I come from a different perspective and share the same conclusion... suggesting that we are both right on the mark. In 1996/7 I was a sysadmin/developer at one of those small ISPs, and as the industry grew up and started to go absolutely insane, it was clear that the big folks were trying too hard in some areas, not trying hard enough in other areas, and were generally clueless. The local folks did everything better except marketing.
Four years later, and the local folks who knew what they were doing back then GREW and became REGIONAL. Some other local folks died natural deaths or were sucked into Verio and other such providers who tried to grow through roll-ups.
So the best of the best are the moderate regionals who have survived. If they have been heavily invested in DSL, they might be pretty downtrodden right now, but they are still the go-to people with clues a-plenty, with the bonus that they actually answer their phones.
(As for me, I left the ISP in 1997, tried to create a web development company and failed, and am left doing managed hosting and co-location out of my house. But we were talking about you, not me.)
At least RobLimo is trying to put a fresh perspective on the WoD. What can one say, really, about this situation. 90% of Slashdotters, as of now, are agreeing with his point of view but saying that it wasn't funny and didn't make the point strongly enough.
Isn't it more interesting that we agree so deeply on the nature of the WoD: that it's hideously expensive yet entirely futile to the point where it's just a game.
Slashdot is made up of people who understand the nature of systems. Programmers, developers, enthusiasts, adminstrators, scientists, math geeks. People who understand that, for example, adding a layer of control can only harm something like the internet, where laws are hopefully made mostly by nature (i.e., physics, the speed of light, the nature of silicon) and what we hope are good, inviolate protocols that allow natural evolution. We show, technically, how a road is beneficial infrastructure but how a gate is only limiting.
For/. then to agree on the destructive, insane nature of the WoD is really saying something. To find that 90% of intelligent people agree is fairly remarkable. To find that they understand that they agree to the point where they would prefer another Perl vs Python article. And yet, we also agree ending or even changing the WoD is politically impossible - to the point where we find it irritating to even bring up the subject.
If they can spend so much money, expend so much effort, imprison so many people, ruin so many lives, and even take on expendable casualties with "friendly fire", while the intelligentsia disagrees so strongly, what else can they do? And isn't this disconnect between the politicians and the intelligentsia incredibly dangerous?
Well, I think this is in some ways a war of apathy. It's pointless to try to change the system and we, as sensible actors, are not going to waste our time trying. Fight 2/3rds of the population? Too hard for too little gain. At what point does that gain become enough for working more actively against the WoD to become sensible? As/.ers, we have all of the elements to demand political change: a community, the tools of the infrastructure, the power to wield them. When do we as a community have so much concern that we work to change things? What parts of the political brew that are not present now will cause this pot to boil over?
Firstly, offtopic. The purpose of the ark is not to save some legacy that we've produced, but to further civilization by studying ourselves and our world.
Secondly, troll. I almost have to suspect that there is an anti-technologist or two that have targetted/. specifically. There is absolutely no reason for a resolute anti-technologist to participate in/. if not specifically to upset the apple cart. Using/. to *educate* people about anti-technology approaches is ironic. And pretty much brain-dead stupid.
Thirdly, flamebait. There is no purpose to addressing western civilization with an anti-civilization rant, specifically the way you did it, if not to raise ire.
Fourthly, overrated. If this were not a Sunday I doubt there would be anything but insightful, informative posts modded up to five. If this were honest moderation I would beg people to read a little more carefully, especially with regard to on-topic-ness.
I have an honest response to you if you would deserve it, but I've already wasted my time enough...
And furthermore, my mother used to tell me to eat all my food because there were starving children in India. 30 years later, I now weigh approximately 450 pounds. If India is actually firing off rockets now, I shall begin dieting.
If this post was a real gun, you'd be dead now
on
Sean In The Middle
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· Score: 2
If you choose to trumpet the fact that you enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, or decide to wear goth clothing, you have also chosen to accept the stigma attached to it.
I see, aggressive stereotyping and stigmatizing other children is expected and is entirely the fault of the victim.
You can not punish someone for not liking someone else.
I see, brutally tormenting people you don't like is expected and acceptable.
The fact remains that this innocent child threatened the lives of others.
Bullshit, he threatened no-one. Compared to the actions of his tormentors, his action was probably the least threatening.
His biggest fault was taking his oppressor's stereotyping and using it against them. He wasn't violent, nor did he use violence. He used suggestion and a simple statement.
Your hypocrisy, sir, is utter. Months and months of physical and verbal abuse by tormentors is supposed to be a learning experience. One single statement in reaction, and you call it threatening and unjustified. If the tormentors were to take your advice, they would not go snivelling off, reporting it to authorities. Liking D&D expected to result in abuse? How about after months and months of abuse you might expect a little threatening aside! You should be telling your fuckup Texan teen circle-jerk buddies that if they can dish it out, they had better fuckin' take it like men, no whining to the principal. Hey, it's just commen sense, right?
Re:Like the last 100 instances, the school was rig
on
Sean In The Middle
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· Score: 2
Damn. "Get over it. Accept your problems. Learn to adjust." Nobody told me that before. Gee all my problems are now magically gone! Thanks, Mr. Class Vice-President, Mr. Most Likely To Be Famous! If only everyone had such wonderful insight into all the problems of the world!
Let's see now, is the victim responsible if s/he is physically abused, not just mentally abused? I just want to make sure I get your approach right.
In fact, shouldn't we honor the tormentors for giving the abused a chance to succeed? I mean, if it worked for you, obviously it'll work for everyone, right? (I know those fourth graders can be merciless, I don't know how you survived.)
And the damned uncaring father, co-dependently giving the son an opportunity to fail by retracting him from the environment where he would be the most challenged. What kind of father is that? He should have just told the kid to buck up and stop whining. Nobody likes those whiners! Why, they're some of the least popular people in school.
And that's important, because one measure of success is how popular you are in high school.
I could go on, but that would put me in line for being moderated down as flamebait. But wait, if that happens, it'll be my fault, and the resulting lesson will make me a better person. OK, moderators, do your worst! I refuse to accept your negative opinion of my message!
Re:zero tolerance for zero tolerance... please
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Sean In The Middle
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Wow. You should check out the book The Fourth Turning. The authors set out to look at your very ideas. They show how history is cyclical and then look at how those cycles operate. Your thinking is right on target!
GenX, or the "13th generation" as the authors put it, are underprotected and undervalued as children, grow up as a nomad generation. They start as free agents, are pragmatic and independent, and must be increasingly tough and resolute as they age in a time of crisis.
"Millenials", of which Sean is one of the first examples, are increasingly protected as children. They come into young adulthood and drive the society into crisis by challenging the crusades of their elders.
(The authors believe that this changing of generations and generational attitudes leads to an inevitable crisis cycle. Past crises in US society have included the revolution, the civil war, and the depression/WW2.) Each turning of the generations leads to predictable approaches, and the fourth turning is the crisis cycle. It begins in 2005. Be prepared.)
Sean's ouster, then, is a predictable overreaction from baby boomers during a period when individualism is stregthened and institutions are increasingly weakened.
Anyway, can't recommend the book more highly.
Re:So where does the information come from?
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A Map to Nowhere?
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There really is no other explanation. The Church has known this for many thousands of years, and now the scientists are realising it too. The missing information must be supplied by the Holy Spirit. When a man impregnates a woman, the Holy Spirit breathes life into the resulting embryo. At least, this is what we were told in school. In actual fact, it breathes information in, and gives it a soul.
That's an interesting take.
Now, when life is breathed in to an embryo, I guess we can assume that can't happen at conception? Because the zygote, at that point, is decidedly less complex than Win2000. Probably less complex than notepad.
About four months along and now you've got something really remarkable; various organs coming along, a basic shape going there. But nope, while it may be as complex as the Mach kernel, it's still no Win2000.
Another two months and there's a big change; neo-cortical brain activity, where logic and reason and emotion and what-not come from. At about the same time, the fetus becomes "viable" - able to live outside the womb, albeit with assistance, if delivered prematurely. (And this is the current law of the land in the US, BTW.)
All I really want is for you to admit that maybe this "soul breathing in" is the beginning of neo-cortical brain activity. And, if you agree with me, please spread the word.
Every unit must have refills that are weightless, can be picked up immediately and that can power-up a with a total minimum of effort. So much as inserting a clip into a handgun is more than enough time for your enemy to select a weapon, fire it at you, and watch as parts of your body fly off in different directions.
I suggest that these fuel cells should be used to improve heads-up displays. If you see a fuel cell and pick it up, you can gain more information about enemies when you're looking at them, such as how much ammo they have in their current weapon, or how injured they are. It would be best if, when you picked up the cell, it made some sort of "power-up" sound to tell you that you have in fact picked it up and deployed it.
But if the military is really serious, it would be far more advantageous to begin work on cheap, easily-found rocket launchers. I realize that the hand-held, shoulder-launched nuclear weapon is against the Geneva Convention. But from experience I can tell you that a rocket launcher is far more important to have than any dumb fuel cell. With that kind of weapon you do have to watch out for walls, which is important to remember, because most war in the future is going to happen indoors.
It seems to me that the statement "E-Business is here, and it's here to stay." is structurally just as brash as "Unlike with other famous bubbles... the Internet bubble is riding on rock-solid fundamentals, perhaps stronger than any the market has seen before."
Everybody expects e-business to stay, and I personally hope against hope that it's true. In fact, I've practically mortgaged my future on the idea that it's true. But y'know, the sad thing is that we can't take that statement for granted any longer. Even the really good business models seem to be failing. We still have Amazon, Paypal and E-Bay? Are you sure you'll be making that same statement a year from now?
One of my favorite vendors of choice has been outpost.com and this morning's news says they probably aren't long for this world. I guess I should have foreseen that they were one of the FC's. But HOW? On Monday morning everyone says THEY understand what happened, but Friday afternoon all we have are bold predictions.
Has there ever been a similar time in business history, where an entire market segment arrived, evolved, and 99.4% perished in the space of less than a decade?
Fucked Company is a lot of fun for those who weren't fucked, and reporting on the end of a cycle is just as important as reporting on the exciting beginning of it. I just hope that at the end of this downturn we have something to work with.
We all have to acknowledge that the net *still* requires the buy-in of the general public, who aren't like us at all. Some of them are even getting tired of $20/month dialup. The blue chip net stocks are dying. There doesn't appear to be any benefit to being online. Nobody can prove that the whole thing isn't a fad. Almost everyone has had to throw their assumptions out and start over.
In uncertain times, certainty about the future is dangerous.
Perens: Thank you for coming. Friends, we know that you've used a ton of free software and sold additional hardware because of that. In return, we'd like you to give something back to the community.
IBM Rep: Thank you, Bruce, for giving us the opportunity to reiterate our commitment to Open Source. Last year we gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Linux development, and this year we plan to invest one billion dollars towards it. We've agreed to port Linux to all of our platforms and we've ported DB2 as well as a ton of other software to Linux. Our commitment to Linux is unequalled in the industry.
Perens: Well, that's nice, but that doesn't count. You see, what I'm talking about is --
IBM Rep: Wait a minute, that doesn't count?
Perens: Yes, you see, that's Open Source you're supporting, not Free Software.
IBM Rep: Are we at the right meeting?
H/P Rep: Yeah, Jim, but Bruce wants to talk about patents --
IBM Rep: Bruce, are you talking about Linux?
Perens: Well, GNU/Linux is a part of it, but --
IBM Rep: Guhnew Linux? We work with Red Hat, are they a competitor to Red Hat?
Perens: No, Red Hat sells that software.
IBM Rep: So they're a partner?
HP Rep: Jim, let me explain. You're actually providing free software to sell your hardware.
IBM Rep: How could it be free if we've given them over twice their market cap to develop it?
HP Rep: Well it was the basis of developing Linux.
IBM Rep: So somebody developed this before Linux and now they want paid for it?
Perens: No, they don't want to be paid. They just want you to give up some of your ability to get paid.
IBM Rep: Are they insane?
(pause)
Perens: Well I represent the Free Software community, and I thnk I can speak for them.
IBM Rep: Really. Before IBM committed to doing anything with Linux, I was told that the community would love us for using it. Now we use it more than anyone else.
Perens: Well Free Software was there before you developed it, it just wasn't adapted by business.
IBM Rep: And we helped it get adapted and we're it's strongest advocates.
Perens: I think so.
IBM Rep: So? Does the community love us?
Perens: Well not really. It isn't enough to use the software, to port it to different platforms, to encourage its use and to give an incredible amount of money to develop it further. You also have to give up some of your ability to make money in the future.
(long pause)
IBM Rep: Folks, I've just gotten paged and there's an emergency we have to take care of.
Perens: But I haven't gotten to the patent part yet.
Part of the problem is the public's mindset of 'consumer'. The Internet has the ability to promote the average person to an active role, but is being strangled by those who believe it is nothing more than television with a keyboard.
I think that's more than a mindset; I think that's what most of the public wants to be.
In fact, that could be the disconnect at a lot of the dot-com woes. And possibly at the stalling of a lot of the "systems" in first- and second-world countries.
As/. users, we are almost all active participants. If there's a conversation going on, we want to be a part of it. If something new is on the horizon, we want to hear about it. We want our thoughts to be feedback.
Joe and Jane Sixpack don't. They don't want Tivo to help them program their own network; they want to switch on the box and have the network programmed for them. They don't want to worry about schools; they want to send their kid to school and have him or her come back educated. They don't want power generation in their backyard; they want the switch the light switch and to have the light come on.
They make a few decisions about where they live, what they do with their time, etc. but for the most part, they don't want to be heavily involved. They know the schools are broken, but they don't want to be the ones to fix them. They know politics is broken, but their reaction is to drop out and not vote. They just want things to work.
The active 10% is out here trying to bring new approaches to them, but they don't really care. Too much change is interesting to us, a whirlwind world we enjoy. We have an advantage in it, because we understand a lot more of it. But change is a problem to them. They don't care for instability; even if it's a pain in the ass, they want to get in their car and go pick up groceries and haul them home, because that's what they've always done and doing what they've always done is appealing in a topsy-turvy world. The more we, the active, push for innovation, the more the passives resist.
A friend of mine is a passive. He's even a computer guy. Back in 1986 I asked him why he didn't get a PC. "I use computers all day at work, I don't want one at home," he said. In 1993 I showed him Usenet. "It's a lot of trouble to read all that stuff, and then have to write back," he said. It was like more work to him. Now he has Internet access, I asked him why he didn't check out/. and other such high-profile sites. But I already knew: he's a passive. A good guy, even a competent, intelligent guy, but he wants life to come to him.
If we can understand these people, we can improve their lives (and they can pay us dearly to do that), but we can't expect them to take an active role. And so when you say to a passive "...all you have to do to run Linux is..." don't be surprised if the answer you get is "No, I don't have to do anything." So the challenge of not only the open source world, but the entire world, is to create paths of least resistance. If they have to do something, they won't. You have to figure out how to make them want to do something.
Andreessen's implementation of the IMG tag is an argument FOR screwing with standards, not AGAINST. Or rather, it would appear that screwing with standards is sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful...
As far as IMG being the GUI, without question it laid the way for GUI approaches to the net. Witness clickable image maps, the server side of which followed pretty closely on IMG's tail. Without IMG there was no need for GUI approaches so I for one don't mind them being synonymous.
Well it's dead easy to talk about interoperability when you're Microsoft, because nobody dares develop a piece of software that doesn't interoperate with you. Microsoft's entire strategy is based on non-interoperability. That's exactly what is meant by "embrace and extend". Wake me again when they completely document a Microsoft "standard" so interoperability is made simple for developers.
"Ultimately, application support will be the most important factor... In the end, the OS has to do something useful."
Will you port Office, Visio and Project to Linux?
"First, there would need to be significant consumer demand from Linux users that actually use Linux as a desktop operating system and were all using the same desktop environment."
In other words, it's same old same old, the catch-22 that we've known about for almost two decades now. MS is so certain of this situation continuing that they will even point it out directly, right to us: hey, you guys aren't going to get the desktop because you have no applications, and you have no applications because you aren't going to get the desktop.
Microsoft components usually interoperate with other Microsoft components, and everyone in business uses Microsoft, so Microsoft interoperability is nearly perfect.
Scale ignored in shooting the battles. I was amazed to learn that the weight limit of some of the heavy classes is over 300 pounds. You aren't given a sense of how big and destructive these bots really are. Either some off-battle time should be spent watching a competitor destroying a common household object, or the playing field should be littered with things we recognize.
Rules encourage lame battles. If one bot is just a tiny little wedge and the other has a huge mighty pick-axe, you know already the wedge is going to win. That's just plain wrong. Also, I was watching an episode where all three matches ended in utterly lame mechanical failures. Not KOs, just "...something's happened to his power. Now let's watch the contentant moving the joysticks in all directions and shrugging, for thirty seconds." Yawn.
On air talent. What talent. Bill Nye is tragically underutilized and the rest of the team is, tragically, utilized. The interviews are meaningless, too short, and don't tell us very much. The announcers are predictable. Their faux excitement is faux.
Everything else. Let's see, they refer to squares instead of corners for some unknown reason, announce the winning "square" even though we don't remember which bot was in which square. They have a referee whose job it is, apparently, turn on the power to the arena. Their use and choice of music is poor. The lighting is unexciting. Their description of the bots doesn't include details that would make it interesting. The viewer finds it impossible to pick a favorite, which is probably OK because the best bots lose anyway.
This is a country that specializes in making uneventful, boring activities exciting on TV. Battlebots manages to make a very exciting premise boring and uneventful.
I haven't seen anyone else say it so I'll say it. Jamie, it appears that you took this submission and fully researched it, then documenting the results of your research, including adding links where appropriate. And it wasn't just speculative research, but documenting the background on the story.
To top it all off, you checked for earlier/. stories, determined this to be a different story than the one eight months ago, but posted that story's link for those who wanted the original/. take on things.
You could have stopped at the first paragraph, and just posted the story as it stood, but you didn't. Applause all around, it's good work by you and my hat's off!
(...and to the usual crew, if yer gonna bitch when they mess up, give 'em a pat on the back and a round when they do well. It's just right.)
Yahoo started to wobble in their traditional high-quality, hand-picked links directory in 1997. By 1999 it was nearly impossible to get anything in there was wasn't under "Business & Economy". And then they implemented their "we'll look at it for $199" approach, which probably makes sense for all involved IF you accept that Yahoo is the 800-pound gorilla. I'm prepared to accept that but a lot of other people aren't.
You're absolutely right that our ability to cope with the net is what's suffering. A friend of mine once said that the Internet is "like giving +1 to everyone's intelligence. If they don't know something, they now have a tool that lets them look it up and get a ton of information quickly." But now we realize that you only get the +1 bonus if you are already fairly intelligent, because it takes intelligence to be able to do Internet research, more intelligence to determine if the sites that you're looking at are good sites and/or responsible with facts.
With the wisdom of hundreds of other netters, and the net's gift of great communication, I can be more intelligent than a doctor is about a given prescription drug, for example. But if I don't select sources correctly, I can be downright dangerously ignorant about that drug.
If the tools that we have for research improve, THEN we can add +1 to everyone's intelligence. So what we have in the meantime is a tool where the smart get smarter and the dumb stay pretty much where they are.
It may be that the current economic contraction may be just what the net needs. It may stagnate in growth for a little bit -- and then we'll have a little bit of time to catch our collective breaths and allow humans to catch up with what is possible. One reason we have all these fucked companies is that the masses didn't adapt as quickly as the netted elite. The main reason is the temporarily insane marketplace, sure, but a lot of online things are much better than their offline counterparts, it's just that people couldn't catch up with the growth of the net. It's better to meet online than to travel 2000 miles to meet, but today we are still adapting to the idea that we can shop for airline tickets over the net.
The net has allowed us to see what's possible and to implement new and better approaches. But it could not hold our hand and show us the new and better approaches. With time at a premium in everyone's lives, no-one can afford the time for experimentation or learning with these new approaches.
Taking a job isn't about ethics. It's about making a transaction whereby someone pays you do spend your time doing what they need to have done.
A company's actions don't reflect the ethical approaches of its employees. Haven't you ever been an employee?
It is NOT "perfectly OK" to spread FUD! That's just an unethical, immoral approach, on which we have lost the moral perspective because so many business majors have been taught otherwise.
It is NOT "perfectly OK" to embrace and extend. Standards depend entirely on the good will and cooperation of the developers. Crushing the standard in order to gain a better position for yourself is the moral equivalent of poisoning a stream to get rid of your waste.
Saying something is "true, as far as I can ascertain" is basically to nullify the statement. Ethics is clearly not the driving force of any company. You'll find out when you go to work for one.
If this is a 4/1 joke, you should know that making your joke realistic enough that it is not clearly a joke to a majority makes for a poor joke. If the majority are going to take your post seriously, then it demands a serious and studied reply anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Four years later, and the local folks who knew what they were doing back then GREW and became REGIONAL. Some other local folks died natural deaths or were sucked into Verio and other such providers who tried to grow through roll-ups.
So the best of the best are the moderate regionals who have survived. If they have been heavily invested in DSL, they might be pretty downtrodden right now, but they are still the go-to people with clues a-plenty, with the bonus that they actually answer their phones.
(As for me, I left the ISP in 1997, tried to create a web development company and failed, and am left doing managed hosting and co-location out of my house. But we were talking about you, not me.)
"Cool, I'll just pop in the CD."
CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop clop clop clop clop clop clop clop clop click whirrrr clack whirrrr kachunk clop clop clop clop clop clop clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP
"OK, let's go."
"Wait a minute... aw crap."
"What is it?"
"The right CD's in my drive, but your drive has the SimCity 3000 disk in it."
"Aw crap. Well hang on."
CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP Clop Clop Clop Clop (...the rest of this message is deleted to preserve your sanity)
Isn't it more interesting that we agree so deeply on the nature of the WoD: that it's hideously expensive yet entirely futile to the point where it's just a game.
Slashdot is made up of people who understand the nature of systems. Programmers, developers, enthusiasts, adminstrators, scientists, math geeks. People who understand that, for example, adding a layer of control can only harm something like the internet, where laws are hopefully made mostly by nature (i.e., physics, the speed of light, the nature of silicon) and what we hope are good, inviolate protocols that allow natural evolution. We show, technically, how a road is beneficial infrastructure but how a gate is only limiting.
For /. then to agree on the destructive, insane nature of the WoD is really saying something. To find that 90% of intelligent people agree is fairly remarkable. To find that they understand that they agree to the point where they would prefer another Perl vs Python article. And yet, we also agree ending or even changing the WoD is politically impossible - to the point where we find it irritating to even bring up the subject.
If they can spend so much money, expend so much effort, imprison so many people, ruin so many lives, and even take on expendable casualties with "friendly fire", while the intelligentsia disagrees so strongly, what else can they do? And isn't this disconnect between the politicians and the intelligentsia incredibly dangerous?
Well, I think this is in some ways a war of apathy. It's pointless to try to change the system and we, as sensible actors, are not going to waste our time trying. Fight 2/3rds of the population? Too hard for too little gain. At what point does that gain become enough for working more actively against the WoD to become sensible? As /.ers, we have all of the elements to demand political change: a community, the tools of the infrastructure, the power to wield them. When do we as a community have so much concern that we work to change things? What parts of the political brew that are not present now will cause this pot to boil over?
Just a few thoughts on a Monday morning...
Secondly, troll. I almost have to suspect that there is an anti-technologist or two that have targetted /. specifically. There is absolutely no reason for a resolute anti-technologist to participate in /. if not specifically to upset the apple cart. Using /. to *educate* people about anti-technology approaches is ironic. And pretty much brain-dead stupid.
Thirdly, flamebait. There is no purpose to addressing western civilization with an anti-civilization rant, specifically the way you did it, if not to raise ire.
Fourthly, overrated. If this were not a Sunday I doubt there would be anything but insightful, informative posts modded up to five. If this were honest moderation I would beg people to read a little more carefully, especially with regard to on-topic-ness.
I have an honest response to you if you would deserve it, but I've already wasted my time enough...
And furthermore, my mother used to tell me to eat all my food because there were starving children in India. 30 years later, I now weigh approximately 450 pounds. If India is actually firing off rockets now, I shall begin dieting.
I see, aggressive stereotyping and stigmatizing other children is expected and is entirely the fault of the victim.
You can not punish someone for not liking someone else.
I see, brutally tormenting people you don't like is expected and acceptable.
The fact remains that this innocent child threatened the lives of others.
Bullshit, he threatened no-one. Compared to the actions of his tormentors, his action was probably the least threatening.
His biggest fault was taking his oppressor's stereotyping and using it against them. He wasn't violent, nor did he use violence. He used suggestion and a simple statement.
Your hypocrisy, sir, is utter. Months and months of physical and verbal abuse by tormentors is supposed to be a learning experience. One single statement in reaction, and you call it threatening and unjustified. If the tormentors were to take your advice, they would not go snivelling off, reporting it to authorities. Liking D&D expected to result in abuse? How about after months and months of abuse you might expect a little threatening aside! You should be telling your fuckup Texan teen circle-jerk buddies that if they can dish it out, they had better fuckin' take it like men, no whining to the principal. Hey, it's just commen sense, right?
Let's see now, is the victim responsible if s/he is physically abused, not just mentally abused? I just want to make sure I get your approach right.
In fact, shouldn't we honor the tormentors for giving the abused a chance to succeed? I mean, if it worked for you, obviously it'll work for everyone, right? (I know those fourth graders can be merciless, I don't know how you survived.)
And the damned uncaring father, co-dependently giving the son an opportunity to fail by retracting him from the environment where he would be the most challenged. What kind of father is that? He should have just told the kid to buck up and stop whining. Nobody likes those whiners! Why, they're some of the least popular people in school.
And that's important, because one measure of success is how popular you are in high school.
I could go on, but that would put me in line for being moderated down as flamebait. But wait, if that happens, it'll be my fault, and the resulting lesson will make me a better person. OK, moderators, do your worst! I refuse to accept your negative opinion of my message!
GenX, or the "13th generation" as the authors put it, are underprotected and undervalued as children, grow up as a nomad generation. They start as free agents, are pragmatic and independent, and must be increasingly tough and resolute as they age in a time of crisis.
"Millenials", of which Sean is one of the first examples, are increasingly protected as children. They come into young adulthood and drive the society into crisis by challenging the crusades of their elders.
(The authors believe that this changing of generations and generational attitudes leads to an inevitable crisis cycle. Past crises in US society have included the revolution, the civil war, and the depression/WW2.) Each turning of the generations leads to predictable approaches, and the fourth turning is the crisis cycle. It begins in 2005. Be prepared.)
Sean's ouster, then, is a predictable overreaction from baby boomers during a period when individualism is stregthened and institutions are increasingly weakened.
Anyway, can't recommend the book more highly.
That's an interesting take.
Now, when life is breathed in to an embryo, I guess we can assume that can't happen at conception? Because the zygote, at that point, is decidedly less complex than Win2000. Probably less complex than notepad.
About four months along and now you've got something really remarkable; various organs coming along, a basic shape going there. But nope, while it may be as complex as the Mach kernel, it's still no Win2000.
Another two months and there's a big change; neo-cortical brain activity, where logic and reason and emotion and what-not come from. At about the same time, the fetus becomes "viable" - able to live outside the womb, albeit with assistance, if delivered prematurely. (And this is the current law of the land in the US, BTW.)
All I really want is for you to admit that maybe this "soul breathing in" is the beginning of neo-cortical brain activity. And, if you agree with me, please spread the word.
I suggest that these fuel cells should be used to improve heads-up displays. If you see a fuel cell and pick it up, you can gain more information about enemies when you're looking at them, such as how much ammo they have in their current weapon, or how injured they are. It would be best if, when you picked up the cell, it made some sort of "power-up" sound to tell you that you have in fact picked it up and deployed it.
But if the military is really serious, it would be far more advantageous to begin work on cheap, easily-found rocket launchers. I realize that the hand-held, shoulder-launched nuclear weapon is against the Geneva Convention. But from experience I can tell you that a rocket launcher is far more important to have than any dumb fuel cell. With that kind of weapon you do have to watch out for walls, which is important to remember, because most war in the future is going to happen indoors.
"xorandmovornot.com", which is actually a tutorial on the use of logical instructions in assembly language.
The 802.11 article used the term "script kiddy"! It would be while if that's the next net jargon term to see widespread use.
Everybody expects e-business to stay, and I personally hope against hope that it's true. In fact, I've practically mortgaged my future on the idea that it's true. But y'know, the sad thing is that we can't take that statement for granted any longer. Even the really good business models seem to be failing. We still have Amazon, Paypal and E-Bay? Are you sure you'll be making that same statement a year from now?
One of my favorite vendors of choice has been outpost.com and this morning's news says they probably aren't long for this world. I guess I should have foreseen that they were one of the FC's. But HOW? On Monday morning everyone says THEY understand what happened, but Friday afternoon all we have are bold predictions.
Has there ever been a similar time in business history, where an entire market segment arrived, evolved, and 99.4% perished in the space of less than a decade?
Fucked Company is a lot of fun for those who weren't fucked, and reporting on the end of a cycle is just as important as reporting on the exciting beginning of it. I just hope that at the end of this downturn we have something to work with.
We all have to acknowledge that the net *still* requires the buy-in of the general public, who aren't like us at all. Some of them are even getting tired of $20/month dialup. The blue chip net stocks are dying. There doesn't appear to be any benefit to being online. Nobody can prove that the whole thing isn't a fad. Almost everyone has had to throw their assumptions out and start over.
In uncertain times, certainty about the future is dangerous.
Good idea, it will be cheaper to replace the employee.
( N O T )
IBM Rep: Thank you, Bruce, for giving us the opportunity to reiterate our commitment to Open Source. Last year we gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Linux development, and this year we plan to invest one billion dollars towards it. We've agreed to port Linux to all of our platforms and we've ported DB2 as well as a ton of other software to Linux. Our commitment to Linux is unequalled in the industry.
Perens: Well, that's nice, but that doesn't count. You see, what I'm talking about is --
IBM Rep: Wait a minute, that doesn't count?
Perens: Yes, you see, that's Open Source you're supporting, not Free Software.
IBM Rep: Are we at the right meeting?
H/P Rep: Yeah, Jim, but Bruce wants to talk about patents --
IBM Rep: Bruce, are you talking about Linux?
Perens: Well, GNU/Linux is a part of it, but --
IBM Rep: Guhnew Linux? We work with Red Hat, are they a competitor to Red Hat?
Perens: No, Red Hat sells that software.
IBM Rep: So they're a partner?
HP Rep: Jim, let me explain. You're actually providing free software to sell your hardware.
IBM Rep: How could it be free if we've given them over twice their market cap to develop it?
HP Rep: Well it was the basis of developing Linux.
IBM Rep: So somebody developed this before Linux and now they want paid for it?
Perens: No, they don't want to be paid. They just want you to give up some of your ability to get paid.
IBM Rep: Are they insane?
(pause)
Perens: Well I represent the Free Software community, and I thnk I can speak for them.
IBM Rep: Really. Before IBM committed to doing anything with Linux, I was told that the community would love us for using it. Now we use it more than anyone else.
Perens: Well Free Software was there before you developed it, it just wasn't adapted by business.
IBM Rep: And we helped it get adapted and we're it's strongest advocates.
Perens: I think so.
IBM Rep: So? Does the community love us?
Perens: Well not really. It isn't enough to use the software, to port it to different platforms, to encourage its use and to give an incredible amount of money to develop it further. You also have to give up some of your ability to make money in the future.
(long pause)
IBM Rep: Folks, I've just gotten paged and there's an emergency we have to take care of.
Perens: But I haven't gotten to the patent part yet.
IBM Rep: Sorry, gotta run.
I think that's more than a mindset; I think that's what most of the public wants to be.
In fact, that could be the disconnect at a lot of the dot-com woes. And possibly at the stalling of a lot of the "systems" in first- and second-world countries.
As /. users, we are almost all active participants. If there's a conversation going on, we want to be a part of it. If something new is on the horizon, we want to hear about it. We want our thoughts to be feedback.
Joe and Jane Sixpack don't. They don't want Tivo to help them program their own network; they want to switch on the box and have the network programmed for them. They don't want to worry about schools; they want to send their kid to school and have him or her come back educated. They don't want power generation in their backyard; they want the switch the light switch and to have the light come on.
They make a few decisions about where they live, what they do with their time, etc. but for the most part, they don't want to be heavily involved. They know the schools are broken, but they don't want to be the ones to fix them. They know politics is broken, but their reaction is to drop out and not vote. They just want things to work.
The active 10% is out here trying to bring new approaches to them, but they don't really care. Too much change is interesting to us, a whirlwind world we enjoy. We have an advantage in it, because we understand a lot more of it. But change is a problem to them. They don't care for instability; even if it's a pain in the ass, they want to get in their car and go pick up groceries and haul them home, because that's what they've always done and doing what they've always done is appealing in a topsy-turvy world. The more we, the active, push for innovation, the more the passives resist.
A friend of mine is a passive. He's even a computer guy. Back in 1986 I asked him why he didn't get a PC. "I use computers all day at work, I don't want one at home," he said. In 1993 I showed him Usenet. "It's a lot of trouble to read all that stuff, and then have to write back," he said. It was like more work to him. Now he has Internet access, I asked him why he didn't check out /. and other such high-profile sites. But I already knew: he's a passive. A good guy, even a competent, intelligent guy, but he wants life to come to him.
If we can understand these people, we can improve their lives (and they can pay us dearly to do that), but we can't expect them to take an active role. And so when you say to a passive "...all you have to do to run Linux is..." don't be surprised if the answer you get is "No, I don't have to do anything." So the challenge of not only the open source world, but the entire world, is to create paths of least resistance. If they have to do something, they won't. You have to figure out how to make them want to do something.
Ugh, I'll stop now before I become Katz.
As far as IMG being the GUI, without question it laid the way for GUI approaches to the net. Witness clickable image maps, the server side of which followed pretty closely on IMG's tail. Without IMG there was no need for GUI approaches so I for one don't mind them being synonymous.
Well it's dead easy to talk about interoperability when you're Microsoft, because nobody dares develop a piece of software that doesn't interoperate with you. Microsoft's entire strategy is based on non-interoperability. That's exactly what is meant by "embrace and extend". Wake me again when they completely document a Microsoft "standard" so interoperability is made simple for developers.
Will you port Office, Visio and Project to Linux?
In other words, it's same old same old, the catch-22 that we've known about for almost two decades now. MS is so certain of this situation continuing that they will even point it out directly, right to us: hey, you guys aren't going to get the desktop because you have no applications, and you have no applications because you aren't going to get the desktop.
Microsoft components usually interoperate with other Microsoft components, and everyone in business uses Microsoft, so Microsoft interoperability is nearly perfect.
Production problems in Battlebots:
This is a country that specializes in making uneventful, boring activities exciting on TV. Battlebots manages to make a very exciting premise boring and uneventful.
To top it all off, you checked for earlier /. stories, determined this to be a different story than the one eight months ago, but posted that story's link for those who wanted the original /. take on things.
You could have stopped at the first paragraph, and just posted the story as it stood, but you didn't. Applause all around, it's good work by you and my hat's off!
(...and to the usual crew, if yer gonna bitch when they mess up, give 'em a pat on the back and a round when they do well. It's just right.)
Yes, being a Windows code whore always sounds like a good idea at first.
(Aw come on, you left yourself wide open for that one)
You're absolutely right that our ability to cope with the net is what's suffering. A friend of mine once said that the Internet is "like giving +1 to everyone's intelligence. If they don't know something, they now have a tool that lets them look it up and get a ton of information quickly." But now we realize that you only get the +1 bonus if you are already fairly intelligent, because it takes intelligence to be able to do Internet research, more intelligence to determine if the sites that you're looking at are good sites and/or responsible with facts.
With the wisdom of hundreds of other netters, and the net's gift of great communication, I can be more intelligent than a doctor is about a given prescription drug, for example. But if I don't select sources correctly, I can be downright dangerously ignorant about that drug.
If the tools that we have for research improve, THEN we can add +1 to everyone's intelligence. So what we have in the meantime is a tool where the smart get smarter and the dumb stay pretty much where they are.
It may be that the current economic contraction may be just what the net needs. It may stagnate in growth for a little bit -- and then we'll have a little bit of time to catch our collective breaths and allow humans to catch up with what is possible. One reason we have all these fucked companies is that the masses didn't adapt as quickly as the netted elite. The main reason is the temporarily insane marketplace, sure, but a lot of online things are much better than their offline counterparts, it's just that people couldn't catch up with the growth of the net. It's better to meet online than to travel 2000 miles to meet, but today we are still adapting to the idea that we can shop for airline tickets over the net.
The net has allowed us to see what's possible and to implement new and better approaches. But it could not hold our hand and show us the new and better approaches. With time at a premium in everyone's lives, no-one can afford the time for experimentation or learning with these new approaches.
OK, I'll stop now before I become Katz.
Taking a job isn't about ethics. It's about making a transaction whereby someone pays you do spend your time doing what they need to have done.
A company's actions don't reflect the ethical approaches of its employees. Haven't you ever been an employee?
It is NOT "perfectly OK" to spread FUD! That's just an unethical, immoral approach, on which we have lost the moral perspective because so many business majors have been taught otherwise.
It is NOT "perfectly OK" to embrace and extend. Standards depend entirely on the good will and cooperation of the developers. Crushing the standard in order to gain a better position for yourself is the moral equivalent of poisoning a stream to get rid of your waste.
Saying something is "true, as far as I can ascertain" is basically to nullify the statement. Ethics is clearly not the driving force of any company. You'll find out when you go to work for one.
If this is a 4/1 joke, you should know that making your joke realistic enough that it is not clearly a joke to a majority makes for a poor joke. If the majority are going to take your post seriously, then it demands a serious and studied reply anyway.