Really now, you should upgrade. You don't need to be eating those frozen burritos. Sure, they do provide natural gas, but that gas ain't no alternative fuel.
You need to upgrade to the hot plate. And now that I'm thinking about it, you get a 1000Watt hot plate built in with this bad boy. Forget the whole usb powered microwave, now you can boil water, or at least raise it a few degrees, right from the comfort of your own computer. Now, you too can enjoy ramen like the rest of the geekly world! Add that to the case with a built in coffee pot, and life don't get much better!
Security Man: Sir, there is an unruly mob at the door. Quimby: Does it have an appointment? Security Man (looking at a list): Yes, sir.
Your point is well taken, if a little eskew. But I must inject that, occasionally, the point of prision is not about protecting society from convicted felons, but rather detering potential criminals in the future.
For example, do you really think the point of giving Bernard Ebbers 25 years in jail was to protect society from that evil man. Is Judith Miller behind bars so she won't go on a crime spree? Is Martha Stewart under house arrest for OUR protection? Okay, bad example, but you get my point: jail is not just a punishment.
I do feel bad for Scott Levine because his punishment will be Draconian, but he knew the risks before he commited the act. US-based spammers were playing russian roulette with the US government and Scott lost. Better luck next time. Maybe when he gets out, he can go hang out with Mitnik. I'm sure they will have something in common.
I can see the marketing dweebs getting their hands on this bad boy. While the lights are on, the room looks normal, proper, clean even. There would be no advertising for the darker culture, the elements that more conservative people abhor.
But turn off the lights, and all of the sudden you get ads for... well, I'll let your mind wander. Just little logos, or maybe slogans, painted on the inside of the lights that glows for a few hours after the club or restaurant gets 'busy.' Perhaps in a bathroom fixture in an hourly hotel room.
I suddenly feel my brain shrinking from thinking like a marketer. I'm gonna go wash my hands now...
Patent officer: I just got that huge pile off my desk, boss. Boss: But you issued a patent for air, water, and my first born... all to Microsoft... just today!! PO: Yeah, I had other things on my mind. Hey, do think it's possible for someone on a vessel traveling at the speed of light to walk to the front of the ship, or can he just walk toward the back? B: THAT'S what you were thinking about! I'm holding an ADM patent for FIRE, and your thinking about THAT. Nice move Einstien! PO: I can't take this any more. You accidently allow ONE patent for gravity to slip by and suddenly the sky is falling. I'm leaving! This won't be the last time you hear the name Albert Einstien! B: Yeah, and the engery I use to kick you butt will be a function of the size of my foot and the speed of light. You're sooo fired. PO, thinking:E=mc. Sounds about right. I'm gonna have to look into that...
First, all y'all should R T F A. The article is not JUST about the future. The article does a look at the world when wired published its first article (10 years ago). Then it compares that to today; then is uses that comparison to extrapolate the future. We all know that 2 points can only solve an equation with 1 variable. The future does have more than 1 variable.
The article actually raised an interesting point. It pointed out that the web (not to be confused with the Internet) began only about 10 years ago with the advent of Netscape. Think about that: less than 4000 days. Now look at the web; between the dynamic content and duplicate Slashdot posts, there are an estimated 600 Billion pages in existence. That works out to 100 pages PER PERSON alive today. And considering that only about 1/6th of the population has access to the web, that figure becomes all the more impressive statement about the value of the web today.
After pointing out that stats, Kelly goes on to state that the web once was thought to be about information. Now, with the dominance of things like blogs, wikis, open source and the ilk, it turns out that the 'raison d'être' of the web is really collaboration, the EXCHANGE of information.
Kelly did briefly try to predict the future, but the point of the article is to illuminate the present, so the future will take care of itself. Welcome to the drivers seat.
Okay, so for kicks, I looked up my childhood home on both maps. I grew up in Albuquerque, NM. Immediately, I see that the MSN map has better resolution (I can tell which car was parked in the driveway at the time with the MSN image).
But the next thing I notice is the cars on the road next to my house. In both images, despite the lack of resolution on the google map, you can destictly see the same color cars are in the exact same location, driving down the road. The gotta be the same images. The odds of that happening otherwise are infinitessimal.
Heck the two images even show the same progress in the road construction... oh nevermind. That proves nothing.
This is not your father's stock market. Didn't anyone else realize that this technological growth spurt would also carry with it a new reality of the stock market? Once technology allowed John Smith to trade stocks in his living room, the stock market changed forever. The stock market is no longer rational people evaluating business; instead it is now the public wagering on the future. And the stakes (and the stocks) are high.
This is not your father's stock market. This revolution is not about market cap, future potential or any other factor that is measurable. It is about knowledge and progress, rather than nuts and bolts. It is about people supporting what they like on the assumption that the price of the stock will continue to raise while good things are still happening at that business. It is not about ROI, dividends and PE ratios; rather, it is about visibility, selling price and simple popularity.
This is not your father's stock market. This is the American thermometer that reflects our collective knowledge. Several weeks ago, Wired published an article that cited a report stating that the people in the World Trade Center on 9/11 were much better informed than the emergency workers on site. To quote classis sci-fi, "A person is smart. People are stupid, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." But there is a third category: an informed group can be much more than the sum of its parts. If you need proof, go look up collaborative intelligence in the wikipedia.
To your father who is now complaining about the unnatural state of the market, I have just one piece of advice: welcome to the next generation. We may not be the greatest generation, but we certainly know what we like and we are showing you. If all this seems a bit too unpredictable, then get out of the way because there are no leaders here and the followers will certainly lose money.
Welcome to the new world order -- Welcome to MY World.
Yes!!!! I now can point my PHB to this article, and then to the article on how to turn IPods into a raid, and that should be enough to convince him to buy a few dozen. Now I will just need to explain to him why having a spare Ipod stored at my house will be a wise decision, you know, just in case the vendor closes it doors tomorrow or does something 'crazy' like switch architectures next year.
I am going to go write a new plugin for apache. It will be a simple plugin. The sole purpose of the plugin will be to replace the typical 509 bandwidth exceeded error response with a much more descriptive error response. It could even be as simple as a 2 charachter response, which would be much easier to serve. The new error page:/.
A few years ago, I read a description of learning java vs. C/C++. I think it was here on/., and I'd like to find the author to give him credit, but I can't. Sorry. Here's the gist of it:
Knowing Java is like learning to drive a car. You have a bunch of control over where it goes and how it gets there, but if something breaks under the hood, you're pretty much left to the mercy of others.
Knowing C/C++ is like being a weekend mechanic. Yeah, you CAN tinker with the bits under the hood, fix things when they break and tweak things way past the factory specs, but most of the time you just hop in the car and go to the store.
And, of course, you have the Tim Allen type of C gurus. These are the type that competes in the obfuscated code competitions. These guys can do in two lines what takes a beginner 20 lines, and an experienced programmer 40 lines. (The experienced programmer comments:) The best comparison to this type of programmer is the mechanic that gets under the hood while the car is in motion, screaming down the interstate at 75mph, just because he can.
Of course, there is always the assembly programmers. Knowing assembly is like being a Swiss watch maker (please follow me on this analogy). Sure, he is very mechanically adept, but he is certainly not going to be building a car any time soon.
I could go on for a while with these analogies, but I think I will stop there. Personally, I've always been an advocate of using the right tool for the job, when the toolkit is available. Why struggle with inadequate tools when the mind is so capable of being such an incredible general-purpose processor.
"I'm sorry honey. I found some really cool jewelery online that I though you would love, but when I went to buy it for you, the server went down. Something about a price cut on the smaller items. They were saying slashed dots or something like that."
It is the new form of the dog ate my homework excuse...the slashdot took down my server excuse.
Hey, do you mind. With the Supreme Court rulings today (what did the doctors give Rehnquist anyway? I want some too), you keep talking like that and they may take away everyone's access to the internet AND ban our cell phones for the infringing use. Heck, they may even want to take away Fido because he was the reason you wanted to call home.
Never doubt the creativity of a cheap computer geek with need for an expensive service. Hackers of the world unite...under the table!
I'm taking bets. I'll guess that every fifth post will be RMS. I'm sure he will try to restrain himself at first, but I'm hoping that he will eventually begin to speak of maternal fornication. But that's just a hunch.
This is a case of someone charging too much for something you can do at home for the cost of a can of krylon, which can then be used to defned your sister's honor.
I am on that very keyboard right now. It is a basic keytronic keyboard that you can pick up new for around US$40. They just painted the keys, removed the keytronic logo, and called it 'uB3R 1337'.
If you don't believe me, check out keytronic.com. This twit even swiped their poopy weight diagram. I love the free market economy. All hail the mighty dollar.
So THAAAT explains the whole jolt/red bull/bawls thing. These were not geeks looking for a quick fix... It's just time-travelers that have went back in time, who are looking for adapters to convert our power sources into usable energy. And you though the 110-220 conversion was a pain the arse.
I plan on going out as a quivering mass of man in a flaming ball of carnage, hopefully while at a speed in the triple digits. You can save your deathbed for someone else.
I was granted my BS in CS 3 weeks ago. I finished with a 3.3 GPA. I was the VP/P of the local ACM chapter, and I was part of a community choir and the Vice Chair of the associated board of the non-profit organization.
My course-load was not math-intensive, but it was a fairly rigorous curriculum. When given a choice, I opted for the more difficult classes. My technical electives were graduate-level courses, and I still managed to graduate only 4 and one half years out of high school. I did that while holding down a series of increasingly complex part-time jobs.
My final job this past fall was at a National Labs as an intern. I was hired with a 3.3 GPA, despite the normal requirement of a 3.5 GPA because I had impressed my (current) boss while he was giving a lecture in one of my classes in the prior spring.
Now that I am no longer eligible to be an intern, I was informed that I would be unable to continue my employment for the Labs because my GPA (unchanged) was too low. My boss would like to keep me, but the stodgy VPs will not even consider an engineer/scientist hiring package that does not include an UG degree GPA of at least 3.5. Period.
I never stressed about my GPA. My GPA always fell between a 3.0 and a 3.5. I was very consistent. I am still unable to keep this job that I enjoy. Now I know. At least I have a high quality internship on my resume, with a security clearance.
I was depressed about this for a while. But then I realized, it is not my loss. I will eventually find a great job, and apply my talents to a company that appreciates that there really is more to life that knowing how to play the academic game. School is important, but there is a GPA threshold, like Joel says, that can eliminate the inept, without discounting the value of not being a shut-in for 4 or 5 years.
What do you mean not realistic? Where I work, security is a major concern, and we do have random passwords. On my first day, I was given a letter that had a random, unique password that was obviously not touched by human hands until it was handed to me. The password is random length, mixed upper, lower, numeric and it gets changed annually for everyone.
Further, I cannot change it on my own. I need to call an administator who runs the script that generates a new print out. My account becomes unusable until I get the printout.
As for the printouts, policy requires that the print out is shreded (observer req.). If you get caught with a written password, your password is changed, and you may or may not be told what it is.
This all may seem strict and unreasonable, but it really isn't that bad. Because the password is used in so many places, from logging-in first thing to filling out a time sheet at the end of the day, it really doesn't take long to memorize the password. After a week, it feels like second nature.
Of course, your milage may very, depending on the type of stuff you are securing. We also have some systems that requires a second physical key and/or biometric. Heck, we even have vaults, with spheres of isolation around them where no electronic system can be placed without being subject to the same scrutiny and restrictions as those in the vault -- you know, just in case someone wants to read the EM emmissions.
Slashdot Mirror
Really now, you should upgrade. You don't need to be eating those frozen burritos. Sure, they do provide natural gas, but that gas ain't no alternative fuel. You need to upgrade to the hot plate. And now that I'm thinking about it, you get a 1000Watt hot plate built in with this bad boy. Forget the whole usb powered microwave, now you can boil water, or at least raise it a few degrees, right from the comfort of your own computer. Now, you too can enjoy ramen like the rest of the geekly world! Add that to the case with a built in coffee pot, and life don't get much better!
I can go along wit' dat. But I was thinking something more along the lines of
--Lanux--
You know, kinda like a Rolax watch, some Fakely Sunglasses, a Sorny TV and the Lanux OS. It works for me.
Is it possible to just label this whole article as flamebait? I'm just curious.
For example, do you really think the point of giving Bernard Ebbers 25 years in jail was to protect society from that evil man. Is Judith Miller behind bars so she won't go on a crime spree? Is Martha Stewart under house arrest for OUR protection? Okay, bad example, but you get my point: jail is not just a punishment.
I do feel bad for Scott Levine because his punishment will be Draconian, but he knew the risks before he commited the act. US-based spammers were playing russian roulette with the US government and Scott lost. Better luck next time. Maybe when he gets out, he can go hang out with Mitnik. I'm sure they will have something in common.
I can see the marketing dweebs getting their hands on this bad boy. While the lights are on, the room looks normal, proper, clean even. There would be no advertising for the darker culture, the elements that more conservative people abhor.
But turn off the lights, and all of the sudden you get ads for... well, I'll let your mind wander. Just little logos, or maybe slogans, painted on the inside of the lights that glows for a few hours after the club or restaurant gets 'busy.' Perhaps in a bathroom fixture in an hourly hotel room.
I suddenly feel my brain shrinking from thinking like a marketer. I'm gonna go wash my hands now...
Patent officer: I just got that huge pile off my desk, boss.
Boss: But you issued a patent for air, water, and my first born... all to Microsoft... just today!!
PO: Yeah, I had other things on my mind. Hey, do think it's possible for someone on a vessel traveling at the speed of light to walk to the front of the ship, or can he just walk toward the back?
B: THAT'S what you were thinking about! I'm holding an ADM patent for FIRE, and your thinking about THAT. Nice move Einstien!
PO: I can't take this any more. You accidently allow ONE patent for gravity to slip by and suddenly the sky is falling. I'm leaving! This won't be the last time you hear the name Albert Einstien!
B: Yeah, and the engery I use to kick you butt will be a function of the size of my foot and the speed of light. You're sooo fired.
PO, thinking: E=mc. Sounds about right. I'm gonna have to look into that...
First, all y'all should R T F A. The article is not JUST about the future. The article does a look at the world when wired published its first article (10 years ago). Then it compares that to today; then is uses that comparison to extrapolate the future. We all know that 2 points can only solve an equation with 1 variable. The future does have more than 1 variable.
The article actually raised an interesting point. It pointed out that the web (not to be confused with the Internet) began only about 10 years ago with the advent of Netscape. Think about that: less than 4000 days. Now look at the web; between the dynamic content and duplicate Slashdot posts, there are an estimated 600 Billion pages in existence. That works out to 100 pages PER PERSON alive today. And considering that only about 1/6th of the population has access to the web, that figure becomes all the more impressive statement about the value of the web today.
After pointing out that stats, Kelly goes on to state that the web once was thought to be about information. Now, with the dominance of things like blogs, wikis, open source and the ilk, it turns out that the 'raison d'être' of the web is really collaboration, the EXCHANGE of information.
Kelly did briefly try to predict the future, but the point of the article is to illuminate the present, so the future will take care of itself. Welcome to the drivers seat.
Okay, so for kicks, I looked up my childhood home on both maps. I grew up in Albuquerque, NM. Immediately, I see that the MSN map has better resolution (I can tell which car was parked in the driveway at the time with the MSN image).
But the next thing I notice is the cars on the road next to my house. In both images, despite the lack of resolution on the google map, you can destictly see the same color cars are in the exact same location, driving down the road. The gotta be the same images. The odds of that happening otherwise are infinitessimal.
Heck the two images even show the same progress in the road construction... oh nevermind. That proves nothing.
This is not your father's stock market. Didn't anyone else realize that this technological growth spurt would also carry with it a new reality of the stock market? Once technology allowed John Smith to trade stocks in his living room, the stock market changed forever. The stock market is no longer rational people evaluating business; instead it is now the public wagering on the future. And the stakes (and the stocks) are high.
This is not your father's stock market. This revolution is not about market cap, future potential or any other factor that is measurable. It is about knowledge and progress, rather than nuts and bolts. It is about people supporting what they like on the assumption that the price of the stock will continue to raise while good things are still happening at that business. It is not about ROI, dividends and PE ratios; rather, it is about visibility, selling price and simple popularity.
This is not your father's stock market. This is the American thermometer that reflects our collective knowledge. Several weeks ago, Wired published an article that cited a report stating that the people in the World Trade Center on 9/11 were much better informed than the emergency workers on site. To quote classis sci-fi, "A person is smart. People are stupid, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." But there is a third category: an informed group can be much more than the sum of its parts. If you need proof, go look up collaborative intelligence in the wikipedia.
To your father who is now complaining about the unnatural state of the market, I have just one piece of advice: welcome to the next generation. We may not be the greatest generation, but we certainly know what we like and we are showing you. If all this seems a bit too unpredictable, then get out of the way because there are no leaders here and the followers will certainly lose money.
Welcome to the new world order -- Welcome to MY World.
Yes!!!! I now can point my PHB to this article, and then to the article on how to turn IPods into a raid, and that should be enough to convince him to buy a few dozen. Now I will just need to explain to him why having a spare Ipod stored at my house will be a wise decision, you know, just in case the vendor closes it doors tomorrow or does something 'crazy' like switch architectures next year.
Dude: Oh yeah, I see your CSI effect and raise you a goolge maps.
...And the geek shall inherit the earth...
Cop: Oh yeah, I see you google maps, and raise you a slashdot effect. Ha!
Dude: Oh yeah, well I see your slashdotting and...
Judge: That's it. Pissing contest over. Boys will be boys. Case dismissed.
I am going to go write a new plugin for apache. It will be a simple plugin. The sole purpose of the plugin will be to replace the typical 509 bandwidth exceeded error response with a much more descriptive error response. It could even be as simple as a 2 charachter response, which would be much easier to serve. /.
The new error page:
Nothing more, nothing less. Just right.
A few years ago, I read a description of learning java vs. C/C++. I think it was here on /., and I'd like to find the author to give him credit, but I can't. Sorry. Here's the gist of it:
:) The best comparison to this type of programmer is the mechanic that gets under the hood while the car is in motion, screaming down the interstate at 75mph, just because he can.
Knowing Java is like learning to drive a car. You have a bunch of control over where it goes and how it gets there, but if something breaks under the hood, you're pretty much left to the mercy of others.
Knowing C/C++ is like being a weekend mechanic. Yeah, you CAN tinker with the bits under the hood, fix things when they break and tweak things way past the factory specs, but most of the time you just hop in the car and go to the store.
And, of course, you have the Tim Allen type of C gurus. These are the type that competes in the obfuscated code competitions. These guys can do in two lines what takes a beginner 20 lines, and an experienced programmer 40 lines. (The experienced programmer comments
Of course, there is always the assembly programmers. Knowing assembly is like being a Swiss watch maker (please follow me on this analogy). Sure, he is very mechanically adept, but he is certainly not going to be building a car any time soon.
I could go on for a while with these analogies, but I think I will stop there. Personally, I've always been an advocate of using the right tool for the job, when the toolkit is available. Why struggle with inadequate tools when the mind is so capable of being such an incredible general-purpose processor.
In a galaxy far, far away...
"I'm sorry honey. I found some really cool jewelery online that I though you would love, but when I went to buy it for you, the server went down. Something about a price cut on the smaller items. They were saying slashed dots or something like that."
It is the new form of the dog ate my homework excuse...the slashdot took down my server excuse.
Hey, do you mind. With the Supreme Court rulings today (what did the doctors give Rehnquist anyway? I want some too), you keep talking like that and they may take away everyone's access to the internet AND ban our cell phones for the infringing use. Heck, they may even want to take away Fido because he was the reason you wanted to call home.
Never doubt the creativity of a cheap computer geek with need for an expensive service. Hackers of the world unite...under the table!
That just goes to show how advanced that computer really is. This guy included firewire.
I'm taking bets. I'll guess that every fifth post will be RMS. I'm sure he will try to restrain himself at first, but I'm hoping that he will eventually begin to speak of maternal fornication. But that's just a hunch.
This is a case of someone charging too much for something you can do at home for the cost of a can of krylon, which can then be used to defned your sister's honor.
I am on that very keyboard right now. It is a basic keytronic keyboard that you can pick up new for around US$40. They just painted the keys, removed the keytronic logo, and called it 'uB3R 1337'.
If you don't believe me, check out keytronic.com. This twit even swiped their poopy weight diagram. I love the free market economy. All hail the mighty dollar.
So THAAAT explains the whole jolt/red bull/bawls thing. These were not geeks looking for a quick fix...
It's just time-travelers that have went back in time, who are looking for adapters to convert our power sources into usable energy. And you though the 110-220 conversion was a pain the arse.
True.
Deathbed??? Pffft! Not my concern.
I plan on going out as a quivering mass of man in a flaming ball of carnage, hopefully while at a speed in the triple digits. You can save your deathbed for someone else.
--Extreme Programmer for Life.
Okay. Here are my thoughts on the GPA issue.
I was granted my BS in CS 3 weeks ago. I finished with a 3.3 GPA. I was the VP/P of the local ACM chapter, and I was part of a community choir and the Vice Chair of the associated board of the non-profit organization.
My course-load was not math-intensive, but it was a fairly rigorous curriculum. When given a choice, I opted for the more difficult classes. My technical electives were graduate-level courses, and I still managed to graduate only 4 and one half years out of high school. I did that while holding down a series of increasingly complex part-time jobs.
My final job this past fall was at a National Labs as an intern. I was hired with a 3.3 GPA, despite the normal requirement of a 3.5 GPA because I had impressed my (current) boss while he was giving a lecture in one of my classes in the prior spring.
Now that I am no longer eligible to be an intern, I was informed that I would be unable to continue my employment for the Labs because my GPA (unchanged) was too low. My boss would like to keep me, but the stodgy VPs will not even consider an engineer/scientist hiring package that does not include an UG degree GPA of at least 3.5. Period.
I never stressed about my GPA. My GPA always fell between a 3.0 and a 3.5. I was very consistent. I am still unable to keep this job that I enjoy. Now I know. At least I have a high quality internship on my resume, with a security clearance.
I was depressed about this for a while. But then I realized, it is not my loss. I will eventually find a great job, and apply my talents to a company that appreciates that there really is more to life that knowing how to play the academic game. School is important, but there is a GPA threshold, like Joel says, that can eliminate the inept, without discounting the value of not being a shut-in for 4 or 5 years.
Just my jaded two cents.
Cheers.
I thought they had a patch for that?
in a land far, far away, some stores opened...
to sell cool new tech -- and no, they don't use $USD.
to really long lines of virgins
Yes, 24 hours in Japan is the same as 24 hours in the US, contrary to popular American belief. Really. No conversion.
It was cold out. Most of them had on two capes.
What do you mean not realistic? Where I work, security is a major concern, and we do have random passwords. On my first day, I was given a letter that had a random, unique password that was obviously not touched by human hands until it was handed to me. The password is random length, mixed upper, lower, numeric and it gets changed annually for everyone.
Further, I cannot change it on my own. I need to call an administator who runs the script that generates a new print out. My account becomes unusable until I get the printout.
As for the printouts, policy requires that the print out is shreded (observer req.). If you get caught with a written password, your password is changed, and you may or may not be told what it is.
This all may seem strict and unreasonable, but it really isn't that bad. Because the password is used in so many places, from logging-in first thing to filling out a time sheet at the end of the day, it really doesn't take long to memorize the password. After a week, it feels like second nature.
Of course, your milage may very, depending on the type of stuff you are securing. We also have some systems that requires a second physical key and/or biometric. Heck, we even have vaults, with spheres of isolation around them where no electronic system can be placed without being subject to the same scrutiny and restrictions as those in the vault -- you know, just in case someone wants to read the EM emmissions.