HHWIB (How Hard Would It Be) to make a little box that sits between a 5-dollar radio shack telephone handset and a voice modem? Does somebody already make one of these?
The idea being that you could hook your house's existing POTS wiring and hardware into a throwaway linux box (VOIP gateway) with just one little cheap black box.
Alfie Kohn wrote a book a few years ago called No Contest: The Case Against Competition. He spends quite a bit of time discussing what he sees as a distinctively American obsession with competition and competitiveness.
My favorite little snippet of the book:
To "cooperate" is to follow instructions. We have another word for genuine cooperative effort, as several writers have pointed out: It is
cheating.
I think an important difference between the technological advances of the first and second half of this century is that while most of the
former were driven by the public sector, most of the latter were made in the private sector.
A market economy will not produce the goods that are best for society, but rather the goods that are best at making a profit for the
producer. The research that brought life expectancy to 1950's levels was largely academic, not corporate. Sputnik was not launched into space to further the interests of a joint stock company.
Instead of, say, investing research effort in the space program, we invest it in developing Ford Excursions. Instead of building homeless shelters, we erect mini malls with payday loan
outfits. The invisible hand gives us Windows ME, TV shows like "World's Scariest Police Chases," and the McRib sandwich ("you eat the bones!"). Instead of a cure for malaria, we get
Viagra. Instead of widespread electronic privacy through encryption, we have encrypted entertainment media.
The (probably accidental) steeping of Americans in a culture that
inexplicably has a profound distrust for authority has delivered us a
much more insidious, underhanded form of servitude. As the influence of
government was diminished, the ease with which it was controlled by monied interests grew. At present, the purpose of goverment has
changed from a banding together of citizens for the common good to a confederation of self-serving corporate interests.
Witness the recent debacle of electric utility deregulation in California. Corporate interests hijacked the aforementioned cultural
phenomenon to advance their agenda of deregulation. "If we cut out the (nosey, bureacratic, inefficient) government, prices will drop." Prices have gone up. Deregulating cable and even airlines has had a similar effect (the latter on published, full-price fares).
With luck, the dawning of the new century (just 28 hours to go!) will bring about the sort of progressive attitude that became widespread at the dawn of the current century.
Hopefully America will get pull its collective head out of its collective ass and reinstate the sort of government that can make a
market economy work. Specifically one which sets up the rules of the game so that when profits are maximized, the public good is maximized.
Once someone has gone as far as oral sex, vaginal sex ain't too far away.
...and pretty soon they're having anal sex with monkeys. I'm not sure what you're implying here, but if there are differences that your audience won't understand, it doesn't help to pretend they don't exist (e.g. Linux = Redhat).
Likewise, I would assume the percentage of crack or heroin users that have used pot as well is higher than the percentage of non-crack and non-heroin users.
If you were trying to say that most crack/heroin users have used pot, you are probably correct, but display a serious misunderstanding of the difference between correlation and causation.
A recent article in The Onion mentioned a study which showed that 90 percent of international terrorists didn't eat a balanced breakfast. While this is a satirical story, the numbers are quite beleivable. So if we are to believe your version of statistics, outlawing poorly balanced breakfasts would eliminate terrorism.
I'm sorry if I sound pissy, but I hate it when people use a poor understanding of statistics to justify bad policy.
This is yet another example of trying to apply a technical solution to a percieved social problem.
What do you plan to do to keep people from bringing in their issue of Butt Cheeks Monthly and reading while they wait for their clothes to dry? You could persuade all local retailers to put tracking tags in pr0n magazines, and have one of those shoplifting alarm systems at the door that goes off if somebody walks in with a dirty magazine.
Or you could have cameras with sophisticated (read: impossible) image recognition algorithms that would vaporize offending magazines with a laser.
The solution to this issue has to be social, rather than technical.
Rumor has it the company I worked at sent a cockroach up to 80,000 feet on one of their high-altitude solar-powered missions (incidentally setting the altitude record for propellor-powered flight).
It costs a hundred bucks a month in electric to keep my saltwater aquarium happy, I can only imagine if I had to recharge a car every day. </blockquote>
<p>Actually, at 30 miles a day, and <i>really</i> expensive electricity, it might cost you $30 a month extra. And you don't have to pay for gas, oil, filters, etc.</p>
I don't know what the primary source of this is, but in Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, he mentions the following theory:
A common symptom when a human ingests a toxin (e.g. alcohol) is that their eyes sense a different perception of balance and motion than their inner ear. So the body evolved to eject these toxins (vomit) when that symptom appeared. I could see a how a similar effect might happen if the visuals were delayed with respect to the anticipated motion.
So the trick would be to lower the latency of the display as much as possible, or to get one of those nifty motion simulators when they come out.
The other purpose of patents, besides encouraging innovation, is to document and disseminate information about the invention.
Amazon would have invented and used 1-click ordering regardless of whether they were going to get a 20-year monopoly on it. So it doesn't meet the first objective.
The author mentions that anyone skilled in the art of web programming wouldn't need to see the patent of 1-click ordering to reproduce it. So it doesn't meet the second objective.
This is a clear example of a gaping hole in the patent system that was at least smaller in the past (right?). Neither objective of the patent system was met.
We need at least a new patent guideline to address this sort of nonsense. What would it be?
The copyright bruhaha (sp?) surrounding new media is basically this: For the first time in history, a book is worth more than the paper its printed on.
Until now it has always been much more expensive to copy a work than to buy a mass-produced copy. Intellectual property interests rested on this crutch until the net and computers knocked it out from under them.
I have a Cisco 675 ADSL router, and with the more consumer-oriented ISPs (e.g. USWest) they are shipped in routing mode, with a DHCP client (for the WAN), DHCP server (for the LAN), and NAT turned on.
They tell you to plug it into you computer (with the included NIC and crossover cable) or into a hub with a bunch of computers. If you are using Wintel, that's all you need to do (there is no maintenance).
You need to know how to use telnet and know that the router picks 10.0.0.1 as its address to fsck with stuff.
They're also reluctant to give you a static IP (which is why I'm switching)...
The "prosumer" (gawd I hate that word) ISPs will make you switch your router to bridging mode, so that it simulates having your LAN plugged into a big fat hub with everyone else's DSL connection. In that case there is some assembly required (I'll be using an OpenBSD firewall/NAT/web server box as soon as USWest switches over the connection).
With any luck those that don't know what they're doing won't need to.
I think about half way through the article (not sure if you got that far), he has some data (admittedly secondhand) that around half of the service sector are "knowledge workers," and somehow I don't think he's referring to knowledge of hamburger flipping.
First off, this was an excerpt of a book about geeks for the general public. This explains and IMO excuses both the at times incredulous tone and the fact that he seems to be telling us geeks what we are.
This is a different thing entirely from his writings on/. for the geek audience (still, I kind of enjoy his perspective).
Secondly, for better or worse, the general public doesn't get their news from the source, but through spokespeople like Jon. Partially, this is because many geeks don't write well (just look at some of the other comments;), and partially because the system sucks and people don't listen to us.
Right now we're stuck with the occasional simplifications, melodramatics and outright errors that these spokespeople weave into their work. I'd rather have Jon presenting geek culture to the world than just about anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
HHWIB (How Hard Would It Be) to make a little box that sits between a 5-dollar radio shack telephone handset and a voice modem? Does somebody already make one of these?
The idea being that you could hook your house's existing POTS wiring and hardware into a throwaway linux box (VOIP gateway) with just one little cheap black box.
Alfie Kohn wrote a book a few years ago called No Contest: The Case Against Competition. He spends quite a bit of time discussing what he sees as a distinctively American obsession with competition and competitiveness.
My favorite little snippet of the book:
I think an important difference between the technological advances of the first and second half of this century is that while most of the former were driven by the public sector, most of the latter were made in the private sector.
A market economy will not produce the goods that are best for society, but rather the goods that are best at making a profit for the producer. The research that brought life expectancy to 1950's levels was largely academic, not corporate. Sputnik was not launched into space to further the interests of a joint stock company.
Instead of, say, investing research effort in the space program, we invest it in developing Ford Excursions. Instead of building homeless shelters, we erect mini malls with payday loan outfits. The invisible hand gives us Windows ME, TV shows like "World's Scariest Police Chases," and the McRib sandwich ("you eat the bones!"). Instead of a cure for malaria, we get Viagra. Instead of widespread electronic privacy through encryption, we have encrypted entertainment media.
The (probably accidental) steeping of Americans in a culture that inexplicably has a profound distrust for authority has delivered us a much more insidious, underhanded form of servitude. As the influence of government was diminished, the ease with which it was controlled by monied interests grew. At present, the purpose of goverment has changed from a banding together of citizens for the common good to a confederation of self-serving corporate interests.
Witness the recent debacle of electric utility deregulation in California. Corporate interests hijacked the aforementioned cultural phenomenon to advance their agenda of deregulation. "If we cut out the (nosey, bureacratic, inefficient) government, prices will drop." Prices have gone up. Deregulating cable and even airlines has had a similar effect (the latter on published, full-price fares).
With luck, the dawning of the new century (just 28 hours to go!) will bring about the sort of progressive attitude that became widespread at the dawn of the current century.
Hopefully America will get pull its collective head out of its collective ass and reinstate the sort of government that can make a market economy work. Specifically one which sets up the rules of the game so that when profits are maximized, the public good is maximized.
Here's NPR's legal petition against LPFM. While competition for listeners makes a better conspiracy theory, they claim it's competition for spectrum.
Once someone has gone as far as oral sex, vaginal sex ain't too far away.
...and pretty soon they're having anal sex with monkeys. I'm not sure what you're implying here, but if there are differences that your audience won't understand, it doesn't help to pretend they don't exist (e.g. Linux = Redhat).
Likewise, I would assume the percentage of crack or heroin users that have used pot as well is higher than the percentage of non-crack and non-heroin users.
If you were trying to say that most crack/heroin users have used pot, you are probably correct, but display a serious misunderstanding of the difference between correlation and causation.
A recent article in The Onion mentioned a study which showed that 90 percent of international terrorists didn't eat a balanced breakfast. While this is a satirical story, the numbers are quite beleivable. So if we are to believe your version of statistics, outlawing poorly balanced breakfasts would eliminate terrorism.
I'm sorry if I sound pissy, but I hate it when people use a poor understanding of statistics to justify bad policy.
The sysadmin Guild -- www.sage.org.
Our local CUG (wcug.wwu.edu) had a speaker from them come up and talk about UNIX security. Pretty geek focused, but interesting.
AFAIK, it only cost us the price of a good Mexican meal.
So when will we see megahertz Class D amplifiers that turn the bitstream directly into high power output?
i.e.:
MHz Bitstream -> Big bucks, high power, high frequency power switching -> Low pass filter -> Speakers
Better yet, how 'bout:
MHz Bitstream -> Big bucks, high power, high frequency power switching -> High power, high frequency transducers (piezo?) -> Accoustic LPF
Battery guys use the following terms:
Power/Volume = power density
Energy/Volume = energy density
Power/Weight = specific power
Energy/Volume = specific energy
Interesting bit o' trivia: the theoretical limit for a battery's specific energy is c^2. Disscuss amongst yourselves.
This is yet another example of trying to apply a technical solution to a percieved social problem.
What do you plan to do to keep people from bringing in their issue of Butt Cheeks Monthly and reading while they wait for their clothes to dry? You could persuade all local retailers to put tracking tags in pr0n magazines, and have one of those shoplifting alarm systems at the door that goes off if somebody walks in with a dirty magazine.
Or you could have cameras with sophisticated (read: impossible) image recognition algorithms that would vaporize offending magazines with a laser.
The solution to this issue has to be social, rather than technical.
Rumor has it the company I worked at sent a cockroach up to 80,000 feet on one of their high-altitude solar-powered missions (incidentally setting the altitude record for propellor-powered flight).
It didn't make it.
Actually, they do. The average catalytic converter ($50) contains more platinum than a car-sized PEM fuel cell.
I don't know what the primary source of this is, but in Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, he mentions the following theory:
A common symptom when a human ingests a toxin (e.g. alcohol) is that their eyes sense a different perception of balance and motion than their inner ear. So the body evolved to eject these toxins (vomit) when that symptom appeared. I could see a how a similar effect might happen if the visuals were delayed with respect to the anticipated motion.
So the trick would be to lower the latency of the display as much as possible, or to get one of those nifty motion simulators when they come out.
-FrankIs this in violation of any law?
IANAL, but yes, it is a violation of the user's right to due process.
-FrankThe other purpose of patents, besides encouraging innovation, is to document and disseminate information about the invention.
Amazon would have invented and used 1-click ordering regardless of whether they were going to get a 20-year monopoly on it. So it doesn't meet the first objective.
The author mentions that anyone skilled in the art of web programming wouldn't need to see the patent of 1-click ordering to reproduce it. So it doesn't meet the second objective.
This is a clear example of a gaping hole in the patent system that was at least smaller in the past (right?). Neither objective of the patent system was met.
We need at least a new patent guideline to address this sort of nonsense. What would it be?
-Frank
The copyright bruhaha (sp?) surrounding new media is basically this: For the first time in history, a book is worth more than the paper its printed on.
Until now it has always been much more expensive to copy a work than to buy a mass-produced copy. Intellectual property interests rested on this crutch until the net and computers knocked it out from under them.
They tell you to plug it into you computer (with the included NIC and crossover cable) or into a hub with a bunch of computers. If you are using Wintel, that's all you need to do (there is no maintenance).
You need to know how to use telnet and know that the router picks 10.0.0.1 as its address to fsck with stuff.
They're also reluctant to give you a static IP (which is why I'm switching)...
The "prosumer" (gawd I hate that word) ISPs will make you switch your router to bridging mode, so that it simulates having your LAN plugged into a big fat hub with everyone else's DSL connection. In that case there is some assembly required (I'll be using an OpenBSD firewall/NAT/web server box as soon as USWest switches over the connection).
With any luck those that don't know what they're doing won't need to.
I think about half way through the article (not sure if you got that far), he has some data (admittedly secondhand) that around half of the service sector are "knowledge workers," and somehow I don't think he's referring to knowledge of hamburger flipping.
Anyone tried to make an anti-filter, replacing "bad" words with "innocent" ones (porn->pr0n) and passing the rest of the page through unaltered?
Would this sort of scheme work for many filters?
-Frank
First off, this was an excerpt of a book about geeks for the general public. This explains and IMO excuses both the at times incredulous tone and the fact that he seems to be telling us geeks what we are.
This is a different thing entirely from his writings on /. for the geek audience (still, I kind of enjoy his perspective).
Secondly, for better or worse, the general public doesn't get their news from the source, but through spokespeople like Jon. Partially, this is because many geeks don't write well (just look at some of the other comments ;), and partially because the system sucks and people don't listen to us.
Right now we're stuck with the occasional simplifications, melodramatics and outright errors that these spokespeople weave into their work. I'd rather have Jon presenting geek culture to the world than just about anyone else.
Check out this link FMI.
How 'bout involving a cathedral and a bazaar?
Maybe pictures of them being edited in the GIMP.
Or is just a screenshot lame?
-Frank