack.
My approach with my children vis-a-vis sharing is that they aren't forced to share their own personal stuff -- forced sharing is no sharing at all. But when they are using my stuff they have to share and take turns. This has proved very effective -- they value sharing as I do and quite often share without prompting.
I believe that forcing people to share at best builds resentment and often leads to very cloudy boundaries, which in turn, leads to domination, codependence and abuse. I find I have little patience for voices which cry "All software must be free!" or "All music must be free!".
Star Wars was definitely worth paying to see. It wouldn't exist if there were no intellectual property laws.
Slashdot Mirror
There are powerful forces at work biologically that counteract any human tendency toward nominating "good" and "bad" genes. Genetic diversity is valuable. It will probably take time for the population at large to see this, but if some particular narrow strand gets really popular among the elite, how long before there is a virus (genetically engineered or naturally occurring) that attacks only that strand?
Boy, talk about darkly ironic, to see the power elite grubbing around for previously "undesirable" genes such as African, or Jewish, or whatever, that are resistant to some new disease.
One of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, writes of the planet Barrayar where sex selection of babies, newly introduced, results in an imbalance. Many more parents opt for male children in Barrayar's male-dominated culture, only to find, a generation later, that all those males can't find wives, and that females quickly become highly valued. Some of those (now adult) females find very interesting way to use the power of their own gender's scarcity.
To me this highlights the powerful biological laws that hold sway. To be sure, a disaster is possible, perhaps even probable. But humans are pretty good at adapting to changing conditions.
Finally, I think it's a mistake to think you have to have it all mapped out ahead of time, that one must have anticipated all the problems, and must prevent them all. We need some forethought and caution, to be sure, but clearly some of the possibilities offered by the HGP are worth a lot.
Linux is looking like one of the "Official" or "Intel Supported" OSs for this platform. Therefor people will be buying $50K to $500K machines from VALinux and running Linux on them.
Linux will be supported on IA64 by SGI and HP, and maybe some others that I don't know about. Does anybody out there have more info on Compaq, IBM, Sun, etc.?
The point being that VA Linux is going to have some pretty stiff competition in this high-end market.
Linux makes very good sense for this market because the people who want this big iron typically want to do special things with it. Linux gives them the opportunity to tweak things to their hearts content, while coalescing around a single OS, instead of all the different proprietary OSes.
In the high-end, I'd have to say Linux has a big edge on Windows NT. Microsoft would love to get into the high end, because it's very profitable. But in the high end, their patronizing "so simple your mother could use it" design philosophy works against them, as does the closedness.
But that's a lot different than the desktop, where I still give them the edge.
I like this comment because, for me, it underlines one of the issues about intellectual property that is threatened. Under current law, when you buy a piece of software, a game, or M/S Office, or Red Hat, you own it. That means you can do almost anything you want with it.
In particular, you can create a library and loan it out to your friends. You can rent it, as Blockbuster does. Nintendo tried to stop them from doing it in the courts. There are a few things you can't do with it legally, though, like sell copies, or give them away.
But the software industry doesn't like even this state of affairs. They want to say that you only license the software, and that under the license, you can't resell the software when you're done, and you can't rent it out. After all, that's lost revenue.
And the movie industry wants to shut down reverse engineering of DVDs. I have every reason to hope that they will not prevail in court, but we should expect them to pursue their interests vigorously.
I find I can't muster the same enthusiasm for the free flow of MP3s. Katz makes two arguments for legalization of pirated recordings.
The first is that laws against them are effectively blue laws. That violations are so widespread, that any attempt to enforce the law could be construed as selective enforcement, which we don't allow according to the laws of the US.
This doesn't wash, because those same laws apply in many, many other situations, where violations are not widespread. Honestly, I don't really like the way the music industry works, but I like the idea of somebody stealing my work and calling it their own even less.
The other arguement is that the copyright laws are the tools that big media uses to control what we listen to, and control what we watch. This is to some extent true as well, but it cuts both ways. Copyright laws are what created GNU and Linux as well. Copyright laws are the tool that can be used to undermine big media.
Furthermore, it is possible for an individual to lessen the control big media has on his life. Buy second-hand CD's through eBay or elsewhere. Listen to the radio, listen to the Net radio. Go to the library. Turn off the television and read.
If you were distributing a filer that said "How to make LSD in your basement, for fun and profit", wouldn't you expect the cops to come and arrest you?
I think you raise a very pertinent issue. However, I think you come to the wrong conclusion. There is no such thing as "thought crime" It is not illegal to know how to do something, what is illegal is actually doing it.
This is at the heart of so many of of these technical cases from encryption export to DVD ripping, to emulation, to nuclear bomb recipes, to Steve Jackson Games.
I have friends who find it interesting to know how to pick locks and descramble cable signals. They don't do it in an illegal context, they are just curious. And frankly, I think there's a value to society in having them know how to do it.
There are lots of people in this country that know how to kill other people with their bare hands or with weapons, too. That seems a lot more serious, but you don't see the government confiscating martial arts manuals or shutting down gun training websites.
Signal 11,
You say that this is the way things are, there's no changing it, why are you complaining. I say, why does it have to be that way, and I'm curious, why do you seem to have an interest in keeping it that way?
You say that the community is very critical of the technical correctness. I say that if you want to be part of a community and have a connection with others, you must learn to distinguish between criticisms and complaints.
A complaint is specific in time and content, e.g. "you were wrong when you said X" or "You mispelled three words in the first paragraph" or even "I think that's a cowardly attitude"
A criticism is a broadband smear, lacking focus, and boundaries: "You're a coward", "You can't spell", "You're a moron", and the classic "You suck" Criticisms have a very toxic effect on the community, and on relationships.
Even more toxic than criticism is the expression of contempt. Contempt is mostly a matter of "tone of voice" but certainly sarcasm is typically an expression of contempt.
But perhaps you don't want Katz to be a member of the community. You wish he would go away, and never post again. This is exactly what he's saying, that it's an attempt to censor him by people who feel otherwise powerless.
What I can't figure out is why. What's he saying that's got the flamers all riled up? I don't get it. Could one of you please stop, check in with yourself, figure out what's making you so angry, and tell us?
From what I can see, the Y2K issues were all too real, and I believe we should celebrate the success of those individuals who worked to fix them all.
For instance, a friend of mine in financial services told me yesterday about all the problems his company had, and fixed. It is clear that power stations had problems. Apparently nearly all of these problems got fixed, which isn't too surprising, since the problem was easy to anticipate, and easy to test, for the most part.
The list of engineering failures from Wired is interesting and helps to illustrate a point. Serious problems are always caused by the stuff
you didn't think about, the stuff you ignored.
So, those engineers and programmers with the responsibility for dealing with Y2K related issues, knowing that, were fairly cautious in their pronouncements, on the nature of, "we've solved all the problems we know about, but we don't have the hubris to say we've got it all, don't worry."
Given that, a simple cost-benefit analysis shows the wisdom of stocking up on a a few things, since, after all, if there isn't a problem, you can just spend the cash. If the water doesn't get contaminated, you can still drink the bottled water you bought.
Unfortunately, this is a complex message, probably too complex for the media at large to convey to the general populous. So, we get a predictable cycle of hype "Better watch out for Y2K", then
backlash "What was all the fuss about?" in the media, often from the same sources.
In my book the job done was done about as well as it could have been.
I don't quite agree with everything Jon said in the article, but I think this could maybe be legitimately called censorship, since there's more than one party involved.
Warner Brothers and its employees, did not write, cast, act, direct, shoot, edit, or otherwise have creative input into the content of Buffy's finale. The production company for Buffy did this under contract with WB.
WB paid for the privilege of "first broadcast rights" -- the production company gets the money for reruns down the line, should it materialize. So they make a decision, for whatever reason, to not air an episode right away.
Technically, this could be called censorship, since there are two parties involved. But it's probably the least onerous kind around. Sometimes individual stations will refuse to air particular episodes of shows. The more obnoxious form was from the network department of "Standards and Practices", where they'd snip out scenes or phrases or demand re-editing.
SPOILER ALERT
/. are, or were, or will be geeks. So I find it a little discouraging that most of us geeks are more than happy to dump on Jar-Jar in just the way the rest of the world dumps on us. I think George Lucas has found a way to make us confront the sources of prejudice that exist in all of us.
I think I must be the only person in America who, though I won't say I liked Jar-Jar, felt the character worked in the Phantom Menace, and enhanced the movie rather than detracted from it.
One of Lucas' favorite themes is to contrast the primitive, the overlooked, and the dismissed, with the efficient, the mechanical, the soulless. This was supposed to be how the Ewoks worked in ROTJ, only the Ewoks turned out way too cute and cuddly. He didn't make that mistake this time.
This is the same theme as Aesop's fable about the lion and the mouse. A lion catches a mouse and is about to have a rather small snack, when the mouse proposes, "If you let me go I'll do you a favor sometime". The lion finds the idea that the mouse could help him highly amusing, but figures the laugh is worth the loss of an admittedly small morsel so figures, "what the hell", and lets the mouse go. Some time later, the lion becomes caught in a hunter's trap, consisting of some heavy netting. Who should come along but the mouse, who repays the favor by gnawing through the netting, saving the lion from certain death at the
hand of the hunter.
So then, Jar-Jar's "job" in The Phantom Menace is to seem useless and annoying for most of the movie and to provide help at a critical time, which is exactly what he does, twice in fact. He helps Qui-Gon and Obiwan get to the Capital City despite the invasion, by introducing them to his hidden city and boss man (whose voice was provided by one of my favorite character actors Brian "Forward my Hawkmen!" Blessed).
And then he takes the party to the Gungan temple where he knows they'll be, so Amidala can bargain with them. And then the entire Gungan army takes on the "tanks" and "missles" of the Trade Federation, evoking the Zulu warriors who took on, and often bested the best and brightest of the British Empire. I can't think of a better metaphor for how I felt about IBM in the '70s or M/S in the 90s than the scene where the racks of robots come out of the carriers and slowly unfold all in perfect, mindless, horrible synchrony. (I hasten to add that I know some people who work, or have worked for Microsoft and I generally like them. So I mean no offense to them.) Lined up against them is a motley crew of Gungans with their spears and shields (well they're enhanced, to be sure, but we're not supposed to think that they can stand up to the Trade Federation.)
In effect, the Gungans in general, and Jar-Jar in particular, are geeks.
Most of us here at
I remember that when I was young, the way I was taught that black people are "just the same as us under the skin". But that's a bit misleading, since there are other differences between people, and between subcultures, and those differences are often substantial. If people weren't different in some way, there would be no prejudice.
My personal prejudice is against Frenchmen. I would never have felt this way if I hadn't shared a house with a Parisian for a year. He had a snooty attitude, and he left smelly anchovies and cheese around the house and just generally annoyed me. It was the difference in manners and habits that I found annoying.
Of course, he wasn't really such a bad guy. My other housemate, who had spent some time in Tunisia, which has strong ties to the French, got along with him well. It didn't help that in those days, I had a certain amount of closed-mindedness about me.
Anyway, the key to defeating prejudice is in seeing differences as valuable, and in seeing people who are different as valuable, whether that's because of the differences or in spite of them. And I can't think of a better demonstration of that in popular culture than Jar-Jar and the Gungans.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm employed by SGI, and have been for eight years. There's a rumor that when you scratch me, I bleed purple, but that is yet to be confirmed.
I see this initiative as aimed at SGI/Cray. The article mentioned that IBM has over 100 of the top 400 supercomputing sites. SGI with both Cray products and Origin 2000's has probably 250 of the rest, not to mention the installations that we own that don't count, since, by the rules of the list, we can't have more than ~3 entries on the list.
So, IBM has a small piece of a shrinking pie, and they are losing to a company that has a pretty compelling scientific visualization story. So what do they do? They give away some computers that they're having a hard time selling. (Don't get me wrong, they're still useful. I'd take one if it were free.) This, they hope, will increase their mindshare and presence. Then they give away some visualization software to try to undermine the SGI visualization market power.
While I tend to agree that sexism is a non-issue among geeks, I'm also a male. We aren't necessarily all that aware of this kind of thing. I wonder how many of you female geeks out there would agree with the premise that sexism is a non-issue among geeks?
It's always a serious mistake to underestimate the capabilities of your opponent. They aren't devoid of engineering talent, in spite of sneers on /. to the contrary. They have plenty of marketing smarts, and very deep pockets. Plus they'll be fighting for their survival, at least, the NT business will be. I'd have to say that Linux is still the underdog, though it has considerable assets too.
I hate the hype too, but mostly I've been ignoring it. However, I think this article misses the mark for two reasons:
First, Lucas is not responsible for the hype. Most of the hype is for merchandising tie-ins, people trying to sell toys, books, calendars, what-have-you. As the originator and copyright owner, he has only three choices that I can see.
1. Don't license the stuff at all. This is the "non-sellout" position. Probably there would be Taiwanese knockoffs and a black market if he took this position.
2. License exclusively. Possible, but probably throws a big windfall in the direction of a few corporations, and limits accessibility. Not Lucas' style.
3. License to whomever will pay at roughly the same royalty. Retain approval over what gets put out there so they don't push stuff that you don't want associated with your movie. No inflatable Amidala sex dolls, for example.
Given this he chose 3. I would too. All the licensees now shamelessly try to cash in on the public's expectations *before* the movie, just in case it's a stinker, or more likely, a yawner.
This machine works way too well for us to be comfortable with it, I agree. But how does this make Lucas a sellout?
The other way this misses the mark is that John compares the actual movie (Ep 4) on the one hand to the hype on the other. This is clearly not an apples to apples comparison, not really relevant. Star Wars: A New Hope had no hype, but Return of the Jedi had plenty... At the time, I believed that the Ewoks were there simply to sell more toys; I've since learned different.
In the original story they were supposed to be Wookies, but he cut the story back to fit into one movie, and gave Han a Wookie sidekick. But it turned tout to be big, so Endor goes back in ROTJ, only now he can't use Wookies. So instead he makes the big furry savages into little furry savages. He's said they didn't quite work out like he wanted, he didn't want them to be so cute.
I'll judge him based on the movie he made, remembering that there's a lot of stuff in SW:ANH that isn't all that good.
So, you don't think it's interesting that people are willing to shell out big $$$ for property in a
computer game? I thought it was very interesting.
Do you think this would have happened in mainstream culture even 10 years ago? I think not.
It isn't about buzzwords, but about social change.
I read these comments, and recall my experiences, (which pale compared to those related to Katz) the thought struck me that this is exactly a description of discrimination. This can't be that far different to what Black Americans experience now or have experienced.
My reading suggests that it is very difficult to change predjudiced attitudes. However, it is considerably easier to change discriminitory behavior. There is no reason that I as a parent should accept violence against my children as "part of growing up". There is no reason any young person in school should accept this, either.
Frankly, I don't know why the police isn't called in more frequently to schools. My experience is that bullying is more psychological than physical, but it can get physical. This should stop, it must stop, it will stop!
Not all schools turn a blind eye to violence/bullying. Some have given up, others have not. All I can do is to act locally, get involved in my local school.
Part of what this is about is dominance, pure and simple. The dominant will act to preserve their position against any threat. Students who ignore the power of the dominant are as much a threat, perhaps more, than those who defy them. Also, those who are at the bottom make easy targets, since there is little chance that others will stand up for them, or that they will be able to resist effectively.
Therefore, the geeks need to understand that they are involved in a power struggle and either leave or find courage to make a stand somehow. I wonder what Ghandi would have done in an American HS?
Accepting the notion that one is inferior is the deepest hurt of all. Do not accept it!
This message contains a misunderstanding of the situation. Virtually all system vendors who ship systems with NT installed get to look at the Microsoft source already. They just don't get to change anything (and then ship it) except that part called the HAL (hardware abstraction layer)
I believe Muth said as much in the article, that they give, er, license (money is usually involved) their source to people including system vendors and university types. They've done that in the past, they do that now, they'll continue to do that, AFAIK. I doubt that was what Ballmer was referring to.
Indeed this was because many popular old flavors of FORTRAN mandate only the first 6 characters (or perhaps 8) are significant. When I first learned FORTRAN in the 70's it was done that way. So to be compatible with legacy code and compilers FORTRAN symbols must be 6 chars. However, this restriction was relaxed in FORTRAN 77, I believe, and certainly doesn't exist in FORTRAN 90 either.
On the other hand, that isn't why it's called strcmp. That has far more to do with Ken Thompson's love of short, obscure names, such as sed, grep, cd, as well as printf and strcmp (and strcpy). I've never known there to be a linkage restriction on any UNIX I've used beginning in about 1982. But, remember, it was written in 1969. Does anybody know any more about this bit of ancient history?
Very few "middle aged or older ladies" who live in an urban or suburban setting would dream of opening the door of their home before checking through a peephole to see if they were willing to trust the knocker.
I think they are capable of learning to do the equivalent with email, but it will take a while.
I find I must take exception the the author's thesis that intellectual property is "a system of law in which access to inventions and creative output is limited in order to reward their creator".
In the first place, intellectual property rights are not "inherent" or "natural" rights they were invented with a purpose. That purpose was to promote sharing by allowing the inventor to benefit from his/her invention in some other way than keeping that invention secret. Patents can protect the small and weak from the large and powerful.
For example, I can invent a better carrot-slicer. What prevents Megtronics Corp. from simply stealing my invention and selling millions of them with no compensation to me? Patent law. By allowing me to retain ownership of my invention, innovation is encouraged.
Rewarding the creator is only a means to an end, not the end itself.
Second, without intellectual property of a different kind (copyrights) we would never have had a GPL. My life personally would be much poorer, since I've been an Emacs user for nearly 20 years. This use of copyright law to perpetuate the sharing of his work is something I deeply respect RMS for, it's a really clever hack.
My approach with my children vis-a-vis sharing is that they aren't forced to share their own personal stuff -- forced sharing is no sharing at all. But when they are using my stuff they have to share and take turns. This has proved very effective -- they value sharing as I do and quite often share without prompting.
I believe that forcing people to share at best builds resentment and often leads to very cloudy boundaries, which in turn, leads to domination, codependence and abuse. I find I have little patience for voices which cry "All software must be free!" or "All music must be free!".
Star Wars was definitely worth paying to see. It wouldn't exist if there were no intellectual property laws.