While at my last company, I got inspiration from JWZ's famous tent of doom. I went to an army surplus store and purchased a 40ft. x 20ft. camouflage net and hung it above my cube. Needless to say, this generated some interesting topics of discussion around the office.
Since that time I've been laid off from that dot com and moved on to another. I've still got the net but I haven't hung it up at the current digs yet.
Make no mistake, Microsoft's number one priority is the bottom line. Microsoft is *not* out to build a better mousetrap. It's main goal is capitalization in as many markets as possible - even if that market does not fall within its realm of expertise because it will simply acquire the expertise.
In the case of Java, Microsoft is pissed about two things: 1) the fact that Sun beat them on the Java rap, and 2) the windfall in the developer community for Java related technologies that is really catapulting Sun ahead in the technology race. Microsoft just can't stand to see something so close to them from which it is not reaping profit.
In retaliation, some knuckleheads at Microsoft get together and say to each other, "Hey, we should develop our own language! We'll show Sun that two can play *that* game!" The sad fact is that Microsoft may be fairly successful simply by way of the proliferation of other Microsoft technologies that already exist in many shops (NT, SQL Server, ASP and all the other "hey we can do that, too!" technologies that Microsoft has stamped with its name).
The most entertaining part about this whole mess is that Microsoft has largely missed out on the internet revolution as of today. Sure it's invested in other ventures like Expedia, etc., but Microsoft the software company is definitely *not* a leader as far as internet technologies are concerned, and this is the real drive behind its.NET effort.
This is just absolutely hilarious to me. It's this kind of thinking that breeds such ideas as homophobia, racism, etc.
If you don't believe me, just take a quick look at his forum for right-winger, turbo "christians", and you'll see his posts all over. Yet another instance where a "christian" demonstrates his true colors to the world.
The best method I've found to getting around that fucking NSI bullshit is to buy a domain that is available and is strategic toward your end result.
For example, if you're trying to reserve the following TLD:
fuckgeorgewbush.com
ewbush.com
Then use a DNS service (e.g. http://www.easydns.com) to set up a virtual domain to read this:
fuckgeorg.ewbush.com
This isn't the most elegant solution, but hell, there's *always* more than one way to skin a cat! I've not done this yet, but I've sure looked into doing it (as you can tell).
I just had to jump in here and ad my $.02. Being that I'm a parent, I have some grave concerns about D.A.R.E. - what it represents and the methods it uses. I am squarely opposed to my child being forced through this program. I say forced because children are coaxed into this program through the same peer pressure that D.A.R.E. claims causes all this wildly irresponsible drug abuse.
I want my child educated on drugs, but not by the D.A.R.E. program. I want her to learn about tobacco and alcohol as drugs as well as other legal and illegal drugs. I want her to learn that casual responsible use of any drug, legal or not, is a personal choice that should not be taken lightly.
Here is a page from http://www.drcnet.org/
-------------------------------------------------
What's wrong with D.A.R.E.?
Over the last several years, ever-louder questions and criticisms
about the merits and wisdom of D.A.R.E. have emerged. This section
attempts to share those that have come to the attention of authors
of this web page.
Efficacy. Despite its huge popularity, and
hundreds of millions in tax revenue and private contributions,
no evidence exists that D.A.R.E. keeps kids off drugs. A large, developing
body of studies
documenting this conclusion is referenced in the accompanying
list of references and other resources.
The bottom line is that at best, in the words of the Justice Department-sponsored
study by the Research Triangle Institute (338k),
D.A.R.E. has a "limited to esentially nonexistent effect on drug
use."
The U.S. General Accounting Office reported, "There is little
evidence so far that [D.A.R.E. and other "resistance training"
programs] have reduced the use of drugs by adolescents" (U.S.
GAO/GGD-93-82, "Confronting the Drug Problem," page
25).
D.A.R.E.'s official response to this growing body of research is disdain
for science. "Scientists tell you that bumblebees can't fly,
but we know better," declared D.A.R.E. Executive Director Glenn
Levant upon release of the government-sponsored report that D.A.R.E.
doesn't work (USA Today, October 11, 1994).
The local D.A.R.E. officers we talked to also claim that the anecdotal
evidence is convincing that D.A.R.E. is working extremely well, citing
the warm reception they have received by schools and parents.
"Besides," they often add, "even if we are reaching
only one kid, it's worth all the effort."
(It is not clear why their standard of success is so low. We would
hardly declare a math curriculum successful if only one kid learned
to add.)
In an editorial October 15, 1993, The Chapel Hill (North Carolina) Herald
observed, "If D.A.R.E. isn't doing the job it's supposed to,
we owe it to fifth- and sixth-graders to find out why."
Curiously, the web site of the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
the nation's preeminent anti-drug abuse agency, doesn't even mention
D.A.R.E.
Content. The content of the D.A.R.E. curriculum
is raising a variety of concerns about what D.A.R.E. is actually teaching
our children. These concerns include:
D.A.R.E.'s message to children is muddled and confusing.
It doesn't tell kids that they must not use drugs. Instead, D.A.R.E.
tells them that they have the "right to say no," implying
that they have the "right to say yes." Despite the term
in its name, D.A.R.E. doesn't teach kids what "drug abuse"
actually is, or how it can be identified.
D.A.R.E. is not respectful of parents and other civilian adults.
The D.A.R.E. video, called "The Land of Decisions and Choices,"
shown to students as part of Lesson 2, portrays all adults as
drunks or other drug abusers, or senile...other than the D.A.R.E.
officer. Parents find this film a bizarre, brazenly exaggerated depiction of drug use.
Although each child is given a D.A.R.E. "workbook," students
are encouraged to leave them at school and not take them home.
Some parents worry that the heavy emphasis on "resistance
skills" subverts their own authority with their children.
It is a well established fact that children's greatest drug
risk is with alcohol and tobacco, yet D.A.R.E. is soft on those drugs,
hammering almost exclusively on illicit drugs. As a condition
of "participation" in D.A.R.E., children are expected to
abstain from all drugs. D.A.R.E. officers themselves are not required
to meet that standard.
D.A.R.E. is based on unproven, and likely false, educational hypotheses,
the most notorious one of which is that using drugs is a sympton
of low self esteem, or of high stress. Thus casual, responsible
use of any drug (alcohol, caffeine, tobacco) by parents or anyone
else is to be seen as pathological, i.e., "abuse."
From this dubious premise, it is alleged that self-esteem can
be "built" by reciting state-sponsored catechisms. These
catechisms consist of claims of "rights" which are said
to have been conferred on fifth grade D.A.R.E. students. They include
the "right to be happy" and the "right to be respected."
Many parents take issue with the emphasis on "self-esteem"
in schools these days, and the notion that it can be readily "taught."
Lillian Katz, Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University
of Illinois, put it this way: "Self-esteem and self-confidence
don't come from being told you are great. You get them by facing
challenges and mastering them through hard work and persistence."
(Readers Digest, April 1994, "Are We Demanding Enough
of Our Kids?)
To determine if students are experiencing a low, medium or
high level of stress, students are given a test, in Lesson 8, called
"My Stress Level." Among the causes of "high stress"
are said to be: taking a test, being late for something, meeting
someone new, being the first one to do something, or helping to
plan a special event. In an earlier version, even "doing
your chores" was said to cause stress.
Undermining the role and credibility of police.
The role of police is to protect the public safety, and to respond
to emergencies. It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect them
to take on the job of teaching mental health and attitudes.
Nor it is helpful for civics education for children to be taught
fictitious "rights." When a child grows up and learns
that she was lied to about her "right to be happy,"
how will she feel about the officer who taught her otherwise,
or the school in which she was so taught?
Not fair to professional teachers. D.A.R.E. mocks
their years of study, by asking them to step aside for a high
school graduate with two weeks training to come in and teach mental
health and psychology. If police officers have the education and
training necessary to be good teachers, what is the point of requiring
years of study and teaching certificates?
If Johnny can't read, teachers bear accountability. If Johnny
doesn't stay off drugs, will the police take responsibility for
the failure of drug education in schools, and protect teachers
from any attribution of blame?
Sacrifices excessive academic time. D.A.R.E.
consumes approximately seventeen hours of academic time that would
otherwise be available for science, math, reading or some other
academic subject. In the absense of any proof that D.A.R.E. works,
this is a substantial sacrifice of valuable school time.
Perpetuates the war. To many people, D.A.R.E.
represents the strongest commitment our nation can make to curb
drug abuse by young people, and that it deserves to be pursued,
even when we know it isn't working. By thus deceiving America
into thinking that we are doing something serious about keeping
kids off drugs, D.A.R.E. is impeding the nation's efforts to find
more efficacious ways to achieve the broader goals of national
drug policy, viz., to protect the public health and safety,
to prevent abuse, and to eliminate the crime and violence associated
with illicit drug trafficking.
Peter G. Arlos, a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, city councillor,
put it this way:
"The tragic truth that the nation
is spending $700 million a year on a program that may not work
has not sunk in on the local or the national levels. A large D.A.R.E.
bureaucracy has grown up that feeds on itself. The public raises
no uproar because it needs the comfort of its delusion that something
is being done to protect children from drugs."
Letter, Sunday Republican (Springfield, Mass.), November
21, 1993
Subverts public education by transforming
schools into instruments for the propagation of prohibitionist doctrine
and the perpetuation of the war waged in its defense. Although
a national debate is growing over whether prohibition, enforced
by war, can reasonably be expected to achieve the goals listed
above, D.A.R.E. defends prohibition zealously, disputing that the
distinction between legal and illegal drugs is based solely on
historical anomaly. ("Drug legalization: surrender is not
the answer!," National D.A.R.E. Officers Newsletter, January,
1995). Looking at history, especially pre-war Germany, some parents
compare D.A.R.E. to previous instances of installing uniformed, sometimes
armed, agents of the state in classrooms to tell children what
their attitudes ought to be, and to obtain information about family
home life which may be of interest to the state.
This van, pictured on a web site maintained by a DARE officer, was
seized by the government under a controversial program known as asset forfeiture, in which drug defendants
can lose their property even if they are never found guilty
of any crime.
It is widely known that D.A.R.E. officers are instructed to put a "D.A.R.E.
Box" in every classroom, into which students may drop "drug
information" or questions under the pretense of anonymity. Officers
are instructed that if a student "makes a disclosure related to drug
use," the officer should report the information to further
authorities, both school and police. This apparently applies whether the
"drug use" was legal or illegal, harmless or harmful. In a
number of communities around the country, students have been enlisted by
the D.A.R.E. officer as
informants against their parents.
D.A.R.E.
costs a lot of money. Glenn Levant, the D.A.R.E. executive
director, states that D.A.R.E. consumes some $750,000,000 per year. The money
goes to purchase paraphernalia--T-shirts, bumper stickers, caps, pens,
pencils, etc.--from D.A.R.E. -licensed vendors, as well as for training and
overtime salaries for police." It is important to realize that every
dollar spent on D.A.R.E. is a dollar not available for a useful, educationally
sound drug education program in schools. The overwhelming preponderance of
federal "Drug-Free Schools" money goes into the D.A.R.E. program.
One Click Patent(TM)
A method and system for submitting a patent to the USPTO via the Internet. The patent is submitted by the submitter at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives the patent submission information including the identification of the submitter from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received submitter information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the patent submission and including the submit patent button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In repsonse to the selection of the submit patent button, the client system sends to the server system a request to submit the patent. The server system receives the request and combines the patent submitter information associated with the client identifier of the client system to submit the patent submission whereby the patent submitter effects the submitting of the patent by the selection of the submit patent button.
I would agree. The first places that I refer people who are interested in web development is Perl and PHP. I've written tons of both of these languages and I think that they've got a very low barrier to entry and yet they're both incredibly powerful. These two are not limited to just web development, however. As we all know, Perl can do damn near anything and PHP can even be used to control the OS now whether it be Unix or Windoze (http://phpbuilder.com/columns/darrell20000319.php 3).
If LinuxOne is hoping to make so much money from an IPO, I sure hope that some of those funds is spent on a site redesign. I may be wrong, but if my company was trying to propel its image (especially for an IPO), and the company link to the public is its website, I'd spend a lot of time and money to revamp the site to project an aura of professionalism first.
Slashdot Mirror
While at my last company, I got inspiration from JWZ's famous tent of doom. I went to an army surplus store and purchased a 40ft. x 20ft. camouflage net and hung it above my cube. Needless to say, this generated some interesting topics of discussion around the office.
Since that time I've been laid off from that dot com and moved on to another. I've still got the net but I haven't hung it up at the current digs yet.
Make no mistake, Microsoft's number one priority is the bottom line. Microsoft is *not* out to build a better mousetrap. It's main goal is capitalization in as many markets as possible - even if that market does not fall within its realm of expertise because it will simply acquire the expertise.
In the case of Java, Microsoft is pissed about two things: 1) the fact that Sun beat them on the Java rap, and 2) the windfall in the developer community for Java related technologies that is really catapulting Sun ahead in the technology race. Microsoft just can't stand to see something so close to them from which it is not reaping profit.
In retaliation, some knuckleheads at Microsoft get together and say to each other, "Hey, we should develop our own language! We'll show Sun that two can play *that* game!" The sad fact is that Microsoft may be fairly successful simply by way of the proliferation of other Microsoft technologies that already exist in many shops (NT, SQL Server, ASP and all the other "hey we can do that, too!" technologies that Microsoft has stamped with its name).
The most entertaining part about this whole mess is that Microsoft has largely missed out on the internet revolution as of today. Sure it's invested in other ventures like Expedia, etc., but Microsoft the software company is definitely *not* a leader as far as internet technologies are concerned, and this is the real drive behind its .NET effort.
This is just absolutely hilarious to me. It's this kind of thinking that breeds such ideas as homophobia, racism, etc.
If you don't believe me, just take a quick look at his forum for right-winger, turbo "christians", and you'll see his posts all over. Yet another instance where a "christian" demonstrates his true colors to the world.
What a lunatic!
The best method I've found to getting around that fucking NSI bullshit is to buy a domain that is available and is strategic toward your end result.
For example, if you're trying to reserve the following TLD:
fuckgeorgewbush.com
ewbush.com
Then use a DNS service (e.g. http://www.easydns.com) to set up a virtual domain to read this:
fuckgeorg.ewbush.com
This isn't the most elegant solution, but hell, there's *always* more than one way to skin a cat! I've not done this yet, but I've sure looked into doing it (as you can tell).
I want my child educated on drugs, but not by the D.A.R.E. program. I want her to learn about tobacco and alcohol as drugs as well as other legal and illegal drugs. I want her to learn that casual responsible use of any drug, legal or not, is a personal choice that should not be taken lightly.
Here is a page from http://www.drcnet.org/
-------------------------------------------------
What's wrong with D.A.R.E.?
Over the last several years, ever-louder questions and criticisms about the merits and wisdom of D.A.R.E. have emerged. This section attempts to share those that have come to the attention of authors of this web page.
The U.S. General Accounting Office reported, "There is little evidence so far that [D.A.R.E. and other "resistance training" programs] have reduced the use of drugs by adolescents" (U.S. GAO/GGD-93-82, "Confronting the Drug Problem," page 25).
D.A.R.E.'s official response to this growing body of research is disdain for science. "Scientists tell you that bumblebees can't fly, but we know better," declared D.A.R.E. Executive Director Glenn Levant upon release of the government-sponsored report that D.A.R.E. doesn't work (USA Today, October 11, 1994). The local D.A.R.E. officers we talked to also claim that the anecdotal evidence is convincing that D.A.R.E. is working extremely well, citing the warm reception they have received by schools and parents. "Besides," they often add, "even if we are reaching only one kid, it's worth all the effort."
(It is not clear why their standard of success is so low. We would hardly declare a math curriculum successful if only one kid learned to add.)
In an editorial October 15, 1993, The Chapel Hill (North Carolina) Herald observed, "If D.A.R.E. isn't doing the job it's supposed to, we owe it to fifth- and sixth-graders to find out why."
Curiously, the web site of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the nation's preeminent anti-drug abuse agency, doesn't even mention D.A.R.E.
Many parents take issue with the emphasis on "self-esteem" in schools these days, and the notion that it can be readily "taught." Lillian Katz, Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois, put it this way: "Self-esteem and self-confidence don't come from being told you are great. You get them by facing challenges and mastering them through hard work and persistence." (Readers Digest, April 1994, "Are We Demanding Enough of Our Kids?)
To determine if students are experiencing a low, medium or high level of stress, students are given a test, in Lesson 8, called "My Stress Level." Among the causes of "high stress" are said to be: taking a test, being late for something, meeting someone new, being the first one to do something, or helping to plan a special event. In an earlier version, even "doing your chores" was said to cause stress.
If Johnny can't read, teachers bear accountability. If Johnny doesn't stay off drugs, will the police take responsibility for the failure of drug education in schools, and protect teachers from any attribution of blame?
Peter G. Arlos, a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, city councillor, put it this way:
"The tragic truth that the nation is spending $700 million a year on a program that may not work has not sunk in on the local or the national levels. A large D.A.R.E. bureaucracy has grown up that feeds on itself. The public raises no uproar because it needs the comfort of its delusion that something is being done to protect children from drugs."
Letter, Sunday Republican (Springfield, Mass.), November 21, 1993
This van, pictured on a web site maintained by a DARE officer, was seized by the government under a controversial program known as asset forfeiture, in which drug defendants can lose their property even if they are never found guilty of any crime.
It is widely known that D.A.R.E. officers are instructed to put a "D.A.R.E. Box" in every classroom, into which students may drop "drug information" or questions under the pretense of anonymity. Officers are instructed that if a student "makes a disclosure related to drug use," the officer should report the information to further authorities, both school and police. This apparently applies whether the "drug use" was legal or illegal, harmless or harmful. In a number of communities around the country, students have been enlisted by the D.A.R.E. officer as informants against their parents.
One Click Patent(TM)
A method and system for submitting a patent to the USPTO via the Internet. The patent is submitted by the submitter at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives the patent submission information including the identification of the submitter from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received submitter information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the patent submission and including the submit patent button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In repsonse to the selection of the submit patent button, the client system sends to the server system a request to submit the patent. The server system receives the request and combines the patent submitter information associated with the client identifier of the client system to submit the patent submission whereby the patent submitter effects the submitting of the patent by the selection of the submit patent button.
Inventor: theFerret (Aurora, CO)
Assignee: theFerret Consulting (Aurora, CO)
Filed: 10 October 2000
I would agree. The first places that I refer people who are interested in web development is Perl and PHP. I've written tons of both of these languages and I think that they've got a very low barrier to entry and yet they're both incredibly powerful. These two are not limited to just web development, however. As we all know, Perl can do damn near anything and PHP can even be used to control the OS now whether it be Unix or Windoze (http://phpbuilder.com/columns/darrell20000319.php 3).
If LinuxOne is hoping to make so much money from an IPO, I sure hope that some of those funds is spent on a site redesign. I may be wrong, but if my company was trying to propel its image (especially for an IPO), and the company link to the public is its website, I'd spend a lot of time and money to revamp the site to project an aura of professionalism first.