Re:ways around the time travel paradox
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 3, Funny
I like the parallel universes explanation mself, but it doesn't solve this. So we won't see any time travelers, fine. Where the hell are all the extra-dimensional sliders coming here for a tour of Bizarro-Earth? "Look folks, on your right, we have the earth where Dubya actually beame president of the united states! As you can see, even the weirdest, most retarded things can happen here..."
Re:laws for time travellers? who cares?
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 2
My favorite, is one of his short stories, where they send someone back to assasinate Hitler. The time traveler arrives, only to be caught by the SS, as "one more of those damn time travelers". Seems everyone attempts the same thing. So Hitler being the nice guy that he is, decides to convince them that he's not a bad guy at all, just trying to rebuild his nation, and play nice. Time traveler doesn't buy it, grabs an SS pistol, and blows his head off. The Nazi's are in panic, what do we do, what do we do... "We must bring in his double, even if the guy is a little bit nuts, we can't let the world know Hitler is dead, or all will be ruined!". The end.
Don't let this fool you. Hogan kicks ass for hardcore non-Star Trek ("oh no we must defibrilate the iso-crapulaton ray fields, or we'll fall into iso-metatonic instability!") scifi.
Thrice Upon a Time. (good one) The Giants series (though it isn't realized as time travel until the 4th book, or was it 5th?) Someone help me fill in the blanks here, he's had several more.
Looks like I'll have to get the Proteus Op, never read that one... hope it's as good as the others.
Re:He's either a fruit that's a little nutty...
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 2
If those scientists are like this guy, we should believe them?
If you mean that time travel requires some sort of recieving device, this *might* be plausible. I want to be the first to coin them timegates. (Please, no posts pointing out how some crappy scifi novel beat me to it, I know someone has). But aren't these wormholes in existence, all around us, since the beginning of time, or what have you? As I understand it, we're all swimming through a sea of the invisible things... they just have to pick the right one, and force it macroscopic, so they can toss through stock tips wadded up in little paper wads. Note to future self: Remember to toss paper wads through, with stock market tips written on them.
Been there, done that.
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 2
Sen. Hollings was played by Ron Silver, as I recall. That was Van Damme, playing me in the role of not-so-bright superhero.
Re:From the article...
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 2
Should speed up the process of neutron decay, dontcha think? May finally be able to measure that crap.;-) That is, of course, providing that "age" is preserved through such a process. I can't wait til he sends himself back though. He just has to remember to not touch himself (at least, in the non-masturbatory sense), and watch out for that fast left high kick Van Damme always uses, its a killer.
Re:you just dont get it
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 2
Thank god someone understands this. I was beginning to believe the world full of even bigger idiots than I had originally thought. I hope someone mods you up.
While this was meant as a joke (and moderated as "Troll"... do they hand out free crack with the 5 points?) I could point you in the right direction. Personally, I've been into hardware hacking for about 3 years now, and I have tried my hand at 10baseT. Good thing I'm an amateur too, sucess rate has only been about 50%. 802.11 is something else entirely though... I know *just* enough to know that I'll never be any sort of RF engineer. This doesn't seem as important at first, providing that you can get ahold of some sample chips, it's not like you're designing a fancy antenna, right? The thing is pretty much a 1 chip solution. The problem is, that the whole pcb itself tends to affect the signal in ways that I just can't understand, no matter how I try. I'm one of those guys, that all the physics I know, I learned from star trek (another joke, crackmoderator... besides, I just got my karma up to 40, have fun trying to knock me down).
Now... have someone figure out the RF aspect of it, and I might have a shot. It wouldn't be the best designed 802.11 card ever, it would probably even be pretty skanky, but I might manage a functional design. And since this guy already has a tcp/ip stack written...
Actually, there are 2 pico ip stacks that I know of anyway, if that's even necessary. The GBA is pretty beefy, right? No longer the ugly little z80 with 32k of ram. Hell, you might even manage to funk the linux kernel and drivers well enough, to not have to worry so much about drivers. Haha, that might actually be fun, providing you can make it small enough to fit a pass through connector... play multi-player wireless (I'm not so great on the software side of things, but some sort of software shim to make it think that you were using the serial port can't be that impossible). Hell, I might even go for wireless web browsing. Does the color screen do high enough rez to get some porn on it?;-)
If you're truly interested, email me at john.oyler@attbi.if-u-cant-figure-this-out-i-dont- want-to-talk-to-you.com. I can at least walk you through the process of finagling crystal to send some sample chips (not so keen on hobbyists).
Not so complex. Make it law, that corporations caan't own patents or copyrights. Make them license everything that they want/need. That alone, might really fix things... still, I want 5 yr renewable corporate charters.
I had all sorts of thoughts about this law, or that law, that if passed might put a stop to nonsense like this. All were bad ideas, either putting more burden on those that might have a legitimate suit, which is bada, or allowing nutcases like this to even twist things further. At the very least, would just feed more lawyers... which is always bad. Kinda like giving M&M's to that cute rat living under your porch, pretty soon there are 10,000 of them, and they aren't so cute any more.
But how about this? Allow these people to appear in court electronically. A simple conference call would do. If identity is an issue, there are at least 2 or 3 fair and cheap ways to handle it. When you petition for electronic appearance, you have to submit a notarized cassette recording of your voice. Or perhaps, you have to show up at the local courthouse, be sworn in there, and allowed into a booth where there is a fairly secure phone line, and where it's a given that you've been positively ID'd as the one called to appear before court. Hell, maybe even videoconferencing could be arranged. I wouldn't mind my tax dollars paying for something that makes things fairer for all (who knows, the next nutcase might sue me).
Not having to buy plane tickets just to appear, would equalize things just a bit.
Also, there should be both state and federal laws prohibiting lawsuits against legal defense funds. No exceptions.
Would be great if I owned more stock in hardware companies. Imagine knowing that after a certain date, those cheapskates with 486's would be forced to upgrade to something new and expensive if they wanted to browse with the latest 60meg bloatware browser.
Hopefully, there is still time for me to cash in on this, before Intel is at $700 per share!
You've obviously never tried to use it then. I've used slackware on my home server for the better part of 4 years, but finally switched over on my workstation computer also, about 6 months ago. I thought that it would be hard, but it was pleasant, much prettier than windows, and did things windows refused to do, all effortlessly. The single windows app I can't live without (and no, it's not office, rather a weird little cad app), well I just installed Wine awhile back, and it was pretty easy too. Those things windows couldn't do, that linux can?
#1 Use my STB pci tv tuner. No commercial windows software will work (the old software that came with it, broke with a DirectX update) and freeware tv software insisted that you "need an agp video card, else there isn't enough bandwidth". XawTV kicks ass, though I must admit, it took the better part of 20 minutes, to get the module params right.
#2 My Umax SCSI scanner. Strike 2 for windows, and its "awesome hardware support". Thank god they keep innovating by changing the driver model, even though old nt4 drivers should in theory work fine. SANE had no problem with this, it took less than 10 minutes to install and setup.
#3 Record of avg 23fps quake3 under windows (yes i have a crappy video card). Under windows, it's under 3fps. When I attempted a DirectX update, it saw my non-Intel cpu as a 486, and wouldn't install. Which is hilarious, considering that win2k won't even run on less than a p133.
Not to mention a non-$500 compiler/IDE, a non-$500 graphic art package, email that is almost immune to that crappy spam that tends to crash outlook once per month (or more), and any other number of little things that I can have look/behave just the way I want, rather than how some marketdroid thinks it should work for me.
Computers are complex, and if you don't like complexity, you don't like computers. Wanting a non-complex computer, is wanting the impossible... and the micro$oft answer is intolerable. Besides, computers are at their best, when they are customized for the person using them... and as long as you are willing to do that, installing and using linux as a desktop OS is not only good, it kicks ass. Try it.
(PS I use wmaker, not KDE or Gnome. They tend to do too well at imitating the windows crashing features).
The MacOS interface has a standard. AmigaOS's interface had a standard. The dashboard in GM cars has a standard.
The windows gui has no standard. It's been too long now (well past 6 months since I booted windows - any incarnation) to remember every little quirk and faux pas, but I'm talking windows itself, not third party software. Buttons here and there that don't have focus by default, tabbed dialogs, that sometimes require hitting OK before tabbing, other times not... it's one big mess. These are the people that put the shutdown command in the "start" button, do remember.
They should lay down and die. In this way, the balance between good and evil might not just be restored, but swung in the direction of "good" for awhile.
If you're talking about some Col Waresque plot that involves a Russian KGB agent who has trained 20 years just impersonating your friends voice, and he is perfect, and also has the tech to intercept and then retransmit, well then I suppose you're screwed.
But if you're that paranoid, what's to stop some psychic or savant from somehow guessing the key? Miss Cleo might not be able to testify against you in court, but if she could decode your trade secret for the competitors...
This doesn't work either. The man in the middle might try this, but he will be revealed when the two participants check their observations against each other. Remember, this isn't encryption itself, so much as a way to securely distribute keys.
These cities hand out welfare all the time... free food to these homeless bums, foodstamps to pregnant dropouts, etc. And then they have the nerve to regulate food? These poor commercial food companies have to sell unreasonably clean food, raising the cost! If it weren't for this unfair competition in customers, plus restrictive legislation, these food companies could probably provide food to the homeless, at a price they could afford. Who cares if its not quite up to standards?
I AM NOT A CONSUMER. If you think that my only reason for existence, is to buy your crud, and fill the coporate coffers, fuck off. If the goverment, which I pay for in taxes, happens to have a clue, and want to build infrastructure (one of its main purposes), then what right do they have to complain? They had their chance. My god, if you can't move faster than our goverment (which is ALWAYS 20 years too slow), then you DESERVE to go broke. I have no sympathies for any of these companies, that are still trying to do business as if its 1975.
It's not ok for hobbyists to write free software? It's free, uses none of blizzard's code, and it's primary purpose is undebatably legal. I have never used it to bypass copy controls, nor any of my friends... it just helps get around IPX only network play. Maybe vivendi plans on attacking the authors of IPXtunnel though.
Failure to include copyright controls in your own work is not the same as NOPing them out of someone elses software.
Wrong. The beauty of it, is that the settings don't have to be known. You call up over the phone, and check against each other... and the info you exchange in the phone call isn't the settings, just what you observed. If both observations match, then it wasn't intercepted. In this way, it's impossible to know the settings... without those, retransmission will fail.
Still doesn't prevent truly paranoid stuff, like someone installing BO on your computer, and eavesdropping on the unencrypted stream.
No, my job is rather lowly, no decisions down where I am.
I don't call people stupid for their taste in operating systems. I've used almost all of them (I like quite a few of them), and there is only one I despise. Movies, the same. Religion... well, they're kinda dumb, but if its not scientology or the Jim Jones cult, I generally leave them alone. I'm not fat, I don't smell, and my wife appreciates the fact that I'm dateless. I'm tolerant of many things. Stupidity isn't one of them.
And if you didn't notice, I did not blame it all on the user. Who really could use M$ products? Hell, I'd want a paper and pencil too, if it were the only other choice.
But read the article, man. My god, the little snippet about the waitress in a diner (I think in comparison to air traffic controllers). That it's a non-serious example is all the better... technology can do a hell of alot better than that broken pencil she's always losing, or the notepad she writes on it with. The obvious improvement, would be a PDA with 802.11, and a mini-menu that she just has to use the stylus to punch in, rather than scribble in some illegible shorthand.
Think about it, before you attack me. How many 50 cent pads does she go through in a year? Enough to pay for the PDA? No? How about, that she still only has to enter it once, and yet they can have accurate inventory, or more accurate records? THat little diner may not know what it served on Sept 6th, 1983, but by god, every day forth, for the next 20 years, it could. Maybe they'll be able to predict all sorts of things, allowing them to only buy just enough stock, or know when to schedule vacations. All sorts of things that you can't know until you do it.
And then there is the enviromental angle. Do you think they recycle the used notes? Or do they get buried in a landfill? How many people do we employ in paper factories, that could be doing other more important things?
And then we have this schmuck, getting published, claiming paper has some magical property, that makes it perfect for human beings. I want to strangle him. If we arrange our papers so that it has some cool effect, then BY GOD WE CAN WRITE CODE THAT DOES THAT TOO. Companies that think they can buy off the shelf software, that's the problem. Hire some college weenies, and make it their job, to actually interact with the people that will be using the software. Sit them at a desk right next to them. Dock their salaries, every time they write code that isn't what people want or need. But me, I don't want to waste a large fraction of our economic output, producing a tool that is no longer necessary, and ruining the planet in the process.
A paperless office will never happen, but not because it wouldn't be possible, or even better. I think up little things all the time, that I start doing electroncically, instead of scribbled on this note or that napkin, or whatever. But I'm one of the guys that makes computers work, that understands them. In corporate america, I'm 1 in 100, or even 1000. The rest are still stuck in the 15th century, and if you don't believe me, duck into the helpdesk call center. The sad thing is, by the time computers are smart enough to do the thinking for these retards, they'll also be able to do the job for them.
But maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe M$ makes it too hard for people, hell, if I had to run Word every time I wanted to scribble a note, I'd want to chop down a tree and felt some paper too. Would be easier. When I was a winslave, I remember numerous times, where I wanted a simple spreadsheet, just some columns with numbers, etc. And they only option was tabbing over in notepad(preferred) or opening Excel (to be avoided). Sc takes care of that stuff now.
Hardly spamming, I would think. AT&T's cable modem service sucks in too many big ways. Waiting for DSL and it's static IP. BTW, without running your own bind, the tld will never resolve.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the parallel universes explanation mself, but it doesn't solve this. So we won't see any time travelers, fine. Where the hell are all the extra-dimensional sliders coming here for a tour of Bizarro-Earth? "Look folks, on your right, we have the earth where Dubya actually beame president of the united states! As you can see, even the weirdest, most retarded things can happen here..."
My favorite, is one of his short stories, where they send someone back to assasinate Hitler. The time traveler arrives, only to be caught by the SS, as "one more of those damn time travelers". Seems everyone attempts the same thing. So Hitler being the nice guy that he is, decides to convince them that he's not a bad guy at all, just trying to rebuild his nation, and play nice. Time traveler doesn't buy it, grabs an SS pistol, and blows his head off. The Nazi's are in panic, what do we do, what do we do... "We must bring in his double, even if the guy is a little bit nuts, we can't let the world know Hitler is dead, or all will be ruined!". The end.
Don't let this fool you. Hogan kicks ass for hardcore non-Star Trek ("oh no we must defibrilate the iso-crapulaton ray fields, or we'll fall into iso-metatonic instability!") scifi.
Thrice Upon a Time. (good one)
The Giants series (though it isn't realized as time travel until the 4th book, or was it 5th?)
Someone help me fill in the blanks here, he's had several more.
Looks like I'll have to get the Proteus Op, never read that one... hope it's as good as the others.
If those scientists are like this guy, we should believe them?
If you mean that time travel requires some sort of recieving device, this *might* be plausible. I want to be the first to coin them timegates. (Please, no posts pointing out how some crappy scifi novel beat me to it, I know someone has). But aren't these wormholes in existence, all around us, since the beginning of time, or what have you? As I understand it, we're all swimming through a sea of the invisible things... they just have to pick the right one, and force it macroscopic, so they can toss through stock tips wadded up in little paper wads. Note to future self: Remember to toss paper wads through, with stock market tips written on them.
Sen. Hollings was played by Ron Silver, as I recall. That was Van Damme, playing me in the role of not-so-bright superhero.
Should speed up the process of neutron decay, dontcha think? May finally be able to measure that crap. ;-) That is, of course, providing that "age" is preserved through such a process. I can't wait til he sends himself back though. He just has to remember to not touch himself (at least, in the non-masturbatory sense), and watch out for that fast left high kick Van Damme always uses, its a killer.
Thank god someone understands this. I was beginning to believe the world full of even bigger idiots than I had originally thought. I hope someone mods you up.
While this was meant as a joke (and moderated as "Troll"... do they hand out free crack with the 5 points?) I could point you in the right direction. Personally, I've been into hardware hacking for about 3 years now, and I have tried my hand at 10baseT. Good thing I'm an amateur too, sucess rate has only been about 50%. 802.11 is something else entirely though... I know *just* enough to know that I'll never be any sort of RF engineer. This doesn't seem as important at first, providing that you can get ahold of some sample chips, it's not like you're designing a fancy antenna, right? The thing is pretty much a 1 chip solution. The problem is, that the whole pcb itself tends to affect the signal in ways that I just can't understand, no matter how I try. I'm one of those guys, that all the physics I know, I learned from star trek (another joke, crackmoderator... besides, I just got my karma up to 40, have fun trying to knock me down).
;-)
- want-to-talk-to-you.com. I can at least walk you through the process of finagling crystal to send some sample chips (not so keen on hobbyists).
Now... have someone figure out the RF aspect of it, and I might have a shot. It wouldn't be the best designed 802.11 card ever, it would probably even be pretty skanky, but I might manage a functional design. And since this guy already has a tcp/ip stack written...
Actually, there are 2 pico ip stacks that I know of anyway, if that's even necessary. The GBA is pretty beefy, right? No longer the ugly little z80 with 32k of ram. Hell, you might even manage to funk the linux kernel and drivers well enough, to not have to worry so much about drivers. Haha, that might actually be fun, providing you can make it small enough to fit a pass through connector... play multi-player wireless (I'm not so great on the software side of things, but some sort of software shim to make it think that you were using the serial port can't be that impossible). Hell, I might even go for wireless web browsing. Does the color screen do high enough rez to get some porn on it?
If you're truly interested, email me at john.oyler@attbi.if-u-cant-figure-this-out-i-dont
Not so complex. Make it law, that corporations caan't own patents or copyrights. Make them license everything that they want/need. That alone, might really fix things... still, I want 5 yr renewable corporate charters.
I hacked up a 802.11 card for mine.
I had all sorts of thoughts about this law, or that law, that if passed might put a stop to nonsense like this. All were bad ideas, either putting more burden on those that might have a legitimate suit, which is bada, or allowing nutcases like this to even twist things further. At the very least, would just feed more lawyers... which is always bad. Kinda like giving M&M's to that cute rat living under your porch, pretty soon there are 10,000 of them, and they aren't so cute any more.
But how about this? Allow these people to appear in court electronically. A simple conference call would do. If identity is an issue, there are at least 2 or 3 fair and cheap ways to handle it. When you petition for electronic appearance, you have to submit a notarized cassette recording of your voice. Or perhaps, you have to show up at the local courthouse, be sworn in there, and allowed into a booth where there is a fairly secure phone line, and where it's a given that you've been positively ID'd as the one called to appear before court. Hell, maybe even videoconferencing could be arranged. I wouldn't mind my tax dollars paying for something that makes things fairer for all (who knows, the next nutcase might sue me).
Not having to buy plane tickets just to appear, would equalize things just a bit.
Also, there should be both state and federal laws prohibiting lawsuits against legal defense funds. No exceptions.
Would be great if I owned more stock in hardware companies. Imagine knowing that after a certain date, those cheapskates with 486's would be forced to upgrade to something new and expensive if they wanted to browse with the latest 60meg bloatware browser.
Hopefully, there is still time for me to cash in on this, before Intel is at $700 per share!
You've obviously never tried to use it then. I've used slackware on my home server for the better part of 4 years, but finally switched over on my workstation computer also, about 6 months ago. I thought that it would be hard, but it was pleasant, much prettier than windows, and did things windows refused to do, all effortlessly. The single windows app I can't live without (and no, it's not office, rather a weird little cad app), well I just installed Wine awhile back, and it was pretty easy too. Those things windows couldn't do, that linux can?
#1 Use my STB pci tv tuner. No commercial windows software will work (the old software that came with it, broke with a DirectX update) and freeware tv software insisted that you "need an agp video card, else there isn't enough bandwidth". XawTV kicks ass, though I must admit, it took the better part of 20 minutes, to get the module params right.
#2 My Umax SCSI scanner. Strike 2 for windows, and its "awesome hardware support". Thank god they keep innovating by changing the driver model, even though old nt4 drivers should in theory work fine. SANE had no problem with this, it took less than 10 minutes to install and setup.
#3 Record of avg 23fps quake3 under windows (yes i have a crappy video card). Under windows, it's under 3fps. When I attempted a DirectX update, it saw my non-Intel cpu as a 486, and wouldn't install. Which is hilarious, considering that win2k won't even run on less than a p133.
Not to mention a non-$500 compiler/IDE, a non-$500 graphic art package, email that is almost immune to that crappy spam that tends to crash outlook once per month (or more), and any other number of little things that I can have look/behave just the way I want, rather than how some marketdroid thinks it should work for me.
Computers are complex, and if you don't like complexity, you don't like computers. Wanting a non-complex computer, is wanting the impossible... and the micro$oft answer is intolerable. Besides, computers are at their best, when they are customized for the person using them... and as long as you are willing to do that, installing and using linux as a desktop OS is not only good, it kicks ass. Try it.
(PS I use wmaker, not KDE or Gnome. They tend to do too well at imitating the windows crashing features).
The MacOS interface has a standard.
AmigaOS's interface had a standard.
The dashboard in GM cars has a standard.
The windows gui has no standard. It's been too long now (well past 6 months since I booted windows - any incarnation) to remember every little quirk and faux pas, but I'm talking windows itself, not third party software. Buttons here and there that don't have focus by default, tabbed dialogs, that sometimes require hitting OK before tabbing, other times not... it's one big mess. These are the people that put the shutdown command in the "start" button, do remember.
They should lay down and die. In this way, the balance between good and evil might not just be restored, but swung in the direction of "good" for awhile.
If you're talking about some Col Waresque plot that involves a Russian KGB agent who has trained 20 years just impersonating your friends voice, and he is perfect, and also has the tech to intercept and then retransmit, well then I suppose you're screwed.
But if you're that paranoid, what's to stop some psychic or savant from somehow guessing the key? Miss Cleo might not be able to testify against you in court, but if she could decode your trade secret for the competitors...
This doesn't work either. The man in the middle might try this, but he will be revealed when the two participants check their observations against each other. Remember, this isn't encryption itself, so much as a way to securely distribute keys.
These cities hand out welfare all the time... free food to these homeless bums, foodstamps to pregnant dropouts, etc. And then they have the nerve to regulate food? These poor commercial food companies have to sell unreasonably clean food, raising the cost! If it weren't for this unfair competition in customers, plus restrictive legislation, these food companies could probably provide food to the homeless, at a price they could afford. Who cares if its not quite up to standards?
I AM NOT A CONSUMER. If you think that my only reason for existence, is to buy your crud, and fill the coporate coffers, fuck off. If the goverment, which I pay for in taxes, happens to have a clue, and want to build infrastructure (one of its main purposes), then what right do they have to complain? They had their chance. My god, if you can't move faster than our goverment (which is ALWAYS 20 years too slow), then you DESERVE to go broke. I have no sympathies for any of these companies, that are still trying to do business as if its 1975.
It's not ok for hobbyists to write free software? It's free, uses none of blizzard's code, and it's primary purpose is undebatably legal. I have never used it to bypass copy controls, nor any of my friends... it just helps get around IPX only network play. Maybe vivendi plans on attacking the authors of IPXtunnel though.
Failure to include copyright controls in your own work is not the same as NOPing them out of someone elses software.
Wrong. The beauty of it, is that the settings don't have to be known. You call up over the phone, and check against each other... and the info you exchange in the phone call isn't the settings, just what you observed. If both observations match, then it wasn't intercepted. In this way, it's impossible to know the settings... without those, retransmission will fail.
Still doesn't prevent truly paranoid stuff, like someone installing BO on your computer, and eavesdropping on the unencrypted stream.
CRT's ? Try LCD's. Big ones.
No, my job is rather lowly, no decisions down where I am.
I don't call people stupid for their taste in operating systems. I've used almost all of them (I like quite a few of them), and there is only one I despise. Movies, the same. Religion... well, they're kinda dumb, but if its not scientology or the Jim Jones cult, I generally leave them alone. I'm not fat, I don't smell, and my wife appreciates the fact that I'm dateless. I'm tolerant of many things. Stupidity isn't one of them.
And if you didn't notice, I did not blame it all on the user. Who really could use M$ products? Hell, I'd want a paper and pencil too, if it were the only other choice.
But read the article, man. My god, the little snippet about the waitress in a diner (I think in comparison to air traffic controllers). That it's a non-serious example is all the better... technology can do a hell of alot better than that broken pencil she's always losing, or the notepad she writes on it with. The obvious improvement, would be a PDA with 802.11, and a mini-menu that she just has to use the stylus to punch in, rather than scribble in some illegible shorthand.
Think about it, before you attack me. How many 50 cent pads does she go through in a year? Enough to pay for the PDA? No? How about, that she still only has to enter it once, and yet they can have accurate inventory, or more accurate records? THat little diner may not know what it served on Sept 6th, 1983, but by god, every day forth, for the next 20 years, it could. Maybe they'll be able to predict all sorts of things, allowing them to only buy just enough stock, or know when to schedule vacations. All sorts of things that you can't know until you do it.
And then there is the enviromental angle. Do you think they recycle the used notes? Or do they get buried in a landfill? How many people do we employ in paper factories, that could be doing other more important things?
And then we have this schmuck, getting published, claiming paper has some magical property, that makes it perfect for human beings. I want to strangle him. If we arrange our papers so that it has some cool effect, then BY GOD WE CAN WRITE CODE THAT DOES THAT TOO. Companies that think they can buy off the shelf software, that's the problem. Hire some college weenies, and make it their job, to actually interact with the people that will be using the software. Sit them at a desk right next to them. Dock their salaries, every time they write code that isn't what people want or need. But me, I don't want to waste a large fraction of our economic output, producing a tool that is no longer necessary, and ruining the planet in the process.
A paperless office will never happen, but not because it wouldn't be possible, or even better. I think up little things all the time, that I start doing electroncically, instead of scribbled on this note or that napkin, or whatever. But I'm one of the guys that makes computers work, that understands them. In corporate america, I'm 1 in 100, or even 1000. The rest are still stuck in the 15th century, and if you don't believe me, duck into the helpdesk call center. The sad thing is, by the time computers are smart enough to do the thinking for these retards, they'll also be able to do the job for them.
But maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe M$ makes it too hard for people, hell, if I had to run Word every time I wanted to scribble a note, I'd want to chop down a tree and felt some paper too. Would be easier. When I was a winslave, I remember numerous times, where I wanted a simple spreadsheet, just some columns with numbers, etc. And they only option was tabbing over in notepad(preferred) or opening Excel (to be avoided). Sc takes care of that stuff now.
Hardly spamming, I would think. AT&T's cable modem service sucks in too many big ways. Waiting for DSL and it's static IP. BTW, without running your own bind, the tld will never resolve.
After all, he is a lawyer so scummy, that other lawyers disbarred him.
This is why I use 1025 bits. Suckers.