There's nothing in High School worth studying. It's all bullshit busy work.
I partially agree. The trick is to convince them that while it's mostly busy work, that's the point. Much of life is busy work - pay bills, wash car, mow lawn, wash dishes, get up in time for work, fill out reports, attend meetings, etc., etc. Busy work is part of life. High School is really (partially) about teaching you to do busy work - some of the actual knowledge will later turn out to be useful, some you'll never use again.
TFA makes the same point:
Yes, as you suspect, a lot of the stuff you learn in your classes is crap. And yes, as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade. But like many fouls, this one was unintentional. [7] So just keep playing.
Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you're there.
I recently went through a similar thing concerning a Yahoo! Group. I found a group in Yahoo's directory, joined, and started reading the back messages. From the back messages I found that the group had been victim to a bunch of spammers - the owner set the group up wide open, no moderation at all - and a bunch of the active members had gone off and created a new, better managed group.
I attempted to contact the group creator with no success. As far as I know, he may have stopped using Yahoo!, died, who knows, but he has certainly abandoned the group. I contacted Yahoo! about closing the group to new members, getting moderator status, whatever. Their response was that their privacy policy only allows the group creator/owner to make such changes.
I understand their point, but it creates an environment where groups can be orphaned by single owner/moderators and group members are powerless to fix, close, or do anything other than go create another group covering the same subject.
On the one hand, I really grok the whole independent hackers do cool work and show up corporate pointy hairs. On the other hand...
The author admits he and his friend did MONTHS of hard work, got stealthily fed hardware and support from sympathetic engineer friends, and yet, when the app met "real" users, it needed lots more work and QA - tasks financially supported by the corporate pointy hairs that initially killed this bit of cool code. This describes lots of OSS software to me. Smart, hard working geeks develop a kernel of nifty code, but that code needs LOTS of boring, thankless, polishing to stand up to the abuse "average" users will subject it to.
How many other insanely cool things such as this have withered away in the labs of Apple, MS, HP, IBM, and other such companies? Is there a way to identify such cool things? Are there better ways to manage engineers so that these things happen more often?
What thing in the PowerPC transition would have not made it if Apple had chosen to support the Calculator?
Again, part of me cheers the little guy that bucked the system and got some really cool code respect; but part of me wonders at the forces swirling around the process.
Thanks for the mention of and link to this technology. Sent me on a nice Google tour of the available info - EE Times has a very good article.
Unfortunately, to me, Canon and Toshiba are targetting the 40"-50" HDTV display market with this technology. Forget seeing it on your desktop or in "normal" sized TVs. I guess they have to aim where the money/margin is. Big TVs = big $$$ = big profit per unit. I guess in that realm if you can undercut the other technologies (plasma, LCD) by "just enough" at the retail level you don't care if it costs significantly less to manufacture; you sell for what the market will bear.
Also, everything I found indicated limited production at the end of '05 with large scale production in '06 or '07. So if you're in the market for a new set in the short term, don't wait around for one of these.
*Sigh* I keep hoping to replace my 10+ year old 27" CRT TV with something significantly better for less than $1000. Where's my OLED TV?
(Not that anyone will read or pay attention to this post, but I'll post so I can track this topic in the future.)
My wife bought me an XBox last Christmas (2003). Right out of the box it had trouble reading a new copy of Project Gotham 2. It usually takes the box 2 tries to boot up with this disc. Occasionally other discs will choke at startup, too.
I don't use the XBox heavily, and the problem hasn't gotten worse that I can tell. But if this does become a class action suit, I may partake. And if the drive ever does go completely south it's nice to know it can be swapped out.
With Halo 2 and MechAssault 2 coming out this year, I anticipate the machine will be getting a LOT of use in the near future. B^)
I have a Blue and White G3/350. Purchased in 1999. It is currently running the latest Mac OS X and many apps at very usable speeds - in fact, OS X has consistently gotten more efficient and faster with new releases. I've added more RAM (700MB now), a couple of hard drives, and a faster video card.
Now, certainly some apps that rely heavily on AltiVec (GarageBand) and newer games (UT2004) are out of this machine's reach, but for web browsing, Photoshopping, Office, even 3D modeling, everything runs at quite acceptable speeds. At the very least, they are the speeds you'd expect in 1999.
Compare that to the Windows world. Would you dare install XP on a Pentium II at 500MHz? How many driver incompatibilities would you have?
Or those who are actually running. The Libertarians, Constitution Party, Green Party, and even Mr. Nader. Someday third party candidates will break the two party duopoly.
"Policies based in religious thought, not science"
Statements like this always amaze me. I'm sure it's a matter of semantics to some degree, but "religious thought" to me implies reasoning based on one's opinion of a higher, eternal being or morality outside of Man and our own expediency. To wit, the statement "there is no God so it doesn't matter what I do" is as much a religious statement as "God says this is right, so it is what I will do".
I think people that make statements like this have little knowledge of scientific history. Many scientists throughout history have been deeply religious - in the believing in God sense, and also in the "there is no God" sense. One's opinion on the eternal profoundly and deeply affects all of one's life. Many "believing" scientists feel that studying and understanding our physical world is a way to understand and know the eternal better.
Anyway, I find it hard to believe people can disconnect their "scientific" thought from their "religious" thought. Science is based on hypotheses. One of the most fundamental hypotheses is "is there a God?" A scientist's answer to that statement will deeply affect the rest of their approach to a question/problem/experiment.
"when looking at international family planning and poverty issues"
My guess is that this is referring to the US's policy concerning abortion. From a "scientific" point of view, a fetus/embryo is a human being. Period. We then make moral decisions on whether human beings are inherently worth preserving, or whether certain stages of human life are more or less valuable. Many "religious" - in the believe in some Higher Being sense - people believe that all human life, regardless of stage of development, ought to be preserved - or at least ought not to be casually destroyed.
- Jasen.
Sheesh. All the anti-American/corporate/globalization whining from people who obviously didn't RTFA doesn't surprise me.
I've been to two Olympics ('84 and '96). They rock. People from all over the world get together and party peacefully. It's great to watch the contingents of fans from the various countries cheering their athletes on - without the riots of soccer. All you railing against the Olympics are just a bunch of bitter whiners.
But not one single proxy server so I can watch the BBC broadband content. No addresses of other national sites where I can watch content from other countries. No URLs for good photo sites with pictures from folks who are there. Or amateur video from the streets. Nothing. Just a bunch of bitter naysayers.
Anyone who paid a bit of attention to Douglas Adams knows he was an ardent Mac-head. To not release the trailer for HHGG in QuickTime is a slap in the face to his ghost.
I believe people are reading WAY too much into a little one page article in a magazine directed at finance types with sprinkles of quotes from Alan Kay in it.
Some simple rules for reading anything written by a "journalist". 1. The more you know about a subject the more the journalist will get wrong.
2. The shorter the article the more will be left out and gotten wrong.
3. The more complex the subject the more will be gotten wrong regardless of article length.
So in this case we have a short article by a journalist of unknown technical credentials writing for a target audience with no technical credentials, and people are complaining that the small quotes from someone with DEEP technical credentials on a VAST subject area are bozo-y? Please. Show me an article _BY_ Alan Kay written for the ACM and then I'll pay attention. This article is just fodder for CEOs to annoy their IT shop with.
PHB: Alan Kay says we should be modeling our business so we can make more money. Get on it.
IT: I'll get right to it after I install the latest critical Windows/IE update and wipe the latest virus from all the machines on our network. (i.e. Never.)
Here is the actual letter "denying" the request. The relevant bits are, IMHO: "ITM advises that the current application was not designed for mass export of all stored images, and thus, the information is not readily available in the format requested." (emphasis added)
So it is not as simple as copying the database, but exporting a large number - thousands? millions? - of image records out of the DB into some format the requester asked for.
Also, "this is a new feature request which would be costly and take a considerable amount of time to implement."
So the requesters asked for something in some format the DB is not designed to deliver. I couldn't find the original request. They may have asked for all the documents in TIFF format sorted by dollar amount contributed, or any other thing.
So this is not a case of "we won't answer your question" but "what we have wasn't designed to answer your question the way you want it answered." By today's standards, the DB in question may be very lame, but that doesn't imply a conspiracy.
Horses can navigate a FAR greater range of terrain than any wheeled vehicle.
And a pair of horses can produce more horses.
As for the technology divide in the show, I think it's right on. We have places on this planet where people ride from village to village with a satellite phone and make money allowing others to make calls.
Perhaps the "iMac G5" choice is a filter to mark users too dumb/lazy to choose the product they actually bought. That choice is then used by the help desk folks to gauge how to deal with the person when they call.
Caller: My printer won't work. Help Desk: I see you have an iMac G5; have you taken the computer out of the box yet? Caller: What? What box? It's in a box? Help Desk: Let me transfer you to someone who specializes in printer issues.
I believe the G4 PowerMacs are/were notoriously noisy (There are several different models of G4 using PMacs, so YMMV). There was even a recall/swap of some sort where Apple would replace your noisy power supply.
That said, Apple seems to value quiet machines. It's part of that "attention to detail" that costs so much more than a home-built $300 AMD box that folks like to compare Macs with when whining about how expensive Macs are.
This market is not unregulated. Cable companies are granted monopolies in localities - by the government. Thus, regulation leads to further regulation. When the government grants monopoly power to cable companies, and the customers complain loud enough that the service is not acceptable, then the government can either pick a new provider or regulate the terms of the monopoly contract.
I suppose some large localities like New York City or Los Angeles could change their contract to prefer a la carte service. Then we might see a cable company or two offer it. i.e. With a big enough customer to start the ball rolling, market forces would drive cable companies to offer what consumers want.
The "easier" thing from a big government point of view is just let the Federal government change the rules for everyone at once. And the cable contracts and rules surrounding them may be at the Fed level already with localities having limited powers; I don't know.
And if a la carte is offered, it in no way obviates the ability of providers to offer packages. A la carte channels at $3.95/mo or preset packages for $20/mo. Sure, you'll end up paying more per channel going a la carte, but so what?
The annoying part will be when you want one or two channels from three or four different packages - your a la carte price will be more than any one package, and maybe more than getting all of them. Don't worry, the cable companies - and their content providers - will figure out how to drive people to buy packages.
It would have been nice if the satellite providers (DiSH, etc.) would have gone a la carte, thus creating a real alternative to cable. As it stands now, they seem to be following the cable pricing structure but being cost competitive in areas with sucky cable providers.
YAKKO'S UNIVERSE (Episode 3) Music and lyrics by Randy Rogel.
Yakko: Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it's worth.
And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.
It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe and we're not.
And we're part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley's Comet too.
And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that's just a fraction of the way.
'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
YW+D : It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney. * Though we don't know how it got here * We're an important part here * It's a big universe and it's ours!
* - In the original script, these lines were:
YW+D : You might think that you're essential
Try inconsequential
It's a small world after all!
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick, But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide. We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point. We go 'round every two hundred million years, And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whizz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Wow. I thought your original post was spot on - except for the little discrepency pointed out by Alsee. But this one totally scares me.
Your absolutely right, I failed to clarify that. There are many many ways in a given situation to figure out someone's name. In this situation, the deputy could run the registration of the truck, and with the owner's name you can then run a driver's license check on that owner. Assuming that this guy owns the truck. If he doesn't want to say, again most states list physical descriptors in the driving record so if it matches up one can be reasonably assured this is the person your dealing with. I think that would have worked just fine given this situation.
With you here. Sounds good.
If that doesn't work you can ask the daughter. You can even explain to her that her dad might go to jail if she doesn't give up his name. (Even if the deputy has NO INTENTION AT ALL to take him to jail) Trickery and deceit are valid tools for law enforcement to use. (As long as we are not entraping people, or making threats or promises to gain admissions or confessions.) While some of you may feel that telling the daughter her dad might go to jail is a threat, in fact it is not. It is not self-incrimination for her to tell her dad's name, nor is it a threat against HER in any way.
WHAT!?! IANAL, and I don't deal with the police on a regular basis, but I can't imagine that threatening a loved one and lying in the manner described above could be construed as anything but coersion. And you clearly are making an implied threat and promise in the above scenario - give up the name or the old man goes to the clink. Especially when there is no legal basis for taking the man to jail for not giving up his name. I'd hope a half-decent lawyer could get the case thrown out based on this kind of information gathering - but maybe I'm just ignorant.
And hey, if "trickery and deceit" are valid ways to deal with the citizenry guess what you're going to get right back? Lie to the cops all you want, they do the same to get you to do what they want. Cheat on your taxes, too. I know, cops deal with lying criminals all the time, and I really do sympathize with you.
Of course I might be a little bit worked up about dealing with someone who is that uncooperative, but it will pass. It happens all the time to officers. They might not be happy about it, but mostly because they are frustrated.
Perhaps if more citizens asserted this right it wouldn't be so frustrating and police would change procedure to find out what's going on before asking for IDs. Although I suspect most stops are vehicle stops and people must surrender ID then.
But it will take LONGER to release someone who won't give their name because I'm trying to use all the tools available to me to find it out.
Why? In part, so you can see if the person has any outstanding warrants. i.e. So they can testify against themselves. They aren't required to do that. I respect the cop's right to try to get the name, but there is a point where they must let it go. In this case, it appears the officer did not let it go, thus a Supreme Court case.
If you think you didn't do anything wrong, and know you don't have any open warrants, then why in the world would you want to make the contact last longer??? Just to prove a point? Ok, but most people have better things to do.
Because the Constitution says I don't have to. Yes, to make a point. And keep the Gummint aware that its powers are limited. Might take time? So does voting. (Oops, perhaps a bad analogy considering the USA's voting record.)
The cops certainly have the right to ask for ID - that is not a violation of the Constitution. And the detainee certainly has the right to refuse such a request. The cop then has the right to take other action to further the investigation - including restraining the detainee for their own sense of safety. Certainly forcing or coercing the detainee into surrendering their ID is a violation.
Are you advocating that the mere asking for ID is a 4th & 5th Amendment violation? Perhaps a case could be made that a police officer's "request" could be interpretted as a mandatory order by an average citizen.
I think you underestimate the safety value of running an ID check. And in the specific case being discussed, there was ample cause.
d: Ok, I'm going to ask these same questions of the lady in the truck. Please stay where I can see your hands, for my own safety.
h: Ok.
d: Hi. Young lady, can I see your papers?
And the moment you - Mr. Hypothetical Cop - take your gaze off the guy he pulls a 9mm from behind his back and puts a few rounds in your sorry ass.
The original poster I believe said you have the choice of showing him ID so he can do a check on you or sitting on the ground in handcuffs. That is not violating your rights, IMHO, but ensuring his safety.
Innocent until proven guilty is great when you're in court on trial, but until then, the responding officer should do what it takes to make sure s/he gets to go home and kiss their spouse and kids.
1. Any peace officer may detain any person whom the officer encounters under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime.
...
3. The officer may detain the person pursuant to this section only to ascertain his identity and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his presence abroad. Any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer.
4. A person may not be detained longer than is reasonably necessary to effect the purposes of this section, and in no event longer than 60 minutes.
Therefore, in NV it is illegal not to identify yourself when asked by a peace officer.
The argument then is that this law violates the US Constitution. What the NV law does not seem to specify is the manner by which the person must identify themselves. When an officer asks for ID is it enough to say, "My name is John Smith" or must you provide a driver's license or other "papers"? The Constitution seems to imply that citizens are to be secure in their "persons" and "papers".
The crucial point seems to be that the officer had a report of a crime which provided all the probable cause needed to do whatever he felt necessary to investigate that reported crime. If the officer had just seen the truck parked by the side of the road and demanded ID there would have been no probable cause.
This is a very good example of what happens when two stubborn, hard headed people clash and are unwilling to give in a little bit to the other side. Mr. Hiibel could have given up his ID; the officer could have toned things down and worked around the ID refusal. Instead, both felt they were well within their rights to get what they were demanding and weren't going to budge till they got what they wanted.
I sympathize with both sides. In the US, it is our right and duty to make sure the Government isn't abusing its power. OTOH, the officer should be able to ensure his own safety, and a first step in that is finding out who you're dealing with and whether they are a known "bad guy". Unfortunately, the police always have to assume they are dealing with the worst kind of drugged up, violent, whack job, criminal; that very often makes them rather unpleasant to deal with. Try to be nice.
Probably not. In Japan animated material (anime) is widely accepted as a general medium for story telling - whether the story is aimed at children or adults. The USA has the mentality that animated stuff is for kids and/or comedy. This is changing a bit as anime starts to penetrate the popular culture, but we're not there yet.
OTOH, with a good story, PIXAR may be able to pull off a successful adult/serious animated feature.
Slashdot Mirror
I partially agree. The trick is to convince them that while it's mostly busy work, that's the point. Much of life is busy work - pay bills, wash car, mow lawn, wash dishes, get up in time for work, fill out reports, attend meetings, etc., etc. Busy work is part of life. High School is really (partially) about teaching you to do busy work - some of the actual knowledge will later turn out to be useful, some you'll never use again.
TFA makes the same point:
- Jasen.I recently went through a similar thing concerning a Yahoo! Group. I found a group in Yahoo's directory, joined, and started reading the back messages. From the back messages I found that the group had been victim to a bunch of spammers - the owner set the group up wide open, no moderation at all - and a bunch of the active members had gone off and created a new, better managed group.
I attempted to contact the group creator with no success. As far as I know, he may have stopped using Yahoo!, died, who knows, but he has certainly abandoned the group. I contacted Yahoo! about closing the group to new members, getting moderator status, whatever. Their response was that their privacy policy only allows the group creator/owner to make such changes.
I understand their point, but it creates an environment where groups can be orphaned by single owner/moderators and group members are powerless to fix, close, or do anything other than go create another group covering the same subject.
- Jasen.
On the one hand, I really grok the whole independent hackers do cool work and show up corporate pointy hairs. On the other hand...
The author admits he and his friend did MONTHS of hard work, got stealthily fed hardware and support from sympathetic engineer friends, and yet, when the app met "real" users, it needed lots more work and QA - tasks financially supported by the corporate pointy hairs that initially killed this bit of cool code. This describes lots of OSS software to me. Smart, hard working geeks develop a kernel of nifty code, but that code needs LOTS of boring, thankless, polishing to stand up to the abuse "average" users will subject it to.
How many other insanely cool things such as this have withered away in the labs of Apple, MS, HP, IBM, and other such companies? Is there a way to identify such cool things? Are there better ways to manage engineers so that these things happen more often?
What thing in the PowerPC transition would have not made it if Apple had chosen to support the Calculator?
Again, part of me cheers the little guy that bucked the system and got some really cool code respect; but part of me wonders at the forces swirling around the process.
- Jasen.
Thanks for the mention of and link to this technology. Sent me on a nice Google tour of the available info - EE Times has a very good article.
Unfortunately, to me, Canon and Toshiba are targetting the 40"-50" HDTV display market with this technology. Forget seeing it on your desktop or in "normal" sized TVs. I guess they have to aim where the money/margin is. Big TVs = big $$$ = big profit per unit. I guess in that realm if you can undercut the other technologies (plasma, LCD) by "just enough" at the retail level you don't care if it costs significantly less to manufacture; you sell for what the market will bear.
Also, everything I found indicated limited production at the end of '05 with large scale production in '06 or '07. So if you're in the market for a new set in the short term, don't wait around for one of these.
*Sigh* I keep hoping to replace my 10+ year old 27" CRT TV with something significantly better for less than $1000. Where's my OLED TV?
- Jasen.
(Not that anyone will read or pay attention to this post, but I'll post so I can track this topic in the future.)
My wife bought me an XBox last Christmas (2003). Right out of the box it had trouble reading a new copy of Project Gotham 2. It usually takes the box 2 tries to boot up with this disc. Occasionally other discs will choke at startup, too.
I don't use the XBox heavily, and the problem hasn't gotten worse that I can tell. But if this does become a class action suit, I may partake. And if the drive ever does go completely south it's nice to know it can be swapped out.
With Halo 2 and MechAssault 2 coming out this year, I anticipate the machine will be getting a LOT of use in the near future. B^)
- Jasen.
I have a Blue and White G3/350. Purchased in 1999. It is currently running the latest Mac OS X and many apps at very usable speeds - in fact, OS X has consistently gotten more efficient and faster with new releases. I've added more RAM (700MB now), a couple of hard drives, and a faster video card.
Now, certainly some apps that rely heavily on AltiVec (GarageBand) and newer games (UT2004) are out of this machine's reach, but for web browsing, Photoshopping, Office, even 3D modeling, everything runs at quite acceptable speeds. At the very least, they are the speeds you'd expect in 1999.
Compare that to the Windows world. Would you dare install XP on a Pentium II at 500MHz? How many driver incompatibilities would you have?
- Jasen.
Here is the real reason for the recent seismic activity at Mount St. Helens.
- Jasen.
Or those who are actually running. The Libertarians, Constitution Party, Green Party, and even Mr. Nader. Someday third party candidates will break the two party duopoly.
- Jasen.
Statements like this always amaze me. I'm sure it's a matter of semantics to some degree, but "religious thought" to me implies reasoning based on one's opinion of a higher, eternal being or morality outside of Man and our own expediency. To wit, the statement "there is no God so it doesn't matter what I do" is as much a religious statement as "God says this is right, so it is what I will do".
I think people that make statements like this have little knowledge of scientific history. Many scientists throughout history have been deeply religious - in the believing in God sense, and also in the "there is no God" sense. One's opinion on the eternal profoundly and deeply affects all of one's life. Many "believing" scientists feel that studying and understanding our physical world is a way to understand and know the eternal better.
Anyway, I find it hard to believe people can disconnect their "scientific" thought from their "religious" thought. Science is based on hypotheses. One of the most fundamental hypotheses is "is there a God?" A scientist's answer to that statement will deeply affect the rest of their approach to a question/problem/experiment.
My guess is that this is referring to the US's policy concerning abortion. From a "scientific" point of view, a fetus/embryo is a human being. Period. We then make moral decisions on whether human beings are inherently worth preserving, or whether certain stages of human life are more or less valuable. Many "religious" - in the believe in some Higher Being sense - people believe that all human life, regardless of stage of development, ought to be preserved - or at least ought not to be casually destroyed. - Jasen.Sheesh. All the anti-American/corporate/globalization whining from people who obviously didn't RTFA doesn't surprise me.
I've been to two Olympics ('84 and '96). They rock. People from all over the world get together and party peacefully. It's great to watch the contingents of fans from the various countries cheering their athletes on - without the riots of soccer. All you railing against the Olympics are just a bunch of bitter whiners.
But not one single proxy server so I can watch the BBC broadband content. No addresses of other national sites where I can watch content from other countries. No URLs for good photo sites with pictures from folks who are there. Or amateur video from the streets. Nothing. Just a bunch of bitter naysayers.
Bah.
- Jasen.
Anyone who paid a bit of attention to Douglas Adams knows he was an ardent Mac-head. To not release the trailer for HHGG in QuickTime is a slap in the face to his ghost.
- Jasen.
I believe people are reading WAY too much into a little one page article in a magazine directed at finance types with sprinkles of quotes from Alan Kay in it.
Some simple rules for reading anything written by a "journalist".
1. The more you know about a subject the more the journalist will get wrong.
2. The shorter the article the more will be left out and gotten wrong.
3. The more complex the subject the more will be gotten wrong regardless of article length.
So in this case we have a short article by a journalist of unknown technical credentials writing for a target audience with no technical credentials, and people are complaining that the small quotes from someone with DEEP technical credentials on a VAST subject area are bozo-y? Please. Show me an article _BY_ Alan Kay written for the ACM and then I'll pay attention. This article is just fodder for CEOs to annoy their IT shop with.
PHB: Alan Kay says we should be modeling our business so we can make more money. Get on it.
IT: I'll get right to it after I install the latest critical Windows/IE update and wipe the latest virus from all the machines on our network. (i.e. Never.)
- Jasen.
Here is the actual letter "denying" the request. The relevant bits are, IMHO:
"ITM advises that the current application was not designed for mass export of all stored images, and thus, the information is not readily available in the format requested." (emphasis added)
So it is not as simple as copying the database, but exporting a large number - thousands? millions? - of image records out of the DB into some format the requester asked for.
Also, "this is a new feature request which would be costly and take a considerable amount of time to implement."
So the requesters asked for something in some format the DB is not designed to deliver. I couldn't find the original request. They may have asked for all the documents in TIFF format sorted by dollar amount contributed, or any other thing.
So this is not a case of "we won't answer your question" but "what we have wasn't designed to answer your question the way you want it answered." By today's standards, the DB in question may be very lame, but that doesn't imply a conspiracy.
- Jasen.
Cars are only useful where there are roads.
Horses can navigate a FAR greater range of terrain than any wheeled vehicle.
And a pair of horses can produce more horses.
As for the technology divide in the show, I think it's right on. We have places on this planet where people ride from village to village with a satellite phone and make money allowing others to make calls.
- Jasen.
Perhaps the "iMac G5" choice is a filter to mark users too dumb/lazy to choose the product they actually bought. That choice is then used by the help desk folks to gauge how to deal with the person when they call.
Caller: My printer won't work.
Help Desk: I see you have an iMac G5; have you taken the computer out of the box yet?
Caller: What? What box? It's in a box?
Help Desk: Let me transfer you to someone who specializes in printer issues.
I believe the G4 PowerMacs are/were notoriously noisy (There are several different models of G4 using PMacs, so YMMV). There was even a recall/swap of some sort where Apple would replace your noisy power supply.
That said, Apple seems to value quiet machines. It's part of that "attention to detail" that costs so much more than a home-built $300 AMD box that folks like to compare Macs with when whining about how expensive Macs are.
"Innovative, quiet design." is number 9 on Apple's Ten reasons to buy a PowerMac G5.
- Jasen.
Bah! They will always be "open-apple" and "closed-apple" to me! (Apple owner since //e.)
- Jasen.This market is not unregulated. Cable companies are granted monopolies in localities - by the government. Thus, regulation leads to further regulation. When the government grants monopoly power to cable companies, and the customers complain loud enough that the service is not acceptable, then the government can either pick a new provider or regulate the terms of the monopoly contract.
I suppose some large localities like New York City or Los Angeles could change their contract to prefer a la carte service. Then we might see a cable company or two offer it. i.e. With a big enough customer to start the ball rolling, market forces would drive cable companies to offer what consumers want.
The "easier" thing from a big government point of view is just let the Federal government change the rules for everyone at once. And the cable contracts and rules surrounding them may be at the Fed level already with localities having limited powers; I don't know.
And if a la carte is offered, it in no way obviates the ability of providers to offer packages. A la carte channels at $3.95/mo or preset packages for $20/mo. Sure, you'll end up paying more per channel going a la carte, but so what?
The annoying part will be when you want one or two channels from three or four different packages - your a la carte price will be more than any one package, and maybe more than getting all of them. Don't worry, the cable companies - and their content providers - will figure out how to drive people to buy packages.
It would have been nice if the satellite providers (DiSH, etc.) would have gone a la carte, thus creating a real alternative to cable. As it stands now, they seem to be following the cable pricing structure but being cost competitive in areas with sucky cable providers.
- Jasen.
YAKKO'S UNIVERSE (Episode 3)
Music and lyrics by Randy Rogel.
Yakko: Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it's worth.
And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.
It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe and we're not.
And we're part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley's Comet too.
And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that's just a fraction of the way.
'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
YW+D : It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
* Though we don't know how it got here
* We're an important part here
* It's a big universe and it's ours!
* - In the original script, these lines were:
YW+D : You might think that you're essential
Try inconsequential
It's a small world after all!
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
With you here. Sounds good.
WHAT!?! IANAL, and I don't deal with the police on a regular basis, but I can't imagine that threatening a loved one and lying in the manner described above could be construed as anything but coersion. And you clearly are making an implied threat and promise in the above scenario - give up the name or the old man goes to the clink. Especially when there is no legal basis for taking the man to jail for not giving up his name. I'd hope a half-decent lawyer could get the case thrown out based on this kind of information gathering - but maybe I'm just ignorant.
And hey, if "trickery and deceit" are valid ways to deal with the citizenry guess what you're going to get right back? Lie to the cops all you want, they do the same to get you to do what they want. Cheat on your taxes, too. I know, cops deal with lying criminals all the time, and I really do sympathize with you.
Perhaps if more citizens asserted this right it wouldn't be so frustrating and police would change procedure to find out what's going on before asking for IDs. Although I suspect most stops are vehicle stops and people must surrender ID then.
Why? In part, so you can see if the person has any outstanding warrants. i.e. So they can testify against themselves. They aren't required to do that. I respect the cop's right to try to get the name, but there is a point where they must let it go. In this case, it appears the officer did not let it go, thus a Supreme Court case.
Because the Constitution says I don't have to. Yes, to make a point. And keep the Gummint aware that its powers are limited. Might take time? So does voting. (Oops, perhaps a bad analogy considering the USA's voting record.)
[big snip.]
Hmmm... I think we're talking past each other.
The cops certainly have the right to ask for ID - that is not a violation of the Constitution. And the detainee certainly has the right to refuse such a request. The cop then has the right to take other action to further the investigation - including restraining the detainee for their own sense of safety. Certainly forcing or coercing the detainee into surrendering their ID is a violation.
Are you advocating that the mere asking for ID is a 4th & 5th Amendment violation? Perhaps a case could be made that a police officer's "request" could be interpretted as a mandatory order by an average citizen.
I think you underestimate the safety value of running an ID check. And in the specific case being discussed, there was ample cause.
- Jasen.
The original poster I believe said you have the choice of showing him ID so he can do a check on you or sitting on the ground in handcuffs. That is not violating your rights, IMHO, but ensuring his safety.
Innocent until proven guilty is great when you're in court on trial, but until then, the responding officer should do what it takes to make sure s/he gets to go home and kiss their spouse and kids.
- Jasen.
Therefore, in NV it is illegal not to identify yourself when asked by a peace officer.
The argument then is that this law violates the US Constitution. What the NV law does not seem to specify is the manner by which the person must identify themselves. When an officer asks for ID is it enough to say, "My name is John Smith" or must you provide a driver's license or other "papers"? The Constitution seems to imply that citizens are to be secure in their "persons" and "papers".
The crucial point seems to be that the officer had a report of a crime which provided all the probable cause needed to do whatever he felt necessary to investigate that reported crime. If the officer had just seen the truck parked by the side of the road and demanded ID there would have been no probable cause.
This is a very good example of what happens when two stubborn, hard headed people clash and are unwilling to give in a little bit to the other side. Mr. Hiibel could have given up his ID; the officer could have toned things down and worked around the ID refusal. Instead, both felt they were well within their rights to get what they were demanding and weren't going to budge till they got what they wanted.
I sympathize with both sides. In the US, it is our right and duty to make sure the Government isn't abusing its power. OTOH, the officer should be able to ensure his own safety, and a first step in that is finding out who you're dealing with and whether they are a known "bad guy". Unfortunately, the police always have to assume they are dealing with the worst kind of drugged up, violent, whack job, criminal; that very often makes them rather unpleasant to deal with. Try to be nice.
- Jasen.
Probably not. In Japan animated material (anime) is widely accepted as a general medium for story telling - whether the story is aimed at children or adults. The USA has the mentality that animated stuff is for kids and/or comedy. This is changing a bit as anime starts to penetrate the popular culture, but we're not there yet.
OTOH, with a good story, PIXAR may be able to pull off a successful adult/serious animated feature.
- Jasen.