Hee hee. I've been going to Norwescon for about 15 years now. Haven't been to Rustycon in a few years, but I know what you mean about the obsessives.
However, while it's fun to point out the stereotypical geeks, most of the people I meet at cons, even the onse in the Klingon costumes barking Qapla'! at each other in the hallways are folks who do have a job, don't live in their parent's basement, and come to the con so they can just be geeky for a few days.
Yeah, there's the usual contingent of drooling mouth-breathers, but in general I find the con-goers to be pretty neat people overall.
I think the truly rare person would be someone who is a fluent (more than shouting catchphrases from the show at the masked ball) speaker of Klingon who is employable- that level of obsessiveness usually comes along with some negative personality traits. That said, I've known some speakers of Quenya and Esperanto who learned those languages just because it interested them, not because they were obsessed, so I would imagine you could find people who spoke Klingon that could keep it in perspective.
In all seriousness, I think this extremely interesting. From my reading of the article, it sounds like the Multonomah County Department of Human Services, by law, has to provide these services, and that means that they have to provide translation services for people who ostensibly only speak Klingon. It's like a totally bizarre collision of law and pop culture. I love it.
Hell, there's probably a research paper in it for someone, focusing on how a phenomenon like Star Trek can have such far-reaching and totally unanticipated effects.
Hmm, let's see- a 500V harpoon that, if it misses, impales some hapless bastard on the sidewalk, or takes out a bus or something. Can you imagine the fallout the first time they used something like that and missed?:-)
It's probably doable, but it would only be able to be used if there were no pedestrians/buildings/other cars about.
I disagree. We do need national defense, but the argument against manned space exploration seems mostly these days to be "it's expensive", expressed in terms of outrage that anyone would dare to waste hard-earned taxpayer money in such a profligate manner. The hypocrisy annoys me, because if you want to find ways to save money, you can definitely still achieve a good national defense without the amount of money we spend now.
I further disagree that we don't need a manned space program. Research and exploration are two things that the human race must do in order to thrive. We have no real frontiers left on this planet, and in my opinion, we need a frontier like space to push into, to fire the imagination and drive human development further. We ignore our own needs at our peril.
Also, it is a fact that right now the species' eggs are all in one basket, so to speak. If we don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs the next time this planet finds itself on the back side of the 8-ball in the cosmic pool game, we better get our shit in one bag and start finding other places to live.
And frankly, 15.7 billion dollars a year doesn't seem that much to me when stacked against the rest of the federal budget. And not all of that is the space shuttle program; much of it is devoted to unmanned missions and research that don't have anything directly to do with the shuttle program.
I've heard it quoted that space shuttle missions cost about $759 million per, although I'm sure that's different on each mission. Still, at that figure, the 113 missions flown by the space shuttle program come out to $85.7 billion- since the shuttle program began. The Air Force's total budget for next year alone is over $95 billion dollars. The aircraft procurement budget for FY2004 is going to be about $16.5 billion, an amount that not only decreased by 3 percent from last year, but is still over a billion dollars more than NASA's entire budget!
I'm not saying that we should start slashing military budgets willy-nilly, but if you want to look at how this nation organizes its priorities, you need look no further than the budget. I reject any argument that says space exploration is too expensive until we get our military budgets under control.
Why aren't you focusing some of that outrage on where the money really goes? NASA's budget for FY2004 is only $15.7 billion dollars, while the military's budget for the same period is $399.1 billion dollars.
You can make the argument that the space shuttle program is inefficient in its context, but if you're going to be outraged as a taxpayer, get outraged about the things that are really soaking your wallet. Scrap one B2 bomber and you could launch the shuttle 3 times. THAT's an outrage.
NASA's proposed budget for FY 2004 is $15.7 billion dollars. The military's budget request for FY 2004 is $399.1 billion dollars. It costs 3 times as much to make on B2 bomber as it does to launch the space shuttle once.
I'm tired of hearing people bitch about how expensive our space program is when we spend over 26 times as much on our military. You can't tell me we can't afford to run our space program in the face of numbers like these. Reduce the military budget by 4 percent and you could double NASA's.
As some others have posted elsewhere, the 5/7/5 format is mostly a western convience. I've been given to understand that the real goal of a haiku is to use as few words as possible or in a "poetic" manner to convey the desired impression.
So for all those saying that these aren't haikus because they don't fit with the 5/7/5 you learned in elementary school, well, get over it.
As I said, this won't be useful to any products already well into the design/production cycle, for reasons you and others cite. But if you're in the design stages for a new product that needs some type of remote management you could do via HTTP, appliance or no, this is something that's worth looking at (IMO). Depends on what features you need to support.
The additional price is only an issue if you consider this item being added to some product as new functionality. This is a godsend to any product in development that had some type of networking integration already slated for its feature set. In fact, for products being designed with this type of functionality in mind, this might actually reduce the final cost.
Engineer Drone: "Yeah, hey boss- we could build it ourselves for a boatload of cash, or we could shell out $30/pop for 10K of these things and spend a few weeks integrating them into the widget. Whaddya think?"
This took place in the US, so they're using the Fahrenheit scale- 185 degrees Fahrenheit is about 85 degrees Celsius- somewhat below the boiling point.
I really doubt that Congress, who won't listen to the majority of its citizens, will bother to listen to a collection of scientists that don't provide any money to their campaign coffers.
After all, the RIAA and MPAA can probably outspend the IEEE by about 500 to one or more.
I hate to be too cynical, but this seems to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing to anyone who isn't a geek.
I don't disagree with you- but to many, he was a hero, the knight in shining armor who came along to lead the charge against the Evil Microsoft Monopoly. Now, to many of those people, he has betrayed them. So the original poster was an ass, but had a good point. Those aren't mutually exclusive.;)
You're right- he isn't in the game for some ideal; he's here to make money, and that means fighting for whichever cause can pay him the most.
I've been here for a few months now and I've never seen a mod-point. I've always assumed it was because I was still new, but I've begun to wonder, given some of the comments I've seen lately.
I don't suppose it matters much; moderating other people's posts isn't why I read/., but I do find myself wondering how the moderation system makes what seems to be fairly weird decisions (give person A modpoints frequently, never give person B any at all, despite similar karma).
Since I also read/. several times a day (albeit briefly each time) that may have something to do with it. Maybe coming here more than once a day puts you into the "obsessive-compulsive reloader" category described in the FAQ.;)
It's an interesting point, but to turn your question on its head, why should we assume that we're the only life form that has a fetish for communication?
If you assume that any other forms of intelligent life exist, you probably have to assume that there's more than one other. So for every one that doesn't like to communicate, there should be one that does.
That someone started taking these irresponsible cretins to task. I applaud this action. For anyone who wants to cry "free speach", it should be noted that the server, bulletin board, and services involved were totally private in nature. That, and this twonk had to get through some kind of agreement prohibitig such behavior in order to gain access. I'm constantly amazed that people seem to think that because a forum is on the Internet that it somehow enjoys some additional protections covering anything you want to say. If you own the equipment, you get to decide what gets done with it, and who can use it.
That's a great idea. Take a device that, if it malfunctions, simply fails to clean your floor. Convert it to a device, that if it fails, probably kills a pet, converts your hedges to mulch, or takes out the local playground.
While I may agree with some of this, I think it should be pointed out that securing your systems is not a binary operation; you can be a competent sysadmin and still get owned by the latest exploit if you didn't find out about it quickly enough. You can also get nailed by some obscure exploit that a duly diligent admin might not have known about.
You might also get nailed if you run an insecure application or allow users to run code on your system. My concern is that if you have a precedent like this, no one who can't afford an army of lawyers could afford to take the risk of being online, because the risk of getting sued into penury is too great.
Do we want to foster a system where only the very wealthy or highly-connected can afford to run a server on the Internet?
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Hee hee. I've been going to Norwescon for about 15 years now. Haven't been to Rustycon in a few years, but I know what you mean about the obsessives.
However, while it's fun to point out the stereotypical geeks, most of the people I meet at cons, even the onse in the Klingon costumes barking Qapla'! at each other in the hallways are folks who do have a job, don't live in their parent's basement, and come to the con so they can just be geeky for a few days.
Yeah, there's the usual contingent of drooling mouth-breathers, but in general I find the con-goers to be pretty neat people overall.
I think the truly rare person would be someone who is a fluent (more than shouting catchphrases from the show at the masked ball) speaker of Klingon who is employable- that level of obsessiveness usually comes along with some negative personality traits. That said, I've known some speakers of Quenya and Esperanto who learned those languages just because it interested them, not because they were obsessed, so I would imagine you could find people who spoke Klingon that could keep it in perspective.
Nah, all they'd have to do is go to the Klingon Language Institute.
In all seriousness, I think this extremely interesting. From my reading of the article, it sounds like the Multonomah County Department of Human Services, by law, has to provide these services, and that means that they have to provide translation services for people who ostensibly only speak Klingon. It's like a totally bizarre collision of law and pop culture. I love it.
Hell, there's probably a research paper in it for someone, focusing on how a phenomenon like Star Trek can have such far-reaching and totally unanticipated effects.
I was referring to the Colt Peacemaker .45 caliber revolver, which predates the ICBM by at least a century. Silly person.
They're mostly museum pieces now, but the name is part of the American lexicon.
I suppose if you use it on someone with a Peacemaker, you'd get shot. :-) Not much electronics in those.
Hmm, let's see- a 500V harpoon that, if it misses, impales some hapless bastard on the sidewalk, or takes out a bus or something. Can you imagine the fallout the first time they used something like that and missed? :-)
It's probably doable, but it would only be able to be used if there were no pedestrians/buildings/other cars about.
I disagree. We do need national defense, but the argument against manned space exploration seems mostly these days to be "it's expensive", expressed in terms of outrage that anyone would dare to waste hard-earned taxpayer money in such a profligate manner. The hypocrisy annoys me, because if you want to find ways to save money, you can definitely still achieve a good national defense without the amount of money we spend now.
I further disagree that we don't need a manned space program. Research and exploration are two things that the human race must do in order to thrive. We have no real frontiers left on this planet, and in my opinion, we need a frontier like space to push into, to fire the imagination and drive human development further. We ignore our own needs at our peril.
Also, it is a fact that right now the species' eggs are all in one basket, so to speak. If we don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs the next time this planet finds itself on the back side of the 8-ball in the cosmic pool game, we better get our shit in one bag and start finding other places to live.
And frankly, 15.7 billion dollars a year doesn't seem that much to me when stacked against the rest of the federal budget. And not all of that is the space shuttle program; much of it is devoted to unmanned missions and research that don't have anything directly to do with the shuttle program.
I've heard it quoted that space shuttle missions cost about $759 million per, although I'm sure that's different on each mission. Still, at that figure, the 113 missions flown by the space shuttle program come out to $85.7 billion- since the shuttle program began. The Air Force's total budget for next year alone is over $95 billion dollars. The aircraft procurement budget for FY2004 is going to be about $16.5 billion, an amount that not only decreased by 3 percent from last year, but is still over a billion dollars more than NASA's entire budget!
I'm not saying that we should start slashing military budgets willy-nilly, but if you want to look at how this nation organizes its priorities, you need look no further than the budget. I reject any argument that says space exploration is too expensive until we get our military budgets under control.
Why aren't you focusing some of that outrage on where the money really goes? NASA's budget for FY2004 is only $15.7 billion dollars, while the military's budget for the same period is $399.1 billion dollars.
You can make the argument that the space shuttle program is inefficient in its context, but if you're going to be outraged as a taxpayer, get outraged about the things that are really soaking your wallet. Scrap one B2 bomber and you could launch the shuttle 3 times. THAT's an outrage.
NASA's proposed budget for FY 2004 is $15.7 billion dollars. The military's budget request for FY 2004 is $399.1 billion dollars. It costs 3 times as much to make on B2 bomber as it does to launch the space shuttle once. I'm tired of hearing people bitch about how expensive our space program is when we spend over 26 times as much on our military. You can't tell me we can't afford to run our space program in the face of numbers like these. Reduce the military budget by 4 percent and you could double NASA's.
M16A2-M4A1=1201.
Too bad it's only for AIM; it would be interesting to apply similar principles to blogs.
I like my geek rare, and that means pink, not bloody.
Mmmm... rare geek.
As some others have posted elsewhere, the 5/7/5 format is mostly a western convience. I've been given to understand that the real goal of a haiku is to use as few words as possible or in a "poetic" manner to convey the desired impression.
So for all those saying that these aren't haikus because they don't fit with the 5/7/5 you learned in elementary school, well, get over it.
As I said, this won't be useful to any products already well into the design/production cycle, for reasons you and others cite. But if you're in the design stages for a new product that needs some type of remote management you could do via HTTP, appliance or no, this is something that's worth looking at (IMO). Depends on what features you need to support.
The additional price is only an issue if you consider this item being added to some product as new functionality. This is a godsend to any product in development that had some type of networking integration already slated for its feature set. In fact, for products being designed with this type of functionality in mind, this might actually reduce the final cost.
Engineer Drone: "Yeah, hey boss- we could build it ourselves for a boatload of cash, or we could shell out $30/pop for 10K of these things and spend a few weeks integrating them into the widget. Whaddya think?"
PHB: "Ka-ching!"
This took place in the US, so they're using the Fahrenheit scale- 185 degrees Fahrenheit is about 85 degrees Celsius- somewhat below the boiling point.
I really doubt that Congress, who won't listen to the majority of its citizens, will bother to listen to a collection of scientists that don't provide any money to their campaign coffers.
After all, the RIAA and MPAA can probably outspend the IEEE by about 500 to one or more.
I hate to be too cynical, but this seems to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing to anyone who isn't a geek.
In Soviet Russia, I heard this one coming about 10 miles away.
I don't disagree with you- but to many, he was a hero, the knight in shining armor who came along to lead the charge against the Evil Microsoft Monopoly. Now, to many of those people, he has betrayed them. So the original poster was an ass, but had a good point. Those aren't mutually exclusive. ;)
You're right- he isn't in the game for some ideal; he's here to make money, and that means fighting for whichever cause can pay him the most.
He may be an ass, but he's got a point. Boies was at one point the hero, now he's the goat.
I've been here for a few months now and I've never seen a mod-point. I've always assumed it was because I was still new, but I've begun to wonder, given some of the comments I've seen lately.
I don't suppose it matters much; moderating other people's posts isn't why I read /., but I do find myself wondering how the moderation system makes what seems to be fairly weird decisions (give person A modpoints frequently, never give person B any at all, despite similar karma).
Since I also read /. several times a day (albeit briefly each time) that may have something to do with it. Maybe coming here more than once a day puts you into the "obsessive-compulsive reloader" category described in the FAQ. ;)
It's an interesting point, but to turn your question on its head, why should we assume that we're the only life form that has a fetish for communication?
If you assume that any other forms of intelligent life exist, you probably have to assume that there's more than one other. So for every one that doesn't like to communicate, there should be one that does.
That someone started taking these irresponsible cretins to task. I applaud this action. For anyone who wants to cry "free speach", it should be noted that the server, bulletin board, and services involved were totally private in nature. That, and this twonk had to get through some kind of agreement prohibitig such behavior in order to gain access. I'm constantly amazed that people seem to think that because a forum is on the Internet that it somehow enjoys some additional protections covering anything you want to say. If you own the equipment, you get to decide what gets done with it, and who can use it.
I'll bet NetBSD beats them to it.
"Of course my vacuum cleaner runs NetBSD."
That's a great idea. Take a device that, if it malfunctions, simply fails to clean your floor. Convert it to a device, that if it fails, probably kills a pet, converts your hedges to mulch, or takes out the local playground.
Now imagine a Beowulf cluster of those...
While I may agree with some of this, I think it should be pointed out that securing your systems is not a binary operation; you can be a competent sysadmin and still get owned by the latest exploit if you didn't find out about it quickly enough. You can also get nailed by some obscure exploit that a duly diligent admin might not have known about.
You might also get nailed if you run an insecure application or allow users to run code on your system. My concern is that if you have a precedent like this, no one who can't afford an army of lawyers could afford to take the risk of being online, because the risk of getting sued into penury is too great.
Do we want to foster a system where only the very wealthy or highly-connected can afford to run a server on the Internet?