They've got the whole site structured if you poke around a little -- do a search for search engine you get a list of awfully generic results, no Yahoo, Alta Vista, Northern Lights,...I see Google! wayyy down on the list, buried among a few hundred other anonymous engines.
I suppose it is in a company's interest to not support their competition, but this is a bit much. Or is it? Would it be reasonable for, say, the New York Times to write about the New York Post? Does that ever happen? (I can't say, I live in Alabama...). Or does the phone book mention competing phone companies? I would think so.
I wonder if such directory services are legally bound to represent information like this accurately -- clearly they aren't here, and it's easy to understand why, but how far can they carry it? If one advertiser doesn't like site so and so, will they block it from listings? This starts butting up on some important issues pretty quickly when you get into such matters. Is blocking access to a document a suppression of first amendment free speech rights? Good question...
Of course if we all just used Google to begin with, this problem might not happen in the first place. But that's just my unofficial, third-party, no-name endorsement of their fine service...
If I were to go out right now and make a free Geocities page endorsing Ralph Nader for president (not a bad idea actually), am I going to have to pay the federal election commision for the use of the server? Is Yahoo supposed to pay for it instead?
Ok, so no money exchanges hands there, it might be harder to argue in a court. But my web page now (nevermind my profile, I need to update it) is on a web server at a public university. I pay tuition and am the primary administrator of this machine -- I like to think of it as mine even though it really isn't. If I put that Nader site here, with all kinds of fun stuff like petitions and links and essays and endorsements and yadda yadda yadda, is someone supposed to pay then?
This is stupid. I can almost follow the FEC's logic: expensive equipment is being used. If you were to publish in a newspaper or run a radio or television broadcast ad, you would have to pay the publisher of that media for the space. In this case, you've already paid for it (via tuition & fees) but from a certain point of view it's the same thing.
But that's an insane point of view. Would it be better to pay by the percentage of clock cycles or disc space that goes to serving out the political page? Arguably, but it's a weak argument at best.
Bzzt [Blue - 5:09 PM EDT] One of those rare, but but inevitable moments of technical difficulties is upon us. Our finger script blew a cork, so if you are having problems accessing one of the.plan links above, that is the problem, we're working on it. We also had to purge some unread email from the mail server as a result of the server crash that the finger script caused, so it's possible your message was lost if it was sent in within the last hour or so, and you might want to resend it. Sorry about the problems, any patience you can spare while we investigate what's up is appreciated.
Many of the comments I've read seem to be taking away the wrong point. *Of course* programming is difficult. *Of course* you can weed out the good programmers from the bad. But guess what? Engineering is difficult too! And some people are good at it while others aren't, just as with programming.
And that could be precisely the engine behind what Rob describes. Did the engineering profession disappear recently? Of course not. And programming won't go anywhere either. But there are probably fewer engineers out there today than there were then, and the ones that remain are probably the more skilled among them. (I have no numbers to support this, only anecdotes). There isn't as much money sloshing around for the reamaining engineers to grab either. What's to say that the bulk of today's coders won't be driven out as well, with only the very best remaining -- if even them?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that IT will go down the same way. Consider that much of the growth behind IT is the move to get businesses onto the internet, and to build the infrastructure to get people on at home at better speeds. In other words, we're in a building phase, much like countries went through when they joined the industrial revolution. But just as with that period, it will end. Eventually, there weren't as many new factories to build, the telegraph lines had been laid, the rivers all had steamboats, and while these things persisted, they slacked off. So it may be here. Eventually, the fiber optic lines and satellites will all be in place; the companies will have their E-Commerce(tm) departments up and running; and the opportunities for new entry will, not disappear, but diminish.
If you think this can't happen, you're delusional. Nothing lasts forever. We've got it good now, but something -- who knows what, who knows when or how soon -- will bring it all to an end. Plan for it. If you are not absolutely top notch, plan on a second career.
One of my professors got his undergrad degree in aerospace engineering -- he worked on the Apollo program and helped send people to the moon. In his domain, he was great -- but one day we stopped sending people to the moon, and he had to find a new job. For a while, he bought a bar & lived as a bartender. Now he's a professor. But he'll probably never send people to the moon again.
It's not pessimism guys, it's reality. Plan for it or get burned. Consider yourselves warned.
Do you want a skill, or an education? Trust me -- go for education. Where would all the COBOL programmers be today if Y2K pandemonium hadn't resuscitated their jobs? That's right -- they'd be out flipping burgers somewhere. Unless they adapt to new methodologies, they're obsolete.
That's what you'd be setting yourself up for with such an education. Sure, exposure to new technologies should be a part of the curriculum, but that will get you only so far. Cold Fusion won't be the Next Big Thing forever, Sun's marketing department won't be able to keep Java alive forever (I hope), and even Randal Schwartz, he of the great O'Reilly Perl books, has talked of plans for what to do "after Perl."
The best thing to get would be a solid basis in the theory underlying the technology, with enough exposure to the applications that you can understand and internalize the theory behind it. You can write a useful little VB application that does this or that cute little GUI trick, but if you don't have a solid understanding of the architecture behind it -- the data structures, the machine representation, the algorithms, and so on -- you will never be able to get the most out of your work.
Mind you, I'm *not* saying that theory is an end goal. As one of my professors put it (paraphrasing), being a consultant (i.e. theory specialist) is like being a sex therapist without ever having had a girlfriend. Or to mangle another person's statement, "Theory is to application as masturbation is to sex."
Obviously, you have to be able to apply what you learn, and yes that means exposure to current mainline technologies. But a general education can only go so far with this. Should the curriculum emphasize a good middle ground, like C++, or should it emphasize specific technologies like Cold Fusion web development, Oracle databases, Cisco routers, Visual Basic interface design, etc.? In other words, where should the specialization end? This question cannot be met by general education, nor should it. Once you have the basis, you can seek out and master the tools you will need *on your own*.
In the end, this should be far more valuable to you than a trade school training. I promise.
Isn't all media biased? Really? The press trumpets itself as this impartial, outside observer of events, never having an opinion, never pushing an agenda, always standing in the middle of things, equally considering both sides of each issue.
But is that really the case? Do you accept that self-assessment? For one thing, who ever said that each issue has only two sides? Who came up with that? Seems a little simplistic to me.
I for one don't buy it. Every little thing you say and do betrays bias, even if subconsciously. You mention this and not that -- why not? You cite this source but not that one -- how come? You talk a lot about this but seldom about that -- why?
Bias-free media is a myth.
Think about where your news comes from. All of the major news & media outlets in the western world are owned by about half a dozen conglomerates. They each run advertisements for their own products, and by so doing try to mold you to their veiw of how the world should be. ("Television shows are a tool to get people to watch more ads than the would ordinarily.") It might not be an explicit plan to manipulate things -- there may not be men in black suits & skinny ties saying who can say what about whatever -- but the people that find their way on screen or into print have demonstrated a willingness to play by the rules of their superiors. And in that way, the tone of the media is molded to the interests of those controlling the top of the pyramid.
That is what I love about Slashdot. There is no central control, or not much anyhow, and anyone from ESR to AC can speak their mind about anything. Is it perfect? No. Is it biased? Yes. But it's democratic -- we control it, not Rupert Murdoch, not General Electric. You and me. We control it. And the bias is not concealed -- we love Linux, we love open source, we want it to spread far and wide. First we had open source software, and it was great. Now, what is this? Open source news media? Hey alright, sounds good to me. We don't cringe from these things.
In my mind, this is the more honest and egalitarian model for the news media to follow. I love it. My only wish is that it wasn't so confined to technical matters -- or rather that there was, say, a kindred site with an emphasis on general news, international affiars, politics, the economy, whatever. As it happens, there is only one Slashdot, and it's all about nerddom. So be it.
May it blaze a shining trail for others to follow.
I know a guy who uses the handle Pez D. Spencer -- is he going to have to change his email now? What a frickin' joke. These people must be working with whoever at Unisys decided to sue everyone over the *.gif's...
It just occurred to me that in the movie Blade Runner (and the PKD book as well?), the test for whether or not a suspect is a replicant or human is basically a fancy Turing test, isn't it?
Place the subject in front of an interrogator and try to provoke an emotional response, indicating humanity. Sufficiently advanced replicants are good at fooling the test ("Rachel took nearly 50 questions") but to date all replicants are distinguishable from humans.
Seems pretty allegorical to me. What was the test called in the film? Who was that doctor / scientist? Would he have been eligible for the reward?
Man I want to see that movie again now...
Other thoughts, since I'm on a tangent: how about a program that can seem more real than Zippy the Pinhead? (Shouldn't be too difficult.) Or one that is less boneheaded than the average Slashdot AC poster? (Shouldn't be too difficult.) Sounds like it's time to get coding...
You'd be surprised -- after one day I'm already at around 60% just with junk I loaded from the O'Reilly book -- Reversi and Freecell and some e-texts (the US Constitution, Shakespeare's sonnets, Aesop's fables, Aladdin & the magic lamp, a Perl reference, etc -- nothing *that* big), etc. Two megabytes is pretty tight. I wonder if it's worth returning it for an upgrade... hmm...
I just got the plain V model *yesterday*. Wonder if I can get an upgrade on the ram. Does anyone know if that's feasible? I didn't see anything on 3com's site...
Sheesh, this comment is killing my Karma. It was a JOKE, guys! Man. Okay, disclaimer (as if it matters now): I endorse no political party, no political creed, if you wanna listen to Rush Limbaugh and vote right that's fine, your mistake but I'm not about to stop you.
Voltaire: "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I'm sure you have heard this quote before, and I heed it personally. That said -- where's your sense of humor?
Could this explain why / how Transmeta brings together people like Linus Torvalds and Paul Allen of Microsoft? (That's the guy's name, right? I just know that autistic billionaire honcho guy. Oh this one is a billionaire too? How about that. Learn something every day...).
What would this mean, exactly? Would you really get to pick your o/s independently of your applications? I could run BeOS, with a bunch of Linux compiled tools, while running MSOffice and maybe some Mac or Amiga software too for good measure? And maybe, just maybe, Java wouldn't be glacially slow? Or would Java be flat out irrelevant? (...iwishiwishiwishiwish...)
If this is the case -- if this really is possible to the extent that is implied here...why didn't anyone think of this decades ago?
"If the police ask [that] you keep the demand to hand over the key [a] secret, telling anyone [about the key?...about the police? it's ambiguous...] would render you liable to 5 years in jail."
Any better?
Re:Actually.. (Offtopic remark to offtopic joke ;)
on
Dear Mr. Straw
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Yeah, you're right of course, and I was kidding. An analogy I heard once went something like this:
Son: "Father, what is the difference between Deomcrats and Republicans?" Father: "They are alike in many ways. Both are like fat slobs gorging themselves at a lavish banquet." Son: "Then what makes them different?" Father: "The Democrats make a point of throwing scraps to the peasants at the door."
And even that is simplistic and inaccurate, but it always cracked me up all the same.
Oh well. At least there's Ralph Nader and the Green party. And Michael Moore, if he could ever be drafted to run for office.
Actually, here's a suggestion, kids -- support third party candidates, whatever your political slant is. If everyone went by the best candidate, and not the one more likely to keep you placated given the choice between options A and B, maybe we'd end up with a smarter, more dynamic government, where boneheaded laws like this wouldn't be so likely.
Biologically produced / biodegradable plastic has been around for at least five or ten years, if not longer. I first learned about a version grown by a bacterial strain in a petri dish several years ago -- sorry I can't cite that better, it's been a while. The problem at that point was that [a] it was of poorer quality than conventional petroleum based plastic, and [b] it was difficult to grow in any significant quantities. It's surely just a matter of time though, as the principles seem fairly solid. Who knows, maybe the organic chemists will be able to synthesize other petroleum byproducts too, like gasoline & motor oil. If they can get one derivitive, I'm not aware of why they couldn't get others as well. This could prove useful when petrol stocks start drying up in a couple decades...
...but then again, fuel cells seem more interesting to me as far as that goes: the only chemicals involved are hydrogen, oxygen, and water, and you get energy useful for electricity, propulsion, or however you care to harness it. Very clean & efficient too, at least on paper. I'm hoping someone can build a useful & affordable fuel cell system to address the fossil fuel shortage. But that's a tangent I won't pursue farther here...
There are, as has been said, many of open source projects out there, and the number of people available for development, while large, *is* finite. Just because an open source project can draw more developers than an in-house commercial project, as per "Cathedral and the Bazaar", doesn't exclude it from that fundamental limitation. As work falls off here and more interesting (read: newer, less defined, more challenging, more fun) projects come along, development for the current project could easily trail off. It's almost like a compromise between Brooks' Law & ESR's Loophole. I don't see why this "news" is surprising.
(I'd give links for CatB and such, but am browsing with Lynx and don't care to mess with it at the moment. I'm sure you could dig it up if you haven't read it yet -- try Google if you need help.)
A cousin of mine was recently diagnosed with Asperger's. Not sure yet if it applies to "D" (as I'll call her here), but the symptoms fit. She didn't speak until she was five, and her first word was -- I kid you not -- "Supercalafragalisticixpyaladocious" (as in that Disney movie).
Ever since then, D has been quirky. Talks, but awkwardly, and always and only just about things that interest her -- tiedye and wiccanism and such. She's pretty clearly brilliant, but always fixated on this or that to the point that it gets frustrating.
You have to understand that Asperger's doesn't mean Rain Man; the "high functioning" modifier is important. In D's case, she has held down jobs, lived on her own, done well in school, had boyfriends, etc. She's 25 or so now and we've only realized there could be a clinical explanation for her oddities for a few months now. Alot of the people that have this condition, if they are anything like D, would for most purposes blend right in with "normal", functioning society.
And this has nothing to do with "labelling the geek phenomenon." Rather, it is a recognition of the fact that there are people -- some but not all of them programmers -- that have a condition and can seek help for it. No one is trying to "weed out the geeks" here, sorry, but you're paranoid.
And in response to Bruce Parens' points -- again, it does not mean non-functional behavior. Aspberger's patients function more or less just like "normal" people -- in the case of D, it took 25 years or so for anyone to realize that there was anything unusual here. Don't associate this with previous conceptions of autism, because on a functional level it seems to be quite different. People with Asperger's are likely to talk just as much as anyone else -- the difference is more in what they will talk about, that mainly being themselves and the things they are interested in and not much else.
It will create many jobs
It will lead to interesting technologies
It will help Raytheon's stock price, various senators kickback schemes, and the bank accounts of various well placed lobbyists groups.
Cons for missile defense:
It won't ever work. If by some freak chance it manages to be able to shoot down ICBMs (doubt it, but remotely possible), would be aggressors will just find a less expensive way to deliver their weaponry. In the article, one researcher points out "you lock your house knowing that a thief could use a window." Maybe so, but this is like electrifying the roof without bothering to lock the front door. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
At least we'll have jobs & neat technology as the shiny new system fails around us. Maybe.
Those of us that are not Senators, do not own any stock in Raytheon, and are not lobbyists will pay for this for the rest of our lives, at $25 million a pop, ad nauseam. But at least a few hundred will have jobs.
Other points:
India was believed to have nuclear weapons since at least the 70s, but sat on them until recently. Part of their motivation was to get the primary nuclear powers to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which all of them except the United States are perfectly willing to do. I might add that missile defense systems are also a violation of various treaties, and are sure to only further destabilize nuclear relations.
Re Stonehand's "leading by example" comment: read up on your game theory before coming back to the table, kid. The only way we are ever going to make progress here is if nations do lead by example. Someone has to show a level of trust or no progress is possible. (By the way, Leejay, you make an amazing number of moronic points. I'm impressed.)
Technical correction: the US & UK are indeed the world's biggest arms exporters. They are followed by Russia, China, and France. Astute readers will note that these five nations just happen to be the five permanent members of the UN security council, the body responsible for maintaining world peace and stability. I'm sure this is just a coincidence though.
Substrate seems surprised by what s/he calls Cold War Two. This shouldn't be a surprise. The end of the first Cold War threatened many people's jobs, hurt alot of people's wallets, and in fact threatened to undercut the engine that lies underneath America's economic (and incidentally military) superiority today. War is big business, and many people stand to benefit from it -- including every one of you that is using a computer with Cold War derived technologies (e.g. DARPAnet...). Finding a new way to have a great big bloodless war ("Blood & gore go over so badly on CNN...") could be the impetus for US success in the next century and beyond.
"God_Almighty" (hahaha) makes many good points, and while s/he ignores the benefits we get from military research (many we rely on daily), s/he is spot on and I add my <AOL>me too!</AOL> to his/her point.
"Newly freed Eastern Europe"? Oh you mean those satellites we redistributed to Germany for good behavior? Oh yeah I remember them. "Free". Heh. Cute way to put it.
Re: complaints that the defense budget is "too low" as a portion of GDP: when your military is more powerful than that of several continents worth of other countries' militaries combined, and when your nations GDP accounts for something like 25% - 50% of global GDP (those numbers are old -- it peaked at 50% after WW2 and has been falling off. 25% seems reasonable but needs to be verified), and when you have companies that can't even make any money that are worth more than frickin' Norway......after all these kinds of things, you may realize after stepping back that maybe, just maybe, you can afford to have an ever so slightly smaller military than you would otherwise, and maybe GDP isn't the best yardstick to work with here.
Delicon writes "at an impact... of 10 km/s, vaporization is the usual result." Seems reasonable, but can you back that up, cite some studies of things that we've managed to even hit at 10 km/s, nevermind damaged? Seems like your point is built on a flimsy assumption...
Ahh yes, another patented Slashdot flamewar. Too bad I'm jumping in on this one so late...
Scott played Gen Buck Turgidson, pentagon advisor in the War Room scenes. The general at the Air Force base was Gen Jack D Ripper (heh), played by Sterling Hayden. Slim Pickens (heh -- real name?) played Maj T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 pilot. (It's also worth noting that James Earl Jones was the plane's radio operator. This must have been one of his first roles, he looked quite young here.) See IMDB's Dr Strangelove page for more information.
The Yahoo / Reuters news piece notes that he twice turned down awards -- first a best actor Oscar for Patton, then an Emmy the next year for an Arthur Miller play. Turned them down on grounds that "he did not feel it was right to compete with other actors."
I can't speak for anyone else, but I admire that. Would any of today's actors do that? I doubt it.
If your objection is based primarily on radiation exposure, then no conclusion can be drawn. Most terrestrial life finds radiation lethal, of course. But in the land surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, organisms (up to and including mammals) have been found that suffer no ill effects from the radiation exposure. A study on voles (basically mice) from the area revealed that the animals had experienced extremely rapid evolutionary adaptation (within a generation even, with a litter exhibiting mutations unique from the mother and from each other).
The point is that even though most organisms avoid such a conditon, others can thrive on it and many can learn to live with it. Life can carry on.
What are the fundamentals of life, as we understand them to be? Water. Carbon. An energy source. That seems to be it. We don't know nearly enough to say what *can't* work -- if deep sea archea can breathe sulfur and Russian mice can learn to live with nuclear meltdown, anything might be possible.
The Christian Science Monitor is a surprisingly unbiased news source -- more unbiased, in my opinion, than the big ones like ABC or CNN. The CSM news service has been around for a long time -- I want to say around a century now -- and has no resemblance to other Christian sources, like say the 700 Club, Rush Limbaugh, etc. Give them a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose it is in a company's interest to not support their competition, but this is a bit much. Or is it? Would it be reasonable for, say, the New York Times to write about the New York Post? Does that ever happen? (I can't say, I live in Alabama...). Or does the phone book mention competing phone companies? I would think so.
I wonder if such directory services are legally bound to represent information like this accurately -- clearly they aren't here, and it's easy to understand why, but how far can they carry it? If one advertiser doesn't like site so and so, will they block it from listings? This starts butting up on some important issues pretty quickly when you get into such matters. Is blocking access to a document a suppression of first amendment free speech rights? Good question...
Of course if we all just used Google to begin with, this problem might not happen in the first place. But that's just my unofficial, third-party, no-name endorsement of their fine service...
Ok, so no money exchanges hands there, it might be harder to argue in a court. But my web page now (nevermind my profile, I need to update it) is on a web server at a public university. I pay tuition and am the primary administrator of this machine -- I like to think of it as mine even though it really isn't. If I put that Nader site here, with all kinds of fun stuff like petitions and links and essays and endorsements and yadda yadda yadda, is someone supposed to pay then?
This is stupid. I can almost follow the FEC's logic: expensive equipment is being used. If you were to publish in a newspaper or run a radio or television broadcast ad, you would have to pay the publisher of that media for the space. In this case, you've already paid for it (via tuition & fees) but from a certain point of view it's the same thing.
But that's an insane point of view. Would it be better to pay by the percentage of clock cycles or disc space that goes to serving out the political page? Arguably, but it's a weak argument at best.
God I hope this doesn't stand up in court...
An tag was left out & the whole front page is italicized now -- you might wanna fix that Rob...
Many of the comments I've read seem to be taking away the wrong point. *Of course* programming is difficult. *Of course* you can weed out the good programmers from the bad. But guess what? Engineering is difficult too! And some people are good at it while others aren't, just as with programming.
And that could be precisely the engine behind what Rob describes. Did the engineering profession disappear recently? Of course not. And programming won't go anywhere either. But there are probably fewer engineers out there today than there were then, and the ones that remain are probably the more skilled among them. (I have no numbers to support this, only anecdotes). There isn't as much money sloshing around for the reamaining engineers to grab either. What's to say that the bulk of today's coders won't be driven out as well, with only the very best remaining -- if even them?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that IT will go down the same way. Consider that much of the growth behind IT is the move to get businesses onto the internet, and to build the infrastructure to get people on at home at better speeds. In other words, we're in a building phase, much like countries went through when they joined the industrial revolution. But just as with that period, it will end. Eventually, there weren't as many new factories to build, the telegraph lines had been laid, the rivers all had steamboats, and while these things persisted, they slacked off. So it may be here. Eventually, the fiber optic lines and satellites will all be in place; the companies will have their E-Commerce(tm) departments up and running; and the opportunities for new entry will, not disappear, but diminish.
If you think this can't happen, you're delusional. Nothing lasts forever. We've got it good now, but something -- who knows what, who knows when or how soon -- will bring it all to an end. Plan for it. If you are not absolutely top notch, plan on a second career.
One of my professors got his undergrad degree in aerospace engineering -- he worked on the Apollo program and helped send people to the moon. In his domain, he was great -- but one day we stopped sending people to the moon, and he had to find a new job. For a while, he bought a bar & lived as a bartender. Now he's a professor. But he'll probably never send people to the moon again.
It's not pessimism guys, it's reality. Plan for it or get burned. Consider yourselves warned.
Do you want a skill, or an education? Trust me -- go for education. Where would all the COBOL programmers be today if Y2K pandemonium hadn't resuscitated their jobs? That's right -- they'd be out flipping burgers somewhere. Unless they adapt to new methodologies, they're obsolete.
That's what you'd be setting yourself up for with such an education. Sure, exposure to new technologies should be a part of the curriculum, but that will get you only so far. Cold Fusion won't be the Next Big Thing forever, Sun's marketing department won't be able to keep Java alive forever (I hope), and even Randal Schwartz, he of the great O'Reilly Perl books, has talked of plans for what to do "after Perl."
The best thing to get would be a solid basis in the theory underlying the technology, with enough exposure to the applications that you can understand and internalize the theory behind it. You can write a useful little VB application that does this or that cute little GUI trick, but if you don't have a solid understanding of the architecture behind it -- the data structures, the machine representation, the algorithms, and so on -- you will never be able to get the most out of your work.
Mind you, I'm *not* saying that theory is an end goal. As one of my professors put it (paraphrasing), being a consultant (i.e. theory specialist) is like being a sex therapist without ever having had a girlfriend. Or to mangle another person's statement, "Theory is to application as masturbation is to sex."
Obviously, you have to be able to apply what you learn, and yes that means exposure to current mainline technologies. But a general education can only go so far with this. Should the curriculum emphasize a good middle ground, like C++, or should it emphasize specific technologies like Cold Fusion web development, Oracle databases, Cisco routers, Visual Basic interface design, etc.? In other words, where should the specialization end? This question cannot be met by general education, nor should it. Once you have the basis, you can seek out and master the tools you will need *on your own*.
In the end, this should be far more valuable to you than a trade school training. I promise.
Isn't all media biased? Really? The press trumpets itself as this impartial, outside observer of events, never having an opinion, never pushing an agenda, always standing in the middle of things, equally considering both sides of each issue.
But is that really the case? Do you accept that self-assessment? For one thing, who ever said that each issue has only two sides? Who came up with that? Seems a little simplistic to me.
I for one don't buy it. Every little thing you say and do betrays bias, even if subconsciously. You mention this and not that -- why not? You cite this source but not that one -- how come? You talk a lot about this but seldom about that -- why?
Bias-free media is a myth.
Think about where your news comes from. All of the major news & media outlets in the western world are owned by about half a dozen conglomerates. They each run advertisements for their own products, and by so doing try to mold you to their veiw of how the world should be. ("Television shows are a tool to get people to watch more ads than the would ordinarily.") It might not be an explicit plan to manipulate things -- there may not be men in black suits & skinny ties saying who can say what about whatever -- but the people that find their way on screen or into print have demonstrated a willingness to play by the rules of their superiors. And in that way, the tone of the media is molded to the interests of those controlling the top of the pyramid.
That is what I love about Slashdot. There is no central control, or not much anyhow, and anyone from ESR to AC can speak their mind about anything. Is it perfect? No. Is it biased? Yes. But it's democratic -- we control it, not Rupert Murdoch, not General Electric. You and me. We control it. And the bias is not concealed -- we love Linux, we love open source, we want it to spread far and wide. First we had open source software, and it was great. Now, what is this? Open source news media? Hey alright, sounds good to me. We don't cringe from these things.
In my mind, this is the more honest and egalitarian model for the news media to follow. I love it. My only wish is that it wasn't so confined to technical matters -- or rather that there was, say, a kindred site with an emphasis on general news, international affiars, politics, the economy, whatever. As it happens, there is only one Slashdot, and it's all about nerddom. So be it.
May it blaze a shining trail for others to follow.
I know a guy who uses the handle Pez D. Spencer -- is he going to have to change his email now? What a frickin' joke. These people must be working with whoever at Unisys decided to sue everyone over the *.gif's...
It just occurred to me that in the movie Blade Runner (and the PKD book as well?), the test for whether or not a suspect is a replicant or human is basically a fancy Turing test, isn't it?
Place the subject in front of an interrogator and try to provoke an emotional response, indicating humanity. Sufficiently advanced replicants are good at fooling the test ("Rachel took nearly 50 questions") but to date all replicants are distinguishable from humans.
Seems pretty allegorical to me. What was the test called in the film? Who was that doctor / scientist? Would he have been eligible for the reward?
Man I want to see that movie again now...
Other thoughts, since I'm on a tangent: how about a program that can seem more real than Zippy the Pinhead? (Shouldn't be too difficult.) Or one that is less boneheaded than the average Slashdot AC poster? (Shouldn't be too difficult.) Sounds like it's time to get coding...
You'd be surprised -- after one day I'm already at around 60% just with junk I loaded from the O'Reilly book -- Reversi and Freecell and some e-texts (the US Constitution, Shakespeare's sonnets, Aesop's fables, Aladdin & the magic lamp, a Perl reference, etc -- nothing *that* big), etc. Two megabytes is pretty tight. I wonder if it's worth returning it for an upgrade... hmm...
Any thoughts?
I just got the plain V model *yesterday*. Wonder if I can get an upgrade on the ram. Does anyone know if that's feasible? I didn't see anything on 3com's site...
I'm sure you have heard this quote before, and I heed it personally. That said -- where's your sense of humor?
What would this mean, exactly? Would you really get to pick your o/s independently of your applications? I could run BeOS, with a bunch of Linux compiled tools, while running MSOffice and maybe some Mac or Amiga software too for good measure? And maybe, just maybe, Java wouldn't be glacially slow? Or would Java be flat out irrelevant? (...iwishiwishiwishiwish...)
If this is the case -- if this really is possible to the extent that is implied here ...why didn't anyone think of this decades ago?
Smarter than everyone else? No -- just some of the Anonymous Cowards...
Any better?
Oh well. At least there's Ralph Nader and the Green party. And Michael Moore, if he could ever be drafted to run for office.
Actually, here's a suggestion, kids -- support third party candidates, whatever your political slant is. If everyone went by the best candidate, and not the one more likely to keep you placated given the choice between options A and B, maybe we'd end up with a smarter, more dynamic government, where boneheaded laws like this wouldn't be so likely.
Interesting idea, no?
...but then again, fuel cells seem more interesting to me as far as that goes: the only chemicals involved are hydrogen, oxygen, and water, and you get energy useful for electricity, propulsion, or however you care to harness it. Very clean & efficient too, at least on paper. I'm hoping someone can build a useful & affordable fuel cell system to address the fossil fuel shortage. But that's a tangent I won't pursue farther here...
There are, as has been said, many of open source projects out there, and the number of people available for development, while large, *is* finite. Just because an open source project can draw more developers than an in-house commercial project, as per "Cathedral and the Bazaar", doesn't exclude it from that fundamental limitation. As work falls off here and more interesting (read: newer, less defined, more challenging, more fun) projects come along, development for the current project could easily trail off. It's almost like a compromise between Brooks' Law & ESR's Loophole. I don't see why this "news" is surprising.
(I'd give links for CatB and such, but am browsing with Lynx and don't care to mess with it at the moment. I'm sure you could dig it up if you haven't read it yet -- try Google if you need help.)
Ever since then, D has been quirky. Talks, but awkwardly, and always and only just about things that interest her -- tiedye and wiccanism and such. She's pretty clearly brilliant, but always fixated on this or that to the point that it gets frustrating.
You have to understand that Asperger's doesn't mean Rain Man; the "high functioning" modifier is important. In D's case, she has held down jobs, lived on her own, done well in school, had boyfriends, etc. She's 25 or so now and we've only realized there could be a clinical explanation for her oddities for a few months now. Alot of the people that have this condition, if they are anything like D, would for most purposes blend right in with "normal", functioning society.
And this has nothing to do with "labelling the geek phenomenon." Rather, it is a recognition of the fact that there are people -- some but not all of them programmers -- that have a condition and can seek help for it. No one is trying to "weed out the geeks" here, sorry, but you're paranoid.
And in response to Bruce Parens' points -- again, it does not mean non-functional behavior. Aspberger's patients function more or less just like "normal" people -- in the case of D, it took 25 years or so for anyone to realize that there was anything unusual here. Don't associate this with previous conceptions of autism, because on a functional level it seems to be quite different. People with Asperger's are likely to talk just as much as anyone else -- the difference is more in what they will talk about, that mainly being themselves and the things they are interested in and not much else.
For more information, you can look at a study from CMU that deals with Aspberger's patients & computer usage, or a more general explanatory link on the condition at Yale University.
Pros for missile defense:
Cons for missile defense:
Other points:
- India was believed to have nuclear weapons since at least the 70s, but sat on them until recently. Part of their motivation was to get the primary nuclear powers to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which all of them except the United States are perfectly willing to do. I might add that missile defense systems are also a violation of various treaties, and are sure to only further destabilize nuclear relations.
- Re Stonehand's "leading by example" comment: read up on your game theory before coming back to the table, kid. The only way we are ever going to make progress here is if nations do lead by example. Someone has to show a level of trust or no progress is possible. (By the way, Leejay, you make an amazing number of moronic points. I'm impressed.)
- Technical correction: the US & UK are indeed the world's biggest arms exporters. They are followed by Russia, China, and France. Astute readers will note that these five nations just happen to be the five permanent members of the UN security council, the body responsible for maintaining world peace and stability. I'm sure this is just a coincidence though.
- Substrate seems surprised by what s/he calls Cold War Two. This shouldn't be a surprise. The end of the first Cold War threatened many people's jobs, hurt alot of people's wallets, and in fact threatened to undercut the engine that lies underneath America's economic (and incidentally military) superiority today. War is big business, and many people stand to benefit from it -- including every one of you that is using a computer with Cold War derived technologies (e.g. DARPAnet...). Finding a new way to have a great big bloodless war ("Blood & gore go over so badly on CNN...") could be the impetus for US success in the next century and beyond.
- "God_Almighty" (hahaha) makes many good points, and while s/he ignores the benefits we get from military research (many we rely on daily), s/he is spot on and I add my <AOL>me too!</AOL> to his/her point.
- "Newly freed Eastern Europe"? Oh you mean those satellites we redistributed to Germany for good behavior? Oh yeah I remember them. "Free". Heh. Cute way to put it.
- Re: complaints that the defense budget is "too low" as a portion of GDP: when your military is more powerful than that of several continents worth of other countries' militaries combined, and when your nations GDP accounts for something like 25% - 50% of global GDP (those numbers are old -- it peaked at 50% after WW2 and has been falling off. 25% seems reasonable but needs to be verified), and when you have companies that can't even make any money that are worth more than frickin' Norway...
...after all these kinds of things, you may realize after stepping back that maybe, just maybe, you can afford to have an ever so slightly smaller military than you would otherwise, and maybe GDP isn't the best yardstick to work with here. - Delicon writes "at an impact
... of 10 km/s, vaporization is the usual result." Seems reasonable, but can you back that up, cite some studies of things that we've managed to even hit at 10 km/s, nevermind damaged? Seems like your point is built on a flimsy assumption...
Ahh yes, another patented Slashdot flamewar. Too bad I'm jumping in on this one so late...[....] hopefully if they are experienced enough to have software to run on it, they've passwd the newbie stage.
passwd? As in "You have to be at least this experienced or we won't let you log in"?
Fascinating.
Scott played Gen Buck Turgidson, pentagon advisor in the War Room scenes. The general at the Air Force base was Gen Jack D Ripper (heh), played by Sterling Hayden. Slim Pickens (heh -- real name?) played Maj T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 pilot. (It's also worth noting that James Earl Jones was the plane's radio operator. This must have been one of his first roles, he looked quite young here.) See IMDB's Dr Strangelove page for more information.
The Yahoo / Reuters news piece notes that he twice turned down awards -- first a best actor Oscar for Patton, then an Emmy the next year for an Arthur Miller play. Turned them down on grounds that "he did not feel it was right to compete with other actors."
I can't speak for anyone else, but I admire that. Would any of today's actors do that? I doubt it.
If your objection is based primarily on radiation exposure, then no conclusion can be drawn. Most terrestrial life finds radiation lethal, of course. But in the land surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, organisms (up to and including mammals) have been found that suffer no ill effects from the radiation exposure. A study on voles (basically mice) from the area revealed that the animals had experienced extremely rapid evolutionary adaptation (within a generation even, with a litter exhibiting mutations unique from the mother and from each other).
The point is that even though most organisms avoid such a conditon, others can thrive on it and many can learn to live with it. Life can carry on.
What are the fundamentals of life, as we understand them to be? Water. Carbon. An energy source. That seems to be it. We don't know nearly enough to say what *can't* work -- if deep sea archea can breathe sulfur and Russian mice can learn to live with nuclear meltdown, anything might be possible.
The Christian Science Monitor is a surprisingly unbiased news source -- more unbiased, in my opinion, than the big ones like ABC or CNN. The CSM news service has been around for a long time -- I want to say around a century now -- and has no resemblance to other Christian sources, like say the 700 Club, Rush Limbaugh, etc. Give them a chance.