As t.v. brings other nations into our homes, we see the results of our tolerance.
Television typically brings "sensationalism" to the front, or else the ratings will fall.
We see the murder of innocent civilians by religious fantatics in the name of their god.
The media emphasizes that. Take for example, the middle east. Lot of palestinian civilians are also killed by Israeli military -- in the name of safety and security.
We see women flogged by the police because they were raped. We see teachers sentenced to death for discussing historical facts in the classroom.
The above statement supports the point of the original article. Would you watch the news if it had coverage on how many computers have been getting internet access in, say Sri Lanka. How many new colleges are coming up in middle east. Or, discussing new cuisines?
The sexier news (unforntunately so) is that of people killing each other, or people being weird. Imagine the CNN saying "Arabs are just like us, no big news this week. To keep you occupied, we are going to show cats, the musical tonight instead of nightly news!"
In my country, the TV shows usually depict stereotypes of Americans -- sex hounds, no morals, no stable families, etc. After living in the US, I have seen that everyone is basically just trying to be happy. Over time I realized that people find my conversations boring. Imagine what must be going through the minds of TV executives.
... that most of it is likely to be biased, half-truths, reinforcement of stereotypes, or some times plain wrong. I believe that one needs to choose the sources of information appopriately. Likewise communicating with people too
Same with any real world interaction -- e.g., if you have good friends and read "good stuff", chances are you'd turn out to be good.
Is it just me or anyone notice people going into a rage everytime they see the news or read newspapers? The same old eternal problems seem to occupy front pages every day (tanks rolling in/people bombing, people killed in communal violence, to drill or not to drill in Alaska, Microsoft says OSS is evil:)
Here is my attempt to "categorize" experience on the net:
News: Plusses -- Essential ; minuses -- Enraging/helplessness Discussions: Plusses -- Sense of community, wide range of views, healthy debates, find out past discussions ; minuses -- too much content Information: Plusses -- vital for learning, enriching, easy to get ; minuses -- might end up at the same pr0n site/games site after a few hops Misc: Plusses -- Health tips, inspiring readings, past literature, depressing reading!
foreach (@msft_bug) { pay $_ and wait }; foreach (@competitors_bug) { they_pay $_ or go belly_up }; negotiate any class_action_suit ( "just like tobacco companies did" => increase price if (you_can_cite_extra_liabilities)); expand kitty; wait and see everyone vanish "like fleas";
Just because a gun can be used to kill someone, doesn't mean the manufacturer should be held liable for the wrongful death.
An apt analogy would be that of a gun firing backwards into your skull when you aim the gun to shoot a burglar in the foot. Now, that is a problem. In that case, the defect is *IN THE PRODUCT*. Just contrasting "Format C:" with the US navy ship stuck in sea because of a divide by zero error. In case of Code Red and LookOut viruses someone else can be blamed for attack, so M$FT is easily off the case.
If a M$FT product is perceived as the only show in town there is nothing that can be done.
It takes about a few weeks on Sun ultra sparcs to simulate a week long air pollution scenario over the north eastern united states. This is assuming a 8x8 km grid (where the 8x8 sqkm area is one "point"). The wind modeling is extremely simplified, and the focus is on a select set of contaminants.
To do a detailed wind modeling, and have a finer resolution, and to do some statistical analysis of different input conditions... suddenly we end up with requirements far more than the current computing power.
We can always come up with a problem that is more complex than we can solve using current computing power. That is a good pursuit.
In the M$FTie world there is no real promise of reward for finding anything revolutionary -- since M$FT can spread FUD, throw persistent and patient money, and if push comes to shove, simply violate laws and hope to get away scot free. Thus, they could drive away small companies, even the ones that just had hopes of simple survival.
The GPL works in a different way, and M$FT cannot buy out the open source developers (may be a tiny percent of them, but not all), so they can try to spread the fear of "people can't get real rich real quick" by "investing money" in OSS.
The ecology is nothing but that of a few big (or many small) investors being sold a promise of becoming rich. And in the years when the stock market is taking a beating, this sort of pushes the right buttons. Furthermore, given the Bush administrations leanings, there is a very good chance that these analogies will be drilled into the minds of the average americans.
Most of the software on linux can be easily ported to solaris -- once it is stable on x86. The "third-party" share will possibly be a small fraction compared to other things...
There would be a boom in the "stress lowering medication" industry. Soon, it would be a necessity to check the news every ten minutes, just to "stay in touch".
Coming to the main point, does this universal tax result in additional antennae/base stations setup in remote places so that people can get a signal? In the old days, this would have meant laying lines over long distances. Now, it would mean just setting up a set of base stations/antennae.
In the movie, the feds talk about a drug deal in the middle of a swimming pool! That seems to be a reasonably safe means of communication.
I can imagine emailing a friend, "Hey, why don't you meet me at the pool"! Coming to think of it, people already do it at work -- "want to get some coffee?"
If I feel like e-mailing my friend that "his midnight plutonium shipment to pier 27 will be delayed until 1:30am" just for the heck of it, can I? Or will the feds knock my door down within 10 minutes?
Take note that there are precedents: One could be arrested for making a joke about guns on a flight, or for sending chalk in an envelope. These things hit you just when you least expect it. Kinda like speeding tickets: every one is speeding, you push the pedal a little, and bam, there are red and blue lights behind your car!
Stretching this a little... what prevents the government from banning encryption unless the encryption uses keys from big corporations. Kinda like outlawing a radar detector. Weirder things have happenned -- people in some countries get arrested for harboring "dangerous literature".
The solution to this problem cannot be a hack or a fix. Instead, it has to be more fundamental than that.
Due to the new clause in the DMCA, any attempt to "tamper with the security mechanisms" (via electric devices such as AC), would result in criminal charges. You have to buy only "security approved" technology from the provider of 92 degrees.
Familiarity with computers without the background education in reading, writing, composition, and comprehension, not to mention basic math and science will take a person only so far.
Most westerers are appalled when they see a eight year old kid repairing motor vehicles in the streets in India, but would not think it is as bad helping the people to be "skilled" in just using computers.
Many experienced "programmers" these days with fancy "java/c++/oracle" education are finding it hard to get a job. What use would computers be to these kids other than trianing them to become a "consumer"?
IMHO the conclusion that just computers/internet and self education can be a good solution is flawed. Being able to draw on a computer using a mouse is not a good indicator of education -- most likely after one person learns how to use the mouse, and is in a position to show other friends how to use it.
Kinda like little kids that learn "Wazzup" and "Howya doing" without basic knowledge of how to read or write. It is cute. A means of education, it isn't.
There are so many places a person can get stuck at. (video games, news, porn, slashdot, inflammatory literature:)), it is definitely not a stable education environment.
Especially when the schools are there to "grade" the students instead of trying to "educate" them. While the process of grading is meant to encourage competition and serve as a carrot, most of the time, grading becomes the only big thing in a course.
Staroffice seems pretty good. However, the complaints I hear often are of the type "staroffice doesn't do a good job with fancy word formatte documents", and "staroffice messes up ppt".
Kinda like driving on the left side of the road. If everyone else is doing it that way, it is great. If everyone is driving on the right side, driving on the left side simply doesn't make sense.
Better import/export facilities should solve the problem over time. May be if more resources went into openoffice...
Many places burn the MP3s onto a CD and give the CD, so a retail store can have a partnership with the music houses and can give "custom CDs" for a small extra charge.
Comparing rupees versus dollars is more appropriate when done on a case by case basis. For instance a computer costs about the same (in dollar terms) in India and US. Booze/international telephone calls/gasoline is more expensive in India than in the US. Basic necessities such as food and shelter are much less expensive in India compared to the US. Some medicines are prohibitively expensive in India, whereas some are dirt cheap.
Since the CDs and the MP3s are targetted to the upper middle class people and up, and since they are more or less on the same "dollar level" as the middle class americans, 10 rupees in India should be looked as something between 25 cents and a dollar.
Most of the time, the price of the goods are dependent on how much people can pay.
ActiveState: Komodo -- a cross platform IDE JabberZilla: an IM client. Intel and Nokia partnership for using Gecko (Mozilla's rendering engine inside cell phones)
A lot of information is available at this URL: http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/mozilla/general0 5.php
The Rig Veda is widely believed as the most ancient script. Bhagavad Gita is what has been preached by Lord Krishna during the Mahabharata time, so it would be fairly yound document.
Interestingly, the first verse of Rig Veda says something like this (paraphrasing...)
"There was no truth before life, no falsehood, no sky, no space. Where was all hidden, who dug it up? Where was all the water?"
Fellow goes to a doc who says that he's going to die in 6 months. The fellow, concerned, asks if he can prolong his life. The conversation goes as follows:
Doc: do you have frequent sex?
Fel: Yes
Doc: No more sex for you
Doc: Do you drink?
Fel: I enjoy it a lot
Doc: No more drinking for you
Same goes for good food, coffee, and reading/.
Finally, the fellow asks the doc how much his life span will be increased by these sacrifices:
Doc: No, it won't increase your lifespan, but your life will seem much longer.
Slashdot Mirror
As the saying goes, "Don't judge a book by its cover".... we must add, "Don't judge a book by its title."
S
As t.v. brings other nations into our homes, we see the results of our tolerance.
Television typically brings "sensationalism" to the front, or else the ratings will fall.
We see the murder of innocent civilians by religious fantatics in the name of their god.
The media emphasizes that. Take for example, the middle east. Lot of palestinian civilians are also killed by Israeli military -- in the name of safety and security.
We see women flogged by the police because they were raped. We see teachers sentenced to death for discussing historical facts in the classroom.
The above statement supports the point of the original article. Would you watch the news if it had coverage on how many computers have been getting internet access in, say Sri Lanka. How many new colleges are coming up in middle east. Or, discussing new cuisines?
The sexier news (unforntunately so) is that of people killing each other, or people being weird. Imagine the CNN saying "Arabs are just like us, no big news this week. To keep you occupied, we are going to show cats, the musical tonight instead of nightly news!"
In my country, the TV shows usually depict stereotypes of Americans -- sex hounds, no morals, no stable families, etc. After living in the US, I have seen that everyone is basically just trying to be happy. Over time I realized that people find my conversations boring. Imagine what must be going through the minds of TV executives.
... that most of it is likely to be biased, half-truths, reinforcement of stereotypes, or some times plain wrong. I believe that one needs to choose the sources of information appopriately. Likewise communicating with people too
:)
Same with any real world interaction -- e.g., if you have good friends and read "good stuff", chances are you'd turn out to be good.
Is it just me or anyone notice people going into a rage everytime they see the news or read newspapers? The same old eternal problems seem to occupy front pages every day (tanks rolling in/people bombing, people killed in communal violence, to drill or not to drill in Alaska, Microsoft says OSS is evil
Here is my attempt to "categorize" experience on the net:
News: Plusses -- Essential ; minuses -- Enraging/helplessness
Discussions: Plusses -- Sense of community, wide range of views, healthy debates, find out past discussions ; minuses -- too much content
Information: Plusses -- vital for learning, enriching, easy to get ; minuses -- might end up at the same pr0n site/games site after a few hops
Misc: Plusses -- Health tips, inspiring readings, past literature, depressing reading!
What's the estimated cause of Nimda so far? Code Red? SadminD? Melissa?I love you? all the other outlook worms?
Don't know of others, but the "love" thing supports a large herd of lawyers involved with paternity suits.
Algorithm:
foreach (@msft_bug) { pay $_ and wait };
foreach (@competitors_bug) { they_pay $_ or go belly_up };
negotiate any class_action_suit ( "just like tobacco companies did" => increase price if (you_can_cite_extra_liabilities));
expand kitty;
wait and see everyone vanish "like fleas";
Just because a gun can be used to kill someone, doesn't mean the manufacturer should be held liable for the wrongful death.
An apt analogy would be that of a gun firing backwards into your skull when you aim the gun to shoot a burglar in the foot. Now, that is a problem. In that case, the defect is *IN THE PRODUCT*. Just contrasting "Format C:" with the US navy ship stuck in sea because of a divide by zero error. In case of Code Red and LookOut viruses someone else can be blamed for attack, so M$FT is easily off the case.
If a M$FT product is perceived as the only show in town there is nothing that can be done.
S
But there is a plenty of hot air free around the net! If someone can isolate the hydrogen part of it...
S
It takes about a few weeks on Sun ultra sparcs to simulate a week long air pollution scenario over the north eastern united states. This is assuming a 8x8 km grid (where the 8x8 sqkm area is one "point"). The wind modeling is extremely simplified, and the focus is on a select set of contaminants.
To do a detailed wind modeling, and have a finer resolution, and to do some statistical analysis of different input conditions... suddenly we end up with requirements far more than the current computing power.
We can always come up with a problem that is more complex than we can solve using current computing power. That is a good pursuit.
S
In the M$FTie world there is no real promise of reward for finding anything revolutionary -- since M$FT can spread FUD, throw persistent and patient money, and if push comes to shove, simply violate laws and hope to get away scot free. Thus, they could drive away small companies, even the ones that just had hopes of simple survival.
The GPL works in a different way, and M$FT cannot buy out the open source developers (may be a tiny percent of them, but not all), so they can try to spread the fear of "people can't get real rich real quick" by "investing money" in OSS.
The ecology is nothing but that of a few big (or many small) investors being sold a promise of becoming rich. And in the years when the stock market is taking a beating, this sort of pushes the right buttons. Furthermore, given the Bush administrations leanings, there is a very good chance that these analogies will be drilled into the minds of the average americans.
S
Most of the software on linux can be easily ported to solaris -- once it is stable on x86. The "third-party" share will possibly be a small fraction compared to other things...
S
If everyone has a cell phone...
There would be a boom in the "stress lowering medication" industry. Soon, it would be a necessity to check the news every ten minutes, just to "stay in touch".
Coming to the main point, does this universal tax result in additional antennae/base stations setup in remote places so that people can get a signal? In the old days, this would have meant laying lines over long distances. Now, it would mean just setting up a set of base stations/antennae.
In the movie, the feds talk about a drug deal in the middle of a swimming pool! That seems to be a reasonably safe means of communication.
I can imagine emailing a friend, "Hey, why don't you meet me at the pool"! Coming to think of it, people already do it at work -- "want to get some coffee?"
S
If I feel like e-mailing my friend that "his midnight plutonium shipment to pier 27 will be delayed until 1:30am" just for the heck of it, can I? Or will the feds knock my door down within 10 minutes?
Take note that there are precedents: One could be arrested for making a joke about guns on a flight, or for sending chalk in an envelope. These things hit you just when you least expect it. Kinda like speeding tickets: every one is speeding, you push the pedal a little, and bam, there are red and blue lights behind your car!
S
Stretching this a little... what prevents the government from banning encryption unless the encryption uses keys from big corporations. Kinda like outlawing a radar detector. Weirder things have happenned -- people in some countries get arrested for harboring "dangerous literature".
The solution to this problem cannot be a hack or a fix. Instead, it has to be more fundamental than that.
S
They have been able to push each and every pet policy of theirs in the name of "homeland security" and patriotism.
Quoting Samuel Johnson, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
S
>
Due to the new clause in the DMCA, any attempt to "tamper with the security mechanisms" (via electric devices such as AC), would result in criminal charges. You have to buy only "security approved" technology from the provider of 92 degrees.
Sastry
Familiarity with computers without the background education in reading, writing, composition, and comprehension, not to mention basic math and science will take a person only so far.
Most westerers are appalled when they see a eight year old kid repairing motor vehicles in the streets in India, but would not think it is as bad helping the people to be "skilled" in just using computers.
Many experienced "programmers" these days with fancy "java/c++/oracle" education are finding it hard to get a job. What use would computers be to these kids other than trianing them to become a "consumer"?
Sastry
IMHO the conclusion that just computers/internet and self education can be a good solution is flawed. Being able to draw on a computer using a mouse is not a good indicator of education -- most likely after one person learns how to use the mouse, and is in a position to show other friends how to use it.
:)), it is definitely not a stable education environment.
Kinda like little kids that learn "Wazzup" and "Howya doing" without basic knowledge of how to read or write. It is cute. A means of education, it isn't.
There are so many places a person can get stuck at. (video games, news, porn, slashdot, inflammatory literature
Sastry
Especially when the schools are there to "grade" the students instead of trying to "educate" them. While the process of grading is meant to encourage competition and serve as a carrot, most of the time, grading becomes the only big thing in a course.
Sastry
Staroffice seems pretty good. However, the complaints I hear often are of the type "staroffice doesn't do a good job with fancy word formatte documents", and "staroffice messes up ppt".
Kinda like driving on the left side of the road. If everyone else is doing it that way, it is great. If everyone is driving on the right side, driving on the left side simply doesn't make sense.
Better import/export facilities should solve the problem over time. May be if more resources went into openoffice...
Sastry
>
Many places burn the MP3s onto a CD and give the CD, so a retail store can have a partnership with the music houses and can give "custom CDs" for a small extra charge.
S
Comparing rupees versus dollars is more appropriate when done on a case by case basis. For instance a computer costs about the same (in dollar terms) in India and US. Booze/international telephone calls/gasoline is more expensive in India than in the US. Basic necessities such as food and shelter are much less expensive in India compared to the US. Some medicines are prohibitively expensive in India, whereas some are dirt cheap.
Since the CDs and the MP3s are targetted to the upper middle class people and up, and since they are more or less on the same "dollar level" as the middle class americans, 10 rupees in India should be looked as something between 25 cents and a dollar.
Most of the time, the price of the goods are dependent on how much people can pay.
Sastry
There are several applications:
0 5.php
ActiveState: Komodo -- a cross platform IDE
JabberZilla: an IM client.
Intel and Nokia partnership for using Gecko (Mozilla's rendering engine inside cell phones)
A lot of information is available at this URL: http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/mozilla/general
Sastry
The Rig Veda is widely believed as the most ancient script. Bhagavad Gita is what has been preached by Lord Krishna during the Mahabharata time, so it would be fairly yound document.
Interestingly, the first verse of Rig Veda says something like this (paraphrasing...)
"There was no truth before life, no falsehood, no sky, no space. Where was all hidden, who dug it up? Where was all the water?"
Sastry
Here's a take on "good but bad things in life"...
/.
Fellow goes to a doc who says that he's going to die in 6 months. The fellow, concerned, asks if he can prolong his life. The conversation goes as follows:
Doc: do you have frequent sex?
Fel: Yes
Doc: No more sex for you
Doc: Do you drink?
Fel: I enjoy it a lot
Doc: No more drinking for you
Same goes for good food, coffee, and reading
Finally, the fellow asks the doc how much his life span will be increased by these sacrifices:
Doc: No, it won't increase your lifespan, but your life will seem much longer.
S