Sadly, there are lot of people within the USA who think articles in the Onion are real.
I heard Carol Kolb, the Onion's head writer, comment on NPR that their office gets a LOT of snail mail from church groups in rural Texas. Not as a reaction to the Onion's offensiveness, mind you: The Texans sincerely believe the content.
Case in point, one of my favorite headlines: "Chinese Woman Has Septuplets: Has One Week to Choose". You get the idea, right? Some poor fictitious mom in China has to choose one child due to government policy, while the rest are thrown over a cliff. Really vicious and mean-spirited (so of course I adored it).
After that headline hit the newsstands and the Net, the Onion was beseiged by heartfelt prayers for the poor woman via the U.S. Postal Service. And pleas for contacts to find out what good Christians could do to help. No, I am not making this shit up.
Intellectual Property Division Legal Department Megagencorp Inc. 2525 Prometheus Way Cuperfremont, CA 94949-4949
Dear Mr. Meoward,
It has come to our attention that you and your spouse, Mrs. Kitty Meoward, are actively attempting, through crude yet effective (and somewhat noisy) means, to duplicate the technology of our patent #3,456,789, also known as "Marker NH54B3". We also understand that you and Mrs. Meoward use every available opportunity to increase the probability of subverting our intellectual property. We are not amused.
Should your efforts result in successful duplication, we will demand licensing royalties for the duration of the new prototype (heretofore described as "the Progeny"). We will demand a flat fee for sharing of this work under license; however, this fee will increase as the Progeny reaches an age of viable replication (a.k.a. "puberty"), during which it may actively seek out attempts at willful replication in the backseats of cars.
We therefore demand that you cease and desist from this activity until you can prove that sufficient safeguards are in place either 1) to guarantee this fee during the lifetime of the Progeny, or 2) to keep the Progeny from ever existing (please submit all receipts to this department).
I just modded up your original comment, because it is so very true. It's not that kids these days are not as smart or as educated as their forebears. They're simply not as curious. Few if any bother to ask how things work, or why. Instead, they've been trained to be Good Little Consumers(tm).
I'm only 37 myself, and I didn't see much of this in my generation either. There were certainly fewer geeks in my day than in the previous generation. Soon I'm afraid "geek" will refer to someone who only prefers non-mainstream culture, and shows no inclination to explore.
If you receive Business Week, read the cover story. MSFT is experiencing a brain drain (Kai-Fu Lee being but one example) due to its stifling bureaucracy.
While software development has become a fairly mature industry, its near-instantaneous economies of scale demand that any organization be fast enough to tackle the Next Big Thing. This is why very large software companies are doomed to lose at least a few battles, and why there will always be room in the marketplace for start-ups.. as well as for refugees from the mothership to staff them.
IBM couldn't be all things to all people, Oracle won't be (no matter who they acquire), and now we're finding that Microsoft is tripping over itself.
Large organizations have inertia. Is this really news?
The storyline is a bit dated of course due to its Cold War release date.
The aftermath, however, defies dating. It still holds.
If you'd like to explore an alternative history, add the book War Day by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka to your reading list as well. It offers a realistic and frightening view of what a limited nuclear attack on the US would have done circa 1988.
It worked for New Orlean's first NBA basketball team.
(Kinda wished the team changed its name after the move though. Who in their right mind would name a team based in Salt Lake City the "Utah Jazz" ? How many famous Mormon saxophone players do you know? )
Thank you for pointing this out. I was wondering if I was the only person in the tech sector who thought the "video iPod" was a mediocre idea at best.
It amazes me when pundits claim that the next step from an audio player is video. I'm convinced the prognosticators are personal injury lawyers by profession. They're just waiting to sue Apple (or Creative, or Microsoft, or a cell phone manufacturer) once somebody hurts themselves by using the Next Logical Step. And the plaintiffs will have hurt themselves with illogical steps, by walking into walls...
Damn. K&C is a great book, and I was hoping someone would try their hand at "The Escapist", the fictional 1930s comic book described in it.
Now some hack has used the name for cyberpunk, a genre that's clearly showing its stretch marks. And is showing them much earlier than, say, 1930s comic books.
So if someone in the Army is walking in a street, its ok to shoot him because he/she is a valid military target?
Of course.
The kicker is "valid military target". Army personnel "walking in a street" of a country that they are currently invading, for example, and who have not surrendered in any way, are perfectly legitimate targets for the defenders. No body of international law would convict the shooter of war crimes in that case.
Sorry if that's not the answer you wanted, but war has a tendency to suck that way.
Y'know, I was waiting for someone to mention this finally.
The "Red Box" was real, at least on OpenSTEP for x86. I believe it was WWDC 2000 when Apple engineers (Avi Tevanian himself?) showed Quake running on OpenSTEP.
Granted, Windows has changed considerably since then. But a built-in virtualization environment for other Intel-based OSes would shake up the market drastically.
Sadly, pissing of MSFT is not a viable option for the AAPL business plan. But if I needed Windows, and could get Red Box, I know what I'd buy in 2006.
Apple has the rights to the PowerPC architecture, including (I assume) Altivec and the RTL. Intel has fabs. Fab, meet RTL; RTL, meet fab. Now go to tape-out.
This is a gross (in fact, really disgusting) over-simplification, but there are no technical hurdles here. This will take time, but nowhere near 3-4 years.
And Intel has every reason to lunge after the PowerPC biz, with Itanium being a mega-flop (all puns intended).
Good point. One WB cartoon I haven't seen in decades is arguably the funniest. Can't find it anywhere:
In one (very recursive) scene, we find ourselves inside a movie theater, with a carefully illustrated scene of Bogart and Bacall playing on the screen. The "movie", of course, is the weird take of Jones, Freleng, et al. on live action: for example, Bogie casually tosses a flame-thrower to Bacall, instead of a Zippo, when she asks for a light.
At one point, something explodes in Bogie's face (hey, WB cartoon, gotta have at least one explosion). With his soot-covered face, "Bogie" suddenly does an impersonation of Rochester, Jack Benny's long-suffering man-servant.
Now, we can argue back and forth about the racism involved, but the sad fact is that it was a very funny short that fell well within even the most progressive norms of its day. (I honestly don't think any kids today would even get the Rochester joke -- if yours can, dear reader, you have some darn erudite children, I must say.)
Now, if this cartoon was produced today, it would be deemed offensive, and rightfully so. But shouldn't we be allowed to see these older shorts.. while not removing them from the context of their times?
The RHAT board of directors could easily adopt a policy that states that any attempt to buy X% of the shares (for significant values of X) must be approved by the board. (I've worked in companies where X = 16, and this prevented hostile takeovers during the Wild West atmosphere of the dot-com era.)
Or issue preferred stock with restrictive covenants.
Or take on a dog-choking amount of debt that would make the MSFT takeover a Pyrrhic victory at best.
If you can keep your shareholders in line, you can keep the bullies at bay. Michael Dell, who just plunked down $99M of his own cash for RHAT shares, knows this too.
Certain once-large organizations have shed a lot of (and will soon shed all ) folks around here, and othersare threatening to do the same. Not surprising, since RTP has been so telecom-centric, and unlike Silicon Valley, concentrates its employment base in a handful of large companies (vs. gajillions of startups).
The upshot is that there are a lot of unemployed techies around here who need re-training. Enter TechEngage. The proposition is simple: if you're unemployed, you get to attend a certain number of classes for free (or close to it), and in return, you donate 40 hours of your time to the cause.
I really wish the public sector would wake up to this effort. Oh, sorry, that would be socialist. Can't have that. Unless of course you're an unemployed textile worker in the western part of NC, without even a high-school diploma. Then our state legislature bends over for you, even though you could never contribute as much to the tax base once employed (grumble)..
Not that I want your friend to become unemployed, but I've pretty much opted out as a customer of American mainstream broadcast media. Doing so is surprisingly easy these days.
There are still some decent content on U.S. TV (the Simpsons, almost anything on Turner Classic Movies), but 90% of it is crap that I easily ignore. We're cable customers, but we can barely justify the expense, other than the broadband access.
Public and internet radio fill the music and news requirements in our house. And there's the Beeb..
If Big Broadcast Media choked to death on its own vomit, we might not even notice it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, there are lot of people within the USA who think articles in the Onion are real.
I heard Carol Kolb, the Onion's head writer, comment on NPR that their office gets a LOT of snail mail from church groups in rural Texas. Not as a reaction to the Onion's offensiveness, mind you: The Texans sincerely believe the content.
Case in point, one of my favorite headlines: "Chinese Woman Has Septuplets: Has One Week to Choose". You get the idea, right? Some poor fictitious mom in China has to choose one child due to government policy, while the rest are thrown over a cliff. Really vicious and mean-spirited (so of course I adored it).
After that headline hit the newsstands and the Net, the Onion was beseiged by heartfelt prayers for the poor woman via the U.S. Postal Service. And pleas for contacts to find out what good Christians could do to help. No, I am not making this shit up.
And it keeps happening. Again and again.
Have you ever been to West Virginia?
You mean the state with the motto "Thank God for Mississippi" ?
I don't give two shits for Galloway, but let's be fair: the man made Norm look like a complete and utter fool.
Someday our Congresscritters are going to understand that:
So pardon me for thinking Norm isn't all that bright.
I just modded up your original comment, because it is so very true. It's not that kids these days are not as smart or as educated as their forebears. They're simply not as curious. Few if any bother to ask how things work, or why. Instead, they've been trained to be Good Little Consumers(tm).
I'm only 37 myself, and I didn't see much of this in my generation either. There were certainly fewer geeks in my day than in the previous generation. Soon I'm afraid "geek" will refer to someone who only prefers non-mainstream culture, and shows no inclination to explore.
If you receive Business Week, read the cover story. MSFT is experiencing a brain drain (Kai-Fu Lee being but one example) due to its stifling bureaucracy.
While software development has become a fairly mature industry, its near-instantaneous economies of scale demand that any organization be fast enough to tackle the Next Big Thing. This is why very large software companies are doomed to lose at least a few battles, and why there will always be room in the marketplace for start-ups.. as well as for refugees from the mothership to staff them.
IBM couldn't be all things to all people, Oracle won't be (no matter who they acquire), and now we're finding that Microsoft is tripping over itself.
Large organizations have inertia. Is this really news?
Amen re: Threads.
The storyline is a bit dated of course due to its Cold War release date.
The aftermath, however, defies dating. It still holds.
If you'd like to explore an alternative history, add the book War Day by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka to your reading list as well. It offers a realistic and frightening view of what a limited nuclear attack on the US would have done circa 1988.
(Kinda wished the team changed its name after the move though. Who in their right mind would name a team based in Salt Lake City the "Utah Jazz" ? How many famous Mormon saxophone players do you know? )
Thank you for pointing this out. I was wondering if I was the only person in the tech sector who thought the "video iPod" was a mediocre idea at best.
It amazes me when pundits claim that the next step from an audio player is video. I'm convinced the prognosticators are personal injury lawyers by profession. They're just waiting to sue Apple (or Creative, or Microsoft, or a cell phone manufacturer) once somebody hurts themselves by using the Next Logical Step. And the plaintiffs will have hurt themselves with illogical steps, by walking into walls...
Damn. K&C is a great book, and I was hoping someone would try their hand at "The Escapist", the fictional 1930s comic book described in it.
Now some hack has used the name for cyberpunk, a genre that's clearly showing its stretch marks. And is showing them much earlier than, say, 1930s comic books.
(Sigh.)
So if someone in the Army is walking in a street, its ok to shoot him because he/she is a valid military target?
Of course.
The kicker is "valid military target". Army personnel "walking in a street" of a country that they are currently invading, for example, and who have not surrendered in any way, are perfectly legitimate targets for the defenders. No body of international law would convict the shooter of war crimes in that case.
Sorry if that's not the answer you wanted, but war has a tendency to suck that way.
Y'know, I was waiting for someone to mention this finally.
The "Red Box" was real, at least on OpenSTEP for x86. I believe it was WWDC 2000 when Apple engineers (Avi Tevanian himself?) showed Quake running on OpenSTEP.
Granted, Windows has changed considerably since then. But a built-in virtualization environment for other Intel-based OSes would shake up the market drastically.
Sadly, pissing of MSFT is not a viable option for the AAPL business plan. But if I needed Windows, and could get Red Box, I know what I'd buy in 2006.
I call bullshit.
Apple has the rights to the PowerPC architecture, including (I assume) Altivec and the RTL. Intel has fabs. Fab, meet RTL; RTL, meet fab. Now go to tape-out.
This is a gross (in fact, really disgusting) over-simplification, but there are no technical hurdles here. This will take time, but nowhere near 3-4 years.
And Intel has every reason to lunge after the PowerPC biz, with Itanium being a mega-flop (all puns intended).
Relax, dude. All we need to do is find Kenny.
Good point. One WB cartoon I haven't seen in decades is arguably the funniest. Can't find it anywhere:
In one (very recursive) scene, we find ourselves inside a movie theater, with a carefully illustrated scene of Bogart and Bacall playing on the screen. The "movie", of course, is the weird take of Jones, Freleng, et al. on live action: for example, Bogie casually tosses a flame-thrower to Bacall, instead of a Zippo, when she asks for a light.
At one point, something explodes in Bogie's face (hey, WB cartoon, gotta have at least one explosion). With his soot-covered face, "Bogie" suddenly does an impersonation of Rochester, Jack Benny's long-suffering man-servant.
Now, we can argue back and forth about the racism involved, but the sad fact is that it was a very funny short that fell well within even the most progressive norms of its day. (I honestly don't think any kids today would even get the Rochester joke -- if yours can, dear reader, you have some darn erudite children, I must say.)
Now, if this cartoon was produced today, it would be deemed offensive, and rightfully so. But shouldn't we be allowed to see these older shorts.. while not removing them from the context of their times?
Not so fast.
The RHAT board of directors could easily adopt a policy that states that any attempt to buy X% of the shares (for significant values of X) must be approved by the board. (I've worked in companies where X = 16, and this prevented hostile takeovers during the Wild West atmosphere of the dot-com era.)
Or issue preferred stock with restrictive covenants.
Or take on a dog-choking amount of debt that would make the MSFT takeover a Pyrrhic victory at best.
If you can keep your shareholders in line, you can keep the bullies at bay. Michael Dell, who just plunked down $99M of his own cash for RHAT shares, knows this too.
Relax....
Certain once-large organizations have shed a lot of (and will soon shed all ) folks around here, and others are threatening to do the same. Not surprising, since RTP has been so telecom-centric, and unlike Silicon Valley, concentrates its employment base in a handful of large companies (vs. gajillions of startups).
The upshot is that there are a lot of unemployed techies around here who need re-training. Enter TechEngage. The proposition is simple: if you're unemployed, you get to attend a certain number of classes for free (or close to it), and in return, you donate 40 hours of your time to the cause.
I really wish the public sector would wake up to this effort. Oh, sorry, that would be socialist. Can't have that. Unless of course you're an unemployed textile worker in the western part of NC, without even a high-school diploma. Then our state legislature bends over for you, even though you could never contribute as much to the tax base once employed (grumble)..
Why did they call it "Attack of the Clowns"?
Yep, excellent source of revenue here in North Carolina too (where there are plenty of steeples).
Of course, that doesn't keep some idiots from using their phones during a service, because the reception is excellent...
Granted, the title I was hawking didn't help...
..because.. We Care A Lot. [ shows age, ducks ]
On the way to work today, I listened to Uncle Tupelo's cover of "I Wanna Destroy You". Coincidence?
Not that I want your friend to become unemployed, but I've pretty much opted out as a customer of American mainstream broadcast media. Doing so is surprisingly easy these days.
There are still some decent content on U.S. TV (the Simpsons, almost anything on Turner Classic Movies), but 90% of it is crap that I easily ignore. We're cable customers, but we can barely justify the expense, other than the broadband access.
Public and internet radio fill the music and news requirements in our house. And there's the Beeb..
If Big Broadcast Media choked to death on its own vomit, we might not even notice it.
"Then I applied the Service Pack.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, the Secret Word!
[insert lots of sirens and noisy things here]
Wake me up when we can submit questions to Jeff Tweedy.