Actually, the birth rate in the USA is below replacement level. In other words, if it weren't for immigration, the population of the USA would be shrinking.
Civilizations existed quite happily for millenia without the "progess" we think new technologies will bring us.
It's true that "progress" is a hallmark of only western civilization - and, that, only for the last 500 years or so.
But, hey, my life depends on progress. If progress stopped, nearly every single mother-loving one of us/. types would soon be out of a job - because our profession depends on convincing people to pay us for software and then pay us again, and again, to improve that software.
Face it - programmers, not just Bill Gates, have a vested interest in writing code that's good enough for people to use, but crappy enough to ensure our continued employment.
To be sure, this is a very dubious definition of progress - but as long as the user's don't catch on, we're safe!
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I'm not kidding - someone anonymously called my company yesterday to warn them that another company had lifted our web site, clients, testimonials and all.
Sadly, while my friend in OPs and I were still working out the best way to crack their server, one of our execs called the guilty company and explained copyright law to them.
I'd provide URLs, but the clone site is already down.
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There used to be a catagory or role-playing games where you bought a rule book, a suplement or 2 and played. Then, along came the collectable cards gaming idea. Yes, you can still find and play the rule book games, but new 'gamers' are playing PokeMon not Paranoia.
????
Okay, I admit that the card playing games have a wider audience than RPGs, but why would WOTG bother doing a AD&D 3rd edition if it was a dying genre?
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That's why I read The Economist as well as US news sources. I'm not saying it's better - although it is very good, but it's great to get a different perspective about world events.
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So, I'm hardly a raving patriot, but having been in Philly during the convention, these claims of "Police State" and "Police Torture" are just making me nuts.
Has anyone noticed that none of these claims of police abuse have been confirmed? The Philadelphia papers came down firmly on the side of the cops, noting that they behaved with complete professionalism. They also noted that the only people who were held for extended periods were the ones who refused to provide ID so they could be processed (and then threatened to sue for denial of due-process!)
Second, there weren't no "500 arrests". The final tally was fewer than 400 - of which 350 were arrested on one day when, catch this, they were doing things like flipping over cars owned by the poor people they were supposed to be protesting *for*.
If the Philly cops had ripped people ears off, it would have been front page news nation wide. Instead we get unsubstantiated claims of "torture" from people who claim that plastic handcuffs are the moral equivalent of being raped with a cattle prod.
Police State? These people don't have a clue what a real police state is like. They should try visiting what's left of the USSR or Yugoslavia and see if they can get a handle on the difference between US and them.
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My guess to the lateness of the patent is the NSA thought encryption should be controlled solely by them, and so they just wrapped the thing up in red tape and left it. Why wait 'til 2000 to let it be patented though? Why not 10-20 years ago when computers were clearly far superior in encryption methods?
Ummm... Question?
How could the NSA have suppressed a patent or, for that matter, be assigned a patent, on something that was filed a good 18 years before the NSA was founded?!?
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Call your state legislator--ask him or her to ask the Public Utility Commission for information on resolving complaints about poor DSL service. You may have to explain DSL to the kid who answers the phone...
HAH!!!
I complained to the PUC about flashcom and got a form letter back that said it wasn't their problem.
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Heh. Kids today. With their accelerated 3d cards and surround sound!
When I was young I wrote a 256 room fantasy game for a calculator with a one line alphanum display and 4k of storage.
While a number of game genres have certainly benefited from the advance of computer hardware, I still play the Zork trilogy. There is definitely a lot that could be learned from those old games - not coding techniques, neccessarily (that game I mentioned above required that I, literally, give a unique meaning to every bit in every byte of the game data. I'm proud of the data compression work I did, but I doubt it's useful to anyone today.)
But certainly the pacing and concepts of games like Joust, Asteroids, Suspended, could teach a lot to modern game designers.
--
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Well, Einstein did do very poorly in mathematics (possibly failing, don't recall) until his (uncle?) tutored him in Algebra and showed him the "interesting" side of solving problems with Math rather than rote memorization...
Sigh. No, he didn't. That's the legend. Look here.
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What I would suggest is a coordinated plan of civil disobedience - get a lot of kids to report themselves. The difference is that it forces the school to go through the work of investigating all the reports, as opposed to creating obviously fake spam about non-existent people.
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Einstein- failed at school, and was regarded as a "misfit" Nobel - ditto
bzzt. That garbage about Einstein failing in school is just an urban legend - he did quite well, thank you. As for Nobel, huh? What does a manufacturer of munitions (who happened to have a guilt complex) have to do with this discussion?
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One thing this points out is how private companies are increasingly behaving in ways that are out-and-out unconstitutional - or, they would be unconstitutional if a government body tried to do them.
For example - it was just a few weeks ago that the Supreme Court decided that an anonymous tip is insufficient grounds to stop and search someone. If a simple frisk can't be done on a tip, I'm fairly sure that police monitoring or tracking of a person's behaviour because of an anonymous tip is even less constitutional.
Meanwhile, corporations constantly engage in kinds of monitoring, supression of speech, and restraint of behaviour that, frankly, approaches fascism.
I think we're going to reach a point where the Consitution is going to need a major rework - we need an ammendment that says that a person's rights cannot be abridged by anyone, not just by the government.
--
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They're so concerned about maintaining "security" that the fact that it may harrass innocent people doesn't really matter to them.
No, no - if that was there interest you could reason with them that there are better ways to improve security. What Pinkerton is really interested in is using the appearance of "security" as a tool for making money.
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And that's because Lucas made damned sure that all those 3rd rate (and very rare 1st rate) SW paperback writers stuck to the rules. No one at Paramount seems interested in doing that for Trek.
But that was always true - even with TOS. Heck, from a SciFi view point, I always thought that 70's cartoon was the best Trek. At least the ripped off the best authors.
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Obviously the remaining Amiga community does not agree with your asessment of the situation. Besides, the point is that this new system is aimed at the future. Or didn't you read the article?
In what sense? What does the Amiga have to offer the future of computing at this point? The Amiga's strength was a preemptive multitasking OS that worked in 256Kb of ram, tightly coupled to a suite of graphics and sound chips to give it multimedia capabilities that contemporary machines could only dream of. But what is that now?
Face it. Any new system will be called "Amiga" only to leverage the fanaticism of a few remaining die-hards, but will have about as much in common with the real Amiga as the Amiga did with the C64.
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You know, I thought there were legal penalties for this sort of behaviour. I loved my Amigas - all 5 of them. I wrote freeware & shareware for them and I had programs published in the AmigaWorld Tool Chest. But the time comes to just let the dead go. At the end, my A3000/25 was running NetBSD and using a Retina video board.
Obviously it isn't the hardware or even the OS, silly geese. It is the legacy Amiga software and the Amiga community which keeps the Amiga alive. It will not be relevant if the new Amiga isn't the "real" Amiga, provided it offers an upgrade path for the existing community.
Oh, cool - just what I want, in the year 2001 I wanna run digipaint in 320x400 mode with golly, 4096 colors.
Don't get me wrong, I still squeal in pain at the mis-designs of Wintel and Macintosh (Although Macs are considerably better than Wintel) but the answer to current computer limitations is in the future, not the past.
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Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the birth rate in the USA is below replacement level. In other words, if it weren't for immigration, the population of the USA would be shrinking.
--
Amen.
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Civilizations existed quite happily for millenia without the "progess" we think new technologies will bring us.
It's true that "progress" is a hallmark of only western civilization - and, that, only for the last 500 years or so.
But, hey, my life depends on progress. If progress stopped, nearly every single mother-loving one of us /. types would soon be out of a job - because our profession depends on convincing people to pay us for software and then pay us again, and again, to improve that software.
Face it - programmers, not just Bill Gates, have a vested interest in writing code that's good enough for people to use, but crappy enough to ensure our continued employment.
To be sure, this is a very dubious definition of progress - but as long as the user's don't catch on, we're safe!
--
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I'm not kidding - someone anonymously called my company yesterday to warn them that another company had lifted our web site, clients, testimonials and all.
Sadly, while my friend in OPs and I were still working out the best way to crack their server, one of our execs called the guilty company and explained copyright law to them.
I'd provide URLs, but the clone site is already down.
--
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There used to be a catagory or role-playing games where you bought a rule book, a suplement or 2 and played. Then, along came the collectable cards gaming idea. Yes, you can still find and play the rule book games, but new 'gamers' are playing PokeMon not Paranoia.
????
Okay, I admit that the card playing games have a wider audience than RPGs, but why would WOTG bother doing a AD&D 3rd edition if it was a dying genre?
--
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That's why I read The Economist as well as US news sources. I'm not saying it's better - although it is very good, but it's great to get a different perspective about world events.
--
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Has anyone noticed that none of these claims of police abuse have been confirmed? The Philadelphia papers came down firmly on the side of the cops, noting that they behaved with complete professionalism. They also noted that the only people who were held for extended periods were the ones who refused to provide ID so they could be processed (and then threatened to sue for denial of due-process!)
Second, there weren't no "500 arrests". The final tally was fewer than 400 - of which 350 were arrested on one day when, catch this, they were doing things like flipping over cars owned by the poor people they were supposed to be protesting *for*.
If the Philly cops had ripped people ears off, it would have been front page news nation wide. Instead we get unsubstantiated claims of "torture" from people who claim that plastic handcuffs are the moral equivalent of being raped with a cattle prod.
Police State? These people don't have a clue what a real police state is like. They should try visiting what's left of the USSR or Yugoslavia and see if they can get a handle on the difference between US and them.
--
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My guess to the lateness of the patent is the NSA thought encryption should be controlled solely by them, and so they just wrapped the thing up in red tape and left it. Why wait 'til 2000 to let it be patented though? Why not 10-20 years ago when computers were clearly far superior in encryption methods?
Ummm... Question?
How could the NSA have suppressed a patent or, for that matter, be assigned a patent, on something that was filed a good 18 years before the NSA was founded?!?
--
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This is actually a great idea, but maybe we should have donations for a reward be managed by Rusty?
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Well,
It used to be true that hackers needed to be skilled and were primarily interested in learning. Not anymore.
Why, in my day, we used card punches! And Liked It!
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As far as Amiga easter eggs go - some models had the engineers names signed on the circuit board, along with lyrics from various rock bands.
... I also seem to remember another computer OS / App that had a KickStart logo easter egg??? ... Anyone remember that?
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Call your state legislator--ask him or her to ask the Public Utility Commission for information on resolving complaints about poor DSL service. You may have to explain DSL to the kid who answers the phone ...
HAH!!!
I complained to the PUC about flashcom and got a form letter back that said it wasn't their problem.
--
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Heh.
I can make up for that. They kept billing me for months after I made them pull the never-worked DSL line from my home.
--
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Heh. Kids today. With their accelerated 3d cards and surround sound!
When I was young I wrote a 256 room fantasy game for a calculator with a one line alphanum display and 4k of storage.
While a number of game genres have certainly benefited from the advance of computer hardware, I still play the Zork trilogy. There is definitely a lot that could be learned from those old games - not coding techniques, neccessarily (that game I mentioned above required that I, literally, give a unique meaning to every bit in every byte of the game data. I'm proud of the data compression work I did, but I doubt it's useful to anyone today.)
But certainly the pacing and concepts of games like Joust, Asteroids, Suspended, could teach a lot to modern game designers.
--
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Apple was #1 in the late 1970s, before IBM introduced the PC. Ever see an Apple II?
The Apple II was not the best selling 8 bit computer - that title belongs to the C64.
--
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Well, Einstein did do very poorly in mathematics (possibly failing, don't recall) until his (uncle?) tutored him in Algebra and showed him the "interesting" side of solving problems with Math rather than rote memorization...
Sigh. No, he didn't. That's the legend. Look here.
--
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What I would suggest is a coordinated plan of civil disobedience - get a lot of kids to report themselves. The difference is that it forces the school to go through the work of investigating all the reports, as opposed to creating obviously fake spam about non-existent people.
--
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Einstein- failed at school, and was regarded as a "misfit"
Nobel - ditto
bzzt. That garbage about Einstein failing in school is just an urban legend - he did quite well, thank you. As for Nobel, huh? What does a manufacturer of munitions (who happened to have a guilt complex) have to do with this discussion?
--
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One thing this points out is how private companies are increasingly behaving in ways that are out-and-out unconstitutional - or, they would be unconstitutional if a government body tried to do them.
For example - it was just a few weeks ago that the Supreme Court decided that an anonymous tip is insufficient grounds to stop and search someone. If a simple frisk can't be done on a tip, I'm fairly sure that police monitoring or tracking of a person's behaviour because of an anonymous tip is even less constitutional.
Meanwhile, corporations constantly engage in kinds of monitoring, supression of speech, and restraint of behaviour that, frankly, approaches fascism.
I think we're going to reach a point where the Consitution is going to need a major rework - we need an ammendment that says that a person's rights cannot be abridged by anyone, not just by the government.
--
Greetings New User! Be sure to replace this text with a
They're so concerned about maintaining "security" that the fact that it may harrass innocent people doesn't really matter to them.
No, no - if that was there interest you could reason with them that there are better ways to improve security. What Pinkerton is really interested in is using the appearance of "security" as a tool for making money.
--
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And that's because Lucas made damned sure that all those 3rd rate (and very rare 1st rate) SW paperback writers stuck to the rules. No one at Paramount seems interested in doing that for Trek.
But that was always true - even with TOS. Heck, from a SciFi view point, I always thought that 70's cartoon was the best Trek. At least the ripped off the best authors.
--
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Obviously the remaining Amiga community does not agree with your asessment of the situation. Besides, the point is that this new system is aimed at the future. Or didn't you read the article?
In what sense? What does the Amiga have to offer the future of computing at this point? The Amiga's strength was a preemptive multitasking OS that worked in 256Kb of ram, tightly coupled to a suite of graphics and sound chips to give it multimedia capabilities that contemporary machines could only dream of. But what is that now?
Face it. Any new system will be called "Amiga" only to leverage the fanaticism of a few remaining die-hards, but will have about as much in common with the real Amiga as the Amiga did with the C64.
--
Greetings New User! Be sure to replace this text with a
You know, I thought there were legal penalties for this sort of behaviour. I loved my Amigas - all 5 of them. I wrote freeware & shareware for them and I had programs published in the AmigaWorld Tool Chest. But the time comes to just let the dead go. At the end, my A3000/25 was running NetBSD and using a Retina video board.
Obviously it isn't the hardware or even the OS, silly geese. It is the legacy Amiga software and the Amiga community which keeps the Amiga alive. It will not be relevant if the new Amiga isn't the "real" Amiga, provided it offers an upgrade path for the existing community.
Oh, cool - just what I want, in the year 2001 I wanna run digipaint in 320x400 mode with golly, 4096 colors.
Don't get me wrong, I still squeal in pain at the mis-designs of Wintel and Macintosh (Although Macs are considerably better than Wintel) but the answer to current computer limitations is in the future, not the past.
--
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Oooh yeah, the PET. I always loved that vaguely "egyptian sphinx" look that machine had.
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