US businesses are pretty relaxed about that sort of thing, actually - as long as you have a credit card, you're probably OK. (This is quite unlike the UK or Japan, where getting a lease, a bank account, phone/internet service etc. is an incredible pain in the ass for recent arrivals. Once you get past immigration, the US is a much easier place to relocate to.)
I don't think it's so sad that there are relatively few places that teach the more theoretical forms of CS. Relative to other disciplines, there was an imbalanced excess of programs teaching skills that only a small number of people would need, and the kind of invention you describe will probably be done by people with a graduate education, anyway.
As important as computers are, I think there should be a lot more breadth in education. Yes, it's vocational training: it should then be possible for people to learn enough to pursue a vocation while cultivating themselves in other disciplines. Someone who is going to be building compilers is going to have to devote themselves to the discipline. Someone who is doing web front-ends should be getting a well-rounded education that includes art, psychology (HCI), sociology (market segments), English, etc.
There's definitely a gap between a utopia based on complete non-scarcity, individual personality, and play, and corporate-scale commerce that involves appealing to (and producing) (real-world) needs, creating scarcity, leveraging differences and aspirations. The latter obviously means more money for Linden Labs. The former is what attracts the market, which Linden wants to deliver to the latter.
When commerce is about relative equals using their own skills and resources to meet each others' needs, it is not in conflict with many utopian ideals. When it is about large institutions existing at an entirely different scale than those of its market, it's another story.
The small-scale, individual entrepreneurial providers of services are not what are getting attacked in SL. It is the influx of commercial institutions.
I agree, but it is a kind of comeuppance insofar as Second Life is still promoted, breathlessly, both as a utopian experimental community and a commercial opportunity. When you try to exploit generally contradictory aspirations and values, you really set yourself up for just this sort of thing.
Re:Editors, please edit!
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Facebook In Court
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, there is no real economic incentive for the editors to do otherwise. Slashdot is unimaginably successful. No one has voted with their feet.
It's just sad that they take such little care and pride in their own project.
While things are changing somewhat, there are two cultural elements at work here: the first is a strong value on humility and modesty about one's self and one's family that pervades society. Bragging and bravado is not thought well of whatsoever. Also, there remains a lot of deference to age and experience: until one has proven oneself, there's little value in what one might think or say.
There is nothing per se religious about morality. It could even be argued that religious bases for determining the rightness or wrongness of an act are generally immoral, because they refer to something outside of the question of the act itself to determine rightness and wrongness (the most obvious case: someone who does the "right" thing to avoid damnation or punishment has no morality except "avoid damnation and punishment.")
Morality is implicit in many discourses that aren't obviously about morality, either. The decisions you make each reflect your personal moral universe, even if they decisions themselves aren't about "right and wrong."
Because you're cherry-picking. There is a plethora of damning evidence throughout these posts and elsewhere, and you fail to respond to them. Instead, you hone in on one post in which an element of emotional response is included, and then claim that you have nothing to argue against.
Considering what the rhetoric of the right has been in the past decade, since the era of right-wing talk radio, that conservatives and Bush-defenders can only resort to a mock "hurt sensibilities" and accusations of name-calling in the light of egregious misbehavior, failed policies, and Machiavellian gumption is both a sign of complete intellectual poverty and utter bald-faced hypocrisy.
What they seem to do is restrict applications from accessing GPRS/EDGE if they aren't certified. I've spent a great deal of time on the phone with them, and I still can't get network access authorization for the Gmail mobile app.
Brazilians seem to have a weird nationalism suited just for this sort of thing. To their credit, they aren't interested in global domination or even regional hegemony as a rule. But when it comes to soccer/football and a kind of geographic vanity, they bury the needle.
The statue really isn't that great. I've been there... it's a nice view and all, but I can think of dozens of more "wondrous" things, from the Fermilab Tevatron to Disney World, from the Daibutsu in Nara to the Chunnel.
1) Don't bill based on what network the call starts on. Bill based on minutes used on each type of network. My understanding of @Home is that if the call starts while you're on the cellular network, and then you get home to the Wifi network, you still eat into your bucket of minutes since the call started on the tower.
I disagree. I prefer the current approach - billing on where the call initiates - because otherwise, there's too much guesswork. I can know for a fact that I will either be billed for minutes for a call or not based on its origination. If I'm moving into and out of WiFi spots - who knows? It's too risky.
Funny how globalization only becomes bad when it affects your own class. I certainly have heard little outcry from the libertarianish techies I know that jobs making shoes, clothes, and cars have moved overseas, nor do I see them looking for "Made in USA" (or other first-world nations) before getting the cheapest product they can find on the shelves.
If it's good enough for Flint, Michigan, it's good enough for Silicon Valley.
There's a $49.99 rebate on that Linksys router, too, if you get the @Home service, that makes it free. It also does encryption and preferential packet routing for your mobile phone traffic.
I got a Nokia 6086 and the T-Mobile @Home service just two days ago. I was already a T-Mobiole customer (and I've been happy enough with them that I'm not interested in moving to AT&T), just happened to be in the market for a cell-phone, and I had forgotten all about this new product until the customer service rep reminded me about it.
If you go to a T-Mobile store and get one of these phones either as a new customer or a contract-extending upgrade, it costs only $49, and (as the article notes) you can get a free wireless router, either a Linksys or a D-Link (there's a rebate involved, but the store personnel handled the tedious task of applying for the rebate) - the router can prioritize voice over IP traffic from the mobile phone. The $10/month rate for the Hotspot @Home service is a temporary promotion, I'm told: it may go up to $20/month later.
The sound quality is very good. One thing I want to test is international roaming - this could mean free cellular calls when I'm overseas, if I'm at a WiFi connection. An unmetered, internationally-roaming VoIP mobile phone would really be incredible.
I have a couple complaints about T-Mobile still. They block some ports on their GPRS service, preventing me from using the Gmail app among other things. In general, they tend to lock down their GPRS more than they should. That's very irritating. I hope the competition from the iPhone/AT&T motivates them to get rid of a couple of their less-customer-friendly aspects. Their customer service (that is, the people I talk to and what they can do for me) has been brilliant - some of the best customer service experiences I've had, and I have complicated telephony needs, with a lot of international-roaming and call-forwarding, and they've always gone to great lengths to be helpful, and they've let me change my calling plan without extending my contract dozens of times.
The phone is no iPhone and not really a smart-phone, either. I'd call it lower-mid-range: a VGA camera (which is fine for me), Bluetooth, Symbian OS (meh), Java-based games (yay). Otherwise, serviceable and straightforward, just how I like it.
Except for T-Mobile Hotspots, the phone will not automatically connect to anything unless you add the network name to your list of WiFi networks. You would have to choose to connect to that free cafe network.
If the phone promiscuously connected to every open WiFi network it found, that would represent a massive privacy and security hole.
Slashdot Mirror
Before the internet, a professional critic did not need to refrain from mentioning plot points in order to placate a fan-base.
(M)y view is that the spoiler obsession, born of the Internet's fan-geek culture, is the enemy of real criticism, real discussion and maybe even real thought ... - Andrew O'Hehir
US businesses are pretty relaxed about that sort of thing, actually - as long as you have a credit card, you're probably OK. (This is quite unlike the UK or Japan, where getting a lease, a bank account, phone/internet service etc. is an incredible pain in the ass for recent arrivals. Once you get past immigration, the US is a much easier place to relocate to.)
I don't think it's so sad that there are relatively few places that teach the more theoretical forms of CS. Relative to other disciplines, there was an imbalanced excess of programs teaching skills that only a small number of people would need, and the kind of invention you describe will probably be done by people with a graduate education, anyway.
As important as computers are, I think there should be a lot more breadth in education. Yes, it's vocational training: it should then be possible for people to learn enough to pursue a vocation while cultivating themselves in other disciplines. Someone who is going to be building compilers is going to have to devote themselves to the discipline. Someone who is doing web front-ends should be getting a well-rounded education that includes art, psychology (HCI), sociology (market segments), English, etc.
There's definitely a gap between a utopia based on complete non-scarcity, individual personality, and play, and corporate-scale commerce that involves appealing to (and producing) (real-world) needs, creating scarcity, leveraging differences and aspirations. The latter obviously means more money for Linden Labs. The former is what attracts the market, which Linden wants to deliver to the latter.
When commerce is about relative equals using their own skills and resources to meet each others' needs, it is not in conflict with many utopian ideals. When it is about large institutions existing at an entirely different scale than those of its market, it's another story.
The small-scale, individual entrepreneurial providers of services are not what are getting attacked in SL. It is the influx of commercial institutions.
I agree, but it is a kind of comeuppance insofar as Second Life is still promoted, breathlessly, both as a utopian experimental community and a commercial opportunity. When you try to exploit generally contradictory aspirations and values, you really set yourself up for just this sort of thing.
Well, there is no real economic incentive for the editors to do otherwise. Slashdot is unimaginably successful. No one has voted with their feet.
It's just sad that they take such little care and pride in their own project.
While things are changing somewhat, there are two cultural elements at work here: the first is a strong value on humility and modesty about one's self and one's family that pervades society. Bragging and bravado is not thought well of whatsoever. Also, there remains a lot of deference to age and experience: until one has proven oneself, there's little value in what one might think or say.
There is nothing per se religious about morality. It could even be argued that religious bases for determining the rightness or wrongness of an act are generally immoral, because they refer to something outside of the question of the act itself to determine rightness and wrongness (the most obvious case: someone who does the "right" thing to avoid damnation or punishment has no morality except "avoid damnation and punishment.")
Morality is implicit in many discourses that aren't obviously about morality, either. The decisions you make each reflect your personal moral universe, even if they decisions themselves aren't about "right and wrong."
Reading Slashdot's horribly mangled copy is geek punishment for making fun of English majors.
Because you're cherry-picking. There is a plethora of damning evidence throughout these posts and elsewhere, and you fail to respond to them. Instead, you hone in on one post in which an element of emotional response is included, and then claim that you have nothing to argue against.
It's pathetic.
Considering what the rhetoric of the right has been in the past decade, since the era of right-wing talk radio, that conservatives and Bush-defenders can only resort to a mock "hurt sensibilities" and accusations of name-calling in the light of egregious misbehavior, failed policies, and Machiavellian gumption is both a sign of complete intellectual poverty and utter bald-faced hypocrisy.
What they seem to do is restrict applications from accessing GPRS/EDGE if they aren't certified. I've spent a great deal of time on the phone with them, and I still can't get network access authorization for the Gmail mobile app.
Brazilians seem to have a weird nationalism suited just for this sort of thing. To their credit, they aren't interested in global domination or even regional hegemony as a rule. But when it comes to soccer/football and a kind of geographic vanity, they bury the needle.
The statue really isn't that great. I've been there... it's a nice view and all, but I can think of dozens of more "wondrous" things, from the Fermilab Tevatron to Disney World, from the Daibutsu in Nara to the Chunnel.
Since T-Mobile HotSpot isn't free wireless, this doesn't apply. And, you're like the millionth person to refer to this story.
1) Don't bill based on what network the call starts on. Bill based on minutes used on each type of network. My understanding of @Home is that if the call starts while you're on the cellular network, and then you get home to the Wifi network, you still eat into your bucket of minutes since the call started on the tower.
I disagree. I prefer the current approach - billing on where the call initiates - because otherwise, there's too much guesswork. I can know for a fact that I will either be billed for minutes for a call or not based on its origination. If I'm moving into and out of WiFi spots - who knows? It's too risky.
8000 minutes for $10 more? Where?
Funny how globalization only becomes bad when it affects your own class. I certainly have heard little outcry from the libertarianish techies I know that jobs making shoes, clothes, and cars have moved overseas, nor do I see them looking for "Made in USA" (or other first-world nations) before getting the cheapest product they can find on the shelves.
If it's good enough for Flint, Michigan, it's good enough for Silicon Valley.
There's a $49.99 rebate on that Linksys router, too, if you get the @Home service, that makes it free. It also does encryption and preferential packet routing for your mobile phone traffic.
I can attest, it changes over from VoIP to cellular tower seamlessly, with no noticeable change.
I start my calls while standing or parked next to a Starbuck's, drive off, and the entire call is free.
The correct term is "unmetered." The minutes as such are free. The service is $10.
I got a Nokia 6086 and the T-Mobile @Home service just two days ago. I was already a T-Mobiole customer (and I've been happy enough with them that I'm not interested in moving to AT&T), just happened to be in the market for a cell-phone, and I had forgotten all about this new product until the customer service rep reminded me about it.
If you go to a T-Mobile store and get one of these phones either as a new customer or a contract-extending upgrade, it costs only $49, and (as the article notes) you can get a free wireless router, either a Linksys or a D-Link (there's a rebate involved, but the store personnel handled the tedious task of applying for the rebate) - the router can prioritize voice over IP traffic from the mobile phone. The $10/month rate for the Hotspot @Home service is a temporary promotion, I'm told: it may go up to $20/month later.
The sound quality is very good. One thing I want to test is international roaming - this could mean free cellular calls when I'm overseas, if I'm at a WiFi connection. An unmetered, internationally-roaming VoIP mobile phone would really be incredible.
I have a couple complaints about T-Mobile still. They block some ports on their GPRS service, preventing me from using the Gmail app among other things. In general, they tend to lock down their GPRS more than they should. That's very irritating. I hope the competition from the iPhone/AT&T motivates them to get rid of a couple of their less-customer-friendly aspects. Their customer service (that is, the people I talk to and what they can do for me) has been brilliant - some of the best customer service experiences I've had, and I have complicated telephony needs, with a lot of international-roaming and call-forwarding, and they've always gone to great lengths to be helpful, and they've let me change my calling plan without extending my contract dozens of times.
The phone is no iPhone and not really a smart-phone, either. I'd call it lower-mid-range: a VGA camera (which is fine for me), Bluetooth, Symbian OS (meh), Java-based games (yay). Otherwise, serviceable and straightforward, just how I like it.
Except for T-Mobile Hotspots, the phone will not automatically connect to anything unless you add the network name to your list of WiFi networks. You would have to choose to connect to that free cafe network.
If the phone promiscuously connected to every open WiFi network it found, that would represent a massive privacy and security hole.
Capitalized, bold words and suggestions that one is trolling suggest at least simmering anger, but that might just be a matter of style.
Um, I was defending the GPL, Angry McYellsalot.