This sort of thing always makes me roll my eyes, and I'm a Kerry supporter.
It seems pretty clear, though, that the back-and-forth of irrelevant campaign
issues is just going to continue, and unfortunately I've got to assume that's because it's
actually effective with a certain segment of voters. Given that, it suppose it *is* actually
important for my side to wave this sort of irrelevant dirt around. Obviously, a "they started it" debate here would be futile, but once the mud starts flying it more or less forces both campaigns to engage in it.
There's only one solution: hunger for the day when the American public reaches a level of sophistication
where they can (a) identify a fairly reliable and impartial source of information and (b)
actually check the BS they hear against those. I mean, the vast majority of Americans are sitting on top of the greatest source of information in the history of history, but they're relying on politicians and sites like NewsMax to tell 'em how it is...
My guess is that the polling folks will spend the week after the election going around the talk-show circuit explaining how their polls managed to be so wrong.
Pretty much all the polls we see are of "likely voters", a group which is made up mostly (or entirely) on the people who voted in the last election. This may be a useful measure in the average election, but not this one.
The 2004 election will have a much, much higher turnout than 2000. In 2000, it didn't seem to matter a whole lot who got elected. In 2004, most everyone knows someone who has lost their job and/or knows someone in Iraq. A lot of people are still genuinely angry about Florida's lack of concern for voting rights or even following their own laws. At the same time, Bush hasn't given his more casual supporters a reason to come vote for him -- the best they've managed to do is spread a bunch of half-truth (or outright lying) reasons why they *shouldn't* vote for Kerry.
More new voters have already registered for this election than any other since 1992. That should tell you something, and logically it doesn't seem like good news for Bush if these polls are showing a close race...
Seeing as they put the distance at 1000 light-years, that'd be a pretty crappy conversation. Just for perspective, the signal would have left the source 95 years before the knights of the First Crusade took Jerusalem (and killed everybody there).
Anything I pay for doesn't get used for business. Period.
Aside from that, this might be a good sign that it's time to start looking around for another job. This isn't 2002 anymore -- employers who still think they can get away with this sort of shit are wrong, wrong, wrong.
So, how long before we're driving down the highway and suddenly all of our
radio stations turn into debt consolidation or penis enlargement ads?
Hell, with all the traffic traveling in groups like it does, you could be
stuck like that for *hours*. Might be time to update the CD collection or
install an XM antenna...
As a side note, living in Oakland I've developed the viewpoint that it's
far better to just ignore the boom cars and go about your business. It
might be cool with the wannabes in Nebraska, but around here you're just
begging to need an appointment with your local auto body shop to get a bunch
of 9mm holes Bondo-ed.
C'mon, invasion of privacy? What is this, 1999 all over again?
Didn't you get the memo? You can *trust* the government these days --
it's not like our leaders are so untrustworthy anymore that they
might get a blowjob or two.
That's why you won't be needing those pesky rights to
free speech or
due process anymore.
Seriously, this sort of thing might be great for our soldiers in the field,
and in my little optimistic heart I'd really like to think that something like
this could exist in our country without being abused by
the "Total Law Enforcement" crowd. I mean, the
US *should* be able to operate that way, what with having Constitutional protections
and all that.
Given what's been going on recently, however, it seems like only a
matter of time before somebody
justifies using
it on Americans on the grounds of terrorism prevention (after which, of course,
everything will become terrorism of one kind or another). I mean, the USA is
suddenly in the business of
above-the-law
prison camps, war without end and
other awful little things like abusing the prisoner (in a non-masterbatory context),
and all it took to get us to this point was the deaths of 3000 Americans.
Does anyone really doubt that looking through the walls of people's homes will be
next?
Huh... I've heard Satan, Lucifer, Old Serphant, Mephistopheles, The Lord of
the Flies, Samael, Old Scratch, the King of Lies, Iblis, Mastema and Beelzebub,
but Dan Glickman is a new one by me.
Okay, these cases always sound a little iffy to me, but
it's not impossible.
I worked for a startup where our whole product line was
based on a voice core that one of the developers had
stolen from his previous employer. Ironically, it ended
up killing the company -- the developer wouldn't share the
code with anyone and didn't have the skill set to make the
sort of changes to it we needed. In the end, we had to try
and build a new core from scratch, which just put us even
farther behind.
Of course, Google ain't some startup run by a bunch of
shit-for-brains dysfunctional asshole managers (not that
I'm bitter or anything). Just given the sort of company Google has
been (aka, not stupid), if the claims pan out it seems to me most
likely that this is a situation where this developer came in
and unpacked some work he'd done elsewhere -- hell, I have a
set of scripts I've developed over the years that I take with
me from company to company so I don't have to rewrite them
(of course, none of them face the outside or even provide output
to anyone other than me).
If that's the case, and assuming this developer actually didn't have
any legal rights to this code, it seems to be like Google shouldn't be liable
unless this company can prove they used the code knowing it was swiped;
otherwise, the lawsuit should be against this developer (not that the
developer has hugely deep pockets or an impending IPO to work against).
Alternatively, isn't it possible that this developer just reimplemented
the same sort of paradigm he was used to and that caused the same sort
of malfunctions? This doesn't seem to far-fetched to me, especially if the
bugs are in the overall logic of the coding rather than just a misspelling
here or there. I know I've made the same sorts of mistakes even on
a complete reimplementation just because nobody had caught them previously...
Despite the constant reminders from the Bush Administration, you've obviously forgotten: The sole reason that terrorists hate Americans because of our freedom and liberties.
The best way to prevent terrorist acts, therefore, is to strip those puppies away as quickly and efficiantly as possible.
Here's how the Moon-to-Mars report should actually read:
"It's not going to happen. This whole deal is just election-year
BS from your friends at the Bush Administration who are still trying
to distract you from the gigantic fucking mess they've created in the
middle east by waving around some cool-sounding ideas that they have
no intention of following up on. Oh sure, we'll spend a whole
lot of tax dollars coming up with reports (like this one!) and let
some worthwhile science projects fall by the wayside, but in the end
absolutely jack will come of it. Hey! Look at that shiney thing! And have
a nice day."
Hey, if the government doesn't trash the economy and the rights of individuals in order to protect an outdated and relatively small sector of the business community, what good are they?
Bringing home good money is important, but there's a lot more to parenting. You gotta be there for those Saturday softball games and Thursday night recitals. You gotta have time for the family, and you gotta be able to make it when you say you're going to.
This disqualifies a certain sector of the development industry where the next release of X product will determine the ongoing fate of the company, and so everything else goes out the window as you try to meet some deadline.
Absent parents cause all sorts of problems -- kids with substance abuse issues, teen parents, low self-esteem... Trust me: I went to a private high school where a fair number of the kids were from rich up-and-coiming families, and a disproportionate number of them were burnouts or had serious problems.
No job and no amount of money is worth seeing your kids slide down the tubes. I'd rather be broke with well-adjusted successful kids than be a millionaire with my kid in rehab.
This seems like a situation where it's less about *what* you do for
a living than *where* you do it.
I used to work at startups and
I currently work at the in-house development department for a major HMO (it's
a big department, like 3500 people).
The work itself hasn't changed a whole lot, but the expectations about hours
certainly have -- at my current job, we're not relying on the next release to
stay alive so there isn't a constant scramble to push product out the door.
I've found, incidently, that this suits me much better than high-pressure
90 hour work weeks.
You might expect that sort of job to pay less, but it actually doesn't. Sure,
I'm not going to become suddenly rich off stock options, but who does these days?
My advice would be to look for a job like mine -- someplace stable and with
reasonable expectations when it comes to the hours you work. That's going
to be someplace big and probably someplace in a industry where software/hardware
isn't the big money-maker. Be sure they know your priorities; an interviewer at
the sort of company you're looking for will respect a commitment to family. After
all, these sorts of people are looking for *you* to be stable, too...
Aside from that: Kudos to the author for realizing that his kids are more
important than the software release. Bringing home the bacon is important, but
it ain't everything -- When I was with the startups, all of the
parents just dumped their kids into daycare and with babysitters a week after
they were born -- our sales VP probably spent a week total of waking time with his
new daughter over the course of a year. Bet he felt really good about that when the
place went under...
Wait, so this Linux advocacy site manages to get Microsoft to pay them to run ads that anyone who actually *goes* to the site will just laugh off anyhow, and we're supposed to *boycott* them?
Jesus Christ, we should be giving these guys a medal!
Frankly, in terms of overpopulation you have a lot more to worry about from the people who are out there having 4 or 5 kids than you do from people who don't die of aging.
Just being old doesn't kill relatively that many people -- accidents, cancer, suicide, abuse of your body (smoking, drinking, etc) and other mortality factors knock off most people before they manage to linger into their triple digits in some retirement home.
As a 26 year-old who has owned every major game system since the NES and
who is getting married next month, I have some experience with this: The
best advice I can give is that moderation and comprimise are the only way
to approach this.
If the two of you can't work out a comprimise (spoken or unspoken), then
you really don't belong in a relationship with one another. Gaming isn't
the only thing that's going to eat into your life in the next few years --
work, children, clubs, friends, PTAs, softball games, etc. will all potentially
require some kind of balance if you're going to continue a workable relationship.
So look at this as a test run.
Relationships are about cooperation -- they're about *not* just considering your own needs, but taking the other person into serious consideration. I used to play hours of Quake
each day in college, but when we moved in together I realized I was ignoring her and
I cut way the heck back. Now, I play where I have a chance; it's not a set
schedule, just something we worked out (you can't live together without having
time alone, IMO). I'll play some GTA while she reads or watches a chick flick
on HBO. She understands it's something I enjoy, but I understand that I can't
blow the unhealthy amount of time I used to on it. Welcome to adult life.
Anyhow, my girlfriend (er, fiance... gotta get used to that before the wedding)
is more important to me than numbing my mind in front of the Xbox. If yours isn't,
well, maybe it's time to cut her loose and pursue your real interests.
Weirdly, I actually found myself on the other side of this one back with Girlfriend 1.0;
she started playing MUDs our freshman year of college and got absolutely addicted.
Our three-year relationship went right into the crapper because she *obviously*
preferred being in character in her little fantasy world to me (or reality in
general for that matter -- she flunked out of school because she wasn't bothering with
classes). I suppose that gave me a bit more empathy in terms of this situation...
You've got it backwards -- the only reason that wind and solar plants exist is because the government (a) heavily subsidizes them, (b) gives power producers a tax break for buying power from them and (c) in some cases mandates that a certain percentage of power delivered by the power industry be from renewable sources.
Of course, in the end, this means that we (taxpayers) are paying more money to fund wind and solar producers (*not* wind and solar research, BTW, but to pay off people to have these plants).
If wind and solar were really reliable and less expensive, what in God's name makes you think we'd be relying on fossil fuels? The oil lobby is powerful, sure, but the rest of the economy would crush them like a bug if a cheaper source of energy came along. That's capitalism for you.
I believe what Mr. Lovelock is saying is that in the next 50 years or so we're going to deplete our supply of fossil fuels to the point where they can't cover our power demands, and that nuclear fission is the only current method we have of replacing the huge gap that's going to be left.
He's right. Unless there's a fantastic amount of oil and coal someplace that we can get at reasonably soon, or unless all the cars in the world start getting 90 MPG Real Soon Now, the price of gas is going to go to a place where it's not usable anymore.
Try to understand: We're not just talking about those evil SUV drivers paying $80 to $100 at the pump. The depletion of the world's fossil fuel supplies will mean a breakdown on a global scale if it isn't planned for *well* in advance. We're talking about a collapse of the global economy and a return to a way of living that can't support the global population. Famine, disease, abject poverty, devistating wars, genocide. A return to a feudal economy, a breakdown of our civilization and another dark age for my children and grandchildren to live in.
While some of the more frustrated environmentalists might suggest that this is what we have coming to us, I'd rather see it avoided. You can't wait for it to happen and then start responding -- humanity has got to get on this one now, and pie-in-the-sky "what if we could increase the yield of solar cell" shit isn't going to cut it.
Once you devise a method of generating power that can compete on an economic level with nuclear, of *course* the world will switch. It only makes sense that we'd switch -- it's basic economics. But we can't count on the tech genie popping up at the last second to save our bacon.
Of course nobody likes nuclear energy. Nuclear's some scary shit even if you don't mess it up, and messing it up is what humanity does.
Unfortuately, coal and oil suck too. Natural gas is better, but also somewhat finite. And the other alternatives suck, too -- solar and wind might be eco-friendly, but they sure ain't cheap. Think the recession in 2000 was bad? Wait until you see what doubling the cost of electricity would do.
Bruce can make all the "pithy comments" he wants, but unless he has some terrific solution stashed up his sleeve they're ultimately not very helpful or insightful. So, unless you're looking to opt out of using electricity and other sources of power (I was camping this weekend -- it's fun, but it's no way to live), it's a necessary evil.
There's nothing wrong with forcing a company to disclose what they're going to do. There's nothing wrong with forcing them to put it in simple language, nothing wrong with forcing them to point out other options.
It *is* wrong, however, to force a company to abide by certain terms in regards to totally legal activities.
Let's say that AT&T came out with a new cell plan tomorrow: You can call anyplace with your phone for as long as you want anytime for free. Beforehand, though, you have to listen to an ad for some company and press in a code they mention to prove you listened to the ad.
Should I have the right to sign up for this service? Of course I should -- I'm bartering my time and attention rather than my money, but it's a fair (and legal) trade.
What if AT&T offered the same deal, except that they wanted to be able to listen in on my call if they wanted to. Should I still have the right to sign up? Should I still have the right to decide if I'd rather spend $40 a month on my phone or give up my privacy?
I mean, I'm an adult. WTF does the government get off making these decisions for me, esp. when the people making the laws are a bunch of idiots to begin with?
Slashdot Mirror
It seems pretty clear, though, that the back-and-forth of irrelevant campaign issues is just going to continue, and unfortunately I've got to assume that's because it's actually effective with a certain segment of voters. Given that, it suppose it *is* actually important for my side to wave this sort of irrelevant dirt around. Obviously, a "they started it" debate here would be futile, but once the mud starts flying it more or less forces both campaigns to engage in it.
There's only one solution: hunger for the day when the American public reaches a level of sophistication where they can (a) identify a fairly reliable and impartial source of information and (b) actually check the BS they hear against those. I mean, the vast majority of Americans are sitting on top of the greatest source of information in the history of history, but they're relying on politicians and sites like NewsMax to tell 'em how it is...
Pretty much all the polls we see are of "likely voters", a group which is made up mostly (or entirely) on the people who voted in the last election. This may be a useful measure in the average election, but not this one.
The 2004 election will have a much, much higher turnout than 2000. In 2000, it didn't seem to matter a whole lot who got elected. In 2004, most everyone knows someone who has lost their job and/or knows someone in Iraq. A lot of people are still genuinely angry about Florida's lack of concern for voting rights or even following their own laws. At the same time, Bush hasn't given his more casual supporters a reason to come vote for him -- the best they've managed to do is spread a bunch of half-truth (or outright lying) reasons why they *shouldn't* vote for Kerry.
More new voters have already registered for this election than any other since 1992. That should tell you something, and logically it doesn't seem like good news for Bush if these polls are showing a close race...
Seeing as they put the distance at 1000 light-years, that'd be a pretty crappy conversation. Just for perspective, the signal would have left the source 95 years before the knights of the First Crusade took Jerusalem (and killed everybody there).
gimme your lunch money, or i'm going to fork out a hurt process on your ass.
Remember kids: Violence isn't the answer, but a good command of Tae Kwon Do sure lets you keep your stuff.
...but someone ought to tell them that Doom 3 runs pretty well just on moderately-new hardware...
Aside from that, this might be a good sign that it's time to start looking around for another job. This isn't 2002 anymore -- employers who still think they can get away with this sort of shit are wrong, wrong, wrong.
As a side note, living in Oakland I've developed the viewpoint that it's far better to just ignore the boom cars and go about your business. It might be cool with the wannabes in Nebraska, but around here you're just begging to need an appointment with your local auto body shop to get a bunch of 9mm holes Bondo-ed.
Seriously, this sort of thing might be great for our soldiers in the field, and in my little optimistic heart I'd really like to think that something like this could exist in our country without being abused by the "Total Law Enforcement" crowd. I mean, the US *should* be able to operate that way, what with having Constitutional protections and all that.
Given what's been going on recently, however, it seems like only a matter of time before somebody justifies using it on Americans on the grounds of terrorism prevention (after which, of course, everything will become terrorism of one kind or another). I mean, the USA is suddenly in the business of above-the-law prison camps, war without end and other awful little things like abusing the prisoner (in a non-masterbatory context), and all it took to get us to this point was the deaths of 3000 Americans.
Does anyone really doubt that looking through the walls of people's homes will be next?
Guess you learn something new every day...
I worked for a startup where our whole product line was based on a voice core that one of the developers had stolen from his previous employer. Ironically, it ended up killing the company -- the developer wouldn't share the code with anyone and didn't have the skill set to make the sort of changes to it we needed. In the end, we had to try and build a new core from scratch, which just put us even farther behind.
Of course, Google ain't some startup run by a bunch of shit-for-brains dysfunctional asshole managers (not that I'm bitter or anything). Just given the sort of company Google has been (aka, not stupid), if the claims pan out it seems to me most likely that this is a situation where this developer came in and unpacked some work he'd done elsewhere -- hell, I have a set of scripts I've developed over the years that I take with me from company to company so I don't have to rewrite them (of course, none of them face the outside or even provide output to anyone other than me).
If that's the case, and assuming this developer actually didn't have any legal rights to this code, it seems to be like Google shouldn't be liable unless this company can prove they used the code knowing it was swiped; otherwise, the lawsuit should be against this developer (not that the developer has hugely deep pockets or an impending IPO to work against).
Alternatively, isn't it possible that this developer just reimplemented the same sort of paradigm he was used to and that caused the same sort of malfunctions? This doesn't seem to far-fetched to me, especially if the bugs are in the overall logic of the coding rather than just a misspelling here or there. I know I've made the same sorts of mistakes even on a complete reimplementation just because nobody had caught them previously...
The best way to prevent terrorist acts, therefore, is to strip those puppies away as quickly and efficiantly as possible.
Obviously, these people are forgetting the role that amateur rocketry played in 9-11.
"It's not going to happen. This whole deal is just election-year BS from your friends at the Bush Administration who are still trying to distract you from the gigantic fucking mess they've created in the middle east by waving around some cool-sounding ideas that they have no intention of following up on. Oh sure, we'll spend a whole lot of tax dollars coming up with reports (like this one!) and let some worthwhile science projects fall by the wayside, but in the end absolutely jack will come of it. Hey! Look at that shiney thing! And have a nice day."
Hey, if the government doesn't trash the economy and the rights of individuals in order to protect an outdated and relatively small sector of the business community, what good are they?
This disqualifies a certain sector of the development industry where the next release of X product will determine the ongoing fate of the company, and so everything else goes out the window as you try to meet some deadline.
Absent parents cause all sorts of problems -- kids with substance abuse issues, teen parents, low self-esteem... Trust me: I went to a private high school where a fair number of the kids were from rich up-and-coiming families, and a disproportionate number of them were burnouts or had serious problems.
No job and no amount of money is worth seeing your kids slide down the tubes. I'd rather be broke with well-adjusted successful kids than be a millionaire with my kid in rehab.
I used to work at startups and I currently work at the in-house development department for a major HMO (it's a big department, like 3500 people). The work itself hasn't changed a whole lot, but the expectations about hours certainly have -- at my current job, we're not relying on the next release to stay alive so there isn't a constant scramble to push product out the door. I've found, incidently, that this suits me much better than high-pressure 90 hour work weeks.
You might expect that sort of job to pay less, but it actually doesn't. Sure, I'm not going to become suddenly rich off stock options, but who does these days?
My advice would be to look for a job like mine -- someplace stable and with reasonable expectations when it comes to the hours you work. That's going to be someplace big and probably someplace in a industry where software/hardware isn't the big money-maker. Be sure they know your priorities; an interviewer at the sort of company you're looking for will respect a commitment to family. After all, these sorts of people are looking for *you* to be stable, too...
Aside from that: Kudos to the author for realizing that his kids are more important than the software release. Bringing home the bacon is important, but it ain't everything -- When I was with the startups, all of the parents just dumped their kids into daycare and with babysitters a week after they were born -- our sales VP probably spent a week total of waking time with his new daughter over the course of a year. Bet he felt really good about that when the place went under...
Jesus Christ, we should be giving these guys a medal!
Just being old doesn't kill relatively that many people -- accidents, cancer, suicide, abuse of your body (smoking, drinking, etc) and other mortality factors knock off most people before they manage to linger into their triple digits in some retirement home.
Hey, if it worked for Bill Gates...
(yeah, I know it's a cheap shot, but it's all I can afford at the moment)
If the two of you can't work out a comprimise (spoken or unspoken), then you really don't belong in a relationship with one another. Gaming isn't the only thing that's going to eat into your life in the next few years -- work, children, clubs, friends, PTAs, softball games, etc. will all potentially require some kind of balance if you're going to continue a workable relationship. So look at this as a test run.
Relationships are about cooperation -- they're about *not* just considering your own needs, but taking the other person into serious consideration. I used to play hours of Quake each day in college, but when we moved in together I realized I was ignoring her and I cut way the heck back. Now, I play where I have a chance; it's not a set schedule, just something we worked out (you can't live together without having time alone, IMO). I'll play some GTA while she reads or watches a chick flick on HBO. She understands it's something I enjoy, but I understand that I can't blow the unhealthy amount of time I used to on it. Welcome to adult life.
Anyhow, my girlfriend (er, fiance... gotta get used to that before the wedding) is more important to me than numbing my mind in front of the Xbox. If yours isn't, well, maybe it's time to cut her loose and pursue your real interests.
Weirdly, I actually found myself on the other side of this one back with Girlfriend 1.0; she started playing MUDs our freshman year of college and got absolutely addicted. Our three-year relationship went right into the crapper because she *obviously* preferred being in character in her little fantasy world to me (or reality in general for that matter -- she flunked out of school because she wasn't bothering with classes). I suppose that gave me a bit more empathy in terms of this situation...
Of course, in the end, this means that we (taxpayers) are paying more money to fund wind and solar producers (*not* wind and solar research, BTW, but to pay off people to have these plants).
If wind and solar were really reliable and less expensive, what in God's name makes you think we'd be relying on fossil fuels? The oil lobby is powerful, sure, but the rest of the economy would crush them like a bug if a cheaper source of energy came along. That's capitalism for you.
He's right. Unless there's a fantastic amount of oil and coal someplace that we can get at reasonably soon, or unless all the cars in the world start getting 90 MPG Real Soon Now, the price of gas is going to go to a place where it's not usable anymore.
Try to understand: We're not just talking about those evil SUV drivers paying $80 to $100 at the pump. The depletion of the world's fossil fuel supplies will mean a breakdown on a global scale if it isn't planned for *well* in advance. We're talking about a collapse of the global economy and a return to a way of living that can't support the global population. Famine, disease, abject poverty, devistating wars, genocide. A return to a feudal economy, a breakdown of our civilization and another dark age for my children and grandchildren to live in.
While some of the more frustrated environmentalists might suggest that this is what we have coming to us, I'd rather see it avoided. You can't wait for it to happen and then start responding -- humanity has got to get on this one now, and pie-in-the-sky "what if we could increase the yield of solar cell" shit isn't going to cut it.
Once you devise a method of generating power that can compete on an economic level with nuclear, of *course* the world will switch. It only makes sense that we'd switch -- it's basic economics. But we can't count on the tech genie popping up at the last second to save our bacon.
Unfortuately, coal and oil suck too. Natural gas is better, but also somewhat finite. And the other alternatives suck, too -- solar and wind might be eco-friendly, but they sure ain't cheap. Think the recession in 2000 was bad? Wait until you see what doubling the cost of electricity would do.
Bruce can make all the "pithy comments" he wants, but unless he has some terrific solution stashed up his sleeve they're ultimately not very helpful or insightful. So, unless you're looking to opt out of using electricity and other sources of power (I was camping this weekend -- it's fun, but it's no way to live), it's a necessary evil.
It *is* wrong, however, to force a company to abide by certain terms in regards to totally legal activities.
Let's say that AT&T came out with a new cell plan tomorrow: You can call anyplace with your phone for as long as you want anytime for free. Beforehand, though, you have to listen to an ad for some company and press in a code they mention to prove you listened to the ad.
Should I have the right to sign up for this service? Of course I should -- I'm bartering my time and attention rather than my money, but it's a fair (and legal) trade.
What if AT&T offered the same deal, except that they wanted to be able to listen in on my call if they wanted to. Should I still have the right to sign up? Should I still have the right to decide if I'd rather spend $40 a month on my phone or give up my privacy?
I mean, I'm an adult. WTF does the government get off making these decisions for me, esp. when the people making the laws are a bunch of idiots to begin with?