the movie looked to me like they'd blown the special effects budget - I mean, using the actor who played her father as the alien? how much of a cop-out is that? the least they could have done was put some latex on his forehead...
Actually, that came from the book. Except that in the book, Jodie Foster's character (Ellie Arroway) is part of an international, five person team, and the "aliens" are more like automated tour guides that are welcoming the human race into space. The aliens take on the form of the team members relatives by scanning their memories. This turns out to be a mixed blessing -- another female in the group realizes that her late husband wasn't all that great a guy by interacting with the alien who takes on his form.
Out of curiosity though how would Biblical scholars explain Carbon dating/Rock layering as proof of a much older earth?
One common copout is to interpret the "six days" as "six phases" of indeterminent length.
This is a gross oversimplification of a very broad range of opinions ranging from "It's just God's will that things look that way" to "The entire creation story is a metaphor and can't be interpreted literally."
In short, science has a habit of disproving core beliefs of most religions, islam and judeo-christianity in particular. The two common reactions are "denial" (the just unelected Kansas state school board's approach) and modification of belief ("days" now equal "phases of indeterminent length"), while still clinging to the defunct core belief.
Again, things are nowhere near that simple. There is a whole range of beliefs out there, many of which do not require you to mindlessly accept dogmas.
Stories like Genesis are not a core beliefs in and of themselves. For many people, they are more important as metaphors for the way we should live our lives. (The need to weigh our desires and wishes against the consequences of our actions as in the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit is a good example.)
By the way, I don't think that science can ever prove or disprove the idea that an all-powerful infinitely old being that is not bound by physical exists. This is the core belief of most religions, not the Genesis story. I mean, these people still cling to the absurd notion that there is an intelligent creator of the universe.
This doesn't seem absurd to many, many people. YMMV.
More silly still, they insist on the notion that such a creator, were he to exist, would give one flying fuck about individual human beings who would be virtually indistinguishable from bacteria from such a being's vantage point.
It's a matter of perspective. We humans are finite creatures and can't see anything below a certain size. We also have trouble comprehending something as large as the universe. An infintely powerful god on the other hand, should be aware of even the smallest part of his creation or he's not worthy being called a god.
Such people truly will believe just about anything, which allows the Jim Jones and David Koreshes (not to mention the Reagans) of the earth to be so successful.
I won't argue this point because it's true.:-) But I will point out that not many religious people simply do not fit this stereotype.
It could be that the Mozilla Porject, without anyone realizing it has turned into a modern day Xerox PARC. It is now an R&D team with no commercial aspirations and it is up to Netscape or AOL to take the Gecko engine, debug it, merge it with the best parts of Communicator 4.x, and call that Communicator 5.0. Then people will stop whining for them to release a new browser and they can wait for Mozilla to produce something else for them to use.
I personally am happy with Netscape's mail client, could live with its Usenet client, and like having my bookmarks in one html file that I can take anywhere and use in any browser. All that really needs fixing in my mind is the aging rendering engine -- and Gecko is there for the taking. If Neoplanet can take the Gecko engine and try to shoehorn it into their browser, why can't Netscape?
And if Netscape doesn't do it, somebody should steal the Gecko code and build a lightweight browser around it. It is GPL after all, and at least one person is already trying to do just that. I say forget about Mozilla! Release Gecko now!
I just found out about it now but my first impression is that it's not that bad. It looks like it should work better than my current solution -- a second account with that uses the light settings. That still leaves in a lot of garbage. (Do we really need to have the "about" and "advertising" pages accessible from every page when dealing with a two inch screen?) This setup usually grabs the top five or so comments if I'm lucky. If I'm not, the comments pages for most stories are inaccessible to me because the AvantGo conduit either times out or goes over the 1.5MB limit I've set for it. Either way it takes a long time to hotsync this way.
First of all, it should have the twenty recent posts on the front page. In bold, please.
I'd prefer a link to the twenty most recent posts instead.
Second, the description pages for each post should have the top 10 scored comments listed automatically, and, of course, trunicated to about 5K overall.
That sounds pretty good.
Think how a such a site would work. I don't want to use a 5-level pull for 250K of site when I only view about 40k of it.
That's still a huge improvement over a 2-level pull that still chews up 1100KB for viewing 40-60KB of information.
I mean, the organization needs alot of work.
It's still a huge improvement over previous methods.
This is pretty similar to my experience. It's not so much that we have less leisure time but that technology tends to cause leisure and work blend together to a certain extent. I use my Palm Pilot to play chess or read a novel when I take a break then I use it to track software installation when I get back to work. Half the stuff I look at when I surf the web usually comes in handy later on when I'm working on a project. Half the stuff on Slashdot is directly relevant to what I do and the other half is just fun.
I like things this way. I would much rather be in a job where I have the flexibility to do personal chores and relax when I need to than one where I have to be constantly on duty and can't relax for a moment even if that job has better hours.
If I want to cut myself off from work, I do it. I don't carry stuff with me on vacation unless I want to. If I have to interupt a vacation because I'm needed at work then they better have crisis on their hands that only I can solve. Otherwise, I'll see everybody when I get back with my tacky souvenirs!
It should be noted, for non-Spanish speakers, that Pendejo Sin Nombre, translates roughly as Nameless Asshole. I think Slashdot would profit a great deal from a similar terminology.
That's how Babelfish translates it but a more accurate translation is nameless moron. Otherwise, I agree with you. Slash could benefit from a similar terminology.
OK, just for the hell of it, I'll bite. According to Tom's Hardware, Intel stands to make about $158 million off of Rambus. That's pocket change for Intel -- they probably spend more money than that on offices cleaning supplies. But by buying into RDRAM, Intel gets to confuse AMD and forces it to spend money licensing the technology that could be better spent on research. In the meantime, motherboard manufacturers scramble to license RDRAM and incorporate it into their products. Only a small number of mavericks try to stick with SDRAM after mighty Intel has spoken.
Then suddenly Intel does some benchmarks and plays innocent -- "those Rambus bastards lied to us!" So Intel does an about face and bring back SDRAM. Maybe it even buys out a couple of those mavericks (who are probably hurting for cash) and stick Intel labels on their mobos to get them out the door quickly.
Where does this leave AMD and competing mobo makers? Up a creek that's where. The big PC makers want to follow Intel's lead and go with SDRAM mobo manufacturers can't afford to switch back to SDRAM quickly enough -- Intel wipes out a bunch of competitors and solidifies its grip on the mobo market in one fell swoop. AMD is pushed away from the PC mainstream and relegated to the extreme low end and hobbyist markets -- again. And Intel thaws out Elvis in time for the launch of Itanium.
Humor aside, I think that NASA is overreacting. Either Europa has life or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we should hope that it is 'contaminated'. If it does, I would put my money on a planetful of life specially evolved for that planet's conditions over a couple dozen carpet-bagging bacteria from a warm and comfy inner-system world like Earth.
I don't know. I think I might wager a few quid on a hardy band of microscopic badasses that could survive a decade in space and the radiation of Jupiter's magnetosphere.
But Europa may already have life on it. The chances are slim perhaps; but Europa's microbes, if they exist, have more rights to Europa than Earth's microbes do.
Why would they believe that this person recieved this item from the Gods? Why would they not believe he made it himself?
Two words: graven images, the people you visit might have some strong ideas about how their gods are supposed to look. And they might not look like you. But if you show up toting all these magical items, they will probably accept that you were chosen by them to carry all of these goodies.
I simply believe that my alternate view is more likely given the way it was framed. You look less like a god and more like a wizard if you are wielding magical objects. Now if we had the technology to embed an anti-gravity generator in your abdomen and a taser in your wrist, you would appear truly god-like since your powers are not linked to any external object.
What he meant by implying that god was interchangable with magic in this quote is this: In a world with primitive technology, a person with sufficiently advanced technology will be godlike. Think about it! What would people in the stone-age say about you if you had a paraglider, a rifle (with ammo, to shoot animals with) and a box of matches? You would be godlike to them, because you can kill things at a distance by pointing at them with a stick and go 'boom' (Sounds a lot like Zeus striking people down with lightning, doesn't it?). You can fly (on a good day:) and you can light fires whenever you want.
You would probably be seen more as a great sorcerer with a special connection to that society's existing gods than as a god yourself. Think about it again. You carry around this powerful staff made of an unkown material that is unlike any other, cold and smooth to the touch. Why the god's must have forged it and given it to you as a sign of their favor! They have also given you wings of cloth and tiny fire sticks. If we make you our king, the god's will bestow more of these goodies upon all of us.
I admit that I haven't checked it out too thoroughly but I see two problems with Psion's offerings.
They have Keyboards. Once I got used to Grafitti, I never wanted to use a cramped handheld keyboard that made the unit heavier by its very existence. The sales numbers imply that I am not alone. Handhelds outsell palmtops by a wide margin.
They're big -- because they have keyboards. See point 1.
Too Windows oriented. Many Windows users probably go with WinCE over Psion because of the MS brand and Windows name and because they view the Psion (unfairly) as a WinCE knock-off.
Talent should always come first but without the right packaging and marketing, it is wasted.
Palm is a good example of this; just look at their ads. A good-looking guy on one train sees a beautiful woman on the next train. They both have Palm Pilots. The woman beams the guy her phone number. Suliminal message: The Palm Pilot will help you organize your life and get you laid.
Compare that to Microsoft's PocketPC ads. A smug looking guy or girl points at you and asks, "Can your Palm do this?" Subliminal message: Neener, neener I've got this kewl new toy and you don't because you've got a Palm Pilot. Not a big incentive to switch.
This is similar to Intel's FDIV fiasco. Palm is using a performance-damaging software workaround to cover faults in their hardware. I will not go along with this.
Supposedly, only 3% of all recently made 8MB Palms are affected. This is a pretty small small scale problem. I don't see it as a big deal -- of course my Visor Deluxe passed its memory test with flying colors. :-)
I've heard that the HotSync feature of 'spiral notebooks' is notoriously slow. That said, the stylus interface is far more effective than Palm's implementation.:-)
Yes, but the character recognition of 'spiral notebooks' sucks -- especially if the user is in medical school.
The reaction shouldn't be different, but it would have been. A few people may find this incident mildly perturbing, but if Microsoft had instigated a similar investigation against, say, Apple's friends (Adobe, Disney, ATi, IBM, Motorola, possibly Sun and AOL) we'd have thousands of people yelling and screaming.
This is true. It's mostly a matter of power. People will cut Oracle slack simply because they don't fear it the way they do Microsoft.
Microsoft is the king, Oracle is just an ambitious lord. No one wants to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But let one of the local noblemen walk out of their castle buck naked . . .
Heller demystifies computers, programming, and C++ for absolute beginners. That's right -- he recruited a full-fledged novice user, capable of little more than e-mail and word processing, and turned her into a decent programmer while reviewing this book. (She became Mrs. Heller shortly after that.)
So that's what I've been doing wrong! No more singles bars for me, from now on I'm teaching programming to cute female newbies until I find Ms. Right.
Maybe....or how about a scan of the ATF agent and the guy that was holding Elian in the picture? Hmm...or how about some type of capture the flag where Elian is the flag?
That would be so cool! Elian is the flag, Janet Reno, Marileysis, Lazaro, the fisherman dude, the dad, and Fidel Castro could be avatars!
I knew someone was going to try to sound superior by bringing up history.
Well now, we wouldn't want to be doomed to repeat it would we?:-)
Look, we all agree that government involvment in the initial protocols, but was ARPANET popular? No. The internet only grew AFTER it was released into the 'public domain' as it were.
Just because A follows B, it doesn't mean that A caused B. I would argue that the Internet grew fastest after the development of the World Wide Web and GUI web browsers like Mosaic and Netscape made it easy for most people who were intimidated by Usenet, Gopher, Telnet, and the like to use the Internet. Government was largely irrelevant in either case; it neither helped nor hurt the growth of the Internet.
Is corporate control better? Of course not, but one could argue that there is no corporate control over the net. There is only government control at the request of corporations (and who would turn down a request from your contributor?)
One can make that argument but realistically, there is some level of corporate control over much of the Internet from the big corporate-owned backbones, down to the corporate owned websites that flow through their pipes.
Even Slashdot has corporate ownership these days -- granted, Rob and Jeff had a good lawyer who ironed out good contract that guarantees their independence, but I think you see my point. Large, bureaucratic organizations like government and large corporations will always seek to control. It's often desirable to have them acting as a check on each other rather then letting one of them run hog wild and do whatever it wants.
It's a trick I tell ya! They're just a bunch o' starvin' geeks who want to get at our precious canned beans and our womenfolk! Fetch me my shotgun Bessie!
What kind of imagined ulterior motive could Jon possibly have to trash this movie?
Multiple choice:
A) He's short on John-Travolta stock and trying to make off with a bundle. B) He's involved in some sort of anti-Scientologist conspiracy. C) The movie truly sucked.
Is it just me, or are there more & more viruses/trojans crawling out of the woodwork of late? Is it an underground effort by the Linux zealots to undermine Windows? Is it a cunning ploy by Micro$lop to get people to buy W2K? Or is it the anti-virus vendors drumming up sales? Or am I just paranoid, and it's all coincidence?
It's the flavor of the month combined with typical sensationalist "journalism." Combine big, largely made up numbers ("ILOVEYOU virus causes $5 billion in damage to U.S. corporations!") with the current headline addicted nature of news in the United States and you've got the press hyping up every new bug as a potential digital Chernobyl. With the Elian story winding down and no recent spectacular celebrity deaths, the press will continue jumping on every virus as a potential huge ratings/eyeballs grabbing headline for the time being.
All right! It's the world's first modular dinosaur. Built from existing components, no less!
Yeah, but is it an Open Source dinosaur? And if so, when will we be able to download the Dino code from Sourceforge.net?
Although, there might be some patent problems if they used human bones... I mean, won't the companies that have patents on portions of our genomes be pissed if we start building other creatures out of human parts?
I agree wholeheartedly that they should split MS into at LEAST three companies, but does anyone else think that IE wouldn't make a valid company?
They'd probably split up all of Microsoft's Internet stuff into a seperate company. So Internet Explorer would get split off together with MSN and various MS shopping websites -- sort of like a mini-AO. Complete with its own Mozilla?
IF M$ is made into several separate companies, there will be 3 monopolies instead of one. Only they will be untouchable because they've already been separated. It would be better to put restrictions on M$ instead of splitting it up.
Actually, the three companies would be very touchable, since it would be a lot easier prove wrong-doing and collusion among three different companies than among three departments within a single company. The separate e-mail systems to wipe clean of evidence. Three separate CEOs that would have to lie in court. Three separate monopolies jealous of their turf and ready to screw each other in the endless quest for consumer cash.
Slashdot Mirror
the movie looked to me like they'd blown the special effects budget - I mean, using the actor who played her father as the alien? how much of a cop-out is that? the least they could have done was put some latex on his forehead...
Actually, that came from the book. Except that in the book, Jodie Foster's character (Ellie Arroway) is part of an international, five person team, and the "aliens" are more like automated tour guides that are welcoming the human race into space. The aliens take on the form of the team members relatives by scanning their memories. This turns out to be a mixed blessing -- another female in the group realizes that her late husband wasn't all that great a guy by interacting with the alien who takes on his form.
Out of curiosity though how would Biblical scholars explain Carbon dating/Rock layering as proof of a much older earth?
One common copout is to interpret the "six days" as "six phases" of indeterminent length.
This is a gross oversimplification of a very broad range of opinions ranging from "It's just God's will that things look that way" to "The entire creation story is a metaphor and can't be interpreted literally."
In short, science has a habit of disproving core beliefs of most religions, islam and judeo-christianity in particular. The two common reactions are "denial" (the just unelected Kansas state school board's approach) and modification of belief ("days" now equal "phases of indeterminent length"), while still clinging to the defunct core belief.
Again, things are nowhere near that simple. There is a whole range of beliefs out there, many of which do not require you to mindlessly accept dogmas.
Stories like Genesis are not a core beliefs in and of themselves. For many people, they are more important as metaphors for the way we should live our lives. (The need to weigh our desires and wishes against the consequences of our actions as in the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit is a good example.)
By the way, I don't think that science can ever prove or disprove the idea that an all-powerful infinitely old being that is not bound by physical exists. This is the core belief of most religions, not the Genesis story.
I mean, these people still cling to the absurd notion that there is an intelligent creator of the universe.
This doesn't seem absurd to many, many people. YMMV.
More silly still, they insist on the notion that such a creator, were he to exist, would give one flying fuck about individual human beings who would be virtually indistinguishable from bacteria from such a being's vantage point.
It's a matter of perspective. We humans are finite creatures and can't see anything below a certain size. We also have trouble comprehending something as large as the universe. An infintely powerful god on the other hand, should be aware of even the smallest part of his creation or he's not worthy being called a god.
Such people truly will believe just about anything, which allows the Jim Jones and David Koreshes (not to mention the Reagans) of the earth to be so successful.
I won't argue this point because it's true.
It could be that the Mozilla Porject, without anyone realizing it has turned into a modern day Xerox PARC. It is now an R&D team with no commercial aspirations and it is up to Netscape or AOL to take the Gecko engine, debug it, merge it with the best parts of Communicator 4.x, and call that Communicator 5.0. Then people will stop whining for them to release a new browser and they can wait for Mozilla to produce something else for them to use.
I personally am happy with Netscape's mail client, could live with its Usenet client, and like having my bookmarks in one html file that I can take anywhere and use in any browser. All that really needs fixing in my mind is the aging rendering engine -- and Gecko is there for the taking. If Neoplanet can take the Gecko engine and try to shoehorn it into their browser, why can't Netscape?
And if Netscape doesn't do it, somebody should steal the Gecko code and build a lightweight browser around it. It is GPL after all, and at least one person is already trying to do just that. I say forget about Mozilla! Release Gecko now!
It needs a bit of reworking. Seriously.
I just found out about it now but my first impression is that it's not that bad. It looks like it should work better than my current solution -- a second account with that uses the light settings. That still leaves in a lot of garbage. (Do we really need to have the "about" and "advertising" pages accessible from every page when dealing with a two inch screen?) This setup usually grabs the top five or so comments if I'm lucky. If I'm not, the comments pages for most stories are inaccessible to me because the AvantGo conduit either times out or goes over the 1.5MB limit I've set for it. Either way it takes a long time to hotsync this way.
First of all, it should have the twenty recent posts on the front page. In bold, please.
I'd prefer a link to the twenty most recent posts instead.
Second, the description pages for each post should have the top 10 scored comments listed automatically, and, of course, trunicated to about 5K overall.
That sounds pretty good.
Think how a such a site would work. I don't want to use a 5-level pull for 250K of site when I only view about 40k of it.
That's still a huge improvement over a 2-level pull that still chews up 1100KB for viewing 40-60KB of information.
I mean, the organization needs alot of work.
It's still a huge improvement over previous methods.
This is pretty similar to my experience. It's not so much that we have less leisure time but that technology tends to cause leisure and work blend together to a certain extent. I use my Palm Pilot to play chess or read a novel when I take a break then I use it to track software installation when I get back to work. Half the stuff I look at when I surf the web usually comes in handy later on when I'm working on a project. Half the stuff on Slashdot is directly relevant to what I do and the other half is just fun.
I like things this way. I would much rather be in a job where I have the flexibility to do personal chores and relax when I need to than one where I have to be constantly on duty and can't relax for a moment even if that job has better hours.
If I want to cut myself off from work, I do it. I don't carry stuff with me on vacation unless I want to. If I have to interupt a vacation because I'm needed at work then they better have crisis on their hands that only I can solve. Otherwise, I'll see everybody when I get back with my tacky souvenirs!
It should be noted, for non-Spanish speakers, that Pendejo Sin Nombre, translates roughly as Nameless Asshole. I think Slashdot would profit a great deal from a similar terminology.
That's how Babelfish translates it but a more accurate translation is nameless moron. Otherwise, I agree with you. Slash could benefit from a similar terminology.
Come on people, need more conspiracy material!
OK, just for the hell of it, I'll bite. According to Tom's Hardware, Intel stands to make about $158 million off of Rambus. That's pocket change for Intel -- they probably spend more money than that on offices cleaning supplies. But by buying into RDRAM, Intel gets to confuse AMD and forces it to spend money licensing the technology that could be better spent on research. In the meantime, motherboard manufacturers scramble to license RDRAM and incorporate it into their products. Only a small number of mavericks try to stick with SDRAM after mighty Intel has spoken.
Then suddenly Intel does some benchmarks and plays innocent -- "those Rambus bastards lied to us!" So Intel does an about face and bring back SDRAM. Maybe it even buys out a couple of those mavericks (who are probably hurting for cash) and stick Intel labels on their mobos to get them out the door quickly.
Where does this leave AMD and competing mobo makers? Up a creek that's where. The big PC makers want to follow Intel's lead and go with SDRAM mobo manufacturers can't afford to switch back to SDRAM quickly enough -- Intel wipes out a bunch of competitors and solidifies its grip on the mobo market in one fell swoop. AMD is pushed away from the PC mainstream and relegated to the extreme low end and hobbyist markets -- again. And Intel thaws out Elvis in time for the launch of Itanium.
Humor aside, I think that NASA is overreacting. Either Europa has life or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we should hope that it is 'contaminated'. If it does, I would put my money on a planetful of life specially evolved for that planet's conditions over a couple dozen carpet-bagging bacteria from a warm and comfy inner-system world like Earth.
I don't know. I think I might wager a few quid on a hardy band of microscopic badasses that could survive a decade in space and the radiation of Jupiter's magnetosphere.
But Europa may already have life on it. The chances are slim perhaps; but Europa's microbes, if they exist, have more rights to Europa than Earth's microbes do.
Why would they believe that this person recieved this item from the Gods? Why would they not believe he made it himself?
Two words: graven images, the people you visit might have some strong ideas about how their gods are supposed to look. And they might not look like you. But if you show up toting all these magical items, they will probably accept that you were chosen by them to carry all of these goodies.
I simply believe that my alternate view is more likely given the way it was framed. You look less like a god and more like a wizard if you are wielding magical objects. Now if we had the technology to embed an anti-gravity generator in your abdomen and a taser in your wrist, you would appear truly god-like since your powers are not linked to any external object.
What he meant by implying that god was interchangable with magic in this quote is this: In a world with primitive technology, a person with sufficiently advanced technology will be godlike. Think about it! What would people in the stone-age say about you if you had a paraglider, a rifle (with ammo, to shoot animals with) and a box of matches? You would be godlike to them, because you can kill things at a distance by pointing at them with a stick and go 'boom' (Sounds a lot like Zeus striking people down with lightning, doesn't it?). You can fly (on a good day
You would probably be seen more as a great sorcerer with a special connection to that society's existing gods than as a god yourself. Think about it again. You carry around this powerful staff made of an unkown material that is unlike any other, cold and smooth to the touch. Why the god's must have forged it and given it to you as a sign of their favor! They have also given you wings of cloth and tiny fire sticks. If we make you our king, the god's will bestow more of these goodies upon all of us.
Talent should always come first but without the right packaging and marketing, it is wasted.
Palm is a good example of this; just look at their ads. A good-looking guy on one train sees a beautiful woman on the next train. They both have Palm Pilots. The woman beams the guy her phone number.
Suliminal message: The Palm Pilot will help you organize your life and get you laid.
Compare that to Microsoft's PocketPC ads. A smug looking guy or girl points at you and asks, "Can your Palm do this?"
Subliminal message: Neener, neener I've got this kewl new toy and you don't because you've got a Palm Pilot.
Not a big incentive to switch.
Does Psion even advertise in the United States?
This is similar to Intel's FDIV fiasco. Palm is using a performance-damaging software workaround to cover faults in their hardware. I will not go along with this.
Supposedly, only 3% of all recently made 8MB Palms are affected. This is a pretty small small scale problem. I don't see it as a big deal -- of course my Visor Deluxe passed its memory test with flying colors.
:-)
I've heard that the HotSync feature of 'spiral notebooks' is notoriously slow. That said, the stylus interface is far more effective than Palm's implementation.
Yes, but the character recognition of 'spiral notebooks' sucks -- especially if the user is in medical school.
The reaction shouldn't be different, but it would have been. A few people may find this incident mildly perturbing, but if Microsoft had instigated a similar investigation against, say, Apple's friends (Adobe, Disney, ATi, IBM, Motorola, possibly Sun and AOL) we'd have thousands of people yelling and screaming.
This is true. It's mostly a matter of power. People will cut Oracle slack simply because they don't fear it the way they do Microsoft.
Microsoft is the king, Oracle is just an ambitious lord. No one wants to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But let one of the local noblemen walk out of their castle buck naked . . .
Is that from a song?
Unfortunately, no. It's from a man who was once one bad Japanese entree away from being President of the United States.
Heller demystifies computers, programming, and C++ for absolute beginners. That's right -- he
recruited a full-fledged novice user, capable of little more than e-mail and word processing, and turned her into a decent programmer while reviewing this book. (She became Mrs. Heller shortly after that.)
So that's what I've been doing wrong! No more singles bars for me, from now on I'm teaching programming to cute female newbies until I find Ms. Right.
Maybe....or how about a scan of the ATF agent and the guy that was holding Elian in the picture?
Hmm...or how about some type of capture the flag where Elian is the flag?
That would be so cool! Elian is the flag, Janet Reno, Marileysis, Lazaro, the fisherman dude, the dad, and Fidel Castro could be avatars!
I knew someone was going to try to sound superior by bringing up history.
Well now, we wouldn't want to be doomed to repeat it would we?
Look, we all agree that government involvment in the initial protocols, but was ARPANET popular? No. The internet only grew AFTER it was released into the 'public domain' as it were.
Just because A follows B, it doesn't mean that A caused B. I would argue that the Internet grew fastest after the development of the World Wide Web and GUI web browsers like Mosaic and Netscape made it easy for most people who were intimidated by Usenet, Gopher, Telnet, and the like to use the Internet. Government was largely irrelevant in either case; it neither helped nor hurt the growth of the Internet.
Is corporate control better? Of course not, but one could argue that there is no corporate control over the net. There is only government control at the request of corporations (and who would turn down a request from your contributor?)
One can make that argument but realistically, there is some level of corporate control over much of the Internet from the big corporate-owned backbones, down to the corporate owned websites that flow through their pipes.
Even Slashdot has corporate ownership these days -- granted, Rob and Jeff had a good lawyer who ironed out good contract that guarantees their independence, but I think you see my point. Large, bureaucratic organizations like government and large corporations will always seek to control. It's often desirable to have them acting as a check on each other rather then letting one of them run hog wild and do whatever it wants.
It's a trick I tell ya! They're just a bunch o' starvin' geeks who want to get at our precious canned beans and our womenfolk! Fetch me my shotgun Bessie!
What kind of imagined ulterior motive could Jon possibly have to trash this movie?
Multiple choice:
A) He's short on John-Travolta stock and trying to make off with a bundle.
B) He's involved in some sort of anti-Scientologist conspiracy.
C) The movie truly sucked.
D) The Slashdot team drew straws and Jon lost.
Is it just me, or are there more & more viruses/trojans crawling out of the woodwork of late?
Is it an underground effort by the Linux zealots to undermine Windows? Is it a cunning ploy by Micro$lop to get people to buy W2K?
Or is it the anti-virus vendors drumming up sales?
Or am I just paranoid, and it's all coincidence?
It's the flavor of the month combined with typical sensationalist "journalism." Combine big, largely made up numbers ("ILOVEYOU virus causes $5 billion in damage to U.S. corporations!") with the current headline addicted nature of news in the United States and you've got the press hyping up every new bug as a potential digital Chernobyl. With the Elian story winding down and no recent spectacular celebrity deaths, the press will continue jumping on every virus as a potential huge ratings/eyeballs grabbing headline for the time being.
All right! It's the world's first modular dinosaur. Built from existing components, no less!
Yeah, but is it an Open Source dinosaur? And if so, when will we be able to download the Dino code from Sourceforge.net?
Although, there might be some patent problems if they used human bones... I mean, won't the companies that have patents on portions of our genomes be pissed if we start building other creatures out of human parts?
Maybe we need a GPL for human DNA?
I agree wholeheartedly that they should split MS into at LEAST three companies, but does anyone else think that IE wouldn't make a valid company?
They'd probably split up all of Microsoft's Internet stuff into a seperate company. So Internet Explorer would get split off together with MSN and various MS shopping websites -- sort of like a mini-AO. Complete with its own Mozilla?
IF M$ is made into several separate companies, there will be 3 monopolies instead of one. Only they will be untouchable because they've already been separated. It would be better to put restrictions on M$ instead of splitting it up.
Actually, the three companies would be very touchable, since it would be a lot easier prove wrong-doing and collusion among three different companies than among three departments within a single company. The separate e-mail systems to wipe clean of evidence. Three separate CEOs that would have to lie in court. Three separate monopolies jealous of their turf and ready to screw each other in the endless quest for consumer cash.