Can you say Harrison Bergeron? I though you could.
You could say that, but you would be wrong:
- The handicap helmet George Bergeron wore in the essay emitted sounds, not electric shocks.
- The helmet was designed to keep George down, i.e. to disrupt his brain/thought patterns, not to resolve any problem he might have had (unlike the device in the article).
Yeah, check out some of Mozarts early work. If he can write stuff like that at the age of 8 then perhaps writing music of genius which will inform and inspire much older composers for centuries is actually a piece of cake!
Zoning laws and long term urban planning can reduce the need for cars by making urban sparl less desirable for developers... make incentives for residentual reclamation of parts of the downtown areas ect
Fair enough - that's a good point. However, the problem (as I see it) is that essentially every extant city already has a significant amount of sprawl around it; this was the result of the urban flight that took place [IIRC] from the 1950s to 1970s. Some places - like the suburbs of Chicago, e.g. Naperville - are experiencing their own housing/development booms right now. Unfortunately I don't see an opportunity to redesign such areas for at least another 50 to 75 years, and that is if an entire neighborhood can be razed/rebuilt en masse.
Perhaps/. should commandeer part of Nebraska or something and start from scratch. Flat land means easy walking.:-)
make cities better designed for walking and cycling
You know, in discussions like this someone will usually mention that cities should "be designed for X". This strikes me as a slightly silly argument:
1) The most densely-populated cities (where X would likely provide the greatest benefit) have already been built. Retrofitting features to implement X would very likely be hideously expensive and impractical, e.g. where X == bike paths in a major city.
2) Are new cities founded/designed/built at such a rate that changing the designs to accommodate X would provide any substantial benefit?
The suit contends, however, that representatives of Harding Earley should not have been able to view the old Healthcare Advocates Web pages - even though they now reside on the archive's servers - because the company, shortly after filing its suit against Health Advocate, had placed a text file on its own servers designed to tell the Wayback Machine to block public access to the historical versions of the site.
Under popular Web convention, such a file - known as robots.txt - dictates what parts of a site can be examined for indexing in search engines or storage in archives.
That is an excerpt; there is a bit more robots.txt related verbiage in the article.
Does that mean if I visited a website in '99, then turned off the computer and haved turned it back on, that I can be sued for having the page in cache?
That is a bad analogy: your switched-off machine is not redistributing content and you are not providing an advertised service. Fair comment on the Wayback removal policy, though.
First: acknowledge that some kids are not bright
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 1
I know this is anathema in the public school system, but ignoring the fact does not make it go away.
Second: acknowledge that some kids are very bright.
Third: allocate limited school resources accordingly.
There are two desirable results:
1) The very bright kids will be able to advance as quickly and as far as they feel comfortable.
2) These same kids can then pursue higher education and go on to perform useful and interesting functions in society.
Public schools in general seem to spend a disproportionate amount of money dragging Johnny Dunderhead and Susie Slacker along while programs for gifted+talented kids are cut drastically (or simply discontinued). Schools should provide a basic education to the less-bright students and offer increased opportunities for the students with more potential. Is this elitist? Probably, but there is much to be said for meritocracy.
No he doesn't. In fact he expicitly states that in the article:
Yes, I saw that. However, he states unequivocally that (A==B) in the middle of the article and then states just as firmly that (A!=B) at the end; this is a poor example of communication. The author should not expect those two statements to carry equal weight - which does he actually believe? The disclaimer-like language in the last paragraph struck me as an effort to weasel out of the strong point he tried to make earlier.
As an aside, I don't read this guy's column and was not inclined to look for the "previous article" he mentioned.
The cold, hard reality here is that the Mac is Apple's past and the iPod is Apple's future.
I find it hard to believe that anyone who purports to know the inner goings-on at Apple could come up with such a ridiculous assertion. The author seems to believe that those products cannot exist in parallel...
Perhaps he's just trying to encourage debate, in which case IHBT.
Becaues municipal WIFI is free, there will be a ton of people joining and using it, especially the lower income people.
So there is a demographic that can afford computers with wireless capabilities but cannot afford monthly ISP fees? I'm not saying such folk don't exist; I'm saying it's probably a very small niche and probably shouldn't be factored into your scenario.
Let's just ask S. Korea what they think about widespread access...
This is a red herring: South Korea has a large market for wired networking, due in some part to the relative population density. The requirements driving wired markets are not the same as those driving wireless markets, and the two ideas should not be viewed as equivalent in a discussion of wireless.
In a further revelation, the CEA's numbers say that approximately 3 million (around 10 percent) aren't used for viewing broadcast television at all. Instead, the electricity gobbled up by these sets is used to play videogames, watch movies on DVD, or view old Jane Fonda exercise tapes.
So the electricity usage would be better justified somehow if those televisions were tuned to local stations? (I'm sure the advertisers feel that way...)
We have
Lhasa Apsos. Ours don't have the dust mop appearance but do have rather long tails that curl up over their backs (which apparently facilitates chasing).
And if you thinks canines are *normally* confused, you should see the looks on their faces when they manage to catch their tails. It's a combination of "Aha - success!" and "Now what?".
Possibly not unlike Ballmer's reaction to the catching of Google by Microsoft - if it should happen, of course.
Disclaimer: this phenomenon works under only very limited circumstances (e.g small dogs w/ long tails). The catch-the-tail thing won't work for most normal companies^W dogs.
I'm about to patent "doing... things with er, stuff". Wish me luck.
Infringer! You reverse-engineered my process for "doing stuff with things".
I'll see you in court.
That's just ridiculous
on
P2P and TV
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This should be true in general. Any work that an "owner" is not interested in exploiting for commercial gain should be strictly PD. None of this nonsense about locking up masterpieces in a vault to rot away.
Scenario:
1) I create a really neat widget.
2) I am not interested in releasing the widget.
3) I am not interested in financial gain.
And somehow you come to the logical (??) conclusion that I should release the widget into the public domain, because obviously if I don't want to profit from it then you should should be able to mandate such release.
That is a ridiculous and indefensible position. As an added bonus, some nitwits have chosen to mod you up.
Here is some news: Some things are not free. Some things are not your property. If you did not create $ITEM, you have no rights whatsoever to $ITEM until the creator/owner agrees to assign such rights. You really should understand this.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you say Harrison Bergeron? I though you could.
You could say that, but you would be wrong:
- The handicap helmet George Bergeron wore in the essay emitted sounds, not electric shocks.
- The helmet was designed to keep George down, i.e. to disrupt his brain/thought patterns, not to resolve any problem he might have had (unlike the device in the article).
One of many places to read Harrison Bergeron in its entirety.
Official Bastard (900041)
I'll be darned.
Yeah, check out some of Mozarts early work. If he can write stuff like that at the age of 8 then perhaps writing music of genius which will inform and inspire much older composers for centuries is actually a piece of cake!
MCSE? Mozart's Compositions Seed Enthusiasm?
SCO$699FeeTroll (695565)
Don't forget...
Never before has a nick been so appropriate.
Okay, when will MS start getting their certification in while kids are in pre-school?
MS allows them to get certifications; the pre-schoolers provide guidance on new MS GUIs.
Clicky for printer-friendly version. It will probably try to print the page as well.
PS The 'perma-link' option does not appear to work yet.
Zoning laws and long term urban planning can reduce the need for cars by making urban sparl less desirable for developers... make incentives for residentual reclamation of parts of the downtown areas ect
Fair enough - that's a good point. However, the problem (as I see it) is that essentially every extant city already has a significant amount of sprawl around it; this was the result of the urban flight that took place [IIRC] from the 1950s to 1970s. Some places - like the suburbs of Chicago, e.g. Naperville - are experiencing their own housing/development booms right now. Unfortunately I don't see an opportunity to redesign such areas for at least another 50 to 75 years, and that is if an entire neighborhood can be razed/rebuilt en masse.
Perhaps
make cities better designed for walking and cycling
You know, in discussions like this someone will usually mention that cities should "be designed for X". This strikes me as a slightly silly argument:
1) The most densely-populated cities (where X would likely provide the greatest benefit) have already been built. Retrofitting features to implement X would very likely be hideously expensive and impractical, e.g. where X == bike paths in a major city.
2) Are new cities founded/designed/built at such a rate that changing the designs to accommodate X would provide any substantial benefit?
Your question is answered in The Fine Article:
The suit contends, however, that representatives of Harding Earley should not have been able to view the old Healthcare Advocates Web pages - even though they now reside on the archive's servers - because the company, shortly after filing its suit against Health Advocate, had placed a text file on its own servers designed to tell the Wayback Machine to block public access to the historical versions of the site.
Under popular Web convention, such a file - known as robots.txt - dictates what parts of a site can be examined for indexing in search engines or storage in archives.
That is an excerpt; there is a bit more robots.txt related verbiage in the article.
Does that mean if I visited a website in '99, then turned off the computer and haved turned it back on, that I can be sued for having the page in cache?
That is a bad analogy: your switched-off machine is not redistributing content and you are not providing an advertised service. Fair comment on the Wayback removal policy, though.
I know this is anathema in the public school system, but ignoring the fact does not make it go away.
Second: acknowledge that some kids are very bright.
Third: allocate limited school resources accordingly.
There are two desirable results:
1) The very bright kids will be able to advance as quickly and as far as they feel comfortable.
2) These same kids can then pursue higher education and go on to perform useful and interesting functions in society.
Public schools in general seem to spend a disproportionate amount of money dragging Johnny Dunderhead and Susie Slacker along while programs for gifted+talented kids are cut drastically (or simply discontinued). Schools should provide a basic education to the less-bright students and offer increased opportunities for the students with more potential. Is this elitist? Probably, but there is much to be said for meritocracy.
" Ta-Da! The finished project in action. It works prefectly."
Creator confirms there are minor typing problems with the unit.
Nah, he just meant that it works "in the manner of a cool frood who really know where his towel is". High praise indeed.
No he doesn't. In fact he expicitly states that in the article:
Yes, I saw that. However, he states unequivocally that (A==B) in the middle of the article and then states just as firmly that (A!=B) at the end; this is a poor example of communication. The author should not expect those two statements to carry equal weight - which does he actually believe? The disclaimer-like language in the last paragraph struck me as an effort to weasel out of the strong point he tried to make earlier.
As an aside, I don't read this guy's column and was not inclined to look for the "previous article" he mentioned.
The cold, hard reality here is that the Mac is Apple's past and the iPod is Apple's future.
I find it hard to believe that anyone who purports to know the inner goings-on at Apple could come up with such a ridiculous assertion. The author seems to believe that those products cannot exist in parallel...
Perhaps he's just trying to encourage debate, in which case IHBT.
Using that is so 2002, I use the power button. And yes, Windows does shutdown correctly when I do that.
Does the reset button on the front of the case initiate an equally safe reboot or do you still need to go to the Start button?
(Assuming the box isn't completely wedged, of course)
MVNO
Apparently we have exhausted all the good TLAs and must venture further into FLAs.
This is an unfortunate start as it looks/sounds like
mv? no.
Ok, so now we have Ubuntu, Gentoo, Suse, Red hat, Mandriva, colinux, Yellow dog, Caldera
If they merged we could have UbunTuseYellowCoDrivaDeraDogHat.
If nothing else the domains should be readily available.
Becaues municipal WIFI is free, there will be a ton of people joining and using it, especially the lower income people.
So there is a demographic that can afford computers with wireless capabilities but cannot afford monthly ISP fees? I'm not saying such folk don't exist; I'm saying it's probably a very small niche and probably shouldn't be factored into your scenario.
Let's just ask S. Korea what they think about widespread access...
This is a red herring: South Korea has a large market for wired networking, due in some part to the relative population density. The requirements driving wired markets are not the same as those driving wireless markets, and the two ideas should not be viewed as equivalent in a discussion of wireless.
(like phd / mcse, mba, etc)
One of these things just doesn't belong.
(Hint: four letters, starts with 'm')
In a further revelation, the CEA's numbers say that approximately 3 million (around 10 percent) aren't used for viewing broadcast television at all. Instead, the electricity gobbled up by these sets is used to play videogames, watch movies on DVD, or view old Jane Fonda exercise tapes.
So the electricity usage would be better justified somehow if those televisions were tuned to local stations? (I'm sure the advertisers feel that way...)
Are you suggesting Ballmer is a Klee Kai?
Nah - those look like friendly, clever dogs.
We have Lhasa Apsos. Ours don't have the dust mop appearance but do have rather long tails that curl up over their backs (which apparently facilitates chasing).
And if you thinks canines are *normally* confused, you should see the looks on their faces when they manage to catch their tails. It's a combination of "Aha - success!" and "Now what?".
Possibly not unlike Ballmer's reaction to the catching of Google by Microsoft - if it should happen, of course.
Disclaimer: this phenomenon works under only very limited circumstances (e.g small dogs w/ long tails). The catch-the-tail thing won't work for most normal companies^W dogs.
They should call it HIJAX...
Since it's AJAX the code should be pretty clean.
I'm about to patent "doing
Infringer! You reverse-engineered my process for "doing stuff with things".
I'll see you in court.
This should be true in general. Any work that an "owner" is not interested in exploiting for commercial gain should be strictly PD. None of this nonsense about locking up masterpieces in a vault to rot away.
Scenario:
1) I create a really neat widget.
2) I am not interested in releasing the widget.
3) I am not interested in financial gain.
And somehow you come to the logical (??) conclusion that I should release the widget into the public domain, because obviously if I don't want to profit from it then you should should be able to mandate such release.
That is a ridiculous and indefensible position. As an added bonus, some nitwits have chosen to mod you up.
Here is some news: Some things are not free. Some things are not your property. If you did not create $ITEM, you have no rights whatsoever to $ITEM until the creator/owner agrees to assign such rights. You really should understand this.