I thought about switching my photoblog over to Ruby on Rails when that craze hit, but I could never stray too far away from Drupal's linear simplicity. Everything is where I expect it to be, and is organized in a matter that I like. Many high-volume sites like TheOnion run on Drupal.
Not really related to Procedural Synthesis at all, but there's also Evolvable Hardware in which an FPGA (field programmable gate array) can be reprogrammed on the fly as well, essentially giving you, say, a custom co-processor.
But to disregard Linux as a substantial part of the open source movement is a great disservice to Linux and its contributions. OSS almost philsophically requires you to have a bottom-up solution. Linux and open-source might be two diferent things, but they're hardly one without the other.
I've polled various Caltech alumni, and here's a snippet of their reactions:
That's awesome!
That's awesome!
That's awesome!
This is an outrage! I can't believe they let this happen! <grumble grumble>
(I give you zero guesses as to which one used to live in the house to which that cannon is most closely identified.)
I hope this gets current Caltech students off their collective keister to do something. No notable pranks in recent years, and they're most currently known for hiking up Mt. Wilson without appropriate equipment (come on, even alumni know that it's c-o-o-o-ld up on Mt. Wilson). If this causes an increase in Caltech-MIT prank warfare, then I'm all for it. Let the arms race, um, continue!
As an alum myself (BSEE, 2000) I say let MIT have it. It belongs to Harvey Mudd anyway.
I don't see blog proliferation to be the next logical step, but rather the expansion of content management systems that include blogs as part of their package, as well as the ability to do email, check stock quotes. I know many laymen users who opt to have some portal as their startpage. As RSS feeds start feeding them with custom content, they'll begin to want to develop their own. I predict that there will have to be a handful of good portal pages first before blogs really hit mainstream.
Ditch Day in its most recent incarnation is a great mix of brute force and finesse. For every sledgehammer, there's a code-breaking buzzle. For every scavenger hunt, there's pounding a fifth of kosher vodka. Some Techers have even hidden clues in DLLs as they were interning at software companies for underclassmen to unearth later.
I started blogging years ago because I'd always get myself involved in some shenanigans with my friends, and it was funny to rehash it in a ridiculous way, and maybe in doing so, come across some hidden enlightenment among the minutiae. It was great, and admittedly it was basically a way to virtually high five each other. And slowly that email list grew and grew, to the point where people who weren't there would want to be included just to find out what happened and to hear about it in a manner other than "X happened."
Nothing replaces a good narrative.
But eventually, the email list grew out of hand, and some writing wouldn't make it past corporate spam or obscenity filters. Posting it on a blog not only circumvented that problem, but also provided with an easy means of archiving.
I always so that if a blog about your life is boring, it's the life that has to change, not the blog.
To continue along the lines of "people like to own stuff," I find that I often like burning archival copies of things like programs, movies, MP3s, etc. Likewise, video on demand might flourish in the next ten years, but it won't replace DVDs outright until there exists the ability to produce a DVD hard copy at home from the VOD material.
Of course, the studios won't like that, but I'm sure the studios and distributors can develop an appropriate pricing scheme. But the infrastructure is already there. Imagine a world where the TV does have video on demand (which it does), but is also connected to a content provider that allows me to download a disc image if I want a hard copy.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought about switching my photoblog over to Ruby on Rails when that craze hit, but I could never stray too far away from Drupal's linear simplicity. Everything is where I expect it to be, and is organized in a matter that I like. Many high-volume sites like TheOnion run on Drupal.
Not really related to Procedural Synthesis at all, but there's also Evolvable Hardware in which an FPGA (field programmable gate array) can be reprogrammed on the fly as well, essentially giving you, say, a custom co-processor.
But to disregard Linux as a substantial part of the open source movement is a great disservice to Linux and its contributions. OSS almost philsophically requires you to have a bottom-up solution. Linux and open-source might be two diferent things, but they're hardly one without the other.
Why would any want to buy TiVo out? All of TiVo's competitors seem to be doing just fine beating TiVo at their own game.
- That's awesome!
- That's awesome!
- That's awesome!
- This is an outrage! I can't believe they let this happen! <grumble grumble>
(I give you zero guesses as to which one used to live in the house to which that cannon is most closely identified.)I hope this gets current Caltech students off their collective keister to do something. No notable pranks in recent years, and they're most currently known for hiking up Mt. Wilson without appropriate equipment (come on, even alumni know that it's c-o-o-o-ld up on Mt. Wilson). If this causes an increase in Caltech-MIT prank warfare, then I'm all for it. Let the arms race, um, continue!
As an alum myself (BSEE, 2000) I say let MIT have it. It belongs to Harvey Mudd anyway.
Ask actually correctly places Playa Vista (a relatively new neighborhood in Los Angeles), whereas on Google simply points at downtown LA.
I don't see blog proliferation to be the next logical step, but rather the expansion of content management systems that include blogs as part of their package, as well as the ability to do email, check stock quotes. I know many laymen users who opt to have some portal as their startpage. As RSS feeds start feeding them with custom content, they'll begin to want to develop their own. I predict that there will have to be a handful of good portal pages first before blogs really hit mainstream.
Ditch Day in its most recent incarnation is a great mix of brute force and finesse. For every sledgehammer, there's a code-breaking buzzle. For every scavenger hunt, there's pounding a fifth of kosher vodka. Some Techers have even hidden clues in DLLs as they were interning at software companies for underclassmen to unearth later.
I started blogging years ago because I'd always get myself involved in some shenanigans with my friends, and it was funny to rehash it in a ridiculous way, and maybe in doing so, come across some hidden enlightenment among the minutiae. It was great, and admittedly it was basically a way to virtually high five each other. And slowly that email list grew and grew, to the point where people who weren't there would want to be included just to find out what happened and to hear about it in a manner other than "X happened." Nothing replaces a good narrative. But eventually, the email list grew out of hand, and some writing wouldn't make it past corporate spam or obscenity filters. Posting it on a blog not only circumvented that problem, but also provided with an easy means of archiving. I always so that if a blog about your life is boring, it's the life that has to change, not the blog.
Of course, the studios won't like that, but I'm sure the studios and distributors can develop an appropriate pricing scheme. But the infrastructure is already there. Imagine a world where the TV does have video on demand (which it does), but is also connected to a content provider that allows me to download a disc image if I want a hard copy.