I realize how deep my geekiness really runs when I see things like the PSP. Were there cave men at the other end of history that couldn't wait to get their hands on the latest in sharp sticks?
Had to fact check, NIN used to be one of my faves. Reznor did 1 year in CE & music at Allegheny College. I'm not trying to be an edu-snob, I just was curious.
Presumably, they're smart enough to not turn the thing on until you pushed the button. Your coca-cola probably gets bottled in your town or a nearby small town. My town of 100k has it's own bottler. They'll know which districts are getting a can so that their prize patrols can be ready.
On a side note, I went to school with a kid who won a Jeep in the Pepsi contest where each cap had a word and you had to make phrases. The phrase was like 'DO IT' or something. The Jeep had a ton of pepsi stickers all over it and the contract he signed required that he could not sell it or remove any of the stickers for one year. Of course he had to pay the tax on the $20,000 vehicle before they would hand it over. Still better than a kick in the pants, but it's amazing the hoops they make you jump through.
I think it was a bit unfair in that the library and phone users seemed quite skilled at the use of those respective mediums, whereas a skilled Googler would easily be able to halve those times.
I've often said that I'd have to quit programming if Google ever disappeared. I lean on it for information in the same way that excessively using a calulator will lead you to punching in 1 + 1. In fact, I'm so good at it that people sometimes think I'm a genius problem solver, when really it's just a matter of creative googling on an error message.
They should fully specify a nice big project, like an accounting system or a 3D shooter. Then rip it into day-long chunks and farm it out as the AP test. Say 10 people all get the same chunk, to ensure that at least one guy will get it right.
Bada-bing-bada-boom. The one day project! Massively parallel programming! Now, if only I can find away to harness the power of bajillions of people sorting playing cards in solitaire to crack encryption codes! Muahahah!!!
In my experience, game programmers tend to be the hardest working and most intelligent programmers in the industry, yet they consistently get crapped on in terms of compensation. I salute you.
My intent all through college was to get a job making games, until I actually talked to people who were in the industry. Game companies consistently offered the lowest salaries, least room for advancement, and worst benefits. After a lot of soul searching, I chose a job which payed almost 50% more than the best game company offer. And although I still regret not doing something sexier for a living, I've consistently been rewarded proportionally to how well I do my job.
Don't overestimate the value of your data. When you pass on, the only person who probably cares about your data will be dead.
That said, I have a little fire safe that I keep important stuff in, like car titles, contracts and cd-rom backups of my computer files. Some of it is sentimental stuff like letters and writing. I imagine if someone decides it is worth publishing, it may live on significantly past my life time. Perhaps none of it will, but I'm not too worried about that, I'm happy that my "important data" lives on in the only place that matters, in the memories of my family and friends.
Basically, usefull and/or popular information has an indefinite life span because people will preserve, expand and share it. Call it the natural selection of information. We don't really need to do anything different to keep that going. Frankly, it's a good thing that useless and unimportant data dies, I'd hate to think that a future historian would be forced to search through petabytes of things like 100 year old Slashdot first-posts in order to find information about our recent war with Iraq.
I'm reminded of the MythBusters episode where they leave toothbrushes in their bathroom for a month to look for fecal coloform bacteria and find it on every brush, inclusing a control brush they didn't touch the entire time in their kitchen.
This kind of silliness has lead companies to create all manner of anti-bacterial wipes and soaps, and while they may ward off the occasional infection, more likely it is just watering down our immune systems so that when an infection does strike, our bodies are unprepared. To me, this is just another blip on the mass-media Paranoia-meter.
I guess I'm pessimistic, but IMHO we are hell bent as a species on painting ourselves into a biological and ecological corner.
When I saw this, I was looking forward to a decent intellectual discussion about fair-use and the Movie Industry's abuse of our rights, but IMHO the author simply manages to take a few pot-shots at a guy he dislikes. He doesn't ask a single question that would enlighten us as to how the MPAA thinks or what it's future strategy might be. He just asks loaded questions like:
TT: Indeed, but are you doing that when you rent a movie from Blockbuster and you watch it at home?... I run Linux on my computer. There's no product I can buy that's licensed to watch [DVDs]. If I go to Blockbuster and rent a movie and watch it, am I a bad person? Is that bad?
He's lucky Valenti didn't ask him if he thought people would buy such a product if it existed or if people would continue to "break the law". Why not address the issue head-on and discuss the main premise, that government and corporations cannot trod on the rights of consumers because of a priori concerns about piracy?
Probably Valenti tells this same story to his buddies to illustrate how difficult it is to have a dialog with fair-use advocates.
I bought an Optoma EzPro 732 from BestBuy for $900 (after $180 rebate) for the same purpose. I've been quite happy with it overall with only a few gripes:
At 800x600 resolution you can visibly see the pixels. There are visible gridlines with on a 120' screen if you stand about 3 feet away. People who visit mainly don't notice it though.
You'll need an absolutely dark room to watch it during the day with good quality. Plan to buy heavy drapes for any offending windows.
Not enough inputs. My projector uses the VGA connector and a dongle to connect Component video. This sucks if you want to hook your computer up along with your AV equipment. Map out your input needs before shopping, or you'll end up buying an expensive receiver to manage it all.
And a couple words of caution on projectors in general:
The fans can be rather loud. If you plan to have it sitting right next to you, plan on having the stereo up. The DB level is somewhat higher than your average computer.
Plan to buy new lamps on a yearly basis. My projector lamp is rated at 2000 hours, and it will actually visibly start to dim at about 75% that. Lamps usually cost several hundred dollars. This would be a big concern with eBay stuff.
If you have a nice clean wall with a slightly irregular surface, don't bother with a screen. I spent $300 and my wall still looks better (although it does brighten up the picture in the daytime).
All in all, I will never ever buy a TV again. My $900 projector has a bigger/better picture than any $1000 TV. Next time I buy though, I'll go for more lumens, higher resolution, and seperate component and VGA inputs.
I've got nothing against regulation. Certainly the voting industry would be regulated. But here's my point in personal terms:
I trust PG&E with my electricity more than I would any government agency. I trust my local bank more than any government agency with money. I believe Ford builds a safer and cleaner car than the government would if it decided to start making cars. I would entrust my health to a private hospital before I would a public one.
In all of these cases is a regulated or semi-regulated industry where private companies provide products or services. In all cases, I believe the product/service of the private entity is superior to a government run alternative.
I contend that your vote would be safer under such a system than it currently is.
Boycott? That's how we're supposed to keep private corporations in check?! And how, pray tell, am I supposed to boycott a company like Diebolical? Don't vote?
Which is my point exactly, the problem is that because voting is NOT privatized you can't boycott a bad company. The government is making your choices for you. I can't entrust my vote to a trustworthy agency because there is only one game in town, the government. If you privatize, there would be many games in town and I'd be able to choose the one that suited me. Perhaps where we disagree is that I believe at least one of these theoretical companies would be more honest and trustworthy than the government, you do not.
As to cost, the government could simply allow each person to take the cost of voting as a tax credit. You'd pay a voting agency up front to record your vote for you. The capitalist playbook even tells us that this will actually cost you less than the alternative because of efficiency gains due to competition.
If you don't think your hard-earned money is already going to private hands for the luxury of voting you are kidding yourself. Somebody manufactures the booths/paper/pencils/counters/etc. that are used during a vote. Diebold is one of them
Bah, the very essence of liberty is ALWAYS in private hands, our own. It's called revolution. The number one cause of loss of liberty for a people is and always has been government. Do private corporations represent a newer subtle form of government? Yes. But one we always have by the balls (boycott) and one which although it may exert power (economic) it can never hold authority.
As to your EPA/FDA example, I did mention a regulatory agency, but it would be primarily an auditor/regulator (as the IRS is to the Treasury) rather than a facilitator. It's primary occupation would be to enforce the rule of law as it pertains to voting. The problem comes when the agency (State Department) audits and regulates itself, there is too much room for corruption.
In fact, such a system bears a striking resemblence to the FDA/food industry relationship. We don't expect the FDA to slaughter the cattle and bring it to the neighborhood store. The FDA ensures that the people who do, do so responsibly.
Online secure data storage. Charge $1 per year (or whatever) per megabyte for guaranteed long term multi-site storage that is guaranteed to exist uncorrupted for the term of your paid subscription. Users wouldn't be able to manipulate the files, just insert an archive, pay and retrieve it, say, 100 times per month (to limit use of the archive as a distribution point). You use some slow, but bulletproof encryption on the archive files.
Anybody want to fund me?:) Is somebody already doing this? I might be interested, I've got files I've been kicking around for almost a decade that I'd hate to loose.
Hold on, don't fall for this as a "privatization is bad" arguement. The problem is that government institutions continue to deal with Diebold, rather than seeking out other "better" private solutions. It's not the private market's fault.
If voting were truly privatized, you'd see a system where private firms collect and certify votes from people for a fee. Counting votes would merely be tabulating all the voting firms. This would work because if a voting firm fucked up even one vote, everyone would run to another voting firm for the next election, and you can bet that these firms would all be watching each other like hawks. Obviously you'd need a unique identification system and a way to verify that your vote was registered properly with the government.
Sound outlandish? Think IRS and e-filing through a tax-agency.
First off, we're talking people, not corporations, but since you mention it, a corporation is only able to deduct up to twice it's cost basis in inventory of donated products. That is, if a Windows CD costs $10 to manufacture, MSFT would only be able to deduct $20 from it's taxes per donated copy. This would correlate to a ~$7 break in taxes. They're better off never manufacturing it in the first place.
Here's a look at MSFT's tax statement. You can see they paid $2.8 billion last year in taxes on $14.7 in income. Not too shabby if you ask me.
Bah, you only get out of paying tax on the amount you donated. So if you donate $1 million, you'll only save $3-500,000 on your taxes. It's still a net donation of $5-700,000.
I agree with you for the most part, but I think it's worth saying that the US is not a pure democracy. It is a democratic republic. In meta-phorical terms, the US is a conglomeration of semi-autonomous city-states which is itself governed by a federal government. This is surprisingly close to the medeval system where landed gentry controlled districts but in turn answered to the authority of a king. The difference, of course, is that we elect our "rulers" rather than have them born and that our "rulers" must answer to a constitution.
The major failings of most Monocratic systems is their lack of constitutional limitations to the monarch's power. Assuming a king/dictator had to abide by the US constitution, I don't think we'd be much worse off than with our current system. Who's to say a hereditary leader trained from birth to rule would be worse than your average ambitious PolSci graduate.
Consider, what would be the political and strategic consequences if China were able to transport nuclear missles to the moon (assuming they could deliver them to targets on Earth)? Assume that the US and the EU do not have space programs that can reach the moon.
Do our [US] ground based missles still represent a nuclear deterent when compared to missle delivery from the moon? Are our detection systems (radar, etc.) capable of detecting a missle coming from the moon with enough time to keep up our end of MAD (mutually assured destruction)? Again, answer in terms of political and strategic consequences.
I don't advocate moving nukes up there ourselves, but we should be capable of preventing other nations from doing so. While my personal loyalty to the space program stems from the spirit of exploration, we all must realize that we have a space program for military as well as scientific purposes.
I absolutely loved the book and after buying the first on DVD (never saw it in the theater) I snapped it in half. (BTW - If you've ever listened to the commentary on the first movie's DVD, you know that the director actively tried to turn the story into a political statement against everything Heinlein expoused in the book. Basically, he all but calls Heinlein a facist. It is an affront to everyone who loves RAH.)
IMHO, this is a large setback for 'Linux Based HD DDR'. It's like a new printing press having its first major publishing run be the inaugural issue of 'Fat & Horny Magazine'.
I know we all need to work toward using open software wherever we can, but good lord, have some taste!
Slashdot Mirror
I realize how deep my geekiness really runs when I see things like the PSP. Were there cave men at the other end of history that couldn't wait to get their hands on the latest in sharp sticks?
Had to fact check, NIN used to be one of my faves. Reznor did 1 year in CE & music at Allegheny College. I'm not trying to be an edu-snob, I just was curious.
On a side note, I went to school with a kid who won a Jeep in the Pepsi contest where each cap had a word and you had to make phrases. The phrase was like 'DO IT' or something. The Jeep had a ton of pepsi stickers all over it and the contract he signed required that he could not sell it or remove any of the stickers for one year. Of course he had to pay the tax on the $20,000 vehicle before they would hand it over. Still better than a kick in the pants, but it's amazing the hoops they make you jump through.
I've often said that I'd have to quit programming if Google ever disappeared. I lean on it for information in the same way that excessively using a calulator will lead you to punching in 1 + 1. In fact, I'm so good at it that people sometimes think I'm a genius problem solver, when really it's just a matter of creative googling on an error message.
Bada-bing-bada-boom. The one day project! Massively parallel programming! Now, if only I can find away to harness the power of bajillions of people sorting playing cards in solitaire to crack encryption codes! Muahahah!!!
[coughs] [takes medicine] Alright, I'm okay now.
My intent all through college was to get a job making games, until I actually talked to people who were in the industry. Game companies consistently offered the lowest salaries, least room for advancement, and worst benefits. After a lot of soul searching, I chose a job which payed almost 50% more than the best game company offer. And although I still regret not doing something sexier for a living, I've consistently been rewarded proportionally to how well I do my job.
That said, I have a little fire safe that I keep important stuff in, like car titles, contracts and cd-rom backups of my computer files. Some of it is sentimental stuff like letters and writing. I imagine if someone decides it is worth publishing, it may live on significantly past my life time. Perhaps none of it will, but I'm not too worried about that, I'm happy that my "important data" lives on in the only place that matters, in the memories of my family and friends.
Basically, usefull and/or popular information has an indefinite life span because people will preserve, expand and share it. Call it the natural selection of information. We don't really need to do anything different to keep that going. Frankly, it's a good thing that useless and unimportant data dies, I'd hate to think that a future historian would be forced to search through petabytes of things like 100 year old Slashdot first-posts in order to find information about our recent war with Iraq.
This kind of silliness has lead companies to create all manner of anti-bacterial wipes and soaps, and while they may ward off the occasional infection, more likely it is just watering down our immune systems so that when an infection does strike, our bodies are unprepared. To me, this is just another blip on the mass-media Paranoia-meter.
I guess I'm pessimistic, but IMHO we are hell bent as a species on painting ourselves into a biological and ecological corner.
I don't know, what the hell is the internet?
Probably Valenti tells this same story to his buddies to illustrate how difficult it is to have a dialog with fair-use advocates.
Gimme a break, I was 12.
10 IF ROLL = 1 THEN PRINT "+1 Arrows" 20 IF ROLL = 2 THEN PRINT "+2 Arrows" . . .
Amen brother. Love is transient, CVS is forever.
- At 800x600 resolution you can visibly see the pixels. There are visible gridlines with on a 120' screen if you stand about 3 feet away. People who visit mainly don't notice it though.
- You'll need an absolutely dark room to watch it during the day with good quality. Plan to buy heavy drapes for any offending windows.
- Not enough inputs. My projector uses the VGA connector and a dongle to connect Component video. This sucks if you want to hook your computer up along with your AV equipment. Map out your input needs before shopping, or you'll end up buying an expensive receiver to manage it all.
And a couple words of caution on projectors in general:- The fans can be rather loud. If you plan to have it sitting right next to you, plan on having the stereo up. The DB level is somewhat higher than your average computer.
- Plan to buy new lamps on a yearly basis. My projector lamp is rated at 2000 hours, and it will actually visibly start to dim at about 75% that. Lamps usually cost several hundred dollars. This would be a big concern with eBay stuff.
- If you have a nice clean wall with a slightly irregular surface, don't bother with a screen. I spent $300 and my wall still looks better (although it does brighten up the picture in the daytime).
All in all, I will never ever buy a TV again. My $900 projector has a bigger/better picture than any $1000 TV. Next time I buy though, I'll go for more lumens, higher resolution, and seperate component and VGA inputs.Disenfranchising people would sure be a bloodier affair...
I trust PG&E with my electricity more than I would any government agency. I trust my local bank more than any government agency with money. I believe Ford builds a safer and cleaner car than the government would if it decided to start making cars. I would entrust my health to a private hospital before I would a public one.
In all of these cases is a regulated or semi-regulated industry where private companies provide products or services. In all cases, I believe the product/service of the private entity is superior to a government run alternative.
I contend that your vote would be safer under such a system than it currently is.
Which is my point exactly, the problem is that because voting is NOT privatized you can't boycott a bad company. The government is making your choices for you. I can't entrust my vote to a trustworthy agency because there is only one game in town, the government. If you privatize, there would be many games in town and I'd be able to choose the one that suited me. Perhaps where we disagree is that I believe at least one of these theoretical companies would be more honest and trustworthy than the government, you do not.
As to cost, the government could simply allow each person to take the cost of voting as a tax credit. You'd pay a voting agency up front to record your vote for you. The capitalist playbook even tells us that this will actually cost you less than the alternative because of efficiency gains due to competition.
If you don't think your hard-earned money is already going to private hands for the luxury of voting you are kidding yourself. Somebody manufactures the booths/paper/pencils/counters/etc. that are used during a vote. Diebold is one of them
As to your EPA/FDA example, I did mention a regulatory agency, but it would be primarily an auditor/regulator (as the IRS is to the Treasury) rather than a facilitator. It's primary occupation would be to enforce the rule of law as it pertains to voting. The problem comes when the agency (State Department) audits and regulates itself, there is too much room for corruption.
In fact, such a system bears a striking resemblence to the FDA/food industry relationship. We don't expect the FDA to slaughter the cattle and bring it to the neighborhood store. The FDA ensures that the people who do, do so responsibly.
Anybody want to fund me? :) Is somebody already doing this? I might be interested, I've got files I've been kicking around for almost a decade that I'd hate to loose.
If voting were truly privatized, you'd see a system where private firms collect and certify votes from people for a fee. Counting votes would merely be tabulating all the voting firms. This would work because if a voting firm fucked up even one vote, everyone would run to another voting firm for the next election, and you can bet that these firms would all be watching each other like hawks. Obviously you'd need a unique identification system and a way to verify that your vote was registered properly with the government.
Sound outlandish? Think IRS and e-filing through a tax-agency.
Here's a look at MSFT's tax statement. You can see they paid $2.8 billion last year in taxes on $14.7 in income. Not too shabby if you ask me.
Bah, you only get out of paying tax on the amount you donated. So if you donate $1 million, you'll only save $3-500,000 on your taxes. It's still a net donation of $5-700,000.
The major failings of most Monocratic systems is their lack of constitutional limitations to the monarch's power. Assuming a king/dictator had to abide by the US constitution, I don't think we'd be much worse off than with our current system. Who's to say a hereditary leader trained from birth to rule would be worse than your average ambitious PolSci graduate.
Do our [US] ground based missles still represent a nuclear deterent when compared to missle delivery from the moon? Are our detection systems (radar, etc.) capable of detecting a missle coming from the moon with enough time to keep up our end of MAD (mutually assured destruction)? Again, answer in terms of political and strategic consequences.
I ask you now, should we go to the moon?
I don't advocate moving nukes up there ourselves, but we should be capable of preventing other nations from doing so. While my personal loyalty to the space program stems from the spirit of exploration, we all must realize that we have a space program for military as well as scientific purposes.IMHO, this is a large setback for 'Linux Based HD DDR'. It's like a new printing press having its first major publishing run be the inaugural issue of 'Fat & Horny Magazine'.
I know we all need to work toward using open software wherever we can, but good lord, have some taste!