As I think more about it, it's very strange to me that this story was posted on Tuesday. As in troll Tuesday.
What if there's a grand conspiracy involving Slashdot, the trolls, and a higher level of consciousness related to both?! What if the war between them is simply a stage on which to act out and therefore express the human tendency to resist authority, and, as such, to sanction it?!
Yeah, I like the Eagle. I made a version where the nose section can undock and land. You can find it at www.mciann.com/orbiter. It's Eagle version 1.02.
I've had a TiVo for some time now, and, like other PVR owners, I've really become a fanatic.
I love fast forwarding during commercials, but I've noticed that I am generally inconsistent in doing so. If the commercial is entertaining enough, I'll forget to fast forward. Inevitably, however, I hit a used car ad or something like that which will remind me that I don't have to watch that tripe. To me, this window of opportunity on the part of advertisers is fair game. If they can make an ad so that it will not annoy me, then they'll get a viewer. (Hell, I've even rewinded particularly cool ads to deliberately look at them) I can see the fairness, therefore, in requiring human decision to fast forward or skip the ad.
Advertisers will have to worry about the quality of their content (hear that, you scum sucking telephone company bastards!?), and they will need to worry about the quality of other ads played nearby in their time slot. If your funny beer ad comes after Crazy Joe's backyard 0% financing pickup truck extravanganza, then you are going to be a high speed blur on my TV set. Repetition will also become meaningless, as I will just zap through the five hundred thousanth iteration of your Windows training CD ad.
If you are an advertiser and this annoys you, remember this. Before TiVo I simply didn't watch TV. I am watching reruns of old shows now because I couldn't deal with ads in realtime. Persuading me not to push the fast-foward button is your only chance of selling me something. It's either that or the power switch.
Really? Why? Have you ever watched NASA-TV? It's incredibly boring and tedious. Why would you want that? Why would you want to be one of the 20 that sit in mission control and monitor telemetry. There's no science. Nothing new. Nothing exciting.
Orbiter does have time acceleration, and most sim-missions have only a handful of people involved. The real fun comes in when something goes wrong. In fact, most of the really fun missions start with that premise - e.g. - we have to rendezvous and dock with a disabled Soyuz module in 48 hours or the crew is dead. Getting the launch window right, and doing all of the necessary orbital maneuvering in time is actually rather challenging, to say nothing of the task of launching efficiently and getting into the right parking orbit. It takes an Orbiter noob some time before they get a fictional ship into orbit, and quite a bit longer before they get their first historical ship into space without crashing back into the sea/siberia.
One of the most fun missions I had was a simulation of the Voyager flight (I took Voyager 2's path), using some of the more advanced navigation tools to set up the gravity assists.
Well, while I think you make a very good point (particularly in regard to the FCC not being an authority to levy taxes) your reference to "taxation without representation" is taken out of context.
Not at all. The FCC is an appointed agency. Its members are not elected. Therefore, the fundamental concept of direct accountability of the government to those who are taxed (which came about as a result of the British Stamp Act, among others, and the body in question was the British Parliament) is broken.
Only this. Taxation without representation. These taxes are not approved by Congress. They are determined and levied under the sole authority of the FCC. That is why they are referred to as a "stealth tax".
Furthermore, as I managed the implementation project for a major municipality's E-rate project, I can tell you that the 55% in question breaks down as follows:
80% - graft and corruption
20% - absurdly overbid and overdesigned networking gear, computers, and WAN circuits.
All this was done "for the children". Within months of implementation, the system collapsed because of the lack of a maintenance staff. The function of the project was immaterial. Once paid for, it had accomplished what the politicians wanted it to do.
E-rate, like all gubmint programs I've ever known anything about, is a social edifice whose purpose it is to make money disappear into political payola and dirty back room deals. Yet another example of how it isn't the type of government that gets you, but its size.
Before we continue to crucify programmers, we need to remember how hard it is to really get to Mars, from a purely spacefaring perspective.
From my experiences flying to Mars in Orbiter space flight simulator (FREE!), several problems become apparent:
Mars is a fantastically difficult target to reach for two main reasons. It has very little gravity, and very little atmosphere.
If you shoot for something big, like Jupiter, you find that it is hard not to miss it. It's gravity well is so massive that navigational errors en route are relatively insignificant. Mars doesn't help you very much in this regard. An Earth to Mars flight has to be dead on.
When you get there, you are likely going to want to use the atmosphere to do at least part of the braking maneuver to get into Mars orbit (as most modern probes do). The problem is that Mars has a very thin atmosphere. Think about the sheet of paper analogies with Earth re-entry. Earth's atmosphere goes MUCH farther into space than does Mars'. You have to get dangerously close to the surface (within 50 miles) to effectively aerobrake using Mars' atmosphere. So with Mars, you are more talking about a near-ephemeral gossamer thin 1 cell thick membrane you have to hit the edge of rather than a nice, thick piece of paper.
I am usually not a spelling Nazi, but dammit, man! How could you misspell proud!? I mean, Jesus, the w is on the other side of the keyboard! You actually had to think "W"!
Whether or not SCO wins, this will be a wakeup call. Before accepting GNU tools for use in the business, managers are now going to be asking, "how can we be certain that this code is legit?" It is a very valid question.
Yes, because commercial organizations always do everything above board and never engage in lawsuits against each other.
Or is the solution simply to buy products from the company that has bought the most judges lately?
Re: Communism just makes me sick to my stomach
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Mod parent up. Even though I hate his sig.
Open source software represents freedom - as perhaps nothing else in human experience. It IS the freedom of speech in the modern world. While I don't fault the original poster for making a comparison between Linux and communism, I am compelled to point out the weaknesses of that comparison.
The real problem with communism is that it is an answer to a question that nobody is asking. The question for humanity, now and always, is, "How can we be free from opression and tyranny?" communism, however, answers this question: "What governmental system prevents opression and tyranny?" This is the same question Capitalism answers, which is why my sig does not contradict this post. The problem is not the style of the governmental system, but its scope. Any governmental system, if given enough power, will result in opression and tyranny, regardless of how that power is applied.
I came to this realization when discussing the American form of government. We (Americans) like to believe that America brought democracy to the world, and that it was this form of government that sparked a worldwide revolution for freedom. The problem is that democracy was nothing new. Just ask the Greeks, or the English, whose history demonstrates that they were already well on track for the same conclusion when we parted way. There was nothing unique about the structure and form of the American government. The only truly unique (if tragically ephemeral) thing about the American government was the extent to which that government was limited. It was that limitation that brought the really good things about America to be, and that is the only legacy of which Americans can take pride in giving the world.
The reality is that no one, capitalists nor communists, really want freedom. From where we sit in the USA, it is very easy to see Linux as a champion for the common man in a world dominated by evil giant business interests. On the other side of the world, however, from behind the great firewall of china, things look quite differently. No one in power, no matter what color uniforms their stormtroopers wear, wants us to have the freedom Linux represents.
I think that it is important to remember that freedom does not derive from how well thought out your government is. Freedom does not come from government. The two are fundamentally and forever opposed.
Those users are a losing proposition for the ISP, and they won't be missed when they leave!
I'm sure its inconvient to oversubscribe your bandwidth, sell imaginary bandwidth to your customers, and then face the prospect of one or two of them actually using that bandwidth. If doing business fairly is what you describe as a losing proposition, then I think I need to place a call to my representatives, the FTC, and the BBB to have rip off artists such as yourself closed down.
Well, if you are in UDP land anyway, you are either in a place where you don't really care about trying to retransmit lost packets (VOIP, streaming media), or you are in a place where you are going to implement connection-orientedness in a higher layer protocol. The "fast TCP" protocol, as it is described, seems to represent the practice of determining the maximum impact energy a 5 lb sledgehammer can exert against an egg, then swinging away madly, hoping the egg sustains every single impact.
If the purpose of using TCP is to deceive the owners of routing infrastructure as to the nature of the packets, then it is, of course, evil terrorism.
They bring an appreciation for nature that is sorely missing in our society.
No doubt, man. If someone is an avid geocacher or mountain biker, they'll know (and love) the area in question when it goes up to get rezoned for a golf course. A little flexibility on the part of environmentalists, and you've turned apathy into activism without any real effort.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about Walgreens, but Walmart has a long history of pulling crap like that.
Man, don't get me started. I worked there about 10 years ago, and they really did lock the doors and force you to work off the clock.
If you act like a doormat, don't be too surprised when someone wipes his boots on you.
I'm pleased to hear that the recession hasn't hit wherever you live.
As I think more about it, it's very strange to me that this story was posted on Tuesday. As in troll Tuesday.
What if there's a grand conspiracy involving Slashdot, the trolls, and a higher level of consciousness related to both?! What if the war between them is simply a stage on which to act out and therefore express the human tendency to resist authority, and, as such, to sanction it?!
Oh, the horror! The agonizing, cold truth!
...
Ok, which door was it again?
A Beowulf cluster of resurgent troll jokes.
Yeah, I like the Eagle. I made a version where the nose section can undock and land. You can find it at www.mciann.com/orbiter. It's Eagle version 1.02.
I've had a TiVo for some time now, and, like other PVR owners, I've really become a fanatic.
I love fast forwarding during commercials, but I've noticed that I am generally inconsistent in doing so. If the commercial is entertaining enough, I'll forget to fast forward. Inevitably, however, I hit a used car ad or something like that which will remind me that I don't have to watch that tripe. To me, this window of opportunity on the part of advertisers is fair game. If they can make an ad so that it will not annoy me, then they'll get a viewer. (Hell, I've even rewinded particularly cool ads to deliberately look at them) I can see the fairness, therefore, in requiring human decision to fast forward or skip the ad.
Advertisers will have to worry about the quality of their content (hear that, you scum sucking telephone company bastards!?), and they will need to worry about the quality of other ads played nearby in their time slot. If your funny beer ad comes after Crazy Joe's backyard 0% financing pickup truck extravanganza, then you are going to be a high speed blur on my TV set. Repetition will also become meaningless, as I will just zap through the five hundred thousanth iteration of your Windows training CD ad.
If you are an advertiser and this annoys you, remember this. Before TiVo I simply didn't watch TV. I am watching reruns of old shows now because I couldn't deal with ads in realtime. Persuading me not to push the fast-foward button is your only chance of selling me something. It's either that or the power switch.
The FCC was created by Congress, dufus. The FCC is therefore accountable to Congress.
Genius, pure genius. The next time I see an anonymous coward on fire, I'll throw water on his mother.
So, cellphones are out, but magic magnetic health bracelets are OK. Got it.
Really? Why? Have you ever watched NASA-TV? It's incredibly boring and tedious. Why would you want that? Why would you want to be one of the 20 that sit in mission control and monitor telemetry. There's no science. Nothing new. Nothing exciting.
Orbiter does have time acceleration, and most sim-missions have only a handful of people involved. The real fun comes in when something goes wrong. In fact, most of the really fun missions start with that premise - e.g. - we have to rendezvous and dock with a disabled Soyuz module in 48 hours or the crew is dead. Getting the launch window right, and doing all of the necessary orbital maneuvering in time is actually rather challenging, to say nothing of the task of launching efficiently and getting into the right parking orbit. It takes an Orbiter noob some time before they get a fictional ship into orbit, and quite a bit longer before they get their first historical ship into space without crashing back into the sea/siberia.
One of the most fun missions I had was a simulation of the Voyager flight (I took Voyager 2's path), using some of the more advanced navigation tools to set up the gravity assists.
Well, while I think you make a very good point (particularly in regard to the FCC not being an authority to levy taxes) your reference to "taxation without representation" is taken out of context.
Not at all. The FCC is an appointed agency. Its members are not elected. Therefore, the fundamental concept of direct accountability of the government to those who are taxed (which came about as a result of the British Stamp Act, among others, and the body in question was the British Parliament) is broken.
Now, what was that you were about to say?
Only this. Taxation without representation. These taxes are not approved by Congress. They are determined and levied under the sole authority of the FCC. That is why they are referred to as a "stealth tax".
Furthermore, as I managed the implementation project for a major municipality's E-rate project, I can tell you that the 55% in question breaks down as follows:
All this was done "for the children". Within months of implementation, the system collapsed because of the lack of a maintenance staff. The function of the project was immaterial. Once paid for, it had accomplished what the politicians wanted it to do.
E-rate, like all gubmint programs I've ever known anything about, is a social edifice whose purpose it is to make money disappear into political payola and dirty back room deals. Yet another example of how it isn't the type of government that gets you, but its size.
Before we continue to crucify programmers, we need to remember how hard it is to really get to Mars, from a purely spacefaring perspective.
From my experiences flying to Mars in Orbiter space flight simulator (FREE!), several problems become apparent:
Mars is a fantastically difficult target to reach for two main reasons. It has very little gravity, and very little atmosphere.
If you shoot for something big, like Jupiter, you find that it is hard not to miss it. It's gravity well is so massive that navigational errors en route are relatively insignificant. Mars doesn't help you very much in this regard. An Earth to Mars flight has to be dead on.
When you get there, you are likely going to want to use the atmosphere to do at least part of the braking maneuver to get into Mars orbit (as most modern probes do). The problem is that Mars has a very thin atmosphere. Think about the sheet of paper analogies with Earth re-entry. Earth's atmosphere goes MUCH farther into space than does Mars'. You have to get dangerously close to the surface (within 50 miles) to effectively aerobrake using Mars' atmosphere. So with Mars, you are more talking about a near-ephemeral gossamer thin 1 cell thick membrane you have to hit the edge of rather than a nice, thick piece of paper.
Very few articles make me angry. This one did.
Where the fuck have you been lately?
It can be difficult to fight "the man" but patience and determinism will pay off in the long run.
Surely you mean determination. I'd hardly advise being fatalistic when facing "the man".
I am usually not a spelling Nazi, but dammit, man! How could you misspell proud!? I mean, Jesus, the w is on the other side of the keyboard! You actually had to think "W"!
Whether or not SCO wins, this will be a wakeup call. Before accepting GNU tools for use in the business, managers are now going to be asking, "how can we be certain that this code is legit?" It is a very valid question.
Yes, because commercial organizations always do everything above board and never engage in lawsuits against each other.
Or is the solution simply to buy products from the company that has bought the most judges lately?
Mod parent up. Even though I hate his sig.
Open source software represents freedom - as perhaps nothing else in human experience. It IS the freedom of speech in the modern world. While I don't fault the original poster for making a comparison between Linux and communism, I am compelled to point out the weaknesses of that comparison.
The real problem with communism is that it is an answer to a question that nobody is asking. The question for humanity, now and always, is, "How can we be free from opression and tyranny?" communism, however, answers this question: "What governmental system prevents opression and tyranny?" This is the same question Capitalism answers, which is why my sig does not contradict this post. The problem is not the style of the governmental system, but its scope. Any governmental system, if given enough power, will result in opression and tyranny, regardless of how that power is applied.
I came to this realization when discussing the American form of government. We (Americans) like to believe that America brought democracy to the world, and that it was this form of government that sparked a worldwide revolution for freedom. The problem is that democracy was nothing new. Just ask the Greeks, or the English, whose history demonstrates that they were already well on track for the same conclusion when we parted way. There was nothing unique about the structure and form of the American government. The only truly unique (if tragically ephemeral) thing about the American government was the extent to which that government was limited. It was that limitation that brought the really good things about America to be, and that is the only legacy of which Americans can take pride in giving the world.
The reality is that no one, capitalists nor communists, really want freedom. From where we sit in the USA, it is very easy to see Linux as a champion for the common man in a world dominated by evil giant business interests. On the other side of the world, however, from behind the great firewall of china, things look quite differently. No one in power, no matter what color uniforms their stormtroopers wear, wants us to have the freedom Linux represents.
I think that it is important to remember that freedom does not derive from how well thought out your government is. Freedom does not come from government. The two are fundamentally and forever opposed.
But she's a Comm major!
It bears importantly on the discussion. See if you can figure out why.
Those users are a losing proposition for the ISP, and they won't be missed when they leave!
I'm sure its inconvient to oversubscribe your bandwidth, sell imaginary bandwidth to your customers, and then face the prospect of one or two of them actually using that bandwidth. If doing business fairly is what you describe as a losing proposition, then I think I need to place a call to my representatives, the FTC, and the BBB to have rip off artists such as yourself closed down.
The shuttle was still in the atmosphere. Drive down the road at 60 mph and throw styrofoam peanuts out your car window for a demonstration.
My shelf came from Home Depot.
...Later that day...
"Hi, welcome to Home Depot, can I help you find anything?"
Uh, yeah, I'm looking for supersonic home organization solutions. Do you have anything with rounded toe edge boards?
Well, if you are in UDP land anyway, you are either in a place where you don't really care about trying to retransmit lost packets (VOIP, streaming media), or you are in a place where you are going to implement connection-orientedness in a higher layer protocol. The "fast TCP" protocol, as it is described, seems to represent the practice of determining the maximum impact energy a 5 lb sledgehammer can exert against an egg, then swinging away madly, hoping the egg sustains every single impact.
If the purpose of using TCP is to deceive the owners of routing infrastructure as to the nature of the packets, then it is, of course, evil terrorism.
I'm pretty sure this is a standard in TCP/IP.
You are exactly right. The one thing that really has me scratching my head is - if you're going to simply belch traffic, why not go UDP?
They bring an appreciation for nature that is sorely missing in our society.
No doubt, man. If someone is an avid geocacher or mountain biker, they'll know (and love) the area in question when it goes up to get rezoned for a golf course. A little flexibility on the part of environmentalists, and you've turned apathy into activism without any real effort.