Very true. The Egyption priests got a lot of currency out of predicting the Nile flooding. They learned the phases of the moon and guarded that knowledge as it was their lifeblood.
you're opening up that Free Software project to charges that they're stealing code from your employer.
And yourself of course. Most contracts for IT jobs forbid you from working on anything else during your time with them, and in some cases for several years after.
You're allowed to do it with written permission in some contracts. The contracts generally don't make any distinction between GPL and working on propriety software. Often they claim ownership rights on what you have done.
Morally wrong or not, that's probably the contract you signed. Break it and you may need a good lawyer.
Did I miss something? This nothing new, ads and product placements have been in games for ages. Soccer games were one of the most common and obvious, with the billboards around the pitch.
But you can go back further. There was a silly Pepsi game back in the days of the Atari ST. Games often have ads for the developers other games, this goes back a long way in gaming history. Perhaps we are so used to ads everywhere (next stop: schools) that you don't even consciously notice half of them!
Don't worry about it. The whole point of Echelon is that you can't spy on your own people. So they spy on us, we spy on them. Share the data and you've just gotten around your peoples civil rights without breaking the law. Wouldn't your mama be proud...
On the other hand, no European country is as big as USA
So? The whole world is considerably bigger than the US, yet they managed to co-ordinate GSM.
I made a GSM phone call from the Great Wall of China 5 years ago using a sub $100 handset. Yet I still have to pay a fortune if I want a phone that works in the US.
You are joking, right? On my old laptop running w2k (266 Mhz/80 meg) Media Player 6 is ready to play in 5 seconds. Media Player 7 takes over a minute. Winamp is round about the same as WMP 6, while Real Player and QuickTime take 5-10 secs.
Stick with Media Player 6. You lose the visualisations, the oh-so wonderful Media Library, the ability to make crippled, poor quality mp3s and two or three options. Big deal.
I would be less surprised if they placed an icon of the Windows Media Player on the start menu root.
I think they do. I've noticed several bookmarks/start menu items that re-appear eventially when deleted. Just try deleting the "Links" folder in the Favourites menu...it will be back soon enough...
There is a really good way to fill drives that no one has mentioned...backups.
Just think how you would feel if your large capacity drive full of everything you have was to die tomorrow? Solution: Buy another and use it either as a mirror, or with some backup software. It's madness not to, 'cos burning 160 gigs of cd's isn't all that fun...
"Drip" clocks have been around for a very long time, I think the ancient greeks used them with water. (I'm not a historian tho, so may be wrong about when/where).
There are a number of problems with this. The biggest is to do with the head level. The more of the "liquid" there is, the greater force (from gravity) there is on the bottleneck. As time passes, the period between drops slows down.
I believe they did come up up with a solution to this, involving a second drip into the resoviour of the first. This would keep the first one at a consistent level, but it would need to be manually monitored to keep it consistent.
One day, hopefully we'll be amazed at the practice of stuffing hundreds of people into flimsy aluminum structures and launching them into the air.
And we will probably hold them in the same regard as we do to the old sailing ship crews, launching themselves into the rough, unknown sea. We'd look back at them with respect and admiration, along with the assumption that they must be completely insane!
That much information? Seems like the bare minimum to me. You need to know the filename, IP/port of remote host (to connect), the username (to manage) and the Supernode (in case you need to ask it to initiate a transfer because the remote is firewalled).
To be honest, seeing your output like that makes me worry less about any security leaks in these apps.
I think the only reason I can say that I enjoy watching baseball is because I played it for so many years.
The same can be said for most sports. You have to try it once to appreciate how good the stars are. Take snooker (OK, not the best example of "sport"), if you haven't tried it (on a full size table), you wouldn't realise just how skillful the players are, not only to pot the target ball, but to control the cue ball to bring it to the point on the table they want. To the layman, it's just someone knocking some balls around.
Seconded, WinMX is the one to own now. Grokster/Kazaa are not bad, but their network is not decentralised and their apps are full of spyware. I prefer it to Napster, which I was using before the servers became linked. I remember thinking "wow" when they hit around 4,000 people per server. Now everyman and his dog is using them.
Sure, searching can be a bit slow, but that's the side-effect of distributed technology. If anyone wanted to shut down WinMX, they would find it hard. It would probably have to come down to the ISPs, but if ISP's A, B and C existed and C did not block p2p, they get my money.
The only rational conclusion is that we are addicted.
Well, that's pretty obvious. Most folk I know aren't even comfortable in a room without a TV set turned on, even just for the visual stimulation. They don't know what to do with their eyes when it isn't there. Try it sometime, it freaks a lot of people out, they stare at the blank screen a lot!!
Switching on the TV is one of the first things a lot of people do when returning home. If that is not an addiction, what is?
(most) TV sucks. Quit watching other peoples lifes and get your own instead. Second-hand experiences will never be as good as the original.
I have to add that I also listen to the odd CD in pro-logic (also a happy medium, mid-range hi-fi gear, all speakers the same etc), and I agree there are some CDs that seem to be made for it, there a definite effects that come out the rears only. Because of the way pro-logic works, it's actually similar to how the real world works. On a test DVD I have, Video Essentials, it shows how diffused sound lacks direction. This diffused sound is what pro-logic decoders extract and divert to the rears.
On the other hand, I've found a number of CDs play terrible on pro-logic.
I've also got a couple of music DVDs that use multichannel sound. They are great to listen too, if the music is recorded that way, it really amazes.
Newspeak and doublethink are far more common in today's society than you think. I thought the same as you at first, after reading the book. It seemed far fetched that either could be realistic, but I read a few essays on the subject and, yes, I do now think that they were very relevant.
I'm really struggling to remember some of the examples cited, it was several years ago I read the essay. It wasn't online either, so searching is out.
An obvious example of doublethink is the "war on terror". The idea that you can stop violence with violence is silly. For every terrorist you get, another 5-10 will be pissed of at your actions and become the next generation of terrorists. But that the next political administrations (and populations) problem, so who cares right?
Another example is the term "free world", referring to the western world. It's a propaganda tool, implying that all non-western countries are not free. OK, there are a few obvious examples where people generally have little freedom, but most of the world that is not in the "free world" isn't all that different in terms of personal freedom. But we still look down on them.
You'd be troubled to convince someone from another planet that what we called "democracy" really is democratic. Let's face it, we're controlled by those in the media (another 1984 key component) into believing what those people what us to believe. Case in point, Bush's urge to attack Iraq. Stateside, the media is promoting this course of action and the public is generally for it. In Europe, the media is against it, take a guess at what the public opinion is here? That's a key part of the population control in 1984 through the Ministry of Information. It's not new, Orwell can't be credited with this "insight", it was around when he was in diapers.
Take the "rewriting" of history, also key in our society. OK, so they aren't rewriting yesterday's news, but certain things taught in schools are plain wrong. Columbus did not "discover" America first; other countries beat him to it. But as the ruling US class is essentially descended from the same peoples as Columbus, it is taught that he discovered the place. Lot's of other things are perceived very differently from how they actually happened, based on the propaganda that was prevalent at the time. Do a search for "remember the Maine" for a classic tale of where the reality of what really happened at the time was suppressed to meet someone's political goals. Only years later was the truth found; I just wonder how many other cases in history were in reality different what really happened, but we've never heard the truth. History is always written by the "winner" of whatever battle or war, so don't depend on it being true. There are many cases in my home country, Scotland, where folk heroes were recorded as the equivalent of terrorists by the English. Had the English written our history (they didn't, we won those wars), we would probably be taught in school about these tyrants. Instead we get taken to monuments that have been erected for them.
Or, on a more controversial note, it's blatantly obvious to anyone that one of the airliners on 9-11 was shot down intentionally (wreckage patterns etc). I have no problem with this action, tragic, but why risk another strike on the ground? However, popular media says there where some "have-a-go" hero's. Guess what, the recommendation is now to "copy" this behaviour if faced with a similar situation, but I really doubt the original action happened that way.
Newspeak can easily be compared to political correctness. It is impossible to express ideas that go against popular thinking because of the fear of backlash. For example, a politician might suggest that legalising ecstasy and heroin would save may lives (it would, most of the deaths are caused by the lack of quality control in the "industry", not the drug itself). But that politician's career is over at that point. Jeez, half the time if they are exposed for trying pot at some point in their life (which an unbelievable percentage has), they have to lie about it!
Or, take the shot down airliner again. If you say anything against this, you are disrespecting some heroes. "Why should you say this against them?" "they are heroes!!". It's hard to argue a case against these sorts of tactics. It makes you look bad, and people want to conform with the norm most of the time, so they don't even think that way. This is similar to the concept of newspeak, which made unpopular thought impossible.
Finally, Bush is a perfect example of the "continuous warfare" idea. If he gets his Iraq, I pretty much guarantee he'll pick out another country before his term is up. War is good for big business, and Bush stands for big business.
I really can't do this topic any justice, and the examples I cite aren't perfect. I'm sure there are lots of essays on the web relating to the real-world similarities to 1984. And most of them will be much better written and with less holes than mine!!
You have to take it as imagery, 1984 was never meant to be a literal prediction on the world of the future. Orwell certainly was insightful on many respects, which is largely why it is still so popular today. I just did a quick search on the web to see if I could enclose a link on this; it's not ideal but this site is similar to what I read, but not as well written and the examples are different. Take a look for yourself; I admit I'm not that all great at the interpretation of written English, so looking at other people's interpretations of books and theories can be quite the eye opener.
A woman walks into a pub and asks the barman for a Double Entendre. The barman gives her one.
See, "double entendres" sounds like a drink, which is half of the joke. Saying "sexual innuendo" gives it away and ruins the punchline. I doubt anyone finds this funny now that it's been repeated 3 times though!!;-)
True, it's not an example of a very well written book, but the future world he envisions in 1943 was pretty spot on. Many people have written essays on how it relates to modern life, and anyone reading it can instally draw comparisons to modern life. 1984 will still be relevant in 50 years. Unless it gets destroyed and "unmade".
To be honest, I think half the folk that cite 1984 have never read it. If you haven't, you can read it here.
Slashdot Mirror
It has it's moments...who can forget "Conan the Librarian" or "Gandi 2 - No More Mr Nice Pacifist Resistance Leader"?
Very true. The Egyption priests got a lot of currency out of predicting the Nile flooding. They learned the phases of the moon and guarded that knowledge as it was their lifeblood.
Maybe not paid for, but I'm sure they were given a few of them for "modeling" purposes... ;-)
And yourself of course. Most contracts for IT jobs forbid you from working on anything else during your time with them, and in some cases for several years after.
You're allowed to do it with written permission in some contracts. The contracts generally don't make any distinction between GPL and working on propriety software. Often they claim ownership rights on what you have done.
Morally wrong or not, that's probably the contract you signed. Break it and you may need a good lawyer.
Did I miss something? This nothing new, ads and product placements have been in games for ages. Soccer games were one of the most common and obvious, with the billboards around the pitch.
But you can go back further. There was a silly Pepsi game back in the days of the Atari ST. Games often have ads for the developers other games, this goes back a long way in gaming history. Perhaps we are so used to ads everywhere (next stop: schools) that you don't even consciously notice half of them!
They aren't, relativly speaking. All they are doing is admitting how many taps they used. If only other governments would follow suit...
Don't worry about it. The whole point of Echelon is that you can't spy on your own people. So they spy on us, we spy on them. Share the data and you've just gotten around your peoples civil rights without breaking the law. Wouldn't your mama be proud...
Sure, crack it open if you want. Don't expect Sony to send any further preview copies after you've returned the remains of the first player.
Ironically, at that point, said reviewer would then have to got to Kazaa/Winmx to get further CDs for review!
So? The whole world is considerably bigger than the US, yet they managed to co-ordinate GSM.
I made a GSM phone call from the Great Wall of China 5 years ago using a sub $100 handset. Yet I still have to pay a fortune if I want a phone that works in the US.
Get a new ISP then. And tell them why you are leaving. Put messages in their newsgroups/boards encouraging other users to do the same.
If we don't make a stand soon, we'll all have to pay this eventially...
You are joking, right? On my old laptop running w2k (266 Mhz/80 meg) Media Player 6 is ready to play in 5 seconds. Media Player 7 takes over a minute. Winamp is round about the same as WMP 6, while Real Player and QuickTime take 5-10 secs.
Stick with Media Player 6. You lose the visualisations, the oh-so wonderful Media Library, the ability to make crippled, poor quality mp3s and two or three options. Big deal.
I think they do. I've noticed several bookmarks/start menu items that re-appear eventially when deleted. Just try deleting the "Links" folder in the Favourites menu...it will be back soon enough...
Just think how you would feel if your large capacity drive full of everything you have was to die tomorrow? Solution: Buy another and use it either as a mirror, or with some backup software. It's madness not to, 'cos burning 160 gigs of cd's isn't all that fun...
There are a number of problems with this. The biggest is to do with the head level. The more of the "liquid" there is, the greater force (from gravity) there is on the bottleneck. As time passes, the period between drops slows down.
I believe they did come up up with a solution to this, involving a second drip into the resoviour of the first. This would keep the first one at a consistent level, but it would need to be manually monitored to keep it consistent.
I suppose he should be thankful that it wasn't the other trough associated with drinking large quantities of beer...
Next, someone will tell us how a friend of a friend woke up in a bathtub full of ice...
And we will probably hold them in the same regard as we do to the old sailing ship crews, launching themselves into the rough, unknown sea. We'd look back at them with respect and admiration, along with the assumption that they must be completely insane!
To be honest, seeing your output like that makes me worry less about any security leaks in these apps.
The same can be said for most sports. You have to try it once to appreciate how good the stars are. Take snooker (OK, not the best example of "sport"), if you haven't tried it (on a full size table), you wouldn't realise just how skillful the players are, not only to pot the target ball, but to control the cue ball to bring it to the point on the table they want. To the layman, it's just someone knocking some balls around.
Sure, searching can be a bit slow, but that's the side-effect of distributed technology. If anyone wanted to shut down WinMX, they would find it hard. It would probably have to come down to the ISPs, but if ISP's A, B and C existed and C did not block p2p, they get my money.
Well, that's pretty obvious. Most folk I know aren't even comfortable in a room without a TV set turned on, even just for the visual stimulation. They don't know what to do with their eyes when it isn't there. Try it sometime, it freaks a lot of people out, they stare at the blank screen a lot!!
Switching on the TV is one of the first things a lot of people do when returning home. If that is not an addiction, what is?
(most) TV sucks. Quit watching other peoples lifes and get your own instead. Second-hand experiences will never be as good as the original.
On the other hand, I've found a number of CDs play terrible on pro-logic.
I've also got a couple of music DVDs that use multichannel sound. They are great to listen too, if the music is recorded that way, it really amazes.
I'm really struggling to remember some of the examples cited, it was several years ago I read the essay. It wasn't online either, so searching is out.
An obvious example of doublethink is the "war on terror". The idea that you can stop violence with violence is silly. For every terrorist you get, another 5-10 will be pissed of at your actions and become the next generation of terrorists. But that the next political administrations (and populations) problem, so who cares right?
Another example is the term "free world", referring to the western world. It's a propaganda tool, implying that all non-western countries are not free. OK, there are a few obvious examples where people generally have little freedom, but most of the world that is not in the "free world" isn't all that different in terms of personal freedom. But we still look down on them.
You'd be troubled to convince someone from another planet that what we called "democracy" really is democratic. Let's face it, we're controlled by those in the media (another 1984 key component) into believing what those people what us to believe. Case in point, Bush's urge to attack Iraq. Stateside, the media is promoting this course of action and the public is generally for it. In Europe, the media is against it, take a guess at what the public opinion is here? That's a key part of the population control in 1984 through the Ministry of Information. It's not new, Orwell can't be credited with this "insight", it was around when he was in diapers.
Take the "rewriting" of history, also key in our society. OK, so they aren't rewriting yesterday's news, but certain things taught in schools are plain wrong. Columbus did not "discover" America first; other countries beat him to it. But as the ruling US class is essentially descended from the same peoples as Columbus, it is taught that he discovered the place. Lot's of other things are perceived very differently from how they actually happened, based on the propaganda that was prevalent at the time. Do a search for "remember the Maine" for a classic tale of where the reality of what really happened at the time was suppressed to meet someone's political goals. Only years later was the truth found; I just wonder how many other cases in history were in reality different what really happened, but we've never heard the truth. History is always written by the "winner" of whatever battle or war, so don't depend on it being true. There are many cases in my home country, Scotland, where folk heroes were recorded as the equivalent of terrorists by the English. Had the English written our history (they didn't, we won those wars), we would probably be taught in school about these tyrants. Instead we get taken to monuments that have been erected for them.
Or, on a more controversial note, it's blatantly obvious to anyone that one of the airliners on 9-11 was shot down intentionally (wreckage patterns etc). I have no problem with this action, tragic, but why risk another strike on the ground? However, popular media says there where some "have-a-go" hero's. Guess what, the recommendation is now to "copy" this behaviour if faced with a similar situation, but I really doubt the original action happened that way.
Newspeak can easily be compared to political correctness. It is impossible to express ideas that go against popular thinking because of the fear of backlash. For example, a politician might suggest that legalising ecstasy and heroin would save may lives (it would, most of the deaths are caused by the lack of quality control in the "industry", not the drug itself). But that politician's career is over at that point. Jeez, half the time if they are exposed for trying pot at some point in their life (which an unbelievable percentage has), they have to lie about it!
Or, take the shot down airliner again. If you say anything against this, you are disrespecting some heroes. "Why should you say this against them?" "they are heroes!!". It's hard to argue a case against these sorts of tactics. It makes you look bad, and people want to conform with the norm most of the time, so they don't even think that way. This is similar to the concept of newspeak, which made unpopular thought impossible.
Finally, Bush is a perfect example of the "continuous warfare" idea. If he gets his Iraq, I pretty much guarantee he'll pick out another country before his term is up. War is good for big business, and Bush stands for big business.
I really can't do this topic any justice, and the examples I cite aren't perfect. I'm sure there are lots of essays on the web relating to the real-world similarities to 1984. And most of them will be much better written and with less holes than mine!!
You have to take it as imagery, 1984 was never meant to be a literal prediction on the world of the future. Orwell certainly was insightful on many respects, which is largely why it is still so popular today. I just did a quick search on the web to see if I could enclose a link on this; it's not ideal but this site is similar to what I read, but not as well written and the examples are different. Take a look for yourself; I admit I'm not that all great at the interpretation of written English, so looking at other people's interpretations of books and theories can be quite the eye opener.
A woman walks into a pub and asks the barman for a Double Entendre. The barman gives her one.
See, "double entendres" sounds like a drink, which is half of the joke. Saying "sexual innuendo" gives it away and ruins the punchline. I doubt anyone finds this funny now that it's been repeated 3 times though!! ;-)
True, it's not an example of a very well written book, but the future world he envisions in 1943 was pretty spot on. Many people have written essays on how it relates to modern life, and anyone reading it can instally draw comparisons to modern life. 1984 will still be relevant in 50 years. Unless it gets destroyed and "unmade".
To be honest, I think half the folk that cite 1984 have never read it. If you haven't, you can read it here.