The lack of objectivity due to the infusion of cash into politics, academics, and journalism is one of the main reasons non-profit organizations like the ones above have come into existence.
People (you, I, and others) have recognized for years that the overall system has been and is further being corrupted by money.
That's why we, as individuals, band together to form and contribute to non-profit watchdogs.
It's not the best solution (which would be for ethical behaviour in our politicians, professors, journalists, etc.), but it is a solution.
---------------------------------
Hmm, if I had the IBM Linux Watch ...
on
The new Palm VIIx
·
· Score: 1
and this Palm VIIX, then maybe fashion a connector from the watch to the Palm, run Apache on the watch, use the palm for the Internet connection, then find a Slashdot code clone, viola,
Can't we have a little sideline debate that others can see, that may be of special interest to Slashdot readers? How else can/.ers debate this topic? Slashdot's not going to post it! Give the original poster some slack and rate him/her back up.
Come on, you know why. There a corp now, and well, shareholders want profits. If DoubleDickYouAndYourPrivacy can deliver the almighty $ to Andover, then they're going to jump into bed with DoubleDick.
Capitalism at its best. Perverting the soul of a once decent website at its worst.
This is exactly why the government likes these big mega-mergers of bandwidth pipeline companies. It's easier to place these carnivore units in just a few major ISPs and easier to keep it quiet.
Dude, don't you realize that historically, these virtual machines will prove a godsend in later years as a way to run ancient code? I'm serious.
An interesting view on this is in Vernor Vinge's SCI-FI great, "A Deepness in the Sky". In the story, he actually postulates about a career called "programmer archeologist," a person who specializes in probing ancient archives of code for useful bits.
No kidding. My prediction: this will become your "official government email address" just like your SSN and you're going to HAVE TO USE IT!
Why? Because when it becomes apparent that nobody is using it initially, USPS officials are going to go crying to Capitol Hill and get this, Congress IS GOING to pass laws stating that official government notifications like: tax liens, notification of tax audits, draft registration, etc. can be sent via email and ONLY TO YOUR OFFICIAL government address.
I'm serious folks, this is really going to suck, because now you're going to be tagged in cyberspace whether you like it or not. When you have to use this damned address to get official government email, it's all going to be an open festival for whoever just like your Social Security number is now.
and you'll have to read it. No kidding. I predict Congress will pass laws saying official government notifications can go out via email but only to your "approved" USPS email address. This is going to be a major pain.
Why? Because nobody's going to use the damned thing when it first gets cranking, so embarassed USPS officials are going to pony up to the testimony table at Congress and beg for official mailings to be sent out only via email to USPS email addresses.
It's the very army of script kiddies and hackers out there that are FORCING major corporations to tighten up their code. Script kiddies and hackers are like the Ralph Nader of the auto industry (remember his book, "Unsafe at Any Speed"). The analogy is the same. Nader pointed out that the auto industry was producing unsafe cars. Hackers are pointing out that software companies are producing software that leave your corporate and home networks vunerable to attack. Except that rather than publishing a book like Nader did, they're publishing the weaknesses and potential methods of attacks.
Nader had to wait years for Congress to pass laws forcing the auto industry to tighten up. I think hackers are a bit more effective. They're forcing companies to tighten up at "Internet speed".
Contrary to what the music industry believes, I think Napster is going to have a huge positive impact on them.
I know from my own experience looking for types of Swing Dance music (don't ask) that I've learned about swing greats such as Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, and Benny Goodman. It's been educational as I search web sites for some of the old greats and then download songs by them via Napster. I now know what songs I want on a CD compilation by these greats. And yes, I'm on the lookout for CDs by these old music stars. Why buy when the MP3s are free? Not all MP3s are created equal, some are good, some suck. I'd prefer a high-quality CD.
Given the talk that the PC is predicted to soon be dead (see Intel Preparing for post-PC world), I have to wonder, is Gnome/Star Office/Linux on the PC simply panhandling now for gold flakes after Microsoft has hauled off most of the gold during the height of the PC era?
Not likely. Cutting yourself off from the major search engines would be like cutting your own throat. Yahoo, Altavista, Google and the like are providing companies a major service by referring people to the companies' sites.
I doubt they'll completely cut off the search engines. Maybe Ebay will cut off other auctioners from its site, but I doubt the search engines will die (unless Gnutella kills them off!)
After reading the Slashdot Fighting UCITAthread and how Maryland passed the bill, a month ago I wrote my Maryland House Delegate, Kumar P. Barve, a main writer/sponsor of the bill and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology.
He read the Slashdot thread and emailed me back that most of the anti-UCITA article references in the thread were old and threw down a very polite gauntlet: what specific provisions of the Maryland UCITA bill are objectionable? He said if he agrees with any objections and reasoning behind them, he would happily sponsor changes. Here's a link to the final bill as signed by the governor of Maryland. How about a little "open source" review of the bill by Slashdot readers to help clean up this bill?
Yeah, let's all stuff flowers in our hair and pierce our tongues and pretend that the U.S. and the Russians still don't have about 6K+ nukes each still aimed at one another (or easily reaimed for firing at the major metropolitan areas).
We haven't disarmed. Again, I ask you what world are YOU living in? We've still got enough nukes to test how tough the Internet really is (remember, it was built to withstand nuclear attacks). Even if you go with current political discussions in the presidential race, they are talking a number between 1000 and 1500 nukes per side. That's still enough to snowball the planet (if you're a nuclear winter fan).
And haven't you been following the news lately? The missile defense we're proposing is scaring the SHIT out of our allies. Why? Because if we ever REALLY perfected such a system, it would invalidate MAD and stoke the paranoia of the Russians and Chinese. Some have even predicted a first strike by one of the two if we ever tried to field such a system.
Face it. MAD worked. We didn't fire and neither did they during the Cold War. And it's still working with thousands of nukes loose in the world.
And the policy is valid when deconstructed to the level of an armed populace versus the State. Your pistol comment was ludicrous in one of your other posts. Many Americans are packing a hell of a lot more thans pistols. And the Feds know it.
Take the advice of one of the other posters. Stick a "GUN FREE HOUSE" sticker on your front door and post to us a year later how you've faired.
"Firearms would NOT have prevented those situations." and "If we were talking about nuclear weapons would your opinion be the same?"
What world are you living in Hard Code? Have you ever had a gun pointed at you and known the hard, cold fear that there's not a damned thing you can do EXCEPT accept whatever the fScker who's pointing the gun at you wants you to do? That or die? I have and it's not fun.
Armed populations can resist and prevent genocides. It's called the theory of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. If you fSck with me, I can fSck back, HARD! That is what kept the nuclear peace (and still does) for these 50 or so years that nuclear weapons have existed. And that's what can keep a nation-state's genocidal impulses against its own citizenry in check.
If disarmament Pollyanas like you had had your "Better Red than Dead" policies enacted in the 60's and 70's, we'd probably be Red by now. But guess what? We didn't disarm, we kept the peace and we're still free.
Your "guns are evil" statement is a smokescreen of ignorance. As is your understanding of the second amendment. The second amendment addressed the fundamental question of the ownership and use of force in the context of citizens and the nation state. That is, does a nation's citizenry have a counterbalancing PHYSICAL force to resist tyrannical statist impulses?
Witness Tiananmen Square, the forced resettlement of Ukrainians by Stalin, Indonesia and East Timor, the Kurds in Iraq, the Kosovars, Pol Pot, El Salvadoran death squads, etc. History is unfortunately populated with the skeletons of populations who did not possess such a counterbalancing force.
Can't happen in the U.S., England, Japan, etc? At this point in time, I'd have to agree with you. I don't foresee tyranny of this nature in our, Western Europe's, or Japan's near future. I also don't really foresee that my house is going to catch fire this year, but I did pay my homeowner's premiums last month. I'd also like to keep my gun, just in case.
As for guns as a public health issue, well, examine the numbers and you'll find estimates range from around 24,000 to 35,000 deaths per year in a population of nearly 300 million -- about.012% per year. That's deaths, not homicides. Part of those numbers also include idiot gunowners being selected out in a Darwin-like fashion when they clean their loaded guns. Part of those numbers are suicides (which are going to occur with or without the use of guns). Also included are the deaths due to people defending themselves killing those who would rob or assault them. And a large part are indeed homicides. But even a large portion of those homicides would likely have been committed with or without the use of a projectile weapon. Homicides can and will occur even without the use of guns. For a good breakdown, see GUN STATS and you'll see that the majority of gun-related deaths are nearly split between homicides vs. suicides (ironically, with suicides being the greatest at 18K+ per year).
Here are some other numbers I'll toss at you: auto deaths - about 50K year (yes your vehicle is more likely to toast someone than my 9mm -- and there are as many guns as autos in this country, probably more, believe it or not). Tobacco-related deaths -- about 400K per year. Alcohol-related deaths -- 100K (including drunks in automobile accidents, drunks with guns shooting themselves or others, and drunks with guns shooting themselves in an auto). I'm sure if you search the net, you can find the stats for bikes, knives, fat-filled fast food and suffocating via Beanie Babies. Tell me, where would you, budding-despot that you are, draw the line when banning dangerous items?
Yes, I agree with background checks (assuming it's a simply a check on my criminal background and not an entry into a national database of gunowners). And yes, I don't mind waiting periods. But no, I don't want my weapon registered or licensed.
The reason the gun issue rose again was, face it, the Colorado incident and the media hype surrounding it. Sure, it was a tragedy. Sure, it shouldn't have happened. But did anyone mention that there are TENS OF MILLIONS of high school students in the United States (millions who do have access to guns in their parents' homes -- I did) who didn't decide to take out the wrestling champ or the homecoming queen? Do the math and give me a percentage of the homicidal, gun-toting high-school population vs. that of the rest of the kids.
No, it hasn't been mentioned for good reason: it would expose the hysteria for what it is, irrational blathering like your rant. And for that I, a law-abiding citizen, am supposed to give up my gun, have it registered in a national database, or be subject to whatever law-du-jour your anti-gun crowd decides to propose? No thank you. I'll pass.
Sure. Maybe. It could be irrational exuberance, or it very well could be as many people suspect great new opportunities to invest in technologies that will change the world as we know it (web, telecom, nanotech, biotech, etc.) Sure, valuations are sky high. Just like they were when the automobile first hit. There were tens of automobile companies in America that people invested in, thinking, "Wow, this is great new technology that will change the world." It did (do you own an auto?). But not all those early auto companies survived. In fact, look at the Big 3 in America. Consolidation happened as the market matured. Consolidation will happen to all the aforementioned technology markets. The trick is to invest in those companies who will do the consolidating and survive in the end. Then we can be back with our lives and Newsweek can stop reporting abou the stock market and begin reporting about more salient issues like, what is Brad Pitt wearing today and what new disgusting fad have teenagers picked up to screw with their parents heads.
PAYLARS.COM has given the record industry the perfect model. The ability to buy individual songs and not a crappy album with two good songs and eight worthless ones. I know, PAYLARS.COM is not selling music, but if you browse the site, just looking at how it is arranged is great. Imagine a Sony website where you could buy the entire an artist's entire CD on MP3 or just click selection boxes and buy songs individually.
I think the record industry should take note.
were pointed out much earlier.
on
Faster
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
The lack of objectivity due to the infusion of cash into politics, academics, and journalism is one of the main reasons non-profit organizations like the ones above have come into existence.
People (you, I, and others) have recognized for years that the overall system has been and is further being corrupted by money.
That's why we, as individuals, band together to form and contribute to non-profit watchdogs.
It's not the best solution (which would be for ethical behaviour in our politicians, professors, journalists, etc.), but it is a solution.
---------------------------------
and this Palm VIIX, then maybe fashion a connector from the watch to the Palm, run Apache on the watch, use the palm for the Internet connection, then find a Slashdot code clone, viola,
SlashWrist!
---------------------------------
"No problem, hold a a sec" (types in the following):
[root@localhost]$ date
[root@localhost]$ Mon Aug 7 10:44:49 EDT 2000
"It's 10:44"
"Thanks"
---------------------------------
Can't we have a little sideline debate that others can see, that may be of special interest to Slashdot readers? How else can /.ers debate this topic? Slashdot's not going to post it! Give the original poster some slack and rate him/her back up.
---------------------------------
Come on, you know why. There a corp now, and well, shareholders want profits. If DoubleDickYouAndYourPrivacy can deliver the almighty $ to Andover, then they're going to jump into bed with DoubleDick.
Capitalism at its best. Perverting the soul of a once decent website at its worst.
---------------------------------
This is exactly why the government likes these big mega-mergers of bandwidth pipeline companies. It's easier to place these carnivore units in just a few major ISPs and easier to keep it quiet.
---------------------------------
Dude, don't you realize that historically, these virtual machines will prove a godsend in later years as a way to run ancient code? I'm serious.
An interesting view on this is in Vernor Vinge's SCI-FI great, "A Deepness in the Sky". In the story, he actually postulates about a career called "programmer archeologist," a person who specializes in probing ancient archives of code for useful bits.
---------------------------------
No kidding. My prediction: this will become your "official government email address" just like your SSN and you're going to HAVE TO USE IT!
Why? Because when it becomes apparent that nobody is using it initially, USPS officials are going to go crying to Capitol Hill and get this, Congress IS GOING to pass laws stating that official government notifications like: tax liens, notification of tax audits, draft registration, etc. can be sent via email and ONLY TO YOUR OFFICIAL government address.
I'm serious folks, this is really going to suck, because now you're going to be tagged in cyberspace whether you like it or not. When you have to use this damned address to get official government email, it's all going to be an open festival for whoever just like your Social Security number is now.
---------------------------------
and you'll have to read it. No kidding. I predict Congress will pass laws saying official government notifications can go out via email but only to your "approved" USPS email address. This is going to be a major pain.
Why? Because nobody's going to use the damned thing when it first gets cranking, so embarassed USPS officials are going to pony up to the testimony table at Congress and beg for official mailings to be sent out only via email to USPS email addresses.
Again, this is going to SUCK big time.
---------------------------------
or are you just making a porno flick? Heh.
---------------------------------
It's the very army of script kiddies and hackers out there that are FORCING major corporations to tighten up their code. Script kiddies and hackers are like the Ralph Nader of the auto industry (remember his book, "Unsafe at Any Speed"). The analogy is the same. Nader pointed out that the auto industry was producing unsafe cars. Hackers are pointing out that software companies are producing software that leave your corporate and home networks vunerable to attack. Except that rather than publishing a book like Nader did, they're publishing the weaknesses and potential methods of attacks.
Nader had to wait years for Congress to pass laws forcing the auto industry to tighten up. I think hackers are a bit more effective. They're forcing companies to tighten up at "Internet speed".
---------------------------------
Contrary to what the music industry believes, I think Napster is going to have a huge positive impact on them.
I know from my own experience looking for types of Swing Dance music (don't ask) that I've learned about swing greats such as Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, and Benny Goodman. It's been educational as I search web sites for some of the old greats and then download songs by them via Napster. I now know what songs I want on a CD compilation by these greats. And yes, I'm on the lookout for CDs by these old music stars. Why buy when the MP3s are free? Not all MP3s are created equal, some are good, some suck. I'd prefer a high-quality CD.
---------------------------------
Given the talk that the PC is predicted to soon be dead (see Intel Preparing for post-PC world ), I have to wonder, is Gnome/Star Office/Linux on the PC simply panhandling now for gold flakes after Microsoft has hauled off most of the gold during the height of the PC era?
---------------------------------
Not likely. Cutting yourself off from the major search engines would be like cutting your own throat. Yahoo, Altavista, Google and the like are providing companies a major service by referring people to the companies' sites.
I doubt they'll completely cut off the search engines. Maybe Ebay will cut off other auctioners from its site, but I doubt the search engines will die (unless Gnutella kills them off!)
---------------------------------
I got the correct adapter, got it in three weeks, and it does have a previous button (labeled preview).
Man! 9 hours of music sittin' on my hip. That's music! I really love my MPTrip.
I agree with the chintzy plastic bit. It does look cheap. But hey, it does what it says it would.
---------------------------------
Two that come to mind are Dreamweaver and Frontpage. They'll check your entire site for you and display broken links.
After reading the Slashdot Fighting UCITA thread and how Maryland passed the bill, a month ago I wrote my Maryland House Delegate, Kumar P. Barve , a main writer/sponsor of the bill and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology.
He read the Slashdot thread and emailed me back that most of the anti-UCITA article references in the thread were old and threw down a very polite gauntlet: what specific provisions of the Maryland UCITA bill are objectionable? He said if he agrees with any objections and reasoning behind them, he would happily sponsor changes. Here's a link to the final bill as signed by the governor of Maryland. How about a little "open source" review of the bill by Slashdot readers to help clean up this bill?
Yeah, let's all stuff flowers in our hair and pierce our tongues and pretend that the U.S. and the Russians still don't have about 6K+ nukes each still aimed at one another (or easily reaimed for firing at the major metropolitan areas).
We haven't disarmed. Again, I ask you what world are YOU living in? We've still got enough nukes to test how tough the Internet really is (remember, it was built to withstand nuclear attacks). Even if you go with current political discussions in the presidential race, they are talking a number between 1000 and 1500 nukes per side. That's still enough to snowball the planet (if you're a nuclear winter fan).
And haven't you been following the news lately? The missile defense we're proposing is scaring the SHIT out of our allies. Why? Because if we ever REALLY perfected such a system, it would invalidate MAD and stoke the paranoia of the Russians and Chinese. Some have even predicted a first strike by one of the two if we ever tried to field such a system.
Face it. MAD worked. We didn't fire and neither did they during the Cold War. And it's still working with thousands of nukes loose in the world.
And the policy is valid when deconstructed to the level of an armed populace versus the State. Your pistol comment was ludicrous in one of your other posts. Many Americans are packing a hell of a lot more thans pistols. And the Feds know it.
Take the advice of one of the other posters. Stick a "GUN FREE HOUSE" sticker on your front door and post to us a year later how you've faired.
"Firearms would NOT have prevented those situations." and "If we were talking about nuclear weapons would your opinion be the same?"
What world are you living in Hard Code? Have you ever had a gun pointed at you and known the hard, cold fear that there's not a damned thing you can do EXCEPT accept whatever the fScker who's pointing the gun at you wants you to do? That or die? I have and it's not fun.
Armed populations can resist and prevent genocides. It's called the theory of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. If you fSck with me, I can fSck back, HARD! That is what kept the nuclear peace (and still does) for these 50 or so years that nuclear weapons have existed. And that's what can keep a nation-state's genocidal impulses against its own citizenry in check.
If disarmament Pollyanas like you had had your "Better Red than Dead" policies enacted in the 60's and 70's, we'd probably be Red by now. But guess what? We didn't disarm, we kept the peace and we're still free.
Your "guns are evil" statement is a smokescreen of ignorance. As is your understanding of the second amendment. The second amendment addressed the fundamental question of the ownership and use of force in the context of citizens and the nation state. That is, does a nation's citizenry have a counterbalancing PHYSICAL force to resist tyrannical statist impulses?
.012% per year. That's deaths, not homicides. Part of those numbers also include idiot gunowners being selected out in a Darwin-like fashion when they clean their loaded guns. Part of those numbers are suicides (which are going to occur with or without the use of guns). Also included are the deaths due to people defending themselves killing those who would rob or assault them. And a large part are indeed homicides. But even a large portion of those homicides would likely have been committed with or without the use of a projectile weapon. Homicides can and will occur even without the use of guns. For a good breakdown, see GUN STATS and you'll see that the majority of gun-related deaths are nearly split between homicides vs. suicides (ironically, with suicides being the greatest at 18K+ per year).
Witness Tiananmen Square, the forced resettlement of Ukrainians by Stalin, Indonesia and East Timor, the Kurds in Iraq, the Kosovars, Pol Pot, El Salvadoran death squads, etc. History is unfortunately populated with the skeletons of populations who did not possess such a counterbalancing force.
Can't happen in the U.S., England, Japan, etc? At this point in time, I'd have to agree with you. I don't foresee tyranny of this nature in our, Western Europe's, or Japan's near future. I also don't really foresee that my house is going to catch fire this year, but I did pay my homeowner's premiums last month. I'd also like to keep my gun, just in case.
As for guns as a public health issue, well, examine the numbers and you'll find estimates range from around 24,000 to 35,000 deaths per year in a population of nearly 300 million -- about
Here are some other numbers I'll toss at you: auto deaths - about 50K year (yes your vehicle is more likely to toast someone than my 9mm -- and there are as many guns as autos in this country, probably more, believe it or not). Tobacco-related deaths -- about 400K per year. Alcohol-related deaths -- 100K (including drunks in automobile accidents, drunks with guns shooting themselves or others, and drunks with guns shooting themselves in an auto). I'm sure if you search the net, you can find the stats for bikes, knives, fat-filled fast food and suffocating via Beanie Babies. Tell me, where would you, budding-despot that you are, draw the line when banning dangerous items?
Yes, I agree with background checks (assuming it's a simply a check on my criminal background and not an entry into a national database of gunowners). And yes, I don't mind waiting periods. But no, I don't want my weapon registered or licensed.
The reason the gun issue rose again was, face it, the Colorado incident and the media hype surrounding it. Sure, it was a tragedy. Sure, it shouldn't have happened. But did anyone mention that there are TENS OF MILLIONS of high school students in the United States (millions who do have access to guns in their parents' homes -- I did) who didn't decide to take out the wrestling champ or the homecoming queen? Do the math and give me a percentage of the homicidal, gun-toting high-school population vs. that of the rest of the kids.
No, it hasn't been mentioned for good reason: it would expose the hysteria for what it is, irrational blathering like your rant. And for that I, a law-abiding citizen, am supposed to give up my gun, have it registered in a national database, or be subject to whatever law-du-jour your anti-gun crowd decides to propose? No thank you. I'll pass.
See the article at FTC Settlement on MSNBC. They've gone after the industry a bit.
Sure. Maybe. It could be irrational exuberance, or it very well could be as many people suspect great new opportunities to invest in technologies that will change the world as we know it (web, telecom, nanotech, biotech, etc.) Sure, valuations are sky high. Just like they were when the automobile first hit. There were tens of automobile companies in America that people invested in, thinking, "Wow, this is great new technology that will change the world." It did (do you own an auto?). But not all those early auto companies survived. In fact, look at the Big 3 in America. Consolidation happened as the market matured. Consolidation will happen to all the aforementioned technology markets. The trick is to invest in those companies who will do the consolidating and survive in the end. Then we can be back with our lives and Newsweek can stop reporting abou the stock market and begin reporting about more salient issues like, what is Brad Pitt wearing today and what new disgusting fad have teenagers picked up to screw with their parents heads.
Micro and Soft?
PAYLARS.COM has given the record industry the perfect model. The ability to buy individual songs and not a crappy album with two good songs and eight worthless ones. I know, PAYLARS.COM is not selling music, but if you browse the site, just looking at how it is arranged is great. Imagine a Sony website where you could buy the entire an artist's entire CD on MP3 or just click selection boxes and buy songs individually.
I think the record industry should take note.
Not so amazing. In, The Discoverers : A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself , Daniel Boorstin pointed this out years ago.