Do you believe that the hypothetical election of a Jewish vice president would reduce the ability of the United States to act as an impartial mediator in the peace process between Israeli and Palestinian sides?
Anonymous sources close to MyButt informed slashdot today that a recent test of project "Flying Monkey" was unsuccessful. Apparently, it was determined that monkeys do not have wings. Reaction was mixed.
MyButt Inc. president Lart Foudly said "This failure does not preclude our finding another of species of monkey which does, in fact, have wings." Industry analyst Lar Jass countered, "It wouldn't have mattered. Even if they find a monkey with wings, which they won't, they won't be able to fit it in there."
The "MFOOMA" coalition has reportedly not been told of the results of the test, but are expected to try and minimize the publication and impact of the results when it is announced next week.
Please don't anyone be fooled into thinking that this is in anyway an attack on Amazon. This is a company that agrees with Amazon's idea, and hopes to usurp it.
If you think this is a good idea, regardless of people that say it's unethical, good for you.
But if you think morality is outdated, you're wrong. Morals are just as popular as ever. New scientific concepts are not immoral by default. They are immoral if they contradict existing morals. Silicon chips were invented well after morality, and I don't think anyone is claiming that their mere existance is immoral. What are you trying to say?
Morality and religion simply aren't relevant to the fast-changing modern world, you say. You're wrong here, too. They are becoming more important, because morals are a lot easier to implement in our fast-paced world than tactics or strategy. I can take a number of devices, find you, and kill you. According to your argument, because it's scientifically possible, it should be defined as moral, and good. Thankfully for you, everyone else refrains from killing you. Why? Morals.
I don't want to burst your bubble, because I too am definitely a skeptic of these "We're going to kill ourselves in short order" scenarios. I personally believe that nature will kill off enough of us to bring our environmental impact down to the level that it can recover from.
I think of it this way. I get a fever when I'm sick, because my body is trying to fight off a virus. We are the virus, global warming is the fever. We're giving ourselves WAY too much credit if we think we're a fatal virus. We're more on the level of a cold. Damn annoying for a couple of millenia, and you can never totally get rid of it, but the symptoms go away with time.
As for whether or not global warming is our doing... I'm pretty convinced. I saw a television special on global warming made by the CBC (scientifically reliable, in my opinion) telling about a scientist that had done studies of glaciers to determine the amount of CO2 (I think) in the atmosphere. This allowed him to trace back through multiple ice ages. He also had data collected atop some remote mountain (no where near civilization) that recorded CO2 levels over the last 50 years or so. The chart went up and down based on the amount of vegetation on the planet, a result of ice ages coming and going. But when it got to the industrial revolution...
For all intents and purposes the line went verticle. The difference caused by the industrial revolution is equivalent to the difference caused by an ice age, except it happened virtually instantaneously, and it happened at a time in the earth's history where CO2 levels were at a relative high.
Yeah, we gave the earth a cold. Now if only we could find some chicken soup.
Actually, what this comment brings to mind for me is NHL Hockey Teams. The Coach is responsible for managing the players, the General Manager is responsible for buying them.
Sports analogies are out of fashion, though. Oh well.
What we need are some good old fashioned megalomaniacs (sp?) to go to the world's rich, lie to them really effectively that there are rivers of gold on pluto, and get them to finance the journey.
I think that saying NASA is aimless at this point is short-sighted. Sure, we're not doing anything as dramatic as going to the moon, but why did we go to the moon in the first place?
To play golf? Plant a flag? Collect rocks? Wow. What a contribution to the human race.
The race to the moon was a political race. The US government believed that the USSR had scared the crap out of it's citizens by being first into space. They were right. They needed to be able to prove to their own citizens that they could beat those ruskies, and they did. It served it's purpose.
So what are we doing now? The International Space Station. Not only will this serve as an excellent scientific resource and a launching site for other space ventures, it also shows us that we are capable of organizing ourselves as a race to achieve things that are not merely "impossible", but rather are significantly useful.
I have a lot of respect for the people that took the moon shot. I have just as much respect for the scientists and engineers working so hard right now to be useful, without the great motivator of political fear backing them.
I apologzie for the shouting, but the signal to noise ratio has hit about 1/5 today. The links cause you to post another report with your browser info. Don't click on 'em.
Take the moderation idea used on slashdot, and improve upon it. Create a system whereby users have the ability to moderate everything that they read. Find patterns between users with similar tastes. When a particular reader comes back, have the system determine which of the latest news items people with the same tastes as this user have moderated highly, and show those messages to them. Works better if done in many dimensions, I'd think (i.e. have the users moderate for humour and informativity seperately).
And if you can come up with a way of having this work, let me know.:)
That's right. Just because you claim ownership of a certain set of professions within english-speaking society does not mean you get to define the words associated with them. What goes into a dictionary is common usage. And in truth, cracker is not commonly used in the way that hackers would want.
So get over it. The votes have been counted. Hacker means what it means. Positive and negative. Don't expect it to make sense, people. It's English. Our noses "run" and our feet "smell". "Cleave" is a word with two synonymns that are antonymns of each other.
Take a deep breath, and relax. And don't bother petitioning dictionary publishers. They just report common usage, they don't define it.
It's amazing to me that organizations can be so stuck in the physical that they still think they can limit access to things. They must truly imagine that there's a portion of a hard disk out there somewhere that holds the offending document.
Seems to me we're going to have to wait at least another 20 years before the large institutions in our global society are staffed by people that have a clue what is going on.
I've suggested it before, and I know there is at least one site out there trying to implement it (although I can't think of it now), but I think it's worth repeating.
Jordan seems to think that the system needs to be based on ownership. I would disagree. I don't need to own a song in order to enjoy it (e.g. radio). It's the person releasing the product that requires ownership and scarcity. So how do you have a system that allows ownership for the seller but not for the buyer? You lower the cost of the product (because it's not resellable, its value is less), and you increase the number of people "buying" the only copy in existance.
How many times have you said "I'd pay to verb that"? You wouldn't pay much, but you would pay. With sufficient demand for a product, that prodcut can be released to the financial benefit of the producer and the general benefit of society.
This system would allow me to write software for a single company, which really needs it, and sell it for some large amount of money, and at the same time, write a generally useful piece of software, and sell it for pennies to thousands of people.
Just as a curiosity, what was the "utility", Jordan, gained from writing for/.?
What they got wise to is another question. Did they figure out that cracks were bound to happen, and nothing they could do would get around that? Did they determine that they had created enough of a PR monster by suing (sp?), then blocking related sites, that they had no choice but to disassociate themselves? Or did they have a moral change of heart, and come to understand that they and parents were not doing kids any favours by saying "The Internet is Dangerous", "Sex is bad", and more importantly "I have the right to control what you can see, what you know, and by extension, what you think."
Probably not the third, but the end result is similar. I'll take it.
I was condiering the effect that a site like Slashdot could have on the future of journalism a while back, and I cam up with something of an idea.
Consider: Could you create a/. without editors?
My answer is yes, although it would be difficult. There would have to be some sort of seperate review-by-peers of story submissions, and only those being most widely accepted as important being promoted to the point where the casual observer would ever see them. In this sort of method, the publisher (people who create the website) still gets income from being a journalist, but does not have their income dependant on the stories, and rather has no control over them.
Of course, there are problems with this, but seeing as how it's never been tried on a large scale, it's hard to say what they would be. Would people submit stories that were inaccurate? Would people promote stories that served an agenda only? Perhaps it would create more problems than it would solve, but I'd sure like to see it tried.
The author is wrong to think that there will come a time when human beings stop caring about what happens in the real universe, and will become absorbed with the artificial ones they can create.
There will still be people wanting to create the devices that allow us to create yet more intricate artificial realities. In order to be able to do that, they are going to have to continue to research basic sciences. And the same people that have researched basic sciences for centuries are the ones that promote interest in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.
Yes, there was a time period for the Human race during which we could not possibly have signalled our presence to other species in the universe. Now that we have achieved radio transmission and nuclear power, we can announce our presence to the world. The idea that in the future we will lose the curiosity that caused us to identify ourselves doesn't make any sense. It wasn't our curiosity that sprung up. It was our technology. Our curiosity has always been there, and will always be there. It is the basis of our advancement as a race, IMHO.
If you went back 100 years and told the leading physicists (sp?) of the day that 100 years from now, we would have the ability to photograph a human body in such a way as to be able to see the complete size and shape of objects within it in three dimensions, they would have been highly skeptical, might have even said it was impossible.
At the time, there were things they didn't know about the universe. Knowing those things makes all the difference.
When I was in highschool, they took us to the University physics labs, and a professor took a petri dish with a checker-sized magnet in it, then placed a small cylindrical semi-conductor on top of the magnet. Then, she poured liquid nitrogen into the petri dish, and the semi-conductor levitated, and floated where it was.
After seeing that, I don't think I'll ever be able to say something is impossible again. I hope they have fun trying.
There's generally only one reason that a court case gets settled, and that is that one of the sides has an unfair advantage of winning.
That certainly seems to be the case. I can't see any way that Matt and his pal could have lost, and Mattel had started a potentially explosive PR problem by suing a couple of people for something that wasn't strictly illegal. They probably knew this before hand, as well, but felt that it was in their best interests to appear as though they were legally challenging the issue.
So what was the settlement, that's what I want to know. Chances are there's a NDA on it, and chances are the NDA is in order to hide the fact that Mattel may have paid these guys off.
Yes, I know that's hard to imagine, but think about the options they had. If they get sued, they have massive legal fees to deal with, and may or may not be able to countersue to recover those costs. If Mattel wants the problem to go away, offer to pay for the lawyers, and drop a few grand on each of them for their cooperation. No further charges, and the boys agree to stop publishing the software.
It seems rather reasonable. Mattel gets to look like it's protecting it's product diligently and winning. They guys don't lose anything, (they can always get the software off the net at this point), and everyone's happy.
The only concerning part is, is there now a market for software cracks to hold corporations hostage for small sums in order to not release their creations?
This goes out to Dave, Carl, Andrew, and all the coders, designers and QA guys at Bioware in my home town.
I have lunch with them occasionally at the Billiards Club across the street from their studios in Edmonton, and these guys are great. They put a tonne of work in. My favorite QA guy Carl came to lunch one day after a 30 hour shift, and he had been doing that all week. And you should have seen the grin of relief on the face of David when he came in last week (after MDK went gold).
You guys all know the drill. If you buy games for Linux, they will keep making games for Linux. And if you need additional motivation, I consider BioWare to be a personal friend of mine, in addition to being a Kick-Ass games shop.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not flamebait... it's just a hard question.
MyButt Inc. president Lart Foudly said "This failure does not preclude our finding another of species of monkey which does, in fact, have wings." Industry analyst Lar Jass countered, "It wouldn't have mattered. Even if they find a monkey with wings, which they won't, they won't be able to fit it in there."
The "MFOOMA" coalition has reportedly not been told of the results of the test, but are expected to try and minimize the publication and impact of the results when it is announced next week.
--------
Scratch OpenTV off your christmas card list.
But if you think morality is outdated, you're wrong. Morals are just as popular as ever. New scientific concepts are not immoral by default. They are immoral if they contradict existing morals. Silicon chips were invented well after morality, and I don't think anyone is claiming that their mere existance is immoral. What are you trying to say?
Morality and religion simply aren't relevant to the fast-changing modern world, you say. You're wrong here, too. They are becoming more important, because morals are a lot easier to implement in our fast-paced world than tactics or strategy. I can take a number of devices, find you, and kill you. According to your argument, because it's scientifically possible, it should be defined as moral, and good. Thankfully for you, everyone else refrains from killing you. Why? Morals.
I think of it this way. I get a fever when I'm sick, because my body is trying to fight off a virus. We are the virus, global warming is the fever. We're giving ourselves WAY too much credit if we think we're a fatal virus. We're more on the level of a cold. Damn annoying for a couple of millenia, and you can never totally get rid of it, but the symptoms go away with time.
As for whether or not global warming is our doing... I'm pretty convinced. I saw a television special on global warming made by the CBC (scientifically reliable, in my opinion) telling about a scientist that had done studies of glaciers to determine the amount of CO2 (I think) in the atmosphere. This allowed him to trace back through multiple ice ages. He also had data collected atop some remote mountain (no where near civilization) that recorded CO2 levels over the last 50 years or so. The chart went up and down based on the amount of vegetation on the planet, a result of ice ages coming and going. But when it got to the industrial revolution...
For all intents and purposes the line went verticle. The difference caused by the industrial revolution is equivalent to the difference caused by an ice age, except it happened virtually instantaneously, and it happened at a time in the earth's history where CO2 levels were at a relative high.
Yeah, we gave the earth a cold. Now if only we could find some chicken soup.
Sports analogies are out of fashion, though. Oh well.
Christopher Columbus was the man. :)
To play golf? Plant a flag? Collect rocks? Wow. What a contribution to the human race.
The race to the moon was a political race. The US government believed that the USSR had scared the crap out of it's citizens by being first into space. They were right. They needed to be able to prove to their own citizens that they could beat those ruskies, and they did. It served it's purpose.
So what are we doing now? The International Space Station. Not only will this serve as an excellent scientific resource and a launching site for other space ventures, it also shows us that we are capable of organizing ourselves as a race to achieve things that are not merely "impossible", but rather are significantly useful.
I have a lot of respect for the people that took the moon shot. I have just as much respect for the scientists and engineers working so hard right now to be useful, without the great motivator of political fear backing them.
Whatever.
6. Effective Date, Term, Retention of Jurisdiction, Modification.
b. Except as provided in section 2.e, the provisions of this Final Judgment apply to Microsoft as defined in section 7.o of this Final Judgment.
7. Definitions.
o. "Manager" means a Microsoft employee who is responsible for the direct or indirect supervision of more than 100 other employees.
I apologzie for the shouting, but the signal to noise ratio has hit about 1/5 today. The links cause you to post another report with your browser info. Don't click on 'em.
Personally, I think we should add a category to the moderation lists in honor of this invention. "Malicious" would work.
And if you can come up with a way of having this work, let me know. :)
Gauntlet
So get over it. The votes have been counted. Hacker means what it means. Positive and negative. Don't expect it to make sense, people. It's English. Our noses "run" and our feet "smell". "Cleave" is a word with two synonymns that are antonymns of each other.
Take a deep breath, and relax. And don't bother petitioning dictionary publishers. They just report common usage, they don't define it.
Pragmatist? Sure, if it works.
Seems to me we're going to have to wait at least another 20 years before the large institutions in our global society are staffed by people that have a clue what is going on.
Jordan seems to think that the system needs to be based on ownership. I would disagree. I don't need to own a song in order to enjoy it (e.g. radio). It's the person releasing the product that requires ownership and scarcity. So how do you have a system that allows ownership for the seller but not for the buyer? You lower the cost of the product (because it's not resellable, its value is less), and you increase the number of people "buying" the only copy in existance.
How many times have you said "I'd pay to verb that"? You wouldn't pay much, but you would pay. With sufficient demand for a product, that prodcut can be released to the financial benefit of the producer and the general benefit of society.
This system would allow me to write software for a single company, which really needs it, and sell it for some large amount of money, and at the same time, write a generally useful piece of software, and sell it for pennies to thousands of people.
Just as a curiosity, what was the "utility", Jordan, gained from writing for /.?
Probably not the third, but the end result is similar. I'll take it.
Consider: Could you create a /. without editors?
My answer is yes, although it would be difficult. There would have to be some sort of seperate review-by-peers of story submissions, and only those being most widely accepted as important being promoted to the point where the casual observer would ever see them. In this sort of method, the publisher (people who create the website) still gets income from being a journalist, but does not have their income dependant on the stories, and rather has no control over them.
Of course, there are problems with this, but seeing as how it's never been tried on a large scale, it's hard to say what they would be. Would people submit stories that were inaccurate? Would people promote stories that served an agenda only? Perhaps it would create more problems than it would solve, but I'd sure like to see it tried.
I meant superconductor.
There will still be people wanting to create the devices that allow us to create yet more intricate artificial realities. In order to be able to do that, they are going to have to continue to research basic sciences. And the same people that have researched basic sciences for centuries are the ones that promote interest in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.
Yes, there was a time period for the Human race during which we could not possibly have signalled our presence to other species in the universe. Now that we have achieved radio transmission and nuclear power, we can announce our presence to the world. The idea that in the future we will lose the curiosity that caused us to identify ourselves doesn't make any sense. It wasn't our curiosity that sprung up. It was our technology. Our curiosity has always been there, and will always be there. It is the basis of our advancement as a race, IMHO.
At the time, there were things they didn't know about the universe. Knowing those things makes all the difference.
When I was in highschool, they took us to the University physics labs, and a professor took a petri dish with a checker-sized magnet in it, then placed a small cylindrical semi-conductor on top of the magnet. Then, she poured liquid nitrogen into the petri dish, and the semi-conductor levitated, and floated where it was.
After seeing that, I don't think I'll ever be able to say something is impossible again. I hope they have fun trying.
That certainly seems to be the case. I can't see any way that Matt and his pal could have lost, and Mattel had started a potentially explosive PR problem by suing a couple of people for something that wasn't strictly illegal. They probably knew this before hand, as well, but felt that it was in their best interests to appear as though they were legally challenging the issue.
So what was the settlement, that's what I want to know. Chances are there's a NDA on it, and chances are the NDA is in order to hide the fact that Mattel may have paid these guys off.
Yes, I know that's hard to imagine, but think about the options they had. If they get sued, they have massive legal fees to deal with, and may or may not be able to countersue to recover those costs. If Mattel wants the problem to go away, offer to pay for the lawyers, and drop a few grand on each of them for their cooperation. No further charges, and the boys agree to stop publishing the software.
It seems rather reasonable. Mattel gets to look like it's protecting it's product diligently and winning. They guys don't lose anything, (they can always get the software off the net at this point), and everyone's happy.
The only concerning part is, is there now a market for software cracks to hold corporations hostage for small sums in order to not release their creations?
I have lunch with them occasionally at the Billiards Club across the street from their studios in Edmonton, and these guys are great. They put a tonne of work in. My favorite QA guy Carl came to lunch one day after a 30 hour shift, and he had been doing that all week. And you should have seen the grin of relief on the face of David when he came in last week (after MDK went gold).
You guys all know the drill. If you buy games for Linux, they will keep making games for Linux. And if you need additional motivation, I consider BioWare to be a personal friend of mine, in addition to being a Kick-Ass games shop.
And they're Canadian, and proud of it!
I submitted it three weeks from now. Come ON!
It will make it a lot easier to chat with those Mars-orbiting satellites if it works.