Old media at least tries--we're talking print here, because clearly TV journalism is the bottom of a filthy fricking barrel. They print corrections when they make mistakes, they only print what they can get on the record, or support with documentation.
But the only reason they do that is because they hold themselves to a standard. Sure as hell no one else holds them to it.
And TV? Jesus. When Fox News can be as popular as it is, you know there is something wrong with TV journalism. Fair and Balanced? God I hate them. But even the other, not completely biased, tv newspeople aren't held to any sort of standard. Do they have to site sources? No. Do they have to stick to documentation, or direct quotes? No.
Most journalism is so far in the toilet right now, I don't see why the NYT has got its panties in a bunch for an online news outlet saying openly what TV has been saying privately for 15 years or more.
The thing with an Online medium, is that anyone can publish, and for relatively low cost. There is simply no way to make sure that every small-time publisher has all their facts straight. Hell, look at the Times itself. How long did it take them to catch Jason Blair, and he was just making it up as he went along.
This is where you're going to run into some good old fashioned biological competition. The sites that print the truth all the time, will be better trusted than those that just spew out garbage.
And, then as now, the humor/pundit sites that tell everyone what they should be thinking with no regard to honesty, truth, or provability, will be the best read.
No point in trying to educate them. A lot of this stuff is so esoteric that even relatively experienced and competent users get taken in, and new stuff comes up all the time. Is it sensible to make someone who really has no need for in depth computer knowledge sit down and cram new viruses and security vulnerabilities 2 hours a day?
The solution is an OS that doesn't just load everything that comes along. It's the digital equivalent of walking around Times Square jabbing used hypodermics into your arm.
This isn't just a Windows thing either...Linux gives you complete freedom to fuck yourself by loading unsigned code. Of course, if you're using Linux you can run the checksums and make sure its the official code.
What it boils down to is that we need some basic validation method, which vets code that should/shouldn't be loaded, and people who don't know what they're doing shouldn't be allowed to override it.
If you get energy from the river, you are taking energy from the river. That's Newton. (Energy can neither be created or destroyed)
Granted, by the same laws, every time you jump up and down on the Earth, you're moving it. (Opposite and equal reaction)
So yea, you're taking out energy, but this river is a pretty big river, and it may turn out that his syphoning of power may be too small to be measured in terms of the whole river.
Submerged wheels are less efficient than wheels powered by falling water, which is something to look into if you live on a rough sort of incline. You could run a sluice to a smaller wheel for the same amount of power if you have a small decline on your water frontage. (Or you could dam the river, ha ha).
A big wheel could run afoul of your winter time ice floes...A nice sized chunk of ice could wreck your system.
A full underwater system (i.e turbines) would look better, and would probably be safe from ice. Turbines are much more expensive though.
There are watershead and pollution issues involved as well.
The state environmental regulatory groups (EPA EPD DEP, whatever) monitor this crap because whenever you take energy from a river system you cause an increase in things like sedimentation--in addition to whatever kind of pollution your system leaks into the water.
Big power companies get away with it because, well, because they're big power companies, but it's very possible that you'll have to pay some liscensing fees and/or get some kind of water permit/pollution fees.
There is no grudging about it. If I couldn't stop them from getting mutilated in the first place, why the hell should I care that there's video of it? The video doesn't change anything.
The example that no one has brought up to date is the JFK assassination, which has been shown over and over and over. Ask his kids how that makes them feel.
I, to date, have not bought an MP3 online. Why not? Because I don't want to pay the same price as I would pay for buying the whole effing album if I'm not getting a damn thing but a 2 meg binary string. An 11 song album would cost around 11.00 to download, and about the same in the store. Some are more some are less, but the fact remains.
So basically, it costs the same for them to print a cd, print the liner notes, buy a jewel case, shrinkwrap it, send it all the way around the country, and let the seller mark it up 20%, as it does for them to let me download a copy in an inferior format onto my own damn media.
And now they think they're making too little? They want to bundle songs? I just told my cable provider to shove it for their crappy bundling.
Fuck them. I'll never buy another damn song if they're going to keep acting like morons. I'll feel better about myself if I spend the money on crack and underage prostitutes.
He's right, that was messed up. And talk about public! I think this Paris guy lost any titular "Right to Privacy" by committing suicide in a public place, but the Bud Dwyer incident set the standard both for sheer nastyness and public dissemination. Hard to get worse than blowing your head off on tv, during the news.
Lol. They should add this to those commercials...You know, shadow of a person dancing around with white headphones...Shadow of another person sneaking up on them...Wham! Talkin 'bout my generation!
I love trees, but I think Nuclear power is the way to go.
The problem is the aging hippy/no-nuke crowd. They'd still rather have giant coal fired sulfur spewing monstrositys than have the faintest hint of radiation. It's hysterical crap...I toured an old reactor once, and the most unique thing about the grounds was the amazing amount of healthy wildlife...Seems background radiation is a lot less harmful to them than a constant human presence.
Even with Java you have problems with Visual Design.
Here's an example I hit the other day... I was using a linked list to store a set of objects. I was using the "LinkedList()" class that is part of Java. Well, my program was pretty memory intensive, and the list wasn't doing what I needed it to, so I ended up having to re-implement a LinkedList to streamline my code and to get rid of 4 funtions I didn't need and add the 1 that I did.
With a visual editor I might have clicked on the "Data structure button" and then chosen something that had a similar functionality to a linked list...But how the hell could I have optimized it? Seems like you'd just end up with tons of big bloated Objects with tons of features added to make them fit every concievable need, which would then sit in memory eating of resources and slowing everything down.
Visual design is nice and all, but I've never seen a visual design engine that was capable enough to replace an actual coder.
It's the difference between an Access database and a php/mysql (or similar) database. You can do a lot of things in Access, you can fiddle with the wizards, and stick cute little things together, etc, but, in the end, you need a VB programmer to come in and write code to make it do the things that you need it to do, but which the designers decided not to implement. And when you're writing that code, Access is fighting you because it isn't designed to be easily extendible.
Whereas php/mysql may not be tinker-toy-esque, but you can truly customize it, right down to the last detail, without trying to work around a clunky existing framework.
I wouldn't be surprised if visual designers became more popular, but I can't imagine them ever replacing a skilled programmer. Then, as now, visual designers will be used by semi-skilled end users that need little more than basic functionality.
Amusing. Frankly, I have a lot more use for the spanish channel than I do for some of the other crap they make me pay for. Oxygen? Lifetime? MTV? Fox News? To hell with that. And my fricking cable company has this mistaken belief that TechTV is too good even for the premium subscribers, so I'd have to upgrade to super ultra premium at 150 dollars a month just to watch it.
If I had the choice I'd have about 20 channels; it pisses me off that I'm contributing to the continued existence of channels like the Home Shopping Network and TNN.
Well, aside from the changable faceplates, most phones just seem to be trying to be more like Trek communicators, which would suggest that even celebs and people with too much disposable income are dorks.
I always think of Zoolander, with the micro cellphone the size of a cheezit.
True. But Mac trumpets its looks less than it talks about its reliability and functionality. I think its safe to say that if Mac hardware was not also VERY reliable, and Mac software relatively bug-free and easy to use, their prices and odd designs would have driven them right out of the market. (Though I think their one button mouse is DOOMED).
I'm not saying it's impossible to have pretty tech, but FASHIONABLE tech? Doesn't seem too likely. Think about how quickly fashion changes...Anything past being able to switch faceplates or some other trivial modification is going to leave you with an expensive piece of unfashionable electronics.
I know I'm a dork, but for me, the coolest tech is sleek, elegant, functional stuff, in your basic grey or black. What looks better than that?
It acted very much like Ebola, which is an interesting comparison. Ebola is massively virulent, but it's onset and effects are so quick that it tends to "burn itself out" before infecting a large number of people. This virus did the same.
It would be interesting to see what percent of the population that COULD have been affected, was. Maybe the writer concluded that, in hitting people with this specific vulnerability, they would have tapped the bulk of their targets in the first 24 hours or so, leaving no need for a long-lived worm.
A delay in targeting a tech savvy population is risky if you care about the amount of long-term damage you're going to cause. A delay of two or three days would have meant many users would have had time to remove the worm before it started eating hard drives.
Fashion all too often seems like the opposite of tech.
Tech is all about having things that work (or ought to work). Form follows function, and the coolest things are the things that function best. Appearance is strictly secondary for any knowledgable user (which is probably the sticking point here).
Whereas fashion is all about things that are nonfunctional. The most fashionable things are the least practical ones, at least as far as the fashion pundits are concerned.
Doesn't surprise me that the fashion people are trying to add a fashion element to tech, though I can't help but think that its doomed. Form and function are too closely linked.
I disagree; I think he is trying to add validity to his own assertion by naming people who also believed that assertion, despite the fact that those people may or may not have had decent reasons for that assertion and thus can lend it little extra credibility.
Logically I think he's stating a fallacy.
Einstein believed in God. Einstein was a great scientist. Therefore belief in God is scientific.
A--->B A--->C... B--->C
Its the old "Appeal to Irrelevant Authority."
Though I agree with YOUR logic, I don't think that his what his.sig says...though you may be right about what he means.
The executive branch is tasked with enforcing the law. The fact that the microsoft rulings have not been enforced is directly related to the president, which is why, even though they were found guilty, nothing has happened.
Actually, I think IBM, the original scary tech monopoly, showed us the benefit of standards (abliet mostly hardware standards).
Microsoft just shows us how little we learn from historical mistakes, REGARDING standards. This is the one place where I wouldn't mind a little government intervention, toward an open and efficient standard. They could hardly screw it up worse than it is now.
Slashdot Mirror
Old media at least tries--we're talking print here, because clearly TV journalism is the bottom of a filthy fricking barrel. They print corrections when they make mistakes, they only print what they can get on the record, or support with documentation.
But the only reason they do that is because they hold themselves to a standard. Sure as hell no one else holds them to it.
And TV? Jesus. When Fox News can be as popular as it is, you know there is something wrong with TV journalism. Fair and Balanced? God I hate them. But even the other, not completely biased, tv newspeople aren't held to any sort of standard. Do they have to site sources? No. Do they have to stick to documentation, or direct quotes? No.
Most journalism is so far in the toilet right now, I don't see why the NYT has got its panties in a bunch for an online news outlet saying openly what TV has been saying privately for 15 years or more.
The thing with an Online medium, is that anyone can publish, and for relatively low cost. There is simply no way to make sure that every small-time publisher has all their facts straight. Hell, look at the Times itself. How long did it take them to catch Jason Blair, and he was just making it up as he went along.
This is where you're going to run into some good old fashioned biological competition. The sites that print the truth all the time, will be better trusted than those that just spew out garbage.
And, then as now, the humor/pundit sites that tell everyone what they should be thinking with no regard to honesty, truth, or provability, will be the best read.
No point in trying to educate them. A lot of this stuff is so esoteric that even relatively experienced and competent users get taken in, and new stuff comes up all the time. Is it sensible to make someone who really has no need for in depth computer knowledge sit down and cram new viruses and security vulnerabilities 2 hours a day?
The solution is an OS that doesn't just load everything that comes along. It's the digital equivalent of walking around Times Square jabbing used hypodermics into your arm.
This isn't just a Windows thing either...Linux gives you complete freedom to fuck yourself by loading unsigned code. Of course, if you're using Linux you can run the checksums and make sure its the official code.
What it boils down to is that we need some basic validation method, which vets code that should/shouldn't be loaded, and people who don't know what they're doing shouldn't be allowed to override it.
Hoover is the only OTHER president besides Bush to have a net job loss during his presidency. Think you're right about the engineers.
If you get energy from the river, you are taking energy from the river. That's Newton. (Energy can neither be created or destroyed)
Granted, by the same laws, every time you jump up and down on the Earth, you're moving it. (Opposite and equal reaction)
So yea, you're taking out energy, but this river is a pretty big river, and it may turn out that his syphoning of power may be too small to be measured in terms of the whole river.
Submerged wheels are less efficient than wheels powered by falling water, which is something to look into if you live on a rough sort of incline. You could run a sluice to a smaller wheel for the same amount of power if you have a small decline on your water frontage. (Or you could dam the river, ha ha).
A big wheel could run afoul of your winter time ice floes...A nice sized chunk of ice could wreck your system.
A full underwater system (i.e turbines) would look better, and would probably be safe from ice. Turbines are much more expensive though.
There are watershead and pollution issues involved as well.
The state environmental regulatory groups (EPA EPD DEP, whatever) monitor this crap because whenever you take energy from a river system you cause an increase in things like sedimentation--in addition to whatever kind of pollution your system leaks into the water.
Big power companies get away with it because, well, because they're big power companies, but it's very possible that you'll have to pay some liscensing fees and/or get some kind of water permit/pollution fees.
There is no grudging about it. If I couldn't stop them from getting mutilated in the first place, why the hell should I care that there's video of it? The video doesn't change anything.
The example that no one has brought up to date is the JFK assassination, which has been shown over and over and over. Ask his kids how that makes them feel.
I, to date, have not bought an MP3 online. Why not? Because I don't want to pay the same price as I would pay for buying the whole effing album if I'm not getting a damn thing but a 2 meg binary string. An 11 song album would cost around 11.00 to download, and about the same in the store. Some are more some are less, but the fact remains.
So basically, it costs the same for them to print a cd, print the liner notes, buy a jewel case, shrinkwrap it, send it all the way around the country, and let the seller mark it up 20%, as it does for them to let me download a copy in an inferior format onto my own damn media.
And now they think they're making too little? They want to bundle songs? I just told my cable provider to shove it for their crappy bundling.
Fuck them. I'll never buy another damn song if they're going to keep acting like morons. I'll feel better about myself if I spend the money on crack and underage prostitutes.
He's right, that was messed up. And talk about public! I think this Paris guy lost any titular "Right to Privacy" by committing suicide in a public place, but the Bud Dwyer incident set the standard both for sheer nastyness and public dissemination. Hard to get worse than blowing your head off on tv, during the news.
No one is making them watch it. Welcome to the real world, because, as the number of cameras increase, the number of these incidents will skyrocket.
Amusing, since the japanese have a good number of monopolies of their own. I wonder if they raid themselves?
Still I can't look down on someone who raids microsoft AND intel.
Lol. They should add this to those commercials...You know, shadow of a person dancing around with white headphones...Shadow of another person sneaking up on them...Wham! Talkin 'bout my generation!
I love trees, but I think Nuclear power is the way to go.
The problem is the aging hippy/no-nuke crowd. They'd still rather have giant coal fired sulfur spewing monstrositys than have the faintest hint of radiation. It's hysterical crap...I toured an old reactor once, and the most unique thing about the grounds was the amazing amount of healthy wildlife...Seems background radiation is a lot less harmful to them than a constant human presence.
Even with Java you have problems with Visual Design.
Here's an example I hit the other day... I was using a linked list to store a set of objects. I was using the "LinkedList()" class that is part of Java. Well, my program was pretty memory intensive, and the list wasn't doing what I needed it to, so I ended up having to re-implement a LinkedList to streamline my code and to get rid of 4 funtions I didn't need and add the 1 that I did.
With a visual editor I might have clicked on the "Data structure button" and then chosen something that had a similar functionality to a linked list...But how the hell could I have optimized it? Seems like you'd just end up with tons of big bloated Objects with tons of features added to make them fit every concievable need, which would then sit in memory eating of resources and slowing everything down.
Heh. I remember that. You could shut down your whole system with the BFG.
Indeed.
Visual design is nice and all, but I've never seen a visual design engine that was capable enough to replace an actual coder.
It's the difference between an Access database and a php/mysql (or similar) database. You can do a lot of things in Access, you can fiddle with the wizards, and stick cute little things together, etc, but, in the end, you need a VB programmer to come in and write code to make it do the things that you need it to do, but which the designers decided not to implement. And when you're writing that code, Access is fighting you because it isn't designed to be easily extendible.
Whereas php/mysql may not be tinker-toy-esque, but you can truly customize it, right down to the last detail, without trying to work around a clunky existing framework.
I wouldn't be surprised if visual designers became more popular, but I can't imagine them ever replacing a skilled programmer. Then, as now, visual designers will be used by semi-skilled end users that need little more than basic functionality.
Amusing. Frankly, I have a lot more use for the spanish channel than I do for some of the other crap they make me pay for. Oxygen? Lifetime? MTV? Fox News? To hell with that. And my fricking cable company has this mistaken belief that TechTV is too good even for the premium subscribers, so I'd have to upgrade to super ultra premium at 150 dollars a month just to watch it.
If I had the choice I'd have about 20 channels; it pisses me off that I'm contributing to the continued existence of channels like the Home Shopping Network and TNN.
Hmmm.
Well, aside from the changable faceplates, most phones just seem to be trying to be more like Trek communicators, which would suggest that even celebs and people with too much disposable income are dorks.
I always think of Zoolander, with the micro cellphone the size of a cheezit.
True. But Mac trumpets its looks less than it talks about its reliability and functionality. I think its safe to say that if Mac hardware was not also VERY reliable, and Mac software relatively bug-free and easy to use, their prices and odd designs would have driven them right out of the market. (Though I think their one button mouse is DOOMED).
I'm not saying it's impossible to have pretty tech, but FASHIONABLE tech? Doesn't seem too likely. Think about how quickly fashion changes...Anything past being able to switch faceplates or some other trivial modification is going to leave you with an expensive piece of unfashionable electronics.
I know I'm a dork, but for me, the coolest tech is sleek, elegant, functional stuff, in your basic grey or black. What looks better than that?
It acted very much like Ebola, which is an interesting comparison. Ebola is massively virulent, but it's onset and effects are so quick that it tends to "burn itself out" before infecting a large number of people. This virus did the same.
It would be interesting to see what percent of the population that COULD have been affected, was. Maybe the writer concluded that, in hitting people with this specific vulnerability, they would have tapped the bulk of their targets in the first 24 hours or so, leaving no need for a long-lived worm.
A delay in targeting a tech savvy population is risky if you care about the amount of long-term damage you're going to cause. A delay of two or three days would have meant many users would have had time to remove the worm before it started eating hard drives.
Fashion all too often seems like the opposite of tech.
Tech is all about having things that work (or ought to work). Form follows function, and the coolest things are the things that function best. Appearance is strictly secondary for any knowledgable user (which is probably the sticking point here).
Whereas fashion is all about things that are nonfunctional. The most fashionable things are the least practical ones, at least as far as the fashion pundits are concerned.
Doesn't surprise me that the fashion people are trying to add a fashion element to tech, though I can't help but think that its doomed. Form and function are too closely linked.
I disagree; I think he is trying to add validity to his own assertion by naming people who also believed that assertion, despite the fact that those people may or may not have had decent reasons for that assertion and thus can lend it little extra credibility.
...
.sig says...though you may be right about what he means.
Logically I think he's stating a fallacy.
Einstein believed in God.
Einstein was a great scientist.
Therefore belief in God is scientific.
A--->B
A--->C
B--->C
Its the old "Appeal to Irrelevant Authority."
Though I agree with YOUR logic, I don't think that his what his
The executive branch is tasked with enforcing the law. The fact that the microsoft rulings have not been enforced is directly related to the president, which is why, even though they were found guilty, nothing has happened.
Actually, I think IBM, the original scary tech monopoly, showed us the benefit of standards (abliet mostly hardware standards).
Microsoft just shows us how little we learn from historical mistakes, REGARDING standards. This is the one place where I wouldn't mind a little government intervention, toward an open and efficient standard. They could hardly screw it up worse than it is now.