1. Trinity dies for no reason, as they don't use her death in any meaningful way.
See other posts. Trinity's death frees Neo to serve his purpose.
2. The scene with the machines entering the outer hull of Zion was drawn out needlessly, as it
contained no switching between the fight at Zion and Neo's plight (think: middle/end of ROTJ)
The fight for the Zion Dock was extremely predictable, I thought, but much of this movie as a
whole was rather predictable. Once I concluded that Zion would survive the simplistic attack
from the Sentinels and that the real struggle would be Neo's, I was ready to move on. This did
not necessarily hurt the scene for other viewers however. In fact, this whole thing is just a gigantic scale rehash of the climax of the original Matrix where the Sentinels are trying to destroy the Nebuchanezzer while Neo is battling the three agents in room 303.
3. The fight scene with Smith/Baines and Neo in the Logos was completely extraneous.
Hardly. Neo's loss of eyesight was shocking after watching him survive innumerable ammo crates
of hot lead up to this point. The worst injury I think he had exhibited was coughing up some
blood. Then whamo!, he's blind. Wow. It began setting up the following scenes in which there
would really be finality brought to this trilogy.
4. Neo's death in the end leaves the humans without a powerful weapon against the machines if
they were to decide to attack the humans again. Contrast this with Star Wars and LotR, where the
playing field is leveled at the end, or slightly in favor of the protagonists.
Neo's not dead, for heaven's sake. We even see him pulling away from the camera on that
Wachowski version of a pickup truck through Neo's own red-tinged "sight". It is only through
Neo's "eyes" that we saw the world in that way in this movie. This post reminds me of the goofy ones after Reloaded that said Zion had been destroyed. Like the title of the song that began rolling the credits in the first Matrix; Wake Up!
5. Keanu Reeves performance was subpar, even for him. In the climactic battle with Smith at the
end, he looked drugged and was not convincing as the leader of the free world. He had no fire,
and it was the machines and the Oracle that actually spurred him on to defeat Smith (esp. the
machines, as they revived him after being consumed by Smith).
Umm, Keanu HAS been drugged a time or two. You're totally missing the points of that scene.
Everything has a purpose. The purpose of a virus (Smith) is simply to spread. "Humans are a
virus that consumes everything and then must move on." Once Smith spreads to his last bit of
opposition, his purpose has been fufilled and the virus collapses. Neo's purpose is to continue
to exhibit freewill. Smith had no freewill but could only go on annihilating everything around
him until it was gone. Once the virus collapsed, all the beings simply returned to their
previous state, like a community returning to health. On the other hand, Neo's purpose can never
be exhausted as long as there are choices to be made.
6. In the beginning, he was trapped in the train station for no conceivable reason but to
lengthen the movie. It served no purpose, benefitted the movie naught and did not lead to any
great discoveries that were used later in the film. Likewise, how we could be jacked in without
being jacked in was never satisfactorily addressed.
The train station conversation with the Indian family served the very important purpose of
showing one of the overriding themes of the trilogy; that Man and Machine need one another. Neo
sees machines that are embracing elements of humanity. How the heck were we supposed to get this
message otherwise, while Neo was dangling from a helicopter skid and dodging bullets? The quiet,
antiseptic get-together was reminiscent of Neo's meeting with the Architect in Reloaded or Neo's conversation with that Minister-guy about Zion's water purification system in Reloaded. As for
Neo being j
Other books at especially high risk include those that sell to the student (particularly college student) market as secondary reading. A student could easily grab the relevant chapter or two out of a book without paying for it.
This whole thing just ain't right, as of yet. If you read the article, you can see that on the one hand, people have figured out how to get 108 pages out of a bestseller (that's unfair to the authors and publishers), and on the other hand, those same authors and publishers are expecting students to purchase entire books just to get the one or two chapters their teacher has directed them to read. Like the new music services, there should be a legal, reasonably priced (oh, boy) way to obtain those two chapters rather than having to purchase the entire book. As for the 108 pages, I am guessing they pulled that out of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, yet another doorstop from this prolific author. As someone who has done a fair amount of writing and someone who has done a LOT of reading, I am sympathetic to both sides in this one. Looks to me like Amazon needs to try again.
Whoa! I stand corrected. I have a natural tendency to root for the underdog and had run across a Slashdot posting about Google Watch months ago. I visited Google Watch, did not investigate further, only changed my search habits a little (using Yahoo only to realize it IS Google) and left this in the ditch. Based on your post, I have visited some related sites. I find the pro-Google arguments and its place in the market far more understandable now than I did before getting into this hornet's nest. You may not have a made a true believer of me, but I have taken the large grain of salt regarding Google Watch. Perhaps it is only natural to be wary of anthing that gets as hugely successful as Google, especially when that success comes quickly. Point, set, match to M. hkmwbz.
Google's domination of the search engine space has created a huge, central tracking point for ALL sorts of Internet activity. This sort of thing is inherently dangerous. If you are committed to a competitive marketplace, don't permanently settle on a single vendor for anything. That sort of behavior gave us the Microsoft/Cisco/Intel hegemony. Don't expect real innovation to come from those whose fortunes are only enhanced by maintaining the status quo. Be sure to check out Google Watch
Buddy, you are way off on this one. If you REALLY want to build a fine mortar, you need to get hold of a copy of "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. In that book, he describes the marvelous and impressively destructive engineering the Soviets were capable of mustering when it came to killing Germans. In contrast, "a pair of Soviet-made shoes were about as flattering and comfortable as the box they came in, but their mortars were a man-killing wonder."...or something to this effect. On the other hand, have a good time in Guantanamo.
Having suffered through an attempt to launch a dot.com in the Spring of 2002, I find this reappearance bittersweet. Let me tell ya, in the Spring of 2002, it looked like a fellow Slashdotter was correct in believing that all the Venture Capitalists had participated in a mass suicide two years earlier. I don't think ANYTHING could get funded at that time other than a successful, working prototype of one of those silly devices that appear in IBM's ads. One of my fellow board members described things perfectly during an interchange between us: Me- "How did we go from these guys funding sock puppets and companies that literally burned piles of cash on Super Bowl ads to being unable to fund ANYTHING?" Him- "VC's are conservative sheep. They only do EXACTLY what all the other sheep are doing." And at that time, the other sheep weren't funding anything. Let's hope this "reappearance of the Red Herring" bodes well for the future. Kind of like the groundhog not seeing his shadow.
If anyone is surprised by this legislation, they haven't seen this legislature in action. As a resident of California, I get up and read the local paper each morning fully prepared to read that the State Assembly and Senate have just gotten our coin-operated governor to sign a law that will put a chicken in every pot, a Mercedes in every garage, and that we will all be farting through silk (thank you Mr. O'Rourke) while only "the rich and fatcat corporations pay for these little perks of living in the Golden State". This legislature can't find its a55 with both hands. The worst thing is that someone (not me) keeps voting these dreamers into office. Let's try it again, there is no free lunch. As a result of this Leviathan of state government, businesses are bailing out of the Golden State as fast as their lawyers will go. California has turned into Europe without the history. I don't have to go to France (again), I already live there. A quick rundown of recent madness from Sacramento (I'm not making this stuff up):
1. Foster parents (most of whom are committed Christians), will receive sensitivity training to ensure they are not discriminating against their charges who might be homosexual. I figure that just nuked at least 10 percent of the potential foster parent population of the state. Result: state is stuck with an even larger child-rearing tab.
2. The poorest Indian tribes in the state have seen their petitions to build casinos shot down in flames. The already-established tribes with casinos (read big, white-skinned investors with Indian fronts) have nakedly ponied up millions for Gray Davis and his Mini-Me, Cruz Bustamante to ensure this came to pass. The big "tribes" are also paying for protection since obscene casino revenues make a tempting target for our obscene state government. In the meantime, Caesar's Palace will be helping a big "tribe" get bigger while the small tribes keep scraping by on Godforsaken land away from the prosperous coast.
3. The state has established new, strict regulations for the auto industry that will determine what levels of CO2 emissions will be permitted in California a few years from now. Basically Washington D.C. took a pass on mandating new mileage requirements for the automakers so Cali took it upon itself to do so. In the meantime, the infrastructure taxes get dribbled away on all manner of programs that won't take care of the real culprit, congestion and traffic jams.
So now Davis is trying to buy a few votes from those who hate spam along with the votes of all the other Golden State Suckers who believe we can legislate our way to prosperity and happiness. With his a55 on the line, Davis is signing anything that looks like it might help. In my opinion, we would be better off with flypaper instead of the paper these laws will be printed on. Much more useful. In the meantime, the business climate here will continue to implode.
Hallelujah, Stephenson is back!
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Glad to see that Neal is as independent and cantankerous as ever. Cryptonomicon was so phenomenal that I gave my copy to a fellow geek-traveller (and old friend), who has probably passed it along like some virus in Snow Crash. Stephenson's books have expanded my mind and I am sure that Quicksilver will be worth a long slog. What the review failed to mention was whether or not the entire book was actually first written using a fountain pen, as I had read it would be years ago. If so, one has to wonder at the determination of an author literally penning a "doorstop". Off to the bookstore...
Great idea here. Get the truck-building companies like Freightliner, Volvo, Ford, Mack and so on to come up with some cleaner-emitting trucks. If Diesel is so bad and these trucks are steadily clicking off 150,000 miles per year, that's a LOT of soot going into the atmosphere. The name of the trucking game is keeping costs down and deliveries timely. This is why they universally run Diesels. Oh, and as a side benefit, the truck-builders could also help the environment since the military uses tremendous numbers of Diesel-powered vehicles. Eventually the military inventories could be updated as well.
This could be just the thing for checking a system for broken hardware and/or connectivity. A tech could walk up, insert their GNOPPIX CD, boot into a GUI environment, check things out and then go. The cost for this versus propietary alternatives would be VERY attractive.
It's fun to get paranoid about shooting down reconnaisance satellites, but there are serious problems with doing so. The major problem is that once a low Earth orbit spacecraft is destroyed, pieces of it begin caroming around at phenomenal speeds, possibly leading to a chain reaction. Throw in the fact that some satellites are atomic powered and we are talking the potential for a SERIOUS mess.
"Within 10 years of enactment, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to and from an Earth-orbit crossing asteroid and rendezvousing with it."
Here we see what happens when Congressmen itching to spend tax money( the product of blood, sweat, tears, threats of imprisonment whatever) get a few days off and get hooked on The History Channel. Recently, the History Channel ran a number of programs about all the Moon-related missions and it must have gotten the space exploration mood going again with the Feds. Cyclical I suppose. Maybe this has something to do with the "failure" of the Space Shuttle program. (Not a failure, IMO.) I am keeping some faith in the X Prize (stupid name) as a way to REALLY get space exploration/tourism cranking along.
Simple plan for space exploration on the cheap:
1. Get some spaceships built. (Investment)
2. Sell tickets to zillionaires.
3. Profit.
4. Reinvest profits so a few scientists can strap-hang along on tourist flights out to Mars.
Oh, and sell the naming rights for that planet to the M&M candy company.
I use VMWare all the time. Getting pretty good with it. It gets a bit squirrely with hardware like my keychain drive yesterday that locked it cold. BTW, your sig reads like Yoda's. Was that intentional?
Oddly, I read the article (unusual for a Slashdotter) here and it seems to imply that these companies were marketing their products for the limited use of trying to catch people with forged identity documents. Rather than just having a Customs officer compare the photograph to the face next to that photograph, the software could chime in with "Yeah, that's her alright." It looks like the security people at Logan Airport deployed these products in bulk. I wonder whose bright idea it was to try and use these at randumb? Perhaps a zealous salesperson or an overenthusiastic security manager? I also noticed the company spokesperson sounded a bit "hedged" like the company is trying to state that "Gosh, this product was never meant to be USED the way this customer is using it." The part left unsaid by the spokesperson was, "We told them this wouldn't work..." On a side note, let's not even consider how abysmal this software must perform when terrorists are deliberately disguising their faces.
Great news! Attention fellow Microserfs, now we can delay Longhorn even further. Of course, now that we KNOW we are facing extinction, that means our Microsoft stock options are kinda worthless. For all the latest news, be sure to check us out at Microsith.com
FYI. If you read Pierre Clostermann's "The Big Show" or "The First and the Last" by Adolf Galland (longtime commander of the Luftwaffe's Fighter forces) or any of a variety of books about the last six months of the air war over Europe 1944-1945, you will see plenty of references to German aircraft operating from clumps of trees (under which they would be parked) and then using a nearby stretch of highway or autobahn for the airstrip. Frequently, the roadway was painted with fake shellholes to throw the Allied photo reconaissance (sp?) flights off. General (later President) Eisenhower had to have been greatly impressed by the autobahns and later signed the Act creating the Interstate Highway System. I heard much of the impetus for the creation of Interstate Highways was to allow for the rapid movement of military forces across the USA. BTW, the big road in Hawaii is NOT an Interstate and Alaska has no such roads. Perhaps at one time there was some thinking that stretches of interstate might have to be used for flight operations during a future war (see "Red Dawn"- a lovable cheesefest with a surprising cast). When I was stationed in Germany, I heard rumors that stretches of the autobahn alongside major airports were indeed used for flight operations periodically. (See the short film "405"). Does anyone know if those rumors were describing actual facts?
Homebrewer and former temporary resident of Bavaria here. I have a book at home on brewing German wheat beers (weissbiere) and it includes some rather alarming information about the rheinheitsgebot. It turns out that as long as things other than malt, water, yeast and hops are only TEMPORARILY added to the beer during the brewing process, that is acceptable. I expect this has allowed Germany's big brewers to lower their production costs a bit. Disappointing. If you ever get a chance, try Bamberg's pride and joy; Rauschbier (Smoked Beer). A fire in a monastery scorched the grain back around 1600 and they ended up brewing with it anyway. As of 1990, about 10 breweries in Bamberg were still making Rauschbier. BTW, my own wheat beers never turn out very good. I just can't get that 1.5 level of carbonation into them. (That means wheat beers are supposed to have about 150% of normal beer carbonation.)
1. Strange that they are keeping out people with access to Microsoft source code, but not people with access to SCO's source code. (Oh, but wait. It looks like anyone working with GNU/Linux already HAS access to SCO source code. Mmm, quite a dilemma.)
2. Hopefully documentation will count for SOMETHING. After dabbling in GNU Privacy Guard for a while, I have concluded it could use better man pages. And no, I am not volunteering...
What a concept! Near the end of the article is the quote about how hard it would be to add the blocking capability at a later time. I would hope these guys are looking at a LOT of security aspects to this technology before they unleash it everywhere. Interestingly, Business 2.0 is currently running an article on Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) and how they have just now really begun to get "wired". Naturally, they are using a lot of RFID technology to track their rail cars. As recently as ten years ago (when I interviewed with them) they were still using paper and pencil. Sometimes an engineer would stop a train and call back to the dispatcher on a pay phone. Bring on the RFID's. MOM, I want a train!
Now I am really confused... On the many occasions I have dabbled with Apple Computers (after the Apple IIe I had in high school), they have been absurdly graphics-centric. Normally, scripting is associated with accomplishing tasks in a command line environment. As for the Apple graphic-obsession, troubleshooting a network without a command line interface is right up there with pacifying Iraq using only a spoon in my book. I know that OS X has a UNIX core and a command line interface, but the bulk of Mac-nuts I have seen would have no interest in this newfangled intrusion. This brings me to the final point: Why has Slashdot posted a book review of a book that will be read by about 100 OS X users?
A key reason I am not a Mac user myself is that in 1994 when I had 1200 bucks to spend on a computer, the Macs at Computer City (remember them?) were about 1600 bucks while the Compaq 486 with Windows 3.1 was 1100 bucks. History has proven this was a fortuitous event. "Windows/Linux has been a berry, berry good to me. Apple, I don't know. But, Windows/Linux has been a berry, berry good to me." Later, I was able to install a new RAM card on a friend's Mac saving her about 50 bucks, so the hardware proved to be not entirely incomprehensible in spite of its higher cost.
...be sure to check out http://chronicle.comIt is the web site of the The Chronicle of Higher Education. It often includes articles on topics just like this one. The Chronicle is not just about colleges and includes MAJOR coverage on the job market for those with advanced degrees, both in academia and the corporate sector. HTH.
My point exactly. My question is just what the hell function do the "regulators" of our industries serve? It seems to me that much of this "out of control liability" mess can be laid at THEIR doorstep. If judges and juries keep finding these companies guilty of overcharging, restraining competition, building defective products and so on, why does it take a pack of rabid lawyers to finally bring about some justice? Yes, justice. Many of these lawsuits are simply extortion, but some do serve a positive function. Case in point, Ford/Firestone and ALL those rollover accidents from high-speed blowouts. Basically, it looks to me like our executive branch of government is industry's cheerleader (see the Federal Aviation Administration's pre-September 11 record on protecting us from hijackings) and our justice system is mostly a convenient place to raise funds to pay off student loans and country club memberships.
Final point, since M$ has to cover the legal fees from this case and the settlement fund, do they have to raise the price of Windows even further, or should they now stand pat and claim the current prices must be kept high to handle more class action suits?
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!
Is this some kind of attempt to get M$ moving on the rumoured increases in its' dividend rate? Were the California shareholders just excessively impatient?
Of course, after living in California a few years now, I can assure you that you had better be a Microsoft-sized company if you expect to survive here. The place is insanely litigous, the State Senate and State Assembly routinely pass absurd legislation that inflicts high costs on companies gullible enough to do business here, and the cost of living is driving this place into a two-tiered society; the wealthy and those who serve them.
Consider this just one more warning to other businesses tempted by this fabled "market of 34 million consumers". Chalk up this settlement next to hundreds of others, the recent tripling of workman's compensation insurance premiums (which is driving out hundreds of small companies and manufacturers), and the recent brilliance of our state government regarding taxes. The state's income tax system is very "progressive" meaning that high earners are heavily taxed and lesser earners are not taxed at all. Our brilliant legislature recently opted only to increase the income tax rates on the high earners. This is the very approach that got us in such a budget mess in the first place. The low earners vote for dozens of unaccountable spending programs that are paid for by the high earners. When the high earners get clobbered (read NASDAQ collapses onto Silicon Valley), the state government goes begging to support all those programs. Eventually, the state will be entirely populated by a wealthy few, some inland farmers, and those who serve the wealthy and depend on government programs to cope with the uniformly high cost of living. At least the ailing public schools will have a few copies of Windows 98 "donated" by Microsith. Be sure to check out microsith.com!
Hey Californians, last one out, turn off the lights!
According to this morning's Wall Street Journal, what we are seeing right now with the NASDAQ is consistent with previous boom and bust investment cycles. It seems that there is a big runup, a big fall, and about 2.5 to 3 years later, a revisiting of the now-despised investments. Eventually, that residual boom dies off too. The expert they cited in the story figures the NASDAQ will peak at around 2400, well above its current 1750-ish level.
Before this is modded offtopic, what this means is that Yahoo!, which has enjoyed a tremendous runup in this recent boom now has some cash to invest. Looks like they are trying to do some expansion like back in the good ol' days when we had AOL buying Time Warner. Look for some other mergers and acquistions unless or until this boomlet ends.
Slashdot Mirror
See other posts. Trinity's death frees Neo to serve his purpose.
2. The scene with the machines entering the outer hull of Zion was drawn out needlessly, as it contained no switching between the fight at Zion and Neo's plight (think: middle/end of ROTJ)
The fight for the Zion Dock was extremely predictable, I thought, but much of this movie as a whole was rather predictable. Once I concluded that Zion would survive the simplistic attack from the Sentinels and that the real struggle would be Neo's, I was ready to move on. This did not necessarily hurt the scene for other viewers however. In fact, this whole thing is just a gigantic scale rehash of the climax of the original Matrix where the Sentinels are trying to destroy the Nebuchanezzer while Neo is battling the three agents in room 303.
3. The fight scene with Smith/Baines and Neo in the Logos was completely extraneous.
Hardly. Neo's loss of eyesight was shocking after watching him survive innumerable ammo crates of hot lead up to this point. The worst injury I think he had exhibited was coughing up some blood. Then whamo!, he's blind. Wow. It began setting up the following scenes in which there would really be finality brought to this trilogy.
4. Neo's death in the end leaves the humans without a powerful weapon against the machines if they were to decide to attack the humans again. Contrast this with Star Wars and LotR, where the playing field is leveled at the end, or slightly in favor of the protagonists.
Neo's not dead, for heaven's sake. We even see him pulling away from the camera on that Wachowski version of a pickup truck through Neo's own red-tinged "sight". It is only through Neo's "eyes" that we saw the world in that way in this movie. This post reminds me of the goofy ones after Reloaded that said Zion had been destroyed. Like the title of the song that began rolling the credits in the first Matrix; Wake Up!
5. Keanu Reeves performance was subpar, even for him. In the climactic battle with Smith at the end, he looked drugged and was not convincing as the leader of the free world. He had no fire, and it was the machines and the Oracle that actually spurred him on to defeat Smith (esp. the machines, as they revived him after being consumed by Smith).
Umm, Keanu HAS been drugged a time or two. You're totally missing the points of that scene. Everything has a purpose. The purpose of a virus (Smith) is simply to spread. "Humans are a virus that consumes everything and then must move on." Once Smith spreads to his last bit of opposition, his purpose has been fufilled and the virus collapses. Neo's purpose is to continue to exhibit freewill. Smith had no freewill but could only go on annihilating everything around him until it was gone. Once the virus collapsed, all the beings simply returned to their previous state, like a community returning to health. On the other hand, Neo's purpose can never be exhausted as long as there are choices to be made.
6. In the beginning, he was trapped in the train station for no conceivable reason but to lengthen the movie. It served no purpose, benefitted the movie naught and did not lead to any great discoveries that were used later in the film. Likewise, how we could be jacked in without being jacked in was never satisfactorily addressed.
The train station conversation with the Indian family served the very important purpose of showing one of the overriding themes of the trilogy; that Man and Machine need one another. Neo sees machines that are embracing elements of humanity. How the heck were we supposed to get this message otherwise, while Neo was dangling from a helicopter skid and dodging bullets? The quiet, antiseptic get-together was reminiscent of Neo's meeting with the Architect in Reloaded or Neo's conversation with that Minister-guy about Zion's water purification system in Reloaded. As for Neo being j
Other books at especially high risk include those that sell to the student (particularly college student) market as secondary reading. A student could easily grab the relevant chapter or two out of a book without paying for it.
This whole thing just ain't right, as of yet. If you read the article, you can see that on the one hand, people have figured out how to get 108 pages out of a bestseller (that's unfair to the authors and publishers), and on the other hand, those same authors and publishers are expecting students to purchase entire books just to get the one or two chapters their teacher has directed them to read. Like the new music services, there should be a legal, reasonably priced (oh, boy) way to obtain those two chapters rather than having to purchase the entire book. As for the 108 pages, I am guessing they pulled that out of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, yet another doorstop from this prolific author. As someone who has done a fair amount of writing and someone who has done a LOT of reading, I am sympathetic to both sides in this one. Looks to me like Amazon needs to try again.
Whoa! I stand corrected. I have a natural tendency to root for the underdog and had run across a Slashdot posting about Google Watch months ago. I visited Google Watch, did not investigate further, only changed my search habits a little (using Yahoo only to realize it IS Google) and left this in the ditch. Based on your post, I have visited some related sites. I find the pro-Google arguments and its place in the market far more understandable now than I did before getting into this hornet's nest. You may not have a made a true believer of me, but I have taken the large grain of salt regarding Google Watch. Perhaps it is only natural to be wary of anthing that gets as hugely successful as Google, especially when that success comes quickly. Point, set, match to M. hkmwbz.
Google's domination of the search engine space has created a huge, central tracking point for ALL sorts of Internet activity. This sort of thing is inherently dangerous. If you are committed to a competitive marketplace, don't permanently settle on a single vendor for anything. That sort of behavior gave us the Microsoft/Cisco/Intel hegemony. Don't expect real innovation to come from those whose fortunes are only enhanced by maintaining the status quo. Be sure to check out Google Watch
FREE KEVIN!!! Oops. Done. Nevermind...
Having suffered through an attempt to launch a dot.com in the Spring of 2002, I find this reappearance bittersweet. Let me tell ya, in the Spring of 2002, it looked like a fellow Slashdotter was correct in believing that all the Venture Capitalists had participated in a mass suicide two years earlier. I don't think ANYTHING could get funded at that time other than a successful, working prototype of one of those silly devices that appear in IBM's ads. One of my fellow board members described things perfectly during an interchange between us: Me- "How did we go from these guys funding sock puppets and companies that literally burned piles of cash on Super Bowl ads to being unable to fund ANYTHING?" Him- "VC's are conservative sheep. They only do EXACTLY what all the other sheep are doing." And at that time, the other sheep weren't funding anything. Let's hope this "reappearance of the Red Herring" bodes well for the future. Kind of like the groundhog not seeing his shadow.
If anyone is surprised by this legislation, they haven't seen this legislature in action. As a resident of California, I get up and read the local paper each morning fully prepared to read that the State Assembly and Senate have just gotten our coin-operated governor to sign a law that will put a chicken in every pot, a Mercedes in every garage, and that we will all be farting through silk (thank you Mr. O'Rourke) while only "the rich and fatcat corporations pay for these little perks of living in the Golden State". This legislature can't find its a55 with both hands. The worst thing is that someone (not me) keeps voting these dreamers into office. Let's try it again, there is no free lunch. As a result of this Leviathan of state government, businesses are bailing out of the Golden State as fast as their lawyers will go. California has turned into Europe without the history. I don't have to go to France (again), I already live there. A quick rundown of recent madness from Sacramento (I'm not making this stuff up): 1. Foster parents (most of whom are committed Christians), will receive sensitivity training to ensure they are not discriminating against their charges who might be homosexual. I figure that just nuked at least 10 percent of the potential foster parent population of the state. Result: state is stuck with an even larger child-rearing tab. 2. The poorest Indian tribes in the state have seen their petitions to build casinos shot down in flames. The already-established tribes with casinos (read big, white-skinned investors with Indian fronts) have nakedly ponied up millions for Gray Davis and his Mini-Me, Cruz Bustamante to ensure this came to pass. The big "tribes" are also paying for protection since obscene casino revenues make a tempting target for our obscene state government. In the meantime, Caesar's Palace will be helping a big "tribe" get bigger while the small tribes keep scraping by on Godforsaken land away from the prosperous coast. 3. The state has established new, strict regulations for the auto industry that will determine what levels of CO2 emissions will be permitted in California a few years from now. Basically Washington D.C. took a pass on mandating new mileage requirements for the automakers so Cali took it upon itself to do so. In the meantime, the infrastructure taxes get dribbled away on all manner of programs that won't take care of the real culprit, congestion and traffic jams.
So now Davis is trying to buy a few votes from those who hate spam along with the votes of all the other Golden State Suckers who believe we can legislate our way to prosperity and happiness. With his a55 on the line, Davis is signing anything that looks like it might help. In my opinion, we would be better off with flypaper instead of the paper these laws will be printed on. Much more useful. In the meantime, the business climate here will continue to implode.
Glad to see that Neal is as independent and cantankerous as ever. Cryptonomicon was so phenomenal that I gave my copy to a fellow geek-traveller (and old friend), who has probably passed it along like some virus in Snow Crash. Stephenson's books have expanded my mind and I am sure that Quicksilver will be worth a long slog. What the review failed to mention was whether or not the entire book was actually first written using a fountain pen, as I had read it would be years ago. If so, one has to wonder at the determination of an author literally penning a "doorstop". Off to the bookstore...
Great idea here. Get the truck-building companies like Freightliner, Volvo, Ford, Mack and so on to come up with some cleaner-emitting trucks. If Diesel is so bad and these trucks are steadily clicking off 150,000 miles per year, that's a LOT of soot going into the atmosphere. The name of the trucking game is keeping costs down and deliveries timely. This is why they universally run Diesels. Oh, and as a side benefit, the truck-builders could also help the environment since the military uses tremendous numbers of Diesel-powered vehicles. Eventually the military inventories could be updated as well.
This could be just the thing for checking a system for broken hardware and/or connectivity. A tech could walk up, insert their GNOPPIX CD, boot into a GUI environment, check things out and then go. The cost for this versus propietary alternatives would be VERY attractive.
It's fun to get paranoid about shooting down reconnaisance satellites, but there are serious problems with doing so. The major problem is that once a low Earth orbit spacecraft is destroyed, pieces of it begin caroming around at phenomenal speeds, possibly leading to a chain reaction. Throw in the fact that some satellites are atomic powered and we are talking the potential for a SERIOUS mess.
Can you say "Armageddon"?
Here we see what happens when Congressmen itching to spend tax money( the product of blood, sweat, tears, threats of imprisonment whatever) get a few days off and get hooked on The History Channel. Recently, the History Channel ran a number of programs about all the Moon-related missions and it must have gotten the space exploration mood going again with the Feds. Cyclical I suppose. Maybe this has something to do with the "failure" of the Space Shuttle program. (Not a failure, IMO.) I am keeping some faith in the X Prize (stupid name) as a way to REALLY get space exploration/tourism cranking along.
Simple plan for space exploration on the cheap:
1. Get some spaceships built. (Investment)
2. Sell tickets to zillionaires.
3. Profit.
4. Reinvest profits so a few scientists can strap-hang along on tourist flights out to Mars.
Oh, and sell the naming rights for that planet to the M&M candy company.
Let war pay for war. -Napoleon
I use VMWare all the time. Getting pretty good with it. It gets a bit squirrely with hardware like my keychain drive yesterday that locked it cold. BTW, your sig reads like Yoda's. Was that intentional?
Oddly, I read the article (unusual for a Slashdotter) here and it seems to imply that these companies were marketing their products for the limited use of trying to catch people with forged identity documents. Rather than just having a Customs officer compare the photograph to the face next to that photograph, the software could chime in with "Yeah, that's her alright." It looks like the security people at Logan Airport deployed these products in bulk. I wonder whose bright idea it was to try and use these at randumb? Perhaps a zealous salesperson or an overenthusiastic security manager? I also noticed the company spokesperson sounded a bit "hedged" like the company is trying to state that "Gosh, this product was never meant to be USED the way this customer is using it." The part left unsaid by the spokesperson was, "We told them this wouldn't work..." On a side note, let's not even consider how abysmal this software must perform when terrorists are deliberately disguising their faces.
Great news! Attention fellow Microserfs, now we can delay Longhorn even further. Of course, now that we KNOW we are facing extinction, that means our Microsoft stock options are kinda worthless. For all the latest news, be sure to check us out at Microsith.com
FYI. If you read Pierre Clostermann's "The Big Show" or "The First and the Last" by Adolf Galland (longtime commander of the Luftwaffe's Fighter forces) or any of a variety of books about the last six months of the air war over Europe 1944-1945, you will see plenty of references to German aircraft operating from clumps of trees (under which they would be parked) and then using a nearby stretch of highway or autobahn for the airstrip. Frequently, the roadway was painted with fake shellholes to throw the Allied photo reconaissance (sp?) flights off. General (later President) Eisenhower had to have been greatly impressed by the autobahns and later signed the Act creating the Interstate Highway System. I heard much of the impetus for the creation of Interstate Highways was to allow for the rapid movement of military forces across the USA. BTW, the big road in Hawaii is NOT an Interstate and Alaska has no such roads. Perhaps at one time there was some thinking that stretches of interstate might have to be used for flight operations during a future war (see "Red Dawn"- a lovable cheesefest with a surprising cast). When I was stationed in Germany, I heard rumors that stretches of the autobahn alongside major airports were indeed used for flight operations periodically. (See the short film "405"). Does anyone know if those rumors were describing actual facts?
Homebrewer and former temporary resident of Bavaria here. I have a book at home on brewing German wheat beers (weissbiere) and it includes some rather alarming information about the rheinheitsgebot. It turns out that as long as things other than malt, water, yeast and hops are only TEMPORARILY added to the beer during the brewing process, that is acceptable. I expect this has allowed Germany's big brewers to lower their production costs a bit. Disappointing. If you ever get a chance, try Bamberg's pride and joy; Rauschbier (Smoked Beer). A fire in a monastery scorched the grain back around 1600 and they ended up brewing with it anyway. As of 1990, about 10 breweries in Bamberg were still making Rauschbier. BTW, my own wheat beers never turn out very good. I just can't get that 1.5 level of carbonation into them. (That means wheat beers are supposed to have about 150% of normal beer carbonation.)
1. Strange that they are keeping out people with access to Microsoft source code, but not people with access to SCO's source code. (Oh, but wait. It looks like anyone working with GNU/Linux already HAS access to SCO source code. Mmm, quite a dilemma.)
2. Hopefully documentation will count for SOMETHING. After dabbling in GNU Privacy Guard for a while, I have concluded it could use better man pages. And no, I am not volunteering...
What a concept! Near the end of the article is the quote about how hard it would be to add the blocking capability at a later time. I would hope these guys are looking at a LOT of security aspects to this technology before they unleash it everywhere. Interestingly, Business 2.0 is currently running an article on Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) and how they have just now really begun to get "wired". Naturally, they are using a lot of RFID technology to track their rail cars. As recently as ten years ago (when I interviewed with them) they were still using paper and pencil. Sometimes an engineer would stop a train and call back to the dispatcher on a pay phone. Bring on the RFID's. MOM, I want a train!
Now I am really confused... On the many occasions I have dabbled with Apple Computers (after the Apple IIe I had in high school), they have been absurdly graphics-centric. Normally, scripting is associated with accomplishing tasks in a command line environment. As for the Apple graphic-obsession, troubleshooting a network without a command line interface is right up there with pacifying Iraq using only a spoon in my book. I know that OS X has a UNIX core and a command line interface, but the bulk of Mac-nuts I have seen would have no interest in this newfangled intrusion. This brings me to the final point: Why has Slashdot posted a book review of a book that will be read by about 100 OS X users?
A key reason I am not a Mac user myself is that in 1994 when I had 1200 bucks to spend on a computer, the Macs at Computer City (remember them?) were about 1600 bucks while the Compaq 486 with Windows 3.1 was 1100 bucks. History has proven this was a fortuitous event. "Windows/Linux has been a berry, berry good to me. Apple, I don't know. But, Windows/Linux has been a berry, berry good to me." Later, I was able to install a new RAM card on a friend's Mac saving her about 50 bucks, so the hardware proved to be not entirely incomprehensible in spite of its higher cost.
My 2 cents...
...be sure to check out http://chronicle.comIt is the web site of the The Chronicle of Higher Education. It often includes articles on topics just like this one. The Chronicle is not just about colleges and includes MAJOR coverage on the job market for those with advanced degrees, both in academia and the corporate sector. HTH.
My point exactly. My question is just what the hell function do the "regulators" of our industries serve? It seems to me that much of this "out of control liability" mess can be laid at THEIR doorstep. If judges and juries keep finding these companies guilty of overcharging, restraining competition, building defective products and so on, why does it take a pack of rabid lawyers to finally bring about some justice? Yes, justice. Many of these lawsuits are simply extortion, but some do serve a positive function. Case in point, Ford/Firestone and ALL those rollover accidents from high-speed blowouts. Basically, it looks to me like our executive branch of government is industry's cheerleader (see the Federal Aviation Administration's pre-September 11 record on protecting us from hijackings) and our justice system is mostly a convenient place to raise funds to pay off student loans and country club memberships.
Final point, since M$ has to cover the legal fees from this case and the settlement fund, do they have to raise the price of Windows even further, or should they now stand pat and claim the current prices must be kept high to handle more class action suits?
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!
Is this some kind of attempt to get M$ moving on the rumoured increases in its' dividend rate? Were the California shareholders just excessively impatient?
Of course, after living in California a few years now, I can assure you that you had better be a Microsoft-sized company if you expect to survive here. The place is insanely litigous, the State Senate and State Assembly routinely pass absurd legislation that inflicts high costs on companies gullible enough to do business here, and the cost of living is driving this place into a two-tiered society; the wealthy and those who serve them.
Consider this just one more warning to other businesses tempted by this fabled "market of 34 million consumers". Chalk up this settlement next to hundreds of others, the recent tripling of workman's compensation insurance premiums (which is driving out hundreds of small companies and manufacturers), and the recent brilliance of our state government regarding taxes. The state's income tax system is very "progressive" meaning that high earners are heavily taxed and lesser earners are not taxed at all. Our brilliant legislature recently opted only to increase the income tax rates on the high earners. This is the very approach that got us in such a budget mess in the first place. The low earners vote for dozens of unaccountable spending programs that are paid for by the high earners. When the high earners get clobbered (read NASDAQ collapses onto Silicon Valley), the state government goes begging to support all those programs. Eventually, the state will be entirely populated by a wealthy few, some inland farmers, and those who serve the wealthy and depend on government programs to cope with the uniformly high cost of living. At least the ailing public schools will have a few copies of Windows 98 "donated" by Microsith. Be sure to check out microsith.com!
Hey Californians, last one out, turn off the lights!
According to this morning's Wall Street Journal, what we are seeing right now with the NASDAQ is consistent with previous boom and bust investment cycles. It seems that there is a big runup, a big fall, and about 2.5 to 3 years later, a revisiting of the now-despised investments. Eventually, that residual boom dies off too. The expert they cited in the story figures the NASDAQ will peak at around 2400, well above its current 1750-ish level.
Before this is modded offtopic, what this means is that Yahoo!, which has enjoyed a tremendous runup in this recent boom now has some cash to invest. Looks like they are trying to do some expansion like back in the good ol' days when we had AOL buying Time Warner. Look for some other mergers and acquistions unless or until this boomlet ends.