Just as a note -- There were HTML tags in the last couple of posts I made. But for some reason, they're suddenly not being interpreted as such (as the lack of emphasis and paragraphs suggests). --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
So would you suggest hooking electrodes up to everyone and anyone who's brain emits activity that places them above or below a limited static line must be suffering from something and should immediately check themselves into the nearest ward so they can be regulated back to normality with introspective therapy sessions and drugs? It's the people who glorify their illnesses (or perceived illnesses, as I could hardly lay blame on someone who truly is suffering from a legitimate illness) that need to be dropped onto the hard asphalt of reality. But this too, I'm sure you'll perceive as a veiled attack on honestly sick people. Despite my very clear statement that I'm not talking about them here -- as I also noted in my original post. Maybe you're a bit paranoid? --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
No, according to my 'criteria' you'd be ill if you were 'suffering' from depression and the like to a degree at which you were at risk of suicide. Two very different things. Just because someone is ecstatic one moment and 'down in the dumps' the next doesn't mean they're moments away from pulling out the keys to the car and a garden hose. People seem to glorify sickness too much these days. If you stub your toe, you have to write twenty pages of poetry about how it made you feel and publish a heart-breaking book compelling others to understand your plight of low self-esteem. If anything seems unhealthy, it's this extreme cathartic clinging to a label by people who think "hey, I fit that description -- I must be suffering from xyz disorder, too!" Where I am drawing the line is saying "your mood swings are drastic so you must be suicidal". If someone is eager and excited about things often, they suffer delusions of grandure. If they are pessimistic and foul-mouthed about most things, they're 'depressed'. Honestly, save such diangoses for people who are truly sick and need help. Most programmers and geeks who may suffer from such a manic state are nowhere near a true mental health concern. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
note: I'm not a diagnosed anything. Unless sarcasm counts as a mental illness (in which case, bring the straight jacket immediately!). But I'm not a dull pencil pusher eager to retire so he can sit in a rocking chair, either. I'm just a 22-year-old techie from the Silicon Valley with friends who are probably more or less aptly pegged in several different 'psychological categories' that they may or may not have come to accept -- but which I fiercely resent on their behalf.
----- I'm not going to single handedly brush the entire board of mental problems off the table with any ignorant statement suggesting that anyone with a mental problem is a pansy who needs to get a grip and grow up. I mention this because there are people who do say this. A few years ago when I was still a teenager and oblivious to the complications of love, work, depression, loss and regret that people in the real world endure, I would have quite possibly asserted that very opinion.
There are genuine people in the world with tangible illnesses. People who cannot live with themselves or in a society because of various reasons which lead them to become incredibly reclusive and withdrawn (as in, building a compound on my land and hiding from the black helicopters and United Nations troops who are trying to subvert American government kind of withdrawn), serial killers, mass murderers, wife beaters or even to commit suicide.
It seems the goal of psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose in every human being some horrid mental illness or individual defect which sets them apart from the sedated, unaffected, diluted norm of society. God forbid you be unique. There is no consideration for the brilliant artists, writers, musicians, architects, poets, film producers and others for whom such 'defects' give them an edge to life and an illuminated view of so much which the blind cattle who succumb to daily life submitting to the whims of corporate dollars, managerial demands and dull suburbia are oblivious to.
Unless you are affected to such a degree as to waver on the edge of being a sociopath capable and willing to kill (or physically harm) others, then you (again, in my opinion) suffer from no mental defect or chemical imbalance. Sure, chemistry plays an important roll in defining our propensity toward certain behavior. But that chemical composition and the propensity toward certain behavior is exactly what sets us apart from one another. To sedate by therapy, counseling or medication, that unique individuality granted to us by whatever cosmic coincidence or effort is a gross and heart-breaking attack on our humanity.
Give me the lowest lows of depression and the highest highs of deluded ecstasy and the clouded judgment of a manic depressive mind in action over the cubicle confined nine-to-five inactive, emotionally sterile subservient work-a-day drone's mind any day.
Insanity, wrap your warm and arousing arms around me and keep away the cold, pallid tendrils of sanctioned normalcy. Let the insane create, innovate and explore and leave the sane to sit in their offices counting numbers and selling their soul so they can go home and feed the mouths of their offspring for one more day. And insanity, for whatever humanity you posses, give their children the privilege to avoid normalcy so that they might enjoy life to its fullest. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
It was theft. If a dorm room with an ethernet port is $24/semester (what is that, something like twenty-four cents per day?) and you steal a drop to that for use in your dorm room, without paying that fee you are stealing. Unless of course, perhaps the connection is being barrowed from a neighbor who is paying for their connection and they've let you use it via an extension.
Honestly, OSU is an expensive college. Everyone I know who is or has attended it either is on a free ride thanks to mommy and daddy or because of a very nice scholarship. Of course, I know there are a lot of people who have busted their ass to afford tuition or earn the 'free ride' -- so I don't want to put everyone in the 'luck-dog' category. Still, Anyone attending there should be able to divy up the extra quarter per day if their internet connection is that much of a need for them. And last I checked, a 300 foot ethernet cable is going to run you a whole lot more than the $48 bucks per year you're saving by not having a network drop in your room.
I'd rather see a drop in every room and every possible point throughout the campus than see a school who's already bilking their students out of $15k or $25k per year trying to nickel and dime them to death on the vitally useful internet connection. But that's a moot point. I'm not saying that this isn't petty and the university is being a bunch of tight-asses about it, but a fee is a fee and they'd have to present a very impressive excuse for me to side with the students on this one.
Granted, there are a couple statements that seem a bit silly here:
Denman said the reason not all residence halls have ethernet is because OSU does not have enough money.
They sure seem to run a lot of advertisements state-wide on television, they have a well-catered -to football and basketball team and their tuition sure as hell isn't cheap -- maybe they need to drop someone's million-dollar salary by $100k and put in another 10 T1's?
"It's financial," he said. "There's not air conditioning in all the halls. There's not cable TV in all the halls.
When was the last time you used an air-conditioner or Bobcat Godthwait's Big Ass Show to research your term-paper? The university is saying that because they supposedly lack the funding for certain physical comforts and entertainment amenities, they can't afford certain things that are almost educational necessities. And the fact that they say "well, we don't have these two items -- so how could we be expected to have drops everywhere?" almost sounds like they're putting the value and need of an air-conditioner (it's warm there, but it ain't California -- come on folks) and a cable connection above internet and network access.
But then again, what the hell do I know. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
The conflict here...is between the Genome project and a private company...The two have been in talks to assimilate the data into a single database...
This was part of my point, though. First, I don't believe that you can patent the database. Copyright it, perhaps -- but not patent it (you could patent the process by which the information for the database was gathered, perhaps). Further, Celera could certainly copyright their database. The Genome Project could copyright theirs. They could both copyright the compilation of data.
You would end up with three databases and three seperate copyrights. Each owning a copyright to their own data and a third joint-copyright of the joined data. We see this all the time elsewhere.
I think they are hung-up on the fact that this was such an incredibly massive undertaking and to do it again would break almost anyone's bank account. So copyrighting the data will still give a large amount of wealth and power to whoever owns it. (A lab at OHSU wants to look at information that may help them enhance their treatment of heart disease? Great, fork over the bucks to access our database(s).)
I can understand the conflict if a large portion of Celera's data was directly attributed to the Genome Project's work itself and was not data Celera obtained by its own work (or under a co-operative contract between themselves and those running the Genome Project). The article itself did not seem to contain any specific information with regard to exactly who acquired what part of the data and how, not to mention what any original agreement may have been. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
I was of the understanding that the human genome project was funded and overseen by the United States Department of Energy? Doesn't this more or less nullify patenting of that information?
How can you patent the mapping of the human genome? That's like patenting the mapping of the North American continent. Perhaps you can copyright a specific map that you've designed and drawn of the continent, but patent it?
I can understand patenting a specific process they may have used, which may be unique, to uncover and map the human genomes, but not the map itself. If they copyrighted the map, though, I would understand. That would also leave it open to other people and organizations to produce their own maps -- just like countless people have produced and released maps of North America. None of them are breaking any patent or copyright law by doing so.
I do not see any right given here beyond copyrighting this information. And doing so would not prevent anyone in the world from creating new technologies and treatments with this information. If they used this information, they would need to pay for it -- just like I would have to pay for acopy of Rand Mcnally's Road Atlas if I wanted to plan a trip across the country. McNally neither owns the country or the right to make maps of the country. But they do own a copyright on the individual map I am using to make my trip.
I would think that anyone who wants to make their own map of the human genome would be welcome to. They could then copyright or GPL their map -- or whatever else they wish to do with it.
I admit that this project brings amazing information and possibilities within our grasp, but we all must also admit that this was no trivial thing. This is a massive project which has taken massive funding and hundreds of man-years (minimally) to accomplish. If this was a private endeavor, it should be that private orgnaization's right to distribute and limit the information however they wish. If, however, the project was largely a public/government undertaking (as has always been my understanding) then this information needs to be freely available without restriction. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Pardon me, as I will extrapolate this into a broader argument . ..
I disagree with the last statement that this is erupting under our noses. This has already erupted and has long since been put to bed. As much as we like to think that information and intellectual property in and of itself should be granted, to some degree, to the public (humanity itself), the very obvious reality is that information and any intellectual effect which can be profited from, can be.
In addition, the construct of our political and legal system seems to prefer the rights of those who would make commercial use and economic gain by means of exploiting information and intellectual creations over those who would wish to make that information more or less available to all without restriction.
This may not be our law or the way we see ourselves, but it is what we've seen practiced over the last few decades. As we know, precedence often supersedes word-for-word legal decrees.
Perhaps I'm just a bit too cynical. I have been the 'victim' of plagiarism and copyright infringement and acknowledge the right of the creators to distribute and limit their 'product' as they see fit, but I also am slightly (and unrealistically) compelled to side with the utopian dream of limitless free information for everyone. I say this not as some punk who wants to rip every CD on the face of the earth to build his MP3 collection (I actually OWN a CD copy of every MP3 I have), but as someone who believes that information should never-the-less not be limited by and for those who can afford it. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Re:Now, that's a stupid law.
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Actually, that would be pretty uninforceable.
Exactly. You understood my point! --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Bend Over And Prepare To Recieve Justice
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From my state (Oregon): It is against the law for animals to have sex in the city limits.
It is illegal to whistle underwater
It is illegal to whisper "dirty" things in your lover's ear during sex.
Ice cream may not be eaten on Sundays.
Hm. I do not see It is illegal to defy the laws of Newtonian physics in here. Someone better get off their donut-fattened legislative ass and rectify that!
While such things are humorous and almost never enforced, you cannot help but feel a little queasy that such stupidity is not only legislated, but law. Orwell's future has been around through much of our past. If you truly think you're a free person in this country, just try using a kernal of corn as bait to fish or taking a bath without a full-length bathing suit on.
To hell with worrying about your rights to burn the American flag or to encrypt your email. In a lot of places, you don't even have the legal right to walk down the sidewalk and knock a snake's head off with a cane. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Every time some senator or economic group endorses the delay of Internet commerce taxes, the reasons are usually not because they dislike taxes or want a free and unique global-transaction system as we have now.
Instead, the reasons are almost unanimously to continue to entice and encourage more people to use the internet for purchases. Once they are satisfied that Internet purchases have become a way-of-life, as ingrained as handing a credit card over for every purchase at the local convenience store, the taxes will be ushered forth by a rush of oinking pigs, eager to pillage your pocket on every transaction.
Yes, there are various reasons for and against taxing Internet transactions, but I'm speaking only to the reasoning behind the current hype over not taxing. It's temporary -- and it is for the best interest of all governments. Don't be lulled into believing that they really are interested in simple free-trade and uninhibited capitalism and entrepreneurship.
Proposed delays are in the best interest of those who wish taxing (even heavy taxing) of the Internet. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Who cares if IDG is polite? They are completely incorrect and very far out of place.
He is not using the "Dummies" name in any way for a handle, username, website or anything else. It was simply a proposal for a "Smart_Host for Dummies" book in reply to an earlier message. Both of the messages (the original and the 'offending' messages were on the Portland Linux Users Group *mailing list*. It appears on the website as do all messages to the list beucase they are archived.
Apparently, companies are now suing over the rights to use their names as thread-subjects? You know, I'd like to propose that someone publish "Dummies Guide To Being An Uptight Corporate Fascist Asshole", but I wouldn't want IDG to sue me
Patents and copyrights have been no more infringed than if I were to post a message to a mailing list about how I wish Pepsi would come out with their own brand of coffee.
Anyone who still isn't clear on this, do yourself a favor and visit the proposed response from Michael himself:
I hope this is taken somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Sorry if they deeply offend anyone. I'm sure some moderators may be eager to mark this down if they disagree with it, but I did mark it as 'possibly offensive' to protect your innocent and virgin minds.
---------------------- Optional WIH modules that can be loaded with the game include great extras, such as:
Monsters Abortion Doctors Homosexuals Non-Jesus-Loving-Sinners Women using birth-control Masturbaters
Missions Stakeout the local abortion clinic. Convert sinners at the local bus-mall. Subject society to your own 'family-values'. Land your own television evangelist career. Scam the flock and run away with their cash. Get freaky with the Altar Boy. Enter the holy realm of Christ and be forgiving of your sins!
Requirements for Module Pack 64MB RAM 800MB Free Disk Space 4x CDROM Windows95 (Requires plug & pray)
Notes This game was developed by experts in holyness and godliness Benny Hinn, Luis Palau and Dr. Laura Schlessinger. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
This was actually reported in the local news a couple days ago and then on the Drudge Report yesterday.
Apparently, it is being developed with the help and encouragement of the Beaurau of Alchohol, Tobacco and Firearms as well as the LA DA Gil Garcetti. It is being tested in a couple dozen schools.
Mosaic-2000 is documented here, by it's creator and developer, 'parenting expert', Gavin De Becker.
According to Mosaic-2000's website:
MOSAIC-2000 cannot label anyone as anything. People unfamiliar with the method may jump to the worry that principals will use it to unfairly label kids, but the objective process resists bias. MOSAIC-2000 is vastly more likely give a low rating in a situation to which people are over-reacting - than to give a high rating in a situation people are not concerned about.
School administrators already label kids. This will simply provide a tool with which they can harass them and bring them to the attention of the district and other professionals. Are they going to use this 'tool' on the beer-drinking all-star quarterback who date-raped his last girlfriend and enjoys slamming the heads of freshmen into the wall? Will they use this on the home-coming-queen who is hiding bullemia and drinking to avoid her abusive parents and contemplating slitting her wrists? Probably not. But they may jump at the chance to use it on the kids who keep to themselves and spend most of their time reading and expressing themselves through their abrasive or depressing writing and 'odd' attire.
MOSAIC-2000 seeks to identify those students most in need of the interventions and resources that are available, and in the school setting, all appropriate intervention is good. In other words, if you happen to fit their specific profile of what a 'troubled student' is and this hunk of code shows that you meet the outline of a possible psycho-killer, you will probably be forced to undergo counseling, therapy, possibly even be weeded out to attend a 'special' school.
How many of us have been the victims of busy-body teachers? I certainly have. When I was in grade-school, I constantly had bruises on me because I also happened to be very active in wrestling and Judo. And because I spent most of my after-school time in sports, I had to bury myself in reading and writing at school -- just to keep up. This appeared to a certain teacher as a loner-child who keeps to himself and is abused at home. This teacher asked me about this and although I gave her my honest explanation, I was speaking with the school counselor by the end of the day, and by evening, there were case-workers from Child Protective Services checking on my parents.
Needless to say, my parents were shocked. So was I. It didn't matter that I was a completely normal child who's bruises were from sports and who was deeply involved in his school-work. What mattered was the self-asserted perception of a busy-body who should have spent more time teaching than trying to play a fairy-god-mother. Is it really much of a stretch to say that a computer would look at the same situation and make the same possibly conclusion?
We must also remember that regardless of what the computer says, the input is from humans and is interpreted and acted upon by humans. Is a teacher going to suddenly change their opinion of a student because a computer did not believe the evidence provided warrented a truly 'potentially violent child'?
A range of answers is far more likely to stimulate accuracy fairness, and completeness. For example, if asking about firearms, a Yes/No question could not stimulate as fair or complete an exploration as a range:
__No known possession of a firearm __Friends known to have ready access to a firearm __There are firearms in the home __There are firearms in a home frequented by the student __The student owns his own firearm __The student recently acquired a firearm
First of all, how in the hell are they going to know these things? I don't even know if my friends or neighbors have firearms. And if I have recently acquired a firearm, am I going to be walking up to any authority and tell them about it?
It seems that any questions that could possibly render any (even incorrect) answer as to whether a subject is a risk or not would require a certain amount of investigation to aptly answer. How will these answers be obtained? Will it require students to fill out a long questionaire? If so, how can anyone be sure the student was truthful? If not, then will schools begin employing detectives to start checking-up on children by interviewing their friends, family, teachers, co-workers, fellow-students, churchr-members or neighbors? By what right would the school be investigating anyone for anything? Even the police must prove a necessary need to do these things. A policeman can not simply go around interrogating everyone who "looks like a troublemaker" and "may, someday, in the next ten or twelve years, become violent".
For the first time, schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels will have access to technology and methods that have long been used for many of our nation's highest stakes assessments.
The same technology used to weed-out international terrorists at airports based on one's ethnicity and accent will now help weed-out seven-year-old little Johnny so that he won't blow everyone's head off by the time he is in highschool.
Please note: hazing, intimidating, harassing, kicking, punching, spitting-on, humiliating, torturing and otherwise generally abusing and making other weaker students lives hell is acceptable.
How many times do you hear a killer's neighbors, friends, co-workers and even family say "I never knew..."? This is precisely because only certain types of violent people have certain traits and histories. In fact, more people who have those same traits and histories are not violent than those who are. You can not look at a person and claim that they will destroy an entire city block by the way they dress, music they listen to, and their proximity to places and people with guns.
If this thing is widely accepted, I'll be surprised if it isn't soon used in the workplace. Of course, we know it already is to a degree, but soon we may be able to officially harass that really quiet guy who reads all those high-tech magazines down in accounting!
School administrators would use MOSAIC-2000 only in situations that reach a certain threshold (e.g., a student makes a threat, brings a weapon to school, teachers or students are concerned a student might act out violently).
Better teach little Jilly to watch her mouth. Next time she says stamps her feet on the ground in a fit and says "I hope you die!" because little Timmy took her favorite Pokeman card, she may be filed away in the school computer and considered a potential threat.
Does MOSAIC-2000 invade the privacy of students?: The information gathered for each evaluation is held at the school only, and is never communicated over the Internet. MOSAIC is a stand-alone system, secure at each school, with no central combining of cases. The system isn't a "Big Brother" approach. MOSAIC-2000 merely brings organization and expert opinion to a process every principal already has. So if something is not distributed over the Internet, it is not invading your privacy? Is this why we walk around giving our social security numbers, home phone number and bank account number to every person who asks?
I find it extremely offensive that someone would want to tag myself or my child as a risk because of computer profiling -- and build a database with their information, telling me it's for the better. What gaurantee is there that this information will never be incorporated into a database or ever released to anyone outside of the school district? Further, what right does my child's teacher or principal have to know anything about the child that isn't directly involved in the child's education?
I understand that safety is involved, but this is a wreckless answer to a problem that has been grossly exaggerated. Profiling, at best, will give a false sense of security and at worst, rob us of any dignity, privacy and freedom while we're still reading Curious George and learning addition.
MOSAIC systems have been in daily use for a decade. Society faces many types of high-stakes evaluations (threats to public officials, hazards to domestic violence victims, workplace violence cases, etc). MOSAIC systems are used by the United States Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve Board, the Central Intelligence Agency, Governors of eleven states, and many others.
Is there really anything that needs to be said right here? Supreme Court, Federal reserve Board, Governors, Central Intelligence Agency, K-12 . ..
In cases where students have been expelled as a result of safety concerns, when they are considered for re-enrollment, some schools may use MOSAIC-2000 to help evaluate if the risk has lessened.
Oh, can't you just smell the lawsuits the next time some kid mows-down his entire graduating class after being reinstated by his school administrators because of Mosaic-2000?
The cost for the final version of MOSAIC-2000 (due in February, 2000) will be determined by the M-2000 Advisory Board. It is likely to be a small monthly fee for each school.
Oh, great. Now the little rats will be coming to my door more often, trying to peddle candy and magazines.
The system operates on entirely standard and traditional hardware, including an IBM-PC compatible 486 computer. It uses very little disk space.
They're apparently not running it on Windows.
Concern that a student might act out violently can be triggered in any of several ways:
a student makes a threat; alarming writings are observed; a student brings a firearm to school; a student gets into trouble with police; teacher, counselor, psychologist, parent, or fellow student becomes concerned and makes a report
I'm not sure about the school you went to, but students made idle threats all the time at mine. It's a part of being an immature kid. As for bringing a firearm to school -- what moron requires a computer to tell them that the child is a risk? First, it is illegal to bring a firearm to school. If you need to rely on the computer program to tell you that posession of a firearm is a danger-sign, you need your face bashed in with a brick.
Alarming writing? What does one consider alarming? The greatest and most lauded writing in the world tends to be alarming, shocking and disturbing! Writing should be a method of release and creativity. And a lot of the most truly disturbing and brilliant pieces I have ever read were written by rather youthful authors.
Mosaic-2000 is not an all-seeing oracle. It is a peice of crap that should be left out of the school system. The answer to the problems of children is not to throw more technology at them and invade their inner-most thoughts and secrets.
The answer is to afford them a little more time, attention and considertion. If it requires mass-murder for us to come to their aid and hear them, we are a ruined society. When the only attention we provide kids with is the scrutinizing eye of accusation, we can only expect jaded, disinterested, paranoid children. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Yet one more cool thing to place on my To Read list. Yes, the same list that has been growing for the last three years. Honestly, I'll get around to them all as soon as I've caught up on all these tech manuals and have some time away from work!
Of course, if Neil would sign a permission slip for my employer to let me stay home from work for a couple days . ..
Of course, I suppose I could use all of my PTO one of these days and lock myself in a room with a stack of books. -- Man, I haven't even read that new Glickman book, either. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
I'm sure Google would choose the likes of Chilly Willy the penguin, of cartoon fame. Or perhaps the old penguin from the penguin and polar-bear duo of Arctic Circle fame (I haven't seen one of those restaurants in years. Mmm. And remember their Fry Sauce? Oh, now I'm hungry.).
I'm so damn tired of every company putting a 'portal' online. I just want a page that I can search for things with. I don't want the same re-hashed AP/Reuters newsfeed that every other website has. I don't want the stupid celebrity-chats, java-games, weather, maps, webmail, shopping venues or discount long-distance phone deals.
Give give me a damn field to enter my keywords in and a button to click.
Everyone wants to corner every part of the market. What happened to 'Do one thing and do it well'? I'm not so lazy that I can't type a new address to go to a seperate webpage. If I'm on a search page that is done well (Google) and I need to catch up on the day's news, I'll take the two seconds to type in another URL.
Marketing hacks and corporate clunkheads seem to think the average web-surfer wants to stay on one webpage forever and have everything they need on that one page. I find that as tacky as going to Castco and seeing the cars and home entertainment systems on sale. If you are buying a car or a stereo-system, go to a car-dealership or a stereo store -- where you can find quality items from people who specialize in them.
I'm not going to buy my car in the next aisle down from the canned-food and I'll not get my news from the same place people search for pr0n.
To be a successful online service, you do not need to spread yourself over everything. You do not need to plaster your site with a thousand banner-ads. You do not even need to register with a search engine. Just do what you do, like what you do, and do it well. People will notice it and appreciate it.
My website, for example, was just something I threw together while I was telecommuting and learning Perl. I figured I would take the site down within a few days once I had learned how to read and dissect the script. And here I am a few months later with a very successful auction site for a very specific group of people. No search engine, no Reuter's news, no banners or advertising, no costs to anyone. And I've never even registered the site on a single search engine. (That's what robots.txt is for anyway, duh!)
My point is not that my site is so special, but that you don't have to become a commercialized sell-out to do well and you do not have to offer every service under the sky. Find something you like and stick with it. Word-of-mouth turned Fight Club from a ho-hum box-office feature to a number-one hit. It can do the same for your site.
Best of all, if you really care about what you are doing, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Let CBS and Tide throw a million dollars at a web project that looks and behaves like every other portal in the world -- you can have something unique to offer for a few bucks.
Speaking of which, could you imagine a project manager with any corporation presenting a website project that can be maintained for $20 per month?
The previous reasons are also why you come to Slashdot for your tech news and gossip instead of finding it burried in the back of your local newspaper, written by some washed-up entertainment editor who's greatest technical accomplishment was booting up their iMac. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Personally, if Silicon Valley was wiped out by a natural disaster, I would think "Hey, that's a start..."
I suppose the personal devistation is a given though. The reason RAM is brought into the conversation is usually because the cost of lives and living is universal through any disaster. RAM, however, is not a common-denomenator. That is why it is something particularly distinct that can and should be pointed out while not detracting from the understanding of the massive loss of life this year.
If the World Trade Center was toasted, the deaths would be obvious and catastrophic, but you can bet your money-driven-ass that Wall Street, money and the entire economy would be brought into comment.
In journalism, the important thing is but why should the reader care? This meant that the story had to tug at the heart-strings of the reader. In turn, this usually meant death, pain, personal loss or other pains of humanity. Now, why should the reader care tends to mean how does this personally effect the reader or their bottom-line? --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
[clueless american impression] But how will it help RAM prices if we donate money to those who were devastated by the earthquakes? Maybe we should donate to the American corporations that use those countries for cheap labor to build their chips, instead? [end impression] --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Cheap RAM is what has kept the computer industry running for so long. High-priced RAM may help them recover the costs of the RAM production itself, but is it worth the loss elsewhere in the industry?
I built a dozen machines last year and bought an average of 128MB's of RAM for each machine. I had intended to buy a couple machines for my home network to run Linux and Solaris on this month, but there's no way in a Silicon hell that I'm dishing out $320 for the same RAM I could purchase for $165 in March.
Maybe I'm just being a greedy consumer, but the doubling of the cost of RAM is costing hard-drive vendors, case vendors, motherboard vendors, etc. I'll resort to a type-writer and carbon-copy sheets (can you even buy that stuff any more?) before I'll pay almost 50% of the cost of my computer for a stick of RAM.
A lot of junk comes out of Taiwan and (not to mention cameras, televisions, etc) -- yet the only massive increase in cost to the consumer is in RAM? This seems as suspicious as this past year when oil companies cried huge tears over one or two small refinery fires and squeezed every last cent they could out of the country by claiming that those few small fires nearly destroyed the bedrock of their industry.
I wonder when the politicians are going to lobby congress for RAM regulation like they do with everything else? I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Perhaps when the soccer-moms start whining because they can't afford little Timmy's braces because they had to spend the last thousand bucks to setup a new machine so mom and dad could ignore each other and hot-chat with recluses on IRC and AOL?
Of course, if I'd just built these computers a couple months ago, I'd be shrugging my shoulders and asking what the big deal is. I suppose it's all a matter of where one stands at the moment he or she complains. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
---------- Kick Ass Computer Game Requirements: 400mhz processor w/ 128MB RAM 300MB Hard Disk Space
The point of this being that a lot of people don't understand that a Compaq 5671 is a brand and not a chip or a clock-speed. They look at the requirements on the back of a cool new game and haven't a single clue as to whether their machine meets the requirements. What if instead of buying a Compaq 4563 with a SledgeHammer K4-800, you just bought a Compaq 786/800mhz? Or an IBM 786/800mhz? You still have the brand-name and ability evquivalent.
Should you (or a customer you have to deal with through technical support or otherwise) have to refer to a massive catalog everytime you simply want to know what chip is in the machine joe-blow is talking about? What if your friend had a Maxtor Killer HD 455? What the hell does that mean? That doesn't tell you how *big* the drive is.
There was a time when Cyrix was a big competitor along with AMD and Intel. And during that time, all three still used (I believe) the simple x86/mhz format for naming. It was simple. It was sensible. And it didn't make you feel like you were buying a fuzzy bunny for your two-year-old or a GI Joe doll for your nephew.
I know this is nit-picking, but while all of these companies are trying to make their machines sound friendlier by giving them cute or fuzzy names, they're confusing the new consumers who draw a blank when you ask them anything about the very machine they sit at ten hours a day. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
But at least you could tell the difference (math-co-processor / no co-processor). Without reading all the specs and white-sheets, how do you instinctlively know the difference between a PII and a K62?
To me, it's a bit like having to handle the metric system and the American system of measurement. It's useless and only clutters everything up. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
I miss the days when a 286 was a 286 and a 486 was a 486. Sure, you had different brands of 286's and 486's but they didn't clutter the scene with these stupid names.
I'm not going to buy a SledgeHammer or Itanium because they have some consumer-friendly name. My decision, like most others, will be based on whether it can handle MP3's without skipping and what kind of benchmarks it achieves (and no, I don't mean how many FPS it gives you when you're fragging in Quake3).
Of course, I suppose we have Andy Groves and Intel to thank for this rediculous trend back when they were scared-to-death that they would lose business, not to a better product, but to the fact that they could not patent a number. (Sorry Davey, we can't teach you to count to ten because Intel owns the number five.)
Now every company employs legions of brain-dead marketing types who spend an entire year to come up with something as brilliant as Itanium. I could have asked a class of first-grade children to suggest more interesting and appealing names than these.
Whoops... Look what time it is... I better get back to my E-work on my I-machine before my Net-boss rips me a new A-hole. (After all, we're now being surveilled by a fleet of Radio-Shack cameras). --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Slashdot Mirror
Just as a note -- There were HTML tags in the last couple of posts I made. But for some reason, they're suddenly not being interpreted as such (as the lack of emphasis and paragraphs suggests).
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
So would you suggest hooking electrodes up to everyone and anyone who's brain emits activity that places them above or below a limited static line must be suffering from something and should immediately check themselves into the nearest ward so they can be regulated back to normality with introspective therapy sessions and drugs? It's the people who glorify their illnesses (or perceived illnesses, as I could hardly lay blame on someone who truly is suffering from a legitimate illness) that need to be dropped onto the hard asphalt of reality. But this too, I'm sure you'll perceive as a veiled attack on honestly sick people. Despite my very clear statement that I'm not talking about them here -- as I also noted in my original post. Maybe you're a bit paranoid?
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
No, according to my 'criteria' you'd be ill if you were 'suffering' from depression and the like to a degree at which you were at risk of suicide. Two very different things. Just because someone is ecstatic one moment and 'down in the dumps' the next doesn't mean they're moments away from pulling out the keys to the car and a garden hose. People seem to glorify sickness too much these days. If you stub your toe, you have to write twenty pages of poetry about how it made you feel and publish a heart-breaking book compelling others to understand your plight of low self-esteem. If anything seems unhealthy, it's this extreme cathartic clinging to a label by people who think "hey, I fit that description -- I must be suffering from xyz disorder, too!" Where I am drawing the line is saying "your mood swings are drastic so you must be suicidal". If someone is eager and excited about things often, they suffer delusions of grandure. If they are pessimistic and foul-mouthed about most things, they're 'depressed'. Honestly, save such diangoses for people who are truly sick and need help. Most programmers and geeks who may suffer from such a manic state are nowhere near a true mental health concern.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
I'm not a diagnosed anything. Unless sarcasm counts as a mental illness (in which case, bring the straight jacket immediately!). But I'm not a dull pencil pusher eager to retire so he can sit in a rocking chair, either. I'm just a 22-year-old techie from the Silicon Valley with friends who are probably more or less aptly pegged in several different 'psychological categories' that they may or may not have come to accept -- but which I fiercely resent on their behalf.
-----
I'm not going to single handedly brush the entire board of mental problems off the table with any ignorant statement suggesting that anyone with a mental problem is a pansy who needs to get a grip and grow up. I mention this because there are people who do say this. A few years ago when I was still a teenager and oblivious to the complications of love, work, depression, loss and regret that people in the real world endure, I would have quite possibly asserted that very opinion.
There are genuine people in the world with tangible illnesses. People who cannot live with themselves or in a society because of various reasons which lead them to become incredibly reclusive and withdrawn (as in, building a compound on my land and hiding from the black helicopters and United Nations troops who are trying to subvert American government kind of withdrawn), serial killers, mass murderers, wife beaters or even to commit suicide.
It seems the goal of psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose in every human being some horrid mental illness or individual defect which sets them apart from the sedated, unaffected, diluted norm of society. God forbid you be unique. There is no consideration for the brilliant artists, writers, musicians, architects, poets, film producers and others for whom such 'defects' give them an edge to life and an illuminated view of so much which the blind cattle who succumb to daily life submitting to the whims of corporate dollars, managerial demands and dull suburbia are oblivious to.
Unless you are affected to such a degree as to waver on the edge of being a sociopath capable and willing to kill (or physically harm) others, then you (again, in my opinion) suffer from no mental defect or chemical imbalance. Sure, chemistry plays an important roll in defining our propensity toward certain behavior. But that chemical composition and the propensity toward certain behavior is exactly what sets us apart from one another. To sedate by therapy, counseling or medication, that unique individuality granted to us by whatever cosmic coincidence or effort is a gross and heart-breaking attack on our humanity.
Give me the lowest lows of depression and the highest highs of deluded ecstasy and the clouded judgment of a manic depressive mind in action over the cubicle confined nine-to-five inactive, emotionally sterile subservient work-a-day drone's mind any day.
Insanity, wrap your warm and arousing arms around me and keep away the cold, pallid tendrils of sanctioned normalcy. Let the insane create, innovate and explore and leave the sane to sit in their offices counting numbers and selling their soul so they can go home and feed the mouths of their offspring for one more day. And insanity, for whatever humanity you posses, give their children the privilege to avoid normalcy so that they might enjoy life to its fullest.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
I thought it was supposed to be an ironic play off the fact that some of us are not all that bright.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Honestly, OSU is an expensive college. Everyone I know who is or has attended it either is on a free ride thanks to mommy and daddy or because of a very nice scholarship. Of course, I know there are a lot of people who have busted their ass to afford tuition or earn the 'free ride' -- so I don't want to put everyone in the 'luck-dog' category. Still, Anyone attending there should be able to divy up the extra quarter per day if their internet connection is that much of a need for them. And last I checked, a 300 foot ethernet cable is going to run you a whole lot more than the $48 bucks per year you're saving by not having a network drop in your room.
I'd rather see a drop in every room and every possible point throughout the campus than see a school who's already bilking their students out of $15k or $25k per year trying to nickel and dime them to death on the vitally useful internet connection. But that's a moot point. I'm not saying that this isn't petty and the university is being a bunch of tight-asses about it, but a fee is a fee and they'd have to present a very impressive excuse for me to side with the students on this one.
Granted, there are a couple statements that seem a bit silly here:
Denman said the reason not all residence halls have ethernet is because OSU does not have enough money.
They sure seem to run a lot of advertisements state-wide on television, they have a well-catered -to football and basketball team and their tuition sure as hell isn't cheap -- maybe they need to drop someone's million-dollar salary by $100k and put in another 10 T1's?
"It's financial," he said. "There's not air conditioning in all the halls. There's not cable TV in all the halls.
When was the last time you used an air-conditioner or Bobcat Godthwait's Big Ass Show to research your term-paper? The university is saying that because they supposedly lack the funding for certain physical comforts and entertainment amenities, they can't afford certain things that are almost educational necessities. And the fact that they say "well, we don't have these two items -- so how could we be expected to have drops everywhere?" almost sounds like they're putting the value and need of an air-conditioner (it's warm there, but it ain't California -- come on folks) and a cable connection above internet and network access.
But then again, what the hell do I know.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
This was part of my point, though. First, I don't believe that you can patent the database. Copyright it, perhaps -- but not patent it (you could patent the process by which the information for the database was gathered, perhaps). Further, Celera could certainly copyright their database. The Genome Project could copyright theirs. They could both copyright the compilation of data.
You would end up with three databases and three seperate copyrights. Each owning a copyright to their own data and a third joint-copyright of the joined data. We see this all the time elsewhere.
I think they are hung-up on the fact that this was such an incredibly massive undertaking and to do it again would break almost anyone's bank account. So copyrighting the data will still give a large amount of wealth and power to whoever owns it. (A lab at OHSU wants to look at information that may help them enhance their treatment of heart disease? Great, fork over the bucks to access our database(s).)
I can understand the conflict if a large portion of Celera's data was directly attributed to the Genome Project's work itself and was not data Celera obtained by its own work (or under a co-operative contract between themselves and those running the Genome Project). The article itself did not seem to contain any specific information with regard to exactly who acquired what part of the data and how, not to mention what any original agreement may have been.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
How can you patent the mapping of the human genome? That's like patenting the mapping of the North American continent. Perhaps you can copyright a specific map that you've designed and drawn of the continent, but patent it?
I can understand patenting a specific process they may have used, which may be unique, to uncover and map the human genomes, but not the map itself. If they copyrighted the map, though, I would understand. That would also leave it open to other people and organizations to produce their own maps -- just like countless people have produced and released maps of North America. None of them are breaking any patent or copyright law by doing so.
I do not see any right given here beyond copyrighting this information. And doing so would not prevent anyone in the world from creating new technologies and treatments with this information. If they used this information, they would need to pay for it -- just like I would have to pay for acopy of Rand Mcnally's Road Atlas if I wanted to plan a trip across the country. McNally neither owns the country or the right to make maps of the country. But they do own a copyright on the individual map I am using to make my trip.
I would think that anyone who wants to make their own map of the human genome would be welcome to. They could then copyright or GPL their map -- or whatever else they wish to do with it.
I admit that this project brings amazing information and possibilities within our grasp, but we all must also admit that this was no trivial thing. This is a massive project which has taken massive funding and hundreds of man-years (minimally) to accomplish. If this was a private endeavor, it should be that private orgnaization's right to distribute and limit the information however they wish. If, however, the project was largely a public/government undertaking (as has always been my understanding) then this information needs to be freely available without restriction.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
I disagree with the last statement that this is erupting under our noses. This has already erupted and has long since been put to bed. As much as we like to think that information and intellectual property in and of itself should be granted, to some degree, to the public (humanity itself), the very obvious reality is that information and any intellectual effect which can be profited from, can be.
In addition, the construct of our political and legal system seems to prefer the rights of those who would make commercial use and economic gain by means of exploiting information and intellectual creations over those who would wish to make that information more or less available to all without restriction.
This may not be our law or the way we see ourselves, but it is what we've seen practiced over the last few decades. As we know, precedence often supersedes word-for-word legal decrees.
Perhaps I'm just a bit too cynical. I have been the 'victim' of plagiarism and copyright infringement and acknowledge the right of the creators to distribute and limit their 'product' as they see fit, but I also am slightly (and unrealistically) compelled to side with the utopian dream of limitless free information for everyone. I say this not as some punk who wants to rip every CD on the face of the earth to build his MP3 collection (I actually OWN a CD copy of every MP3 I have), but as someone who believes that information should never-the-less not be limited by and for those who can afford it.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Exactly. You understood my point!
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
It is against the law for animals to have sex in the city limits.
It is illegal to whistle underwater
It is illegal to whisper "dirty" things in your lover's ear during sex.
Ice cream may not be eaten on Sundays.
Hm. I do not see It is illegal to defy the laws of Newtonian physics in here. Someone better get off their donut-fattened legislative ass and rectify that!
While such things are humorous and almost never enforced, you cannot help but feel a little queasy that such stupidity is not only legislated, but law. Orwell's future has been around through much of our past. If you truly think you're a free person in this country, just try using a kernal of corn as bait to fish or taking a bath without a full-length bathing suit on.
To hell with worrying about your rights to burn the American flag or to encrypt your email. In a lot of places, you don't even have the legal right to walk down the sidewalk and knock a snake's head off with a cane.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Instead, the reasons are almost unanimously to continue to entice and encourage more people to use the internet for purchases. Once they are satisfied that Internet purchases have become a way-of-life, as ingrained as handing a credit card over for every purchase at the local convenience store, the taxes will be ushered forth by a rush of oinking pigs, eager to pillage your pocket on every transaction.
Yes, there are various reasons for and against taxing Internet transactions, but I'm speaking only to the reasoning behind the current hype over not taxing. It's temporary -- and it is for the best interest of all governments. Don't be lulled into believing that they really are interested in simple free-trade and uninhibited capitalism and entrepreneurship.
Proposed delays are in the best interest of those who wish taxing (even heavy taxing) of the Internet.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
The correct address would be: http://www.skylab.org/~plumpy/idgreply.t xt
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
He is not using the "Dummies" name in any way for a handle, username, website or anything else. It was simply a proposal for a "Smart_Host for Dummies" book in reply to an earlier message. Both of the messages (the original and the 'offending' messages were on the Portland Linux Users Group *mailing list*. It appears on the website as do all messages to the list beucase they are archived.
Apparently, companies are now suing over the rights to use their names as thread-subjects? You know, I'd like to propose that someone publish "Dummies Guide To Being An Uptight Corporate Fascist Asshole", but I wouldn't want IDG to sue me
Patents and copyrights have been no more infringed than if I were to post a message to a mailing list about how I wish Pepsi would come out with their own brand of coffee.
Anyone who still isn't clear on this, do yourself a favor and visit the proposed response from Michael himself:
http://www.sklab.org/~plumpy/idgreply.txt
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
----------------------
Optional WIH modules that can be loaded with the game include great extras, such as:
Monsters
Abortion Doctors
Homosexuals
Non-Jesus-Loving-Sinners
Women using birth-control
Masturbaters
Missions
Stakeout the local abortion clinic.
Convert sinners at the local bus-mall.
Subject society to your own 'family-values'.
Land your own television evangelist career.
Scam the flock and run away with their cash.
Get freaky with the Altar Boy.
Enter the holy realm of Christ and be forgiving of your sins!
Requirements for Module Pack
64MB RAM
800MB Free Disk Space
4x CDROM
Windows95 (Requires plug & pray)
Notes
This game was developed by experts in holyness and godliness Benny Hinn, Luis Palau and Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Apparently, it is being developed with the help and encouragement of the Beaurau of Alchohol, Tobacco and Firearms as well as the LA DA Gil Garcetti. It is being tested in a couple dozen schools.
Mosaic-2000 is documented here, by it's creator and developer, 'parenting expert', Gavin De Becker.
According to Mosaic-2000's website:
MOSAIC-2000 cannot label anyone as anything. People unfamiliar with the method may jump to the worry that principals will use it to unfairly label kids, but the objective process resists bias. MOSAIC-2000 is vastly more likely give a low rating in a situation to which people are over-reacting - than to give a high rating in a situation people are not concerned about.
School administrators already label kids. This will simply provide a tool with which they can harass them and bring them to the attention of the district and other professionals. Are they going to use this 'tool' on the beer-drinking all-star quarterback who date-raped his last girlfriend and enjoys slamming the heads of freshmen into the wall? Will they use this on the home-coming-queen who is hiding bullemia and drinking to avoid her abusive parents and contemplating slitting her wrists? Probably not. But they may jump at the chance to use it on the kids who keep to themselves and spend most of their time reading and expressing themselves through their abrasive or depressing writing and 'odd' attire.
MOSAIC-2000 seeks to identify those students most in need of the interventions and resources that are available, and in the school setting, all appropriate intervention is good. In other words, if you happen to fit their specific profile of what a 'troubled student' is and this hunk of code shows that you meet the outline of a possible psycho-killer, you will probably be forced to undergo counseling, therapy, possibly even be weeded out to attend a 'special' school.
How many of us have been the victims of busy-body teachers? I certainly have. When I was in grade-school, I constantly had bruises on me because I also happened to be very active in wrestling and Judo. And because I spent most of my after-school time in sports, I had to bury myself in reading and writing at school -- just to keep up. This appeared to a certain teacher as a loner-child who keeps to himself and is abused at home. This teacher asked me about this and although I gave her my honest explanation, I was speaking with the school counselor by the end of the day, and by evening, there were case-workers from Child Protective Services checking on my parents.
Needless to say, my parents were shocked. So was I. It didn't matter that I was a completely normal child who's bruises were from sports and who was deeply involved in his school-work. What mattered was the self-asserted perception of a busy-body who should have spent more time teaching than trying to play a fairy-god-mother. Is it really much of a stretch to say that a computer would look at the same situation and make the same possibly conclusion?
We must also remember that regardless of what the computer says, the input is from humans and is interpreted and acted upon by humans. Is a teacher going to suddenly change their opinion of a student because a computer did not believe the evidence provided warrented a truly 'potentially violent child'?
A range of answers is far more likely to stimulate accuracy fairness, and completeness. For example, if asking about firearms, a Yes/No question could not stimulate as fair or complete an exploration as a range:
__No known possession of a firearm
__Friends known to have ready access to a firearm
__There are firearms in the home
__There are firearms in a home frequented by the student
__The student owns his own firearm
__The student recently acquired a firearm
First of all, how in the hell are they going to know these things? I don't even know if my friends or neighbors have firearms. And if I have recently acquired a firearm, am I going to be walking up to any authority and tell them about it?
It seems that any questions that could possibly render any (even incorrect) answer as to whether a subject is a risk or not would require a certain amount of investigation to aptly answer. How will these answers be obtained? Will it require students to fill out a long questionaire? If so, how can anyone be sure the student was truthful? If not, then will schools begin employing detectives to start checking-up on children by interviewing their friends, family, teachers, co-workers, fellow-students, churchr-members or neighbors? By what right would the school be investigating anyone for anything? Even the police must prove a necessary need to do these things. A policeman can not simply go around interrogating everyone who "looks like a troublemaker" and "may, someday, in the next ten or twelve years, become violent".
For the first time, schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels will have access to technology and methods that have long been used for many of our nation's highest stakes assessments.
The same technology used to weed-out international terrorists at airports based on one's ethnicity and accent will now help weed-out seven-year-old little Johnny so that he won't blow everyone's head off by the time he is in highschool.
Please note: hazing, intimidating, harassing, kicking, punching, spitting-on, humiliating, torturing and otherwise generally abusing and making other weaker students lives hell is acceptable.
How many times do you hear a killer's neighbors, friends, co-workers and even family say "I never knew..."? This is precisely because only certain types of violent people have certain traits and histories. In fact, more people who have those same traits and histories are not violent than those who are. You can not look at a person and claim that they will destroy an entire city block by the way they dress, music they listen to, and their proximity to places and people with guns.
If this thing is widely accepted, I'll be surprised if it isn't soon used in the workplace. Of course, we know it already is to a degree, but soon we may be able to officially harass that really quiet guy who reads all those high-tech magazines down in accounting!
School administrators would use MOSAIC-2000 only in situations that reach a certain threshold (e.g., a student makes a threat, brings a weapon to school, teachers or students are concerned a student might act out violently).
Better teach little Jilly to watch her mouth. Next time she says stamps her feet on the ground in a fit and says "I hope you die!" because little Timmy took her favorite Pokeman card, she may be filed away in the school computer and considered a potential threat.
Does MOSAIC-2000 invade the privacy of students?: The information gathered for each evaluation is held at the school only, and is never communicated over the Internet. MOSAIC is a stand-alone system, secure at each school, with no central combining of cases. The system isn't a "Big Brother" approach. MOSAIC-2000 merely brings organization and expert opinion to a process every principal already has. So if something is not distributed over the Internet, it is not invading your privacy? Is this why we walk around giving our social security numbers, home phone number and bank account number to every person who asks?
I find it extremely offensive that someone would want to tag myself or my child as a risk because of computer profiling -- and build a database with their information, telling me it's for the better. What gaurantee is there that this information will never be incorporated into a database or ever released to anyone outside of the school district? Further, what right does my child's teacher or principal have to know anything about the child that isn't directly involved in the child's education?
I understand that safety is involved, but this is a wreckless answer to a problem that has been grossly exaggerated. Profiling, at best, will give a false sense of security and at worst, rob us of any dignity, privacy and freedom while we're still reading Curious George and learning addition.
MOSAIC systems have been in daily use for a decade. Society faces many types of high-stakes evaluations (threats to public officials, hazards to domestic violence victims, workplace violence cases, etc). MOSAIC systems are used by the United States Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve Board, the Central Intelligence Agency, Governors of eleven states, and many others.
Is there really anything that needs to be said right here? Supreme Court, Federal reserve Board, Governors, Central Intelligence Agency, K-12 . . .
In cases where students have been expelled as a result of safety concerns, when they are considered for re-enrollment, some schools may use MOSAIC-2000 to help evaluate if the risk has lessened.
Oh, can't you just smell the lawsuits the next time some kid mows-down his entire graduating class after being reinstated by his school administrators because of Mosaic-2000?
The cost for the final version of MOSAIC-2000 (due in February, 2000) will be determined by the M-2000 Advisory Board. It is likely to be a small monthly fee for each school.
Oh, great. Now the little rats will be coming to my door more often, trying to peddle candy and magazines.
The system operates on entirely standard and traditional hardware, including an IBM-PC compatible 486 computer. It uses very little disk space.
They're apparently not running it on Windows.
Concern that a student might act out violently can be triggered in any of several ways:
a student makes a threat;
alarming writings are observed;
a student brings a firearm to school;
a student gets into trouble with police; teacher, counselor, psychologist, parent, or fellow student becomes concerned and makes a report
I'm not sure about the school you went to, but students made idle threats all the time at mine. It's a part of being an immature kid. As for bringing a firearm to school -- what moron requires a computer to tell them that the child is a risk? First, it is illegal to bring a firearm to school. If you need to rely on the computer program to tell you that posession of a firearm is a danger-sign, you need your face bashed in with a brick.
Alarming writing? What does one consider alarming? The greatest and most lauded writing in the world tends to be alarming, shocking and disturbing! Writing should be a method of release and creativity. And a lot of the most truly disturbing and brilliant pieces I have ever read were written by rather youthful authors.
Mosaic-2000 is not an all-seeing oracle. It is a peice of crap that should be left out of the school system. The answer to the problems of children is not to throw more technology at them and invade their inner-most thoughts and secrets.
The answer is to afford them a little more time, attention and considertion. If it requires mass-murder for us to come to their aid and hear them, we are a ruined society. When the only attention we provide kids with is the scrutinizing eye of accusation, we can only expect jaded, disinterested, paranoid children.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Of course, if Neil would sign a permission slip for my employer to let me stay home from work for a couple days . . .
Of course, I suppose I could use all of my PTO one of these days and lock myself in a room with a stack of books. -- Man, I haven't even read that new Glickman book, either.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
I'm so damn tired of every company putting a 'portal' online. I just want a page that I can search for things with. I don't want the same re-hashed AP/Reuters newsfeed that every other website has. I don't want the stupid celebrity-chats, java-games, weather, maps, webmail, shopping venues or discount long-distance phone deals.
Give give me a damn field to enter my keywords in and a button to click.
Everyone wants to corner every part of the market. What happened to 'Do one thing and do it well'? I'm not so lazy that I can't type a new address to go to a seperate webpage. If I'm on a search page that is done well (Google) and I need to catch up on the day's news, I'll take the two seconds to type in another URL.
Marketing hacks and corporate clunkheads seem to think the average web-surfer wants to stay on one webpage forever and have everything they need on that one page. I find that as tacky as going to Castco and seeing the cars and home entertainment systems on sale. If you are buying a car or a stereo-system, go to a car-dealership or a stereo store -- where you can find quality items from people who specialize in them.
I'm not going to buy my car in the next aisle down from the canned-food and I'll not get my news from the same place people search for pr0n.
To be a successful online service, you do not need to spread yourself over everything. You do not need to plaster your site with a thousand banner-ads. You do not even need to register with a search engine. Just do what you do, like what you do, and do it well. People will notice it and appreciate it.
My website, for example, was just something I threw together while I was telecommuting and learning Perl. I figured I would take the site down within a few days once I had learned how to read and dissect the script. And here I am a few months later with a very successful auction site for a very specific group of people. No search engine, no Reuter's news, no banners or advertising, no costs to anyone. And I've never even registered the site on a single search engine. (That's what robots.txt is for anyway, duh!)
My point is not that my site is so special, but that you don't have to become a commercialized sell-out to do well and you do not have to offer every service under the sky. Find something you like and stick with it. Word-of-mouth turned Fight Club from a ho-hum box-office feature to a number-one hit. It can do the same for your site.
Best of all, if you really care about what you are doing, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Let CBS and Tide throw a million dollars at a web project that looks and behaves like every other portal in the world -- you can have something unique to offer for a few bucks.
Speaking of which, could you imagine a project manager with any corporation presenting a website project that can be maintained for $20 per month?
The previous reasons are also why you come to Slashdot for your tech news and gossip instead of finding it burried in the back of your local newspaper, written by some washed-up entertainment editor who's greatest technical accomplishment was booting up their iMac.
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seumas.com
Forget the RAM. You need to upgrade your sarcasm parser. It seems just a little out of synch.
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seumas.com
I suppose the personal devistation is a given though. The reason RAM is brought into the conversation is usually because the cost of lives and living is universal through any disaster. RAM, however, is not a common-denomenator. That is why it is something particularly distinct that can and should be pointed out while not detracting from the understanding of the massive loss of life this year.
If the World Trade Center was toasted, the deaths would be obvious and catastrophic, but you can bet your money-driven-ass that Wall Street, money and the entire economy would be brought into comment.
In journalism, the important thing is but why should the reader care? This meant that the story had to tug at the heart-strings of the reader. In turn, this usually meant death, pain, personal loss or other pains of humanity. Now, why should the reader care tends to mean how does this personally effect the reader or their bottom-line?
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
[clueless american impression]
But how will it help RAM prices if we donate money to those who were devastated by the earthquakes? Maybe we should donate to the American corporations that use those countries for cheap labor to build their chips, instead?
[end impression]
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
I built a dozen machines last year and bought an average of 128MB's of RAM for each machine. I had intended to buy a couple machines for my home network to run Linux and Solaris on this month, but there's no way in a Silicon hell that I'm dishing out $320 for the same RAM I could purchase for $165 in March.
Maybe I'm just being a greedy consumer, but the doubling of the cost of RAM is costing hard-drive vendors, case vendors, motherboard vendors, etc. I'll resort to a type-writer and carbon-copy sheets (can you even buy that stuff any more?) before I'll pay almost 50% of the cost of my computer for a stick of RAM.
A lot of junk comes out of Taiwan and (not to mention cameras, televisions, etc) -- yet the only massive increase in cost to the consumer is in RAM? This seems as suspicious as this past year when oil companies cried huge tears over one or two small refinery fires and squeezed every last cent they could out of the country by claiming that those few small fires nearly destroyed the bedrock of their industry.
I wonder when the politicians are going to lobby congress for RAM regulation like they do with everything else? I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Perhaps when the soccer-moms start whining because they can't afford little Timmy's braces because they had to spend the last thousand bucks to setup a new machine so mom and dad could ignore each other and hot-chat with recluses on IRC and AOL?
Of course, if I'd just built these computers a couple months ago, I'd be shrugging my shoulders and asking what the big deal is. I suppose it's all a matter of where one stands at the moment he or she complains.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
"GuiAmp technical support."
"Yeah, my GuiAmp won't run right -- it's choppy."
"Okay. What speed is your machine?"
"It's a 5671."
"A what?"
"A 5671 -- It's a Compaq."
"Um . .
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Kick Ass Computer Game Requirements:
400mhz processor w/ 128MB RAM
300MB Hard Disk Space
The point of this being that a lot of people don't understand that a Compaq 5671 is a brand and not a chip or a clock-speed. They look at the requirements on the back of a cool new game and haven't a single clue as to whether their machine meets the requirements. What if instead of buying a Compaq 4563 with a SledgeHammer K4-800, you just bought a Compaq 786/800mhz? Or an IBM 786/800mhz? You still have the brand-name and ability evquivalent.
Should you (or a customer you have to deal with through technical support or otherwise) have to refer to a massive catalog everytime you simply want to know what chip is in the machine joe-blow is talking about? What if your friend had a Maxtor Killer HD 455? What the hell does that mean? That doesn't tell you how *big* the drive is.
There was a time when Cyrix was a big competitor along with AMD and Intel. And during that time, all three still used (I believe) the simple x86/mhz format for naming. It was simple. It was sensible. And it didn't make you feel like you were buying a fuzzy bunny for your two-year-old or a GI Joe doll for your nephew.
I know this is nit-picking, but while all of these companies are trying to make their machines sound friendlier by giving them cute or fuzzy names, they're confusing the new consumers who draw a blank when you ask them anything about the very machine they sit at ten hours a day.
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seumas.com
To me, it's a bit like having to handle the metric system and the American system of measurement. It's useless and only clutters everything up.
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seumas.com
I'm not going to buy a SledgeHammer or Itanium because they have some consumer-friendly name. My decision, like most others, will be based on whether it can handle MP3's without skipping and what kind of benchmarks it achieves (and no, I don't mean how many FPS it gives you when you're fragging in Quake3).
Of course, I suppose we have Andy Groves and Intel to thank for this rediculous trend back when they were scared-to-death that they would lose business, not to a better product, but to the fact that they could not patent a number. (Sorry Davey, we can't teach you to count to ten because Intel owns the number five.)
Now every company employs legions of brain-dead marketing types who spend an entire year to come up with something as brilliant as Itanium. I could have asked a class of first-grade children to suggest more interesting and appealing names than these.
Whoops... Look what time it is... I better get back to my E-work on my I-machine before my Net-boss rips me a new A-hole. (After all, we're now being surveilled by a fleet of Radio-Shack cameras).
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icq:2057699
seumas.com