but I have the original ENIAC set up in an old warehouse outside of town. I need six full-time employees just to change the vacuum tubes as they burn out. I use the ENIAC to do ballistics calculations for my bottle-rocket fights with the neighbors across the street.
Okay, lemme get this straight... it's a story about a hobbit who has to throw the One Ring of Power into Mount Doom to save Middle Earth from the Dark Lord Sauron. It starts off with Bilbo Baggins leaving the Shire and walking off on a long journey. Then Frodo & Company walk to Bree, after which Aragorn joins them and they walk to Rivendell. Then Legolas, Gandalf and Gimli join them and they set off walking toward the Misty Mountains... you get the idea. Our way of appreciating this epic of walking is to sit for ten hours straight. Maybe I'll walk to the theater.
Here's my idea for the Slashdotter's Horoscope:
Aries: You will get First Post today!
Taurus: You will receive a visit from the "goatse guy."
Gemini: You Fail It!
Cancer: You will read a story about the SCO lawsuit today.
Leo: Today you will finish your transformation of an old vacuum cleaner into a computer case.
Virgo: Today your boss will catch you reading/. while you're supposed to be working.
Libra: You will be asked to Meta-Moderate.
Scorpio: Someone will tell you that, despite your best efforts, BSD is dying.
Sagittarius: Your sig will mysteriously be left off your post on/. today.
Capricorn: What you thought was a witty comment will receive -1, Troll.
Aquarius: A site that you try to visit after reading about on/. will ironically be slashdotted.
Pisces: Your post on/. will unfortunately have an instance of "teh" in place of "the" because you didn't hit the preview button.
Remember "Mr. Fusion" from the end of "Back to the Future?" And the flying skateboards and weather control from another one of those movies? On the other hand, when I told my dad (a retired programmer, sorry, "software engineer") how much disk space I have on my computer, he just shook his head.
Journalists really ought to at least try and understand their subject matter before committing their thoughts to be distributed to the general public. They have a duty of responsibility to ensure that data of limited significance is not represented as some twisted interpretation of a coming apocalypse.
You have got to be kidding me. They would all be out of jobs. News outlets would lose millions of viewers/readers if they only covered things that were known to be important, true, and not salacious.
This is my guess about what the thinking might be. Let's say you have a large organization with lots of desktop machines. You're going to have employees of different levels of ability, and who adjust to change with different levels of ease. It's a good bet that the people in the IT department will adapt more quickly to a Linux migration than most of the other departments. You'll probably have people at about every level of the company who will adjust to the Linux migration more easily if they can keep using Word, if only for a while. That's where things like Crossover Office and AclereX come in. It's sort of a question of weaning, as opposed to going cold turkey.
You couldn't think of anything better to quote than Star Trek II? Perhaps to quote a television show: "It was the best one of those movies." How about quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was quoting the Bhagavad Gita, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer said this in full knowledge of the horrific potential of the atomic bomb; he was working for the military (well, really the U.S. Government), but was hardly their pawn. I think it is dangerous to make sweeping generalizations about the ethics of either scientists or government people.
I would say the chances are that even after the incandescent bulb is replaced, the new LED thingy will screw into a (now) standard light bulb socket, just so that people won't have to buy all new lamps and rewire their houses in order to use them. Also, I would be willing to bet real money that the LED replacement for a lightbulb will be called a "lightbulb" by a lot of people for a long time to come. Have you ever heard anybody call a refrigerator an "icebox?"
From the Samba Team's release:
"In light of this it is the depths of hypocrisy that at the same event SCO also announced the incorporation of the Samba3 release into their latest OpenServer product."
If I had written this, I would have changed "depths of hypocrisy" to "heights of being stupid, clueless dipshits." It's not as eloquent, but that's what SCO's actions seem like to me.
Every time there's a new SCO story, SCO seems less like a band of evil, litigious hypocrites, and more like a bunch of confused, hallucinating acidheads.
IANASE (I Am Not A Scientist Either) but IIRC there is a theory which predicts that there are some stable trans-uranic elements beyond the unstable ones which we've already discovered. These would also be non-naturally-occurring (since they would have to be produced in a lab) but wouldn't decay in a picosecond or whatever. I didn't get this from Star Trek, I swear.
I am sure that most websites would grant this protection, but it begs the question...
It doesn't "beg the question," it raises the question. "Begging the question," also known by its Latin name petitio principii is the logical fallacy in which you include in your argument the conclusion you are trying to prove. Here's an example: "It says in the Bible that God exists. Since the Bible is God's word, and God never speaks falsely, then everything in the Bible must be true. So, God must exist." Really. Look it up. I know that many people use the expression "to beg the question" when they mean "to raise the question," but it would it's a shame that we've lost track of this often-used logical fallacy.
"What the hell are you talking about!?!" - Homer Simpson
T4: The Terminator Returns Again
T5: The Terminator & Robin
T6: The Terminator vs. Mothra
T7: The Attack of the Clone Robots
T8: Abbott & Costello & The Terminator Go To Mars
T9: Terminator Resurrection
T10: Star Trek: Nemesis
T11: The Terminator Has A Fistfull of Dollars
T12: The Terminator Goes To The Grand Canyon With The Brady Bunch
Here's my prediction of what will happen. First, a number of corporations will make a lot of money from space exploration/tourism and other commercial development (mining the asteroids, etc.). Then, Zefram Cochrane will become outraged that space is only for the rich, and found two things: 1) The SNN (SNN's Not NASA) project and the FSF (the Free Space Foundation). The goal of SNN will be to develop a free replacement for the expensive commercial spacecraft. SNN will tinker around for half a decade or so developing the cockpit, zero-g toilets, a chassis, but no actual engine to put the thing in orbit. Then a guy named Larry Finn will come along and design an engine, which he will whimsically name Larynx. Then a whole bunch of other people will realise that between the SNN stuff and the Larynx engine, you can build a complete working spacecraft. A bunch of professionals, hobbyists, and enthusiasts will build their own "Larynx" spacecraft, and suddenly space will be free for everybody. After that, just about everbody will be happy, except for 1) The commercial space interests, who see a threat to their profits, and 2) Zefram Cochrane, who will be outraged that everybody is calling the new spacecraft "Larynx" systems, and not SNN/Larynx. By the way, it's pronounced Suh-NN.
No offense, but Yes Safari would exist. The Engineers just chose not to use Gecko and also not to develop their own, in-house trying to add to a project that already invented the wheel.
This is not a flame, I just thought something in the above looked really funny. It reads "The Engineers," so I'm wondering, "Who are "The Engineers," that they get a capital letter? Is it a band? Are they gods? Is this a reference to "The Ringworld Engineers?" And then I thought, "Oh, it means the engineers who coded the Safari web browser. What a letdown."
Who cares? I've been playing video games since I was a fetus! My mom had Pong implanted in her uterus! And that was back when video games were hard! Not like now - you kids got it easy! You have 3D graphics, but in my day your guy was just a little square with no name or nothing! And the screens just kept getting harder and harder until you died! Just like life!
Yes, I think you're quite right. In the 60s he might have been a hippy living in a commune. Now we'll have to wait a few decades to see if he morphs into a minivan driving suburbanite soccer dad who tells long, pointless, nostalgic stories about this decade when he used to spend all his time fragging instead of working. "Ah, the good old days..."
I'm not surprised that NIC died, since "network computers" never made a whole lot of sense to me anyway. For some years now, PCs have been cheap enough that most people who want or need one can afford one. Sure, a lot of people use their computers mostly for e-mail and browsing the web, but what do you do if you only have one of these pared down machines and you want to, for example, edit a photograph? It's like having a moped (scooter, motorino, whatever): it's only really useful if you already have a car, or if you only ever go two or three streets over (I'm talking about in the U.S. here... European countries, that's a different story). Anyway, this should be a lesson to all of us: when somebody says that the "next big thing" is going to be a crippled version of what we already have, don't believe it.
Heinlein, Stephenson, Herbert, Morehouse
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 1
Heinlein's books are dated now, but the guy was definitely ahead of his time:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Time Enough for Love
The Number of the Beast
I know it's already been mentioned, but 'Cryptonomicon' is a double- maybe triple-read. 'The Diamond Age' is also good.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned these, but the 'Dune' series is interesting as the story of a society which has completely eradicated computers (the Butlerian Jihad) - Herbert did some interesting things with how such a society would have to compensate (mentats - the human computers).
For something different and new, you might want to check out Lyda Morehouse's books: Archangel Protocol, Fallen Host, and the upcoming Messiah Node for an interesting mix of postcyberpunk, action, and religion (very well researched).
Think of the WWW as a huge, unedited encyclopedia that also includes porn, gambling, urban myths, lies, scams, the goatse guy, rants, conspiracy theories... you get the idea. Now, let's say you go to the ATI website to download the updated drivers for your video card. Are you going to read the whole website? Hell, NO! You're only going to read what you absolutely have to to get the drivers. That people don't read everything on every site they visit is a sign of selectivity, nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
but I have the original ENIAC set up in an old warehouse outside of town. I need six full-time employees just to change the vacuum tubes as they burn out. I use the ENIAC to do ballistics calculations for my bottle-rocket fights with the neighbors across the street.
Okay, lemme get this straight ... it's a story about a hobbit who has to throw the One Ring of Power into Mount Doom to save Middle Earth from the Dark Lord Sauron. It starts off with Bilbo Baggins leaving the Shire and walking off on a long journey. Then Frodo & Company walk to Bree, after which Aragorn joins them and they walk to Rivendell. Then Legolas, Gandalf and Gimli join them and they set off walking toward the Misty Mountains ... you get the idea. Our way of appreciating this epic of walking is to sit for ten hours straight. Maybe I'll walk to the theater.
Here's my idea for the Slashdotter's Horoscope: /. while you're supposed to be working. /. today. /. will ironically be slashdotted. /. will unfortunately have an instance of "teh" in place of "the" because you didn't hit the preview button.
Aries: You will get First Post today!
Taurus: You will receive a visit from the "goatse guy."
Gemini: You Fail It!
Cancer: You will read a story about the SCO lawsuit today.
Leo: Today you will finish your transformation of an old vacuum cleaner into a computer case.
Virgo: Today your boss will catch you reading
Libra: You will be asked to Meta-Moderate.
Scorpio: Someone will tell you that, despite your best efforts, BSD is dying.
Sagittarius: Your sig will mysteriously be left off your post on
Capricorn: What you thought was a witty comment will receive -1, Troll.
Aquarius: A site that you try to visit after reading about on
Pisces: Your post on
The Rise of the Machines ... cute little machine puppies! John Connor had better board over that "doggie-door" on his front door.
Remember "Mr. Fusion" from the end of "Back to the Future?" And the flying skateboards and weather control from another one of those movies? On the other hand, when I told my dad (a retired programmer, sorry, "software engineer") how much disk space I have on my computer, he just shook his head.
What are you on? Can I get some?
/. lately?
It's called "crack." Or haven't you been reading
"These broad lances--they are coming into fashion." -Atli Admondson, upon being stabbed
Journalists really ought to at least try and understand their subject matter before committing their thoughts to be distributed to the general public. They have a duty of responsibility to ensure that data of limited significance is not represented as some twisted interpretation of a coming apocalypse.
You have got to be kidding me. They would all be out of jobs. News outlets would lose millions of viewers/readers if they only covered things that were known to be important, true, and not salacious.
This is my guess about what the thinking might be. Let's say you have a large organization with lots of desktop machines. You're going to have employees of different levels of ability, and who adjust to change with different levels of ease. It's a good bet that the people in the IT department will adapt more quickly to a Linux migration than most of the other departments. You'll probably have people at about every level of the company who will adjust to the Linux migration more easily if they can keep using Word, if only for a while. That's where things like Crossover Office and AclereX come in. It's sort of a question of weaning, as opposed to going cold turkey.
You couldn't think of anything better to quote than Star Trek II? Perhaps to quote a television show: "It was the best one of those movies." How about quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was quoting the Bhagavad Gita, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer said this in full knowledge of the horrific potential of the atomic bomb; he was working for the military (well, really the U.S. Government), but was hardly their pawn. I think it is dangerous to make sweeping generalizations about the ethics of either scientists or government people.
I would say the chances are that even after the incandescent bulb is replaced, the new LED thingy will screw into a (now) standard light bulb socket, just so that people won't have to buy all new lamps and rewire their houses in order to use them. Also, I would be willing to bet real money that the LED replacement for a lightbulb will be called a "lightbulb" by a lot of people for a long time to come. Have you ever heard anybody call a refrigerator an "icebox?"
When they sell all three movies together on DVD, I want them to throw in not just a map and some other extras, but an actual Ring of Power.
From the Samba Team's release:
"In light of this it is the depths of hypocrisy that at the same event SCO also announced the incorporation of the Samba3 release into their latest OpenServer product."
If I had written this, I would have changed "depths of hypocrisy" to "heights of being stupid, clueless dipshits." It's not as eloquent, but that's what SCO's actions seem like to me.
Every time there's a new SCO story, SCO seems less like a band of evil, litigious hypocrites, and more like a bunch of confused, hallucinating acidheads.
IANAL either, but are there any lawyers at all here? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?
IANASE (I Am Not A Scientist Either) but IIRC there is a theory which predicts that there are some stable trans-uranic elements beyond the unstable ones which we've already discovered. These would also be non-naturally-occurring (since they would have to be produced in a lab) but wouldn't decay in a picosecond or whatever. I didn't get this from Star Trek, I swear.
I am sure that most websites would grant this protection, but it begs the question...
It doesn't "beg the question," it raises the question. "Begging the question," also known by its Latin name petitio principii is the logical fallacy in which you include in your argument the conclusion you are trying to prove. Here's an example: "It says in the Bible that God exists. Since the Bible is God's word, and God never speaks falsely, then everything in the Bible must be true. So, God must exist." Really. Look it up. I know that many people use the expression "to beg the question" when they mean "to raise the question," but it would it's a shame that we've lost track of this often-used logical fallacy.
"What the hell are you talking about!?!" - Homer Simpson
T4: The Terminator Returns Again
T5: The Terminator & Robin
T6: The Terminator vs. Mothra
T7: The Attack of the Clone Robots
T8: Abbott & Costello & The Terminator Go To Mars
T9: Terminator Resurrection
T10: Star Trek: Nemesis
T11: The Terminator Has A Fistfull of Dollars
T12: The Terminator Goes To The Grand Canyon With The Brady Bunch
Here's my prediction of what will happen. First, a number of corporations will make a lot of money from space exploration/tourism and other commercial development (mining the asteroids, etc.). Then, Zefram Cochrane will become outraged that space is only for the rich, and found two things: 1) The SNN (SNN's Not NASA) project and the FSF (the Free Space Foundation). The goal of SNN will be to develop a free replacement for the expensive commercial spacecraft. SNN will tinker around for half a decade or so developing the cockpit, zero-g toilets, a chassis, but no actual engine to put the thing in orbit. Then a guy named Larry Finn will come along and design an engine, which he will whimsically name Larynx. Then a whole bunch of other people will realise that between the SNN stuff and the Larynx engine, you can build a complete working spacecraft. A bunch of professionals, hobbyists, and enthusiasts will build their own "Larynx" spacecraft, and suddenly space will be free for everybody. After that, just about everbody will be happy, except for 1) The commercial space interests, who see a threat to their profits, and 2) Zefram Cochrane, who will be outraged that everybody is calling the new spacecraft "Larynx" systems, and not SNN/Larynx. By the way, it's pronounced Suh-NN.
Who cares? I've been playing video games since I was a fetus! My mom had Pong implanted in her uterus! And that was back when video games were hard! Not like now - you kids got it easy! You have 3D graphics, but in my day your guy was just a little square with no name or nothing! And the screens just kept getting harder and harder until you died! Just like life!
Yes, I think you're quite right. In the 60s he might have been a hippy living in a commune. Now we'll have to wait a few decades to see if he morphs into a minivan driving suburbanite soccer dad who tells long, pointless, nostalgic stories about this decade when he used to spend all his time fragging instead of working. "Ah, the good old days ..."
"Inferiorness?" I think the word you want is "inferiority."
I'm not surprised that NIC died, since "network computers" never made a whole lot of sense to me anyway. For some years now, PCs have been cheap enough that most people who want or need one can afford one. Sure, a lot of people use their computers mostly for e-mail and browsing the web, but what do you do if you only have one of these pared down machines and you want to, for example, edit a photograph? It's like having a moped (scooter, motorino, whatever): it's only really useful if you already have a car, or if you only ever go two or three streets over (I'm talking about in the U.S. here ... European countries, that's a different story). Anyway, this should be a lesson to all of us: when somebody says that the "next big thing" is going to be a crippled version of what we already have, don't believe it.
Heinlein's books are dated now, but the guy was definitely ahead of his time:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Time Enough for Love
The Number of the Beast
I know it's already been mentioned, but 'Cryptonomicon' is a double- maybe triple-read. 'The Diamond Age' is also good.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned these, but the 'Dune' series is interesting as the story of a society which has completely eradicated computers (the Butlerian Jihad) - Herbert did some interesting things with how such a society would have to compensate (mentats - the human computers).
For something different and new, you might want to check out Lyda Morehouse's books: Archangel Protocol, Fallen Host, and the upcoming Messiah Node for an interesting mix of postcyberpunk, action, and religion (very well researched).
Think of the WWW as a huge, unedited encyclopedia that also includes porn, gambling, urban myths, lies, scams, the goatse guy, rants, conspiracy theories ... you get the idea. Now, let's say you go to the ATI website to download the updated drivers for your video card. Are you going to read the whole website? Hell, NO! You're only going to read what you absolutely have to to get the drivers. That people don't read everything on every site they visit is a sign of selectivity, nothing more.
If I can't use it to look at pr0n, I ain't interested.