Well, I have to say that it would suck to play a game where I was getting left behind by a bunch of guys who were running cheat programs. I'm just not a real super competative person, and when I do an RPG, I like cool stories and a group of clever and cooperative people in my party, not some gugn-ho I-have-the-most-frags ego trip. Other people like competitive things and have fun backstabbing each other. If I have read my everquest FAQs correctly, (I am not playing yet till my new hardware arrives) there are servers dedicated to competitive play where bodies can be looted and so forth, and others devoted to cooperative play.
So, why not take that a step further? Some people prize privacy above all else, while others are more interested in keeping playability and enjoyability maximized. Is there any reason that Verant can't set up some servers that scan for 'foriegn objects in the ring' and others that leave everyone on the honor system?
That way we can decide on an individual basis wether to submit to these scans, rather than having a few privacy advocates or corporate goons dictating the One True Way to run the game. After all, no one person can always understand what I want from the gaming experience or what my privacy needs are.
There was a study done in England during WWII on workweek and productivity. During and after the blitz, England had dire need to absolutely maximize output. And they were highly motivated.
As the war progressed, the workweek for the war factories was slowly increased. 45 hours, 50h, 55h, 60h, 65h. The first few steps up increased total output in the factories. The workers were 100% commited, and people gladly worked the longer hours. England was fighting for her life. But the step up from about 55 to 60 (I am not sure of the exact numbers), actually produced a drop in production. The total number of manhours at the plants increased, but the workforce was so overtaxed that they were not able to keep productivity up.
I've noticed similar trends at my own workplace. Over one particularly bad 3 month period I worked 70 hours every week. By the end I was significantly fried. I hated work (and I've stuck with this job for less pay than I might get elsewhere because of how much I like it), and even after going back to a 40 hour week I still was taking twice as long to get things done for a month and a half after that. Of course, I am exempt from overtime, so I haven't really seen any return on that investment. We'll see when bonus/stockoption time rolls around whether I get compensated.
Of course, I am posting this from work, but the old perfmeter on the wall says my CPU is still maxed out, so I am not really wasting THAT much time...
I think he gets flamed as much because of HOW he says things as WHAT he says. Every time I read one of his articles, I get the feeling that he is claiming to speak for me. That's all well and good if we agree, but when he says "we of the slashdot community beleive X" and I don't belive X, I get irritated. It definitely cuts back on the vaunted Slashdot Feeling Of Community (TM) that Katz praises so highly, when major columnists for the site tell me I am not stepping in line with Group Thought(TM).
I start to feel like I have to shout "Hey, wait a damn second, some of us do NOT subscribe to this POV!" Besides, a lot of his articles are really more editorials, and those always spark dissagreement, or they wouldn't be worth writing.
The Oil companies have been using CAVEs to visualize the innards of oil and gas reservoirs. Its pretty useful. The problem geologists have is that they are having to visualize the insides of extremely complex 3D objects. (I'd say that the Earth is a pretty complex 3D object, wouldn't you?) I've been in one at ARCO (a 3 wall and a floor model) and seen some really cool structures represented that would have been impossible to really draw in 2D. This thing is a much bigger boon to science than to the military.
Well, I doubt it will go to blinking squares. The fact is, that at least for America, we care what we target. We don't want to target schools and churches, we want command centers, factories, and other targets that actually affect the opposing force's capability to make war. If for no other reason than we don't want to waste a 2.5 million dollar smart missile on a church, when we could get something usefule. So I doubt that the video will be replaced any time soon.
Also, I don't think that getting "up close and personal" about killing is really much of a deterent. One can read any number of accounts of really really sick shit being perpetrated by soldiers armed with nothing but swords. Look at the Crusades, or the accounts in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, for examples.
Making soldiers see their victims eye to eye will do nothing to end wars.
Yeah, let's fight a war where one side never has to see any blood, and all the bleeding's done by the other side. Go, U.S. Army! You guys must be real proud of your achievements.
Armies have been proud of slaughter for all of human history. They've enjoyed seeing blood. If we don't see the blood, we will not be any less civilized. Your sarcasm is misdirected.
Well put. I think an important development is the concept of narrowcasting. While the infrastructure of disseminating information was highly centralized, and easily monopolized, lowest common denominator was the word of the day. The best examples being broadcast TV and Radio. Since there can only be a few radio and tv stations in a given market, they all are fighting for the largest slice of the pie. So they all fit with some formula, sitcoms and top-forty.
But to have a webcasting station takes significantly less infrastructure, and no FCC licensing. So places like Spinner can have a number of channels to chose from. Me, I like progressive rock, and Spinner has a progressive channel which has a lot of music I like, some I don't like, and a lot that I've never heard. I've bought music based on things that I have heard there.
The same is true for digital cable/satellite systems. Who'd have imagined a 24hour history station being at all popular 10 years ago? Now we've got the History Channel.
PBS is losing its monopoly. And unfortunately, they are learning the wrong lesson, and going for Lowest Common Denominator stuff like Eagles and Rolling Stones reunions and Riverdance. But by and large, I think that while information overload is a legitimate concern, and the "Play-it-over-and-over-again-Sam" syndrome may expand in some areas, there is some cause for hope.
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For Crying in the beer, would ya chill with the AOL/Time-Warner hoohaa? Its really about as sinister as Lego merging with Duplo. The only two "respected media organizations" to be affected are CNN and TIME, and they've been working together for some time now anyway. There's no threat of a Journalistic monopoly. The only sinister result was some shoddy fact-checking on the bogus story about nerve gas in Southeast Asia.
Standing up to the establishment is good, when the establishment is being naughty, but this smacks of a plea for attention. The one thing we should have learned from the boomers is to eschew catch-phrase driven media types who shout out "corporatism" at every flickering shadow.
It seems to me that there is at least one recourse that Mitnik can use to redress some of the damage done to him. If John Markoff really printed as many untrue statements about him as he claims, he's got a pretty good case for libel.
I would assume that he doesn't really qualify as a public figure, which makes the libel claim easier (which points out a shortcoming in American law which was meant to support free press but has ended up leaving us with an unaccountable press, able to publish inuendo without any basis in fact)
In that case he should go to court to prove the allegations Markoff makes are untrue and unfounded. That kind of legal victory would go a great way towards damping the hysteria surrounding "hacker crimes" and serving the mainstream media with a nice slice of humble pie.
(Of course those of us who have defended him would have to eat that pie if such a trial actually showed that he had done a lot of damage as a malicious hacker, but at least the issue would be resolved)
Well, the Mars Society, is all about Mars exploration and one of thier prime activists is Robert Zubrin, an engineer for Lockheed Martin who has written The Case for Mars, a book which outlines his ideas on Mars exploration. He makes a pretty convincing case, in my layman's opinion. I don't know if NASA is buying it, but its gotten a lot of grass roots support, as these things go.
The typical argument I see is that oligopolies and monopolies can't exist with government control (or making them legal, etc), and competition should increase without market controls, but I don't think that is true. If we really did have zero government control/regulation, what would stop a giant slug fest with the result being a few corporations basically owning and/or running the world?
Not really. There is some tendency towards consolidation, which often leads to management efficiency and reduction of overhead, which makes a company stronger. But that only works up to a point. But often, large old companies in slower moving industries get sluggish and inefficient. Then newer start-up complanies get some oportunities to join the fray and spice things up. A prime example is the chemical industry. Long dominated by the pondering bulks of DuPont, Monsanto, Allied, and the like, but along came little bitty (by chemical industry standards) Gore Industries with its very popular GoreTex technology, and all of a sudden they are branching out in wierd ways. There's even Gore Dental Floss. Ironically, and to prove that Bigger does not mean Bettter, Gore developed GoreTex while working at DuPont, but the management was unable to see what they had, and sent Gore packing. Oooops.
(I suppose I had best mention for the sake of clarity that GoreTex is a waterproof fabric used in boots and jackets and coats and other such things, and was developed by a chemist named Gore.)
I think our government has been moving twords the Libetarian ideal for a number of years now anyway, with deregulation. But look at the telecom industry, competition is decreasing, not increasing, and the industry is consolidating. Even in markets that have been opened up to competitors (such as mine) for the baby bells, not much has changed, DSL access is still spotty, etc. How do Libertarians respond to this?
The baby bells are the wrong example to use if you are trying to examine the effects of deregulation. While there has been real deregulation of long-distance, resulting in some real competition and some real improvements and savings in consumer long distance (with some equally real failings) that has not happened in the local market. While there have been some token gestures towards deregulation of the local markets, the baby bells still have a strangle hold over local markets because of the long-standing local monopolies they have had, and the monumental cost of changing infrastructure which has so long been established. These have been very pointedly government protected monopolies, and there has been no effort to break them down.
There is a loosening of the baby bell stranglehold underway with the advent of wireless, where no monopolies have been granted by the government (possibly excepting cases of some small markets where only one company bothered to bid on a given chunk of spectrum). Still, it took local governments' collective decision on restricting right-of-way access to build the baby bell monopolies, and it will take some force of political will to rectify the situation. Make no mistake, the current atmosphere of telecomunications is far from a free-market ideal. These were and remain government enforced monopolies, and they still carry much of that bureaucratic momentum.
Obviously as with all economic theory, there are exceptions. M$ certainly qualifies, since I don't think their monopoly was really the result of government hanky panky. Whether or not they have crossed the line sufficiently for a Libertarian to support spanking them, and how hard, is still being hashed out in Libertarian circles, I think. I am OK with breaking up M$, but I just don't feel threatened by the prancings and posturings of the mainstream media.
And "Biblical proportions"? Katz, sit down, drink a Coke, and get some perspective, dude. Its just not that big a deal.
Only threat I worry about is broadband monopoly
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I think there is still enough diversity in media sources to keep things sane. The only Time/Warner owned media outlet I ever see is CNN. But I sure as hell don't use CNN as my only, or even main, source of news. Its no big thing, really.
More important is the fact that now AOL will be in control of RoadRunner cable modem service. But really is that any change from before? The cable companies have had government enforced monopolies since thier creation. While a vigilant anti-trust department is a reasonable precaution, I'd like to see it go to work on local municipalities' stranglehold on local utilities. The almost universal practice of granting exclusive access to single service providers, from telephones to cable to power, has generally been used to line the pockets of local officials and thier cronies, consumers be damned. Even places that ostensibly allow multiple licensees almost never get around to actually granting a second license. So our problem is not, as I see it, Big Business, so much as it is Little Government.
I bet Katz is just pissed that Time Magazine turned him down when he applied for a job reviewing records.
I went and looked at the USPS web site, and their description of the data supports this analysis.
The zip+4 database contains 35 million records. I would guess that each record could be atleast 50 bytes. That's 1.7GB uncompressed. If the actual geographic boundaries are necessary (each zipcode is a polygonal area on the Earth's surface, after all, and possibly requiring double-precission definitions for the vertices) it could be a heck of a lot larger. That's getting a bit big to be FTPing around all day. I'd certainly put the whole thing on CDs and charge some nominal fee for the digital data.
Alternatively, if the USPS didn't have that data digitally already, they might have paid some company to compile it, enter it into a computer, and create a database. That cost money, so that company gets the right to sell the fruits of their labor. It's kind of like somebody who writes a text book on physics. They don't own the laws of physics, but they do own thier description of it. If you don't want to pay for thier description of physics, you go out and do the work on your own to compile that information.
Actually, there are probably as many things that are free in the US and for sale in Europe as vice versa.
For example, of the industrialized countries I have dealt with, only the US does not copyright its topographic maps. I can remember off the top of my head that Canada, the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands all maintain copyrights on government topographic maps, making it illegal to copy this data.
The USGS (United States Geological Survey), on the other hand, sells hardcopy topographic maps, digital elevation models, aerial photos, and even satelite imagery for about the cost of printing and shipping, or for some nominal cost of creation. The maps are not copyrighted, and any individual or business can copy, resell, alter, fold, spindle, or mutilate these maps at will. All US digital topographic data for the US is available for free via FTP. The US is unique in this, as far as I know, and this is part of my job.
The same is true for FCC market deliniations, and a great deal of Census Bureau data, including extensive street-network and hydrography data.
So it is probably unfair to cast the US as being cash-obsessed and the EU as being a non-materialist utopian society. Counter-examples do exist.
Mr. Katz certainly paints a stirring picture of these protesters, valiantly decrying the Corporations' attempt to stifle individual creativity and culture through their faceless bureacracy. Up with people! Rage against the machine! Think Locally, Act Globally.
Unfortunately, there is something of a disconnect between what the protestors want and what they are likely to achieve if their protests are successful. WTO. Corporatism. Anarchists. "You keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean."
The world is changing minute by minute, and no-one can be sure where they stand. My job isn't secure. Lower wage workers in India and Brazil constantly threaten to steal our customers away with lower priced products. The corporate honchos may decide any day now that my department can't compete and give us all a miserly severance (if they're feeling generous) and 15 minutes to clear out all our things. This is bad for me. So should I go traipsing off to Seattle to protest the WTO? Before I do, there are two important questions I should ask. A) Is my job inherently more valuable than those of and Indian or Brazilian worker, and should I try and put a stop to this unfair competition? And B) If so, is the WTO responsible for my plight?
We'll start with A.
From my stand point, SURE my job is important. I built real value. I make better products. I work hard! I deserve a job. Why should I be cast aside just because I cost more than some third-worlder willing to work for peanuts! What about the American Dream?
Now I'll walk a mile in the other man's shoes, and see how they feel.
"Well, here I am, I have done what America has done, I went to school. I got an education and have real technical skills. Ok, so my education isn't as good as those Americans, but I work hard! I don't demand as much money, I just wan't enough to feed my family, and maybe get a little better education for my children!" (Its easy for me to role play this because I went to public school in the South, and I sometimes feel that way about Ivey League frat boys and Stanford/Berkeley Silicon Valley types... the grass is always greener).
Well, why shouldn't he have a job? What right do I have to say, "Sorry, pal. You're interfering with business-as-usual, and that's a threat to me, so I'll have to keep you in the gutter." Yes wages go down. Yes jobs are exported. But what right do we have to keep them here in the first place? Nope, I don't want to loose any of my cake for you, so you can't come to the party.
I just don't feel comfortable with the concept that we are the chosen ones, so we should use our government to keep everything to ourselves through tarrifs and trade restrictions. So I'd better start looking for new work. Well, if I am so educated I should try and find something else that adds value to the world that isn't done elsewhere. I should unleash my creativity on some other sector of the economy. I have already begun planning to do just that.
But for the sake of argument, lets set aside this view of free trade and the chaos of global markets, and look at what the WTO is versus what we would want to accomplish. Most of the protesters fall into two camps. One has to do with labor (the Blues) and the other with the environment (the Greens). there is also a small detatchment who are concerned more with the evils of what the French call "cultural polution" (We'll call these the "Anything-but-Teals" or ABTs for short).
First the Blues. Lets examine how the WTO will hurt the cause of labor. Is this a tool of the Corporations to outsource all our jobs to foreigners? That is likely to happen without the WTO. If trade opens up, labor will flow. But the argument against this is very similar to the arguments against allowing immigration. We can't let THEM take away our jobs!!! I think Pat Buchanan and the ALF/CIO are wrong to restrict immigration and I think we are wrong to stop trade. It works both ways. BMW and Mercedes have both built plants in the US in areas that have traditionally had little industrial investment. Why? Because people in those economically depressed areas were willing to work for less than their German counterparts. You won't find Alabamans going to the EU and arguing for sanctions against Mercedes. (A quick note on the piety of the AFL/CIO: During the UPS strike the AFT (a member union of the AFL/CIO) were paying my bother low wages without benefits as a temp worker in a permanent position)
What about Child Labor? Well, what of it? Increased trade with China is hardly going to promote child labor. China has a massive abundance of laborers, so much so that they have an inconceivable amount of make-work positions in the state-run factories. With a little representative government, they might actually get some child labor laws passed. But political reforms will not happen if we shut them out. The WTO will hardly force us to repeal any laws about our own children. And as numerous people have pointed out, child labor is most prominent in agricultural and service segments. These industries will be propped up by trade barriers, not torn down.
On to the greens. The basic argument is that the WTO is used by corporations to strip environmental and consumer safety laws. Well, are those laws really all so utopian? Recently a chemical company went to the US EPA and said that an insecticide in common use was dangerous (the patent for which was expired). The EPA banned it in the US. The chemical company was then free to sell its own, patented, expensive (but EPA approved! I feel safe!) insecticide. This might be legitimate, but might also simply be a shallow corporate tool to stifle free competition.
And dolphin safe nets! The WTO has ruled that the US laws are anti-competitive and unfairly restrict foriegn fishermen. Well, we have four options. One, fold. Cave in and let the WTO gut our policies. Two, modify our restrictions such that foriegn fishermen have the same capability to comply with our laws that domestic fishermen have. That is the problem in the WTOs eyes, so lets fix it. Third, if we cannot protect dolphins without being WTO non-compliant, then lets just protect the dolphins, and then take our lumps from their courts. The trade sanctions which have been allowed by the WTO in cases of unfair trade have always been fairly limited in scope and we make our case look stronger if we seem willing to stick to our guns on these issues. Fourth, tune in, turn on, drop out. Screw the WTO! We're AMERICA, DAMN IT!!! We'll be damned if were going compromise an inch in trade disputes! God is on our side.
Fifth, of course, we can just stop eating tuna. The oceans are massively overfished anyway, so stop eating seafood. I have. (except sushi. I am weak there. but I don't eat much and I will never eat shark (massively threatened by overfishing), I avoid shrimp (sea turtles aside, shrimp nets are horribly destructive), and I don't eat Octopi because I think they are cool)
And finally the ABTs (save us from MTV and the Gap!). While I could point to a litany of the abuses of the power of the state to enforce ideas of culture (Nazis against jazz, because it was "negroe" music, and other attempts to keep the master race pure; Mao's brutally repressive Cultural Revolution.), such extreme examples aren't necessary. A quick look at a much more moderate attempt shows how such restrictions on corporate freedom ends up hurting the cause of culture. The French government thinks that America is wiping out France, turning it into one big McBlockbuster (Although it turns out that Bove' was not mad at McDonaldization when he attacked the local Mickey D's with his tractor, but infact mad at American tarrifs on his cheese products... The tarrif was imposed as part of a trade dispute starting with jet engines. Hence the need for some form of WTO). One proposal is to limit the number of American movies imported into France each year. Arguments about freedom of speech aside, this hardly improves the quality of movies getting into France. If you can only have 10 movies imported, would you choose subtle, artistic films which might have limited appeal, but have real cultural value, or would you choose Titanic, which will appeal to the largest segment of the population, even if it is of dubious quality (Oscars notwithstanding). Of course, the French elite still gets to see everything at the Cannes festival, but average joe doesn't have the oportunity to see a Woody Allen film or Buffalo '76. This forces the French public to get ONLY that portion of American culture which is most dulled by corporatism, and prevents any free exchange of ideas which we take for granted (unless you live in a small town, and never get to see a good imported movie). Yes, America has an impact on the French film industry, but it has for decades, and the French have still made many of the finest films. Indeed, the free exchange of ideas across the Atlantic has given fresh ideas to both Hollywood and France. My point here being that government and trade-restrictions are a ham-fistedand counter productive response to corporatization of culture.
Remember, a lot of smaller towns would never have had cappuccino if not for Starbucks. Barnes and Noble became popular more because of great selection and nice atmosphere than cuthroat pricing and backroom deals (couches to sit on while you browse through your books were rare in bookstores prior to B&N's explosive growth). So corpratism has its benefits. It envigorates stagnant economies, even as it stifles some elements therein. This is not to say that B&Ns business practices are saintly, far from it. I myself tend toward used bookstores unless I really want to support an author.
Don't like Nike? Don't buy it. I don't. Think Coke is too omnipresent? That's your beef, but don't tell me I can't have it, or you'll have a fight on your hands.
A note of caution now. As the economy turned down in 1927 and 28, countries around the world began to fear the ills of foreign competition and tariffs went up. Trade was slowed, causing an acceleration to the recession that was beginning. The Great Depression was preceded by an upsurge in protectionism and anti-internationalism (nationalism/isolationism). Our economic upswing cannot last forever. If we clamp down on trade, we risk more than just corporate dividends.
I wish there really were some anarchists in Seattle, rather than the handfull of labor/green bosses and some masses who are filled with righteous zeal by their messages of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. The protesters in Seattle seemed more to be raging against their own insecurities than any carefully reasoned arguments against the wonks of the WTO itself.
I understand the emotional appeal of standing up against the faceless monolith. On the other hand, I am wary of trampling on the dynamic nature of human interrelations, and trade is an important part of that. If we seek to keep the internet free, why not that great global sneakernet which is the marketplace? Step back and see if your emotions are leading you the right way.
"Gummi Bears don't spread darkness and death, do they?"
Tsiekovsky sounds correct for their bad mammajamma designer guy. Spent years in the Gulag because Stalin didn't understand his ideas about rocketry, but still worked hard to win the moon race because he belived in our future in space. Gotta respect that.
Red Star in Orbit by James Oberg is a pretty good overview of the Russian space program.
Don't forget Werner Von Braun when you need a forth name.
I am implementing a similar scheme at home, based on the Mercury Seven. My Linux server will be Shepard (Alan Shepard) and my Linux/Win9x machine will be Grissom (Gus Grissom). Space heros rule.
At work we have a complicated convention for our groups machines. They are cars that are named after animals. Jaguar, Mustang, Impala and such. Preferably fast cars. We generally try to get a model of the car in question to put on top of the monitor, but recently that's been hard. Anyone know where you'd find a model kit for an AMC Hornet?
This is a valid point. As a grad student in a geological science progam, I did a lot of work with GPS and GIS. In both cases, our department was provided with GPS recievers, processing software, and GIS software licenses each costing $20,000 to $40,000. The idea being that if people were familiar with the software or hardware in question, they would be more likely to insist on its use when they were out in the paying world.
The analogy holds with standard software. How many people (ordinary computer semi-literates) have any idea what to do with a database? Well, that is something that is a rather difficult concept for a lot of people to grasp. Anyone can type a paper in Word or use Powerpoint to make a gaudy presentation, but few people right off the bat have any clue of what to do with a relational database. So the granting of one license, which is costs the software company nothing, (especially if we assume that the schools couldn't pay for it if they wanted to) leads to people who understand the advantages of a given peice of software, and why they need to have it when they are in the working world. That means more sales, and more happy customers evangelizing the product
It isn't even a matter of whether its morally right to "force" a school to pay for software (I am a firm believer in Free Luna style TANSTAAFL) but it is instead a matter of sound business strategy for software companies. Good PR, good advertising, and good karma. Everyone is happy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I have to say that it would suck to play a game where I was getting left behind by a bunch of guys who were running cheat programs. I'm just not a real super competative person, and when I do an RPG, I like cool stories and a group of clever and cooperative people in my party, not some gugn-ho I-have-the-most-frags ego trip. Other people like competitive things and have fun backstabbing each other. If I have read my everquest FAQs correctly, (I am not playing yet till my new hardware arrives) there are servers dedicated to competitive play where bodies can be looted and so forth, and others devoted to cooperative play.
So, why not take that a step further? Some people prize privacy above all else, while others are more interested in keeping playability and enjoyability maximized. Is there any reason that Verant can't set up some servers that scan for 'foriegn objects in the ring' and others that leave everyone on the honor system?
That way we can decide on an individual basis wether to submit to these scans, rather than having a few privacy advocates or corporate goons dictating the One True Way to run the game. After all, no one person can always understand what I want from the gaming experience or what my privacy needs are.
Except possibly me.
There was a study done in England during WWII on workweek and productivity. During and after the blitz, England had dire need to absolutely maximize output. And they were highly motivated.
As the war progressed, the workweek for the war factories was slowly increased. 45 hours, 50h, 55h, 60h, 65h. The first few steps up increased total output in the factories. The workers were 100% commited, and people gladly worked the longer hours. England was fighting for her life. But the step up from about 55 to 60 (I am not sure of the exact numbers), actually produced a drop in production. The total number of manhours at the plants increased, but the workforce was so overtaxed that they were not able to keep productivity up.
I've noticed similar trends at my own workplace. Over one particularly bad 3 month period I worked 70 hours every week. By the end I was significantly fried. I hated work (and I've stuck with this job for less pay than I might get elsewhere because of how much I like it), and even after going back to a 40 hour week I still was taking twice as long to get things done for a month and a half after that. Of course, I am exempt from overtime, so I haven't really seen any return on that investment. We'll see when bonus/stockoption time rolls around whether I get compensated.
Of course, I am posting this from work, but the old perfmeter on the wall says my CPU is still maxed out, so I am not really wasting THAT much time...
Watching progress bars is work, isn`t it?
I think he gets flamed as much because of HOW he says things as WHAT he says. Every time I read one of his articles, I get the feeling that he is claiming to speak for me. That's all well and good if we agree, but when he says "we of the slashdot community beleive X" and I don't belive X, I get irritated. It definitely cuts back on the vaunted Slashdot Feeling Of Community (TM) that Katz praises so highly, when major columnists for the site tell me I am not stepping in line with Group Thought(TM).
I start to feel like I have to shout "Hey, wait a damn second, some of us do NOT subscribe to this POV!" Besides, a lot of his articles are really more editorials, and those always spark dissagreement, or they wouldn't be worth writing.
My $.02 anyway.
NEAR Earth Asteroid Rendesvous...
I like recursive acronyms that actually make USE of the first word.
The Oil companies have been using CAVEs to visualize the innards of oil and gas reservoirs. Its pretty useful. The problem geologists have is that they are having to visualize the insides of extremely complex 3D objects. (I'd say that the Earth is a pretty complex 3D object, wouldn't you?) I've been in one at ARCO (a 3 wall and a floor model) and seen some really cool structures represented that would have been impossible to really draw in 2D. This thing is a much bigger boon to science than to the military.
Das ist sehr groovy.
Well, I doubt it will go to blinking squares. The fact is, that at least for America, we care what we target. We don't want to target schools and churches, we want command centers, factories, and other targets that actually affect the opposing force's capability to make war. If for no other reason than we don't want to waste a 2.5 million dollar smart missile on a church, when we could get something usefule. So I doubt that the video will be replaced any time soon.
Also, I don't think that getting "up close and personal" about killing is really much of a deterent. One can read any number of accounts of really really sick shit being perpetrated by soldiers armed with nothing but swords. Look at the Crusades, or the accounts in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, for examples.
Making soldiers see their victims eye to eye will do nothing to end wars.
Yeah, let's fight a war where one side never has to see any blood, and all the bleeding's done by the other side. Go, U.S. Army! You guys must be real proud of your achievements.
Armies have been proud of slaughter for all of human history. They've enjoyed seeing blood. If we don't see the blood, we will not be any less civilized. Your sarcasm is misdirected.
Well put. I think an important development is the concept of narrowcasting. While the infrastructure of disseminating information was highly centralized, and easily monopolized, lowest common denominator was the word of the day. The best examples being broadcast TV and Radio. Since there can only be a few radio and tv stations in a given market, they all are fighting for the largest slice of the pie.
.sig? Ubik sigs tickle the funnybone, and never fade. Get a shiny new Ubik today. 100% safe when used as directed.
So they all fit with some formula, sitcoms and top-forty.
But to have a webcasting station takes significantly less infrastructure, and no FCC licensing. So places like Spinner can have a number of channels to chose from. Me, I like progressive rock, and Spinner has a progressive channel which has a lot of music I like, some I don't like, and a lot that I've never heard. I've bought music based on things that I have heard there.
The same is true for digital cable/satellite systems. Who'd have imagined a 24hour history station being at all popular 10 years ago? Now we've got the History Channel.
PBS is losing its monopoly. And unfortunately, they are learning the wrong lesson, and going for Lowest Common Denominator stuff like Eagles and Rolling Stones reunions and Riverdance. But by and large, I think that while information overload is a legitimate concern, and the "Play-it-over-and-over-again-Sam" syndrome may expand in some areas, there is some cause for hope.
Looking for a clever
For Crying in the beer, would ya chill with the AOL/Time-Warner hoohaa? Its really about as sinister as Lego merging with Duplo. The only two "respected media organizations" to be affected are CNN and TIME, and they've been working together for some time now anyway. There's no threat of a Journalistic monopoly. The only sinister result was some shoddy fact-checking on the bogus story about nerve gas in Southeast Asia.
Standing up to the establishment is good, when the establishment is being naughty, but this smacks of a plea for attention. The one thing we should have learned from the boomers is to eschew catch-phrase driven media types who shout out "corporatism" at every flickering shadow.
It seems to me that there is at least one recourse that Mitnik can use to redress some of the damage done to him. If John Markoff really printed as many untrue statements about him as he claims, he's got a pretty good case for libel.
I would assume that he doesn't really qualify as a public figure, which makes the libel claim easier (which points out a shortcoming in American law which was meant to support free press but has ended up leaving us with an unaccountable press, able to publish inuendo without any basis in fact)
In that case he should go to court to prove the allegations Markoff makes are untrue and unfounded. That kind of legal victory would go a great way towards damping the hysteria surrounding "hacker crimes" and serving the mainstream media with a nice slice of humble pie.
(Of course those of us who have defended him would have to eat that pie if such a trial actually showed that he had done a lot of damage as a malicious hacker, but at least the issue would be resolved)
Well, the Mars Society, is all about Mars exploration and one of thier prime activists is Robert Zubrin, an engineer for Lockheed Martin who has written The Case for Mars, a book which outlines his ideas on Mars exploration. He makes a pretty convincing case, in my layman's opinion. I don't know if NASA is buying it, but its gotten a lot of grass roots support, as these things go.
And don't forget cooking.com!
Use MSIE5, go to home.netscape.com, click on download...
Uh, No mister administrator sir, I'm not installing unauthorized software on your machine.
The typical argument I see is that oligopolies and monopolies can't exist with government control (or making them legal, etc), and competition should increase without market controls, but I don't think that is true. If we really did have zero government control/regulation, what would stop a giant slug fest with the result being a few corporations basically owning and/or running
the world?
Not really. There is some tendency towards consolidation, which often leads to management efficiency and reduction of overhead, which makes a company stronger. But that only works up to a point. But often, large old companies in slower moving industries get sluggish and inefficient. Then newer start-up complanies get some oportunities to join the fray and spice things up. A prime example is the chemical industry. Long dominated by the pondering bulks of DuPont, Monsanto, Allied, and the like, but along came little bitty (by chemical industry standards) Gore Industries with its very popular GoreTex technology, and all of a sudden they are branching out in wierd ways. There's even Gore Dental Floss. Ironically, and to prove that Bigger does not mean Bettter, Gore developed GoreTex while working at DuPont, but the management was unable to see what they had, and sent Gore packing. Oooops.
(I suppose I had best mention for the sake of clarity that GoreTex is a waterproof fabric used in boots and jackets and coats and other such things, and was developed by a chemist named Gore.)
I think our government has been moving twords the Libetarian ideal for a number of years now anyway, with deregulation. But look at the telecom industry, competition is decreasing, not increasing, and the industry is consolidating. Even in markets that have been opened up to competitors (such as mine) for the baby bells, not much has changed, DSL access is still spotty, etc. How do Libertarians respond to this?
The baby bells are the wrong example to use if you are trying to examine the effects of deregulation. While there has been real deregulation of long-distance, resulting in some real competition and some real improvements and savings in consumer long distance (with some equally real failings) that has not happened in the local market. While there have been some token gestures towards deregulation of the local markets, the baby bells still have a strangle hold over local markets because of the long-standing local monopolies they have had, and the monumental cost of changing infrastructure which has so long been established. These have been very pointedly government protected monopolies, and there has been no effort to break them down.
There is a loosening of the baby bell stranglehold underway with the advent of wireless, where no monopolies have been granted by the government (possibly excepting cases of some small markets where only one company bothered to bid on a given chunk of spectrum). Still, it took local governments' collective decision on restricting right-of-way access to build the baby bell monopolies, and it will take some force of political will to rectify the situation. Make no mistake, the current atmosphere of telecomunications is far from a free-market ideal. These were and remain government enforced monopolies, and they still carry much of that bureaucratic momentum.
Obviously as with all economic theory, there are exceptions. M$ certainly qualifies, since I don't think their monopoly was really the result of government hanky panky. Whether or not they have crossed the line sufficiently for a Libertarian to support spanking them, and how hard, is still being hashed out in Libertarian circles, I think. I am OK with breaking up M$, but I just don't feel threatened by the prancings and posturings of the mainstream media.
And "Biblical proportions"? Katz, sit down, drink a Coke, and get some perspective, dude. Its just not that big a deal.
I think there is still enough diversity in media sources to keep things sane. The only Time/Warner owned media outlet I ever see is CNN. But I sure as hell don't use CNN as my only, or even main, source of news. Its no big thing, really.
More important is the fact that now AOL will be in control of RoadRunner cable modem service. But really is that any change from before? The cable companies have had government enforced monopolies since thier creation. While a vigilant anti-trust department is a reasonable precaution, I'd like to see it go to work on local municipalities' stranglehold on local utilities. The almost universal practice of granting exclusive access to single service providers, from telephones to cable to power, has generally been used to line the pockets of local officials and thier cronies, consumers be damned. Even places that ostensibly allow multiple licensees almost never get around to actually granting a second license. So our problem is not, as I see it, Big Business, so much as it is Little Government.
I bet Katz is just pissed that Time Magazine turned him down when he applied for a job reviewing records.
I went and looked at the USPS web site, and their description of the data supports this analysis.
The zip+4 database contains 35 million records. I would guess that each record could be atleast 50 bytes. That's 1.7GB uncompressed. If the actual geographic boundaries are necessary (each zipcode is a polygonal area on the Earth's surface, after all, and possibly requiring double-precission definitions for the vertices) it could be a heck of a lot larger. That's getting a bit big to be FTPing around all day. I'd certainly put the whole thing on CDs and charge some nominal fee for the digital data.
Alternatively, if the USPS didn't have that data digitally already, they might have paid some company to compile it, enter it into a computer, and create a database. That cost money, so that company gets the right to sell the fruits of their labor. It's kind of like somebody who writes a text book on physics. They don't own the laws of physics, but they do own thier description of it. If you don't want to pay for thier description of physics, you go out and do the work on your own to compile that information.
Actually, there are probably as many things that are free in the US and for sale in Europe as vice versa.
For example, of the industrialized countries I have dealt with, only the US does not copyright its topographic maps. I can remember off the top of my head that Canada, the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands all maintain copyrights on government topographic maps, making it illegal to copy this data.
The USGS (United States Geological Survey), on the other hand, sells hardcopy topographic maps, digital elevation models, aerial photos, and even satelite imagery for about the cost of printing and shipping, or for some nominal cost of creation. The maps are not copyrighted, and any individual or business can copy, resell, alter, fold, spindle, or mutilate these maps at will. All US digital topographic data for the US is available for free via FTP. The US is unique in this, as far as I know, and this is part of my job.
The same is true for FCC market deliniations, and a great deal of Census Bureau data, including extensive street-network and hydrography data.
So it is probably unfair to cast the US as being cash-obsessed and the EU as being a non-materialist utopian society. Counter-examples do exist.
Mr. Katz certainly paints a stirring picture of these protesters, valiantly decrying the Corporations' attempt to stifle individual creativity and culture through their faceless bureacracy. Up with people! Rage against the machine! Think Locally, Act Globally.
... The tarrif was imposed as part of a trade dispute starting with jet engines. Hence the need for some form of WTO). One proposal is to limit the number of American movies imported into France each year. Arguments about freedom of speech aside, this hardly improves the quality of movies getting into France. If you can only have 10 movies imported, would you choose subtle, artistic films which might have limited appeal, but have real cultural value, or would you choose Titanic, which will appeal to the largest segment of the population, even if it is of dubious quality (Oscars notwithstanding). Of course, the French elite still gets to see everything at the Cannes festival, but average joe doesn't have the oportunity to see a Woody Allen film or Buffalo '76. This forces the French public to get ONLY that portion of American culture which is most dulled by corporatism, and prevents any free exchange of ideas which we take for granted (unless you live in a small town, and never get to see a good imported movie). Yes, America has an impact on the French film industry, but it has for decades, and the French have still made many of the finest films. Indeed, the free exchange of ideas across the Atlantic has given fresh ideas to both Hollywood and France. My point here being that government and trade-restrictions are a ham-fistedand counter productive response to corporatization of culture.
Unfortunately, there is something of a disconnect between what the protestors want and what they are likely to achieve if their protests are successful. WTO. Corporatism. Anarchists. "You keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean."
The world is changing minute by minute, and no-one can be sure where they stand. My job isn't secure. Lower wage workers in India and Brazil constantly threaten to steal our customers away with lower priced products. The corporate honchos may decide any day now that my department can't compete and give us all a miserly severance (if they're feeling generous) and 15 minutes to clear out all our things. This is bad for me. So should I go traipsing off to Seattle to protest the WTO? Before I do, there are two important questions I should ask. A) Is my job inherently more valuable than those of and Indian or Brazilian worker, and should I try and put a stop to this unfair competition? And B) If so, is the WTO responsible for my plight?
We'll start with A.
From my stand point, SURE my job is important. I built real value. I make better products. I work hard! I deserve a job. Why should I be cast aside just because I cost more than some third-worlder willing to work for peanuts! What about the American Dream?
Now I'll walk a mile in the other man's shoes, and see how they feel.
"Well, here I am, I have done what America has done, I went to school. I got an education and have real technical skills. Ok, so my education isn't as good as those Americans, but I work hard! I don't demand as much money, I just wan't enough to feed my family, and maybe get a little better education for my children!" (Its easy for me to role play this because I went to public school in the South, and I sometimes feel that way about Ivey League frat boys and Stanford/Berkeley Silicon Valley types... the grass is always greener).
Well, why shouldn't he have a job? What right do I have to say, "Sorry, pal. You're interfering with business-as-usual, and that's a threat to me, so I'll have to keep you in the gutter." Yes wages go down. Yes jobs are exported. But what right do we have to keep them here in the first place? Nope, I don't want to loose any of my cake for you, so you can't come to the party.
I just don't feel comfortable with the concept that we are the chosen ones, so we should use our government to keep everything to ourselves through tarrifs and trade restrictions. So I'd better start looking for new work. Well, if I am so educated I should try and find something else that adds value to the world that isn't done elsewhere. I should unleash my creativity on some other sector of the economy. I have already begun planning to do just that.
But for the sake of argument, lets set aside this view of free trade and the chaos of global markets, and look at what the WTO is versus what we would want to accomplish. Most of the protesters fall into two camps. One has to do with labor (the Blues) and the other with the environment (the Greens). there is also a small detatchment who are concerned more with the evils of what the French call "cultural polution" (We'll call these the "Anything-but-Teals" or ABTs for short).
First the Blues. Lets examine how the WTO will hurt the cause of labor. Is this a tool of the Corporations to outsource all our jobs to foreigners? That is likely to happen without the WTO. If trade opens up, labor will flow. But the argument against this is very similar to the arguments against allowing immigration. We can't let THEM take away our jobs!!! I think Pat Buchanan and the ALF/CIO are wrong to restrict immigration and I think we are wrong to stop trade. It works both ways. BMW and Mercedes have both built plants in the US in areas that have traditionally had little industrial investment. Why? Because people in those economically depressed areas were willing to work for less than their German counterparts. You won't find Alabamans going to the EU and arguing for sanctions against Mercedes. (A quick note on the piety of the AFL/CIO: During the UPS strike the AFT (a member union of the AFL/CIO) were paying my bother low wages without benefits as a temp worker in a permanent position)
What about Child Labor? Well, what of it? Increased trade with China is hardly going to promote child labor. China has a massive abundance of laborers, so much so that they have an inconceivable amount of make-work positions in the state-run factories. With a little representative government, they might actually get some child labor laws passed. But political reforms will not happen if we shut them out. The WTO will hardly force us to repeal any laws about our own children. And as numerous people have pointed out, child labor is most prominent in agricultural and service segments. These industries will be propped up by trade barriers, not torn down.
On to the greens. The basic argument is that the WTO is used by corporations to strip environmental and consumer safety laws. Well, are those laws really all so utopian? Recently a chemical company went to the US EPA and said that an insecticide in common use was dangerous (the patent for which was expired). The EPA banned it in the US. The chemical company was then free to sell its own, patented, expensive (but EPA approved! I feel safe!) insecticide. This might be legitimate, but might also simply be a shallow corporate tool to stifle free competition.
And dolphin safe nets! The WTO has ruled that the US laws are anti-competitive and unfairly restrict foriegn fishermen. Well, we have four options. One, fold. Cave in and let the WTO gut our policies. Two, modify our restrictions such that foriegn fishermen have the same capability to comply with our laws that domestic fishermen have. That is the problem in the WTOs eyes, so lets fix it. Third, if we cannot protect dolphins without being WTO non-compliant, then lets just protect the dolphins, and then take our lumps from their courts. The trade sanctions which have been allowed by the WTO in cases of unfair trade have always been fairly limited in scope and we make our case look stronger if we seem willing to stick to our guns on these issues. Fourth, tune in, turn on, drop out. Screw the WTO! We're AMERICA, DAMN IT!!! We'll be damned if were going compromise an inch in trade disputes! God is on our side.
Fifth, of course, we can just stop eating tuna. The oceans are massively overfished anyway, so stop eating seafood. I have. (except sushi. I am weak there. but I don't eat much and I will never eat shark (massively threatened by overfishing), I avoid shrimp (sea turtles aside, shrimp nets are horribly destructive), and I don't eat Octopi because I think they are cool)
And finally the ABTs (save us from MTV and the Gap!). While I could point to a litany of the abuses of the power of the state to enforce ideas of culture (Nazis against jazz, because it was "negroe" music, and other attempts to keep the master race pure; Mao's brutally repressive Cultural Revolution.), such extreme examples aren't necessary. A quick look at a much more moderate attempt shows how such restrictions on corporate freedom ends up hurting the cause of culture. The French government thinks that America is wiping out France, turning it into one big McBlockbuster (Although it turns out that Bove' was not mad at McDonaldization when he attacked the local Mickey D's with his tractor, but infact mad at American tarrifs on his cheese products
Remember, a lot of smaller towns would never have had cappuccino if not for Starbucks. Barnes and Noble became popular more because of great selection and nice atmosphere than cuthroat pricing and backroom deals (couches to sit on while you browse through your books were rare in bookstores prior to B&N's explosive growth). So corpratism has its benefits. It envigorates stagnant economies, even as it stifles some elements therein. This is not to say that B&Ns business practices are saintly, far from it. I myself tend toward used bookstores unless I really want to support an author.
Don't like Nike? Don't buy it. I don't. Think Coke is too omnipresent? That's your beef, but don't tell me I can't have it, or you'll have a fight on your hands.
A note of caution now. As the economy turned down in 1927 and 28, countries around the world began to fear the ills of foreign competition and tariffs went up. Trade was slowed, causing an acceleration to the recession that was beginning. The Great Depression was preceded by an upsurge in protectionism and anti-internationalism (nationalism/isolationism). Our economic upswing cannot last forever. If we clamp down on trade, we risk more than just corporate dividends.
I wish there really were some anarchists in Seattle, rather than the handfull of labor/green bosses and some masses who are filled with righteous zeal by their messages of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. The protesters in Seattle seemed more to be raging against their own insecurities than any carefully reasoned arguments against the wonks of the WTO itself.
I understand the emotional appeal of standing up against the faceless monolith. On the other hand, I am wary of trampling on the dynamic nature of human interrelations, and trade is an important part of that. If we seek to keep the internet free, why not that great global sneakernet which is the marketplace? Step back and see if your emotions are leading you the right way.
"Gummi Bears don't spread darkness and death, do they?"
oops, the guy I described was Korolev. Tsiolkovskiy was another Russian teacher who did not really make a big contribution.
Korolev is the big guy and thats easier to type.
goddard
oberth
Tsiekovsky sounds correct for their bad mammajamma designer guy. Spent years in the Gulag because Stalin didn't understand his ideas about rocketry, but still worked hard to win the moon race because he belived in our future in space. Gotta respect that.
Red Star in Orbit by James Oberg is a pretty good overview of the Russian space program.
Don't forget Werner Von Braun when you need a forth name.
I am implementing a similar scheme at home, based on the Mercury Seven. My Linux server will be Shepard (Alan Shepard) and my Linux/Win9x machine will be Grissom (Gus Grissom). Space heros rule.
At work we have a complicated convention for our groups machines. They are cars that are named after animals. Jaguar, Mustang, Impala and such. Preferably fast cars. We generally try to get a model of the car in question to put on top of the monitor, but recently that's been hard. Anyone know where you'd find a model kit for an AMC Hornet?
This is a valid point. As a grad student in a geological science progam, I did a lot of work with GPS and GIS. In both cases, our department was provided with GPS recievers, processing software, and GIS software licenses each costing $20,000 to $40,000. The idea being that if people were familiar with the software or hardware in question, they would be more likely to insist on its use when they were out in the paying world.
The analogy holds with standard software. How many people (ordinary computer semi-literates) have any idea what to do with a database? Well, that is something that is a rather difficult concept for a lot of people to grasp. Anyone can type a paper in Word or use Powerpoint to make a gaudy presentation, but few people right off the bat have any clue of what to do with a relational database. So the granting of one license, which is costs the software company nothing, (especially if we assume that the schools couldn't pay for it if they wanted to) leads to people who understand the advantages of a given peice of software, and why they need to have it when they are in the working world. That means more sales, and more happy customers evangelizing the product
It isn't even a matter of whether its morally right to "force" a school to pay for software (I am a firm believer in Free Luna style TANSTAAFL) but it is instead a matter of sound business strategy for software companies. Good PR, good advertising, and good karma. Everyone is happy.