I've been hearing about this new service for a bit, and the *great* thing that I'm hearing is a severe lack of complaining. The news media isn't making a stink about this, because Microsoft is making a concerted effort to start with only out-of-copyright books. This is the first step, and it's a step that Google should have done correctly.
Note also that this MS product, while I don't think it's quite as easy to navigate as Google's, is very specifically about putting books online, and giving them to anyone that wants them. No "previews." No gimmicks. Just books. Sure, they call it Book Search, but once you find the book, there's a link to "Download The Entire Book" in pdf format.
Google dropped the ball on their archive by choosing to focus on the wrong challenges. MS is saying "Well, if you won't fix it; we sure will." For this, interestingly, I applaud them.
I've been recently wrestling with the idea of putting solar panels up myself, but the truth of the matter is that I cannot afford the current RoR's length of time (approx 13-18years), nor can I get enough panels onto the limited rooftop I plan to use to cause a very big dent. A huge increase in efficiency of space, as well as cost/watt, changes these numbers *dramatically.* This is awesome.
I'm no scientist, and for all I know these new drugs could prove to work just fine. But from what I do know about sleep, I'm pretty skeptical of the long-term effects of taking these drugs. There is obviously something necessary about sleep that regulates our personalities, maintains our memory and keeps us from literally going nuts - and also that keeps us alive. As we still haven't identified exactly what the mechanism is that does that, I don't really see how all of that could be boiled down into pill form. We've taken an unknown and claimed to have replicated it.
I've always wondered about tidbits like this. How come we aren't hacking at the Kernal in a situation like this? Computer needs a daily reboot or it starts to act skitzo, so we say "no, no, don't rock the boat. Just keep using it." Hardly a geeky thing to say:)
I think it's awesome that there is progress being made to remove the necessity for sleep from our existence. How cool would it be to not have a required shutdown every evening? Someday we'll be talking about humans that have been online continuously since the start of Web 3.1415926536 . w00t.:)
That's the big "challenge" with the open source mentality and reconciling it with our society, especially in our culture as it stands today. The concept over many years has become "I created it, thus it is mine." We as a society have continued to value this belief, especially due to its connotation in relation to the capitalism that has brought us where we are today. Ask 95% of people in the Western World who owns Mickey Mouse, and they will unequivocally say Disney. While I may be a growing proponent of the Pirate Party, I know that I am personally torn between my desire to create an open opportunity VS a closed opportunity.
To me, it comes down to expectations and control. Not total control, nor wishing my competitors to be unable to catch up so that I can extract all the cash, but simply to me being just risk-averse enough that I don't want the company or IP to fall outside the scope that I can design and "profit from." (whether financially or societally). It's the intrapersonal conflict between personal responsibility, the desire to increase your own stature/safety, and our desire to give.
Look at the recent mini-hubbubs over IceWeasel and Citizendium. Forking a project is at the CORE of open source, right? Being able to expand upon something to make it better (in your eyes). Yet here we have a situation where people are saying "this will hurt browser acceptance, don't do it," or "this will confuse people with 2 wikipedias... just fix wikipedia!" We've all heard the usual "we need a central linux desktop" arguments, right?
But that's not the heart of the GPL, in my mind. It's not to fight a war, it's to create something that can grow in quality and eventually win out in the marketplace thru sheer force of greatness.
However, therein lies the rub: In order to put together an 'open' opportunity, and give it value, you have to be willing to move in the open direction. You have to create something *potentially* outside of your control, that could, on a whim, toss you aside and pick someone else as a favorite. Because of the uncontrollable possibilities inherent in a system built around such ideals, I can completely understand why many investors will find that challenging to get behind. I'm not sure there's really a way to change that, other than to continue to impress upon people the value of an 'open' future.
The tricks are not what's important. You have to just continue doing great things until people realize the value contained within. If need be, infuse a bit of marketing to help people along the path of understanding... but CREATE something that gives value to others, and you will find yourself at the heart of the GPL.
It's not nearly that simple, and you know it. While you can definitely make the case that the poorer students don't get the education they deserve, the truth of the matter is that those kids who *do* go on to higher education *do* get support. Lots of it. It costs $20,000 a YEAR to take college classes at an undergraduate university level! Literally! Go to a university's website and look it up. If your parents make $60,000 a year (the breach of upper middle class), and they have two kids, they can't afford to drop even for one kid. Hell, they shouldn't have to!
So the govt gives out LOANS. As in, dollars that need to be repayed.
User experience thus far is that you should be able to use moneydance just fine, as long as you get them to allow you OFX access. I have no personal experience with this issue though, so good luck.
- DaftShadow
I have to be honest, the paper's response was *spot* on. It was not, as the slashdot summary made it seem to be, a political retraction. It was a specific commentary describing what the blogger's article did wrong and why. Not only that, it addressed every point of sarcasm that the blogger presented in his article, and did such with reason.
I don't claim to say that this makes the Singapore government a different beast (how did we start talking about the govt anyhow?), but I do care to say that it changes the entire situation. This blogger does not deserve to be a Matyr. He ranted and raved about how bad he's got it, and passed blame. If he felt that one or any of these programs were a failure, there are far better approaches to answering that question. I can't rant and rave like a lunatic too, but it doesn't make me a journalist.
Who here dreams of taking off into space? Who here dreams of living on the moon?!? What!?! How dare you!!!
I don't know about you, but when I dream about awesome results I don't sit around thinking 'well, maybe I should wait ten years and *then* go after my dreams...'
It would be awesome to build a colony on the moon. It would also be pretty darn awesome to build a city-sized space station at L5. Stating that it won't be practical right now is merely a self-actualizing prophecy that means that in ten years the same will be the case. If Rutan hadn't succeeded so brilliantly, would we now be seeing the future within our grasp? If the X-prize hadn't jolted the geeky masses into a target, would we still be sitting around joking about carmack's latest armadillo attempt?
Setting up shop may not feel practical, but it sure feels awesome. And when you get people working full-bore towards something they consider truly inspiring, you often find yourselves with favorable results. To give up on the next target because it seems like it might be hard is how you get left on the wayside.
These glasses look pretty cool. I've been trying to get my hands on a pair of the "new age" of small form displays. Why have an LCD monitor? Why not have a totally mobile monitor setup? Just plop on your display, and voila! These don't look like those crappy full-face helmets. They are sleek and interesting.
These things aren't "3D virtual reality glasses"; they are small-form, optical LCD displays. And it's not like they just plopped an LCD up either... they have tiny lenses in front of the display that allow your eyes to focus correctly and look at this thing for hours on end, just like you were staring at your monitor that's sitting two feet away. It's brilliant stuff.
Combine this with an OQO or other such portable device, and you have a totally mobile computing platform. Or why not just use Ipod Linux...
The way I see it, the true value of croquet is *NOT* that it is a 3D desktop...
I've been spending some time getting psyched up about Croquet recently, because I don't see it as a replacement of the desktop. Croquet takes the concept of a desktop and turns it on its ear! Instead of working "on your computer", you are working "on the net", or maybe "at the office". It's like waking up, having a cup of coffee, plopping down on your couch, physically transporting yourself to the office in the blink of an eye, and starting to work!
Croquet is about collaboration. Croquet is about creating a "3D Internet"/Metaverse on a peer-to-peer infrastructure that can be used to connect anyone on the planet at a moment's notice and allow them to collaborate and work together using whatever tools they want to. It's not a Desktop replacement; It doesn't want to make Linux/Windows go away. It wants to allow you an entirely new way of interacting with the people and tools on the web.
What if you could have an "online working space" for your favorite open source program? What if all the linux kernel guys could log in, open up a croquet space and start talking and working on the kernel? Instead of talking on a conferance call where everyone's looking at the code and trying to keep up, they are all looking at the code together and the "talker" is bringing up examples that everyone can see, and illustrating points as necessary... and then when someone has a different interpretation, they just pull up what they need and explain it then. Everyone understands the context, because they are all there! Then, when they want to be alone to code in peace, they can do it instantly.
Talk about a file-system... what if you were working and needed to access a file on your computer to bring it up? You just pop open whatever type of terminal window you want, and voila! Someone could write a squeak version of the terminal, so you could open it directly in croquet... or you could open your linux terminal THROUGH croquet. OR, you could open Nautilus. OR you could open Spotlight. OR you could open a 3D version of Nautilus where the icons spin around your head (something I want to see;).
What about games... let's say you want to open up Quake 3 from inside croquet. You just pull it up using whatever "accessing" module you want (terminal, menu, speaking into your computer, whatever) and it opens! Maybe it logs you off croquet when you open the game? Maybe it makes you invisible? Maybe it transports you to a special "nothing rendered" area so you don't use any GPU cycles? I haven't the foggiest what it would do. But I can tell you right now that you would still be running Quake 3, just like you expected to. But maybe we're talking about a big match now... There's a huge quake tourney, and everyone wants to watch the match. Someone could create a croquet space and put a bunch of 200m screens up showing the viewpoints of all the tourney players. People could log in and view the matches as they happen from the player's perspective, WITHOUT ID SOFTWARE NEEDING TO PROGRAM THAT FUNCTIONALITY!!!
That last bit is important because it is where the value of croquet really shines. You can collaborate with your buddies no matter what the software was intended for. You're just running the software on your computer like normal, and using croquet as the gateway. But depending on what you want others to see, they can see through that gateway too!
My point in all this is that all of these options would be available to you because croquet doesn't look to REPLACE the great things that help make you productive. Instead, it works to ADD new and greater capabilities beyond what a static, disconnected desktop can offer. Your desktop still exists in its entirety, but croquet can become the new buffer into how you access and interact with those programs and what they get used to create. It opens up a whole new ball-game for accessing "reality."
Your argument makes sense as a rant, but it completely ignores the reasoning behind release dates. The stores can't sell it early because it doesn't go on SALE until the 9th. Everyone knows it comes out on the 9th. I met a 50 year old guy the other day that couldn't stop talking about how he couldn't wait until Nov. 9th so he could get his copy of Halo 2. This is a huge date, and there are huge parties and huge programs and lots of hype and lots of expectations. Many of the EBGames will be hosting halo tourneys, and staying open very late, so they can give away Halo 2 at 12:01am on Nov 9th.
Now, because of the effort required for a store to recieve merchandise and ready it for sale and put it into their store's computer systems, and all that jazz, they have to do a lot of work. Hours and Hours worth of work. It's not as simple as getting a box, putting it on the shelf, and selling it. So all the stores need to get their copies early. It's common practice for movie stores to get movies 1-2 weeks in advance. I expect that, for game stores, the same is generally true (if possible, of course:).
Having games in the back offices early doesn't "encourage" piracy... it merely means that it is possible that someone unscrupulous might get their hands on a copy early and put it up for download.
... I can think of no one else to fault *BUT* the technician. The IT guys know full well that this "quirk" exists, and in fact, part of their planning and maintenence involved resetting the machine in order to get around this potential problem. These guys did not complete their job duties, and as such, the system went down.
How can you intimate blaming the software company here?
I found this site a few weeks back, and it caught my attention. It advertises the sale of a software product (or maybe just information...) designed to teach you how to type one-handed on a normal, full sized QWERTY.
At first I was interested but skeptical, and then I saw a diagram showing basically how it was pulled off, and the whole thing just clicked into place (home row == FGHJ, use pinky and index fingers to access most of the keyboard).
I expect it would be a bit harder to pick up than two-handed touch typing, but as I played around with going for the keys from the home rome, I realized that all it would take is training your muscle-memory for a new situation (the keyboard is still fully accessible, albiet requiring a stretch at times to get to the characters on the far right). The only other issues I can think of involve the Shift key... I can't figure out how to press the damn thing. Maybe just learn to switch CapsLock on/off for each capital letter?
It'd be a cool party trick, though, huh? One-handed typing on two different keyboards? At the least, it would be nice to keep my hand on the mouse at times.
And of course, if I was disabled in any way, being able to use my good hand anywhere I went would be priceless.
I've never understood this perspective. Cigarrettes will never be illegal, because so many damn people smoke them! It's not because the govt. gets so much money. It's because everyday citizens wake up, and have a smoke. It's because people get stressed out, and have a smoke. It's because people have sex, and then have a smoke!
Sure, "secondhand smoke kills", but so do alcoholic drivers! And it's not like you see millions of people go out every weekend to enjoy the "NotFunAtAll" syrum of choice...
Like any "substance", used correctly, it doesn't do shit. Smoke outside, and away from your family/friends, and they won't get hurt. Drink a lot of booze, but don't drive, and you don't crash into anyone. Use cocaine like a motherfucker, but do it in your private home and to your own body, while making sure to pay the bills and spend quality time with your children?
People need to take responsibility for their own actions. We need to stop trying to circumvent their abilities and use the law to do it. We need to realize that the law is meant to represent the compromises we members of society feel are necessary! All of this garbage about how the govt. likes smokers because of tax purposes, is ludicrous.
They like smokers, because, like us all, they *are* smokers.
Firstly, I'm glad you didn't say anything about a "right to $X"...;)
Second, I wanted to just note that in Wal-Mart's case, I'm most impressed with the fact that they intentionally "undercutt" market prices in order to grow. The market isn't forcing them to give good deals. Wal-Mart structured themselves in such a way that they could price under competitors like Target and K-mart, and by drawing customers with those deals, they have knocked the market-competitors on their asses. Wal-Mart competes with almost every retail store on the face of the earth. Not just the "sell everything" types, but they do clothes, toys, sporting goods, movies, foodstuffs, electronics. And not only do they sell them, they sell them for cheaper than competitors!
I may not particularly agree with a lot of their practices, but it's almost awe-inspiring to look at Wal-Mart's approach to a competitive marketplace, and see how they dominate it. They come up with a way to take profit from competitors, and then they just blaze on and do it again and again!
Of course, it all sadly begs the question: how will Wal-Mart react once they have 90% control of retail sales?
Your post brings to mind a major perspective issue that has been shoved down the throats of consumers for a while: That we are here to serve industry.
Of course, we all "know" that industry is here to serve us, but we've given them free reign. Industry (particularly the media, and other "celebrity" industries) is under the impression that we should pay what they think. This is because their previous leaders (the ones with intelligence) have brilliantly conditioned us as consumers to believe them!
Your quote says it all to me. For the love of God, Why should any consumer fall for the scam that if copyright is easy to violate, then all those great celebrities will just up and vanish? Brad Pitt is just going to go on strike until we as consumers realize that he deserves our cash for his hard work. Bullshit! If he stops working for us, we stop paying.
And not only that, we should be telling him how much he's worth! We should be making the prices! The cost of a movie should be decreasing, not increasing!
But we consumers don't see it like that anymore. We see the world thru those damn glasses they give out with Spy Kids 3D, and believe that if Brad stops working, we will be the ones lesser off for it.
The media's argument is far more effective than it should be. Consumers should realize the bullshit, and yet we cannot. We believe the media projections of the end of TV as we know it, in the same way that we have been trained to.
I'm not sure I see an end to this issue. Consumers will have to wake up to the whole system before noticing even the smallest of transgressions... and right now, we've been run so ragged that we can do nothing but absorb our daily hit of Friends re-runs.
Now there is a new development that's changing this. I think that the open source movement is a way for coding to be a social act. It's social in the way programmers are social; there's a lot of ego involved in it, showing off your work and getting recognition for it, and I think that's fine. The most promising thing about it, in addition to having open source, is that the practitioners now have a social way to interact around programming.
I am somewhat curious what some in the crowd deign the strengths and weaknesses (socially!) of open source development. I haven't done any research, and was hoping to leech off my fellow social misfits a bit;-)
That's also what it seemed like to me when I read stuff. But I don't think it's that simple. With the cable modem you send your packets thru a neighborhood hub, which then goes to the company and out onto the web. With this system I don't understand how they could coordinate that, and it doesn't seem right to me anyhow. Would the system keep a listing of all people connected and then go thru the fastest route? Would it only use systems that are not sending or recieving data?
For some reason I doubt that this setup would fly, especially due to the capacity for security problems. What if you were able to configure your system to catch all queries relayed thru your box?
Personally, I can't wait to inform my buddy about this. He's 220 feet outside of the area that he might be able to get DSL to, and Pac Bell sucks. This has the potential to be great for a great many people.
- DaftShadow
That's one thing I don't understand, why exactly should we trust our elected officials? In china, it's much easier for the people there to have a split "I trust/I don't trust attitude." In the US, however, the statement that we choose our government is something I find appalling. We Elect our government, which is very different. Take a look at the 2000 presidential election, if you will. The American People were given 3 horrible candidate choices, with no apparent strong leader among them. They were all bland, regurtitated the old lines, and had nothing to offer the american public. Then they got into a petty dick-slapping contest. And then, one of them became the president!
I don't trust a fair portion of the elected officials because, as the above election shows, we don't choose our officials. If choosing was as simple as having the guy down the street run for office, then I would. But to run for office requires an immense amount of money, a brilliant staff (in short supply, obviously), and all sorts of other things that are not available to just anyone. Besides that, the populace just picks along party lines anyway; which destroys chances for most independents, who I am only a little more likely to trust with my future.
I understand that many members of government are not bad at all, but this is just like saying that most people are not stupid. A Person isn't stupid, but people are crazy, fearful, paranoid, and all sorts of other things but intelligent.1
The US is not China, but we are far from having the type of government that should be "trusted" just because they are able to spin that we "elected" them.
In the world of marketing and big-business corporate combat, image is EVERYTHING. AOL buys Red Hat, and suddenly it's like AOL invented Linux. Most consumers have never heard of Linux. Most average computer users have heard of Linux, but have a) zero experience or b) zero real knowledge or c) no interest. Most AOL Users? Heard of/have knowledge of Linux? These guys think AOL is "the web"... 'nuff said there.
Suddenly, AOL has Red Hat and it all changes. For the geeks of the world, all of us/.'ers, running an AOL/OS is absolutely absurd. Yet, there's millions (millions of millions!) of people without a clue. AOL has 33 million users? They start pushing computer systems running their OS (33million person marketing base? wonderous). What happens?
Well, this: New computer buyers get systems with AOL/OS standard thru shopping on AOL. AOL/Time Warner is able to use their influence bringing entertainment to AOL/OS (while keeping it central to their version, and not running on other Linux setups). They won't phase out the geeks, that's impossible; but Linux will become synonymous with AOL because word-of-mouth is king, and user base is only slightly behind.
As the article said higher up, the smashing of cosmic rays into ozone has been known to create such an amount of energy at such a tiny level that an extremely unstable black hole can be created for an infinitesimal period of time. This object does not have close to enough energy to suck anything into it. Even if the black hole created was a bit larger than an atom, it couldn't do more than take in a few atoms before it expends the energy it has available and "fizzle[s] out".
The article also states that it is a decently rare experience that rays with enough pent-up energy arrive that a black hole can be created.
The attempt to generate these black holes ourselves is somewhat of a different matter, but not much. CERN originally got a lot of flak for attempting to do this, since a lot of uneducated people freaked out about the thought of a black hole being created. But, that has since died down because it was so long ago and, annoyingly, the average person is kinda forgetful:).
Now, onto the good stuff. The black holes that CERN is attempting to generate are the equivalent of those that the article talks about that the PAO is trying to detect. Why it won't hurt us is due to the nature of black holes and how they are created.
A black hole requires an immense amount of energy to be created on a grand scale. That's the reason that only the largest of giant stars will become black holes when nova. The more energy it has in it while in a black hole state, the greater stability is has (though it's likely excruciatingly chaotic, and that's another branch of really fun science:). The ones that will be created will only have a small amount of energy, so little in fact that they could not possibly stay in existence for long enough to do damage. More so, with every particle that is brought into the black hole it requires a specific amount of energy expended by the black hole to drag this particle in. This is, of course, the fun part because no one's quite sure what happens to this particle. Does it disappear from our dimension? Does it come back when the black hole dissipates? There's only one way to find out, and by using harmless black holes so small they cannot do any sort of damage (if it's really damage) to more than a few nearby atoms, we are extremely safe from the attempt.
What exactly would be the use of sending e-mail to a spammer? It's not like he's going to read it, he'll just toss it out like the rest of us...
But first, he'll do this: The fellow will take your insulting e-mail, find the little address you have attached, and plop it onto as many spam lists as he can find. So, he wakes up in the morning with one insulting letter and the good man gives you 100 messages a day about Free Horny Teens.
I will gladly agree that the two with honorable mention were wonderfully painful, but I cannot say the same for Got Debt?. Besides the obvious ploy on a copywritten gimmick, it stresses the constant overflow of inboxes everywhere with the same thing. It seems a belief of Spammers (and probably founded to the 1/777% ) that by overloading the senses of a typical web monger they will, somehow, force the user to either choose going into cardiac arrest or buying the product.
It also gives a little philosophical enjoyment for those who care to take the useless things in life further than they ever should be. You can pile schemes a mile high, but the situation you're living in now isn't going to change.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been hearing about this new service for a bit, and the *great* thing that I'm hearing is a severe lack of complaining. The news media isn't making a stink about this, because Microsoft is making a concerted effort to start with only out-of-copyright books. This is the first step, and it's a step that Google should have done correctly.
Note also that this MS product, while I don't think it's quite as easy to navigate as Google's, is very specifically about putting books online, and giving them to anyone that wants them. No "previews." No gimmicks. Just books. Sure, they call it Book Search, but once you find the book, there's a link to "Download The Entire Book" in pdf format.
Google dropped the ball on their archive by choosing to focus on the wrong challenges. MS is saying "Well, if you won't fix it; we sure will." For this, interestingly, I applaud them.
- DaftShadow
I've been recently wrestling with the idea of putting solar panels up myself, but the truth of the matter is that I cannot afford the current RoR's length of time (approx 13-18years), nor can I get enough panels onto the limited rooftop I plan to use to cause a very big dent. A huge increase in efficiency of space, as well as cost/watt, changes these numbers *dramatically.* This is awesome.
- DaftShadow
I'm no scientist, and for all I know these new drugs could prove to work just fine. But from what I do know about sleep, I'm pretty skeptical of the long-term effects of taking these drugs. There is obviously something necessary about sleep that regulates our personalities, maintains our memory and keeps us from literally going nuts - and also that keeps us alive. As we still haven't identified exactly what the mechanism is that does that, I don't really see how all of that could be boiled down into pill form. We've taken an unknown and claimed to have replicated it.
:)
:)
I've always wondered about tidbits like this. How come we aren't hacking at the Kernal in a situation like this? Computer needs a daily reboot or it starts to act skitzo, so we say "no, no, don't rock the boat. Just keep using it." Hardly a geeky thing to say
I think it's awesome that there is progress being made to remove the necessity for sleep from our existence. How cool would it be to not have a required shutdown every evening? Someday we'll be talking about humans that have been online continuously since the start of Web 3.1415926536 . w00t.
- DaftShadow
That's the big "challenge" with the open source mentality and reconciling it with our society, especially in our culture as it stands today. The concept over many years has become "I created it, thus it is mine." We as a society have continued to value this belief, especially due to its connotation in relation to the capitalism that has brought us where we are today. Ask 95% of people in the Western World who owns Mickey Mouse, and they will unequivocally say Disney. While I may be a growing proponent of the Pirate Party, I know that I am personally torn between my desire to create an open opportunity VS a closed opportunity.
To me, it comes down to expectations and control. Not total control, nor wishing my competitors to be unable to catch up so that I can extract all the cash, but simply to me being just risk-averse enough that I don't want the company or IP to fall outside the scope that I can design and "profit from." (whether financially or societally). It's the intrapersonal conflict between personal responsibility, the desire to increase your own stature/safety, and our desire to give.
Look at the recent mini-hubbubs over IceWeasel and Citizendium. Forking a project is at the CORE of open source, right? Being able to expand upon something to make it better (in your eyes). Yet here we have a situation where people are saying "this will hurt browser acceptance, don't do it," or "this will confuse people with 2 wikipedias... just fix wikipedia!" We've all heard the usual "we need a central linux desktop" arguments, right?
But that's not the heart of the GPL, in my mind. It's not to fight a war, it's to create something that can grow in quality and eventually win out in the marketplace thru sheer force of greatness.
However, therein lies the rub: In order to put together an 'open' opportunity, and give it value, you have to be willing to move in the open direction. You have to create something *potentially* outside of your control, that could, on a whim, toss you aside and pick someone else as a favorite. Because of the uncontrollable possibilities inherent in a system built around such ideals, I can completely understand why many investors will find that challenging to get behind. I'm not sure there's really a way to change that, other than to continue to impress upon people the value of an 'open' future.
The tricks are not what's important. You have to just continue doing great things until people realize the value contained within. If need be, infuse a bit of marketing to help people along the path of understanding... but CREATE something that gives value to others, and you will find yourself at the heart of the GPL.
- DaftShadow
7 characters. pwned.
It's not nearly that simple, and you know it. While you can definitely make the case that the poorer students don't get the education they deserve, the truth of the matter is that those kids who *do* go on to higher education *do* get support. Lots of it. It costs $20,000 a YEAR to take college classes at an undergraduate university level! Literally! Go to a university's website and look it up. If your parents make $60,000 a year (the breach of upper middle class), and they have two kids, they can't afford to drop even for one kid. Hell, they shouldn't have to!
So the govt gives out LOANS. As in, dollars that need to be repayed.
*sigh*
Tell them you use Quicken or MS Money :)
0 06-June/008033.html
http://moneydance.com/pipermail/moneydance-info/2
User experience thus far is that you should be able to use moneydance just fine, as long as you get them to allow you OFX access. I have no personal experience with this issue though, so good luck. - DaftShadow
I have to be honest, the paper's response was *spot* on. It was not, as the slashdot summary made it seem to be, a political retraction. It was a specific commentary describing what the blogger's article did wrong and why. Not only that, it addressed every point of sarcasm that the blogger presented in his article, and did such with reason.
I don't claim to say that this makes the Singapore government a different beast (how did we start talking about the govt anyhow?), but I do care to say that it changes the entire situation. This blogger does not deserve to be a Matyr. He ranted and raved about how bad he's got it, and passed blame. If he felt that one or any of these programs were a failure, there are far better approaches to answering that question. I can't rant and rave like a lunatic too, but it doesn't make me a journalist.
- DaftShadow
Who here dreams of taking off into space? Who here dreams of living on the moon?!? What!?! How dare you!!!
I don't know about you, but when I dream about awesome results I don't sit around thinking 'well, maybe I should wait ten years and *then* go after my dreams...'
It would be awesome to build a colony on the moon. It would also be pretty darn awesome to build a city-sized space station at L5. Stating that it won't be practical right now is merely a self-actualizing prophecy that means that in ten years the same will be the case. If Rutan hadn't succeeded so brilliantly, would we now be seeing the future within our grasp? If the X-prize hadn't jolted the geeky masses into a target, would we still be sitting around joking about carmack's latest armadillo attempt?
Setting up shop may not feel practical, but it sure feels awesome. And when you get people working full-bore towards something they consider truly inspiring, you often find yourselves with favorable results. To give up on the next target because it seems like it might be hard is how you get left on the wayside.
- DaftShadow
These glasses look pretty cool. I've been trying to get my hands on a pair of the "new age" of small form displays. Why have an LCD monitor? Why not have a totally mobile monitor setup? Just plop on your display, and voila! These don't look like those crappy full-face helmets. They are sleek and interesting.
These things aren't "3D virtual reality glasses"; they are small-form, optical LCD displays. And it's not like they just plopped an LCD up either... they have tiny lenses in front of the display that allow your eyes to focus correctly and look at this thing for hours on end, just like you were staring at your monitor that's sitting two feet away. It's brilliant stuff.
Combine this with an OQO or other such portable device, and you have a totally mobile computing platform. Or why not just use Ipod Linux...
- DaftShadow
I've been spending some time getting psyched up about Croquet recently, because I don't see it as a replacement of the desktop. Croquet takes the concept of a desktop and turns it on its ear! Instead of working "on your computer", you are working "on the net", or maybe "at the office". It's like waking up, having a cup of coffee, plopping down on your couch, physically transporting yourself to the office in the blink of an eye, and starting to work!
Croquet is about collaboration. Croquet is about creating a "3D Internet"/Metaverse on a peer-to-peer infrastructure that can be used to connect anyone on the planet at a moment's notice and allow them to collaborate and work together using whatever tools they want to. It's not a Desktop replacement; It doesn't want to make Linux/Windows go away. It wants to allow you an entirely new way of interacting with the people and tools on the web.
What if you could have an "online working space" for your favorite open source program? What if all the linux kernel guys could log in, open up a croquet space and start talking and working on the kernel? Instead of talking on a conferance call where everyone's looking at the code and trying to keep up, they are all looking at the code together and the "talker" is bringing up examples that everyone can see, and illustrating points as necessary... and then when someone has a different interpretation, they just pull up what they need and explain it then. Everyone understands the context, because they are all there! Then, when they want to be alone to code in peace, they can do it instantly.
Talk about a file-system... what if you were working and needed to access a file on your computer to bring it up? You just pop open whatever type of terminal window you want, and voila! Someone could write a squeak version of the terminal, so you could open it directly in croquet... or you could open your linux terminal THROUGH croquet. OR, you could open Nautilus. OR you could open Spotlight. OR you could open a 3D version of Nautilus where the icons spin around your head (something I want to see ;).
What about games... let's say you want to open up Quake 3 from inside croquet. You just pull it up using whatever "accessing" module you want (terminal, menu, speaking into your computer, whatever) and it opens! Maybe it logs you off croquet when you open the game? Maybe it makes you invisible? Maybe it transports you to a special "nothing rendered" area so you don't use any GPU cycles? I haven't the foggiest what it would do. But I can tell you right now that you would still be running Quake 3, just like you expected to. But maybe we're talking about a big match now... There's a huge quake tourney, and everyone wants to watch the match. Someone could create a croquet space and put a bunch of 200m screens up showing the viewpoints of all the tourney players. People could log in and view the matches as they happen from the player's perspective, WITHOUT ID SOFTWARE NEEDING TO PROGRAM THAT FUNCTIONALITY!!!
That last bit is important because it is where the value of croquet really shines. You can collaborate with your buddies no matter what the software was intended for. You're just running the software on your computer like normal, and using croquet as the gateway. But depending on what you want others to see, they can see through that gateway too!
My point in all this is that all of these options would be available to you because croquet doesn't look to REPLACE the great things that help make you productive. Instead, it works to ADD new and greater capabilities beyond what a static, disconnected desktop can offer. Your desktop still exists in its entirety, but croquet can become the new buffer into how you access and interact with those programs and what they get used to create. It opens up a whole new ball-game for accessing "reality."
- DaftShadow
Your argument makes sense as a rant, but it completely ignores the reasoning behind release dates. The stores can't sell it early because it doesn't go on SALE until the 9th. Everyone knows it comes out on the 9th. I met a 50 year old guy the other day that couldn't stop talking about how he couldn't wait until Nov. 9th so he could get his copy of Halo 2. This is a huge date, and there are huge parties and huge programs and lots of hype and lots of expectations. Many of the EBGames will be hosting halo tourneys, and staying open very late, so they can give away Halo 2 at 12:01am on Nov 9th.
:).
Now, because of the effort required for a store to recieve merchandise and ready it for sale and put it into their store's computer systems, and all that jazz, they have to do a lot of work. Hours and Hours worth of work. It's not as simple as getting a box, putting it on the shelf, and selling it. So all the stores need to get their copies early. It's common practice for movie stores to get movies 1-2 weeks in advance. I expect that, for game stores, the same is generally true (if possible, of course
Having games in the back offices early doesn't "encourage" piracy... it merely means that it is possible that someone unscrupulous might get their hands on a copy early and put it up for download.
- DaftShadow
... I can think of no one else to fault *BUT* the technician. The IT guys know full well that this "quirk" exists, and in fact, part of their planning and maintenence involved resetting the machine in order to get around this potential problem. These guys did not complete their job duties, and as such, the system went down.
How can you intimate blaming the software company here?
- DaftShadow
http://www.aboutonehandtyping.com/
I found this site a few weeks back, and it caught my attention. It advertises the sale of a software product (or maybe just information...) designed to teach you how to type one-handed on a normal, full sized QWERTY.
At first I was interested but skeptical, and then I saw a diagram showing basically how it was pulled off, and the whole thing just clicked into place (home row == FGHJ, use pinky and index fingers to access most of the keyboard).
I expect it would be a bit harder to pick up than two-handed touch typing, but as I played around with going for the keys from the home rome, I realized that all it would take is training your muscle-memory for a new situation (the keyboard is still fully accessible, albiet requiring a stretch at times to get to the characters on the far right). The only other issues I can think of involve the Shift key... I can't figure out how to press the damn thing. Maybe just learn to switch CapsLock on/off for each capital letter?
It'd be a cool party trick, though, huh? One-handed typing on two different keyboards? At the least, it would be nice to keep my hand on the mouse at times.
And of course, if I was disabled in any way, being able to use my good hand anywhere I went would be priceless.
I've never understood this perspective. Cigarrettes will never be illegal, because so many damn people smoke them! It's not because the govt. gets so much money. It's because everyday citizens wake up, and have a smoke. It's because people get stressed out, and have a smoke. It's because people have sex, and then have a smoke!
Sure, "secondhand smoke kills", but so do alcoholic drivers! And it's not like you see millions of people go out every weekend to enjoy the "NotFunAtAll" syrum of choice...
Like any "substance", used correctly, it doesn't do shit. Smoke outside, and away from your family/friends, and they won't get hurt. Drink a lot of booze, but don't drive, and you don't crash into anyone. Use cocaine like a motherfucker, but do it in your private home and to your own body, while making sure to pay the bills and spend quality time with your children?
People need to take responsibility for their own actions. We need to stop trying to circumvent their abilities and use the law to do it. We need to realize that the law is meant to represent the compromises we members of society feel are necessary! All of this garbage about how the govt. likes smokers because of tax purposes, is ludicrous.
They like smokers, because, like us all, they *are* smokers.
- DaftShadow
Firstly, I'm glad you didn't say anything about a "right to $X"... ;)
Second, I wanted to just note that in Wal-Mart's case, I'm most impressed with the fact that they intentionally "undercutt" market prices in order to grow. The market isn't forcing them to give good deals. Wal-Mart structured themselves in such a way that they could price under competitors like Target and K-mart, and by drawing customers with those deals, they have knocked the market-competitors on their asses. Wal-Mart competes with almost every retail store on the face of the earth. Not just the "sell everything" types, but they do clothes, toys, sporting goods, movies, foodstuffs, electronics. And not only do they sell them, they sell them for cheaper than competitors!
I may not particularly agree with a lot of their practices, but it's almost awe-inspiring to look at Wal-Mart's approach to a competitive marketplace, and see how they dominate it. They come up with a way to take profit from competitors, and then they just blaze on and do it again and again!
Of course, it all sadly begs the question: how will Wal-Mart react once they have 90% control of retail sales?
- DaftShadow
Your post brings to mind a major perspective issue that has been shoved down the throats of consumers for a while: That we are here to serve industry.
Of course, we all "know" that industry is here to serve us, but we've given them free reign. Industry (particularly the media, and other "celebrity" industries) is under the impression that we should pay what they think. This is because their previous leaders (the ones with intelligence) have brilliantly conditioned us as consumers to believe them!
Your quote says it all to me. For the love of God, Why should any consumer fall for the scam that if copyright is easy to violate, then all those great celebrities will just up and vanish? Brad Pitt is just going to go on strike until we as consumers realize that he deserves our cash for his hard work. Bullshit! If he stops working for us, we stop paying.
And not only that, we should be telling him how much he's worth! We should be making the prices! The cost of a movie should be decreasing, not increasing!
But we consumers don't see it like that anymore. We see the world thru those damn glasses they give out with Spy Kids 3D, and believe that if Brad stops working, we will be the ones lesser off for it.
The media's argument is far more effective than it should be. Consumers should realize the bullshit, and yet we cannot. We believe the media projections of the end of TV as we know it, in the same way that we have been trained to.
I'm not sure I see an end to this issue. Consumers will have to wake up to the whole system before noticing even the smallest of transgressions... and right now, we've been run so ragged that we can do nothing but absorb our daily hit of Friends re-runs.
- DaftShadow
... why Babelfish still is such an amazingly wonderful waste of time.
That's also what it seemed like to me when I read stuff. But I don't think it's that simple. With the cable modem you send your packets thru a neighborhood hub, which then goes to the company and out onto the web. With this system I don't understand how they could coordinate that, and it doesn't seem right to me anyhow. Would the system keep a listing of all people connected and then go thru the fastest route? Would it only use systems that are not sending or recieving data? For some reason I doubt that this setup would fly, especially due to the capacity for security problems. What if you were able to configure your system to catch all queries relayed thru your box? Personally, I can't wait to inform my buddy about this. He's 220 feet outside of the area that he might be able to get DSL to, and Pac Bell sucks. This has the potential to be great for a great many people. - DaftShadow
I don't trust a fair portion of the elected officials because, as the above election shows, we don't choose our officials. If choosing was as simple as having the guy down the street run for office, then I would. But to run for office requires an immense amount of money, a brilliant staff (in short supply, obviously), and all sorts of other things that are not available to just anyone. Besides that, the populace just picks along party lines anyway; which destroys chances for most independents, who I am only a little more likely to trust with my future.
I understand that many members of government are not bad at all, but this is just like saying that most people are not stupid. A Person isn't stupid, but people are crazy, fearful, paranoid, and all sorts of other things but intelligent.1
The US is not China, but we are far from having the type of government that should be "trusted" just because they are able to spin that we "elected" them.
- DaftShadow
1. TLJ-in-MIB
Suddenly, AOL has Red Hat and it all changes. For the geeks of the world, all of us /.'ers, running an AOL/OS is absolutely absurd. Yet, there's millions (millions of millions!) of people without a clue. AOL has 33 million users? They start pushing computer systems running their OS (33million person marketing base? wonderous). What happens?
Well, this: New computer buyers get systems with AOL/OS standard thru shopping on AOL. AOL/Time Warner is able to use their influence bringing entertainment to AOL/OS (while keeping it central to their version, and not running on other Linux setups). They won't phase out the geeks, that's impossible; but Linux will become synonymous with AOL because word-of-mouth is king, and user base is only slightly behind.
- DaftShadow
As the article said higher up, the smashing of cosmic rays into ozone has been known to create such an amount of energy at such a tiny level that an extremely unstable black hole can be created for an infinitesimal period of time. This object does not have close to enough energy to suck anything into it. Even if the black hole created was a bit larger than an atom, it couldn't do more than take in a few atoms before it expends the energy it has available and "fizzle[s] out".
The article also states that it is a decently rare experience that rays with enough pent-up energy arrive that a black hole can be created.
The attempt to generate these black holes ourselves is somewhat of a different matter, but not much. CERN originally got a lot of flak for attempting to do this, since a lot of uneducated people freaked out about the thought of a black hole being created. But, that has since died down because it was so long ago and, annoyingly, the average person is kinda forgetful :).
Now, onto the good stuff. The black holes that CERN is attempting to generate are the equivalent of those that the article talks about that the PAO is trying to detect. Why it won't hurt us is due to the nature of black holes and how they are created.
A black hole requires an immense amount of energy to be created on a grand scale. That's the reason that only the largest of giant stars will become black holes when nova. The more energy it has in it while in a black hole state, the greater stability is has (though it's likely excruciatingly chaotic, and that's another branch of really fun science :). The ones that will be created will only have a small amount of energy, so little in fact that they could not possibly stay in existence for long enough to do damage. More so, with every particle that is brought into the black hole it requires a specific amount of energy expended by the black hole to drag this particle in. This is, of course, the fun part because no one's quite sure what happens to this particle. Does it disappear from our dimension? Does it come back when the black hole dissipates? There's only one way to find out, and by using harmless black holes so small they cannot do any sort of damage (if it's really damage) to more than a few nearby atoms, we are extremely safe from the attempt.
Hope you find some solace in all that :)
- DaftShadow
But first, he'll do this: The fellow will take your insulting e-mail, find the little address you have attached, and plop it onto as many spam lists as he can find. So, he wakes up in the morning with one insulting letter and the good man gives you 100 messages a day about Free Horny Teens.
After you, sir...
- DaftShadow
It also gives a little philosophical enjoyment for those who care to take the useless things in life further than they ever should be. You can pile schemes a mile high, but the situation you're living in now isn't going to change.
-DaftShadow