But before we put people on mars, shouldn't we grab a few of the right kind of asteroids and drop them on that rock? A few billion tons of water, at least? Maybe some carbon, too? Seems like it would be a lot more worrisome dropping that stuff on that rock after people have landed than it would be before.
Finally a meta topic where I can bitch and not be [entirely] offtopic.
What/. has been doing lately: suck.
1. Get an editor. Just one real one. Only let them promote stories. 2. Stop posting crap. Just one editor will help. Fewer, better stories, please. ** Major Backlash Looms For Apple's New Maps App - crap ** TSA Spending $245 Million On "Second Generation" Body Scanners - offtopic ** Designers Criticize Apple's User Interface For OS X and iOS - crap ** Roundup Tolerant GM Maize Linked To Tumor Development - offtopic 3. Contact sites you're going to link to. Maybe even arrange caching.
Damn if Google hasn't already done it: https://support.google.com/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=69980 A third option, Sort by magic will rank items by "magic." Personalized magic ranking is automatically generated, taking into account your past reading behavior (including liking and starring) and global signals. We'll do our best to display items in the most relevant and interesting order -- click the Like button on things you think are important or enjoy reading, and we'll learn to put items like that first.
Guess I'll have to check it out. I already use reader.
That's the sad thing of people who have never taught; once you create a lesson plan your good to go for eternity. Been there as an in-classroom instructor for the Air Force. Things are not as static as most people think.
I fail to see how this is a problem. That's kind of the point of social networks -- you only see posts from people you have agreed to see posts from. Unless you're talking about the common 'message' feature on most networks -- in which case there's really no difference between that and email, and the same technology that manages to keep my Gmail completely devoid of spam should work just as well in something like diaspora.
When you look someone up on Facebook, you are searching one server and it has controls.
When you look someone up on diaspora, what's to keep thousands of zombie diaspora nodes from replying with bogus accounts hoping to connect to you?
From the other direction: have you ever received a spam friend request on a social network like Facebook or g+? Imagine what it would be like with the same connectivity as email, but with less context to determine if an invitation is spam?
I mean, I will say I have no personal experience with this having not been alive at the time, but it is my understanding that in the early days of personal computers there were many email providers with proprietary systems that were not capable of sending messages between networks.
From http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2002/cmsc434-0101/MUIseum/applications/emailhistory.html : "In the late-1970's and 1980's the phenomenal growth of personal computers (Apple II 1978 - 1985; IBM PC 1983 and Apple Macintosh 1984) created a whole new genre of email technologies. Some of these systems were proprietary 'dial-up' systems such as MCI Mail, EasyLink, Telecom Gold, One-to-One, CompuServe, AppleLink etc. For two people to exchange messages remotely on these systems they had to both be subscribers. The proprietary systems did not interoperate or transmit messages from one system to another, or for the few systems that did these were notoriously unreliable...."
I guess I have the "advantage" of having been alive way back then:-)
From my limited perspective as a Californian geek who graduated high school in '86... In the mid 80's there were a lot of BBS's, and many of them were isolated nodes. A fair number of them did pass messages back and forth, however. But the number of users back in the day was ridiculously small compared to today.
At the same time, in the 80's, all the major universities in the States had interconnected email. Again, the number of users was tiny - mostly CompSci majors. People studying others subjects very often did not own a computer.
In the late 80's, many of the small BBS's started to integrate with the internet (lowercase 'i', which used to indicate nodes that would store and forward email and news), and you could send and receive email to many different kinds of BBS from any internet node.
And, of course, in the mid 90's, we all explained to our parents what email is and how it works.
So there was a small window in the mid or late 80's when there were some BBSs and companies with proprietary email systems that did not connect. But at the same time (and for some time before) there was the university system. For the vast majority of people who heard the term 'email', the first time they heard it it was interconnected.
First of all, plenty of people still use their ISP email...
I wish I could find numbers.
..But email wasn't always decentralized, so there's no reason why social networking couldn't end up decentralized as well, if people demand it...
Wait. What? When was email not decentralized? Which is to say: when was email centralized?
I think the real, "killer app" win here would be if they could make it easily to fully segregate your data.
Circles work fine for me. Most people seem to care very little.
On an unrelated note -- basing your profile address on a domain name? Really? Why not a more decentralized approach?
Right. Because what I really want is 1000 commercial sites all responding to queries for Kurt Werle with data about me they have scrapped off the web.
This is one of the biggest invisible features of the walled gardens of Facebook & gPlus: the walls. Because if you think that email spam is bad, wait until you start to get Diaspora spam from Russia, China, and a million zombie boxes all running bogus diaspora nodes.
Thirty years ago, the idea that non-geeks would ever start using computers themselves seemed absurd.
Forty years ago, the idea that people - rather than corporations and governments - would use computers themselves seemed absurd.
You need to update those numbers. 30 years ago Apple was most certainly selling computers to home users.
What we have learned i the past 40 years is that people will use computers. What we have learned in the past 15 years is that people will not admin servers.
Give people a choice (I'm looking at you, too, linux), and people will ignore you. Give people a single (or very few) "winning" options - like Facebook - and they will flock.
Remember when every ISP offered email? I guess they still do - but nobody cares. There are 3ish winners in the west: Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail.
And people suppose - with a couple of gorillas already on the scene - that people will adapt a multitude of social network sites that magically* interoperate? I'm not betting on it.
* I don't buy that any significant number of sites in this space will successfully maintain consistent standards and communicate. Unless there's a whole lot of fairy dust involved
<disillusioned home email/web/etc admin of 15ish years>
That's your best option...from the sounds of you problems, short hours only, special needs, I'm sorry to say, but in the private sector, you're kinda fucked.
I think that's almost entirely true - but there will be some exceptions. If you do good work, there will be small consulting companies who will hire you for what you are - a good worker with some special needs. There are some very large companies that are so large they know how to handle unusual employees. And some of those are government contractors, so they're required to do so.
In addition to collectives, there are other public places that you might do well in. I sometimes work at the public library. It's generally quiet, and it's not home. There's a cafe' I often work at (I make a point to spend money there, so I don't feel bad using one of the several open tables).
But if you need a routine, then an office might be the place for you.
I might look for government employment. City/County. Very large organizations tend to be better equipped to handle and understand unusual worker needs.
The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.
If you'd ever flown you'd know that they ask you to stow all personal effects - books, bags, coats. So it's clearly not EM emissions they're worried about.
4. BACKGROUND. Section 91.21 (formerly 91.19) was initially established in May 1961 to prohibit the operation of portable frequency-modulated radio receivers aboard U.S. air carrier and U.S.-registered aircraft when the very high frequency omnidirectional range was being used for navigation purposes. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) subsequently determined that other PED’s could be potentially hazardous to aircraft communication and navigation equipment, if operated aboard aircraft. Amendment 91-35 amended the scope of former section 91.19 to prohibit the use of additional PED’s aboard certain U.S. civil aircraft. Earlier studies conducted by RTCA, Inc. (RTCA), Special Committee 156, Document No. RTCA/DO-199, Volumes 1 and 2, entitled “Potential Interference to Aircraft Electronic Equipment from Devices Carried Aboard,” have contributed greatly to an understanding of the operational effects of PED’s aboard aircraft. (See paragraph 7b for obtaining copies.)
Which by a process of elimination leaves a) attention and b) clutter. And c), both.
I think you missed one:
d) because someone told them their job depends on them repeating that magic phrase.
I don't fly nearly as frequently as I used to, but I've [also] never been asked to put away a book I've been reading.
The "pay attention" notion seems reasonable - which is why it probably is not true. Instead the truth seems to be that they are enforcing a rule from the 60's that probably doesn't make much sense [any more].
How did we reach a point where we will so willingly turn over our individual agency to Apple, Microsoft, Sony? Or AT&T and Comcast? Who here believes that those companies can be trusted to look out for our best interests?
Nobody* gives a shit about GPC. They don't even want "computers". They want a way to browse the web, play games, do email, and run a few productivity apps - preferably without having to worry about viruses, etc. Oh, and do "phone stuff". In short, consumers are consumers. It's the apps, stupid. Why would you be surprised that the computer Uncle Bob wants to use doesn't look like the one you do?
Those of us who want/need to do software have a wide variety of CPUs and hardware (and software) to do it with. I don't know that it's more or less choice than ever before, but certainly we have lots of options.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do we even listen to these people?
We don't. But the editors put it on /., so there you go.
But before we put people on mars, shouldn't we grab a few of the right kind of asteroids and drop them on that rock? A few billion tons of water, at least? Maybe some carbon, too? Seems like it would be a lot more worrisome dropping that stuff on that rock after people have landed than it would be before.
Finally a meta topic where I can bitch and not be [entirely] offtopic.
What /. has been doing lately: suck.
1. Get an editor. Just one real one. Only let them promote stories.
2. Stop posting crap. Just one editor will help. Fewer, better stories, please.
** Major Backlash Looms For Apple's New Maps App - crap
** TSA Spending $245 Million On "Second Generation" Body Scanners - offtopic
** Designers Criticize Apple's User Interface For OS X and iOS - crap
** Roundup Tolerant GM Maize Linked To Tumor Development - offtopic
3. Contact sites you're going to link to. Maybe even arrange caching.
I didn't get one in my macbook pro until about '09. I'm never going back.
It's my understanding that 'story' is the magical tag that promotes submissions to post status.
I guess maybe what I need is a custom rss feed reader that can tag each article as 'interesting' or 'crap'. Maybe I'll write a bayesian filter.
Has anyone already done that, I wonder...
http://superuser.com/questions/188036/bayesian-filter-for-rss-feeds
Damn if Google hasn't already done it:
https://support.google.com/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=69980
A third option, Sort by magic will rank items by "magic." Personalized magic ranking is automatically generated, taking into account your past reading behavior (including liking and starring) and global signals. We'll do our best to display items in the most relevant and interesting order -- click the Like button on things you think are important or enjoy reading, and we'll learn to put items like that first.
Guess I'll have to check it out. I already use reader.
Could we have a tag: 'newsworthy' - something to identify a story as being worth paying ANY attention to?
Yeah. Here's my idea:
<h1 title="We are sorry for the crap we have been posting">We know we need an editor</h1>
That's the sad thing of people who have never taught; once you create a lesson plan your good to go for eternity. Been there as an in-classroom instructor for the Air Force. Things are not as static as most people think.
You're.
Since we're all about education...
None of which I use, and the majority of people in my email to-list are not on one of those.
Why?
I fail to see how this is a problem. That's kind of the point of social networks -- you only see posts from people you have agreed to see posts from. Unless you're talking about the common 'message' feature on most networks -- in which case there's really no difference between that and email, and the same technology that manages to keep my Gmail completely devoid of spam should work just as well in something like diaspora.
When you look someone up on Facebook, you are searching one server and it has controls.
When you look someone up on diaspora, what's to keep thousands of zombie diaspora nodes from replying with bogus accounts hoping to connect to you?
From the other direction: have you ever received a spam friend request on a social network like Facebook or g+? Imagine what it would be like with the same connectivity as email, but with less context to determine if an invitation is spam?
I mean, I will say I have no personal experience with this having not been alive at the time, but it is my understanding that in the early days of personal computers there were many email providers with proprietary systems that were not capable of sending messages between networks.
From http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2002/cmsc434-0101/MUIseum/applications/emailhistory.html :
"In the late-1970's and 1980's the phenomenal growth of personal computers (Apple II 1978 - 1985; IBM PC 1983 and Apple Macintosh 1984) created a whole new genre of email technologies. Some of these systems were proprietary 'dial-up' systems such as MCI Mail, EasyLink, Telecom Gold, One-to-One, CompuServe, AppleLink etc. For two people to exchange messages remotely on these systems they had to both be subscribers. The proprietary systems did not interoperate or transmit messages from one system to another, or for the few systems that did these were notoriously unreliable...."
I guess I have the "advantage" of having been alive way back then :-)
From my limited perspective as a Californian geek who graduated high school in '86...
In the mid 80's there were a lot of BBS's, and many of them were isolated nodes. A fair number of them did pass messages back and forth, however. But the number of users back in the day was ridiculously small compared to today.
At the same time, in the 80's, all the major universities in the States had interconnected email. Again, the number of users was tiny - mostly CompSci majors. People studying others subjects very often did not own a computer.
In the late 80's, many of the small BBS's started to integrate with the internet (lowercase 'i', which used to indicate nodes that would store and forward email and news), and you could send and receive email to many different kinds of BBS from any internet node.
And, of course, in the mid 90's, we all explained to our parents what email is and how it works.
So there was a small window in the mid or late 80's when there were some BBSs and companies with proprietary email systems that did not connect. But at the same time (and for some time before) there was the university system. For the vast majority of people who heard the term 'email', the first time they heard it it was interconnected.
First of all, plenty of people still use their ISP email...
I wish I could find numbers.
..But email wasn't always decentralized, so there's no reason why social networking couldn't end up decentralized as well, if people demand it...
Wait. What? When was email not decentralized? Which is to say: when was email centralized?
I think the real, "killer app" win here would be if they could make it easily to fully segregate your data.
Circles work fine for me. Most people seem to care very little.
On an unrelated note -- basing your profile address on a domain name? Really? Why not a more decentralized approach?
Right. Because what I really want is 1000 commercial sites all responding to queries for Kurt Werle with data about me they have scrapped off the web.
This is one of the biggest invisible features of the walled gardens of Facebook & gPlus: the walls. Because if you think that email spam is bad, wait until you start to get Diaspora spam from Russia, China, and a million zombie boxes all running bogus diaspora nodes.
Thirty years ago, the idea that non-geeks would ever start using computers themselves seemed absurd.
Forty years ago, the idea that people - rather than corporations and governments - would use computers themselves seemed absurd.
You need to update those numbers. 30 years ago Apple was most certainly selling computers to home users.
What we have learned i the past 40 years is that people will use computers. What we have learned in the past 15 years is that people will not admin servers.
Give people a choice (I'm looking at you, too, linux), and people will ignore you. Give people a single (or very few) "winning" options - like Facebook - and they will flock.
Remember when every ISP offered email? I guess they still do - but nobody cares. There are 3ish winners in the west: Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail.
And people suppose - with a couple of gorillas already on the scene - that people will adapt a multitude of social network sites that magically* interoperate? I'm not betting on it.
* I don't buy that any significant number of sites in this space will successfully maintain consistent standards and communicate. Unless there's a whole lot of fairy dust involved
<disillusioned home email/web/etc admin of 15ish years>
While it's fun for everyone to bitch about the TSA, what is it doing here on /. ?
It has been a problem since the beginning of slashdot. But [I assume] the editors still don't warn sites and certainly do not provide a cache backup.
Yes, sites should be able to handle it. No, they often can't. Yes, a courtesy call would be easy to do. No, it's not bloody likely.
>
That's your best option...from the sounds of you problems, short hours only, special needs, I'm sorry to say, but in the private sector, you're kinda fucked.
I think that's almost entirely true - but there will be some exceptions. If you do good work, there will be small consulting companies who will hire you for what you are - a good worker with some special needs. There are some very large companies that are so large they know how to handle unusual employees. And some of those are government contractors, so they're required to do so.
In addition to collectives, there are other public places that you might do well in. I sometimes work at the public library. It's generally quiet, and it's not home. There's a cafe' I often work at (I make a point to spend money there, so I don't feel bad using one of the several open tables).
But if you need a routine, then an office might be the place for you.
I might look for government employment. City/County. Very large organizations tend to be better equipped to handle and understand unusual worker needs.
Good luck.
http://www.apple.com/fr/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.
-- Steve Jobs
OK, the notion is kind of funny.
Why is this on /.?
I don't know about "pales in comparison". The valley is getting pretty damn expensive:
http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/Mountain_View-heat_map/
I guess we still have a ways to go before hitting London prices.
Though rent looks downright cheap, judging from
http://www.londoncommunitynews.com/2012/06/londons-apartment-vacancy-rate-dips/
http://xkcd.com/927/
But seriously, so, now we're defining metastandards? Could somebody please explain the implications of this?
No problem:
If you'd ever flown you'd know that they ask you to stow all personal effects - books, bags, coats. So it's clearly not EM emissions they're worried about.
http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsid=6275
http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisoryCircular.nsf/list/AC%2091.21-1A/$FILE/AC91-21-1A.pdf
4. BACKGROUND. Section 91.21 (formerly 91.19) was initially established in May 1961 to prohibit the operation of portable frequency-modulated radio receivers aboard U.S. air carrier and U.S.-registered aircraft when the very high frequency omnidirectional range was being used for navigation purposes. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) subsequently determined that other PED’s could be potentially hazardous to aircraft communication and navigation equipment, if operated aboard aircraft. Amendment 91-35 amended the scope of former section 91.19 to prohibit the use of additional PED’s aboard certain U.S. civil aircraft. Earlier studies conducted by RTCA, Inc. (RTCA), Special Committee 156, Document No. RTCA/DO-199, Volumes 1 and 2, entitled “Potential Interference to Aircraft Electronic Equipment from Devices Carried Aboard,” have contributed greatly to an understanding of the operational effects of PED’s aboard aircraft. (See paragraph 7b for obtaining copies.)
Which by a process of elimination leaves a) attention and b) clutter. And c), both.
I think you missed one:
d) because someone told them their job depends on them repeating that magic phrase.
I don't fly nearly as frequently as I used to, but I've [also] never been asked to put away a book I've been reading.
The "pay attention" notion seems reasonable - which is why it probably is not true. Instead the truth seems to be that they are enforcing a rule from the 60's that probably doesn't make much sense [any more].
Common sense and federal regulations, eh?
Citation, please.
How did we reach a point where we will so willingly turn over our individual agency to Apple, Microsoft, Sony? Or AT&T and Comcast? Who here believes that those companies can be trusted to look out for our best interests?
Nobody* gives a shit about GPC. They don't even want "computers". They want a way to browse the web, play games, do email, and run a few productivity apps - preferably without having to worry about viruses, etc. Oh, and do "phone stuff". In short, consumers are consumers. It's the apps, stupid. Why would you be surprised that the computer Uncle Bob wants to use doesn't look like the one you do?
Those of us who want/need to do software have a wide variety of CPUs and hardware (and software) to do it with. I don't know that it's more or less choice than ever before, but certainly we have lots of options.
* You and your /. buddies don't count.
Although it's true that they pay for shipping, etc, I've found that if you use your computer for as long as I do, the giftcard thing ends up being $0.
Still, that they do the recycling is cool/the right thing to do in my book.