I'll get flamed for saying this I'm sure, but Sci-fi does not have the same wide appeal as any of the movies, for example, you just named...
While not a flame, I'm not sure I completely agree. If you list the all time blockbusters there's lots of science fiction there. While not all are "great science fiction" in the sense of Blade Runner or 2001, a lot would put them in the SciFi bucket over "bio pic", "comedy", "western", etc.
I don't see the problem so much in just SciFi, but all of Hollywood seems to have a talent deficit on the story side and most of what sells these days is sequel and derivitive. That's why movies like Sideways, Life Aquatic, etc. stand out so much I think.
(Sky Captain didn't have original story, but it did have an original feel to it being "retro with good CGI").
BTW, I'm guilty. I went to see Ocean's Twelve recently. Oh why did I do that?
Don't beat yourself up too much, 12 was not really a remake but a sequel. Ocean's 12 was a sequel to Ocean's 11, which was a poor remake of the original Ocean's 11, which was a pretty lousy movie. Although the 11 remake did capture well the concept of "bunch of popular older actors with little screen chemistry and random scenes with little plot to tie them together."
When the 75 year issue comes up I almost hate hearing Disney being brought up as an example. While Mickey has been around for a long time, its not like Walt did Steamboat Willie and that was it. Most of the Disney property has continued to be promoted, refined, added (and yes, a lot of the added is crap), but the point is that they continue to invest and promote the "product" and it didn't just sit in a can all this time.
So, as you say, the good and the bad of derivitive works.
I think where Gates' interview is off target is that a lot of Microsoft products are derivitive of others, and they pick and choose what prior art they want to absorb as they chug along. Software is not pure creative, and is a lot of science and the whole "building on previous works" issue. Open source for some is probably a "software should be free" thing, but for others is simply the scientists' way of life, "I found a great program I can use, and if I build a little widget it becomes more useful."
While it is definitely possible to do it to a helicopter, but has anybody realized that it would be nigh near IMPOSSIBLE to shine a laser pointer into the cockpit of an airliner, particularly into the eyes of the pilot?
Do you really think there is no place on the ground to shine something into the eyes of a pilot? Do you really think pilots only look at the sky and there's no way for them to see the ground? Haven't you even seen a movie, TV show, or sat in a plane and watched the pilot line up on the runway? There's a reason runways have lines and lights all around them -- THE PILOTS ARE LOOKING AT THEM!
Yes, a pilot doesn't look straight down. But if you were positioned past the end of a runway you could look right into the pilots eyes as he landed.
Let's not let our hatred of authority blind us of basic understanding of science. We're supposed to be nerds, for cryin' out loud, not schoolkids whipped into a frenzy over the latest conspiracy theories. And this is modded "insightful", no less...
Sunday's Washington Post had an article on another Ham Radio operator (link - probably requires registration - sorry). A real life, very public example of why ham radio is important.
I believe targeting systems for military are infrared - would not be visible to human eyes. Bombs and missles home in on the "painted" target, and it would obviously give away the fact that something is being targeted if it was visible light.
Snipers use a visible red dot, of course, since they have to see it (at least old school snipers).
Even $500 for a Mac is an awful lot just to see if it works.
But, $300-$400 is not an awful lot just to listen to music?:) While some think $500 is OK to plug into a KVM switch, others will think $500 is OK when they were thinking about spending this much at Best Buys on a WhoCares 5000 XP. I think this could be a huge win for Apple, since the current low end models come with smallish screens.
As someone getting ready to buy an iMac for a workstation and wishing I had the money for a laptop, now I'm wondering if I should buy the laptop and wait for this lower cost workstation.
While that may be true, your message is posted right smack dap in the middle of Nerdville -- it's central park, so to speak. You're a Republican who's walked into the middle of the Democratic convention and yelled at them to get a grip.
Of course we'll survive. It's just the internet. But, many of us are software professionals. We care so much about this we decided to make a career of this. We care so much about this we're willing to give away our ideas as open source projects, just to share them with the world. Forgive us if we care passionately about this, and think that basic things like browsers should not have security hole after security hole till we wonder if it will ever stop.
And, it's not even too much of a stretch. Enough people get screwed with identity theft, and the trust of the system falls apart and it ceases to be a method that many of us earn a living with. If one of the largest companies in the world can't even fix their browser, with all the resources of an almost monopoly on the market and stock options to hire every CS post graduate student on the planet -- a technology that went through its basic definition years ago -- it puts into question the entire value of software professionals.
A hit to their home page shows that they have quite a few products outside the car market. It's a forward thinking thing. They expect some day robots will be as common as a lawn mower.
The problem is that Monster.com is both a commercial enterprise and a job site. So which do you pick?
Here's the point of this little exercise.
If you are a large, well recognized name like "Coke" (or just want to protect your name), you are now forced into paying for coke.com, coke.net, coke.org, etc. etc. etc. to avoid issues like "whitehouse.com". Large companies now have to register probably 12 or 15 times for each domain prefix they want, and so do people who want to avoid similar squatting.
I suppose there is some whining from "Phil Epsi" and having "pepsi.info" helps with this somewhat, but you have to wonder where it all ends. After a handful of new TLD, there is now no end in site as any group with enough money can justify new ones.
One nice thing is that if you're looking for a job on ".jobs" you know that its just another brain dead recruiter/body shop and not a real company looking for someone.
(From
M-W Online) Elite d : a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence (members of the ruling elite) (the intellectual elites of the country)
From this definition ("virtue of position"), minority status is not a requirement for "elite". The 6 digit assignment will be closed, and no new members will be able to appear as the wise old sages of Slashdot.
Not that it really matters. It's just a sig with a silly observation.:)
I wish I shared your enthusiasm. While I know its still around (we installed a DS20E in the lab this year) and many of our clients use it, HP's committment to the Alpha line is gone, and it's committment to VMS (OpenVMS) is only to ease the yelling of a handful of large federal accounts. I do know how easy it is to sleep when responsible for VMS systems, and I hate seeing it go, but without a vendor seeing this as a strategic product it's not going to happen.
I don't blame HP completely, as the DEC-Compaq thing started the ball rolling, but they clearly don't need HP-UX, Tru64, MPE, and VMS as proprietary operating systems while they consolidate the world onto Intel chips.
The Alpha line's part costs are crazy, there's no support for emerging things like iSCSI, every software vendor has long since ported their products to UNIX/Windows platforms and no one considers VMS a primary development environment anymore. Many Alphas won't die, as they are well engineered machines that will run longer than anything coming off a Dell assembly line now, and the loyalty of VMS technical people will keep them running without the need for endless patches from Redmond. Eventually, however, they will just be an old app in the back office that no one remembers anything about and they keep around just because someone in accounting still occaisionally looks up things on it and no one is demanding support or license for it.
I just mentioned elsewhere that I read somewhere Verizon was already working on updating with fiber.
There was a Slashdot thread on this a few weeks ago. They're rolling out now in some places of CA and TX, with plans to deploy through the east coast through 2005. I chatted with someone using it in a test market and the review was pure joy! Depending on service, it was 15M down 3M up! I called Verizon about it because I'm getting ready to upgrade to a Speakeasy account and didn't want to lock into a year or so if this was rolling down the street soon, but no one had information unless your neighborhood was already wired.
Verizon seems to have gotten aggresive (after sitting on DSL for years) about voice/data/video over fiber to your house. Kind of exciting when it gets here.
The Verizon/PA issue does seem to be getting a lot of press. A lot of towns have deployed something, at least on a small scale. Others in this thread pointed out that small businesses and non-profits can step in, however.
From Webster's Online: Commodity: a mass-produced unspecialized product ex: commodity chemicals, commodity memory chips
I don't think healthcare, insurance, telco, and maybe even power fit into these definitions. These are specialized, constantly changing technologies -- different vendors can create products with competitive advantages. They are the exact opposite of a commodity, unless this is an argument over word meaning.
Soda and hamburgers are commodities, but the government doesn't hand them out, right? It's not really an issue of whether its a commodity or not. Governments provide that which the private sector cannot provide. Law and regulation, defense of country, treaties, etc. are the responsibilities of government. It is a somewhat utopian vision (and socialist too, I guess) that sees government having the resources to provide all "essentials".
FCC is regulating those airwaves. The 2.4 GHz spectrum they're using has very clear rules about it.
I'm not sure, but it might be possible that if the FCC stepped in they would rule against the government, since this spectrum is not set aside for federal use like other chunks.
Comes up whenever the government wants to do something like build housing and other "public works" that the private sector also provides. Government doesn't provide telephone service, for example.
However, I don't see anything wrong with a fairly low level service that is free, and the private sector provides higher speed, secure service. Problem right now is that 802.11b is pretty darn good for general use, so its hard to segment out a role for the private sector if this is free. I hope this wouldn't block a private, non-profit from these services, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're comparing TN's annual revenue to Microsoft's quarterly revenue.
How the heck is the second post "redundant"?
I think "geek factor" alone justifies the extra $200 or so for a new system.
While not a flame, I'm not sure I completely agree. If you list the all time blockbusters there's lots of science fiction there. While not all are "great science fiction" in the sense of Blade Runner or 2001, a lot would put them in the SciFi bucket over "bio pic", "comedy", "western", etc.
I don't see the problem so much in just SciFi, but all of Hollywood seems to have a talent deficit on the story side and most of what sells these days is sequel and derivitive. That's why movies like Sideways, Life Aquatic, etc. stand out so much I think.
(Sky Captain didn't have original story, but it did have an original feel to it being "retro with good CGI").
Don't beat yourself up too much, 12 was not really a remake but a sequel. Ocean's 12 was a sequel to Ocean's 11, which was a poor remake of the original Ocean's 11, which was a pretty lousy movie. Although the 11 remake did capture well the concept of "bunch of popular older actors with little screen chemistry and random scenes with little plot to tie them together."
The Thing's left hand seems to be separating from his arm.
Lousy costume. Doesn't look near beefy enough to be the thing. The probably should have CGI'ed him. Original Look
And someone needs to tell Jessica to stand up straight. A superhero needs to have at least a little athletic look to them.
All espresso machines have magic in them. :)
When the 75 year issue comes up I almost hate hearing Disney being brought up as an example. While Mickey has been around for a long time, its not like Walt did Steamboat Willie and that was it. Most of the Disney property has continued to be promoted, refined, added (and yes, a lot of the added is crap), but the point is that they continue to invest and promote the "product" and it didn't just sit in a can all this time.
So, as you say, the good and the bad of derivitive works.
I think where Gates' interview is off target is that a lot of Microsoft products are derivitive of others, and they pick and choose what prior art they want to absorb as they chug along. Software is not pure creative, and is a lot of science and the whole "building on previous works" issue. Open source for some is probably a "software should be free" thing, but for others is simply the scientists' way of life, "I found a great program I can use, and if I build a little widget it becomes more useful."
Didn't this same topic get beat into the ground just 6 days ago?
Do you really think there is no place on the ground to shine something into the eyes of a pilot? Do you really think pilots only look at the sky and there's no way for them to see the ground? Haven't you even seen a movie, TV show, or sat in a plane and watched the pilot line up on the runway? There's a reason runways have lines and lights all around them -- THE PILOTS ARE LOOKING AT THEM!
Yes, a pilot doesn't look straight down. But if you were positioned past the end of a runway you could look right into the pilots eyes as he landed.
Let's not let our hatred of authority blind us of basic understanding of science. We're supposed to be nerds, for cryin' out loud, not schoolkids whipped into a frenzy over the latest conspiracy theories. And this is modded "insightful", no less...
Sunday's Washington Post had an article on another Ham Radio operator (link - probably requires registration - sorry). A real life, very public example of why ham radio is important.
Still an interesting point. Osama Bin Laden a Clancy fan? Someone stop that guy from writing books.
I believe targeting systems for military are infrared - would not be visible to human eyes. Bombs and missles home in on the "painted" target, and it would obviously give away the fact that something is being targeted if it was visible light.
Snipers use a visible red dot, of course, since they have to see it (at least old school snipers).
But, $300-$400 is not an awful lot just to listen to music? :) While some think $500 is OK to plug into a KVM switch, others will think $500 is OK when they were thinking about spending this much at Best Buys on a WhoCares 5000 XP. I think this could be a huge win for Apple, since the current low end models come with smallish screens.
As someone getting ready to buy an iMac for a workstation and wishing I had the money for a laptop, now I'm wondering if I should buy the laptop and wait for this lower cost workstation.
While that may be true, your message is posted right smack dap in the middle of Nerdville -- it's central park, so to speak. You're a Republican who's walked into the middle of the Democratic convention and yelled at them to get a grip.
Of course we'll survive. It's just the internet. But, many of us are software professionals. We care so much about this we decided to make a career of this. We care so much about this we're willing to give away our ideas as open source projects, just to share them with the world. Forgive us if we care passionately about this, and think that basic things like browsers should not have security hole after security hole till we wonder if it will ever stop.
And, it's not even too much of a stretch. Enough people get screwed with identity theft, and the trust of the system falls apart and it ceases to be a method that many of us earn a living with. If one of the largest companies in the world can't even fix their browser, with all the resources of an almost monopoly on the market and stock options to hire every CS post graduate student on the planet -- a technology that went through its basic definition years ago -- it puts into question the entire value of software professionals.
A hit to their home page shows that they have quite a few products outside the car market. It's a forward thinking thing. They expect some day robots will be as common as a lawn mower.
Here's the point of this little exercise.
If you are a large, well recognized name like "Coke" (or just want to protect your name), you are now forced into paying for coke.com, coke.net, coke.org, etc. etc. etc. to avoid issues like "whitehouse.com". Large companies now have to register probably 12 or 15 times for each domain prefix they want, and so do people who want to avoid similar squatting.
I suppose there is some whining from "Phil Epsi" and having "pepsi.info" helps with this somewhat, but you have to wonder where it all ends. After a handful of new TLD, there is now no end in site as any group with enough money can justify new ones.
One nice thing is that if you're looking for a job on ".jobs" you know that its just another brain dead recruiter/body shop and not a real company looking for someone.
Rick Dees (link). Sorry - one of those trivia facts that hasn't fallen out of my head yet.
From this definition ("virtue of position"), minority status is not a requirement for "elite". The 6 digit assignment will be closed, and no new members will be able to appear as the wise old sages of Slashdot.
Not that it really matters. It's just a sig with a silly observation. :)
I wish I shared your enthusiasm. While I know its still around (we installed a DS20E in the lab this year) and many of our clients use it, HP's committment to the Alpha line is gone, and it's committment to VMS (OpenVMS) is only to ease the yelling of a handful of large federal accounts. I do know how easy it is to sleep when responsible for VMS systems, and I hate seeing it go, but without a vendor seeing this as a strategic product it's not going to happen.
I don't blame HP completely, as the DEC-Compaq thing started the ball rolling, but they clearly don't need HP-UX, Tru64, MPE, and VMS as proprietary operating systems while they consolidate the world onto Intel chips.
The Alpha line's part costs are crazy, there's no support for emerging things like iSCSI, every software vendor has long since ported their products to UNIX/Windows platforms and no one considers VMS a primary development environment anymore. Many Alphas won't die, as they are well engineered machines that will run longer than anything coming off a Dell assembly line now, and the loyalty of VMS technical people will keep them running without the need for endless patches from Redmond. Eventually, however, they will just be an old app in the back office that no one remembers anything about and they keep around just because someone in accounting still occaisionally looks up things on it and no one is demanding support or license for it.
Hubble repair project: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/06/01/hubble.ro bots.ap/
Replacement projects are also listed.
Two horses and a buggy (plus passenger) probably weigh more than a lot of cars!
There was a Slashdot thread on this a few weeks ago. They're rolling out now in some places of CA and TX, with plans to deploy through the east coast through 2005. I chatted with someone using it in a test market and the review was pure joy! Depending on service, it was 15M down 3M up! I called Verizon about it because I'm getting ready to upgrade to a Speakeasy account and didn't want to lock into a year or so if this was rolling down the street soon, but no one had information unless your neighborhood was already wired.
Verizon seems to have gotten aggresive (after sitting on DSL for years) about voice/data/video over fiber to your house. Kind of exciting when it gets here.
The Verizon/PA issue does seem to be getting a lot of press. A lot of towns have deployed something, at least on a small scale. Others in this thread pointed out that small businesses and non-profits can step in, however.
From Webster's Online: Commodity: a mass-produced unspecialized product ex: commodity chemicals, commodity memory chips
I don't think healthcare, insurance, telco, and maybe even power fit into these definitions. These are specialized, constantly changing technologies -- different vendors can create products with competitive advantages. They are the exact opposite of a commodity, unless this is an argument over word meaning.
Soda and hamburgers are commodities, but the government doesn't hand them out, right? It's not really an issue of whether its a commodity or not. Governments provide that which the private sector cannot provide. Law and regulation, defense of country, treaties, etc. are the responsibilities of government. It is a somewhat utopian vision (and socialist too, I guess) that sees government having the resources to provide all "essentials".
FCC is regulating those airwaves. The 2.4 GHz spectrum they're using has very clear rules about it.
I'm not sure, but it might be possible that if the FCC stepped in they would rule against the government, since this spectrum is not set aside for federal use like other chunks.
Fairly standard issue.
Comes up whenever the government wants to do something like build housing and other "public works" that the private sector also provides. Government doesn't provide telephone service, for example.
However, I don't see anything wrong with a fairly low level service that is free, and the private sector provides higher speed, secure service. Problem right now is that 802.11b is pretty darn good for general use, so its hard to segment out a role for the private sector if this is free. I hope this wouldn't block a private, non-profit from these services, though.