While/. tends to attract those who consider themselves the enlightened 31337, the fact is that most of the Great Unwashed who use the internet tend either not to notice such tactics, or even welcome them.
I know people who primarily use email, for example, to send "e-greetings" cards, animated cute baby gifs, etc., from places like Spamford Wallace's PassThisOn and their ilk, which generates tons of spam for the sender AND the recipient. They LIKE getting stuff in their email, even if consists entirely of bad advertising.
In that light, and in the current state of human culture we live in where advertising is ubiquitous, I don't see this as causing too much of an outrage among normal users, especially since this smartlink stuff is not as noticeable upon first glance as, say, X10 pop-under ads.
We should all keep in mind this simple truth: NASA is dying.
You don't need to be Kreskin to predict NASA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: NASA faces a bleak future. Things are looking very bad for NASA. As many of us are already aware, NASA continues to lose friends. Blood flows like a river of red ink.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers:
Michael Hawes, deputy associate administrator for the space station, states that there are 7000 users of NASA. How many users of NASA are there? Let's see. The number of NASA projects versus NASA expenditure is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. NASA's inspector general office reported late last month that the space agency spent $97 million and 19 months, for example, on a propulsion module for the space station before determining the design was unacceptable. The project was canceled in March.
Make no mistake about it: NASA is on its last legs. It is ceasing to be. It will soon be an ex-agency.
Chairman Kaga is just the sort of campy, melodramatic character that Shatner has essentially made his entire post-"Trek" career on. It makes total sense.
Who gets to play the Oto and Fukui-san parts tho?
First Scientology revealed here, now Stonecutters?
on
The Business
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· Score: 2
Lots of campuses are disallowing access to Napster and other such bandwidth-sucking fare...can't help but wonder if GT is going to do that with this setup (or disallowing local networks, Beowulf clusters real or imagined, etc.)
Once something like this is in place, however, it seems like it would be easier to administrate (from a hardware/networking/cabling standpoint) than a traditional CAT5 or token ring kind of system. I doubt that the security of such a network would remain unbreached though, especially on a college campus...
Perhaps the big names like Dell and Gateway might be diminishing in importance, but the PC itself is probably not in any danger. More and more, folks are comfortable with the idea of having to open up their machine and replace/install stuff, and carry on. It's replaced the automobile as the thing people talk about repairing, or "souping up". People I thought would never even touch a computer are bragging to me about how much RAM, HD space, etc., they have. It's amazing.
While niche machines like Tivo are bound to proliferate, the PC itself has ensconced itself in enough homes now (especially in the US) that to write it off prematurely would not be wise.
The PHB's and People In Charge will be unaffected anyway, since they'll just go ahead with whatever "Solution" Microsoft forces on them, regardless of merit or test results. Even if this got a great deal of publicity, I don't see it changing anything on either the pro- or anti-MS sides, because both camps already have their mind made up (or had it made for them by the software licensing their company has agreed upon).
Plus, we've seen such reactions to benchmarking results from MS before, and it didn't really seem to affect their market share...
O'Shea has a bunch of Atari stuff--they bought all the remaining inventory when Atari sold out a few years back (see related Slashdot article). I'm sure they'll cut you a wholesale deal.
Used Video Games, Video Game Liquidators...many of these places also do auctions on eBay; often you can contact them directly and get better deals than you would get from bidding, but the auctions themselves are a good way to find the wholesalers and their websites/contact info. Good luck!
Agreed. Plus, lots of recordings themselves are deliberately lo-fi, in the age of using samples and bits from previous recordings a la Beck, Portishead, most hip-hop, etc. (Everclear has a song out called "AM Radio", for example, based entirely around an old scratchy vinyl sample of the old R&B song "Mr. Big Stuff".)
Since some of the audio quality has been extrapolated for artistic purposes before the work even enters the chain, it makes less of a difference in the final compressed MP3 file. I wholeheartedly agree with the poster above; I also feel that the way music is increasingly being made augments this process...
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Titanic and Linux in the movies
on
Linux in 3D
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· Score: 1
Remember when they used Linux for some of the FX in Titanic? And this article in LinuxPlanet discusses Linux in perspective with the history of computer-assisted special effects in the film industry--an interesting read.
The X-33 is actually a pretty cool little craft that would have proven extremely useful in NASA's future plans. (The X33 site still features a very positive status report regarding the engine testing mentioned in the article, and no mention of the program's termination...yet.)
One happy byproduct of the current US administration, I had hoped, would be that NASA would gain a bit more funding--if for no other reasons than new technology development for defense/military concerns. From the few actions we have seen regarding the US space program so far, however (not to mention the problems eternally plaguing the deployment of the ISS), it looks like the hope many of us harbor for a renewed push toward deeper and more pervasive space exploration will have to wait awhile. Again.
Interesting question you pose about benefit, and motive. Who knows? Maybe they were just convenient scapegoats, or perhaps someone higher up had a vendetta thing going on. Hehehe, maybe it was retaliation by the govt for harboring Microsoft's World HQ;)
(I wasn't in Seattle for the festivities, but a few close friends were...some of which are referenced by my.sig...)
heh. Perhaps they weren't really "our more radical elements"...it is common for agents provocateur, "strike breakers", and fun disinfo stuff like the Black Panther Coloring Book to be utilized in discrediting any dissent of the status quo. Many believe that the violence during the WTO event falls along similar lines.
As the Prophet spoke: "Go back to bed America, your government is in control."
The increasing use of military force right here in America lends weight to the idea that "non-lethal weaponry" is being deployed more as a domestic deterrent rather than as true war weaponry for use against other countries. Obviously they don't want to kill American citizens if they don't have to, but a zap from something like this would, apparently, be acceptable to the People In Charge...
Slashdot Mirror
fp
fp
I know people who primarily use email, for example, to send "e-greetings" cards, animated cute baby gifs, etc., from places like Spamford Wallace's PassThisOn and their ilk, which generates tons of spam for the sender AND the recipient. They LIKE getting stuff in their email, even if consists entirely of bad advertising.
In that light, and in the current state of human culture we live in where advertising is ubiquitous, I don't see this as causing too much of an outrage among normal users, especially since this smartlink stuff is not as noticeable upon first glance as, say, X10 pop-under ads.
You don't need to be Kreskin to predict NASA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: NASA faces a bleak future. Things are looking very bad for NASA. As many of us are already aware, NASA continues to lose friends. Blood flows like a river of red ink.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers:
Michael Hawes, deputy associate administrator for the space station, states that there are 7000 users of NASA. How many users of NASA are there? Let's see. The number of NASA projects versus NASA expenditure is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. NASA's inspector general office reported late last month that the space agency spent $97 million and 19 months, for example, on a propulsion module for the space station before determining the design was unacceptable. The project was canceled in March.
Make no mistake about it: NASA is on its last legs. It is ceasing to be. It will soon be an ex-agency.
"Canyonero! Canyonero!"
Who gets to play the Oto and Fukui-san parts tho?
Who made Steve Guttenberg a star?"
Eleven.
Eleven?
It's not even funny. It's ridiculous.
Gordon Moore has hit the maximum age of employment at Intel. As of May, he'll only be an honorary employee.
And then the Sandmen come to take him to Carousel.
fp
Once something like this is in place, however, it seems like it would be easier to administrate (from a hardware/networking/cabling standpoint) than a traditional CAT5 or token ring kind of system. I doubt that the security of such a network would remain unbreached though, especially on a college campus...
__
Perhaps the big names like Dell and Gateway might be diminishing in importance, but the PC itself is probably not in any danger. More and more, folks are comfortable with the idea of having to open up their machine and replace/install stuff, and carry on. It's replaced the automobile as the thing people talk about repairing, or "souping up". People I thought would never even touch a computer are bragging to me about how much RAM, HD space, etc., they have. It's amazing.
While niche machines like Tivo are bound to proliferate, the PC itself has ensconced itself in enough homes now (especially in the US) that to write it off prematurely would not be wise.
_
The PHB's and People In Charge will be unaffected anyway, since they'll just go ahead with whatever "Solution" Microsoft forces on them, regardless of merit or test results. Even if this got a great deal of publicity, I don't see it changing anything on either the pro- or anti-MS sides, because both camps already have their mind made up (or had it made for them by the software licensing their company has agreed upon).
Plus, we've seen such reactions to benchmarking results from MS before, and it didn't really seem to affect their market share...
O'Shea has a bunch of Atari stuff--they bought all the remaining inventory when Atari sold out a few years back (see related Slashdot article). I'm sure they'll cut you a wholesale deal.
Used Video Games, Video Game Liquidators...many of these places also do auctions on eBay; often you can contact them directly and get better deals than you would get from bidding, but the auctions themselves are a good way to find the wholesalers and their websites/contact info. Good luck!
__
Agreed. Plus, lots of recordings themselves are deliberately lo-fi, in the age of using samples and bits from previous recordings a la Beck, Portishead, most hip-hop, etc. (Everclear has a song out called "AM Radio", for example, based entirely around an old scratchy vinyl sample of the old R&B song "Mr. Big Stuff".)
Since some of the audio quality has been extrapolated for artistic purposes before the work even enters the chain, it makes less of a difference in the final compressed MP3 file. I wholeheartedly agree with the poster above; I also feel that the way music is increasingly being made augments this process...
__
Remember when they used Linux for some of the FX in Titanic? And this article in LinuxPlanet discusses Linux in perspective with the history of computer-assisted special effects in the film industry--an interesting read.
The X-33 is actually a pretty cool little craft that would have proven extremely useful in NASA's future plans. (The X33 site still features a very positive status report regarding the engine testing mentioned in the article, and no mention of the program's termination...yet.)
One happy byproduct of the current US administration, I had hoped, would be that NASA would gain a bit more funding--if for no other reasons than new technology development for defense/military concerns. From the few actions we have seen regarding the US space program so far, however (not to mention the problems eternally plaguing the deployment of the ISS), it looks like the hope many of us harbor for a renewed push toward deeper and more pervasive space exploration will have to wait awhile. Again.
Interesting question you pose about benefit, and motive. Who knows? Maybe they were just convenient scapegoats, or perhaps someone higher up had a vendetta thing going on. Hehehe, maybe it was retaliation by the govt for harboring Microsoft's World HQ ;)
.sig...)
(I wasn't in Seattle for the festivities, but a few close friends were...some of which are referenced by my
__
heh. Perhaps they weren't really "our more radical elements"...it is common for agents provocateur, "strike breakers", and fun disinfo stuff like the Black Panther Coloring Book to be utilized in discrediting any dissent of the status quo. Many believe that the violence during the WTO event falls along similar lines.
As the Prophet spoke: "Go back to bed America, your government is in control."
Recently there have been lots of "anti-terrorist" domestic military exercises taking place in major US cities, as well as the escalating usage of military weapons/personnel against protest efforts by peaceful American citizens during events such as the WTO conference recently in Seattle, constituting possible violations against the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
The increasing use of military force right here in America lends weight to the idea that "non-lethal weaponry" is being deployed more as a domestic deterrent rather than as true war weaponry for use against other countries. Obviously they don't want to kill American citizens if they don't have to, but a zap from something like this would, apparently, be acceptable to the People In Charge...
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