To be kind, I think maybe it's a generational thing. It was Disney after all. It really is a kid's movie and I was too old at the release to connect with it. Nothing inherently bad about that either way.
the government databases would provide a work authorization confirmation within three business days.
"Government databases" my ass. This administration doesn't believe in government doing anything that can't be contracted. Presumably some info services are going to make multi-billions per year as intermediaries providing this service. THAT is where I would look for the motivation behind it.
Sort of like IBM getting the contract to record the Jews. Could be the base for something big. Since it would almost certainly be done privately, it would be outside Freedom of Information restrictions and they would be "free" to note down whether your neighbor says you are gay, take drugs, are a known liberal or are seen at home on a Sunday morning instead of church.
You just have to run queries that join the "black" servers and the "white" servers to get very useful lists, right?
Our suburb is scheduled to have municipal online, as it were, in quadrants over the course of this summer. But one thing I've never seen was straight talk about what it will cost:
Lompoc recently slashed prices by $9, to $16 a month, for the main household plan.
OK. Here's the thing guys. If I didn't already have cable or DSL broadband, at $25 I would tack it on with my current provider instead of dealing with yet _another_ provider. At $16 I suppose you will get a great percentage of dial-up people to upgrade. Maybe even a few current broadband customers who want to save a few bucks/month or those who don't have cable OR a land line. But I'm not surprised the response is lukewarm. Makes me think this really does have to be a government-run commodity to work economically.
Actually, The Tube music videos on broadcast HD haven't been viewable on my MythTV box here for some weeks even though my signal strength remains the same. I assume they did something but I haven't cared enough to look into it -- or see whether there is a MythTV "fix" on the web;)
HMMMMM. Well, yes. That _is_ a noble sentiment. But, just for the sake of argument, can you tell us a little something about the history of the AMA positions on socialized medicine vs. corporatized medicine?
competitive prices if the recycling process were carried out with electricity generated by a nuclear power plant or windmills.
And hydrogen will be an EVEN BETTER energy source once we get the fusion reactors online to power the cycle.
GRRRRRRR. I'm going to start just laughing at hydrogen people uncivilly unless their proposals start including full cycle Calorie input and output ratios. Why, why, why are these people pushing the idea when we already have the electrical grid in place? Remember, most electric cars would recharge at night. Can we just evolve to the all-electric car? Please?
And who are these people who want a whole new distribution grid? An offshoot of the nuclear industry?
I would argue that a show distributed on the internet could be as valuable as a show broadcast. What does "valuable" mean? Sure, we all think about eventual DVD compilations and piracy. But it's the advertising that the broadcaster is concerned with, right? They shouldn't worry about limiting internet broadcast. They should be concerned about eliminating the fast-forward button.
Let's be honest. Most of us are lazy asses. If you knew you could go to any broadcaster's site and conveniently access anything to download for free even if it meant the commercials had to play, wouldn't you? I bet comfortably over 90% of the population would. And, no doubt, MSN and AOL would make it "extra convenient" to enable the user to do that. The current distribution of edited downloads would be marginalized. And with VCRs why did anybody ever buy a DVD compilation in the first place? In other words, if they could just distribute everything with commercials burned in, why wouldn't the same people still buy as many deluxe DVD compilation sets as before?
I think the problem is the laziness, greed, fear and lack of vision of the broadcasters and advertisers. Broadcasters have to convince advertisers that internet distribution makes sense. How hard can that be? They already rely on polls to set their advertising rates. Just do it. And advertisers have to admit and accept that even if the broadcaster has given up one stage of control, they are still delivering the eyes and ears promised in a slightly different way.
That's something that always annoyed me about the first international wave of stream some years ago. There was technical enthusiasm but it seemed like management treated it as an expensive toy in the basement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I don't have to understand every word of a Paris stream to make out the words, "Coca Cola". It's a global company, I'm a potential customer, and it doesn't matter whether I'm sitting in Minnesota. I've just been served. I got the feeling broadcaster marketing was seldom aggressive enough in pushing that paradigm shift. Broadcasters, advertisers -- take stream and downloads seriously. Not as a threat. As an opportunity. And try to talk some sense into the content creators.
Because George H. W. Bush, and his brood, are still alive? And the most compelling pot of circumstantial evidence I've seen points to some of Bush's Bay of Pigs CIA operatives as the shooters.
I was in Junior High at the time and I distinctly remember a radio announcer broadcast over our school's speaker system mentioning the Grassy Knowl on site. It wasn't just a conspiracy theory cooked up after the fact, so how can I not be suspicious?
Similar, I should think, to the BBC broadcast that World Trade Center 7 had collapsed while it was visible over the commentator's shoulder -- until the feed from America was lost a couple minutes before it really collapsed. Hard to keep focused on the official story and not pay attention to your lying eyes and ears.
Or maybe they want to keep improving the cash cow _because_ it will slow the move to rechargables?
Until department store and grocery store check outs display rechargables, it is a little difficult to accept that the biz has the best interests of the consumer and environment in mind. Selling rechargables is one thing I will credit our local SuperAmerica with precisely because that is the exception.
I know people who claim they instantly get headaches trying to read in cars while I've spent decades reading everything from Descartes to my mail on a commuter bus. But put me on a stationary bike and even watching TV is severely annoying. Believe me, you wouldn't want me as an employee in that setup.
Nonetheless, it's an appealing concept. I always thought Hemingway was on to something.
Does no one else find it not only weird, but downright scary
In 2007? Not weird anymore. Still scary.
In my home, it's a few minutes of local "news" and weather and then the MythTV box gets pointed at full-screen BFM stream from Paris. Wife's gotten into it too. His and Hers dictionaries on each end of the sofa. If we're going to get lied to (I think maybe a little less), we can at least do something useful at the same time like learn a language. A person could also pay for BBC news video stream. Or maybe your public television has a half hour of BBC world news like ours.
I just won't watch U.S. network news. I respect myself enough to know I deserve better. What is network news now? 10 minutes of fiber and pharma ads, 10 minutes of half-truth slanted into lies and 10 minutes of baby pandas and inspirational blind quadriplegics carried up Everest and the like.
Palast, on the other hand, is always worth reading. Anyone who has had the life experience to write a chapter, "My Mother was a Hypnotist for McDonalds" has decades of world-class cynicism that has to be respected.
And I know our metro transit (Minneapolis/St. Paul) has a few hybrid full-size buses and they've set a goal of 20% hybrids by 2012. I talked to one driver and he says he loves them. Again, it's that electric motor torque.
I got my wife one of those "My Prius Accelerates Faster than Your SUV" bumper stickers for her Prius but she's too old to stick it on and wear it with attitude.
the younger you are the more conversant with technology you are, so you are more likely to have one.
So how does that link in with the fact that I'm older and am happy with a landline for the DSL web server for my tech-employed wife and I -- and to download program schedules to the MythTV box I built?
No, I think that is simplistic. Perpetual group connectedness as a social phenomena whether it is text messaging, MySpace or cell phones alone or simultaneously really is one of _the_most_striking_ generational differences you are likely to bump up against. Many of us who are older not only don't get it, we find the idea quite unappealing and that is a distinction to be appreciated.
I've taken metro mass transit for decades and don't need a survey to note with bemusement that cell is the low class choice. That vantage point has rather corroded the cool factor for me.
As for convenience, there is an old-fashioned concept called "planning" that also works well in sync with regular face-to-face communication with significant others. The person I see standing in the meat section of the supermarket arguing over a cell about whether a dozen burgers will be enough and two dozen will be too much and whether they should go with potato salad and coleslaw or potato salad and beans looks like a MORON to me. Wouldn't it have made more sense in terms of efficiency to plan that picnic out together in person _before_ one of them gets to the market? From my viewpoint, it would have. And from my viewpoint, I only have to assume it is the perpetual group connectedness they actually find reinforcing. Which, as I say, I don't think my generation is so crazy about. We oldsters, we are not Borg.
We aren't getting the legendary city mileage with our Prius so those new numbers are still a little high for us. But the highway numbers are equally low. So: about right.
Because they trumpet that you are a bully and a coward with too much money and you're too self-centered to realize that's what you are broadcasting? Came to me one day when I saw a Hummer in one lane and a guy without a helmet or a shirt on his Harley in the other lane side-by-side at a stop light. The guy in the Hummer apparently thought he needed an armored vehicle to be safe and thought he was cool displaying it. The guy on the Harley wearing only a pair of shorts was the _real_ macho man. Stupid. But fearless!
Now they won't question the government's need for tough resolve when they get older.
I'm not trying to be flippant. Aside from the obvious fact that these people are morons, I can only think some half-baked concepts like that were floating around in their skulls. Now the kids will be adequately traumatized to be vigilant, they'll know terrorism is serious business that can strike anytime and anywhere and they'll realize that we are in a situation where society has to do "whatever it takes to keep us safe".
Teaching the kids pathological hysteria, basically, on the march to Christo-Fascism.
I thought it was a good talk. I'll just say that 20 years ago I was watching characters appear on my TV via a 300 baud modem that plugged into my Commodore. Even with software curve flattening, the next 20 years should be cool.
The BBC should have connections to enough comedic talent to ridicule Scientology into the ground if anyone can. On the other hand, they will have to be watchful for email trojans that pop a rattlesnake onto their screens.
the urge to improve ourselves to the point of modification and beyond is a part of our own adaptability.
So is beating other species to death with a stick.
I suspect there is a reason we're the last Homo species standing and we'd probably have a Babylon 5 telepathy war, or Dark Angel/X-Men hunt after an radical speciation on the planet.
Darwin? Population isolation and adaptation, right? That's why I always turn to Bruce Sterling's Schizmatrix. One of his early still-wet-behind-the-ears novels. "Mech" prosthetic technology cultures vs. various genetic modifications as isolated populations colonizing the inner solar system adapt in their unique ways to unique conditions.
And a good example of why best-of-breed science fiction writers are generally more interesting than university futurists when you are skating the event horizon.
Speak for yourself. I was never _joking_ about the evil empire. I helped support a department revolt in the 90s against Word on our campus that at least left WordPerfect the "acceptable co-installed alternative" for another couple years. Felt that strongly that Word was a piece of crap.
I assume this is FUD mostly directed at Red Hat because it isn't like they are going to seize the international corporate headquarters of Debian or Slackware. What would they propose to stop the kudzu-like growth of the really free distributions? Take down notices on source servers? Set up servers to try to catch people using linux browsers?
Or is that just paranoid? Wouldn't a wiretap want to digest _all_ ports? Sixteen hours of stream a day might be annoying to our diligent guardians of freedom (that "they" hate us for).
Actually, my ISP announced over the last couple weeks that we would be switching over to a new email and filtering system by "Sunday evening". Coincidence?
Insightful enough for me. Not uncommon for me to be labeled a troll when the moderator loves Microsoft and I express my heartfelt opinion that Microsoft has always shoddily produced "good enough for the masses" versions of last year's technology by other people. You can start with an example like Dr. DOS in the 80s. Look at Dr-DOS and those would be the features in next year's MS-DOS. And work forward in time example by example. How can anybody form a _techno_ cult based on that sort of track record? It would be like a gastronomical society that worships McDonalds.
On the other hand, Bill Gates didn't eat Sunday dinner on the Hare Krishna's dime when he was young so he obviously didn't learn the techniques for mindfucking his employees like Jobs did.
Yup, linux user here. Not crazy about either of them.
Exactly. For good or ill. QEMU I've used a fair amount with different OSes and my wife and I both bought the Win9X Win4Lin and it worked well, but I'm tempted to say I've never had anything compellingly non-trivial run on WINE in an install experience I've wanted to screw around with. (Does IE6 count as non-trivial?)
So, put both options on the scale and see how it tips, I'm in favor of Shuttleworth's decision. Why add any default program that is likely to frustrate the user and work half-assed? Particularly a program that former Windows users are going to circle toward like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.
Those who want to experiment aren't being prohibited, are they? So why complain?
Slashdot Mirror
Thank God you said it first.
To be kind, I think maybe it's a generational thing. It was Disney after all. It really is a kid's movie and I was too old at the release to connect with it. Nothing inherently bad about that either way.
the government databases would provide a work authorization confirmation within three business days.
"Government databases" my ass. This administration doesn't believe in government doing anything that can't be contracted. Presumably some info services are going to make multi-billions per year as intermediaries providing this service. THAT is where I would look for the motivation behind it.
Sort of like IBM getting the contract to record the Jews. Could be the base for something big. Since it would almost certainly be done privately, it would be outside Freedom of Information restrictions and they would be "free" to note down whether your neighbor says you are gay, take drugs, are a known liberal or are seen at home on a Sunday morning instead of church.
You just have to run queries that join the "black" servers and the "white" servers to get very useful lists, right?
Our suburb is scheduled to have municipal online, as it were, in quadrants over the course of this summer. But one thing I've never seen was straight talk about what it will cost:
Lompoc recently slashed prices by $9, to $16 a month, for the main household plan.
OK. Here's the thing guys. If I didn't already have cable or DSL broadband, at $25 I would tack it on with my current provider instead of dealing with yet _another_ provider. At $16 I suppose you will get a great percentage of dial-up people to upgrade. Maybe even a few current broadband customers who want to save a few bucks/month or those who don't have cable OR a land line. But I'm not surprised the response is lukewarm. Makes me think this really does have to be a government-run commodity to work economically.
(once you update). Now there's a sales slogan.
;)
Actually, The Tube music videos on broadcast HD haven't been viewable on my MythTV box here for some weeks even though my signal strength remains the same. I assume they did something but I haven't cared enough to look into it -- or see whether there is a MythTV "fix" on the web
HMMMMM. Well, yes. That _is_ a noble sentiment. But, just for the sake of argument, can you tell us a little something about the history of the AMA positions on socialized medicine vs. corporatized medicine?
And he specifically had to say HD-DVDs. There's quite a lot of entertainment value in a MythTV box.
competitive prices if the recycling process were carried out with electricity generated by a nuclear power plant or windmills.
And hydrogen will be an EVEN BETTER energy source once we get the fusion reactors online to power the cycle.
GRRRRRRR. I'm going to start just laughing at hydrogen people uncivilly unless their proposals start including full cycle Calorie input and output ratios. Why, why, why are these people pushing the idea when we already have the electrical grid in place? Remember, most electric cars would recharge at night. Can we just evolve to the all-electric car? Please?
And who are these people who want a whole new distribution grid? An offshoot of the nuclear industry?
I would argue that a show distributed on the internet could be as valuable as a show broadcast. What does "valuable" mean? Sure, we all think about eventual DVD compilations and piracy. But it's the advertising that the broadcaster is concerned with, right? They shouldn't worry about limiting internet broadcast. They should be concerned about eliminating the fast-forward button.
Let's be honest. Most of us are lazy asses. If you knew you could go to any broadcaster's site and conveniently access anything to download for free even if it meant the commercials had to play, wouldn't you? I bet comfortably over 90% of the population would. And, no doubt, MSN and AOL would make it "extra convenient" to enable the user to do that. The current distribution of edited downloads would be marginalized. And with VCRs why did anybody ever buy a DVD compilation in the first place? In other words, if they could just distribute everything with commercials burned in, why wouldn't the same people still buy as many deluxe DVD compilation sets as before?
I think the problem is the laziness, greed, fear and lack of vision of the broadcasters and advertisers. Broadcasters have to convince advertisers that internet distribution makes sense. How hard can that be? They already rely on polls to set their advertising rates. Just do it. And advertisers have to admit and accept that even if the broadcaster has given up one stage of control, they are still delivering the eyes and ears promised in a slightly different way.
That's something that always annoyed me about the first international wave of stream some years ago. There was technical enthusiasm but it seemed like management treated it as an expensive toy in the basement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I don't have to understand every word of a Paris stream to make out the words, "Coca Cola". It's a global company, I'm a potential customer, and it doesn't matter whether I'm sitting in Minnesota. I've just been served. I got the feeling broadcaster marketing was seldom aggressive enough in pushing that paradigm shift. Broadcasters, advertisers -- take stream and downloads seriously. Not as a threat. As an opportunity. And try to talk some sense into the content creators.
Because George H. W. Bush, and his brood, are still alive? And the most compelling pot of circumstantial evidence I've seen points to some of Bush's Bay of Pigs CIA operatives as the shooters.
I was in Junior High at the time and I distinctly remember a radio announcer broadcast over our school's speaker system mentioning the Grassy Knowl on site. It wasn't just a conspiracy theory cooked up after the fact, so how can I not be suspicious?
Similar, I should think, to the BBC broadcast that World Trade Center 7 had collapsed while it was visible over the commentator's shoulder -- until the feed from America was lost a couple minutes before it really collapsed. Hard to keep focused on the official story and not pay attention to your lying eyes and ears.
Or maybe they want to keep improving the cash cow _because_ it will slow the move to rechargables?
Until department store and grocery store check outs display rechargables, it is a little difficult to accept that the biz has the best interests of the consumer and environment in mind. Selling rechargables is one thing I will credit our local SuperAmerica with precisely because that is the exception.
I know people who claim they instantly get headaches trying to read in cars while I've spent decades reading everything from Descartes to my mail on a commuter bus. But put me on a stationary bike and even watching TV is severely annoying. Believe me, you wouldn't want me as an employee in that setup.
Nonetheless, it's an appealing concept. I always thought Hemingway was on to something.
Does no one else find it not only weird, but downright scary
In 2007? Not weird anymore. Still scary.
In my home, it's a few minutes of local "news" and weather and then the MythTV box gets pointed at full-screen BFM stream from Paris. Wife's gotten into it too. His and Hers dictionaries on each end of the sofa. If we're going to get lied to (I think maybe a little less), we can at least do something useful at the same time like learn a language. A person could also pay for BBC news video stream. Or maybe your public television has a half hour of BBC world news like ours.
I just won't watch U.S. network news. I respect myself enough to know I deserve better. What is network news now? 10 minutes of fiber and pharma ads, 10 minutes of half-truth slanted into lies and 10 minutes of baby pandas and inspirational blind quadriplegics carried up Everest and the like.
Palast, on the other hand, is always worth reading. Anyone who has had the life experience to write a chapter, "My Mother was a Hypnotist for McDonalds" has decades of world-class cynicism that has to be respected.
And I know our metro transit (Minneapolis/St. Paul) has a few hybrid full-size buses and they've set a goal of 20% hybrids by 2012. I talked to one driver and he says he loves them. Again, it's that electric motor torque.
I got my wife one of those "My Prius Accelerates Faster than Your SUV" bumper stickers for her Prius but she's too old to stick it on and wear it with attitude.
the younger you are the more conversant with technology you are, so you are more likely to have one.
So how does that link in with the fact that I'm older and am happy with a landline for the DSL web server for my tech-employed wife and I -- and to download program schedules to the MythTV box I built?
No, I think that is simplistic. Perpetual group connectedness as a social phenomena whether it is text messaging, MySpace or cell phones alone or simultaneously really is one of _the_most_striking_ generational differences you are likely to bump up against. Many of us who are older not only don't get it, we find the idea quite unappealing and that is a distinction to be appreciated.
I've taken metro mass transit for decades and don't need a survey to note with bemusement that cell is the low class choice. That vantage point has rather corroded the cool factor for me.
As for convenience, there is an old-fashioned concept called "planning" that also works well in sync with regular face-to-face communication with significant others. The person I see standing in the meat section of the supermarket arguing over a cell about whether a dozen burgers will be enough and two dozen will be too much and whether they should go with potato salad and coleslaw or potato salad and beans looks like a MORON to me. Wouldn't it have made more sense in terms of efficiency to plan that picnic out together in person _before_ one of them gets to the market? From my viewpoint, it would have. And from my viewpoint, I only have to assume it is the perpetual group connectedness they actually find reinforcing. Which, as I say, I don't think my generation is so crazy about. We oldsters, we are not Borg.
We aren't getting the legendary city mileage with our Prius so those new numbers are still a little high for us. But the highway numbers are equally low. So: about right.
Because they trumpet that you are a bully and a coward with too much money and you're too self-centered to realize that's what you are broadcasting? Came to me one day when I saw a Hummer in one lane and a guy without a helmet or a shirt on his Harley in the other lane side-by-side at a stop light. The guy in the Hummer apparently thought he needed an armored vehicle to be safe and thought he was cool displaying it. The guy on the Harley wearing only a pair of shorts was the _real_ macho man. Stupid. But fearless!
Now they won't question the government's need for tough resolve when they get older.
I'm not trying to be flippant. Aside from the obvious fact that these people are morons, I can only think some half-baked concepts like that were floating around in their skulls. Now the kids will be adequately traumatized to be vigilant, they'll know terrorism is serious business that can strike anytime and anywhere and they'll realize that we are in a situation where society has to do "whatever it takes to keep us safe".
Teaching the kids pathological hysteria, basically, on the march to Christo-Fascism.
I thought it was a good talk. I'll just say that 20 years ago I was watching characters appear on my TV via a 300 baud modem that plugged into my Commodore. Even with software curve flattening, the next 20 years should be cool.
The BBC should have connections to enough comedic talent to ridicule Scientology into the ground if anyone can. On the other hand, they will have to be watchful for email trojans that pop a rattlesnake onto their screens.
the urge to improve ourselves to the point of modification and beyond is a part of our own adaptability.
So is beating other species to death with a stick.
I suspect there is a reason we're the last Homo species standing and we'd probably have a Babylon 5 telepathy war, or Dark Angel/X-Men hunt after an radical speciation on the planet.
Darwin? Population isolation and adaptation, right? That's why I always turn to Bruce Sterling's Schizmatrix. One of his early still-wet-behind-the-ears novels. "Mech" prosthetic technology cultures vs. various genetic modifications as isolated populations colonizing the inner solar system adapt in their unique ways to unique conditions.
And a good example of why best-of-breed science fiction writers are generally more interesting than university futurists when you are skating the event horizon.
Speak for yourself. I was never _joking_ about the evil empire. I helped support a department revolt in the 90s against Word on our campus that at least left WordPerfect the "acceptable co-installed alternative" for another couple years. Felt that strongly that Word was a piece of crap.
I assume this is FUD mostly directed at Red Hat because it isn't like they are going to seize the international corporate headquarters of Debian or Slackware. What would they propose to stop the kudzu-like growth of the really free distributions? Take down notices on source servers? Set up servers to try to catch people using linux browsers?
Or is that just paranoid? Wouldn't a wiretap want to digest _all_ ports? Sixteen hours of stream a day might be annoying to our diligent guardians of freedom (that "they" hate us for).
You too?
Actually, my ISP announced over the last couple weeks that we would be switching over to a new email and filtering system by "Sunday evening". Coincidence?
Insightful enough for me. Not uncommon for me to be labeled a troll when the moderator loves Microsoft and I express my heartfelt opinion that Microsoft has always shoddily produced "good enough for the masses" versions of last year's technology by other people. You can start with an example like Dr. DOS in the 80s. Look at Dr-DOS and those would be the features in next year's MS-DOS. And work forward in time example by example. How can anybody form a _techno_ cult based on that sort of track record? It would be like a gastronomical society that worships McDonalds.
On the other hand, Bill Gates didn't eat Sunday dinner on the Hare Krishna's dime when he was young so he obviously didn't learn the techniques for mindfucking his employees like Jobs did.
Yup, linux user here. Not crazy about either of them.
Exactly. For good or ill. QEMU I've used a fair amount with different OSes and my wife and I both bought the Win9X Win4Lin and it worked well, but I'm tempted to say I've never had anything compellingly non-trivial run on WINE in an install experience I've wanted to screw around with. (Does IE6 count as non-trivial?)
So, put both options on the scale and see how it tips, I'm in favor of Shuttleworth's decision. Why add any default program that is likely to frustrate the user and work half-assed? Particularly a program that former Windows users are going to circle toward like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.
Those who want to experiment aren't being prohibited, are they? So why complain?