Phillip Jose Farmer's novelette Riders Of The Purple Wage, published in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, is exactly about a world in which few people are required to run the economy, and most people are permanently at liberty.
Lots of SF fan service too. Puns. Tropes. Allusions. Joe Bob says "check it out".
> the reason capitalism and a private sector is so good > is that it promotes economic diversity,
Unregulated, capitalism tends naturally to produce monopolies which have all the defects of "monoculture" state solutions, plus robber barons unaccountable to the society as a whole.
It may be a delusion... to imagine that state power can ever create a just society. But one reason some people are perennially tempted to try is that private power is generally so comfortable with unjust ones.
George Scialabba in What Are Intellectuals Good For?
I'm glad that we have a choice of licenses. Let a hundred legal flowers bloom.
But in my prayerful moments I thank the Tao of Programming that gcc and gdb exist, and are GPL'ed. Thank you RMS.
Those of you who were not programmers before gcc became the lingua franca perhaps do not recognize how these two tools have revolutionized computer engineering. Code used to be negligibly portable. Adequate development tooling was once scarce, buggy, and expensive, even for popular platforms such as the PDP-11 and Data General minis.
Don't get me wrong; Lessig is indispensible, unparalleled in the areas in which he focusses his attention.
But Ms. Speier is a pro, and has been preparing for this seat for a long time.
Even though I think the world and all of Lessig, if there were a runoff, I'd take Speier for this slot.
So it's wonderful that I don't have to make that choice.
If you're one of the people who were getting ready to work to get Lessig elected:
consider supporting Ms. Speier's campaign
The straight-news part of the WSJ has some of the best and most eclectic reportage out there. It will be wonderful to be able to read it online for free (as in beer).
The OpinionJournal is so factually-challenged and idealogically blinkered that, at free, it costs too much.
This is why all my XP computers are dual-boot with a legal copy of Windows 2000. If for some reason MS decides my XP should not be able to run, I still have access to my files. Those bits are MINE, damn it.
If Valve has extracted a few more dollars from me than from another person for the same merchandise, I really don't give a toss.
If there is any company in the world that I think deserves my money, it's Valve. Thanks, guys.
(I can see that my friend the GTA addict has actually gotten more replay value from San Andreas than I have from HL / Blue Shift / Opposing Force / HL2 / Lost Coast / Episode One, but he's welcome to it; I just don't enjoy being Carl Johnson, though it's fun to watch, and the music is superlative)
Always put the box on a hard surface. If you've gotta lay it on a carpeted floor, put a book or a magazine under it to get the bottom of the box up out of the carpet.
Don't let dust accumulate in the vent holes or fans -- use a vacuum to suck it clean every once in a while.
Note that the summit of Olympus Mons, one of the four super-volcanoes comprised by the Tharsis region, is over 20 kilometers above mean datum. Dude, that's a 65-thousand-foot-tall volcano.
> So Bush decreed that private investment of personal Social Security funds thing > and that drilling in ANWR thingie as supreme law?
no, you're right about that.
on the other hand, Bush now claims the legal right for himself
_or_his_representative_ to name *you* an enemy combatant,
and on that basis detain you indefinitely
(and torture you if he feels like it)
without any judicial review or legislative oversight.
without presenting any evidence to anyone. ever.
that has a certain absolute-monarch feel to it, doesn't it?
Ditmer's Gourmet Meats and Wurst Hause on San Antonio is one of the best things about living in Silicon Valley.
_Real_ bratwurst, schinken, weisswurst, jaegerwurst, kassler ripchen, mettwurst. Gold medal award plaques line the walls. Real Bayerische sourdough rye in kilo loaves. German potato salad. Emmentaler.
this is entirely appropriate, that 391 decay into irrelevance
just as every organization, every business dream in silicon valley decays eventually into irrelevance.
Tandem Gould SEL Xidex System Industries Atari National Semi Zilog amdahl 3DO Netscape Monolithic Memories HAL Wyle Silicon Graphics Diamond Borland
only Computer Literacy and Fry's were created immortal --
[ and the owners of Computer Literacy traded their heritage
for a mess of Barnes and Noble pottage
and did become greatly enriched thereby ]
If there's ever a "Here's Where Silicon Valley Started" brass plaque, it arguably belongs at the former site of The Wagon Wheel bar'ngrill on Middlefield, where aerospace and electronic engineers went to drink beer and draw boxes and arrows on the backs of napkins.
[ Moria on Middlefield in Sunnyvale gets honorable mention.
Rosotti's. The Oasis. St. John's. ]
And if there's ever a "Here's Where Silicon Valley Got Drunk" brass plaque, it arguably belongs at the former site of St. James Infirmary, on Moffett Blvd not far from the 101 Club. I miss their hot wings, and the 100 beers on tap, and the giant fibreglass statue of Wonder Woman looming over the dance floor. And the free peanuts. And the hot wings.
> Focus follows mouse (without auto-raise) > is the only way to read one window while typing in another, > without the window you're typing in raising to the foreground > and obscuring the window you're reading from.
Yes. It is a broken characteristic of Windows
that this is impossible to make work cleanly.
The other Windows UI decision that seems fundamentally wrong
to me is to put the scroll bar on the right margin. (I can't
find a way to fix this other than to read everything in Hebrew.)
Since in general most text is left-justified, this cast-in-stone
decsion means that you must display the entirety of the window
you're using -- the left margin for the text, and the right
margin for the scrollbar -- which makes the cascaded-windows
approach to multitasking much more difficult.
Oh: and this --
Use Windows Explorer to display the contents of a folder.
Use the window's View->Choose Details facility to add columns
like ownership, creation time, attributes, etc.
Now let's see you capture that display as a text file
(the equivalent of Unix ls -lrt > foo.txt)
Ten quatloos if you can do it.
Effective leaders have known this at least since the Bronze Age.
You do all the creative work, all the organizing, all the planning and "getting one's ducks in a line" _before_ the meeting. You talk to all the important participants, sound them out, and introduce your ideas, _before_ the meeting.
Then you hold the meeting to review and ratify.
For a picture of an effective leader playing this game at the grandmaster level, see the second volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, _Master_of_the_Senate_.
I bow to no one in my disdain for Microsoft's bad software. Don't get me started talking about Windows 98 and predecessors, or Outlook and Exchange, or Word, or Source Safe, unless you're prepared for an angry rant.
But many of the best programmers I know consider C## and the.NET runtime to be a distinct improvement on Java; a truly superior bit of language design and software engineering.
Your mileage may vary. Contents may have settled during shipping.
On Feb 17, 2009, US broadcasters are scheduled to abandon analog TV. There will be, I think, an enormous howl as people realize that they've been had -- particularly in rural areas, where cable is not available.
[ the Feb 2007 issue of Scientific American has an
article about this transition; unfortunately, I
cannot find in it any reference at all to DRM or HDCP
or the broadcast flag ]
Sometime after that date, "they" will flip the bit that enables enforcement of the Broadcast Flag. Again, I think that this will provoke consumer outrage and rebellion.
But I am often disappointed when I expect to be able to distinguish between US consumers and sheep.
Slashdot Mirror
Phillip Jose Farmer's novelette Riders Of The Purple Wage, published in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, is exactly about a world in which few people are required to run the economy, and most people are permanently at liberty.
Lots of SF fan service too. Puns. Tropes. Allusions. Joe Bob says "check it out".
> the reason capitalism and a private sector is so good
> is that it promotes economic diversity,
Unregulated, capitalism tends naturally to produce monopolies which have all the defects of "monoculture" state solutions, plus robber barons unaccountable to the society as a whole.
I'm glad that we have a choice of licenses.
Let a hundred legal flowers bloom.
But in my prayerful moments I thank the Tao of Programming that gcc and gdb exist, and are GPL'ed. Thank you RMS.
Those of you who were not programmers before gcc became the lingua franca perhaps do not recognize how these two tools have revolutionized computer engineering. Code used to be negligibly portable. Adequate development tooling was once scarce, buggy, and expensive, even for popular platforms such as the PDP-11 and Data General minis.
Don't get me wrong; Lessig is indispensible, unparalleled in the areas in which he focusses his attention. But Ms. Speier is a pro, and has been preparing for this seat for a long time. Even though I think the world and all of Lessig, if there were a runoff, I'd take Speier for this slot. So it's wonderful that I don't have to make that choice. If you're one of the people who were getting ready to work to get Lessig elected: consider supporting Ms. Speier's campaign
The straight-news part of the WSJ has some of the best and most eclectic reportage out there. It will be wonderful to be able to read it online for free (as in beer).
The OpinionJournal is so factually-challenged and idealogically blinkered that, at free, it costs too much.
This is why all my XP computers are dual-boot with a legal copy of Windows 2000.
If for some reason MS decides my XP should not be able to run, I still have access to my files. Those bits are MINE, damn it.
If Valve has extracted a few more dollars from me than from another person for the same merchandise, I really don't give a toss.
If there is any company in the world that I think deserves my money, it's Valve.
Thanks, guys.
(I can see that my friend the GTA addict has actually gotten more replay value from San Andreas than I have from HL / Blue Shift / Opposing Force / HL2 / Lost Coast / Episode One, but he's welcome to it; I just don't enjoy being Carl Johnson, though it's fun to watch, and the music is superlative)
Always put the box on a hard surface.
If you've gotta lay it on a carpeted floor,
put a book or a magazine under it to get the
bottom of the box up out of the carpet.
Don't let dust accumulate in the vent holes
or fans -- use a vacuum to suck it clean every
once in a while.
> that would be one monstrous lava tube.
m arsthar.html
That's one monstrous volcano.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solar/
Note that the summit of Olympus Mons, one of the four super-volcanoes
comprised by the Tharsis region, is over 20 kilometers above mean datum.
Dude, that's a 65-thousand-foot-tall volcano.
"Requires" DX10 => requires Vista
As I will not ever purchase Vista (DRM-ridden bloatware)
I will unfortunately not get a chance to play Halo3.
On the Xbox 360? Nein, meinherr. I have one,
but FPS with thumbstix suxxors.
> So Bush decreed that private investment of personal Social Security funds thing
> and that drilling in ANWR thingie as supreme law?
no, you're right about that.
on the other hand, Bush now claims the legal right for himself
_or_his_representative_ to name *you* an enemy combatant,
and on that basis detain you indefinitely
(and torture you if he feels like it)
without any judicial review or legislative oversight.
without presenting any evidence to anyone. ever.
that has a certain absolute-monarch feel to it, doesn't it?
Ditmer's Gourmet Meats and Wurst Hause on San Antonio
is one of the best things about living in Silicon Valley.
_Real_ bratwurst, schinken, weisswurst,
jaegerwurst, kassler ripchen, mettwurst.
Gold medal award plaques line the walls.
Real Bayerische sourdough rye in kilo loaves.
German potato salad. Emmentaler.
Say hi to Herr Bubert for me.
this is entirely appropriate, that 391 decay into irrelevance
just as every organization,
every business dream in silicon valley
decays eventually into irrelevance.
Tandem Gould SEL Xidex System Industries
Atari National Semi Zilog amdahl 3DO
Netscape Monolithic Memories HAL
Wyle Silicon Graphics Diamond Borland
only Computer Literacy and Fry's were created immortal --
[ and the owners of Computer Literacy traded their heritage
for a mess of Barnes and Noble pottage
and did become greatly enriched thereby ]
If there's ever a "Here's Where Silicon Valley Started"
brass plaque, it arguably belongs at the former site of
The Wagon Wheel bar'ngrill on Middlefield, where aerospace and
electronic engineers went to drink beer and draw boxes
and arrows on the backs of napkins.
[ Moria on Middlefield in Sunnyvale gets honorable mention.
Rosotti's. The Oasis. St. John's. ]
And if there's ever a "Here's Where Silicon Valley Got Drunk"
brass plaque, it arguably belongs at the former site of
St. James Infirmary, on Moffett Blvd not far from the 101 Club.
I miss their hot wings, and the 100 beers on tap, and the
giant fibreglass statue of Wonder Woman looming over the
dance floor. And the free peanuts. And the hot wings.
gone, all gone, all dust in the wind
> Focus follows mouse (without auto-raise)
> is the only way to read one window while typing in another,
> without the window you're typing in raising to the foreground
> and obscuring the window you're reading from.
Yes. It is a broken characteristic of Windows
that this is impossible to make work cleanly.
The other Windows UI decision that seems fundamentally wrong
to me is to put the scroll bar on the right margin. (I can't
find a way to fix this other than to read everything in Hebrew.)
Since in general most text is left-justified, this cast-in-stone
decsion means that you must display the entirety of the window
you're using -- the left margin for the text, and the right
margin for the scrollbar -- which makes the cascaded-windows
approach to multitasking much more difficult.
Oh: and this --
Use Windows Explorer to display the contents of a folder.
Use the window's View->Choose Details facility to add columns
like ownership, creation time, attributes, etc.
Now let's see you capture that display as a text file
(the equivalent of Unix ls -lrt > foo.txt)
Ten quatloos if you can do it.
Effective leaders have known this at least since the Bronze Age.
You do all the creative work, all the organizing,
all the planning and "getting one's ducks in a line"
_before_ the meeting. You talk to all the important
participants, sound them out, and introduce your ideas,
_before_ the meeting.
Then you hold the meeting to review and ratify.
For a picture of an effective leader playing this game
at the grandmaster level, see the second volume of
Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson,
_Master_of_the_Senate_.
> That's because Christians don't blow things up when you disagree with them
Your facts suffer from selection bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph
http://www.answers.com/topic/james-charles-kopp
The KKK
The IRA
et. alia. usw. et cetera et cetera et cetera
I wish they'd repeat the experiment with foosball.
I bow to no one in my disdain for Microsoft's bad software.
Don't get me started talking about Windows 98 and predecessors,
or Outlook and Exchange, or Word, or Source Safe, unless
you're prepared for an angry rant.
But many of the best programmers I know consider C## and the
runtime to be a distinct improvement on Java; a truly superior
bit of language design and software engineering.
Your mileage may vary. Contents may have settled during shipping.
On Feb 17, 2009, US broadcasters are scheduled to abandon analog TV.
There will be, I think, an enormous howl as people realize that
they've been had -- particularly in rural areas, where cable is
not available.
[ the Feb 2007 issue of Scientific American has an
article about this transition; unfortunately, I
cannot find in it any reference at all to DRM or HDCP
or the broadcast flag ]
Sometime after that date, "they" will flip the bit
that enables enforcement of the Broadcast Flag.
Again, I think that this will provoke consumer outrage and rebellion.
But I am often disappointed when I expect to be able to distinguish
between US consumers and sheep.
I believe I'll listen to Ken Deffeyes
http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/
http://www.amazon.com/Basin-Range-John-McPhee/dp/
Bravo.
I'll take Politics for $1,000
... ...
> government
> to keep some
> from getting equal treatment
I know! I know!
"What is the definition of "Compassionate Conservative"
You breathe the sacred names "Strunk" and "White"
in the same sentence as the flabby cliche
"rolling in their graves"?
Feh.
Those of us with Northgate Omnikey or Avant Stellar
keyboards can do this in hardware.
I'm guessing Das Keyboard can do it too.
For those lacking L337 hardware,
the System Internals app ctrl2cap fits the bill.
Comes with source.
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Ctrl2Cap.ht
[ Russinovich & Assoc. recently sold their souls to
the Beast of Redmond. May Bog have mercy on them. ]
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