Before you jump to sign up for membership, read this article in Web Review by Andy Oram. Entitled "Would I join this Club if it would have me as a Member?", the article outlines some of the good reasons NOT to join ICANN as a member-at-large, as tempting as it may seem.
Someone needs to pull the NSA back in - they're rapidly becoming a rogue government agency. They don't respond to congressional requests for information, they don't talk to the media, they don't believe in the FOIA, they don't believe in upholding their charter and federal law (about spying on domestic communications). That's a dangerous situation, and so I hope this (and other) court cases work out.
Makes you sometimes wonder if NSA's secrecy is because they don't have anything, rather than because they have too much.
Plenty of kids his age can use computers; this is just an absurd Microsoft PR stunt. Anyway, what is a "certified" executive? And what is his function in the company? It is clear that no three year old will have any impact in making decisions to help run the real business world. And, even if he could, so what? What's the difference btwn a three year old and a fifty year old as an executive if they both have the same knowledge?
Giving this MSFT stunt any attention is a _bad_ idea. Ignore it.
Another great victory for Linux! Linux's growth & world-wide-awareness grows exponentially with each new announcement like this. And it's great to see main-stream, "old style" companies like SGI adopt Linux. Now let's hope that IBM starts shipping only Linux machines w/ Apache web server software...
Re:Millennial hysteria in 1000
on
The Year 1000
·
· Score: 1
Just thought I'd mention the fact that the millennium did not occur until 1001 (just as the next millennium will occur in 2001, not 2000). There was no year zero.
What about electronic ink and the whole electronic paper concept being developed at (among other places) the MIT Media Lab?
This seems to answer the problem of screens causing eyestrain as well as the whole paper glut issue. That is -- if it can ever be made practical, affordable, and easy-to-use.
Getting closer to Larry Elinson's dream/vision of a NC-based world. Too bad the machines aren't made by Oracle. It seems that the NC hoopla has died down recently -- this seems like hype in an attempt to bring back the NC movement.
Personally, I'd be much happier seeing this school running Macs (eg., a large network of iBooks or iMacs connected by AirPort wireless networking) -- it seems at this point like a far more intelligent choice for a educational institution.
Indeed, congratulations. Moral objections to universities aside, Linus Torvalds deserves it very much -- a lot more than some others who have even real PhD's. He gave something to society, and this is yet another way of repaying him for it.
So does anybody know actually how many people it does employ, or are those numbers classified? If it's very high, we can only assume that most of them are involved in some type of Echelon operation (since NSA is certainly not going to employ 70,000+ highly trained mathematicians and computer scientists).
Intel tried to do the same thing to kill usage of the MacOS @ universities & colleges. In several cases (I think Yale was one of them, but I could be wrong), the plan met with initial success and then backfired (gave them mega-bad publicity _and_ the universities retracted their pro-Wintel policy). Hopefully the same kind of backfiring will occur this time.
It reminds me of the deals Coke gets with fast food chains and university cafeterias to only distribute Coke (and thus the university gets some kind of kick-back from Coke). Disgusting.
Speaking of the invention of the internet, you reminded me of the somewhat amusing fact that microsoft.com wasn't registered until 1991. Therefore, 1991 is the official date of the creation of the internet.;-) (On a side note, apple.com was registered in 1987. Going back even further, mit.edu, for instance, was registered with InterNIC in 1985.)
Why, chemically/biologically, do flickering things (strobe lights, monitors/florescent bulbs with refresh rates of less than 70-80 Hz) cause headaches, migranes, and general annoyance? Does the eye have some kind of sensitivity to such changes?
Even if the electrical engineers among us claim that they flicker at 120Hz, I find this hard to believe. I find the flicker on florescent lighting to be about as bad as the flicker on 60-70 Hz monitors (which is _very_ perceptible to me -- that's why I've got a refresh rate of 100Hz on my monitor @ home). With computer monitors, I stop noticing flickering @ 80Hz, and I can _definitely_ see florescents refreshing, so it's got to be 60.
Since so many people in work environments complain about florescent lighting, there must be some kind of "anti-florescent movement" web site (or pro-halogen site) -- can anybody think of one?
Especially true for comments later in the page. I always notice that the first ten or so comments -- regardless of how brilliant they are -- usually get scored up somewhat; after about fifty comments, scores above 1 or 2 are very rare. This is bad, because it penalizes those who have something good to say but arrive late in the discussion. Any way to cure this?
Two suggestions: 1) To help people score down trolls, how about this: if three separate people give -1 to a comment, they don't loose any moderator points. (So an obvious troll message, which was downgraded by three separate individuals, would not count against stored-up moderator points). 2) Since AC's start with a default of Score:0 and non-AC's start with a default of Score:1, how about making users logged in posting anonymously start with Score:1? (Or is this already the case?)
I'm happy to see that my question has generated so much discussion. A few thoughts:
Indeed, it may be too early to determine which documents profoundly shaped the internet. However, this makes our task far more important & daunting. What WILL happen in twenty, thirty years when historians try to assemble this anthology? Because information is so readily lost (data formats change, web servers disappear, a gem of a file is lost because of information glut), we must seek to preserve files (as many as we can, without going overboard, anyway) that will POTENTIALLY be important. This does not mean that we should create a database with every RFC, essay, piece of code, internet-related legislature, Slashdot posting, USENET posting, etc. on the web. No -- it instead means that we should make informed guesses as to what documents will be interesting (or important) to internet historians in the future.
Here's how I propose we could go about this:
Use a slashdot-style web site. Users would post a URL to a certain document, explaining why they think it has significance. This gets added to the database. Then other readers can visit this URL, read the tex, return to the original poster's message, and then comment on it and give it a score (eg., between one and ten). All documents submitted would be maintained in the database (unless they were clearly spam, trolls, etc.), but scores would be attached to them, making it easier in the future. Perhaps -- depending on drive space available, the URL should actually be mirrored (to prevent future 404s); or we could press CDs/DVDs with the full text of these documents.
The site would be an ongoing effort. If an older document is discovered in five years that has significance, add it.
Regardless of what this site would turn out, it would be an important step in preserving the creation stage of the internet.
Please reply (on Slashdot) to this message if anybody has the time/interest to implement such a site. It could be a group effort -- I propose that we create either a working mailing list or web-based message board in the interim (before THIS Slashdot article disappears into oblivion). However, I also propose that in order to prevent lots of Slashdotters from creating numerous "competing" mailing lists, you all should hold off on this until a few people have a chance reply to this posting with their thoughts.
Slashdot Mirror
Before you jump to sign up for membership, read this article in Web Review by Andy Oram. Entitled "Would I join this Club if it would have me as a Member?", the article outlines some of the good reasons NOT to join ICANN as a member-at-large, as tempting as it may seem.
Where can I get me one of those machines? ;-)
Use a treadmill exercise machine. You feel like you're walking on those. Find some way to let the path of direction rotate.
Makes you sometimes wonder if NSA's secrecy is because they don't have anything, rather than because they have too much.
Plenty of kids his age can use computers; this is just an absurd Microsoft PR stunt. Anyway, what is a "certified" executive? And what is his function in the company? It is clear that no three year old will have any impact in making decisions to help run the real business world. And, even if he could, so what? What's the difference btwn a three year old and a fifty year old as an executive if they both have the same knowledge?
Giving this MSFT stunt any attention is a _bad_ idea. Ignore it.
Another great victory for Linux! Linux's growth & world-wide-awareness grows exponentially with each new announcement like this. And it's great to see main-stream, "old style" companies like SGI adopt Linux. Now let's hope that IBM starts shipping only Linux machines w/ Apache web server software...
Whatever.
Are Sun Virtual Machines released as open source? If not, shouldn't we encourage them to do so?
This seems to answer the problem of screens causing eyestrain as well as the whole paper glut issue. That is -- if it can ever be made practical, affordable, and easy-to-use.
Just a thought that seems to have been neglected.
Personally, I'd be much happier seeing this school running Macs (eg., a large network of iBooks or iMacs connected by AirPort wireless networking) -- it seems at this point like a far more intelligent choice for a educational institution.
Indeed, congratulations. Moral objections to universities aside, Linus Torvalds deserves it very much -- a lot more than some others who have even real PhD's. He gave something to society, and this is yet another way of repaying him for it.
So does anybody know actually how many people it does employ, or are those numbers classified? If it's very high, we can only assume that most of them are involved in some type of Echelon operation (since NSA is certainly not going to employ 70,000+ highly trained mathematicians and computer scientists).
Intel tried to do the same thing to kill usage of the MacOS @ universities & colleges. In several cases (I think Yale was one of them, but I could be wrong), the plan met with initial success and then backfired (gave them mega-bad publicity _and_ the universities retracted their pro-Wintel policy). Hopefully the same kind of backfiring will occur this time.
It reminds me of the deals Coke gets with fast food chains and university cafeterias to only distribute Coke (and thus the university gets some kind of kick-back from Coke). Disgusting.
Does the award include a grant of $$ or is it just so that the winners can say "I won this award."
Speaking of the invention of the internet, you reminded me of the somewhat amusing fact that microsoft.com wasn't registered until 1991. Therefore, 1991 is the official date of the creation of the internet. ;-) (On a side note, apple.com was registered in 1987. Going back even further, mit.edu, for instance, was registered with InterNIC in 1985.)
I suppose I could look it up -- but is it florescent or flourescent (or are they both acceptable, with the "u" being an anglophilic spelling)?
Why, chemically/biologically, do flickering things (strobe lights, monitors/florescent bulbs with refresh rates of less than 70-80 Hz) cause headaches, migranes, and general annoyance? Does the eye have some kind of sensitivity to such changes?
Even if the electrical engineers among us claim that they flicker at 120Hz, I find this hard to believe. I find the flicker on florescent lighting to be about as bad as the flicker on 60-70 Hz monitors (which is _very_ perceptible to me -- that's why I've got a refresh rate of 100Hz on my monitor @ home). With computer monitors, I stop noticing flickering @ 80Hz, and I can _definitely_ see florescents refreshing, so it's got to be 60.
Since so many people in work environments complain about florescent lighting, there must be some kind of "anti-florescent movement" web site (or pro-halogen site) -- can anybody think of one?
Especially true for comments later in the page. I always notice that the first ten or so comments -- regardless of how brilliant they are -- usually get scored up somewhat; after about fifty comments, scores above 1 or 2 are very rare. This is bad, because it penalizes those who have something good to say but arrive late in the discussion. Any way to cure this?
Two suggestions: 1) To help people score down trolls, how about this: if three separate people give -1 to a comment, they don't loose any moderator points. (So an obvious troll message, which was downgraded by three separate individuals, would not count against stored-up moderator points). 2) Since AC's start with a default of Score:0 and non-AC's start with a default of Score:1, how about making users logged in posting anonymously start with Score:1? (Or is this already the case?)
I'm happy to see that my question has generated so much discussion. A few thoughts:
Indeed, it may be too early to determine which documents profoundly shaped the internet. However, this makes our task far more important & daunting. What WILL happen in twenty, thirty years when historians try to assemble this anthology? Because information is so readily lost (data formats change, web servers disappear, a gem of a file is lost because of information glut), we must seek to preserve files (as many as we can, without going overboard, anyway) that will POTENTIALLY be important. This does not mean that we should create a database with every RFC, essay, piece of code, internet-related legislature, Slashdot posting, USENET posting, etc. on the web. No -- it instead means that we should make informed guesses as to what documents will be interesting (or important) to internet historians in the future.
Here's how I propose we could go about this:
Use a slashdot-style web site. Users would post a URL to a certain document, explaining why they think it has significance. This gets added to the database. Then other readers can visit this URL, read the tex, return to the original poster's message, and then comment on it and give it a score (eg., between one and ten). All documents submitted would be maintained in the database (unless they were clearly spam, trolls, etc.), but scores would be attached to them, making it easier in the future. Perhaps -- depending on drive space available, the URL should actually be mirrored (to prevent future 404s); or we could press CDs/DVDs with the full text of these documents.
The site would be an ongoing effort. If an older document is discovered in five years that has significance, add it.
Regardless of what this site would turn out, it would be an important step in preserving the creation stage of the internet.
Please reply (on Slashdot) to this message if anybody has the time/interest to implement such a site. It could be a group effort -- I propose that we create either a working mailing list or web-based message board in the interim (before THIS Slashdot article disappears into oblivion). However, I also propose that in order to prevent lots of Slashdotters from creating numerous "competing" mailing lists, you all should hold off on this until a few people have a chance reply to this posting with their thoughts.