It's not really fair to keep on bashing Mir's supposed "unreliability". Remember that it was designed and built to operate only until 1992-1993 (don't remember the exact date), which means that it has been used for 7-8 years longer than its scheduled operational life. I, for one, would like to see how does the space shuttle operate in 2025... if it's still operating at all.
I don't know why I'm bothering to answer such an obvious troll, but...:
The EU hasn't objected so far to Time-Warner operating in Europe. The EU hasn't objected to AOL operating in Europe. The EU has a problem with BOTH companies merging and operating as a single entity in Europe.
I know this is an analogy that perhaps shouldn't even be mentioned in Slashdot, but if Microsoft decided to buy, say, Compaq, would anyone here object to a government (american or european) blocking it?
Please have a look to the earlier post that had a link to all the companies that Time-Warner/AOL control, to see how many things would you have to boycott.
While this "freedom of choice in the market" thing sounds neat on paper, in the real world it's often difficult to exercise said freedom, since people will often have access to just one or two choices that are practical for them (example off the rtop of my head: driving 100Km. to find the next video rental store because the only one in your town is Blockbusters, which BTW, also happens to be owned by another Big Corporation).
As of this writing, the website in question is not responding at all.
So that's why you posted this, eh? Make readers slashdot his site, that's how he will learn.
Well, I have. Using Windows NT (cough) with normal drivers, copying a large file (40-50Mb or more) would take 100% of processor time, while with bus mastering drivers it took just 3%-5%, or even less.
Hey, we are not talking here about redesigning the site for Yet Another Browser that happens to use a completely different implementation of DHTML, DOM, Javascript, etc., We are talking simply about putting ***ALT*** tags in each image, okay? One simple line of text for each graphic they use; how hard is that?
Of course, it's going to be more time-consuming (though even that could be arguable), but my point is that it doesn't present any technical problem; when did ALTs first come out, in HTML 2.0?
Actually, there IS at least one german company working to deliver pr0n content to WAP users.
(Don't remember names, URLs nor if this has been submitted here. It did appear at www.barrapunto.com, the spanish counterpart o Slashdot; just search there for "WAP" and you'll find it).
You were probably using a modeller that couldn't export optimized VRML code.
VRML was, in this aspect, pretty similar to HTML: you can write code by hand and produce tight, optimized files, or you can use FrontPage and produce bloat. Of course, it was quite more difficult to code 3D scenes on your own, by hand, (which reminds me of my POV-Ray using days... but I disgress), but that's why you had gzip for.
Freedom means being able to do anything you're willing to take responsibility for. There are ways to protect your privacy on the internet. So long as the government doesn't take those away, we shouldn't expect them to start forcing replacements on us.
Because, of course, there isn't ever a chance that a private corportation could try to take away your privacy or your ways to protect it. No sir!!! That's something that only the government could ever think of doing.
Okay. In that case, if you sister ever gets sexually abused (not that I'm wishing it to happen), I hope that she will be able to participate in online recovery groups with her full name attached, so that everybody knows what happened to her... I'm not in favour of absolute, 100% cypherpunk-style anonymity, but being able to speak up anonymously can be important in some cases.
I think you're confusing the european meaning of "liberalism" vs. the american one. In Europe, "neoliberal" is the name of the ideology represented by people like Milton Friedman or Reagan: unlimited free market, desregulate as much as possible, etc.; you get the idea.
Whoa, cowboy - that's a *big* postulate. We have to acheive massively parallel AI, not to mention a much greater degree of dexterity than currently possible before we can begin to talk about most, much less all, things people can do.
You are right about that, but the thing is, as Bill Joy points out too in his article, that a truly "intelligent" machine isn't really even necessary. Let's suppose that somebody creates nanomachines able to replicate themselves massively, and that those nanomachines do something like, erm... swallow all oxygen from atmosphere and convert it into some other gas. Would those machines be intelligent? Obviously no, but...
As immersed in technology as this readership might be, it is easy to forget that there are a lot of people who don't even like computers and don't want to rely on them. The majority of people might be reliant on microwaves and televisions, but not intelligent devices.
But they still rely on electric power and water supply, just to put two examples. And the power plants and sewage systems are regulated by...?
If I remember correctly, Gecko is the new HTML rendering engine of Mozilla/Netscape 6 (wait a minute... but in that case, what was Seamonkey? Oh well, gone to http://www.mozilla.org to read the FAQ...).
There are steps a knowledgeble person can take to prevent too much information, besides what we wish to give, out. Also, Doubleclick looks like it might be about to face several lawsuits for invasion of privacy.
The problem is: how many net users fall under the definition of "knowledgeable"?
We Slashdot users have a sort of tunnel vision in this subject, because most of us know what cookies are for, how can they be used, etc., so we tend to see this as less of a problem than what it actually is. But go out and ask the average citizen who just installed AOL and "just wants to use this net stuff". Their browsers have cookies activated, and they don't even know it. Nor they care. And they are currently the majority of the users.
And the same could be applied to many other technologies that one couldn't even imagine (not just cookies), over which we have much less control. For example, cell phones. (Disgression: some years ago the chechenian leader Dudayev (sp?) was killed by a russian missile while talking on a cell phone with Moscow authorities to discuss a possible peace treaty. When it happened, most media published that Dudayev had been traced "thanks to his cell phone"... and yet nobody made a big deal about it. Every newspaper seemed to treat the fact that They can trace you thanks to a cell phone as something completely natural. If that's what you can expect from the media that is supposedly responsable of educating the public...)
ABC is owned by Disney, isn't it? Uh oh... I haven't had time in the last days to read what abcnews.com had to report on this case, and specially what kind of spin they put on it. Can anybody who has read their coverage give an opinion? How biased/clueless was it?
The problem is that the big monopolistic media corporations won't let me. Really? In what ways do you see this manifested? I have heard this charge levelled many times, and have yet to hear a good defense of it.
Well, in what ways does Microsoft limit people's freedom to choose their OS? [g]
Now seriously: just as an example, a common practice followed by Hollywood film companies in Europe (and I suppose that in the U.S.) is to sell films to exhibitors in groups. Thus, they can tell to the theater owner: "you have to buy and show these 20 pieces of crap that flopped in american box office, because otherwise we won't sell you the Big Summer Blockbuster". Or, as anotehr example, the coordinated hype campaigns that we're seeing more and more lately: Big Blockbuster, made by Studio A, carries on a soundtrack sang by artists from Recording Label B, which belongs to the same company than Studio A, and is hyped to death by magazines of Publisher C, which has a strategic alliance with the aforementioned companies, etc., etc. Result? The small film made by a company that doesn't have all these synergies working for it gets shut out.
Now, to be fair, none of these practices make it impossible, in absolute terms, to make a choice as a consumer, but certainly it makes it more difficult. You can easily install Linux on your PC if you like, but finding a manufacturer willing to sell it to you without a Windows 98 license (aka Microsoft tax) is not that easy (or wasn't until relatively recently).
I like "edgy" art at times, and believe it has a place, but not necessarily in everybody's living room. That's up to them to decide
Ah, but that's exactly the point. I believe in freedom of choice too, and I have no problems with everybody going to see the latest summer blockbuster as long as I can still get to see my iranian pseudo-documentaries. The problem is that the big monopolistic media corporations won't let me.
With all the talk about the Microsoft trial, it would be interesting to see what would happen if one tried to apply the antitrust laws to the usual practices of Hollywood majors. Monopolistic practices? Attempts to block the competition from reaching the consumers? You bet.
Don't get it wrong. Us elitist arthouse moviegoers are not against other people's freedom (I did like "The Phantom Menace"). Hollywood corporations are the ones going after our freedom.
An interesting fact is that, while Bradbury is considered as one of the masters of SF, he is actually quite technophobic and dismissive about the Internet. I remember reading an article by him a couple of years ago about the net, where he voiced the standard close-minded / clueless concerns that so many people have about computers: they are useless, they are just silly toys that males like to use to waste time ("women are more intelligent because they don't get into computers", an almost exact quote), etc., etc. And actually, if you read his work, you'll find out that he almost never gets into the details of the technology; for him, science was just an excuse to drift into other fields.
Actually, that does NOT solve the problem at all. The reason why spam is bad is not only because it wastes your time, as some people think, but also that it takes *resources from the network* in order to be sent.
A conventional junk-emailer is always limited, to a certain extent, by the costs of printing his ads. On the net, OTOH, sending 2 millions of emails is just a bit more costly than sending 1 million.
Imagine that everybody starts doing that: spammer A sends 1 million mails; spammer B, not wanting to be outnumbered, sends 2 million; spammer C sends 5 millions...
What would happen in a matter of weeks? If your mailbox wasn't clogged with 200 millions of "UNSOLICITED-REMOVE IF NOT INTERESTED" mails, it would be probably because the Internet would have collapsed before.
That is why, when explaining spam, it makes more sense to compare it to the waste of natural resources in the real world (somebody abusing a resource that belongs to the public, that is, to all of us), rather than getting stuck in the "free speech" argument.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really fair to keep on bashing Mir's supposed "unreliability". Remember that it was designed and built to operate only until 1992-1993 (don't remember the exact date), which means that it has been used for 7-8 years longer than its scheduled operational life. I, for one, would like to see how does the space shuttle operate in 2025... if it's still operating at all.
I don't know why I'm bothering to answer such an obvious troll, but...:
The EU hasn't objected so far to Time-Warner operating in Europe. The EU hasn't objected to AOL operating in Europe. The EU has a problem with BOTH companies merging and operating as a single entity in Europe.
I know this is an analogy that perhaps shouldn't even be mentioned in Slashdot, but if Microsoft decided to buy, say, Compaq, would anyone here object to a government (american or european) blocking it?
Please have a look to the earlier post that had a link to all the companies that Time-Warner/AOL control, to see how many things would you have to boycott.
While this "freedom of choice in the market" thing sounds neat on paper, in the real world it's often difficult to exercise said freedom, since people will often have access to just one or two choices that are practical for them (example off the rtop of my head: driving 100Km. to find the next video rental store because the only one in your town is Blockbusters, which BTW, also happens to be owned by another Big Corporation).
As of this writing, the website in question is not responding at all.
So that's why you posted this, eh? Make readers slashdot his site, that's how he will learn.
Well, I have. Using Windows NT (cough) with normal drivers, copying a large file (40-50Mb or more) would take 100% of processor time, while with bus mastering drivers it took just 3%-5%, or even less.
Hey, we are not talking here about redesigning the site for Yet Another Browser that happens to use a completely different implementation of DHTML, DOM, Javascript, etc., We are talking simply about putting ***ALT*** tags in each image, okay? One simple line of text for each graphic they use; how hard is that?
Of course, it's going to be more time-consuming (though even that could be arguable), but my point is that it doesn't present any technical problem; when did ALTs first come out, in HTML 2.0?
Actually, there IS at least one german company working to deliver pr0n content to WAP users.
(Don't remember names, URLs nor if this has been submitted here. It did appear at www.barrapunto.com, the spanish counterpart o Slashdot; just search there for "WAP" and you'll find it).
You were probably using a modeller that couldn't export optimized VRML code.
VRML was, in this aspect, pretty similar to HTML: you can write code by hand and produce tight, optimized files, or you can use FrontPage and produce bloat. Of course, it was quite more difficult to code 3D scenes on your own, by hand, (which reminds me of my POV-Ray using days... but I disgress), but that's why you had gzip for.
Freedom means being able to do anything you're willing to take responsibility for. There are ways to protect your privacy on the internet. So long as the government doesn't take those away, we shouldn't expect them to start forcing replacements on us.
Because, of course, there isn't ever a chance that a private corportation could try to take away your privacy or your ways to protect it. No sir!!! That's something that only the government could ever think of doing.
Not anymore, AFAIK:
ALTER TABLE blah ADD COLUMN blerh char(16);
Or did you mean something completely different?
(Another thing, of course, is deleting columns from existing tables...)
Okay. In that case, if you sister ever gets sexually abused (not that I'm wishing it to happen), I hope that she will be able to participate in online recovery groups with her full name attached, so that everybody knows what happened to her...
I'm not in favour of absolute, 100% cypherpunk-style anonymity, but being able to speak up anonymously can be important in some cases.
I think you're confusing the european meaning of "liberalism" vs. the american one. In Europe, "neoliberal" is the name of the ideology represented by people like Milton Friedman or Reagan: unlimited free market, desregulate as much as possible, etc.; you get the idea.
You are right about that, but the thing is, as Bill Joy points out too in his article, that a truly "intelligent" machine isn't really even necessary. Let's suppose that somebody creates nanomachines able to replicate themselves massively, and that those nanomachines do something like, erm... swallow all oxygen from atmosphere and convert it into some other gas. Would those machines be intelligent? Obviously no, but...
As immersed in technology as this readership might be, it is easy to forget that there are a lot of people who don't even like computers and don't want to rely on them. The majority of people might be reliant on microwaves and televisions, but not intelligent devices.But they still rely on electric power and water supply, just to put two examples. And the power plants and sewage systems are regulated by...?
If I remember correctly, Gecko is the new HTML rendering engine of Mozilla/Netscape 6 (wait a minute... but in that case, what was Seamonkey? Oh well, gone to http://www.mozilla.org to read the FAQ...).
The problem is: how many net users fall under the definition of "knowledgeable"?
We Slashdot users have a sort of tunnel vision in this subject, because most of us know what cookies are for, how can they be used, etc., so we tend to see this as less of a problem than what it actually is. But go out and ask the average citizen who just installed AOL and "just wants to use this net stuff". Their browsers have cookies activated, and they don't even know it. Nor they care. And they are currently the majority of the users.
And the same could be applied to many other technologies that one couldn't even imagine (not just cookies), over which we have much less control. For example, cell phones. (Disgression: some years ago the chechenian leader Dudayev (sp?) was killed by a russian missile while talking on a cell phone with Moscow authorities to discuss a possible peace treaty. When it happened, most media published that Dudayev had been traced "thanks to his cell phone"... and yet nobody made a big deal about it. Every newspaper seemed to treat the fact that They can trace you thanks to a cell phone as something completely natural. If that's what you can expect from the media that is supposedly responsable of educating the public...)
ABC is owned by Disney, isn't it? Uh oh...
I haven't had time in the last days to read what abcnews.com had to report on this case, and specially what kind of spin they put on it. Can anybody who has read their coverage give an opinion? How biased/clueless was it?
Indeed. Microsoft bought Softimage, made them port their software to NT, and then sold the company to Avid, which is its currewnt owner.
So now History and literature are "the bottom of the barrel"? Why, thank you, said the Humanities *nerds* in unison...
Really? In what ways do you see this manifested? I have heard this charge levelled many times, and have yet to hear a good defense of it.
Well, in what ways does Microsoft limit people's freedom to choose their OS? [g]
Now seriously: just as an example, a common practice followed by Hollywood film companies in Europe (and I suppose that in the U.S.) is to sell films to exhibitors in groups. Thus, they can tell to the theater owner: "you have to buy and show these 20 pieces of crap that flopped in american box office, because otherwise we won't sell you the Big Summer Blockbuster". Or, as anotehr example, the coordinated hype campaigns that we're seeing more and more lately: Big Blockbuster, made by Studio A, carries on a soundtrack sang by artists from Recording Label B, which belongs to the same company than Studio A, and is hyped to death by magazines of Publisher C, which has a strategic alliance with the aforementioned companies, etc., etc. Result? The small film made by a company that doesn't have all these synergies working for it gets shut out.
Now, to be fair, none of these practices make it impossible, in absolute terms, to make a choice as a consumer, but certainly it makes it more difficult. You can easily install Linux on your PC if you like, but finding a manufacturer willing to sell it to you without a Windows 98 license (aka Microsoft tax) is not that easy (or wasn't until relatively recently).
I like "edgy" art at times, and believe it has a place, but not necessarily in everybody's living room. That's up to them to decide
Ah, but that's exactly the point. I believe in freedom of choice too, and I have no problems with everybody going to see the latest summer blockbuster as long as I can still get to see my iranian pseudo-documentaries. The problem is that the big monopolistic media corporations won't let me.
With all the talk about the Microsoft trial, it would be interesting to see what would happen if one tried to apply the antitrust laws to the usual practices of Hollywood majors. Monopolistic practices? Attempts to block the competition from reaching the consumers? You bet.
Don't get it wrong. Us elitist arthouse moviegoers are not against other people's freedom (I did like "The Phantom Menace"). Hollywood corporations are the ones going after our freedom.
From the Merrian-Webster dictionary:
Philistine:
2 often not capitalized a : a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values
Don't know why did the word suddenly crossed my mind, though. Mmmmm...
Analog?
(Don't remember the URL now, but I'm sure that you'll find it easily in any search).
A 19' Sony monitor!!!!
(Of course I could dream of Crays, Beowulf clusters, private jet airplanes..., but this is what I actually, realistically want).
(Incidentally: anybody had any experience with the Sony GS 200 monitors?)
An interesting fact is that, while Bradbury is considered as one of the masters of SF, he is actually quite technophobic and dismissive about the Internet.
I remember reading an article by him a couple of years ago about the net, where he voiced the standard close-minded / clueless concerns that so many people have about computers: they are useless, they are just silly toys that males like to use to waste time ("women are more intelligent because they don't get into computers", an almost exact quote), etc., etc. And actually, if you read his work, you'll find out that he almost never gets into the details of the technology; for him, science was just an excuse to drift into other fields.
Actually, that does NOT solve the problem at all. The reason why spam is bad is not only because it wastes your time, as some people think, but also that it takes *resources from the network* in order to be sent.
A conventional junk-emailer is always limited, to a certain extent, by the costs of printing his ads. On the net, OTOH, sending 2 millions of emails is just a bit more costly than sending 1 million.
Imagine that everybody starts doing that: spammer A sends 1 million mails; spammer B, not wanting to be outnumbered, sends 2 million; spammer C sends 5 millions...
What would happen in a matter of weeks? If your mailbox wasn't clogged with 200 millions of "UNSOLICITED-REMOVE IF NOT INTERESTED" mails, it would be probably because the Internet would have collapsed before.
That is why, when explaining spam, it makes more sense to compare it to the waste of natural resources in the real world (somebody abusing a resource that belongs to the public, that is, to all of us), rather than getting stuck in the "free speech" argument.