No loss, possible win. If somebody does build upon it successfully, they can get the novel warm glow of saying that the tech "originated" at Microsoft.
I could see some applications towards commercial places selling "custom juices"
That's what I thought. There must be about 25-50,000 juice bars in the U.S. They typically seem to have two or three employees. So I figure 25-50,000 machines sold in the U.S. alone if it can knock down one employee per shift.
What's that worth? Not exactly theoretical science but not such a dumb entrepreneurial student project to laugh at.
Of course, that's talking about 25-50,000 people who can't even sling juice for a living then, but that's the automation biz, right?
Can I be the only one in which this phrase immediately evoked Cthulhu's mighty tentacles?
'We're going to have to figure out how to build some bridges between the various parts of our industry,'
So Microsoft will more effectively know where to put the guard towers and road blocks?
Eric Raymond responds, saying the first steps Microsoft could do are to open their file formats and support open standards.
Good! Not necessarily a bad thing to meet to gather intelligence. Just as long as they are "open" meetings that don't attempt to coopt the participants. And if the participants are centered in an intelligent position of strength. Does Microsoft now accept that linux is like dandelions and kudzu -- a part of the technological ecology that isn't going to be eliminated? Or are they just searching for a new model to "buy in" like Apple and Borland stock deals? Maybe some Microsoft code in exchange for a subservient linux? Divide and conquer?
Yup. Good sci fi should elaborate on the effects of the hardware universe upon culture. Reason I can't spit on Dark Angel was the one episode of the kids forming their own mythology in the dorm as a new, mutant race.
This will be an interesting test. It isn't so hard to envision the Microsoft brainstorming session where they said, "Hey, I've got a brilliant new idea. Let's poison an existing standard with something incompatible!" But can their monopoly clout really take on.pdf at this late date?
But I understand the studios dumped on (and just dumped) THX 1138. That taught him REALLY, REALLY good. Worst example of a hard-knocks lesson since, according to Reader's Digest, a black girl knocked little Karl Rove off his bicycle because he had a Nixon sticker on it.
But just _maybe_ if George could dig really, really deep he still has something saved up down there worth directing since he has been so engrossed in blockbusters the last decades. If he doesn't have the clout now to pull off something cool in sci fi that would still make money, who does? But in a funny way I don't think the guy believes in himself or the public.
Ehrlich may have underestimated the ability of technology to increase food production on the short term but I think he was right in principle. It is my understanding that the large fish population in the Atlantic is a minor fraction of what it was only 30 years ago. That is an epic planetary die-off that has already occurred in an extraordinarily short time. World-wide human starvation hasn't been seen (yet) because we are still in the transition process of stripping the planet bare. Why do we need _any_ population increase to finish the job?
Haven't people heard the story about passenger pigeons:
"It was Alvin Jones who told us about the Pigeon Roost Prairie which was near the Jones homestead. He said so many pigeons stopped to roost in the pines in this are that they broke the limbs off the trees and the trees died, so there was a prairie there. There wasn't a living tree for 150 acres, and it was called Pigeon Roost Prairie. That was virgin pine timber they killed. The pigeons were almost as big as a chicken, not the homing pigeon; they were two or three times larger, about the size of a pheasant. Not thousands of pigeons but millions of pigeons! I tried to learn all I could about this pigeon migration. I was interested in it. It was something to think about. There would be so, many they would darken the sun for three days, all going north."
http://www.ulala.org/P_Pigeon/Texas.html
Aren't people curious about how primitive cultures were able to feed themselves with sharpened sticks? I suspect it was because going down to the brook to spear a carp was only somewhat more inconvenient than going down to the freezer to find something to thaw.
Like boiling frogs, the human lifespan is only 70+ years. Perhaps it is too short for people to actually experience ecological change and ingrain any feeling for the issue. As long as there is soylent green, some people will call it a balanced ecology. Others think more diversity is valuable.
The point is that the planet was already damaged by population and industry before anyone on Slashdot was born. We should be discussing whether we are at the planetary coup de grace stage, not congratulating ourselves on how population isn't a problem.
(AND, if we didn't have so many people, there would be one less argument for both GMO and nuclear.)
Well, of course, one could refer to any number of faith-based initiatives. Take your pick from among: trickle-down economy, privatization, social security reform, "debt doesn't matter", "charity works best through the church" and preemptive cultural reconstruction on the national level in Iraq will succeed.
But TV should be a no-brainer. It has been a reoccurring comedy theme on the Le Show show by Harry Shearer for years that this isn't happening on time. Dubya is going to tell every trailer park in the red states that their rabbit ears ain't gonna work no mo? Get real. Take that to the bookie and put me down for $100 too.
Knew a guy who started a print shop. Didn't work at his dad's print shop. He accepted a small cast-off press from his dad and started his own small time. It was just standard operating business procedure for the supplies salesmen to treat him like crap for his small orders. When he was doing great and the same salesmen were courting him, the shoe was on the other foot.
Beyond hardware compatibility, I hope somebody is keeping a list of companies that have actively given linux the rush. Unless linux gets effectively illegalized out of interoperability, it is certain to succeed sure as dandelions covering a field. Then which camera interface will be worked on _last_?
What's the sweat? Just a few more billion in Treasury bills we sucker the Chinese into buying regularly. My guess is, we build the national debt up to about 50 trillion under President Jeb then we default. What's China going to do, nuke us?
Well, there was the white house accountant who was told he would be fired if he complained that the numbers don't add up so that sort of skews the reported economic data.
Research results that don't fit the dogma seem to get lost on government web sites.
There was the slaughterhouse that _wanted_ to test every carcass for mad cow so they could continue shipping to Japan but they were FORBIDDEN.
Don't cases come up every now and then of drug research pro and con that get "interesting" final evaluations?
Access to law is already privatized in practice by Lawson. Unless I'm mistaken. What is the URL of the repository of U.S. Statutes?
If what you say is true (not a big Trek fan, for one, nor am I interested in getting into the politics of your statements
I thought I was noting sociology, not politics. When I was watching classic trek as a kid, we were progressing to the moon for real and that was a heady social vision. That isn't an "opinion". America was #1 in education. America was the manufacturing engine of the world and "Made in Japan" meant junk. UNICEF was a good cause at halloween. Kennedy challenged the young to foreign service in the PEACE Corp. State college tuition was about $12/credit (free in some states) in large part because education was considered an essential good to society. Roddenberry was well known as a humanist instead of an evangelical. Just facts. This isn't the same society. There isn't even room to discuss the Startrek vision now without angry divisiveness (and being called "political").
Remember that we are talking a mass medium in television. Not only is it an uphill battle to transmit quality when you have to stop to hawk Pizza Hut every 10 minutes, as a mass medium it really does have to reflect the values of the society to maintain adequate ratings. Heck, Great Britian once had a meet-the-philosopher-of-the-week talking head show that I understand was actually quite popular. Don't hold your breath for that to show up on UPN either. No, the fact that the Startrek vision is quite opposed to current reality _is_ a reason to keep it off TV and a reason that isn't so easy to overcome IMHO.
Same here (too). Too many buggy machines built that were rock solid after quality/faster-than-base RAM.
I just had an unhappy realization after buying more ram to max out a machine that needs CL2 ram though. The new module errors out Memtest and, although it has the same item number, it looks NOTHING like the other two. About 1/8" higher and the chips about 40% larger. So don't think a high name manufacturer and identical item number are sufficient when the units can be so different between batches.
At risk of being considered a flamer, I would like to propose that the Startrek vision is now irrelevant.
1. United Federation of Planets? Give me a break. Not when we are going to send someone to the UN who wants to dismantle it.
2. Science? Not when you got Jesus
3. Technology? Not when you got China
4. Prime directive? Why are we in Iraq? (Well, at least _one_ of the reasons thrown out)
5. Human rights? Where to start.....
Most "damning" probably is the loss of American Positivism: the idea that a rational society can make "progress". We are actively dismantling that progress of the last century every day.
Put in that light, why on earth should anyone expect there to be a TV show like Startrek on network Television? Unless it is reworked into Startrek Revelations.
Unfortunately, I"ve found the movies profoundly mediocre to awaful so if they think they can revive interest in a few years with a movie, they've lost me. I'll pop a bottle of wine and toast the loss of my youthful ideals at the last episode.
So you are saying, "On the one hand, not so bad. On the other hand, not so good."
I've made a tourism pledge that I don't go to execution countries. That way I never have an argument about which baggage handler put the brick of opium in my suitcase. Unfortunately, I live in the U.S.
Does anyone think the Congressman acted out of principle?
My bet is that his party saw how well campaign-paid blogging worked in South Dakota to upseat minority leader Tom Dashle. Basically, the Republican Party experimented with the internet this election and concluded that, yeah, we can work within this system to effectively spread propaganda.
So it comes down, as it does so frequently, to whether speech is free absolutely or whether outright lying should be prohibited (ala European laws) when there is a net social impact in how the lies influence the foolish. There is no clear answer. We prohibit false advertising claims in the U.S. all the time. Why not make it a federal offense to finance a blog that claims, for example, that presidential candidate John McCain has an illegitimate black baby?
Personally, I want to come down on the side of absolute freedom of speech. I just have the sinking feeling that I'm being played for a fool in doing so in this age of concentrated mass media.
Amateur radio operators, for example, have a responsibility to make sure their equipment is working properly, properly tuned, and operated without malicious intent so that it doesn't interfere with others.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically.
No loss, possible win. If somebody does build upon it successfully, they can get the novel warm glow of saying that the tech "originated" at Microsoft.
I could see some applications towards commercial places selling "custom juices"
That's what I thought. There must be about 25-50,000 juice bars in the U.S. They typically seem to have two or three employees. So I figure 25-50,000 machines sold in the U.S. alone if it can knock down one employee per shift.
What's that worth? Not exactly theoretical science but not such a dumb entrepreneurial student project to laugh at.
Of course, that's talking about 25-50,000 people who can't even sling juice for a living then, but that's the automation biz, right?
the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice's behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.
I guess the idea is that this is supposed to make me feel better?
Microsoft is reaching out to the OSS community
Can I be the only one in which this phrase immediately evoked Cthulhu's mighty tentacles?
'We're going to have to figure out how to build some bridges between the various parts of our industry,'
So Microsoft will more effectively know where to put the guard towers and road blocks?
Eric Raymond responds, saying the first steps Microsoft could do are to open their file formats and support open standards.
Good! Not necessarily a bad thing to meet to gather intelligence. Just as long as they are "open" meetings that don't attempt to coopt the participants. And if the participants are centered in an intelligent position of strength. Does Microsoft now accept that linux is like dandelions and kudzu -- a part of the technological ecology that isn't going to be eliminated? Or are they just searching for a new model to "buy in" like Apple and Borland stock deals? Maybe some Microsoft code in exchange for a subservient linux? Divide and conquer?
You are assuming they will want fries with that. They might just send as much home as possible to put their 5 siblings through the CS program.
Yup. Good sci fi should elaborate on the effects of the hardware universe upon culture. Reason I can't spit on Dark Angel was the one episode of the kids forming their own mythology in the dorm as a new, mutant race.
This will be an interesting test. It isn't so hard to envision the Microsoft brainstorming session where they said, "Hey, I've got a brilliant new idea. Let's poison an existing standard with something incompatible!" But can their monopoly clout really take on .pdf at this late date?
But I understand the studios dumped on (and just dumped) THX 1138. That taught him REALLY, REALLY good. Worst example of a hard-knocks lesson since, according to Reader's Digest, a black girl knocked little Karl Rove off his bicycle because he had a Nixon sticker on it.
But just _maybe_ if George could dig really, really deep he still has something saved up down there worth directing since he has been so engrossed in blockbusters the last decades. If he doesn't have the clout now to pull off something cool in sci fi that would still make money, who does? But in a funny way I don't think the guy believes in himself or the public.
China announced today that Red Flag linux has matured to the point where it is ready for distribution on desktops throughout the nation.
Ehrlich may have underestimated the ability of technology to increase food production on the short term but I think he was right in principle. It is my understanding that the large fish population in the Atlantic is a minor fraction of what it was only 30 years ago. That is an epic planetary die-off that has already occurred in an extraordinarily short time. World-wide human starvation hasn't been seen (yet) because we are still in the transition process of stripping the planet bare. Why do we need _any_ population increase to finish the job?
Haven't people heard the story about passenger pigeons:
"It was Alvin Jones who told us about the Pigeon Roost Prairie which was near the Jones homestead. He said so many pigeons stopped to roost in the pines in this are that they broke the limbs off the trees and the trees died, so there was a prairie there. There wasn't a living tree for 150 acres, and it was called Pigeon Roost Prairie. That was virgin pine timber they killed. The pigeons were almost as big as a chicken, not the homing pigeon; they were two or three times larger, about the size of a pheasant. Not thousands of pigeons but millions of pigeons! I tried to learn all I could about this pigeon migration. I was interested in it. It was something to think about. There would be so, many they would darken the sun for three days, all going north."
http://www.ulala.org/P_Pigeon/Texas.html
Aren't people curious about how primitive cultures were able to feed themselves with sharpened sticks? I suspect it was because going down to the brook to spear a carp was only somewhat more inconvenient than going down to the freezer to find something to thaw.
Like boiling frogs, the human lifespan is only 70+ years. Perhaps it is too short for people to actually experience ecological change and ingrain any feeling for the issue. As long as there is soylent green, some people will call it a balanced ecology. Others think more diversity is valuable.
The point is that the planet was already damaged by population and industry before anyone on Slashdot was born. We should be discussing whether we are at the planetary coup de grace stage, not congratulating ourselves on how population isn't a problem.
(AND, if we didn't have so many people, there would be one less argument for both GMO and nuclear.)
Well, of course, one could refer to any number of faith-based initiatives. Take your pick from among: trickle-down economy, privatization, social security reform, "debt doesn't matter", "charity works best through the church" and preemptive cultural reconstruction on the national level in Iraq will succeed.
But TV should be a no-brainer. It has been a reoccurring comedy theme on the Le Show show by Harry Shearer for years that this isn't happening on time. Dubya is going to tell every trailer park in the red states that their rabbit ears ain't gonna work no mo? Get real. Take that to the bookie and put me down for $100 too.
Knew a guy who started a print shop. Didn't work at his dad's print shop. He accepted a small cast-off press from his dad and started his own small time. It was just standard operating business procedure for the supplies salesmen to treat him like crap for his small orders. When he was doing great and the same salesmen were courting him, the shoe was on the other foot.
Beyond hardware compatibility, I hope somebody is keeping a list of companies that have actively given linux the rush. Unless linux gets effectively illegalized out of interoperability, it is certain to succeed sure as dandelions covering a field. Then which camera interface will be worked on _last_?
Obviously, they have their eye on the contract of 2010 ala:
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/excerpts.php
What's the sweat? Just a few more billion in Treasury bills we sucker the Chinese into buying regularly. My guess is, we build the national debt up to about 50 trillion under President Jeb then we default. What's China going to do, nuke us?
That was my first thought.
Well, there was the white house accountant who was told he would be fired if he complained that the numbers don't add up so that sort of skews the reported economic data.
Research results that don't fit the dogma seem to get lost on government web sites.
There was the slaughterhouse that _wanted_ to test every carcass for mad cow so they could continue shipping to Japan but they were FORBIDDEN.
Don't cases come up every now and then of drug research pro and con that get "interesting" final evaluations?
Access to law is already privatized in practice by Lawson. Unless I'm mistaken. What is the URL of the repository of U.S. Statutes?
If what you say is true (not a big Trek fan, for one, nor am I interested in getting into the politics of your statements
I thought I was noting sociology, not politics. When I was watching classic trek as a kid, we were progressing to the moon for real and that was a heady social vision. That isn't an "opinion". America was #1 in education. America was the manufacturing engine of the world and "Made in Japan" meant junk. UNICEF was a good cause at halloween. Kennedy challenged the young to foreign service in the PEACE Corp. State college tuition was about $12/credit (free in some states) in large part because education was considered an essential good to society. Roddenberry was well known as a humanist instead of an evangelical. Just facts. This isn't the same society. There isn't even room to discuss the Startrek vision now without angry divisiveness (and being called "political").
Remember that we are talking a mass medium in television. Not only is it an uphill battle to transmit quality when you have to stop to hawk Pizza Hut every 10 minutes, as a mass medium it really does have to reflect the values of the society to maintain adequate ratings. Heck, Great Britian once had a meet-the-philosopher-of-the-week talking head show that I understand was actually quite popular. Don't hold your breath for that to show up on UPN either. No, the fact that the Startrek vision is quite opposed to current reality _is_ a reason to keep it off TV and a reason that isn't so easy to overcome IMHO.
Same here (too). Too many buggy machines built that were rock solid after quality/faster-than-base RAM.
I just had an unhappy realization after buying more ram to max out a machine that needs CL2 ram though. The new module errors out Memtest and, although it has the same item number, it looks NOTHING like the other two. About 1/8" higher and the chips about 40% larger. So don't think a high name manufacturer and identical item number are sufficient when the units can be so different between batches.
At risk of being considered a flamer, I would like to propose that the Startrek vision is now irrelevant.
1. United Federation of Planets? Give me a break. Not when we are going to send someone to the UN who wants to dismantle it.
2. Science? Not when you got Jesus
3. Technology? Not when you got China
4. Prime directive? Why are we in Iraq? (Well, at least _one_ of the reasons thrown out)
5. Human rights? Where to start.....
Most "damning" probably is the loss of American Positivism: the idea that a rational society can make "progress". We are actively dismantling that progress of the last century every day.
Put in that light, why on earth should anyone expect there to be a TV show like Startrek on network Television? Unless it is reworked into Startrek Revelations.
Unfortunately, I"ve found the movies profoundly mediocre to awaful so if they think they can revive interest in a few years with a movie, they've lost me. I'll pop a bottle of wine and toast the loss of my youthful ideals at the last episode.
So you are saying, "On the one hand, not so bad. On the other hand, not so good."
I've made a tourism pledge that I don't go to execution countries. That way I never have an argument about which baggage handler put the brick of opium in my suitcase. Unfortunately, I live in the U.S.
Define pornography.
I'm sure somebody would be offended by Lucretius' chapter on "plowing the furrow" no matter how musing and studious the guy's tone..
About time.
400,000 fragments. When can I get a translated set on Amazon?
Does ANYBODY ANYWHERE really want to work with a palmtop?
Does anyone think the Congressman acted out of principle?
My bet is that his party saw how well campaign-paid blogging worked in South Dakota to upseat minority leader Tom Dashle. Basically, the Republican Party experimented with the internet this election and concluded that, yeah, we can work within this system to effectively spread propaganda.
So it comes down, as it does so frequently, to whether speech is free absolutely or whether outright lying should be prohibited (ala European laws) when there is a net social impact in how the lies influence the foolish. There is no clear answer. We prohibit false advertising claims in the U.S. all the time. Why not make it a federal offense to finance a blog that claims, for example, that presidential candidate John McCain has an illegitimate black baby?
Personally, I want to come down on the side of absolute freedom of speech. I just have the sinking feeling that I'm being played for a fool in doing so in this age of concentrated mass media.
Sucks. Kick the liberal bastards out! And what do you get -- Dubya lite in the global economy?
Amateur radio operators, for example, have a responsibility to make sure their equipment is working properly, properly tuned, and operated without malicious intent so that it doesn't interfere with others.