Yeah, but aren't fuel cells *themselves* made of dangerous chemicals that need to be dug up or sythesized somehow? That takes energy, right? So, in toto (is that correct latin?), how much to feul cells really "save" as far as energy and the environment?
Theoretically mini nuclear plants would be efficient and "emission-less". Of course that is only if you don't mind the radioactive rods in your backyard.
Hate to say it, but as we expect more and more from our packaging mechanisms, we have to lean more towards a central repository, or "registry" if you can stand it. Not that that "registry" has to be in some funky proprietary format, but there needs to be some central place where apps and configuration utilities can get some info about their installation, configuration, and removal. I mean, the passwd file itself serves as a "registry" of user account info that other applications are dependent upon. This is fine.
I think there is some project out there to standardize configuration files. One of the suggestions was XML. While I think for very simple configurations XML is going overboard, I do think some standardization needs to be made. When I configure an application, I don't want to have to learn a new configuration format. And I would like all installation and removal to be done in a uniform seamless manner for all applications. So, in short, I think we need standardization on these issues. Since *everybody* has to install and remove stuff on different systems at some point, "choice" is not a perfect alibi here.
I thought it was funny when Gore was on Letterman the other night and they were running through a top ten Slogans for the Gore/Leibermann campaign that were discarded. One of them was something like:
"5. I invented the internet, and I can take it away. Think about it."
I'm not a big fan of hip-hop/rap, but I do appreciate the classic "old school" (to me at least) stuff: Snoop, Dre, Onyx, Tupac (especially), Beastie Boys.
IMO, rap has been in a coma for the last few years. Goddamn, I am so f*cking bored of stupid puff-daddy resampling and grunting. SO BORING. However, lately, Eminem is bringing a fresh, original (albiet sick and twisted;) sound to rap.
I'll grant alternative/rock has been in a sort of slump since it's ~94 peak. But I think the standard bearers, REM, Pearl Jam, RHCP, STP, have kept it alive. I'm glad to see one of my favorite bands, Radiohead, influencing the scene. I think their music is especially applicable to this new computer/telecommunications age and the counter-intuitive revelation that we are ending up alienating ourselves more and more. Their post-modern warholish art is priceless and should be in museums IMHO. These days I'm getting a bit more electronic/ambient with Portishead, etc.
A lot of what is considered "alternative" today is really just retreaded pop shit. Blink82, Eve6, blah blah boring juvenile crap.
I got Sims for my gf, I think to make up for something stupid I did. I had read reviews in several places, and although I usually only find Sim* games interesting for about 15 minutes, I thought this would be cool.
So we get it home and install it, and I'm thinking, hey this is cool. But after about 15 minutes I'm like "this is it!?". Am I the only one who is bored out of his skull from making people make food, eat, crap, take out the trash and clean themselves? Hell, I don't even want to do that stuff in my *real* life. Now I have all these people that I have to do chores with? How *boring*. I think I'm like the only one who hates this game. Am I not "getting" it? Is there something "fun" about doing chores over and over and talking some babble to annoying neighbors who come uninvited, leave crap all over your house and don't know when to leave? And I wish I could shoot those damn babies. Wah! Wah! SHUT UP!.
This game would be a bit better if you could play, say, a FPS terrorist game and come in and assassinate all these boring people.
It took me a while to figure out, but "management" has a purpose. It wasn't until *I* had to be involved in, and manage, projects with *real* deadlines and goals, and a motley assortment of people with different skills and attitudes, that I realized this.
Managers should:
* Define goals, and save us from death by committee.
* Define a path to those goals, so people don't wander off and get lost. "Path" may be formal/informal methodology, standards, technology, milestones for features, etc.
* Keep people on task. Your presence along makes them feel guilty when they are not acheiving goals. I know this, because I waste my time reading Slashdot, and I feel guilty to my manager.
* Facilitate communication amongst people. Complexity of communication scales at n^2. Makes sure people know what others are doing and aren't blocked by dependencies.
This is not exactly coding, but it is definately work that needs to be done. The price a manager pays for not having to be ordered around, is that they are now free to:
And of anybody, Tesla was a true "hacker". Although many companies wanted to buy his patents for large sums of money, he refused. I think in many cases he refused to even patent ideas because he thought they should be for the good of all. So companies took advantage of his ideas, appropriated them, got rich off them, and erased Tesla from the history books. Tesla, one of the greatest scientists and inventors to ever live, died alone, penniless, and forgotten. It is really a shame and a disgrace. There are still devices and towers built by Tesla that we haven't fully figured out. He was truly an amazing man.
I agree. Sitting in our $2000 polycarbonate ergonomic chairs with our lava lamps, and geek chic wardrobe, isolated from "RL", it is all too easy to get wrapped up in the novelty of invention. Now I'm not a luddite, I think this stuff is great. But, like Bill Joy, I have this creeping shadow on my conscience...that perhaps this mad rush forward needs to be analyzed a bit more soberly. What we need to realize is that technology is a tool. It should serve a purpose. A lot of people talk about "progress". What are we "progressing" to, I wish people would ask themselves. We should stop once in a while and ask ourselves what *is* this "manifest destiny" for which we are rushing into the golden west of technology. Civilizations existed quite happily for millenia without the "progess" we think new technologies will bring us. That is being evinced in things like the Long Now Foundation.
Where have you been? Quake bots have been around since the beginning. Some of them are actually pretty sophisticated. Last time I heard, the Reaper bot was still on top.
One type of bot relied on humans to lay "path markers" so that the bot knew where it could go. However, there are some later bots which are more sophisticated and "learn" the topology of the map themselves and dynamically adjust their routes. Rather quite fascinating.
To a great extent, we are the corporate power. Never before in American history has so much money been invested in the stock market by so many people.
A gigantic amount of which money is from the inordinately wealthy, or from other corporations themselves.
Corporations exist to make money. I'll be the first to agree with that.
Corporations exist out of the good will of the society to grant them explicit charters. The power to issue and revoke charters and replace management has always been with the people. Corporations don't have any natural "rights" to operate. Those rights are explicitly granted, and are conditional on their good behavior.
If you don't like a company, don't buy its product but do buy its shares. Become and owner and change the way it operates.
This is true to some extent but certainly not to the mythical status that consumers solely shape the market. For multi-billion dollar international corporations who have locked down market segments, individual consumers' stock and voices aren't worth piss in a monsoon. I'd like to see you try to boycott ADM or Daewoo or any of the major pharmaceutical or chemical companies.
Even if corporations attained their wealth and power perfectly legally and honorably, they are still polluting the political system. Witness the liberal hollywood set raising and dumping money into the democratic party which is ironically running two candidates who are loudly castigating "the media" and proposing tighter media regulations. Either hollywood is stupid, or they know that their money has more power than any promises politicians make.
But there is one thing, even beyond First Amendment rights and fair use that scares me. I'm not a legal historian or anything, but it always seemed to me that laws were about restricting *behavior*. If I sign an NDA, and then disclose some secret info, it is not the *information* that is illegal, it is the *act* of disclosing it. Or if somebody tells me a password and they weren't allowed to, it is *their* *action* that will get them in trouble. Now with the DeCSS judgement, I can imagine a trend in which the *information* itself is branded legal or illegal. This is something entirely new. As far as I know, *information* has never been given a legal state unto itself - it was always some action that was made illegal. It's scary to think that simply holding some information in your head would make you a criminal, but on worse days I can imagine that possibly happening.
What I can't understand is why they'd even let this get out of hand like it did. I mean, the only thing Amazon really *has* above the competition is a base of really loyal customers. *Why* would they want to alienate them like that? Patent issues aside, I think Amazon has done a damn fine job with their site and all the nice features they've added, making it a real "comforting" and convenient experience. Why would they risk it all with a ploy like this?
Ok, Creative, in light of these actions, and you're pretty damn good audio and video products, I'll forgive that CD-ROM breakdown I had recently.
*applause*
I believe the geek/hacker/techie community is a great group of people for a company to have on their side - in general we have a large amount of disposable money to frivolously spend on expensive gadgets and gizmos, and I believe listen pretty well to word of mouth about the quality of a company's products.
Mispriced? Huh? Prices that dynamically change as you reload, or when you clear cookies, or change browser is not a mistake! Duh! Unless it is a bug in their software, this price fluctuating is intentional. What, do they have a group of monkeys, randomly changing prices so that when users reload the prices have changed? Bollocks. This is not an accident.
I can even tolerate restricting otherwise free speech and allowed behavior when there is clear and present danger (yelling "Fire", stalking somebody, publishing hit lists and telling people to go murder people on the list).
But DeCSS is as harmless as it gets. There is absolutely 0 threat that a bunch of letters and numbers on somebody's hard drive is going to harm anybody in any way.
Actually it's sort of scary when you step back and think about information itself (without regard to the process by which it was obtained) being branded legal or illegal. "This is information that you are allowed to have. This is information that you are not allowed to have."
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but aren't fuel cells *themselves* made of dangerous chemicals that need to be dug up or sythesized somehow? That takes energy, right? So, in toto (is that correct latin?), how much to feul cells really "save" as far as energy and the environment?
Theoretically mini nuclear plants would be efficient and "emission-less". Of course that is only if you don't mind the radioactive rods in your backyard.
Hate to say it, but as we expect more and more from our packaging mechanisms, we have to lean more towards a central repository, or "registry" if you can stand it. Not that that "registry" has to be in some funky proprietary format, but there needs to be some central place where apps and configuration utilities can get some info about their installation, configuration, and removal. I mean, the passwd file itself serves as a "registry" of user account info that other applications are dependent upon. This is fine.
I think there is some project out there to standardize configuration files. One of the suggestions was XML. While I think for very simple configurations XML is going overboard, I do think some standardization needs to be made. When I configure an application, I don't want to have to learn a new configuration format. And I would like all installation and removal to be done in a uniform seamless manner for all applications. So, in short, I think we need standardization on these issues. Since *everybody* has to install and remove stuff on different systems at some point, "choice" is not a perfect alibi here.
I thought it was funny when Gore was on Letterman the other night and they were running through a top ten Slogans for the Gore/Leibermann campaign that were discarded. One of them was something like:
"5. I invented the internet, and I can take it away. Think about it."
Gore was a pretty good sport.
Thanks....they lowercased the page name.
The correct url should be: votenader.org/issues/corporations.html
I believe Nader2000 just mirrors that. Nader2000 is unofficial, but has a lot of info.
I'm not a big fan of hip-hop/rap, but I do appreciate the classic "old school" (to me at least) stuff: Snoop, Dre, Onyx, Tupac (especially), Beastie Boys.
;) sound to rap.
IMO, rap has been in a coma for the last few years. Goddamn, I am so f*cking bored of stupid puff-daddy resampling and grunting. SO BORING. However, lately, Eminem is bringing a fresh, original (albiet sick and twisted
I'll grant alternative/rock has been in a sort of slump since it's ~94 peak. But I think the standard bearers, REM, Pearl Jam, RHCP, STP, have kept it alive. I'm glad to see one of my favorite bands, Radiohead, influencing the scene. I think their music is especially applicable to this new computer/telecommunications age and the counter-intuitive revelation that we are ending up alienating ourselves more and more. Their post-modern warholish art is priceless and should be in museums IMHO. These days I'm getting a bit more electronic/ambient with Portishead, etc.
A lot of what is considered "alternative" today is really just retreaded pop shit. Blink82, Eve6, blah blah boring juvenile crap.
What are you
RAT
talking about?
We RAT all
RAT know that the
RAT
major RAT candidates are
decent RAT
upstanding citizens who would
RAT
never try a thing like that.
RAT
If the DVD-CCA made such an offer, there encryption scheme would probably be a lot better and we'd be even more SOL.
Ok, this may be a troll...
I got Sims for my gf, I think to make up for something stupid I did. I had read reviews in several places, and although I usually only find Sim* games interesting for about 15 minutes, I thought this would be cool.
So we get it home and install it, and I'm thinking, hey this is cool. But after about 15 minutes I'm like "this is it!?". Am I the only one who is bored out of his skull from making people make food, eat, crap, take out the trash and clean themselves? Hell, I don't even want to do that stuff in my *real* life. Now I have all these people that I have to do chores with? How *boring*. I think I'm like the only one who hates this game. Am I not "getting" it? Is there something "fun" about doing chores over and over and talking some babble to annoying neighbors who come uninvited, leave crap all over your house and don't know when to leave? And I wish I could shoot those damn babies. Wah! Wah! SHUT UP!.
This game would be a bit better if you could play, say, a FPS terrorist game and come in and assassinate all these boring people.
<rant>
It took me a while to figure out, but "management" has a purpose. It wasn't until *I* had to be involved in, and manage, projects with *real* deadlines and goals, and a motley assortment of people with different skills and attitudes, that I realized this.
Managers should:
* Define goals, and save us from death by committee.
* Define a path to those goals, so people don't wander off and get lost. "Path" may be formal/informal methodology, standards, technology, milestones for features, etc.
* Keep people on task. Your presence along makes them feel guilty when they are not acheiving goals. I know this, because I waste my time reading Slashdot, and I feel guilty to my manager.
* Facilitate communication amongst people. Complexity of communication scales at n^2. Makes sure people know what others are doing and aren't blocked by dependencies.
This is not exactly coding, but it is definately work that needs to be done. The price a manager pays for not having to be ordered around, is that they are now free to:
* Get blamed when projects fail.
Remember, managers <!=> suits
And of anybody, Tesla was a true "hacker". Although many companies wanted to buy his patents for large sums of money, he refused. I think in many cases he refused to even patent ideas because he thought they should be for the good of all. So companies took advantage of his ideas, appropriated them, got rich off them, and erased Tesla from the history books. Tesla, one of the greatest scientists and inventors to ever live, died alone, penniless, and forgotten. It is really a shame and a disgrace. There are still devices and towers built by Tesla that we haven't fully figured out. He was truly an amazing man.
Vandalism is a felony? I didn't know that. I thought it was a midemeanor or something...
I agree. Sitting in our $2000 polycarbonate ergonomic chairs with our lava lamps, and geek chic wardrobe, isolated from "RL", it is all too easy to get wrapped up in the novelty of invention. Now I'm not a luddite, I think this stuff is great. But, like Bill Joy, I have this creeping shadow on my conscience...that perhaps this mad rush forward needs to be analyzed a bit more soberly. What we need to realize is that technology is a tool. It should serve a purpose. A lot of people talk about "progress". What are we "progressing" to, I wish people would ask themselves. We should stop once in a while and ask ourselves what *is* this "manifest destiny" for which we are rushing into the golden west of technology. Civilizations existed quite happily for millenia without the "progess" we think new technologies will bring us. That is being evinced in things like the Long Now Foundation.
Where have you been? Quake bots have been around since the beginning. Some of them are actually pretty sophisticated. Last time I heard, the Reaper bot was still on top.
One type of bot relied on humans to lay "path markers" so that the bot knew where it could go. However, there are some later bots which are more sophisticated and "learn" the topology of the map themselves and dynamically adjust their routes. Rather quite fascinating.
IM dominance? The gov cares about IM dominance!? What about MEDIA dominance?? That is a lot more important than IM dominance.
(it's possible it's not "replace management" but "replace board members" or something along those lines...not sure)
Corporations exist out of the good will of the society to grant them explicit charters. The power to issue and revoke charters and replace management has always been with the people. Corporations don't have any natural "rights" to operate. Those rights are explicitly granted, and are conditional on their good behavior.
This is true to some extent but certainly not to the mythical status that consumers solely shape the market. For multi-billion dollar international corporations who have locked down market segments, individual consumers' stock and voices aren't worth piss in a monsoon. I'd like to see you try to boycott ADM or Daewoo or any of the major pharmaceutical or chemical companies.
Even if corporations attained their wealth and power perfectly legally and honorably, they are still polluting the political system. Witness the liberal hollywood set raising and dumping money into the democratic party which is ironically running two candidates who are loudly castigating "the media" and proposing tighter media regulations. Either hollywood is stupid, or they know that their money has more power than any promises politicians make.
(IANALawyer, correct me if I'm wrong)
I know we're just preaching to the converted...
But there is one thing, even beyond First Amendment rights and fair use that scares me. I'm not a legal historian or anything, but it always seemed to me that laws were about restricting *behavior*. If I sign an NDA, and then disclose some secret info, it is not the *information* that is illegal, it is the *act* of disclosing it. Or if somebody tells me a password and they weren't allowed to, it is *their* *action* that will get them in trouble. Now with the DeCSS judgement, I can imagine a trend in which the *information* itself is branded legal or illegal. This is something entirely new. As far as I know, *information* has never been given a legal state unto itself - it was always some action that was made illegal. It's scary to think that simply holding some information in your head would make you a criminal, but on worse days I can imagine that possibly happening.
What I can't understand is why they'd even let this get out of hand like it did. I mean, the only thing Amazon really *has* above the competition is a base of really loyal customers. *Why* would they want to alienate them like that? Patent issues aside, I think Amazon has done a damn fine job with their site and all the nice features they've added, making it a real "comforting" and convenient experience. Why would they risk it all with a ploy like this?
You think it could have been from all the hot air...?
Ok, this is the gratiutous "sue" post.
So, is Jobs now going to sue PowerPC Linux for stealing his thunder?
Ok, Creative, in light of these actions, and you're pretty damn good audio and video products, I'll forgive that CD-ROM breakdown I had recently.
*applause*
I believe the geek/hacker/techie community is a great group of people for a company to have on their side - in general we have a large amount of disposable money to frivolously spend on expensive gadgets and gizmos, and I believe listen pretty well to word of mouth about the quality of a company's products.
Mispriced? Huh? Prices that dynamically change as you reload, or when you clear cookies, or change browser is not a mistake! Duh! Unless it is a bug in their software, this price fluctuating is intentional. What, do they have a group of monkeys, randomly changing prices so that when users reload the prices have changed? Bollocks. This is not an accident.
they should have shot richard into space
the nude bum
"BEE DO DEEP"
"Sorry, the number you have dialed is unavailable. We are currently being Slashdotted. Please hang up and try again in an hour"
I can even tolerate restricting otherwise free speech and allowed behavior when there is clear and present danger (yelling "Fire", stalking somebody, publishing hit lists and telling people to go murder people on the list).
But DeCSS is as harmless as it gets. There is absolutely 0 threat that a bunch of letters and numbers on somebody's hard drive is going to harm anybody in any way.
Actually it's sort of scary when you step back and think about information itself (without regard to the process by which it was obtained) being branded legal or illegal. "This is information that you are allowed to have. This is information that you are not allowed to have."