Oh, don't get me wrong, I didn't mind that they sent it to me (although I actually am not all that fond of the local republicans...). I was just really surprised that they went through the lists in that much detail.
Actually the republican's took it one step further in my town. I'm registered as republican and of course I get a lot of mailings from the various republican candidates... but one thing that really got me was this: I vote at every possible opportunity I get, I vote in school board elections, bond issues, and every regular election even if it is off year. So one day I got a letter from the local Republican committee inviting me to their meetings with the line:
We noticed that you voted in a third off year election.
They really know everything... and they openly admitted it.
Why just Nader? Not only is Nader not the only third party candidate, but he's not even part of the largest and most recognized third party.
I'm afraid its Buchanan that really got the shaft on this one, because if any of the third party candidates had a right to be there it is the reform candidate, especially considering the fact that they recieved millions in matching funds from the government in the first place.
The PR firm that wrote the speech for him must suck... if they honestly wanted people to believe the Fanning was speaking his mind they would not have put such gems as:
I for one am happy that they released a linux version... I was getting very tired of using gaim, for the simple reason that gaim is quite possibly the most unfortunatly named piece of software that I've ever encountered.
Well... also you can't ssh in as root (or at least it should be set to that).
Okay, for example if you have a service running like a web server or an ftp server, they probably won't be running as root (at least they shouldn't be). There might be a bug in one of those services that allows you to execute commands on the machine (this is generally what happens in the buffer overflow exploits you hear about all the time). So now the attacker can most likely get himself access to your machine with whatever privlages the service that was comprimised had, not root.
Bastille ended up chmod'ing a bunch of executables so only root could use them. This ended up breaking numerous things, including the Helix updater. I couldn't even run ifconfig as a normal user after running Bastille. At least it generates pretty thorough logs, so I was able to undo the "damage".
This is all part of network security though. The purpose of doing this kind of "damage" isn't just protecting you from local users. The idea is that if an outsider cracker manages to compromise a user account (which is much easier than getting root directly) you want to prevent them from then using internal exploits to gain root.
This guy is pretty clever. What better way to get exposure to the hardcore internet users than to get himself mentioned on slashdot... and he didn't even have to run around on gas powered shoes or anything.
But that just reinforces the point... 50k to 60k a year was a minimum, so.. if you have to pay him twice minimum wage to keep now you've basically had the robot pay for itself in 2 or 3 years instead of 5.
You're not replacing each cook with an operator, you're replacing 4 or more cooks and possibly their manager with maybe one operator.
To an extent I agree with you that this is a marketing gimic (which they admit themselves). But with the job market conditions right (ie when you have to pay the cooks considerably more than minimum wage to keep them) these robots do become viable, and I'm sure you will see something like them being used in the near future.
As one of the other posters to this thread mentioned, Flipper was mentioned on NPR a day or two ago. What I remember from the broadcast however was that the arm was originally an arm used by IBM in computer fabrication that was lent (or sold cheaply) for the purpose of building a demo. So basically you were absolutely correct on all points, except I think you may be wrong on labor costs.
The other thing they mentioned in that broadcast was that the original arm sold for something like 150K. Now, I know you can buy these things used and I know that you can buy smaller arms for about 50K (I've worked in a robotics labs). So say if there was a reasonable demand for these things the price would about an even 100K. Now these things can do the work of two people (according to the article) over sixteen hours... so really 4 people since most people work 8 hour shifts. So thats a salary savings of about 50k-60k a year. Now I don't know how much maintenance on these things cost, and I'm sure they'ld have to pay someone quite a bit to program them (although the programmer would probably service many of these things), but if it lasts for 5 or 10 years, even with maintenance costs you've still saved quite a bit of money.
The funniest incident I've ever encountered with the guiness widget was when one of my friends, who had no idea what was supposed to be in the bottom of the can, picked up an empty was very preturbed to find that there was something rattling in it. So he went to the kitchen to get a knife and cut the thing open. He then exclaimed, "MY GOD, THERE's A PING PONG BALL IN IT," and then proceded to run up the stairs to show everyone the ping ball he found in his beer can. When he came back he managed to get well into his plan to sue Guiness for getting a can with a foreign object it in it, before I could tell him.
Thats odd, I've got a pair of 486's here, they both boot on every try. Yes, when we turned them on they both said Jan 4, 1980, but then we manually reset the clocks using the data command and it seems to hold every time we reboot them. Hmph, must be a different bios.
(because it automatically assumes EVERYONE is a moron).
Sort of like a lot of the new installation programs for the comercially popular linux distributions. Yeah, yeah, they still allow you a higher degree of control... but if you notice, the direction they are going in is to automate as much as possible. Hmm, I wonder why? Maybe its because thats what normal consumers want? Besides, neither you nor I might be the normal consumer, but I'm sure we could both still benefit from better (well... anythings better than the almost non-existant) hardware detection.
NOTHING should ever descend to the dumbass level. EVER. When it does you begin sacrificing quality to serve the idiots, who then continue to complain "It's too hard! Make it easier!" simply because they don't want to learn. MAKE THEM LEARN.
This doesn't make any sense, of course things should be made as easy as possible. First of all, this is what consumers want. You aren't going to be competative if you don't listen to your customers. And if you haven't noticed this is exactly the direction many linux distributions are going. And your statement that you should "MAKE THEM LEARN" also doesn't make any sense. Computers are supposed to make life easier for people, they don't need or want to sit down and learn a large set of arcane commands and formats for 50 different configuration files (well.. I like to do that, but thats just me), they just want to sit down and get something useful done.
It might not have dawned on you, but ONE (I'm not saying its the only) major reasons why windows is dominant today, is that its relatively easy to use, even for someone who has never touched a computer before (well... macs are even more like that, but they lost for other reasons).
What I will agree with you on, is that it is nice to have the abillity to get down and dirty with the operating system and bypass all of the dumbed down controls... maybe with a little (well... a lot) more work kde or gnome will give us just that.
Also, Microsoft, since they have "monopoly" power, should be forced to stand behind their product. They probably the only company who's product does critical jobs, yet they don't stand behind it (they have a clause stating essentially NO WARRANTY, and you have to pay extra for tech support). The ENTIRE Linux community stands behind it.
Okay, this is just wrong. If you take a look at Part 11 of the GPL its pretty clear that there is, I quote, "NO WARRANTY".
The linux community might be a little more helpful when it comes to fixing bugs than microsoft, but when it comes to the court room they are not any more accountable than microsoft.
I actually have two schemes. The first is just to come up with a password that forms some sort of shape... then I just type the shape. (Yes, yes a lot of people do this). Although I find that this is most useful for telephone based passwords, its easier to type shapes when pecking IMHO.
Anyways, the other scheme that I use is that I come up with a fixed 4 character string of random symbols and numbers (like 1!.] or something like that) and then for each of my accounts I assign a four letter word (pick your favorite!). Then for the password I reverse the word and interleave it with the random string, so if you picked the word "this" for a particular account the password would be '1s!i.h]t'. So I remember one random string and then I just have a bunch of four letter words to associate with each account.
What exactly would you expect from someone after they are sent these kind of questions. I mean, there wasn't even an attempt to sound diplomatic in them. Almost every single one (even the joke one kind of fits this) was of the format: "You did wrong. You are prick. How do you respond?" Frankly I'm surprised he even answered.
And to make things even worse the entire interview is posted as JP DOESN'T REALLY ANSWER. I'd say he addressed the vast majority of the issues brought up in the questions, and he did it in a way that allowed him to ignore the thinly vailed (or openly shouted) insults that were thrown at him.
And for those who weren't satisfied with his answers, what did you expect? Him to say: "Yeah, well I've been jerk. Everything I did was wrong and I'm sorry." Oh please. He basically defended himself and gave us some insight into his side of the story. You really couldn't ask for much more than that (well except for maybe a slightly better layout).
Anyways, don't get me wrong, from everything I've read about the guy it seems like he REALLY is a complete prick. But thats pretty much irrelevant, since if you want to get reasonable and insightful answers to you're questions, you have to show at least a little bit of respect.
um... because the laws that microsoft may or may not have broken were originally designed (maybe not in the best way) to help the economy...
There have been monopolies broken up before. We got through it just fine.
You're correct in saying that we got through it. But the better question, and the question that is harder to answer, is are we better off because of it. I'm not completely sure of the answer to that. (If you were around back in the days when there was just ma bell, would you say that telephone service is better or worse now... my mother claims its worse, but I really don't know.)
You see my fear is this: they find that micrsoft did break the law and then go ahead and break up the company. Now, the vast majority of businesses that rely on Microsoft software will have an absolute nightmare getting support, upgrades or anything else from what used to be Micrsoft until everything has settled back down, which could take years. Lots of money and time is lost by everyone, even if they do switch over to a different platform (which I doubt they will anyway). Is anyone really better off after this... probably not.
But its all probably a moot point anyway, since the likelyhood that the government would actually break microsoft down into smaller companies is rather unlikely. Probably just lots of rebates to users and what not.
Well, since you were wondering, I read it and here's a reply:
I think the mouse post is actually pretty interesting although it might be more relevant if it wasn't just research and was actually going to be produced sometime soon....I'd definitly be interested.
Definately agree that it was an interesting post, however I don't think something needs to be near production to be relevant. I mean for one thing its always nice to see whats out on the horizen. For another, I think the question sparked some useful debate and user interface issues, or at least it got me thinking about it.
A few weeks ago there was an article about these one man, wearable jet packs (or something like that). I mean obviously those things are no where near production, but it was still kinda cool to read about them.
I'd also have to agree that it's gotten to the point where there's to many stories....I used to actually go to Slashdot and at least read through each abstract but as of last I just go to my "daily page" that gets updated with the headlines once an hour and only come to/. if one of those looks interesting.
I disagree, I think its a good thing to have a decently large number of stories published here. Even if you aren't interested in every single one of them, there's nothing wrong with skipping over ones that don't interest you, maybe you could even . (Well, I'll give a little bit on the Guide to Geek Love or whatever the hell that was... that did seem like a bit much).
In part I'm posting for a totally different reason......I've been wondering how thoroughly these threads are read once the they're more than a few hours old and there's more than 75 posts. I'm guessing a HUGE majority of reader just leave their threshold at 3 or 4 and just read the few posts that make it that high.
I would think that these things are pretty carefully read up to the first page or so of replies... I mean once it reaches 500 or so comments, then people probably just ignore the later ones.
And on a final, slightly off topic note (but related to your comment), I keep my threshold at -1. Frankly I'd rather make my own decisions as to what are good remarks and what aren't.
the ironic part of this device, and the test page for it, is the total and absolute useless clutter they showin the toolbar of MS WORD. how many functions does a damned word processor need
Oh come on, they showed a lot of the buttons at once just to demonstrate their new little toy. Obviously very few people would actually need that many functions, however its nice to have the option to put whatever you want on that toolbar. The last time I checked you could customize the bar to contain as much or as little as you want.
And yes, it is useful to have a word processor that can do a lot of functions. Maybe you don't have a use for that many, but I'm sure there are are other people out there who do.
and how many of them can readily recognized by a 8x8 pixel icon?! i don't understand 1/5 of the icons i see wAhen i use MS WORD. this is the reason we have pull down menus. they're a good thing. you don't need
Its all a matter of how frequently you are using certain tools. Maybe there are people who can and do use all of those little icons. Again, its nice to have the choice.
The point is that, I don't see how you can claim that microsoft created a problem by including all of these features. I mean you can turn them off if you want. Besides, every other piece of software from word perfect to netscape pretty much uses the same style of toolbar.
On the other hand, I do agree that this does seem a little pointless for what would probably be a 200 dollar piece of equipment. Plus I have my own gripes about the usefulness of the example they showed... but those were covered in another post, so never mind with them now.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, don't get me wrong, I didn't mind that they sent it to me (although I actually am not all that fond of the local republicans...). I was just really surprised that they went through the lists in that much detail.
Actually the republican's took it one step further in my town. I'm registered as republican and of course I get a lot of mailings from the various republican candidates... but one thing that really got me was this: I vote at every possible opportunity I get, I vote in school board elections, bond issues, and every regular election even if it is off year. So one day I got a letter from the local Republican committee inviting me to their meetings with the line:
We noticed that you voted in a third off year election.
They really know everything... and they openly admitted it.
a moron
Why just Nader? Not only is Nader not the only third party candidate, but he's not even part of the largest and most recognized third party. I'm afraid its Buchanan that really got the shaft on this one, because if any of the third party candidates had a right to be there it is the reform candidate, especially considering the fact that they recieved millions in matching funds from the government in the first place.
The PR firm that wrote the speech for him must suck... if they honestly wanted people to believe the Fanning was speaking his mind they would not have put such gems as:
This synergy of technologies created a platform..
I for one am happy that they released a linux version... I was getting very tired of using gaim, for the simple reason that gaim is quite possibly the most unfortunatly named piece of software that I've ever encountered.
geez... I'm probably just feeding a troll here but whatever.
hahah. Like nobody drank during Prohibition. Might I suggest some American history for you? (Why do you think prohibition was repealed?)
um... sarcasm anyone... what you're saying was the previous posters entire point...
shouldn't that have been first pooh-st... or better yet first time for pooh-st...
I'm sorry.
Well... also you can't ssh in as root (or at least it should be set to that).
Okay, for example if you have a service running like a web server or an ftp server, they probably won't be running as root (at least they shouldn't be). There might be a bug in one of those services that allows you to execute commands on the machine (this is generally what happens in the buffer overflow exploits you hear about all the time). So now the attacker can most likely get himself access to your machine with whatever privlages the service that was comprimised had, not root.
Bastille ended up chmod'ing a bunch of executables so only root could use them. This ended up breaking numerous things, including the Helix updater. I couldn't even run ifconfig as a normal user after running Bastille. At least it generates pretty thorough logs, so I was able to undo the "damage".
This is all part of network security though. The purpose of doing this kind of "damage" isn't just protecting you from local users. The idea is that if an outsider cracker manages to compromise a user account (which is much easier than getting root directly) you want to prevent them from then using internal exploits to gain root.
This guy is pretty clever. What better way to get exposure to the hardcore internet users than to get himself mentioned on slashdot... and he didn't even have to run around on gas powered shoes or anything.
But that just reinforces the point... 50k to 60k a year was a minimum, so.. if you have to pay him twice minimum wage to keep now you've basically had the robot pay for itself in 2 or 3 years instead of 5.
You're not replacing each cook with an operator, you're replacing 4 or more cooks and possibly their manager with maybe one operator.
To an extent I agree with you that this is a marketing gimic (which they admit themselves). But with the job market conditions right (ie when you have to pay the cooks considerably more than minimum wage to keep them) these robots do become viable, and I'm sure you will see something like them being used in the near future.
As one of the other posters to this thread mentioned, Flipper was mentioned on NPR a day or two ago. What I remember from the broadcast however was that the arm was originally an arm used by IBM in computer fabrication that was lent (or sold cheaply) for the purpose of building a demo. So basically you were absolutely correct on all points, except I think you may be wrong on labor costs.
The other thing they mentioned in that broadcast was that the original arm sold for something like 150K. Now, I know you can buy these things used and I know that you can buy smaller arms for about 50K (I've worked in a robotics labs). So say if there was a reasonable demand for these things the price would about an even 100K. Now these things can do the work of two people (according to the article) over sixteen hours... so really 4 people since most people work 8 hour shifts. So thats a salary savings of about 50k-60k a year. Now I don't know how much maintenance on these things cost, and I'm sure they'ld have to pay someone quite a bit to program them (although the programmer would probably service many of these things), but if it lasts for 5 or 10 years, even with maintenance costs you've still saved quite a bit of money.
amazon would probably sue them or whoever bought it for copyright infringement...
The funniest incident I've ever encountered with the guiness widget was when one of my friends, who had no idea what was supposed to be in the bottom of the can, picked up an empty was very preturbed to find that there was something rattling in it. So he went to the kitchen to get a knife and cut the thing open. He then exclaimed, "MY GOD, THERE's A PING PONG BALL IN IT," and then proceded to run up the stairs to show everyone the ping ball he found in his beer can. When he came back he managed to get well into his plan to sue Guiness for getting a can with a foreign object it in it, before I could tell him.
Thats odd, I've got a pair of 486's here, they both boot on every try. Yes, when we turned them on they both said Jan 4, 1980, but then we manually reset the clocks using the data command and it seems to hold every time we reboot them. Hmph, must be a different bios.
(because it automatically assumes EVERYONE is a moron).
Sort of like a lot of the new installation programs for the comercially popular linux distributions. Yeah, yeah, they still allow you a higher degree of control... but if you notice, the direction they are going in is to automate as much as possible. Hmm, I wonder why? Maybe its because thats what normal consumers want? Besides, neither you nor I might be the normal consumer, but I'm sure we could both still benefit from better (well... anythings better than the almost non-existant) hardware detection.
NOTHING should ever descend to the dumbass level. EVER. When it does you begin sacrificing quality to serve the idiots, who then continue to complain "It's too hard! Make it easier!" simply because they don't want to learn. MAKE THEM LEARN.
This doesn't make any sense, of course things should be made as easy as possible. First of all, this is what consumers want. You aren't going to be competative if you don't listen to your customers. And if you haven't noticed this is exactly the direction many linux distributions are going. And your statement that you should "MAKE THEM LEARN" also doesn't make any sense. Computers are supposed to make life easier for people, they don't need or want to sit down and learn a large set of arcane commands and formats for 50 different configuration files (well.. I like to do that, but thats just me), they just want to sit down and get something useful done.
It might not have dawned on you, but ONE (I'm not saying its the only) major reasons why windows is dominant today, is that its relatively easy to use, even for someone who has never touched a computer before (well... macs are even more like that, but they lost for other reasons).
What I will agree with you on, is that it is nice to have the abillity to get down and dirty with the operating system and bypass all of the dumbed down controls... maybe with a little (well... a lot) more work kde or gnome will give us just that.
Also, Microsoft, since they have "monopoly" power, should be forced to stand behind their product. They probably the only company who's product does critical jobs, yet they don't stand behind it (they have a clause stating essentially NO WARRANTY, and you have to pay extra for tech support). The ENTIRE Linux community stands behind it.
Okay, this is just wrong. If you take a look at Part 11 of the GPL its pretty clear that there is, I quote, "NO WARRANTY".
The linux community might be a little more helpful when it comes to fixing bugs than microsoft, but when it comes to the court room they are not any more accountable than microsoft.
I actually have two schemes. The first is just to come up with a password that forms some sort of shape... then I just type the shape. (Yes, yes a lot of people do this). Although I find that this is most useful for telephone based passwords, its easier to type shapes when pecking IMHO.
Anyways, the other scheme that I use is that I come up with a fixed 4 character string of random symbols and numbers (like 1!.] or something like that) and then for each of my accounts I assign a four letter word (pick your favorite!). Then for the password I reverse the word and interleave it with the random string, so if you picked the word "this" for a particular account the password would be '1s!i.h]t'. So I remember one random string and then I just have a bunch of four letter words to associate with each account.
What exactly would you expect from someone after they are sent these kind of questions. I mean, there wasn't even an attempt to sound diplomatic in them. Almost every single one (even the joke one kind of fits this) was of the format: "You did wrong. You are prick. How do you respond?" Frankly I'm surprised he even answered.
And to make things even worse the entire interview is posted as JP DOESN'T REALLY ANSWER. I'd say he addressed the vast majority of the issues brought up in the questions, and he did it in a way that allowed him to ignore the thinly vailed (or openly shouted) insults that were thrown at him.
And for those who weren't satisfied with his answers, what did you expect? Him to say: "Yeah, well I've been jerk. Everything I did was wrong and I'm sorry." Oh please. He basically defended himself and gave us some insight into his side of the story. You really couldn't ask for much more than that (well except for maybe a slightly better layout).
Anyways, don't get me wrong, from everything I've read about the guy it seems like he REALLY is a complete prick. But thats pretty much irrelevant, since if you want to get reasonable and insightful answers to you're questions, you have to show at least a little bit of respect.
I've had netscape take a minute to load even without any virus scanners...
Although three virus checkers sounds like a bit of over kill.
I actually kind of like html formatting... well at least I like having active links available... cutting and pasting can be a real pain in the ass.
Why does everyone bring the economy into this?
um... because the laws that microsoft may or may not have broken were originally designed (maybe not in the best way) to help the economy...
There have been monopolies broken up before. We got through it just fine.
You're correct in saying that we got through it. But the better question, and the question that is harder to answer, is are we better off because of it. I'm not completely sure of the answer to that. (If you were around back in the days when there was just ma bell, would you say that telephone service is better or worse now... my mother claims its worse, but I really don't know.)
You see my fear is this: they find that micrsoft did break the law and then go ahead and break up the company. Now, the vast majority of businesses that rely on Microsoft software will have an absolute nightmare getting support, upgrades or anything else from what used to be Micrsoft until everything has settled back down, which could take years. Lots of money and time is lost by everyone, even if they do switch over to a different platform (which I doubt they will anyway). Is anyone really better off after this... probably not.
But its all probably a moot point anyway, since the likelyhood that the government would actually break microsoft down into smaller companies is rather unlikely. Probably just lots of rebates to users and what not.
what are talking about? that would be the best movie ever!
I have too much karma
Well, since you were wondering, I read it and here's a reply:
I think the mouse post is actually pretty interesting although it might be more relevant if it wasn't just research and was actually going to be produced sometime soon....I'd definitly be interested.
Definately agree that it was an interesting post, however I don't think something needs to be near production to be relevant. I mean for one thing its always nice to see whats out on the horizen. For another, I think the question sparked some useful debate and user interface issues, or at least it got me thinking about it.
A few weeks ago there was an article about these one man, wearable jet packs (or something like that). I mean obviously those things are no where near production, but it was still kinda cool to read about them.
I'd also have to agree that it's gotten to the point where there's to many stories....I used to actually go to Slashdot and at least read through each abstract but as of last I just go to my "daily page" that gets updated with the headlines once an hour and only come to /. if one of those looks interesting.
I disagree, I think its a good thing to have a decently large number of stories published here. Even if you aren't interested in every single one of them, there's nothing wrong with skipping over ones that don't interest you, maybe you could even . (Well, I'll give a little bit on the Guide to Geek Love or whatever the hell that was... that did seem like a bit much).
In part I'm posting for a totally different reason......I've been wondering how thoroughly these threads are read once the they're more than a few hours old and there's more than 75 posts. I'm guessing a HUGE majority of reader just leave their threshold at 3 or 4 and just read the few posts that make it that high.
I would think that these things are pretty carefully read up to the first page or so of replies... I mean once it reaches 500 or so comments, then people probably just ignore the later ones.
And on a final, slightly off topic note (but related to your comment), I keep my threshold at -1. Frankly I'd rather make my own decisions as to what are good remarks and what aren't.
Oh come on, they showed a lot of the buttons at once just to demonstrate their new little toy. Obviously very few people would actually need that many functions, however its nice to have the option to put whatever you want on that toolbar. The last time I checked you could customize the bar to contain as much or as little as you want.
And yes, it is useful to have a word processor that can do a lot of functions. Maybe you don't have a use for that many, but I'm sure there are are other people out there who do.
and how many of them can readily recognized by a 8x8 pixel icon?! i don't understand 1/5 of the icons i see wAhen i use MS WORD. this is the reason we have pull down menus. they're a good thing. you don't need
Its all a matter of how frequently you are using certain tools. Maybe there are people who can and do use all of those little icons. Again, its nice to have the choice.
The point is that, I don't see how you can claim that microsoft created a problem by including all of these features. I mean you can turn them off if you want. Besides, every other piece of software from word perfect to netscape pretty much uses the same style of toolbar.
On the other hand, I do agree that this does seem a little pointless for what would probably be a 200 dollar piece of equipment. Plus I have my own gripes about the usefulness of the example they showed... but those were covered in another post, so never mind with them now.
Oh, and here's a story that the New York Times ran on it a last week.