I did work at NetworkWorld in the late 90's. One of the tasks I was involved in was replacing all their macs with Windows 95 machines (with the exception of some art folks). After that was accomplished they went to a publishing system based on NT and Word Macros.
This was right around the time when word macros were the rage. It was a nightmare. You'd get one macro virus, and in an hour the entire company would have it.
Are they all really switching back to macs? And if so, I am glad to hear they finally junked that crappy publishing system. I am sure the only reason they didn't kill that project on week 2 was because they would have to admit they threw hundreds of thousands of dollars into a bad product.
I did some research on the calorie content of guiness recently, and found that it was surpricingly low. I got this data from http://www.realbeer.com/edu/health/calories.php (if you have contrary data, I would love to see it!)
Calories for a 12oz serving: Budweiser 143 calories 5.0% alcohol Bud Light 110 calories 4.2% alcohol Guinness 110 calories 4.0% alcohol Sam Adams Lager 160 calories 4.8% alcohol
So, chosing a crappy domestic rice beer isn't necessarily going to be cutting back on the calories. It is worth doing some research to find out if the beer you prefer is high in calories or not. Plus, if you are going to subject yourself to rice beer, you may as well switch to sake (which has between 180 and 240 calories for a 5.5 oz glass, with about 15-17% alcohol).
What you are probably thinking of in terms of keeping records on students is FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act - http://www.ed.gov/offices/OM/fpco/ferpa/ ).
If you think about it, the last command on your campus server could be considered a violation of this since it has student records (login times).
As long as your records are restricted to school staff, you shouldn't be violating FERPA. However, IANAL so this is just my interpretation.
I am the sys admin of a "OneCard" server, though I try not to touch it since it has tons of propritary configurations on it. I do know that security was a large concern of mine because of FERPA. However, encryption on the network, and other things, I haven't looked into. (And from my possition it wouldn't do me much good since the decision to go with the product was made 6 months before I heard about it).
To further support this post, I would like to say that music holds a niche in the younger population that books don't. During those young years of raging hormones and the peak of 'ankst & woe' music holds a special sway over you that for most people doesn't hold as you grow up.
I'm not saying that the younger population likes music more, but they certainly are hooked into emtionally driven music much easier, and this is a hook that doesn't relate back to books or movies. "The sound track of my life" can be shared much easier than "I read this book that I so relate too".
I perhaps am broadly generalizing, I'll take this back a step and say I was that ankst & woe child, hooked on bands that emtional punch, like NIN, Metallica, Ani Difranco, Rage against the Machine, The Cure. I like all these artists still, they are in my music line up, but as a teenage these groups/artists meant MUCH more, and I listened to them on a much higher frequency.
Music allows you to be drawn in over and over in a way that books or movies don't. The 'cultural' power of having something beat into you during much of your waking hours is nontrivial.
So, I support the above posts statement that this is an apples and oranges coorilation. The comment that the future could hold less money for more artists maybe true, but like books, music has become easier to record and distribute. THIS is where I see them as alike. Not as a cultural, youth, drugs, hookers, type thing.
I agree with you, this isn't exactly confidence inspiring news. Granted, the chances are probably very slim of a bug happening, and more slim that it becomes fatal. But I'm such a control freak that I certainly don't need yet another thing to be worried about on a flight!
But then again, it isn't as if it shouldn't be reported on. I just like it when they tell me how statisticly improbably it is that it will effect me:)
It is not as if the specified change was saying "All lands west of the Sun and south of the Moon are claimed by America". Clearly, just because we know it is there should not allow us to claim it.
However, in other ways, the concept does sort of resemble the Treaty of Tordesillas. In the article he claims that America is the best choice of a benevolent rulership of these potential colonies, much as the Spanish and Portuguese had the backing of the Pope as the bearers of the true faith. Government and religion have a lot in common when it comes to personal rights, liberty and justice. Most Americans, my self included taken it on faith that freedom is the right way, and that the Constitutions attempt at providing us with it is the logical thing to follow.
The Pope signing over such a huge amount of land in such a gross negligence of the reality is much like saying "We should allow national claim on Mars, and who better than the US."
I am not really trying to make a point so much as show an example from our history of colonization (as a species). Clearly deciding what political, economical, and religious standard you will have (if any) on a colony is a sticky issue. Most orginzations naturally think their way is best, and eventually a decision will have to be made one way or the other.
It isn't surpricing that the author of this article said "It may as well be our way." That seems like a pretty natural response. I do applaud him for approaching the topic, since it raises some good questions.
The question remains, if we ever plan to colonize a body in space other than Earth, we will have to tackle these kinds of issues (economic, political, religious). If we decide that these issues are too scary we are dooming ourselves to this planet.
I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I think this message has been disjointed enough for one sitting.
It seems like it would be easier, and better, to simply have the end of III end in such a way that it gracefully leads into IV.
I don't think it's necessary, I think each movie, in each trilogy should in some way stand alone.
I also thought Jaba in the re-edit of IV was lame though. It just felt forced. It would be very difficult to splice in new footage in a way that didn't make the difference in filming techniques and animation a striking contrast.
I'm in the camp who says 'Lucas is a big sell out' and I selectively purchase/view his 'work'. I won't spend money to see the old movies with 5 seconds force fed scenes. But you can, and that's why Lucas keeps doing it.
This is clearly the case. Attack of the Clones failed on multiple fronts, and all of them could have easily been corrected via direction or writing.
First of all, the love story in AotC's was horrible. Padme may as well show up on Jerry Springers "Power Crazed Sociopaths and why we love them". No one watching the movie could understand why Padme didn't run screaming the second stalker-jedi-boy starts drooling on her.
Spider-man's love story on the other hand made more sense. MJ may have been sketched out by Peter Parker's obsession for her, but she wasn't because he showed genuine caring towards her, something she was lacking (her father yelling at her, her boyfriends being shallow, etc.). This was believable.
Second big complaint. Who was the villian of Attack of the Clones? Dooku? You gotta be kidding. This guy didn't lie to anyone. He didn't appear to do anything really bad except maybe sit by and watch the 'execution'. He explained to Obi Wan his reasons, asked him to join up, Obi Wan said 'no, I'm not with you I'm against you', so what's he gonna do? The only implication that this guy is suppose to be evil is Yoda saying he's using the dark side of the force. But Anakin is suppose to be the one to bring balance, which implies that you need just as much dark side as light side. Again, it never clearly shows Dooku as being 'the bad guy'.
In Spider-Man the Green Goblin blows people up to get his way.
I am all for a more indepth story than 'hero fights bad guy', but shoving that all in a 2 hour movie is difficult, and Lucas has shown he can't even do it in a series this time around. If I want depth I'll read the book, it's a much better medium for such a thing.
Oh and lastly, I have to say, the Anakin in Phantom Menance and the Anakin in AotC's is so amazingly different it's unbelievable. Cute, friendly, helpful to strangers turns into power-crazed sociopathic mass murdering stalker. Man, Obi-Wan really fucked up his training!
I may be responding a little slow on this topic, slashdot time, but as someone who left school and got a job as a sysadmin, I feel my point of view may be relevant.
A lot of people have talked about upstart kids who skip college and get jobs who don't work out because of bad attitudes. I've seen these types myself, who think they are smarter than everyone else (even if they are), and they truly are an annoying breed. However, the college degree (or rather lack thereof) is a symptom of that, not a cause. Kids who think they know everything don't want to go to school and have someone tell them they don't.
When I left college I ended up doing contracting/consulting and the entire time no one cared whether I had a degree. I started working in '97, so the market may have helped this. Now I work at a small private college. But if I had continued on my consultant track I could have continued to make lots of money in a fast pace career.
I've always wondered whether or not my lack of degree will rear it's ugly head and screw me up. However, since I'm not interested in going very far from my sysadmin roots, and would not want a purely management job, it _may_ never be a problem. But I'm also the type of person who has no problem giving up a little bit of money for a good job. If you want to be someone who makes the big bucks, corporate climb, you probably want a college degree with one of those fancy names on it.
So, what I'm saying is I left college and never looked back, and it hasn't caused me any problems yet. I don't feel as though it 'jump started' my career by starting earlier. That wasn't why I left either. As much as you may feel as though the world is rushing by while you are in college, it really isn't.
I advocate going to college. I remember very fondly my college years (well, 1.5), and most of my long term friends I made there. Living with a bunch of people your age day in and day out gives you social outlets you won't have when you are in the work place. College gives you more freedom than you ever had, and gives you more free time than you are likely to ever have again.
In college you will have 90% of all the philosophical discussions that you will have in your life time.
In college you will drink 50% of all the alcohol you will ever drink in your life time.
In college you will do 80% of all the drugs you will ever do in your life time.
In college you will do 70% of all the things you will in the future tell stories about.
In college you will do 60% of all the things you regret in your life time.
In college you will sleep with 70% of all the women and/or men you will in your lifetime.
In college you will do 80% of all the kinky sex acts you will in your lifetime.
So, job or no, go to college, at least for a little while.
It's interesting that you mention that testing of this concept has taken place in Marlborough since it is a metro-suburb of Boston, the home of the worlds biggest civil works project, the Big Dig.
As someone who moved away from Boston to escape the traffic, I can safely say I spent a lot of time on route 93 day dreaming about exactly this concept. And to think a half hour away they were testing it.
Imagine if all the billions of dollars dumped into the Big Dig were instead put into reevaluating the city infrastructure and implimenting this kind of system. In fact, it's probably a technically easier challenge then digging under a city.
The concept of trasitionary vehicles is key however. You approach the city from any direction in your little commuter pod, hit the transition station (I imagine traffic jams like toll booths), and once you are in the system, you are routed appropriately. City 'approach' routers would be many laned to handle the input, and then branched off into various areas of the city, cutting down on the problems of 'clogged' lanes due to break downs effecting other lanes. (this being a potential 'large' delay for those stuck behind, but the frequency of jams based on other lane problems is such a huge factor in back-ups currently anyhow).
Once within the city single lane jam problems could be routed around, and may require a little bit of foot work, but otherwise is trivial.
Obviously the difficult part is phasing this in. Downtown areas and vast city networks are obviously a last step. Implimenting them in suburbs would be the proper field test, and then 'grown' into the city. Initially space is a problem, but once you have a system in place you can begin to slice out sections of city that are deemed unnecessary to have standard vehicle access (minus emergency vehicles) allowing for more space to expand the rail infrastructure, not to mention self-propelled transportation.
A point that stood out to me was that new systems of transporation spawn from already existing forms of technology. It's implimentation that takes work. I'd add to this it also takes a lot of lobbying, adverticing and most importantly for all the Hollywood raised kids, hype!
He's right. If you get sued by Metallica for downloading their music, the best way to get out of it is to go out and buy their CD. Who cares if it goes against a 'Metallica ban', you just got yourself out of a law suit. Don't you wish you could get out of every law suit for $16.95?
Actually, the reason that Ender was the the right guy for the job was because he was empathetic. He had the ability to get to know someone, including his enemy, so well that he could see through there eyes and see why they did the things they did. At this point he could understand exactly why they were doing the things they did, but at the same time, he knew them so well he knew how to defeat him.
That is also why he made a good leader, because he could use those under him to there fullest potential.
These concepts came out more in Speaker for the Dead, but are still very visible from Ender's Game. He is smart. He is quick. But his biggest advantage is his ability to know and use people.
Their are lots of references to the Buggers trying to use there communication with Ender, hence the bad dreams during the end of the book. And the manipulation of the fantasy game hinted at as well (and the creation of Jane).
Slashdot Mirror
I did work at NetworkWorld in the late 90's. One of the tasks I was involved in was replacing all their macs with Windows 95 machines (with the exception of some art folks). After that was accomplished they went to a publishing system based on NT and Word Macros.
This was right around the time when word macros were the rage. It was a nightmare. You'd get one macro virus, and in an hour the entire company would have it.
Are they all really switching back to macs? And if so, I am glad to hear they finally junked that crappy publishing system. I am sure the only reason they didn't kill that project on week 2 was because they would have to admit they threw hundreds of thousands of dollars into a bad product.
I did some research on the calorie content of guiness recently, and found that it was surpricingly low. I got this data from http://www.realbeer.com/edu/health/calories.php (if you have contrary data, I would love to see it!)
Calories for a 12oz serving:
Budweiser 143 calories 5.0% alcohol
Bud Light 110 calories 4.2% alcohol
Guinness 110 calories 4.0% alcohol
Sam Adams Lager 160 calories 4.8% alcohol
So, chosing a crappy domestic rice beer isn't necessarily going to be cutting back on the calories. It is worth doing some research to find out if the beer you prefer is high in calories or not. Plus, if you are going to subject yourself to rice beer, you may as well switch to sake (which has between 180 and 240 calories for a 5.5 oz glass, with about 15-17% alcohol).
Life is to short to drink bad beer.
What you are probably thinking of in terms of keeping records on students is FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act - http://www.ed.gov/offices/OM/fpco/ferpa/ ).
If you think about it, the last command on your campus server could be considered a violation of this since it has student records (login times).
As long as your records are restricted to school staff, you shouldn't be violating FERPA. However, IANAL so this is just my interpretation.
I am the sys admin of a "OneCard" server, though I try not to touch it since it has tons of propritary configurations on it. I do know that security was a large concern of mine because of FERPA. However, encryption on the network, and other things, I haven't looked into. (And from my possition it wouldn't do me much good since the decision to go with the product was made 6 months before I heard about it).
To further support this post, I would like to say that music holds a niche in the younger population that books don't. During those young years of raging hormones and the peak of 'ankst & woe' music holds a special sway over you that for most people doesn't hold as you grow up.
I'm not saying that the younger population likes music more, but they certainly are hooked into emtionally driven music much easier, and this is a hook that doesn't relate back to books or movies. "The sound track of my life" can be shared much easier than "I read this book that I so relate too".
I perhaps am broadly generalizing, I'll take this back a step and say I was that ankst & woe child, hooked on bands that emtional punch, like NIN, Metallica, Ani Difranco, Rage against the Machine, The Cure. I like all these artists still, they are in my music line up, but as a teenage these groups/artists meant MUCH more, and I listened to them on a much higher frequency.
Music allows you to be drawn in over and over in a way that books or movies don't. The 'cultural' power of having something beat into you during much of your waking hours is nontrivial.
So, I support the above posts statement that this is an apples and oranges coorilation. The comment that the future could hold less money for more artists maybe true, but like books, music has become easier to record and distribute. THIS is where I see them as alike. Not as a cultural, youth, drugs, hookers, type thing.
I agree with you, this isn't exactly confidence inspiring news. Granted, the chances are probably very slim of a bug happening, and more slim that it becomes fatal. But I'm such a control freak that I certainly don't need yet another thing to be worried about on a flight!
But then again, it isn't as if it shouldn't be reported on. I just like it when they tell me how statisticly improbably it is that it will effect me
It is not as if the specified change was saying "All lands west of the Sun and south of the Moon are claimed by America". Clearly, just because we know it is there should not allow us to claim it.
However, in other ways, the concept does sort of resemble the Treaty of Tordesillas. In the article he claims that America is the best choice of a benevolent rulership of these potential colonies, much as the Spanish and Portuguese had the backing of the Pope as the bearers of the true faith. Government and religion have a lot in common when it comes to personal rights, liberty and justice. Most Americans, my self included taken it on faith that freedom is the right way, and that the Constitutions attempt at providing us with it is the logical thing to follow.
The Pope signing over such a huge amount of land in such a gross negligence of the reality is much like saying "We should allow national claim on Mars, and who better than the US."
I am not really trying to make a point so much as show an example from our history of colonization (as a species). Clearly deciding what political, economical, and religious standard you will have (if any) on a colony is a sticky issue. Most orginzations naturally think their way is best, and eventually a decision will have to be made one way or the other.
It isn't surpricing that the author of this article said "It may as well be our way." That seems like a pretty natural response. I do applaud him for approaching the topic, since it raises some good questions.
The question remains, if we ever plan to colonize a body in space other than Earth, we will have to tackle these kinds of issues (economic, political, religious). If we decide that these issues are too scary we are dooming ourselves to this planet.
I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I think this message has been disjointed enough for one sitting.
They'd definately need to setup a squid server on Mars with a lag time of 40 minutes!
It seems like it would be easier, and better, to simply have the end of III end in such a way that it gracefully leads into IV.
I don't think it's necessary, I think each movie, in each trilogy should in some way stand alone.
I also thought Jaba in the re-edit of IV was lame though. It just felt forced. It would be very difficult to splice in new footage in a way that didn't make the difference in filming techniques and animation a striking contrast.
I'm in the camp who says 'Lucas is a big sell out' and I selectively purchase/view his 'work'. I won't spend money to see the old movies with 5 seconds force fed scenes. But you can, and that's why Lucas keeps doing it.
This is clearly the case. Attack of the Clones failed on multiple fronts, and all of them could have easily been corrected via direction or writing.
First of all, the love story in AotC's was horrible. Padme may as well show up on Jerry Springers "Power Crazed Sociopaths and why we love them". No one watching the movie could understand why Padme didn't run screaming the second stalker-jedi-boy starts drooling on her.
Spider-man's love story on the other hand made more sense. MJ may have been sketched out by Peter Parker's obsession for her, but she wasn't because he showed genuine caring towards her, something she was lacking (her father yelling at her, her boyfriends being shallow, etc.). This was believable.
Second big complaint. Who was the villian of Attack of the Clones? Dooku? You gotta be kidding. This guy didn't lie to anyone. He didn't appear to do anything really bad except maybe sit by and watch the 'execution'. He explained to Obi Wan his reasons, asked him to join up, Obi Wan said 'no, I'm not with you I'm against you', so what's he gonna do? The only implication that this guy is suppose to be evil is Yoda saying he's using the dark side of the force. But Anakin is suppose to be the one to bring balance, which implies that you need just as much dark side as light side. Again, it never clearly shows Dooku as being 'the bad guy'.
In Spider-Man the Green Goblin blows people up to get his way.
I am all for a more indepth story than 'hero fights bad guy', but shoving that all in a 2 hour movie is difficult, and Lucas has shown he can't even do it in a series this time around. If I want depth I'll read the book, it's a much better medium for such a thing.
Oh and lastly, I have to say, the Anakin in Phantom Menance and the Anakin in AotC's is so amazingly different it's unbelievable. Cute, friendly, helpful to strangers turns into power-crazed sociopathic mass murdering stalker. Man, Obi-Wan really fucked up his training!
I may be responding a little slow on this topic, slashdot time, but as someone who left school and got a job as a sysadmin, I feel my point of view may be relevant.
A lot of people have talked about upstart kids who skip college and get jobs who don't work out because of bad attitudes. I've seen these types myself, who think they are smarter than everyone else (even if they are), and they truly are an annoying breed. However, the college degree (or rather lack thereof) is a symptom of that, not a cause. Kids who think they know everything don't want to go to school and have someone tell them they don't.
When I left college I ended up doing contracting/consulting and the entire time no one cared whether I had a degree. I started working in '97, so the market may have helped this. Now I work at a small private college. But if I had continued on my consultant track I could have continued to make lots of money in a fast pace career.
I've always wondered whether or not my lack of degree will rear it's ugly head and screw me up. However, since I'm not interested in going very far from my sysadmin roots, and would not want a purely management job, it _may_ never be a problem. But I'm also the type of person who has no problem giving up a little bit of money for a good job. If you want to be someone who makes the big bucks, corporate climb, you probably want a college degree with one of those fancy names on it.
So, what I'm saying is I left college and never looked back, and it hasn't caused me any problems yet. I don't feel as though it 'jump started' my career by starting earlier. That wasn't why I left either. As much as you may feel as though the world is rushing by while you are in college, it really isn't.
I advocate going to college. I remember very fondly my college years (well, 1.5), and most of my long term friends I made there. Living with a bunch of people your age day in and day out gives you social outlets you won't have when you are in the work place. College gives you more freedom than you ever had, and gives you more free time than you are likely to ever have again.
In college you will have 90% of all the philosophical discussions that you will have in your life time.
In college you will drink 50% of all the alcohol you will ever drink in your life time.
In college you will do 80% of all the drugs you will ever do in your life time.
In college you will do 70% of all the things you will in the future tell stories about.
In college you will do 60% of all the things you regret in your life time.
In college you will sleep with 70% of all the women and/or men you will in your lifetime.
In college you will do 80% of all the kinky sex acts you will in your lifetime.
So, job or no, go to college, at least for a little while.
It's interesting that you mention that testing of this concept has taken place in Marlborough since it is a metro-suburb of Boston, the home of the worlds biggest civil works project, the Big Dig.
As someone who moved away from Boston to escape the traffic, I can safely say I spent a lot of time on route 93 day dreaming about exactly this concept. And to think a half hour away they were testing it.
Imagine if all the billions of dollars dumped into the Big Dig were instead put into reevaluating the city infrastructure and implimenting this kind of system. In fact, it's probably a technically easier challenge then digging under a city.
The concept of trasitionary vehicles is key however. You approach the city from any direction in your little commuter pod, hit the transition station (I imagine traffic jams like toll booths), and once you are in the system, you are routed appropriately. City 'approach' routers would be many laned to handle the input, and then branched off into various areas of the city, cutting down on the problems of 'clogged' lanes due to break downs effecting other lanes. (this being a potential 'large' delay for those stuck behind, but the frequency of jams based on other lane problems is such a huge factor in back-ups currently anyhow).
Once within the city single lane jam problems could be routed around, and may require a little bit of foot work, but otherwise is trivial.
Obviously the difficult part is phasing this in. Downtown areas and vast city networks are obviously a last step. Implimenting them in suburbs would be the proper field test, and then 'grown' into the city. Initially space is a problem, but once you have a system in place you can begin to slice out sections of city that are deemed unnecessary to have standard vehicle access (minus emergency vehicles) allowing for more space to expand the rail infrastructure, not to mention self-propelled transportation.
A point that stood out to me was that new systems of transporation spawn from already existing forms of technology. It's implimentation that takes work. I'd add to this it also takes a lot of lobbying, adverticing and most importantly for all the Hollywood raised kids, hype!
Actually, competative companies agreeing on holding prices high is illegal.
He's right. If you get sued by Metallica for downloading their music, the best way to get out of it is to go out and buy their CD. Who cares if it goes against a 'Metallica ban', you just got yourself out of a law suit. Don't you wish you could get out of every law suit for $16.95?
Makaer
Actually, the reason that Ender was the the right guy for the job was because he was empathetic. He had the ability to get to know someone, including his enemy, so well that he could see through there eyes and see why they did the things they did. At this point he could understand exactly why they were doing the things they did, but at the same time, he knew them so well he knew how to defeat him.
That is also why he made a good leader, because he could use those under him to there fullest potential.
These concepts came out more in Speaker for the Dead, but are still very visible from Ender's Game. He is smart. He is quick. But his biggest advantage is his ability to know and use people.
Their are lots of references to the Buggers trying to use there communication with Ender, hence the bad dreams during the end of the book. And the manipulation of the fantasy game hinted at as well (and the creation of Jane).
Makaer