"And uh... if your kid is still nursing at three years of age, you maybe have a problem on your hands. Gross."
In indigenous cultures children breast feed as long as through the fifth year of life (although not for primary nutrition in the later years.)
It is very likely the American sexualization (and to some degree the "Western" sexualization) of breasts that leads people to perceive prolonged breastfeeding as "gross" because breasts are seen as sexual... "simply hot" as you so charmingly say.
The health benefits of nursing through the third year of life are well established. If you should ever have children, I hope you'll take the time to research this, and, at a mininum encourage your wife (or make sure that you do so personally if you are female) to nurse through the first year of life.
But all research suggests that the immune system beneifts, nutritional benefits and psychological value of breast feeding continues through the third year of life at least.
You want a smart kid? Make sure he/she gets his breast milk, for a long time.
(Of course correlation never proves causation, but it can support causation in the presence of other compelling arguments, which you will find if you take the time to study the issue medically, and anthropologically.)
You're right about the likely connection to upright walking, but a more direct reason for the sexualization of the female breast has to do with frontal coitus, largely unique to homo sapiens, although also practiced on occasion by those fun loving bonobos ("pygmy chimps").
Big fat orbs are a basic sexual signal to the male ape, and breasts provide the "big fat ass orbs" signal when having sex face to face, in place of the ass.... And of course face-to-face coitus is facilitated by the skeletal structure associated with upright walking. So likely the transition to upright posture, the development of face to face coitus and the enlargement of breasts to function as a "sexual" organ occured together in evolutionary time.
Breasts in short, and in part, are an ass transplanted to the chest... for sexual purposes.
But beyond that the REAL REAL reason for the sexualization of breasts is very modern and has to do with the decline of breast feeding.
Western and American children, deprived of the NORMAL two to three years of breast feeding that homo sapiens have enjoyed throughout recent evolutionary history, never got enough of the boob and spend their lives lusting after what they missed.
The hyper-sexualization of breasts is DIRECTLY related to the decline of breastfeeding.
American men in particular are known to be breast obsessed as adults, while breast feeding rates in America are among the lowest in the world - That's a correlation that does suggest causation!
Go to cultures where children derive significant portion of their nutritional needs through the first 3 years of life from the breast and you will find that (1) it is the buttocks and legs that are more sexualized and (2) breasts are freely displayed (often) becase they pretty much thought of as feeding tubes, quite unconnected to sex.
http://milkofhumankindness.org/
That's the real story, you breast deprived American men.
antiNat, Yours is classic blame the victim reasoning - downright "unAmerican" to this PDXer
I don't know that they require registration for their proposed compensation, but I know the weasling ways of American corporations.
I have NO responsibility to register a bike lock, and the lock should be warrantied to function as a lock regardless of where a little yellow card is in the universe.
I suggested a class action law suit because the proposed response (an opportunity to buy a new product from the company that sold the defective product) seems like such a classic corporate weasel.
However, I'm willing to wait a few days to see what the official response is before I call a lawyer.:-)
I take full personal responsibility for my actions, and expect nothing less (and in fact MUCH more) from the non-persons we call corporations.
If they don't take responsibility, well that's what law suits for and thank God for it.
If you are like me, you may own, say 3 kryptoloks, purchased over the last five years which you never bothered to register, and can't remember where you purchased them, or maybe you remember that you purchased them somewhere in Los Angeles and now you live in PDX... will this apply to unregistered locks? with no receipt? LIKE THOSE PROBABLY OWNED BY 90% OF FOLKS?... and it sounds like they are only offering to let you spend more money on a new product by a company that sold you a defective product the first time around. "Please reward us for our mistake."
Unless they are willing to replace the defective product, maybe it's time for a class action law suit?
Makes me feel good to live in this town (Portland, aka Stumptown, aka River City aka the Rose City aka "the city that works") where the most important news in the world is that the locks we all use to secure our bikes aren't technically "locks." at all.
There exist Japan only (not ever marketed in the US) point and shoot cameras that already record GPS data directly. (Rioch... and some other brand I haven't heard of.)
And of course various Nikon pro models have this capacity, such as that used here:
"Should we go to Mars?.... This is not a new dream. As long as humanity has been human, it has looked toward the heavens and dreamed that some day, some way, there would be giant federal contracts involved"
Dave Barry
The idea that we can keep expanding the boundary flies in the face of a much more important truth, which is that THIS is all the water there is, THIS is the air that we have, and THIS is the planet we have.
As long as we can delude ourselves about new lands, and new planets, we postpone the day of reckoning with the finite nature of the planet earth and its habitable regions.
All talk of space travel is ultimately the product of a deluded attempt to disguise the need to achieve a state of ecological and economic balance.
From Kennedy to Bush, space travel is a way for politicians and teenagers to avoid dealing with the real problems here on Earth... with militarism and with hunger and with poverty and ill health. Those problems are all so messy... and require such incredible changes in how we live.... how much more fun to think of zooming through space... and how completely irrelevant and cruel.
I'm all for small budget robot exploration of the solar system but...
"... every rocket fired, in a final sense, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."- Dwight D. Eisenhower
As Thomas Jefferson said: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Thomas Jefferson
Now just 'cause an 18th century slave holder said it, doesn't mean its true. I'm well aware of the US' leading role in making "IP" the subject of ownership. The fact that it is what makes the US empire what it is today, doesn't mean it is the right way to structure capitalism on the planet earth.
Patents and intellectual property were originally constructed to provide incentives for the creation of products and ideas that might not otherwise be created.... gradually they have become a means to stifle the creativity of others.
I believe the world would be a richer, more productive place if the right to "own an idea" were recognized for the artificial and creativity stunting idea that it is, and if the notion of "IP" were greatly limited in duration and scope.
IP is a deadweight on US power because it concentrates the right to be creative and productive in an increasingly narrow class of large corporations which are able to compete thorugh access to political power rather than in the market place, and through reliance on military might rather than through the creation of innovative products.
I well understand what IP is, and I'm pretty clear that it is being used in ways that are counter to its original limited intentions.
There is justification for giving an author a few years of revenue... there is justification for giving an innovator a FEW years to profit from an idea.... indefinite copyrights.... massive patent portfolios used as legal weapons... these are not in the public's or the planet's interest.
What is left to compete with you ask? Solutions.... or as you derisively call it... service. People will compete with Brainpower... providing people to solve your problems. The cost of service will not reach zero because smart people will continue to command salaries for their time.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea...."
The US patent system is not worldwide... it extends only as far as the US Empire extends.
Even if MS gets the entire US Congress and court system to bend over and take it in the rear... even if it drives open source out of every server in the US.... there is a limit to its potential power... the law of intellectual property regimes only extends as far as the military and political might of the American empire.
Ultimately the conflict over intellectual property regimes escalates to an international and civilizational conflict, in which some nations (China, India) will use the OSS model... and enjoy its benefits.
The corrupt American empire, bought and owned by the multinational corporations that it once liscensed but that now licsence it, will not be able to compete.
At that point either (1) the US loosens up its intellectual property regime, moves away from "software patents" and other bad ideas, and remains competitive on an international economic level... or (2) its relative position in the world begins to slide as India/China and the World realize the economic externalities in an OSS software intellectual property regime and use them to compete.
The intellectual property regime we are constructing in the US is a deadweight on US international power.... a deadweight that large corporations would love to see remain in place.
It will be interesting to see what path we choose, given the paths that India and China will surely choose toward OSS.
(Of course... paradoxically... if you think the US is too powerful in the world... in this dialectical model, you would then root for the success of Microsoft, software patents and all sorts of other nonesense to ultimately reduce the power of the American empire. But you can resolve the paradox by considering that there are two kinds of power.... the power of domination and the power of leadership... power that is "we win/ you lose" versus power that involves "we win, and you win too." )
... and here's why. Simple economics. It costs huge sums to pay all those MS folk to keep developing Windows.
IBM has figured out that the OS is a commodity... and a proprietary OS is a just a tool to lock in application producers/providers... so they are actively driving the value out of the OS market.
Microsoft will NOT be able to survive as the dominant OS if it has to pay hundreds and hundreds of developers to do what Linux developers do more or less for free.
Even Apple, which has cut costs by using BSD at the core, still has huge built in costs. But they are smart... they are using their OS budget to develop a competitive advantage at the interface level.
As Linux becomes the numerically dominant OS worldwide it will draw a growing number of application writers.... snowball effect... just as "everyone" writes for Windows now, there will come a day when people can't afford not to write for Linux and Windows... and not too long after that, a day when people will look at the shrinking Windows market share and say, as they do of Apple now... hey maybe will get around to writing for that someday...
MS can't... simply can't.... compete on cost at the basic OS level. They will therefore compete politicaly, legally, and every other way.
Now... you like Windows because it runs your apps? Hey, I like it for the same reason. I run XP and SuSE.
SuSE is definitely more of a pain in the butt... no Dreamweaver.... no Photoshop CS... although I could go back to Photoshop 7 with codeweaver.... I'm still trying to figure out how to install programs from source.... it's a pain in the butt every time. But look at IBMs strategy and you will see why Window's share will be about the size of Apples's market share in 10 years.
None of the programs I run in SuSE ever give me trouble... but I don't run Dreamweaver which is the main thing that is always locking up in XP. Neither ever locks up fully... although I have had XP grow unstable and funky, leading me to reboot... and of course I reboot for some installs. No big... I'm so square I turn off my computer every night. But all in all XP is still easier to use... and DOOMED.
Linux and open source sucks the profit out of the OS. MS will NOT be able to afford to compete with the cost of linux development. They are selling something that used to require a paid army, and now needs only an unpaid army to develop and improve.
As a result Windows will die.... unless they simply purchase the governments and court systems of the world outright, or with the help of their corporate partners, and outlaw free software and, not to get too overheated about it, freedom of thought and communication itself.
What is really impressive about this piece of drivel is that a big fancy think tank would put out an article that is filled with grammar and usage errors.
You would think that MS money could at least buy an extremely well written and smooth argument. There is of course an intelligent argument to make against Linux by twisting the intereview comments that Brown received, but you would have to do it more carefully than Brown does it. I could take the people he quotes and do a better job than this.
I don't get it. Maybe the point is to enrage people.... with poor use of English.
"AdTI is certain that inevitably, some unfortunate user of Linux will be facing an incalculable legal problem." Incalculable legal problem? Are some legal problems calculable?
"Meanwhile, we should also very plainly ask, ?who[m] are we trusting??" Well, Mr. Brown, is it who or whom? Do you know? (The m is used when it's an object, which it is not here.... eg. "in whom do we put trust" OR "Who do we put trust in? What the F is your coy little [m] supposed to mean?
"Tanenbaum told us about the Coherent project repeatedly, but it was easy to research that it was a completely different situation." NOT English
"We included this interview to provide another perspective for readers to understand the magnitude of the Torvalds story." NOT exactly English.
"We also included this interview to resonate the character of Mr. Torvalds." To "resonate"? I'm sure he means SOMETHING nasty, but what?
" In a published interview between Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds, Raymond brandishes how Torvalds basically derived Linux from Minix." Brandishes? OK, we know what you mean, but... come on.
"There is far too much boasting about stealing, reverse engineering, and illegal copying espoused by some within the open source community." (Boasting is "espoused"? Could we possibly butcher the English language any more? Ideas are espoused, boasting is done, I've never heard anyone espouse boasting.)
And on and on and on... this is one low budget dude MS is paying. Not to mention that he appears to be a vicious liar.
...with an utterly nonessential good like a camera, I don't have a problem with the morality of capitalism at all, and if a corporation can sell more of a chip by selling it as a full function device, and as a limited function device, and make more money doing that, that
1) is good for the shareholders 2) good for consumers.
I just don't see that the people are screwed by a low function chip. I see that lots of people who couldn't afford the full function device have an opportunity to get some of the functions at a lower price. How are they losers?
People who object to this strategy probably think that Microsoft should sell stuff for the cost of the media since the money has already been spent and the marginal cost is 0. That's ridiculous, for too many reasons to describe here. (My objections to Microsoft have to do with it being a monopoly, not that it sells software for a profit.)
If you are in the business of selling something in which the marginal cost of producing an additional unit approaches zero, that doesn't create an obligation to reflect that marginal cost in the price!
Pricing should reflect demand and different levels of functionality, with an eye to maximizing profit - that's a core obligation of a company to its shareholders. That said, OF COURSE, governments have an opportunity to tax those profits sufficient to build social capital and create a humane society.
The 10d is used by many professionals, in specfici applications (speaking for myself, as a relatively new professional photog). Of course we'd all love to have a 1ds or the Mark II, but we can get 35mm quality (1ds is closer to medium format) at a "reasonable" price with the 10d... and it will stand up to some abuse, which I doubt the Rebel will.
From everything I've seen about the Rebel, it is a much more cheaply made piece of equipment. "As a professional" I would consider the more robust design of the 10D (which is due for a replacement/update by the way) to make it a superior camera, for reasons unrelated to the chip set and its functions. Furthermore, as a professional, I am considering the Rebel as a backup digital body, without any hacking. It just doesn't look like a good bet for a high use high reliability camera, although it has its potential uses. But even with functions hacked, it is unlikely to equal a 10d.
As for the "propriety" of crippling functionality, get a clue. The fact that a company can give something away at no cost doesn't mean that it is evil if it doesn't.
Look at it this way: The price for the low function and high function products is probably lower (over time, ceteris parabus, etc. etc.) because the development cost is amortized over a larger market which includes the low and high function products instead of just the high function products.
Of course the company could distribute the benefits of the larger manufacturing run to different market segments depending on compeitition... but somewhere, if the market is competitive, the consumer is a winner, if the company can sell more of those chips by crippling some of them.
Microsoft/Sun is betting that the future of ownership lies in the realm of "ideas on paper", and not in the realm of "ideas expressed in metal and silicon", much less in the realm of plain old physical stuff, which is the only area that ownership should be meaningful.
It's an interesting claim.... building the structure of ownership from "stuff" out into the abstract realm of ideas.
If they can get away with it, they are golden and you and I are so, so screwed.
It's no exageration to say that the future of humanity and human freedom is at stake. If ideas can be owned in perpetuity, given the viral nature of ideas, ultimately we have a condition of complete ownership of your brain by large corporations.
If ideas are owned, someday every idea you have learned will have been learned from a textbook or cultural source that someone had an intellectual property interest in. You literally will not own the thoughts in your own head.
It is an amazing fascistic vision that these folks are promoting. It is hard to see where it will end, given that the issue is difficult for ordinary law makers and citizens to grasp, and given the fact that MS already has its foot in the door with billions to spend to promote this idea.
Of all the random letters and words they could have generated, the use of an "N" "G" "R" word is very wierd. Either these people live in some kind of social and intellectual bubble... (most likely), or else what....?
Here are some words that I wouldn't choose too. Mithorfickur.... cantlickir... etc.
"nigritude" is just one weird choice. Why would they choose it? It isn't random letters... it has the feel of English.
I think it's a bad choice, since presumably they just want something neutral... but maybe brushing up against words that have negative cultural connotations is how you take a boring nonesense word and make it interesting...
Seems like a really bad choice.... and it is reinforced by the use of a "color" word as the second word... ultramarine is a color, and so this cues the mind to think of color, which, in a different sense, is also implicit in the letters of the first word.
Very odd, and surely a poor choice for the purpose at hand.
Oh, I agree that criticism about the use of the word "niggardly" ("miserly") is pure ignorance... but I also bow to the fact that we live in an ignorant society and I would avoid using it because I wish to communicate and, really, how often do you really need to say "niggardly" to make your point?
You don't, ever, need to use it. And you don't need to choose a word like "nigritude" as a "random" word either. You just don't.
... the best dude, and as a material good it could be transported from Guatemalla at a low cost to the planet, while you and I can do our traveling in our minds without leaving our rooms....
"Did you know that modern cars in London actually clean the air they pass through?"
Not if you include the environmental degradation associated with the maintenance of the military empire that assures that they have fuel... I'd wager you....
" Governments don't have any money to spend. We elect a government to decide how to spend our money on large tasks." Sorry but that's just silly.... we tax ourselves enormously to finance our highway systems and the military empire that makes our transportation system possible. Well "we" do it... but I don't consent to it. I reject the premise that transportation is worth those costs.
"Trade involves transport" I confined my critique to the movement of human bodies. If you subtract that out, the movement of goods would require a much lighter on the earth transportation structure. I should have clarified by emphasizing "human transportation". The movement of goods is essential, and positive.... and also much cheaper.
The context of the article is "ways of moving people around" and that was my emphasis.
Moving people around is ecologically expensive and dangerous and probably impossible to do at Western levels for the whole planet's population.
I think it is indisputable that all 6 billion and growing people cannot move about the earth in the way that say Americans and West Europeans currently do.
I think that the idea that merely changing the mechanism or the power source for all that movement makes it somehow possible is simplistic and unrealistic.
The equation you make between "civillization" (as we know it) and "conveyance" is accurate, but I'm arguing that we can envision new forms of civillization that subtract that inherently environmentally negative nature of transportation from the equation....
Which certainly subsidize and invest in economic activity that promotes the long term sustainability of human life on the planet earth. You can make a case for agricultural technology, health care and education as potentially non-subtractive... I don't see how you make the analogous case for more movement, or faster movement of people.
As for how cool it is to really be in other places... I readily grant that... let's just make sure that people pay real prices that reflect real costs... If they do, people will find that three dimensional holograms may be a much better choice...
At least fuel prices in the UK reflect some of the costs of transportation... but you still get an enormous subsidy from the US government through its military protection services that guarantee the flow of oil.
How do you calculate the cost of environmental transformation wrought by a road through a jungle that brings people and ecological change... or devestation?
How do you calculate the cost of road deaths?
How do you calculate the cost of maintaining an American military empire designed to ensure reliable fuel supplies?
It can be done, and it should be done, and when you do it, I guarantee you that roads and cars, and trains and automobiles are the driving engine for the extraction of wealth from society and the environment.
The thrill of physical movement through space blinds us to its costs, and the governments know how we love movement and will spend millions on the technologies of physical movement, no matter where the resources and value must be extracted from to support it.
You and I are transportation addicts.... some addicts know they are addicted, and some rage against the very idea.
You have to think a little more deeply than people are accustomed to thinking.
I'm betting you got a really nice freebie courtesy of your government and the planet earth, and that you paid a tiny fraction of the real cost associated with moving your flesh to those locations.
I'm betting you, and most people, couldn't begin to afford the real price associated with all of the technology that gets them to those places.
Of course you had a wonderful experience, and I've had them too. But I know that I didn't pay anything near the real cost, and that the planet earth couldn't sustain everyone having those experiences, anymore than it can sustain everyone having as many cars as we do in the US.
My perspective isn't "hippie"..... it's pretty hard core economics.
You have failed to imagine (or conceptualize) the real costs associated with your privilleged position in the global economy. Think again.
But you make a fundamental mistake in thinking that the physical movement of human bodies is necessary to bring people and ideas into closer contact...
You can achieve the experience of "other places" (whether the vistas or the cultures) without the costs of moving bodies around, thereby getting the value of transportation without the planet destroying costs.
YES, there is a human desire to move about and see the world. I only ask that movement and transportaiton pay for its full externalities which include the massive cost of habitat destruction and pollution associated with them. Currently we masively subsidize these INCREDIBLE luxuries like a five hour trip across the American continent, or the highway networks everywhere...
Sure people should be able to travel, but they should also bear the real environmental costs, and that will mean that many many fewer people will travel, and will instead experience other places and peoples virtually, since the movement of information has such a low cost and such few externalities, in comparison to the movement of human bodies.
Don't imagine that physical movement is the only way to create diversity and complexity of social life....
ALSO, most transportation is not about long term migration, but about daily movement to work, and business travel, all of which is highly subsidized by the government and for which the environment pays an enormous cost. I'm not suggesting that people won't be able to move about the planet, just that they should do so at realistic (extremely high) prices, and that we should find other ways of achieving many of the goods associated with transportation of human bodies.
Slashdot Mirror
"And uh... if your kid is still nursing at three years of age, you maybe have a problem on your hands. Gross."
In indigenous cultures children breast feed as long as through the fifth year of life (although not for primary nutrition in the later years.)
It is very likely the American sexualization (and to some degree the "Western" sexualization) of breasts that leads people to perceive prolonged breastfeeding as "gross" because breasts are seen as sexual... "simply hot" as you so charmingly say.
The health benefits of nursing through the third year of life are well established. If you should ever have children, I hope you'll take the time to research this, and, at a mininum encourage your wife (or make sure that you do so personally if you are female) to nurse through the first year of life.
But all research suggests that the immune system beneifts, nutritional benefits and psychological value of breast feeding continues through the third year of life at least.
You want a smart kid? Make sure he/she gets his breast milk, for a long time.
(Of course correlation never proves causation, but it can support causation in the presence of other compelling arguments, which you will find if you take the time to study the issue medically, and anthropologically.)
You're right about the likely connection to upright walking, but a more direct reason for the sexualization of the female breast has to do with frontal coitus, largely unique to homo sapiens, although also practiced on occasion by those fun loving bonobos ("pygmy chimps").
... for sexual purposes.
Big fat orbs are a basic sexual signal to the male ape, and breasts provide the "big fat ass orbs" signal when having sex face to face, in place of the ass.... And of course face-to-face coitus is facilitated by the skeletal structure associated with upright walking. So likely the transition to upright posture, the development of face to face coitus and the enlargement of breasts to function as a "sexual" organ occured together in evolutionary time.
Breasts in short, and in part, are an ass transplanted to the chest
But beyond that the REAL REAL reason for the sexualization of breasts is very modern and has to do with the decline of breast feeding.
Western and American children, deprived of the NORMAL two to three years of breast feeding that homo sapiens have enjoyed throughout recent evolutionary history, never got enough of the boob and spend their lives lusting after what they missed.
The hyper-sexualization of breasts is DIRECTLY related to the decline of breastfeeding.
American men in particular are known to be breast obsessed as adults, while breast feeding rates in America are among the lowest in the world - That's a correlation that does suggest causation!
Go to cultures where children derive significant portion of their nutritional needs through the first 3 years of life from the breast and you will find that (1) it is the buttocks and legs that are more sexualized and (2) breasts are freely displayed (often) becase they pretty much thought of as feeding tubes, quite unconnected to sex. http://milkofhumankindness.org/
That's the real story, you breast deprived American men.
(Yes, I'm an American man too.)
antiNat, Yours is classic blame the victim reasoning - downright "unAmerican" to this PDXer
:-)
I don't know that they require registration for their proposed compensation, but I know the weasling ways of American corporations.
I have NO responsibility to register a bike lock, and the lock should be warrantied to function as a lock regardless of where a little yellow card is in the universe.
I suggested a class action law suit because the proposed response (an opportunity to buy a new product from the company that sold the defective product) seems like such a classic corporate weasel.
However, I'm willing to wait a few days to see what the official response is before I call a lawyer.
I take full personal responsibility for my actions, and expect nothing less (and in fact MUCH more) from the non-persons we call corporations.
If they don't take responsibility, well that's what law suits for and thank God for it.
If you are like me, you may own, say 3 kryptoloks, purchased over the last five years which you never bothered to register, and can't remember where you purchased them, or maybe you remember that you purchased them somewhere in Los Angeles and now you live in PDX... will this apply to unregistered locks? with no receipt? LIKE THOSE PROBABLY OWNED BY 90% OF FOLKS? ... and it sounds like they are only offering to let you spend more money on a new product by a company that sold you a defective product the first time around. "Please reward us for our mistake."
Unless they are willing to replace the defective product, maybe it's time for a class action law suit?
Normally the Oregonian is nothing to brag about, but damn if this wasn't the lead articlef ?/base/front_page/1095508748276280.xml
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ss
on Saturday morning.
Makes me feel good to live in this town (Portland, aka Stumptown, aka River City aka the Rose City aka "the city that works") where the most important news in the world is that the locks we all use to secure our bikes aren't technically "locks." at all.
PDX is one two wheelin' city.
This isn't my web site but I wish it were:
http://www.geosnapper.com/
There exist Japan only (not ever marketed in the US) point and shoot cameras that already record GPS data directly. (Rioch... and some other brand I haven't heard of.)
And of course various Nikon pro models have this capacity, such as that used here:
http://www.californiacoastline.org/
In the same vein, check out:
http://apps.ecy.wa.gov/shorephotos/index.html
I haven't evaluated this: http://www.robogeo.com/home/
But I do own this, and it works well, as advertised to get a GPS read for each time at which you take a picture: http://www.geospatialexperts.com/
At the above location, they happen to sell the Ricoh model that can record GPS out of the box.
I agree with the choice of Blade Runner.
But I thought that Silent Running was pretty cool.
Also The Andromeda Strain... that was pretty neat in its day.
Just saw Soylent Green too... nice dystopian idea.
"Should we go to Mars? .... This is not a new dream. As long as humanity has been human, it has looked toward the heavens and dreamed that some day, some way, there would be giant federal contracts involved"
...
... every rocket fired, in a final sense, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dave Barry
The idea that we can keep expanding the boundary flies in the face of a much more important truth, which is that THIS is all the water there is, THIS is the air that we have, and THIS is the planet we have.
As long as we can delude ourselves about new lands, and new planets, we postpone the day of reckoning with the finite nature of the planet earth and its habitable regions.
All talk of space travel is ultimately the product of a deluded attempt to disguise the need to achieve a state of ecological and economic balance.
From Kennedy to Bush, space travel is a way for politicians and teenagers to avoid dealing with the real problems here on Earth... with militarism and with hunger and with poverty and ill health. Those problems are all so messy... and require such incredible changes in how we live.... how much more fun to think of zooming through space... and how completely irrelevant and cruel.
I'm all for small budget robot exploration of the solar system but
"
As Thomas Jefferson said:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Thomas Jefferson
Now just 'cause an 18th century slave holder said it, doesn't mean its true. I'm well aware of the US' leading role in making "IP" the subject of ownership. The fact that it is what makes the US empire what it is today, doesn't mean it is the right way to structure capitalism on the planet earth.
Patents and intellectual property were originally constructed to provide incentives for the creation of products and ideas that might not otherwise be created.... gradually they have become a means to stifle the creativity of others.
I believe the world would be a richer, more productive place if the right to "own an idea" were recognized for the artificial and creativity stunting idea that it is, and if the notion of "IP" were greatly limited in duration and scope.
IP is a deadweight on US power because it concentrates the right to be creative and productive in an increasingly narrow class of large corporations which are able to compete thorugh access to political power rather than in the market place, and through reliance on military might rather than through the creation of innovative products.
I well understand what IP is, and I'm pretty clear that it is being used in ways that are counter to its original limited intentions.
There is justification for giving an author a few years of revenue... there is justification for giving an innovator a FEW years to profit from an idea.... indefinite copyrights.... massive patent portfolios used as legal weapons... these are not in the public's or the planet's interest.
What is left to compete with you ask? Solutions.... or as you derisively call it... service. People will compete with Brainpower... providing people to solve your problems. The cost of service will not reach zero because smart people will continue to command salaries for their time.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea...."
The US patent system is not worldwide... it extends only as far as the US Empire extends.
Even if MS gets the entire US Congress and court system to bend over and take it in the rear... even if it drives open source out of every server in the US.... there is a limit to its potential power... the law of intellectual property regimes only extends as far as the military and political might of the American empire.
Ultimately the conflict over intellectual property regimes escalates to an international and civilizational conflict, in which some nations (China, India) will use the OSS model... and enjoy its benefits.
The corrupt American empire, bought and owned by the multinational corporations that it once liscensed but that now licsence it, will not be able to compete.
At that point either (1) the US loosens up its intellectual property regime, moves away from "software patents" and other bad ideas, and remains competitive on an international economic level... or (2) its relative position in the world begins to slide as India/China and the World realize the economic externalities in an OSS software intellectual property regime and use them to compete.
The intellectual property regime we are constructing in the US is a deadweight on US international power.... a deadweight that large corporations would love to see remain in place.
It will be interesting to see what path we choose, given the paths that India and China will surely choose toward OSS.
(Of course... paradoxically... if you think the US is too powerful in the world... in this dialectical model, you would then root for the success of Microsoft, software patents and all sorts of other nonesense to ultimately reduce the power of the American empire. But you can resolve the paradox by considering that there are two kinds of power.... the power of domination and the power of leadership... power that is "we win/ you lose" versus power that involves "we win, and you win too." )
... and here's why. Simple economics. It costs huge sums to pay all those MS folk to keep developing Windows.
IBM has figured out that the OS is a commodity... and a proprietary OS is a just a tool to lock in application producers/providers... so they are actively driving the value out of the OS market.
Microsoft will NOT be able to survive as the dominant OS if it has to pay hundreds and hundreds of developers to do what Linux developers do more or less for free.
Even Apple, which has cut costs by using BSD at the core, still has huge built in costs. But they are smart... they are using their OS budget to develop a competitive advantage at the interface level.
As Linux becomes the numerically dominant OS worldwide it will draw a growing number of application writers.... snowball effect... just as "everyone" writes for Windows now, there will come a day when people can't afford not to write for Linux and Windows... and not too long after that, a day when people will look at the shrinking Windows market share and say, as they do of Apple now... hey maybe will get around to writing for that someday...
MS can't... simply can't.... compete on cost at the basic OS level. They will therefore compete politicaly, legally, and every other way.
Now... you like Windows because it runs your apps? Hey, I like it for the same reason. I run XP and SuSE.
SuSE is definitely more of a pain in the butt... no Dreamweaver.... no Photoshop CS... although I could go back to Photoshop 7 with codeweaver.... I'm still trying to figure out how to install programs from source.... it's a pain in the butt every time. But look at IBMs strategy and you will see why Window's share will be about the size of Apples's market share in 10 years.
None of the programs I run in SuSE ever give me trouble... but I don't run Dreamweaver which is the main thing that is always locking up in XP. Neither ever locks up fully... although I have had XP grow unstable and funky, leading me to reboot... and of course I reboot for some installs. No big... I'm so square I turn off my computer every night. But all in all XP is still easier to use... and DOOMED.
Linux and open source sucks the profit out of the OS. MS will NOT be able to afford to compete with the cost of linux development. They are selling something that used to require a paid army, and now needs only an unpaid army to develop and improve.
As a result Windows will die.... unless they simply purchase the governments and court systems of the world outright, or with the help of their corporate partners, and outlaw free software and, not to get too overheated about it, freedom of thought and communication itself.
"Free software is only free if your time has no value..." and free TV is only free if space in your brain has no value.
What is really impressive about this piece of drivel is that a big fancy think tank would put out an article that is filled with grammar and usage errors.
... come on.
You would think that MS money could at least buy an extremely well written and smooth argument. There is of course an intelligent argument to make against Linux by twisting the intereview comments that Brown received, but you would have to do it more carefully than Brown does it. I could take the people he quotes and do a better job than this.
I don't get it. Maybe the point is to enrage people.... with poor use of English.
"AdTI is certain that inevitably, some unfortunate user of Linux will be facing an incalculable legal problem." Incalculable legal problem? Are some legal problems calculable?
"Meanwhile, we should also very plainly ask, ?who[m] are we trusting??" Well, Mr. Brown, is it who or whom? Do you know? (The m is used when it's an object, which it is not here.... eg. "in whom do we put trust" OR "Who do we put trust in? What the F is your coy little [m] supposed to mean?
"Tanenbaum told us about the Coherent project repeatedly, but it was easy to research that it was a completely different situation." NOT English
"We included this interview to provide another perspective for readers to understand the magnitude of the Torvalds story." NOT exactly English.
"We also included this interview to resonate the character of Mr. Torvalds." To "resonate"? I'm sure he means SOMETHING nasty, but what?
" In a published interview between Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds, Raymond brandishes how Torvalds basically derived Linux from Minix." Brandishes? OK, we know what you mean, but
"There is far too much boasting about stealing, reverse engineering, and illegal copying espoused by some within the open source community." (Boasting is "espoused"? Could we possibly butcher the English language any more? Ideas are espoused, boasting is done, I've never heard anyone espouse boasting.)
And on and on and on... this is one low budget dude MS is paying. Not to mention that he appears to be a vicious liar.
...with an utterly nonessential good like a camera, I don't have a problem with the morality of capitalism at all, and if a corporation can sell more of a chip by selling it as a full function device, and as a limited function device, and make more money doing that, that
1) is good for the shareholders
2) good for consumers.
I just don't see that the people are screwed by a low function chip. I see that lots of people who couldn't afford the full function device have an opportunity to get some of the functions at a lower price. How are they losers?
People who object to this strategy probably think that Microsoft should sell stuff for the cost of the media since the money has already been spent and the marginal cost is 0. That's ridiculous, for too many reasons to describe here. (My objections to Microsoft have to do with it being a monopoly, not that it sells software for a profit.)
If you are in the business of selling something in which the marginal cost of producing an additional unit approaches zero, that doesn't create an obligation to reflect that marginal cost in the price!
Pricing should reflect demand and different levels of functionality, with an eye to maximizing profit - that's a core obligation of a company to its shareholders. That said, OF COURSE, governments have an opportunity to tax those profits sufficient to build social capital and create a humane society.
The 10d is used by many professionals, in specfici applications (speaking for myself, as a relatively new professional photog). Of course we'd all love to have a 1ds or the Mark II, but we can get 35mm quality (1ds is closer to medium format) at a "reasonable" price with the 10d... and it will stand up to some abuse, which I doubt the Rebel will.
From everything I've seen about the Rebel, it is a much more cheaply made piece of equipment. "As a professional" I would consider the more robust design of the 10D (which is due for a replacement/update by the way) to make it a superior camera, for reasons unrelated to the chip set and its functions. Furthermore, as a professional, I am considering the Rebel as a backup digital body, without any hacking. It just doesn't look like a good bet for a high use high reliability camera, although it has its potential uses. But even with functions hacked, it is unlikely to equal a 10d.
As for the "propriety" of crippling functionality, get a clue. The fact that a company can give something away at no cost doesn't mean that it is evil if it doesn't.
Look at it this way: The price for the low function and high function products is probably lower (over time, ceteris parabus, etc. etc.) because the development cost is amortized over a larger market which includes the low and high function products instead of just the high function products.
Of course the company could distribute the benefits of the larger manufacturing run to different market segments depending on compeitition... but somewhere, if the market is competitive, the consumer is a winner, if the company can sell more of those chips by crippling some of them.
Think about it.
Microsoft/Sun is betting that the future of ownership lies in the realm of "ideas on paper", and not in the realm of "ideas expressed in metal and silicon", much less in the realm of plain old physical stuff, which is the only area that ownership should be meaningful.
It's an interesting claim.... building the structure of ownership from "stuff" out into the abstract realm of ideas.
If they can get away with it, they are golden and you and I are so, so screwed.
It's no exageration to say that the future of humanity and human freedom is at stake. If ideas can be owned in perpetuity, given the viral nature of ideas, ultimately we have a condition of complete ownership of your brain by large corporations.
If ideas are owned, someday every idea you have learned will have been learned from a textbook or cultural source that someone had an intellectual property interest in. You literally will not own the thoughts in your own head.
It is an amazing fascistic vision that these folks are promoting. It is hard to see where it will end, given that the issue is difficult for ordinary law makers and citizens to grasp, and given the fact that MS already has its foot in the door with billions to spend to promote this idea.
Of all the random letters and words they could have generated, the use of an "N" "G" "R" word is very wierd. Either these people live in some kind of social and intellectual bubble... (most likely), or else what....?
Here are some words that I wouldn't choose too.
Mithorfickur.... cantlickir... etc.
"nigritude" is just one weird choice. Why would they choose it? It isn't random letters... it has the feel of English.
I think it's a bad choice, since presumably they just want something neutral... but maybe brushing up against words that have negative cultural connotations is how you take a boring nonesense word and make it interesting...
Seems like a really bad choice.... and it is reinforced by the use of a "color" word as the second word... ultramarine is a color, and so this cues the mind to think of color, which, in a different sense, is also implicit in the letters of the first word.
Very odd, and surely a poor choice for the purpose at hand.
Oh, I agree that criticism about the use of the word "niggardly" ("miserly") is pure ignorance... but I also bow to the fact that we live in an ignorant society and I would avoid using it because I wish to communicate and, really, how often do you really need to say "niggardly" to make your point?
You don't, ever, need to use it. And you don't need to choose a word like "nigritude" as a "random" word either. You just don't.
Hey, what's the source for this:
"You can't give freedom to someone. They have to take it. Without permission."
Red Warrior
I like it. Who said it? When? thanks
... the best dude, and as a material good it could be transported from Guatemalla at a low cost to the planet, while you and I can do our traveling in our minds without leaving our rooms....
"Did you know that modern cars in London actually clean the air they pass through?"
Not if you include the environmental degradation associated with the maintenance of the military empire that assures that they have fuel... I'd wager you....
" Governments don't have any money to spend. We elect a government to decide how to spend our money on large tasks." Sorry but that's just silly.... we tax ourselves enormously to finance our highway systems and the military empire that makes our transportation system possible. Well "we" do it... but I don't consent to it. I reject the premise that transportation is worth those costs.
"Trade involves transport"
I confined my critique to the movement of human bodies. If you subtract that out, the movement of goods would require a much lighter on the earth transportation structure. I should have clarified by emphasizing "human transportation". The movement of goods is essential, and positive.... and also much cheaper.
The context of the article is "ways of moving people around" and that was my emphasis.
Moving people around is ecologically expensive and dangerous and probably impossible to do at Western levels for the whole planet's population.
... a reasonable modification, but...
I think it is indisputable that all 6 billion and growing people cannot move about the earth in the way that say Americans and West Europeans currently do.
I think that the idea that merely changing the mechanism or the power source for all that movement makes it somehow possible is simplistic and unrealistic.
The equation you make between "civillization" (as we know it) and "conveyance" is accurate, but I'm arguing that we can envision new forms of civillization that subtract that inherently environmentally negative nature of transportation from the equation....
Which certainly subsidize and invest in economic activity that promotes the long term sustainability of human life on the planet earth. You can make a case for agricultural technology, health care and education as potentially non-subtractive... I don't see how you make the analogous case for more movement, or faster movement of people.
As for how cool it is to really be in other places... I readily grant that... let's just make sure that people pay real prices that reflect real costs... If they do, people will find that three dimensional holograms may be a much better choice...
We've got 6 billion people and counting....
At least fuel prices in the UK reflect some of the costs of transportation... but you still get an enormous subsidy from the US government through its military protection services that guarantee the flow of oil.
How do you calculate the cost of environmental transformation wrought by a road through a jungle that brings people and ecological change... or devestation?
How do you calculate the cost of road deaths?
How do you calculate the cost of maintaining an American military empire designed to ensure reliable fuel supplies?
It can be done, and it should be done, and when you do it, I guarantee you that roads and cars, and trains and automobiles are the driving engine for the extraction of wealth from society and the environment.
The thrill of physical movement through space blinds us to its costs, and the governments know how we love movement and will spend millions on the technologies of physical movement, no matter where the resources and value must be extracted from to support it.
You and I are transportation addicts.... some addicts know they are addicted, and some rage against the very idea.
You have to think a little more deeply than people are accustomed to thinking.
I'm betting you got a really nice freebie courtesy of your government and the planet earth, and that you paid a tiny fraction of the real cost associated with moving your flesh to those locations.
I'm betting you, and most people, couldn't begin to afford the real price associated with all of the technology that gets them to those places.
Of course you had a wonderful experience, and I've had them too. But I know that I didn't pay anything near the real cost, and that the planet earth couldn't sustain everyone having those experiences, anymore than it can sustain everyone having as many cars as we do in the US.
My perspective isn't "hippie"..... it's pretty hard core economics.
You have failed to imagine (or conceptualize) the real costs associated with your privilleged position in the global economy. Think again.
But you make a fundamental mistake in thinking that the physical movement of human bodies is necessary to bring people and ideas into closer contact...
You can achieve the experience of "other places" (whether the vistas or the cultures) without the costs of moving bodies around, thereby getting the value of transportation without the planet destroying costs.
YES, there is a human desire to move about and see the world. I only ask that movement and transportaiton pay for its full externalities which include the massive cost of habitat destruction and pollution associated with them. Currently we masively subsidize these INCREDIBLE luxuries like a five hour trip across the American continent, or the highway networks everywhere...
Sure people should be able to travel, but they should also bear the real environmental costs, and that will mean that many many fewer people will travel, and will instead experience other places and peoples virtually, since the movement of information has such a low cost and such few externalities, in comparison to the movement of human bodies.
Don't imagine that physical movement is the only way to create diversity and complexity of social life....
ALSO, most transportation is not about long term migration, but about daily movement to work, and business travel, all of which is highly subsidized by the government and for which the environment pays an enormous cost. I'm not suggesting that people won't be able to move about the planet, just that they should do so at realistic (extremely high) prices, and that we should find other ways of achieving many of the goods associated with transportation of human bodies.
Cheers.