Dude this is completely off-topic, but I read about Russian soldier sent out with no BOOTS and no GUNS in WWII when Hitler greedily struck east. They were told to kill the first enemy they encountered with their bare hands and to appropriate guns and boots. Mind you, this is during the Russian winter.
I had an argument with a good friend the other day ab out the power that dictatorships wield; there is nothing more dangerous than an entire country geared towards the agenda of a single person. But then, we in the US already know of this, don't we.
And I agree completely with what you've put forth about design ethos. Although, the space shuttle is a completely "german" design.
Also, pertinent to the Russian design philosophy is to underspecialize. Americans have begun to seriously overspecialize - with many projects having terminator genes - components, science, staff, etc. that don't translate easily into other projects.
Interesting, because I heard the opposite, that the moon was going in the opposite direction, with its distance from earth increasing slowly but surely.
... but an undereducated, socially-crippled, obsessive-compulsive, uncouth geek found a fertile, viable woman to not only marry him, but bear him child thricefold...
dude is just getting his license. this is far more amazing than bittorrent and deserves its own thread.
you make an interesting point. everyone I know who has smoked strong smoke for long periods has had deep paranoid/depressive episodes. Like four dudes.... one of them my younger brother. He's at school at an esteemed institution a couple of hours from the canadian border and they get GREAT imports.
Every one of them, my brother included, decided to stop after that. Those initial episodes continued for weeks on end. One of the aforementioned four asttempted suicide.
My personal experience with the stuff is that I do notice cognitive benefit, but that cognitive benefit is not of value to my psyche.
I'm a firm believer in the useful threshold of human intelligence. I think there is a band - a range of intelligence "values" that are of value to humans. below that threshold is insufficient to be a productive member of first world societies, and above a certain threshold is too much. I contend that too much intelligence is actually more harmful to the quality of life than not enough.
There are studies making a direct correlation between intelligence and depression... intelligence and suicide. Look up the suicide crisis the japanese have.
I've made a similar contention about artificial intelligence.
The issue with mice is that we cannot determine the full nature of psychoactive benefits or detriments because we cannot measure, directly or peripherally, the qualitative nature of its effects on their consciousness (if it exists). I have no reason to believe that this is of benefit to healthy adults.
I can see it being of benefit to the aged who've experience cognitive decline.
isn't that going to depend on how much of the floating ice is submerged?
the density of ice to water is 0.92 to 1. therefore the difference in displacement for ice already submerged isn't an issue. in a closed system that means that displacement levels are higher before the ice melts as opposed to after, right? But what of ice that is not submerged and is therefore not currently displacing water?
I'm not a physicist, or even particularly good at math. Just curious.
I didn't read the article, but this is nonsensical. What happened to multitasking?
Why can't they keep small evolving groups that develop disparate but complementary principles?
Robotics will clearly accomplish more in the short run because space travel has deleterious effects on humans that we cannot yet counter effectively. Are we acceding that we will be sending astronauts to their deaths on long term missions? Or are we gonna wait another couple of fucking generations for the singularity to solve everything? This is a fucking joke.
two things: lecithin (specifically standardized to ensure optimum levels of phosphatidyl choline or PC), and DMAE (derived from fatty fish).
Or you could just eat fatty fish (DMAE) with a cupful of soybeans (lecithin) twice a day for a week - and you'll be lucid dreaming again.
Meditative state. I'm kind of hyperkinetic, so it's tough for me to get close to a meditative state by sitting still. So I go the opposite way and work out to exhaustion. Whatever works for you - but you need to be in a worry-free state.
although its been my experience that most remember bad dreams more than good ones. if you're the type of person who realizes that in a lucid dream - you can BRING YOURSELF TO LIFE AFTER YOU'VE BEEN KILLED and basically do anything you want, then it's cool to experiment with lucid dreams. If you're a hesitant, prone to paralyzing fear type, then I wouldn't recommend it; you could scar yourself. Good luck. Have fun.
wall street also likes to run up stocks because large wall street partners are deeply invested in companies. Companies like Legg Mason manipulate the market, usually because they have the most to gain. For example, a Legg Mason guy on Bloomberg television said recently, when asked about how he could justify Google's stock price given earnings, he said something to the effect of, "it's their culture. they have guys analyzing the food they eat." The journalist responds, "well, how does this translate into revenue?" and this guy responds, "imagine if that precision is applied to products." What? What does that mean?
Then a google search shows that Legg Mason owns like 15% of google, actually one of the largest pieces of the pie. They've been in since day one.
The point of which is to say, Wall Street will put its money in places where market psychology will assure quick returns. Satellite radio is an example. Howard Stern even admitted that his signing was the equivalent of a stock run-up, as convergence would quickly kill satellite radio. The audience fed into it by buying a couple of subscriptions; and the car deal was the cincher... a few people are going to get very rich before satellite radio fails.
Google benefits from good market psychology. Apple benefits from good market psychology.
AOL used to have this psychology, but they slept on innovation and got left behind. So the street walked away, and subscribers started bailing.
Then something happened; subscriber base loss stabilized a bit. AIM is the instant messenger analog to google; a free service that has the lion's share of the marketplace.
It's common for kids in general to be more technically savvy than their parents, but the parents tend to make internet decisions in the household. Internet=AOL is easy for the technophobe parent to understand, and because it isn't broken, there is no need to fix it. This hooks the KIDS in the household onto AIM. I've seen this happen - I help my nephew with his math homework on AIM all the time because his mom equates the internet with AOL, despite the fact that they have comcast broadband at home. There is also the perception that AOL is the easiest way to get your kids online. So the subscriber number for AOL can be misleading, because they have like five or seven screennames per subscriber account. And AOL parental controls gives you a very accurate understanding of your audience demographic, a significant percentage of whom are pre-brainwashed emerging impulse consumers. The American economy is artificially propped up by impulse and trend consuming, so these kids mean a lot to the economy. Hollywood alone lives on summer blockbusters, which depends almost completely on the 13-21 year old crowd. That's why you rarely see an R rated film before the fall.
So ironically, investing in AOL is one of those paradoxically sound investments. A dying company with a largely ignorant critical mass user base waiting to be told what to do. It's not a quarterly return investment, so it's not sound for the guy up the block or the cash-out investor. If you're a company who wants eyeballs and an association with what Americans perceive the internet to be, then it's a good move that should yield cash down the line as you get those eyeballs where you want them. Fiscally, they have diversified revenue stream that is relatively consistent.
The other side is that you have to pick this up even if you don't want to, because it leverages considerable revenue power to whomever does.
I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't barked down this tree before. It would have been a cheaper purchase a couple of years ago.
The stock market agrees with you. their stock is down 5% already today. Despite setting record sales, they actually missed expectations and came in under the results expected by the market.
Analysts believe that the IPOD's popularity has peaked. The other concern is actually that once a critical mass of the population has IPODs, there will be less of a reason to get a new one. Similar to the PC ramp-up... the sales along the way to a monopoly are typically higher than maintenance sales. Analysts see Apple going into the maintenance phase of the IPOD cycle, meaning that the IPOD has become a mature product. Jobs feels similar, which is why he regularly releases new IPODS in order to bolster quarterly earnings. He will most certainly announce something soon in order to stem the bloodletting from their lower than expected quarterly earnings.
i'm totally finding a lot of this stuff on peer networks. there's a forum... mightyvibes.org or something like that, that indexes really good music in a whjole bunch of genres.
dude, this is totally true. I think that the biggest thing about having so much music available to one is that one becomes aware of the wealth of music all across the world that is worth listening to. It requires a bit of work, but finding really good music is so worthwhile.
I'm listening to so many kinds of music i'd otherwise not be listening to if i let radio or MTV et al program my listening choices.
There's some really good stuff coming out of Germany and Brazil too. Mostly death metal out of Germany - more rhythmic hip hop stuff out of Brazil (plus Portugese is such a great sounding language). Dan the Automator and DJ Shadow released a couple of albums called Bombay the Hard Way, which are remixes of 70s era Bollywood spy film scores. Amazing stuff. Bombay the Hard Way - check it out.
I recently freelanced for a financial services firm on wall street that's on the downslope. The CEO (and namesake) of that company, is the laughing stock of the industry. His CEO "friends" no longer return his calls, and previously friendly requests for meetings and luncheons are now seen as acts of desperation by the beleaguered head of a floundering firm. As a consequence of his misfortunes, this CEO (not a bad guy in my estimation) has not taken a salary for two years, diverted some of his own wealth to the company, and actually exposed his personal credit in order to offset the decreasing value of the company's corporate credit rating.
It's awful to see a guy who accomplished a lot in his time start to fall off. It's even more awful to see his former "friends" and associates look down on him and now exclude him from the same circles he traveled frequently in recent memory. I've learned so much from watching this guy and from watching social interactions amongst fierce predators on national geographic. There is no such thing as friendship or comraderie. Strength is respected and accepted. Weakness is pounced upon mercilessly.
All of which to say, I think you have a point. A CEO's salary and prominence is his "big swinging dick" - and not having one can be a detriment. It's a good point.
lol, I temped once at this company, and a lot of the entry level/temp/freelance guys went outside to work on a freshly rolled fattie. This was also at a Christmas party.
The CEO stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes for a moment, and looked at us. By this time, the joint was hidden out of sight.
He looked at me and said, "so are you going to pass that or what?" I sheepishly passed it, and he hogged it while shooting the shit with us. It was never discussed; but we were appalled.
About a week later, he sent me an email asking me if I could get him more of that stuff. It was weird.
My point is this: good to whom? A good CEO to investors is not necessarily considered a good CEO by employees. That "good" CEO might significantly downsize the R&D department to reduces costs and increase ROI, which would make him a bad CEO by many employees, but a coveted employee by stockholders. This same CEO is not vested in the company's long term survival, but short term health. In that regard, what is meant by a "good" CEO?
This is my point. The market's idea of a good CEO can be different from an employee's idea of a good CEO in many instances.
CEOs should think in very broad strokes - industry wide paradigms.
lower level employees are pointillists, they are paid to think in detail, painstakingly small and acute dimensions.
these are inherently different languages; few people speak both. It's why most engineers make less than successful CEOs and why most CEOs were mediocre students/entry level workers/etc. That is the benefit and the bane of the middle manager. The good middle manager understands the engineer and can explain his perspective to the broad stroke upper management guy who makes decisions but cannot understand the engineer's perspective. The downside is that there is little opportunity for advancement for the middle manager - as his benefit to the machine is perpetually in the middle.
Micro-managing bosses don't inspire confidence. I also agree that sifting through countless emails would be time consuming, especially in large companies with very strong hiring practices (which would mean fielding a good number of seemingly pertinent and thought provoking emails on a regular basis; imagine what Eric Schmidt's inbox looks like at the end of the day). I agree with an email filter. I don't think it should be the secretary though. Not to denigrate secretaries, but even good secretaries inspire way less confidence than the most micro-managingest CEO.
not anymore. CEO terms are becoming shorter than political terms in many instances. there is no vested interest in CEOs thinking long term, especially when long term interests often conflict with short term interests, i.e. return on investment. This is especially true for publically traded companies.
i guess my point is, the idea of what a good CEO is... is a very relative term.
For example, Steve Jobs has become a wall street darling because he has evolved from being a good private company CEO to a good public company CEO. I contend that the two are distinctly different breeds.
i read the article, and this is what I got from it. i could be wrong.
-5 million TB of data. -170 TB have already been indexed. -it would take 300 years to index that data and make it searchable.
I don't think it's an exercise to index all knowledge. As you point out, that would be alogical. I think it's more of an understanding of what it would take to effectively and completely serve the world's information needs given current indexing capabilities.
I guess establishing a benchmark currently, both of how efficiently they index information, as well as a general number for the amount of data is out there, they can gauge how efficient they get relative to the rate at which the amount of potentially indexable data increases.
that's interesting, because i say the same thing about serenity/firefly. It's such an annoyingly insulting pastiche of cliches that doesn't even come close to touching on anything novel or earnest.
-cue the messianic hot chick who is apparently physically invulnerable despite being about 47 kilos soaking wet. check. -band of misfits. check. -war with underlying secret conspiracy. check. -inanely underwhelming wise cracks and cookie cutter television humor perfected on shows like Buffy (!!!). check. -annoyingly inconsistent horribly conceived far future universe. check. -paper thin swiss cheese plot. check.
lol....
It's amazing that Whedon and firefly/serenity get so much attention here on slashdot when really cool good sci-fi films like primer get not near as much. If you guys ran out and got Primer the way you got Firefly, we'd actually get more cogent sci fi.
Primer is ten times the movie Serenity is. Blade Runner owns it.
he signed with the william morris agency. In tech terms, that like signing with the microsoft of agencies. they're the lumbering giant; CAA or Endeavor or somebody like that might be considered Google.
all of which is to say is that somebody will put money behind him now. hopefully he won't be handcuffed and told to dumb down by the system.
but shit man, Primer is such a good movie.
The other thing about Primer is that it was so open ended. You leave with more questions than you arrive with - and you realize that the story is tree-structured - it can go in so many directions, branching from the root.... further implementation of the machines, dealing with doubles and paradox, physical and psychological effects of unraveling and reconstructing reality, long term effects on the integrity of the world and universe. It's so refreshingly thoughtful.
Slashdot Mirror
lol. I'll do it after I buy a tin foil umbrella. Didn't you hear? The ISS is falling!
Dude this is completely off-topic, but I read about Russian soldier sent out with no BOOTS and no GUNS in WWII when Hitler greedily struck east. They were told to kill the first enemy they encountered with their bare hands and to appropriate guns and boots. Mind you, this is during the Russian winter.
I had an argument with a good friend the other day ab out the power that dictatorships wield; there is nothing more dangerous than an entire country geared towards the agenda of a single person. But then, we in the US already know of this, don't we.
And I agree completely with what you've put forth about design ethos. Although, the space shuttle is a completely "german" design.
Also, pertinent to the Russian design philosophy is to underspecialize. Americans have begun to seriously overspecialize - with many projects having terminator genes - components, science, staff, etc. that don't translate easily into other projects.
Interesting, because I heard the opposite, that the moon was going in the opposite direction, with its distance from earth increasing slowly but surely.
this is just an equal but opposite troll.
It wasn't meant to insult the guy. I live in New York. We don't drive either.
... but an undereducated, socially-crippled, obsessive-compulsive, uncouth geek found a fertile, viable woman to not only marry him, but bear him child thricefold...
dude is just getting his license. this is far more amazing than bittorrent and deserves its own thread.
does anyone know if she's hot?
you make an interesting point. everyone I know who has smoked strong smoke for long periods has had deep paranoid/depressive episodes. Like four dudes.... one of them my younger brother. He's at school at an esteemed institution a couple of hours from the canadian border and they get GREAT imports.
Every one of them, my brother included, decided to stop after that. Those initial episodes continued for weeks on end. One of the aforementioned four asttempted suicide.
My personal experience with the stuff is that I do notice cognitive benefit, but that cognitive benefit is not of value to my psyche.
I'm a firm believer in the useful threshold of human intelligence. I think there is a band - a range of intelligence "values" that are of value to humans. below that threshold is insufficient to be a productive member of first world societies, and above a certain threshold is too much. I contend that too much intelligence is actually more harmful to the quality of life than not enough.
There are studies making a direct correlation between intelligence and depression... intelligence and suicide. Look up the suicide crisis the japanese have.
I've made a similar contention about artificial intelligence.
The issue with mice is that we cannot determine the full nature of psychoactive benefits or detriments because we cannot measure, directly or peripherally, the qualitative nature of its effects on their consciousness (if it exists). I have no reason to believe that this is of benefit to healthy adults.
I can see it being of benefit to the aged who've experience cognitive decline.
isn't that going to depend on how much of the floating ice is submerged?
the density of ice to water is 0.92 to 1. therefore the difference in displacement for ice already submerged isn't an issue. in a closed system that means that displacement levels are higher before the ice melts as opposed to after, right? But what of ice that is not submerged and is therefore not currently displacing water?
I'm not a physicist, or even particularly good at math. Just curious.
I didn't read the article, but this is nonsensical. What happened to multitasking?
Why can't they keep small evolving groups that develop disparate but complementary principles?
Robotics will clearly accomplish more in the short run because space travel has deleterious effects on humans that we cannot yet counter effectively. Are we acceding that we will be sending astronauts to their deaths on long term missions? Or are we gonna wait another couple of fucking generations for the singularity to solve everything? This is a fucking joke.
Just do R&D in a country that practically ignores patent law.
China is your friend.
MS Messenger is the most popular IM client by a significant margin in many places throughout the world - in some places to the tune of ~ 90%.
two things: lecithin (specifically standardized to ensure optimum levels of phosphatidyl choline or PC), and DMAE (derived from fatty fish).
Or you could just eat fatty fish (DMAE) with a cupful of soybeans (lecithin) twice a day for a week - and you'll be lucid dreaming again.
Meditative state. I'm kind of hyperkinetic, so it's tough for me to get close to a meditative state by sitting still. So I go the opposite way and work out to exhaustion. Whatever works for you - but you need to be in a worry-free state.
although its been my experience that most remember bad dreams more than good ones. if you're the type of person who realizes that in a lucid dream - you can BRING YOURSELF TO LIFE AFTER YOU'VE BEEN KILLED and basically do anything you want, then it's cool to experiment with lucid dreams. If you're a hesitant, prone to paralyzing fear type, then I wouldn't recommend it; you could scar yourself. Good luck. Have fun.
wall street also likes to run up stocks because large wall street partners are deeply invested in companies. Companies like Legg Mason manipulate the market, usually because they have the most to gain. For example, a Legg Mason guy on Bloomberg television said recently, when asked about how he could justify Google's stock price given earnings, he said something to the effect of, "it's their culture. they have guys analyzing the food they eat." The journalist responds, "well, how does this translate into revenue?" and this guy responds, "imagine if that precision is applied to products." What? What does that mean?
Then a google search shows that Legg Mason owns like 15% of google, actually one of the largest pieces of the pie. They've been in since day one.
The point of which is to say, Wall Street will put its money in places where market psychology will assure quick returns. Satellite radio is an example. Howard Stern even admitted that his signing was the equivalent of a stock run-up, as convergence would quickly kill satellite radio. The audience fed into it by buying a couple of subscriptions; and the car deal was the cincher... a few people are going to get very rich before satellite radio fails.
Google benefits from good market psychology. Apple benefits from good market psychology.
AOL used to have this psychology, but they slept on innovation and got left behind. So the street walked away, and subscribers started bailing.
Then something happened; subscriber base loss stabilized a bit. AIM is the instant messenger analog to google; a free service that has the lion's share of the marketplace.
It's common for kids in general to be more technically savvy than their parents, but the parents tend to make internet decisions in the household. Internet=AOL is easy for the technophobe parent to understand, and because it isn't broken, there is no need to fix it. This hooks the KIDS in the household onto AIM. I've seen this happen - I help my nephew with his math homework on AIM all the time because his mom equates the internet with AOL, despite the fact that they have comcast broadband at home. There is also the perception that AOL is the easiest way to get your kids online. So the subscriber number for AOL can be misleading, because they have like five or seven screennames per subscriber account. And AOL parental controls gives you a very accurate understanding of your audience demographic, a significant percentage of whom are pre-brainwashed emerging impulse consumers. The American economy is artificially propped up by impulse and trend consuming, so these kids mean a lot to the economy. Hollywood alone lives on summer blockbusters, which depends almost completely on the 13-21 year old crowd. That's why you rarely see an R rated film before the fall.
So ironically, investing in AOL is one of those paradoxically sound investments. A dying company with a largely ignorant critical mass user base waiting to be told what to do. It's not a quarterly return investment, so it's not sound for the guy up the block or the cash-out investor. If you're a company who wants eyeballs and an association with what Americans perceive the internet to be, then it's a good move that should yield cash down the line as you get those eyeballs where you want them. Fiscally, they have diversified revenue stream that is relatively consistent.
The other side is that you have to pick this up even if you don't want to, because it leverages considerable revenue power to whomever does.
I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't barked down this tree before. It would have been a cheaper purchase a couple of years ago.
The stock market agrees with you. their stock is down 5% already today. Despite setting record sales, they actually missed expectations and came in under the results expected by the market.
Analysts believe that the IPOD's popularity has peaked. The other concern is actually that once a critical mass of the population has IPODs, there will be less of a reason to get a new one. Similar to the PC ramp-up... the sales along the way to a monopoly are typically higher than maintenance sales. Analysts see Apple going into the maintenance phase of the IPOD cycle, meaning that the IPOD has become a mature product. Jobs feels similar, which is why he regularly releases new IPODS in order to bolster quarterly earnings. He will most certainly announce something soon in order to stem the bloodletting from their lower than expected quarterly earnings.
i'm totally finding a lot of this stuff on peer networks. there's a forum... mightyvibes.org or something like that, that indexes really good music in a whjole bunch of genres.
I'm getting the Handsome Boy stuff now. Thanks.
dude, this is totally true. I think that the biggest thing about having so much music available to one is that one becomes aware of the wealth of music all across the world that is worth listening to. It requires a bit of work, but finding really good music is so worthwhile.
I'm listening to so many kinds of music i'd otherwise not be listening to if i let radio or MTV et al program my listening choices.
There's some really good stuff coming out of Germany and Brazil too. Mostly death metal out of Germany - more rhythmic hip hop stuff out of Brazil (plus Portugese is such a great sounding language). Dan the Automator and DJ Shadow released a couple of albums called Bombay the Hard Way, which are remixes of 70s era Bollywood spy film scores. Amazing stuff. Bombay the Hard Way - check it out.
Lol @ the tool for it. lol.
I recently freelanced for a financial services firm on wall street that's on the downslope. The CEO (and namesake) of that company, is the laughing stock of the industry. His CEO "friends" no longer return his calls, and previously friendly requests for meetings and luncheons are now seen as acts of desperation by the beleaguered head of a floundering firm. As a consequence of his misfortunes, this CEO (not a bad guy in my estimation) has not taken a salary for two years, diverted some of his own wealth to the company, and actually exposed his personal credit in order to offset the decreasing value of the company's corporate credit rating.
It's awful to see a guy who accomplished a lot in his time start to fall off. It's even more awful to see his former "friends" and associates look down on him and now exclude him from the same circles he traveled frequently in recent memory. I've learned so much from watching this guy and from watching social interactions amongst fierce predators on national geographic. There is no such thing as friendship or comraderie. Strength is respected and accepted. Weakness is pounced upon mercilessly.
All of which to say, I think you have a point. A CEO's salary and prominence is his "big swinging dick" - and not having one can be a detriment. It's a good point.
lol, I temped once at this company, and a lot of the entry level/temp/freelance guys went outside to work on a freshly rolled fattie. This was also at a Christmas party.
The CEO stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes for a moment, and looked at us. By this time, the joint was hidden out of sight.
He looked at me and said, "so are you going to pass that or what?" I sheepishly passed it, and he hogged it while shooting the shit with us. It was never discussed; but we were appalled.
About a week later, he sent me an email asking me if I could get him more of that stuff. It was weird.
My point is this: good to whom? A good CEO to investors is not necessarily considered a good CEO by employees. That "good" CEO might significantly downsize the R&D department to reduces costs and increase ROI, which would make him a bad CEO by many employees, but a coveted employee by stockholders. This same CEO is not vested in the company's long term survival, but short term health. In that regard, what is meant by a "good" CEO?
This is my point. The market's idea of a good CEO can be different from an employee's idea of a good CEO in many instances.
CEOs should think in very broad strokes - industry wide paradigms.
lower level employees are pointillists, they are paid to think in detail, painstakingly small and acute dimensions.
these are inherently different languages; few people speak both. It's why most engineers make less than successful CEOs and why most CEOs were mediocre students/entry level workers/etc. That is the benefit and the bane of the middle manager. The good middle manager understands the engineer and can explain his perspective to the broad stroke upper management guy who makes decisions but cannot understand the engineer's perspective. The downside is that there is little opportunity for advancement for the middle manager - as his benefit to the machine is perpetually in the middle.
I agreee with you on several points.
Micro-managing bosses don't inspire confidence. I also agree that sifting through countless emails would be time consuming, especially in large companies with very strong hiring practices (which would mean fielding a good number of seemingly pertinent and thought provoking emails on a regular basis; imagine what Eric Schmidt's inbox looks like at the end of the day). I agree with an email filter. I don't think it should be the secretary though. Not to denigrate secretaries, but even good secretaries inspire way less confidence than the most micro-managingest CEO.
not anymore. CEO terms are becoming shorter than political terms in many instances. there is no vested interest in CEOs thinking long term, especially when long term interests often conflict with short term interests, i.e. return on investment. This is especially true for publically traded companies.
i guess my point is, the idea of what a good CEO is... is a very relative term.
For example, Steve Jobs has become a wall street darling because he has evolved from being a good private company CEO to a good public company CEO. I contend that the two are distinctly different breeds.
i read the article, and this is what I got from it. i could be wrong.
-5 million TB of data.
-170 TB have already been indexed.
-it would take 300 years to index that data and make it searchable.
I don't think it's an exercise to index all knowledge. As you point out, that would be alogical. I think it's more of an understanding of what it would take to effectively and completely serve the world's information needs given current indexing capabilities.
I guess establishing a benchmark currently, both of how efficiently they index information, as well as a general number for the amount of data is out there, they can gauge how efficient they get relative to the rate at which the amount of potentially indexable data increases.
that's interesting, because i say the same thing about serenity/firefly. It's such an annoyingly insulting pastiche of cliches that doesn't even come close to touching on anything novel or earnest.
-cue the messianic hot chick who is apparently physically invulnerable despite being about 47 kilos soaking wet. check.
-band of misfits. check.
-war with underlying secret conspiracy. check.
-inanely underwhelming wise cracks and cookie cutter television humor perfected on shows like Buffy (!!!). check.
-annoyingly inconsistent horribly conceived far future universe. check.
-paper thin swiss cheese plot. check.
lol....
It's amazing that Whedon and firefly/serenity get so much attention here on slashdot when really cool good sci-fi films like primer get not near as much. If you guys ran out and got Primer the way you got Firefly, we'd actually get more cogent sci fi.
Primer is ten times the movie Serenity is. Blade Runner owns it.
Dude, this is better than BLADE RUNNER?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I think your argument is an emotional one. I'd love to hear your points outlining why you think Serenity is better than Blade Runner.
he signed with the william morris agency. In tech terms, that like signing with the microsoft of agencies. they're the lumbering giant; CAA or Endeavor or somebody like that might be considered Google.
all of which is to say is that somebody will put money behind him now. hopefully he won't be handcuffed and told to dumb down by the system.
but shit man, Primer is such a good movie.
The other thing about Primer is that it was so open ended. You leave with more questions than you arrive with - and you realize that the story is tree-structured - it can go in so many directions, branching from the root.... further implementation of the machines, dealing with doubles and paradox, physical and psychological effects of unraveling and reconstructing reality, long term effects on the integrity of the world and universe. It's so refreshingly thoughtful.