"Dick was an SF writer firmly grounded in the field, and would never have made as obvious and asinine mistake as violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics the way The Matrix's idiotic "humans as batteries" backstory does."
You're assuming that wasn't a lie propogated by the computer to appease questioning minds. It appears that the truth of the matter is that the matrix needs human minds to run, not for batteries. The human mind is the CPU of the matrix. This concept is very much within the realm of PKD.
Hormel has been very understanding regarding the use of the word 'spam' as a term for mass unsolicited email. It has been willing to share the name space and, IIRC, even support the alternative use. If they are challenging this particular case, it is not an indication that they will then move to more reasonable use of the word elsewhere.
Apple has started a chain reaction which will ultimately destroy the "music industry" as we know it.
When an artist creates, they need three things to make money from their art. Distribution, Collection, and Advertising. Music artists were dependant on the music industry, because the industry provided these three things. Through this power are able to create new artists, when originally the record companies had to search for artist.
With the internet and digital media, Distribution and Collection can be relatively easy. Apple has provided the structure. Whole sections of the music industry are obsolete, but they still have money. They will continue to fight for existence as long as they have money.
The last link is Advertising. The only way someone get someone hooked on a song is for them to hear it. The record industry owns radio, so that's not how it will come about. Internet radio will eventually click and it will happen when wireless is good enough that I can listen to an internet stream anywhere I would normally hear radio.
Sometimes I think maybe people plant these kinds of things just to see if terrorist really will try to use them. Here, take these plans to build a nuke and see what happens. Here, build your own flight simulator.
I'm so happy to hear someone finally ditched the X windows. Now maybe we can get some decent applications without needing to code the whole UI experience every time.
Resources are NOT cheap dispite what everbody claims.
I'm not sure that claim has ever been that resources were cheap. What has been said is that resources are cheaper (than they have ever been.)
There was a necessity in Unix to make things small. Smaller components meant your program was also smaller. This was very important when programs were meant to fit in under 64K.
We don't live in that world anymore. The restrictions on program size have change dramatically, but unix is still stuck in it's roots (no pun intended.)
1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept. It isn't right for someone else to do the same thing.
They do it now, more or less.
2) Taking all MS products off the campus would be a dis-service to the students. Do some of us like non-MS products? Sure. But when those students graduate and go to work, are they going to see a lot of MS in the workplace? You bet. To hide them from MS products for 4 years would be harming their education.
Almost as bad as forcing them to use Microsoft for four years. There are plenty of universities out there. I see nothing wrong with some being alternatives to the "normal" all microsoft set up. The real dis-service is not allowing students to avoid microsoft if they so choose.
The main supporters of this are the people who have Brick and Mortor stores to soak up the sales that wont be on the internet.
For christ sakes, if you want taxes on internet sales, make the taxes local to the state the server is in. If my server is in Chicago, then that's where the sale takes place. That way you will have states competing for the internet business by lowering their online sales tax. Isn't that what we want?
1. It's very likely that whatever the undelete command was, that it would have been in the bin as well. It's unlikely that you've be able to run it from the trashcan and unlikely you could have gotten to it without the contents of/bin.
2. Undelete is not for 'rm -rf'. It's for deleting a copy of that invoice/letter/utility you know you'll never need again, only to get a phone call ten minutes later.
So when marketing (or whoever makes the decisions) determines that there should be an integrated spell-checker, someone will code it up because that's what they're paid to do. As opposed to the open-source problem of finding someone who wants to do it.
Exactly.
When marketing decides that having more features will sell more product, they add the features, even if the average consumer never uses them. Open-source only adds features when they are actually helpful.
I see this as a big win for the consumer. I could have a word processor that works and cost me nothing, or I can pay hundreds of dollars for the extra features that some marketer thought would sell more product...
When I tell most people this, their eyes pop out of their heads as they realize that a large portion of their daily lives have no meaning to me. "No, I have no idea what happened on Buffy last week." They take it as a value statement. It's like I'm saying "You suck." Actually I like most of you, it's TV that sucks.
The average person (in the US) spends 4 hours watching TV a day, but there are real reasons to keep watching:
* Connection to others. TV creates social connections, even between people with little else in common. Feeling 'out of touch' with others would then require you to find other social connections.
* Communication to the masses. Corporations and Governments use TV as a way to send out their messages to mass populations. You might miss the important messages from these organizations if you didn't watch.
* Introduction to new products. Often TV is used to launch new products and services to major markets. How would you knew a new product was introduced if you didn't watch TV?
* It occupies your time. It fills an average of 28 hours a week. If you eliminated it, you'd be force to do something else with that time.
So when commercials are increased on Public TV (and cable too, you actually pay to watch those commercials), I don't worry. It's a balance issue. The commercials need to pay for the air time, staff, actors, equipment... well basically everything in the broadcasters budget. Billions and billions of dollars. If advertising doesn't work to make the advertisers the money back (plus profit) then they have do something else.
The question you should be asking yourself, however, is 'how well do advertisements work?' When a corporation is willing to pay billions of dollars to get ad space, they are getting a return on that investment. You are buying that product... when they advertise to you on TV. Do you remember making that choice?
Where I worked we used the 80/20 rule. "You use 80 percent of your time trying to fix what's wrong on 20% of your users."
That meant we didn't bother coding things to work in Netscape or Opera. I'd still do it on the side for grevious errors, but MS was a client of ours and so there was pressure to make it an IE only site.
My boss didn't care about anything else so I decided to look at user statistics. He didn't really like that I was doing this, but in the end the numbers showed that only 4% of the users were using anything but IE. Since I know that the world uses other browsers in higher proportion I noted that we were forcing some people not to use our site. It didn't matter, because he used the numbers to say we should waste our time on 4% of the market.
Statistics... pretty soon you start to believe them.;-)
This person figures that if you can make the X-Box run Linux, then you can get people to buy X-Boxes at the rediculous price that MS have set for them. This will hurt Microsoft in the short term.
A very pro-Miscrosoft person.
This person figures that if you can make the X-Box run Linux, then you can get people to buy X-Boxes at the rediculous price that MS have set for them. This will help Microsoft in the long term.
The problem as I see it is that I can't decide who is right.
Slashdot Mirror
"Dick was an SF writer firmly grounded in the field, and would never have made as obvious and asinine mistake as violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics the way The Matrix's idiotic "humans as batteries" backstory does."
You're assuming that wasn't a lie propogated by the computer to appease questioning minds. It appears that the truth of the matter is that the matrix needs human minds to run, not for batteries. The human mind is the CPU of the matrix. This concept is very much within the realm of PKD.
Hormel has been very understanding regarding the use of the word 'spam' as a term for mass unsolicited email. It has been willing to share the name space and, IIRC, even support the alternative use. If they are challenging this particular case, it is not an indication that they will then move to more reasonable use of the word elsewhere.
Apple has started a chain reaction which will ultimately destroy the "music industry" as we know it.
When an artist creates, they need three things to make money from their art. Distribution, Collection, and Advertising. Music artists were dependant on the music industry, because the industry provided these three things. Through this power are able to create new artists, when originally the record companies had to search for artist.
With the internet and digital media, Distribution and Collection can be relatively easy. Apple has provided the structure. Whole sections of the music industry are obsolete, but they still have money. They will continue to fight for existence as long as they have money.
The last link is Advertising. The only way someone get someone hooked on a song is for them to hear it. The record industry owns radio, so that's not how it will come about. Internet radio will eventually click and it will happen when wireless is good enough that I can listen to an internet stream anywhere I would normally hear radio.
Sometimes I think maybe people plant these kinds of things just to see if terrorist really will try to use them. Here, take these plans to build a nuke and see what happens. Here, build your own flight simulator.
I'm so happy to hear someone finally ditched the X windows. Now maybe we can get some decent applications without needing to code the whole UI experience every time.
This may be the one.
I'll state for the record that I didn't write a damn thing.
Done!
Tux, the mute pengium. He stays hidden unless you really, REALLY need him. Which nobody ever does.
Resources are NOT cheap dispite what everbody claims.
I'm not sure that claim has ever been that resources were cheap. What has been said is that resources are cheaper (than they have ever been.)
There was a necessity in Unix to make things small. Smaller components meant your program was also smaller. This was very important when programs were meant to fit in under 64K.
We don't live in that world anymore. The restrictions on program size have change dramatically, but unix is still stuck in it's roots (no pun intended.)
Browser Safe? What rock have you been hiding under?
No one cares about browser safe colours anymore. We have higher colour depth now. Honest.
On the other hand, I agree that the Electric blue is too vivid. Why not a nice raster green?
Uh, I've got some money ($2.50). And I hate corporations. PA is just one paypal button away from a legal defense fund of massive proportions.
1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept. It isn't right for someone else to do the same thing.
They do it now, more or less.
2) Taking all MS products off the campus would be a dis-service to the students. Do some of us like non-MS products? Sure. But when those students graduate and go to work, are they going to see a lot of MS in the workplace? You bet. To hide them from MS products for 4 years would be harming their education.
Almost as bad as forcing them to use Microsoft for four years. There are plenty of universities out there. I see nothing wrong with some being alternatives to the "normal" all microsoft set up. The real dis-service is not allowing students to avoid microsoft if they so choose.
I say we find out who this poster is and give them Karma. No one should get away with this outrage!
Can someone give me a concrete example of spam he has sent? If I've recieved it then look out Alan. ;-)
The main supporters of this are the people who have Brick and Mortor stores to soak up the sales that wont be on the internet.
For christ sakes, if you want taxes on internet sales, make the taxes local to the state the server is in. If my server is in Chicago, then that's where the sale takes place. That way you will have states competing for the internet business by lowering their online sales tax. Isn't that what we want?
Personally, I don't like advertisements tapdancing on the chest of my own free will...
You still believe in free will.
Here's an article where Bill Gates has taken a real interest in India... I don't think these two event are unrelated.
Bill Gates hands out millions to fight AIDS in India
1. It's very likely that whatever the undelete command was, that it would have been in the bin as well. It's unlikely that you've be able to run it from the trashcan and unlikely you could have gotten to it without the contents of /bin.
2. Undelete is not for 'rm -rf'. It's for deleting a copy of that invoice/letter/utility you know you'll never need again, only to get a phone call ten minutes later.
You'd think you didn't have $12 left after buying that damn computer...
I'm using a two button mouse on my Mac right now and it works just fine, out of the box. Hell, it's set up to a KVM switch.
I didn't have to install any software, it just worked.
So when marketing (or whoever makes the decisions) determines that there should be an integrated spell-checker, someone will code it up because that's what they're paid to do. As opposed to the open-source problem of finding someone who wants to do it.
Exactly.
When marketing decides that having more features will sell more product, they add the features, even if the average consumer never uses them. Open-source only adds features when they are actually helpful.
I see this as a big win for the consumer. I could have a word processor that works and cost me nothing, or I can pay hundreds of dollars for the extra features that some marketer thought would sell more product...
And if I wanted to build roads and charge people to ride on them... should the government stop building roads?
Obviously not. SELinux should be a secure *infrastructure* system and the Government has every right to make secure infrastructures.
one of these things killed some Turing Police who were chasing Case. Shouldn't we have learned by now?!?
When I tell most people this, their eyes pop out of their heads as they realize that a large portion of their daily lives have no meaning to me. "No, I have no idea what happened on Buffy last week." They take it as a value statement. It's like I'm saying "You suck." Actually I like most of you, it's TV that sucks.
The average person (in the US) spends 4 hours watching TV a day, but there are real reasons to keep watching:
* Connection to others. TV creates social connections, even between people with little else in common. Feeling 'out of touch' with others would then require you to find other social connections.
* Communication to the masses. Corporations and Governments use TV as a way to send out their messages to mass populations. You might miss the important messages from these organizations if you didn't watch.
* Introduction to new products. Often TV is used to launch new products and services to major markets. How would you knew a new product was introduced if you didn't watch TV?
* It occupies your time. It fills an average of 28 hours a week. If you eliminated it, you'd be force to do something else with that time.
So when commercials are increased on Public TV (and cable too, you actually pay to watch those commercials), I don't worry. It's a balance issue. The commercials need to pay for the air time, staff, actors, equipment... well basically everything in the broadcasters budget. Billions and billions of dollars. If advertising doesn't work to make the advertisers the money back (plus profit) then they have do something else.
The question you should be asking yourself, however, is 'how well do advertisements work?' When a corporation is willing to pay billions of dollars to get ad space, they are getting a return on that investment. You are buying that product... when they advertise to you on TV. Do you remember making that choice?
Cheers.
I'll believe in a data haven when one shows up in a real country. This place is just hype.
By some accounts, this is a datahaven in Britain. Is it just hype if their actively working as a datahaven? It's only hype if they stop.
Where I worked we used the 80/20 rule. "You use 80 percent of your time trying to fix what's wrong on 20% of your users."
;-)
That meant we didn't bother coding things to work in Netscape or Opera. I'd still do it on the side for grevious errors, but MS was a client of ours and so there was pressure to make it an IE only site.
My boss didn't care about anything else so I decided to look at user statistics. He didn't really like that I was doing this, but in the end the numbers showed that only 4% of the users were using anything but IE. Since I know that the world uses other browsers in higher proportion I noted that we were forcing some people not to use our site. It didn't matter, because he used the numbers to say we should waste our time on 4% of the market.
Statistics... pretty soon you start to believe them.
I can see the donar being one of two people:
A very anti-Microsoft person.
This person figures that if you can make the X-Box run Linux, then you can get people to buy X-Boxes at the rediculous price that MS have set for them. This will hurt Microsoft in the short term.
A very pro-Miscrosoft person.
This person figures that if you can make the X-Box run Linux, then you can get people to buy X-Boxes at the rediculous price that MS have set for them. This will help Microsoft in the long term.
The problem as I see it is that I can't decide who is right.