Certain other people criticized your post because you responded semi-seriously to a post that was a joke. I'm not one of those people. I have no problem debating something that was probably intended as a joke.
Anyway, I realize you were probably somewhat joking, but I'm not sure ST replicators are gonna get it done. Problem is, something's gotta power those replicators. I don't know what the dollar figure would be on the energy required to replicate a car, but I don't think it's gonna be cheap because a car is pretty complicated device, and also because replicators don't actually exist so I can merely claim it's expensive to use them for this puprpose, and then it automatically is.:-)
I guess all this explains why DeBeers and others spend so much money on their marketing. Gotta make people believe in the symbolic importance of diamonds after all.
If anything, I'd take a lesson from big city messengers: use a mountian bike.
Mountain bikes are also much cheaper.:-) Or, you could use a conventional "non magic" scooter--although they can get tiring rather quickly. Yeah, go with the mountain bike.
Not that anyone else in the world cares, but by my own personal categorizations:
The Truman Show: definitely fantasy*, also probably gets to be science fiction since, to my knowlege, no one has ever built a huge hemispherical dome on the Earth and put someone inside it like a sort of goldfish. Although we can easily conceive of the idea of doing this, actually doing it would pose all sorts of technical challenges. So, it's gotta be at least "technology fiction":-) and maybe science fiction as well.
Oh, and btw, seperate from that, I definitely agree: Truman Show was an awesome movie that raises many important questions about ourselves, the Universe, and all that. And, I also agree that sci-fi is at its best when it's doing that.
The Star Wars trilogy: I'd classify these as fantasy*/sci-fi, but with a qualifier (the same qualifier that should get prepended to most sci-fi). That qualifier is "soft". Whenever the make-believe science isn't the central focus (it almost never is), then this is soft sci-fi. (Note: a story that has a lame-ass sounding "scientist" go on about how sub-meson quarks infiltrated the ape's brain to turn it into Pee Wee Herman does not count as hard sci-fi--to count as hard sci-fi, the explanations have to not suck.)
Bladerunner: Well, it's definitely fantasy*/sci-fi, but the category it seems to fit best, at least superficially would be "detective story" / "film noir".
* I'm using the literary definition of fantasy I was given in high school. This definition went something like: a story with a fantastical or make-believe setting. You can see that this is rather more broad than simply "sword and sorcery" or "sci-fi" and encompasses all those settings and more (e.g. there are many good short stories where we're not sure of the exact location or the technology they have because it's not relevant).
Okay, okay, I know this whole thing has been pointless--it was just a way for me to exercise my typing skills.:-) It is, of course, almost always the case that the really good stories defy categorization. It is also that case that, regardless of that, categories tend to be rather superficial as I wrote there about Bladerunner.
Anymore? Historicly Sci-fi did include fantasy, just look at all the old Andre Norton works that were more fantasy than sci-fi. For that matter anything fantasy was sci-fi.
According to my high school teacher, it was the other way around; i.e. fantansy included science fiction. This makes sense because the simple English word fantasy is more general than science fiction. Fantasy was supposed to refer to any story with a fantastical premise or situation--in fact it didn't even specifically have to involve science or guys with swords and wizards. Many Twilight Zone episodes fall into this category. By contrast, in a science fiction story, some sort of made-up science was always supposed to play a major role.
Apparently they're redefining the phrase "science fiction" al la "the sci-fi channel". That channel seems to show many things that barely even count as entertainment much less science fiction.
Actually, I think segways do have a point or a certain niche in which they would be useful. Unfortunately for the manufacturers, this niche is way too small to support a product so expensive. (I don't think they'd be very good for mountain trails)
I mean, sure it would be nice to take the car down to the downtown area, find a parking space *somewhere*, then just segway around to wherever you need to be, but... problems:
1) Almost no one has a segway so there aren't any special parking accomodations set up for them for when you get where you wanted to be.
2) Segways cost over $1000. That's waaay too much for something that will be used so little. Also, since it is so expensive, you don't dare let anything happen to it. Safest place for it is in the closet, actually...
IIRC, the guy that made segway tried to set up a sort of "master plan" (like get it guarenteed street legal everywhere, get a number of business organizations with $$$ to be early adopters, build up a lot of hype before revealing the device, etc) but the plan backfired in various ways. One example: I don't think he ever intended for the IT campaign to go nearly as far as it did. The resulting disillusionment hurt badly: "Oh..." (long pause) "So it's a... it's a scooter..."
Damn it's just not my night. Ah well, at least it's not like I had Windows crash while demoing it at Comdex or something. (.mov player required to view--read text if desired.)
Well, I don't think it's very beneficial for Microsoft in the long run to do this; to get nailed and pay
How long of a run are you thinking of? Check this out. MS is currently worth about $50 BILLION. $50 BILLION - $5 billion is $45 billion. $5 billion / $50 million is 500.
So... a mere five hundred settlements later, MS will only be worth $45 billion instead of the $50 billion they're worth now. Except that, by then they'll probably have made enough money back to more than counteract the loss.
Yes, it is true that it does damamge a company's reptuation to have to dole out money through all these settlements. But the saving face action you're talking about is very important for a company. I imagine that many of the people that have stock in MS will want to turn a blind eye to MS criticism as long as they possibly can. If MS ever had to admit to serious wrongdoing, the company's stock would be hurt badly. Their value might even shrink an order of magnitude or half an order. Ouchie for Bill, Steve and all the rest.
IMHO, MS will try to prevent that for as long as they possibly can.
Those sons a biatches. I wonder--could a crafty lawyer counter that by specifically requesting the format that the emails are to be presented in? Or at least--couldn't the lawyer request that the emails be given in their original form?
Such a request would seem only fair to me--it would help allay any fears that the evidence (emails) had been tampered with.
It's a good joke. I get it. I'm just posting this to force you to get another message in slahsdot message center because, as you say, people keep posting responces to your post.:-D
What the hell is up with this article going on and on about how we can't hope for govenerment intervention so we're screwed? Where did this weirdo notion come from?
The way to combat this outsourcing problem is well known--they're called unions and I'm not talking about a C overlapping data structure here. If IT people can't or won't unionize, then... yeah, we're screwed. Get over it and move on.
Me and my Bachelor's degree in CS are gonna start a happy-fun career as a plant operator at a wastewater treatment facility in a week or so. (no joke)
That might work. But some salesmen/Jehova's Witnesses/etc will keep right on going anway. They'll just laugh it off like, "oh wow, that Mr. Jones, he is such a card!" and go up to your door with a big ol' grin. But at least their finger will hurt.
An 18 year old arsonist that attempted to burn down the infrastructure of the country perhaps... or one count of "arson" per incident which in the case of this worm numbers in the hundreds of millions.
You must be psychic. How is it you can see inside this youngster's mind so well? How can you be sure what his motivations and intentions were? Judging from the message inside the.exe, I'm thinking maybe his motivation was to tell Bill Gates he has bad software.
It's treasonous behaviour that was aimed at disabling/disrupting vital services (even if that wasn't the intension) and that's domestic terrorism by any definition.
Since when did arson become treason? Now I know you're trolling. Either that or you've lost touch with reality on a basic level. (Do you work for SCO?) Further, you contradict yourself when you say that the behaviour was "aimed at disabling/disrupting" followed by "even if that wasn't the intention".
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Note epsecially that by this definition, terrorism involves violence or the threat of violence. This teenager committed no voilent act nor did he threaten to do so. Also, treason and terrorism are very different things, and the one does in no way imply the other.
Next time you want to rant, please get your definitions straight first. Thanks for playing.
I did door-to-door sales one summer. (But please don't kill me, I've reformed!) We were instructed to go ahead and knock on the doors of people that had "no soliciting" signs and the like. The rationale, basically, was that sometimes you'd get away with it. The doormat that reads "We shoot every third salesman that comes here and the last two just left!" is only funny when you're not a door-to-door salesman. (You already know that salespeople are a despicable, underhanded lot, but until you've actually been one, you can't know how desparate, gruelling, and utterly shitty sales really is.) I knocked on the door anway... but apparently no one was home.
Actually, if you read carefully it appears they're replacing a 12 digit code system with a 96 bit one. (I hope you're not taking any physics classes right now.)
So basically they've increased their address space from 10^12 = 1000000000000
to 2^96 = 79228162514264337593543950336.
I think tha should last a while, don't you?
It looks like SCO may be showing a glimmer of sanity at last. I was starting to look forward to continual, hillarious insanity from SCO for months to come (until they finally get crushed).
If they keep making sane statements like this, they might actually pose a threat or something.
Come on, SCO! Let's get back to the inane tirades of yesterdays! They were very amusing.
I have some problems with various parts of your post, but I'll just focus on the last part here:
On the other hand, nobody ever said prison was supposed to be all Tea and Crumpets, either: it's punishment for crimes committed and convicted. ..
I often tend to think of prision as punishment as well, but even this (supposedly simple) point is not without contention. I ask you: Is the purpose of a prision to rehabilite people or is it to punish them? You'll probably say, "both" but does that really make sense?
If the purpose is really just to punish then why do we even bother? Punishment is not all that effective a deterrent. Why not just kill every one that ever gets sent to prision? (I'm not being serious here.)
No answers here, just a bunch of discussion questions.
Your post sounds like a troll and a bad one. Apparently, you were so busy thinking about your little "the Man is gonna get us" speech, you failed to actually read what you were replying to. The parent poster (to your post) didn't talk of reporting a crime, he talked of attempting to prevent a crime.
He was saying that you wouldn't be obligated to stop the hammer killer by intervening. Of course you should report it.
His post had nothing to do with the continual decay of civil liberties in this country.
But look at the slashdot moderation system--I mean look at the fact that it exists. This is what I'm on about. The same unfortunate thing that's happened to other parts of the Internet has happened to slashdot too. That's why the moderation system (and meta moderation system and karma) exist. The "death of slashdot" has been avoided not just once, but several times. You're slashdot ID is a whole order of magnitude below mine so I assume you were here for all that stuff.
I think we both agree that the Internet has problems. I just choose to be more optimistic about its future outlook because... why not?
I know you're joking, but really... I think you're giving SCO waaaay too much credit. These guys couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map let alone pull off something as clever as you describe.
Slashdot Mirror
Certain other people criticized your post because you responded semi-seriously to a post that was a joke. I'm not one of those people. I have no problem debating something that was probably intended as a joke.
Anyway, I realize you were probably somewhat joking, but I'm not sure ST replicators are gonna get it done. Problem is, something's gotta power those replicators. I don't know what the dollar figure would be on the energy required to replicate a car, but I don't think it's gonna be cheap because a car is pretty complicated device, and also because replicators don't actually exist so I can merely claim it's expensive to use them for this puprpose, and then it automatically is. :-)
I guess all this explains why DeBeers and others spend so much money on their marketing. Gotta make people believe in the symbolic importance of diamonds after all.
(I'm agreeing with you)
Mountain bikes are also much cheaper. :-) Or, you could use a conventional "non magic" scooter--although they can get tiring rather quickly. Yeah, go with the mountain bike.
Not that anyone else in the world cares, but by my own personal categorizations:
The Truman Show: definitely fantasy*, also probably gets to be science fiction since, to my knowlege, no one has ever built a huge hemispherical dome on the Earth and put someone inside it like a sort of goldfish. Although we can easily conceive of the idea of doing this, actually doing it would pose all sorts of technical challenges. So, it's gotta be at least "technology fiction" :-) and maybe science fiction as well.
Oh, and btw, seperate from that, I definitely agree: Truman Show was an awesome movie that raises many important questions about ourselves, the Universe, and all that. And, I also agree that sci-fi is at its best when it's doing that.
The Star Wars trilogy: I'd classify these as fantasy*/sci-fi, but with a qualifier (the same qualifier that should get prepended to most sci-fi). That qualifier is "soft". Whenever the make-believe science isn't the central focus (it almost never is), then this is soft sci-fi.
(Note: a story that has a lame-ass sounding "scientist" go on about how sub-meson quarks infiltrated the ape's brain to turn it into Pee Wee Herman does not count as hard sci-fi--to count as hard sci-fi, the explanations have to not suck.)
Bladerunner: Well, it's definitely fantasy*/sci-fi, but the category it seems to fit best, at least superficially would be "detective story" / "film noir".
* I'm using the literary definition of fantasy I was given in high school. This definition went something like: a story with a fantastical or make-believe setting. You can see that this is rather more broad than simply "sword and sorcery" or "sci-fi" and encompasses all those settings and more (e.g. there are many good short stories where we're not sure of the exact location or the technology they have because it's not relevant).
Okay, okay, I know this whole thing has been pointless--it was just a way for me to exercise my typing skills. :-) It is, of course, almost always the case that the really good stories defy categorization. It is also that case that, regardless of that, categories tend to be rather superficial as I wrote there about Bladerunner.
According to my high school teacher, it was the other way around; i.e. fantansy included science fiction. This makes sense because the simple English word fantasy is more general than science fiction. Fantasy was supposed to refer to any story with a fantastical premise or situation--in fact it didn't even specifically have to involve science or guys with swords and wizards. Many Twilight Zone episodes fall into this category. By contrast, in a science fiction story, some sort of made-up science was always supposed to play a major role.
Apparently they're redefining the phrase "science fiction" al la "the sci-fi channel". That channel seems to show many things that barely even count as entertainment much less science fiction.
Oh well, at least BtVS won something.
Actually, I think segways do have a point or a certain niche in which they would be useful. Unfortunately for the manufacturers, this niche is way too small to support a product so expensive. (I don't think they'd be very good for mountain trails)
I mean, sure it would be nice to take the car down to the downtown area, find a parking space *somewhere*, then just segway around to wherever you need to be, but... problems:
1) Almost no one has a segway so there aren't any special parking accomodations set up for them for when you get where you wanted to be.
2) Segways cost over $1000. That's waaay too much for something that will be used so little. Also, since it is so expensive, you don't dare let anything happen to it. Safest place for it is in the closet, actually...
IIRC, the guy that made segway tried to set up a sort of "master plan" (like get it guarenteed street legal everywhere, get a number of business organizations with $$$ to be early adopters, build up a lot of hype before revealing the device, etc) but the plan backfired in various ways. One example: I don't think he ever intended for the IT campaign to go nearly as far as it did. The resulting disillusionment hurt badly: "Oh..." (long pause) "So it's a... it's a scooter..."
Yes, thank you, I suck. If I could change the post, I'd do that. But slashdot doesn't let me do that. Oh well.
Damn it's just not my night. Ah well, at least it's not like I had Windows crash while demoing it at Comdex or something. (.mov player required to view--read text if desired.)
like myself. argh. It would be nice if slashdot allowed people to edit their posts after they've been posted. Then I could hide my math error.
$50 billion / $50 million is only 100. So MS would have to start worrying sooner.
How long of a run are you thinking of? Check this out. MS is currently worth about $50 BILLION. $50 BILLION - $5 billion is $45 billion. $5 billion / $50 million is 500.
So... a mere five hundred settlements later, MS will only be worth $45 billion instead of the $50 billion they're worth now. Except that, by then they'll probably have made enough money back to more than counteract the loss.
Yes, it is true that it does damamge a company's reptuation to have to dole out money through all these settlements. But the saving face action you're talking about is very important for a company. I imagine that many of the people that have stock in MS will want to turn a blind eye to MS criticism as long as they possibly can. If MS ever had to admit to serious wrongdoing, the company's stock would be hurt badly. Their value might even shrink an order of magnitude or half an order. Ouchie for Bill, Steve and all the rest.
IMHO, MS will try to prevent that for as long as they possibly can.
Those sons a biatches. I wonder--could a crafty lawyer counter that by specifically requesting the format that the emails are to be presented in? Or at least--couldn't the lawyer request that the emails be given in their original form?
Such a request would seem only fair to me--it would help allay any fears that the evidence (emails) had been tampered with.
It's a good joke. I get it. I'm just posting this to force you to get another message in slahsdot message center because, as you say, people keep posting responces to your post. :-D
But three out of four ain't bad...
What the hell is up with this article going on and on about how we can't hope for govenerment intervention so we're screwed? Where did this weirdo notion come from?
The way to combat this outsourcing problem is well known--they're called unions and I'm not talking about a C overlapping data structure here. If IT people can't or won't unionize, then... yeah, we're screwed. Get over it and move on.
Me and my Bachelor's degree in CS are gonna start a happy-fun career as a plant operator at a wastewater treatment facility in a week or so. (no joke)
That might work. But some salesmen/Jehova's Witnesses/etc will keep right on going anway. They'll just laugh it off like, "oh wow, that Mr. Jones, he is such a card!" and go up to your door with a big ol' grin. But at least their finger will hurt.
It is difficult to dissuade the "righteous".
You must be psychic. How is it you can see inside this youngster's mind so well? How can you be sure what his motivations and intentions were? Judging from the message inside the .exe, I'm thinking maybe his motivation was to tell Bill Gates he has bad software.
Since when did arson become treason? Now I know you're trolling. Either that or you've lost touch with reality on a basic level. (Do you work for SCO?) Further, you contradict yourself when you say that the behaviour was "aimed at disabling/disrupting" followed by "even if that wasn't the intention".
yourdictionary.com defines terrorism as
Note epsecially that by this definition, terrorism involves violence or the threat of violence. This teenager committed no voilent act nor did he threaten to do so. Also, treason and terrorism are very different things, and the one does in no way imply the other.
Next time you want to rant, please get your definitions straight first. Thanks for playing.
I did door-to-door sales one summer. (But please don't kill me, I've reformed!) We were instructed to go ahead and knock on the doors of people that had "no soliciting" signs and the like. The rationale, basically, was that sometimes you'd get away with it. The doormat that reads "We shoot every third salesman that comes here and the last two just left!" is only funny when you're not a door-to-door salesman.
(You already know that salespeople are a despicable, underhanded lot, but until you've actually been one, you can't know how desparate, gruelling, and utterly shitty sales really is.)
I knocked on the door anway... but apparently no one was home.
Actually, if you read carefully it appears they're replacing a 12 digit code system with a 96 bit one. (I hope you're not taking any physics classes right now.)
So basically they've increased their address space from
10^12 = 1000000000000
to
2^96 = 79228162514264337593543950336.
I think tha should last a while, don't you?
It looks like SCO may be showing a glimmer of sanity at last. I was starting to look forward to continual, hillarious insanity from SCO for months to come (until they finally get crushed).
If they keep making sane statements like this, they might actually pose a threat or something.
Come on, SCO! Let's get back to the inane tirades of yesterdays! They were very amusing.
I think what he did was more like arson not terrorism. He should get a sentence similar to the kind that an 18 yr old arsonist would get.
I have some problems with various parts of your post, but I'll just focus on the last part here:
I often tend to think of prision as punishment as well, but even this (supposedly simple) point is not without contention. I ask you: Is the purpose of a prision to rehabilite people or is it to punish them? You'll probably say, "both" but does that really make sense?
If the purpose is really just to punish then why do we even bother? Punishment is not all that effective a deterrent. Why not just kill every one that ever gets sent to prision? (I'm not being serious here.)
No answers here, just a bunch of discussion questions.
Your post sounds like a troll and a bad one. Apparently, you were so busy thinking about your little "the Man is gonna get us" speech, you failed to actually read what you were replying to. The parent poster (to your post) didn't talk of reporting a crime, he talked of attempting to prevent a crime.
He was saying that you wouldn't be obligated to stop the hammer killer by intervening. Of course you should report it.
His post had nothing to do with the continual decay of civil liberties in this country.
But look at the slashdot moderation system--I mean look at the fact that it exists. This is what I'm on about. The same unfortunate thing that's happened to other parts of the Internet has happened to slashdot too. That's why the moderation system (and meta moderation system and karma) exist. The "death of slashdot" has been avoided not just once, but several times. You're slashdot ID is a whole order of magnitude below mine so I assume you were here for all that stuff.
I think we both agree that the Internet has problems. I just choose to be more optimistic about its future outlook because... why not?
I know you're joking, but really... I think you're giving SCO waaaay too much credit. These guys couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map let alone pull off something as clever as you describe.