Do you honestly believe personal achievement gives a person license to be petty and immature, or are you just baiting me?
I'm not baiting you. I'm just stating that if someone does more than the average person is willing or able to do he can go crow about it a bit.
As in... If a scientist cured AIDs or cancer tomorrow, he can kick a puppy or two and we should be able to look past that.
This is of course relative to your position on absolute and relative morality, but if someone does something for me out of his own free will and effor (and it benefits me greatly), he can be as a big of an immature ass as he wants and I'll gladly ignore it and enjoy his product.
However, if you haven't done anything to improve our well being and just complain about others being improper and immature brats... I'm sort of hard pressed to agree with you if that immature brat has done work that has helped many of us as a whole.
Personally, I would like mature, polite, and altruistic people making software for me (and does it out of the kindness of their heart and not a bullshit sales talk to take my money) over an immature one, but sometimes we have to deal with the fact those people don't exist as often as we would like...
I'd like to be proven wrong because that would we live in a better world than I think we do.
So, you feel "Terms of Service" should be renamed to "Censorship Manifesto"? I wish they had a "Whacko" moderation category for things like this.
No. Actually, I wasn't attacking flickr since there are alternatives and you aren't forced to use them for ideas, but rather the idea that "if you are a private organization that you can violate people's rights because your not the government".
But rights are not given by the government nor are they restricted to interactions with them. Government is pretty much a label for what runs the nation. Corporations almost run the nation in a sense that they have more power today over our every day lives than the government does.
Corporations pay my wages and I have vested interest in them in the stock market. But what if they decided to start inflicting on to me things that the government disalowed.
What if I would starve to death if I critized my employer or perhaps faced threat of force. (yes I know this is an extreme and does not happen, but if a scenario like this ever happened it would still count).
What if I was forced to house other employees of the corporation in my dwelling. What if my employer could search through my home without a warrant?
Most people would say this is isane or wacko and will never happen... (they also think I'm apparently trolling)
And I agree this is unlikley to happen in my lifetime.
But we should not exscuse private organizations from doing things that the government is not allowed because if this private groups one day have more power than our constitutional rights will be voided by proxy.
I just want to get that through to people that this private organization should not be a cop out of our rights. I know flickr was a bad example on my part, but we should hold everyone including individuals, corporations, and governments to respect the rights of others regardless of the situation. Altruism isn't dead yet.
Yes, right now the ISP's are getting paid. $19.95 a month for DSL in many cases. Offered at a loss to build market share and penetration. Even cable systems charging $40-$60 a month aren't really paying the whole bill.
DSL for $19.95 won't make money back for almost 24 months of the roll out.
However, Cable makes money the instant they hook you up.
How do I know this? I used to work for a 3rd party major ISP that leased DSL lines and Cable connections.
Basically DSL was a money hole (at least in 2003)... You'd often pour $1,000 to get a single customer up and running with the installation and fixing all their line problems and finding the load coils and everything else that could go wrong (and even then some of it wouldn't work).
That is why we held this "contractual agreement" over a customers head and threatened them with a big fat cancelation fee if they canceled their service.
But the Cable service on the other hand was pure profit... We'd slap our name on the package and handle the email servers and lease our IP address to the local provider. Sent out an installer and boom they were up and running and bandwidth and support costs were nihl. Cable was setup on the get go and the matainece cost was such that we would get take a smaller cut, but still make more back than we did on DSL.
Of course I quit the ISP in 2003 due to things going downhill so DSL might be a bit more stable these days, but I don't think cable costs anymore.
One you setup a bandwidth it is like running an aqueduct. The only thing it costs the companies is when they need more of it, replace broken equipment, electricity, and pay the network egineers.
Once the structure is in place it doesn't really cost that much IMO. However it is the initial customer buy in and installation is what costs the most money.
This extra charge is not needed for the telcos, cables, and other ISPs to remain profitable. Bandwidth isn't free but isn't not as expesive as they make it out to be.
Censorship by a private company is still censorship.
If tomorrow, you only had one ISP you could choose from they said they are blocking Slashdot because its bad for their business... Would you claim that violates your rights? (somehow)
If our 1st amendment rights are violated by proxy by private groups it is still a violation if we have no alternatives.
I know some people would disagreee, but the truth of the matter is that these things violate the spirit of the bill of rights. Had the founding fathers (especially Jefferson) had enough foresight to realize that multi-national corporations were as powerful (if not more powerful) than national governments they might have included a clause implicitly states this fact.
You do have to remember that corporations didn't really exist as they are with rights as persons until the 1890s.
If there was a god, I would pray to be a network engineer at Google's server farms. Man, how awesome that would be.
If there is not a god... Google will build the first StrongAI and it will become sentient...
And it shall bring forth the technological singularity and reverse the second law of thermodyamics and answer the answer to the meaning of life and everything in the universe.
Or maybe not... It might just go sentient and launch all nukes.
2015? As in, nearly ten years from now? Nobody seriously expects phones to be recognisably unique devices by then, do they? It's nigh-on impossible to buy a mobile phone these days that does not incorporate, to a significant degree, functions for which there are already devices available.
To be fair... Semi-Strong Ai will be theoretically possible on $2,000 peice of hardware by then if Moore's law holds true.
And I use the term theoretically in a very vague kind of way... Personally I'd hope that my cell phone would be my wallet and could fit in my back pocket and not hurt to sit on. Or maybe it would just be an earpeice.
No doubt about that, but an invasion did not help in Iraq. People were killed before, now they are still killed--only now it's more like random violence. In addition, the country became a gigantic terrorist training ground, so if peace were to come to Iraq we would have a few thousands terrorists on the loose. Want to do it over in Iran?
Also... Iran's second biggest consumer and largest investor of its oil is China.
If we invaded Iran, China would most likley see this as a direct threat or an attack on its iterests. Perhaps this would convince them that they too no longer have to abide by international laws when it comes to invading countries...
you can live your live in a cave with a rock covering the mouth in fear of the end of life, or you can embrace each day for all there is to enjoy about it. or you can just cry about all your sorrows and bitch about how much life sucks, whatever floats your boat man, it's not going to make a super virus infect the human race or whatever.
Well... On the brightside... If the end of the world does happen... We won't be around to bitch about it.
But seriously, if you haven't noticed the rest of the universe is not prone to life (that or we are the first) so chances are we are a fluke and we are about to get the galactic snuff any day now.
So either we do something about it in the next few thousand years... Or we die.
That is simple as that.
If a technological singularity does not happen, mankind will not be around to notice.
Maybe the evolved cockroaches or sentient apes in a few hundred million years will wonder what these stupid creatures did to themselves, but obviously we get off this god forsaken rock or we will die...
If not by a meteor event in the next 100,000 years... Perhaps in a few billion when the sun expands and absorbs the planet.
Of course if that causes the end of mankind... I'd like to ask our decendants "WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR THE PAST FEW BILLION YEARS TO NOT HAVE BOTHERED MAKING A SPACE PROGRAM!"
Multicast isn't implemented currently in the IPv4 internet
Well if even you weren't going to use the IPv6 technology you'd either have to have either:
A.) Hope that everyone will get FiOS installed in their homes soon. (or equivalant 15-30mbps down)
or
B.) Dedicated hardware for video compression and decompression. Like something a way better than H.264 (Mpeg-4)
Sadly, neither of these two things are going to happen any time soon, but when 25% of the people start getting fiber to the curb and video hardware companies find better ways to compress video from the studio to the home without it being too lossy.
Personally, if I had a few million to kick around with a VC I'd do a startup with either some type of mp3 downloads or IPTV hardware development.
Basically an IPTV would be something like vonage in which you plug it into your existing TV and hook to your broad band. You could program the box through a web interface and have the standard pay channels you'd get in your cable companies (and HBO etc) just like your other system.
It would be easier to verify than cable because you have accounts like xbox live etc (know anyone who steals free xbox live access?)
Buuut... The key feature of this is that you could stream any IP from anywhere in the world. Want Korean streams... Just save the Korean news channel IP address... Want to watch some blogger in Canada? Just plug in his compatiable h.898 protocol streaming server.
How would this make money? Well I think mostly like how original cable was going to be subscription only... My hope is that this box would be open anyone will to subscribe could go to best buy and pull one off the shelf and could subcribe to any of these independant server like one pays a "premimum website" for content or perhaps just views ads.
How would the startup company make money... Well hopefully from the boxes themselves rather than the content, but there would be a "out of the box" service subscription cheaper than say... oh.. comcast... but the infrastructure isn't here so anyone with VC money feel free to steal this idea.
All you have to do is updated his quotes and replace Americans with file sharers, Iraq with the internet, and Saddam Hussein with the RIAA.
"They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq [the internet]. This is an illusion... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."
"They [illegal mp3s] are not in Baghdad [the internet]. They [file sharers] are not in control of any airport [web server]. I tell you this. It is all a lie. They lie. It is a Hollywood movie. You do not believe them."
"They are nowhere near Baghdad [the internet]. Their allegations are a cover-up for their failure."
"After Iraq [RIAA] aborts the invasion that is being carried out by the American [Piratebay] and British villains [isohunt], the USA [files sharers] will no longer be a superpower. Its deterioration will be rapid. I say to those villains who are meeting in Europe, thinking of launching psychological war and brainwashing: wait. Do not be hasty because your disappointment will be huge. You will reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq [RIAA], except for disgrace and defeat."
Joe Sixpack don't care for Stallmanism, he just wants his software to work.
Well... To be fair, Joe Sixpack doesn't care for voting, feeding starving kids in Africa, eating right, or taking care of the environment either.
Of course neither do I... And we are bad people for not bothering.
There I've said it... I don't care much for Stallmanism, but you have to acknowledge these people are better human beings than us because they try...(although inefectually)
It is kind of like Buddhism... Of course no single Buddhist is going to save all forms of sentient life by meditation. But it is the thought of their compasion and their self sacrifice that we should appreciate. (I mean a true Stallmanist can't play Xbox, download iTunes, or watch DVDs... who'd in their right mind would really want to live that kind of life... certainly not me)
Of course if it is the though that counts, then why is the road to hell paved with good intentions?
Wages in construction here are less than they were 20 years ago.
Really? Maybe that is why they are building so many houses in this once "Union Only" city. This hell hole needed a facelift after being burned out from the 70's.
Meanwhile as a native, you have to pay for all of that FOR them out of your taxes, then you have to pay car insurance, car taxes, property taxes, medical, dental, vision, you have to send your kids to a private school because their kids have ruined the public schools, you can't goto the hospital because illegals are clogging it up
Ok... Problem #1 with this is that you say "your kids". I don't have any kids... Nor do I plan on ever having them ever... So... No.. "Your kids" legal and illegal are spending my tax money regardless of whether I like it or not even though I have not burdened society with my godforsaken spawn.
Secondly, the reason you can't get into hospitals is not because illegals aren't messing with the system, but because only 5% of the people that have insurance cause 90% of the medical costs in this nation. And most of them aren't illegals... Usually the obsese unhealthy heart and medical conditional types. You don't see me on the streets screaming "FAT PEOPLE MAKE ME PAY MORE INSURANCE PREMIUMS! SEND THEM BACK!"
Illegals turn your nice community into a shit pile and your house gets broken into constantly
Really? I've had no problem with native crackheads breaking into my car just to steal a case of CDRs and and these guys were born and raised in the good old usa. Being a foreigner doesn't make a criminal. I'd rather live next to immigrants than my current neighbors and I'm sure you would too (hey at least I don't live across the river in Camden)
Oh, and your teenage kids can't jobs because all the low skill jobs that teenagers used to do are taken by illegals (mowing lawns, bussing tables, etc).
Well... Why don't they get a job at Best Buy, Gamestop, or some other retail store that requires you do learn good english skills and communication with the customer. Oh wait... Most native brats these days couldn't speak proper English if they wanted to... And they don't want to.
You know... I avoided my entire life working at jobs you mentioned and I've been working since I was 15.
Wrong! Only a court can set a legal precedent... Out of court settlements are just that, out of court agreements to "Not sue, if X, Y and Z terms are met."
And just because a court decides in a certain way doesn't mean the precedent is legally binding.
It just means that it has been tried in court and chances are if the same incident (or similar) was tried in court again that it would receive the same verdict and judges often time use other cases to decide how to rule.
However... If the prior judge was insane, smoking crack, or just plain nuts and you made an appeal to another court and they said "Yeah... This guy is nuts... We don't know why he ruled that way... Case overturned!"
And even then... When you have juries involved you can get totally different outcomes at different trials so precedants are nothing but speculation on what would happen the next time it gets tried in court.
Sure, but doesn't mean you can't teach your replacment a thing or two about being a bad employee.
You: "Ok Vishnu, when you write code make sure you never use indents... Managment hates that. And keep everything on same line. Oh and never ever EVER comment your code unless you want to talk about your current mood and what you had for breakfast that morning." Vishnu: "I see..." You: "Oh... Also... Make sure you take your phone off the hook and never delete your voicmail so that no one can leave you a message. It will make you look uber busy... Make sure you never reply to his emails regardless of what the urgency is because he'll think that you are working hard and too busy to play with email all day. And you'll get a raise pronto." Vishnu: "What does 'uber' mean?" You: "It means you know what you are talking about... You should use uber in every sentence when you are talking to the Boss in the states. You'll get a raise for sure. Also... When he does call make sure you have some of the Punab music... Vishnu: "Punjabi..." You: "Whatever... Just make sure it is playing playing really loudly in the background every time he calls. He will apprecieate your culture." Vishnu: "Oh thanks for your wise teachings..." You: "No sweat. And one more thing do you read Slashdot?" Vishnu: "What is that?" You: "Oh great... If you don't know what Slashdot is... You'll loose your job for sure!" Vishnu: "Oh no!" You: "Well buddy... I'll clue you in. Reading Slashdot is more important than actually doing any work at your job and you should always have it open at work and hit refresh every few minutes to see if there are any new stories. Then if you see anything that you don't have authority to talk about you need to make a comment with outrageous claims so that you get what they call 'modded up' and everyone will think that you are the head honcho and you'll great a raise for sure! Not only that but the more mod ups you get, the better karma you'll have!" Vishu: "Oh blessed karma! Thank you American sir!" You: "Anytime."
Experience tells me that such predictions are more wrong than they are right.
Depends on who making the prediction...
If it is lone column writer on some newspaper claiming that we will have Fusion power by 2015 because he saw a science fiction movie then chances are it won't happen.
If it is a small group of scientists with PHDs in nuclear science saying we will have fusion power by 2015 because they have done computer models then it is more likley to happen.
If it is a larger group of government officials, world leaders, and scientists saying we will have fusion by 2015 because they have allocated 1 Trillion dollars to the project then I'd say they will most likley be able to pull it off.
Also some trends are self fufilling prophecies. Take More's Law for example. There isn't anything that is a law about this trend and could up and stop anyday now. However, because this is the goal the market has set for itself, companies know they are expected to keep up with this trend.
With that in mind it we use Moore's law (and assume that this trend can continue) we can safley assume by 2018 (or 2020) that we will have enough MIPS or FLOPS (100 billion MIPS) in a $1,000 hardware to simulate all the several trillion neurons of a human mind in parallel and therefore StrongAI will at least be theoretically possible by this time.
Of course we might need to take other things into account, but this is a better prediction of the future because it is based off current trends rather than saying "Look... We have a cars... And we have airplanes and they are both improving on their own field every year... Oh I have a cool idea... Someone could combine them and we can have flying cars in about 40 years!"
Without thinking about the social or technical problems one might be faced with a drunk driver flying their car into a building at 300mph. That said... The reason we don't have flying cars today is because we still can't drive the ones on the ground safely (40,000 died to car related accidents last year)
Speaking of which... (And if you want to talk about future trends and predictions) You should check out the talks given at the Singularity Summit. Sebastian Thrun (the head dev on the Stanley winning car at the DARPA 2005 grand challenge) gives a good talk on automated car technology and his goal to eventually see computers replace people as the drivers. We might not see anything for another 10 years to reach the market, but we know this stuff is feasible given enough research and technical effort. It will be interesting to see what the 2007 Urban Challenge will bring... And it will be more important than any of these CNN predictions.
Actually, airbursts are apparently quite common with even Iron metorites...
Take the Meteor Crater in Arizona for example. Throughout its history (after being discovered and acknowledged to be a impact from a space object) people thought they could find a rather large iron core. There were many owners of the site who set up drilling/mining projects so they could find the "grand prize" of this object.
However, all this time they could never find this no matter how deep they went, but all over the site was plenty of iron and other minerals like coesite and stishovite (and the special quartz you can only make when you have high energy impacts like an abomb).
So it is pretty much speculated that the object had an airburst right before it impacted turning into plasma. The crater was created through raw energy of this explosion rather than the object burrying itself into the earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you honestly believe personal achievement gives a person license to be petty and immature, or are you just baiting me?
I'm not baiting you. I'm just stating that if someone does more than the average person is willing or able to do he can go crow about it a bit.
As in... If a scientist cured AIDs or cancer tomorrow, he can kick a puppy or two and we should be able to look past that.
This is of course relative to your position on absolute and relative morality, but if someone does something for me out of his own free will and effor (and it benefits me greatly), he can be as a big of an immature ass as he wants and I'll gladly ignore it and enjoy his product.
However, if you haven't done anything to improve our well being and just complain about others being improper and immature brats... I'm sort of hard pressed to agree with you if that immature brat has done work that has helped many of us as a whole.
Personally, I would like mature, polite, and altruistic people making software for me (and does it out of the kindness of their heart and not a bullshit sales talk to take my money) over an immature one, but sometimes we have to deal with the fact those people don't exist as often as we would like...
I'd like to be proven wrong because that would we live in a better world than I think we do.
So, you feel "Terms of Service" should be renamed to "Censorship Manifesto"? I wish they had a "Whacko" moderation category for things like this.
No. Actually, I wasn't attacking flickr since there are alternatives and you aren't forced to use them for ideas, but rather the idea that "if you are a private organization that you can violate people's rights because your not the government".
But rights are not given by the government nor are they restricted to interactions with them. Government is pretty much a label for what runs the nation. Corporations almost run the nation in a sense that they have more power today over our every day lives than the government does.
Corporations pay my wages and I have vested interest in them in the stock market. But what if they decided to start inflicting on to me things that the government disalowed.
What if I would starve to death if I critized my employer or perhaps faced threat of force. (yes I know this is an extreme and does not happen, but if a scenario like this ever happened it would still count).
What if I was forced to house other employees of the corporation in my dwelling. What if my employer could search through my home without a warrant?
Most people would say this is isane or wacko and will never happen... (they also think I'm apparently trolling)
And I agree this is unlikley to happen in my lifetime.
But we should not exscuse private organizations from doing things that the government is not allowed because if this private groups one day have more power than our constitutional rights will be voided by proxy.
I just want to get that through to people that this private organization should not be a cop out of our rights. I know flickr was a bad example on my part, but we should hold everyone including individuals, corporations, and governments to respect the rights of others regardless of the situation. Altruism isn't dead yet.
Yes, right now the ISP's are getting paid. $19.95 a month for DSL in many cases. Offered at a loss to build market share and penetration. Even cable systems charging $40-$60 a month aren't really paying the whole bill.
DSL for $19.95 won't make money back for almost 24 months of the roll out.
However, Cable makes money the instant they hook you up.
How do I know this? I used to work for a 3rd party major ISP that leased DSL lines and Cable connections.
Basically DSL was a money hole (at least in 2003)... You'd often pour $1,000 to get a single customer up and running with the installation and fixing all their line problems and finding the load coils and everything else that could go wrong (and even then some of it wouldn't work).
That is why we held this "contractual agreement" over a customers head and threatened them with a big fat cancelation fee if they canceled their service.
But the Cable service on the other hand was pure profit... We'd slap our name on the package and handle the email servers and lease our IP address to the local provider. Sent out an installer and boom they were up and running and bandwidth and support costs were nihl. Cable was setup on the get go and the matainece cost was such that we would get take a smaller cut, but still make more back than we did on DSL.
Of course I quit the ISP in 2003 due to things going downhill so DSL might be a bit more stable these days, but I don't think cable costs anymore.
One you setup a bandwidth it is like running an aqueduct. The only thing it costs the companies is when they need more of it, replace broken equipment, electricity, and pay the network egineers.
Once the structure is in place it doesn't really cost that much IMO. However it is the initial customer buy in and installation is what costs the most money.
This extra charge is not needed for the telcos, cables, and other ISPs to remain profitable. Bandwidth isn't free but isn't not as expesive as they make it out to be.
Censorship by a private company is still censorship.
If tomorrow, you only had one ISP you could choose from they said they are blocking Slashdot because its bad for their business... Would you claim that violates your rights? (somehow)
If our 1st amendment rights are violated by proxy by private groups it is still a violation if we have no alternatives.
I know some people would disagreee, but the truth of the matter is that these things violate the spirit of the bill of rights. Had the founding fathers (especially Jefferson) had enough foresight to realize that multi-national corporations were as powerful (if not more powerful) than national governments they might have included a clause implicitly states this fact.
You do have to remember that corporations didn't really exist as they are with rights as persons until the 1890s.
Flickr is all about photographs, so it makes sense that that's what they focus on.
What if I'm taking a picture of my monitor with a camera?
...or does Theo come off as a snotty primadona?
Well... Have you made an operating system latley? No? Well... When you do... You can be as snotty as you want.
The reason for this is that we are required by the conditions of our US export licenses to know who and where our customers are.
So you can't have reverse DNS lookup or ftp logs of IP addresses?
It is easier for a foreigner to claim they are from the states in the NDA form fields, than proxy into a US box.
One can stick to one's principles without being a whiny little shit about it.
"If you don't ask, you don't get." -Mahatma Gandhi
If there was a god, I would pray to be a network engineer at Google's server farms. Man, how awesome that would be.
If there is not a god... Google will build the first StrongAI and it will become sentient...
And it shall bring forth the technological singularity and reverse the second law of thermodyamics and answer the answer to the meaning of life and everything in the universe.
Or maybe not... It might just go sentient and launch all nukes.
2015? As in, nearly ten years from now? Nobody seriously expects phones to be recognisably unique devices by then, do they? It's nigh-on impossible to buy a mobile phone these days that does not incorporate, to a significant degree, functions for which there are already devices available.
To be fair... Semi-Strong Ai will be theoretically possible on $2,000 peice of hardware by then if Moore's law holds true.
And I use the term theoretically in a very vague kind of way... Personally I'd hope that my cell phone would be my wallet and could fit in my back pocket and not hurt to sit on. Or maybe it would just be an earpeice.
You mean, like porn?
;)
Well... Yes
No doubt about that, but an invasion did not help in Iraq. People were killed before, now they are still killed--only now it's more like random violence. In addition, the country became a gigantic terrorist training ground, so if peace were to come to Iraq we would have a few thousands terrorists on the loose. Want to do it over in Iran?
Also... Iran's second biggest consumer and largest investor of its oil is China.
If we invaded Iran, China would most likley see this as a direct threat or an attack on its iterests. Perhaps this would convince them that they too no longer have to abide by international laws when it comes to invading countries...
Say... Taiwan.
you can live your live in a cave with a rock covering the mouth in fear of the end of life, or you can embrace each day for all there is to enjoy about it. or you can just cry about all your sorrows and bitch about how much life sucks, whatever floats your boat man, it's not going to make a super virus infect the human race or whatever.
Well... On the brightside... If the end of the world does happen... We won't be around to bitch about it.
But seriously, if you haven't noticed the rest of the universe is not prone to life (that or we are the first) so chances are we are a fluke and we are about to get the galactic snuff any day now.
So either we do something about it in the next few thousand years... Or we die.
That is simple as that.
If a technological singularity does not happen, mankind will not be around to notice.
Maybe the evolved cockroaches or sentient apes in a few hundred million years will wonder what these stupid creatures did to themselves, but obviously we get off this god forsaken rock or we will die...
If not by a meteor event in the next 100,000 years... Perhaps in a few billion when the sun expands and absorbs the planet.
Of course if that causes the end of mankind... I'd like to ask our decendants "WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR THE PAST FEW BILLION YEARS TO NOT HAVE BOTHERED MAKING A SPACE PROGRAM!"
Oh well... Maybe we deserve to cease to exist.
Multicast isn't implemented currently in the IPv4 internet
Well if even you weren't going to use the IPv6 technology you'd either have to have either:
A.) Hope that everyone will get FiOS installed in their homes soon. (or equivalant 15-30mbps down)
or
B.) Dedicated hardware for video compression and decompression. Like something a way better than H.264 (Mpeg-4)
Sadly, neither of these two things are going to happen any time soon, but when 25% of the people start getting fiber to the curb and video hardware companies find better ways to compress video from the studio to the home without it being too lossy.
Personally, if I had a few million to kick around with a VC I'd do a startup with either some type of mp3 downloads or IPTV hardware development.
Basically an IPTV would be something like vonage in which you plug it into your existing TV and hook to your broad band. You could program the box through a web interface and have the standard pay channels you'd get in your cable companies (and HBO etc) just like your other system.
It would be easier to verify than cable because you have accounts like xbox live etc (know anyone who steals free xbox live access?)
Buuut... The key feature of this is that you could stream any IP from anywhere in the world. Want Korean streams... Just save the Korean news channel IP address... Want to watch some blogger in Canada? Just plug in his compatiable h.898 protocol streaming server.
How would this make money? Well I think mostly like how original cable was going to be subscription only... My hope is that this box would be open anyone will to subscribe could go to best buy and pull one off the shelf and could subcribe to any of these independant server like one pays a "premimum website" for content or perhaps just views ads.
How would the startup company make money... Well hopefully from the boxes themselves rather than the content, but there would be a "out of the box" service subscription cheaper than say... oh.. comcast... but the infrastructure isn't here so anyone with VC money feel free to steal this idea.
I was wondering what the former Iraqi Minister of Information was doing these days.
... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."
All you have to do is updated his quotes and replace Americans with file sharers, Iraq with the internet, and Saddam Hussein with the RIAA.
"They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq [the internet]. This is an illusion
"They [illegal mp3s] are not in Baghdad [the internet]. They [file sharers] are not in control of any airport [web server]. I tell you this. It is all a lie. They lie. It is a Hollywood movie. You do not believe them."
"They are nowhere near Baghdad [the internet]. Their allegations are a cover-up for their failure."
"After Iraq [RIAA] aborts the invasion that is being carried out by the American [Piratebay] and British villains [isohunt], the USA [files sharers] will no longer be a superpower. Its deterioration will be rapid. I say to those villains who are meeting in Europe, thinking of launching psychological war and brainwashing: wait. Do not be hasty because your disappointment will be huge. You will reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq [RIAA], except for disgrace and defeat."
Joe Sixpack don't care for Stallmanism, he just wants his software to work.
Well... To be fair, Joe Sixpack doesn't care for voting, feeding starving kids in Africa, eating right, or taking care of the environment either.
Of course neither do I... And we are bad people for not bothering.
There I've said it... I don't care much for Stallmanism, but you have to acknowledge these people are better human beings than us because they try...(although inefectually)
It is kind of like Buddhism... Of course no single Buddhist is going to save all forms of sentient life by meditation. But it is the thought of their compasion and their self sacrifice that we should appreciate. (I mean a true Stallmanist can't play Xbox, download iTunes, or watch DVDs... who'd in their right mind would really want to live that kind of life... certainly not me)
Of course if it is the though that counts, then why is the road to hell paved with good intentions?
So... If I were to make a Star Wars anology... OSS is like the Jedi and Microsoft is like Emperor Palpatine and AT&T is the trade federation?
So if ATT is defeated and Microsoft takes over congress... Well do you remember what happened to the Jedi?
Those two made a great team. Right?
... and then build a Beowulf cluster?
Nah... Back then Beowulf ran only on stand alone kings.
I'm pretty sure the command line went something like this:
500AD Beowulf@Denmark: sudo kill Grendel
500AD Beowulf@Denmark: grep Ale&Whores
Wages in construction here are less than they were 20 years ago.
Really? Maybe that is why they are building so many houses in this once "Union Only" city. This hell hole needed a facelift after being burned out from the 70's.
Meanwhile as a native, you have to pay for all of that FOR them out of your taxes, then you have to pay car insurance, car taxes, property taxes, medical, dental, vision, you have to send your kids to a private school because their kids have ruined the public schools, you can't goto the hospital because illegals are clogging it up
Ok... Problem #1 with this is that you say "your kids". I don't have any kids... Nor do I plan on ever having them ever... So... No.. "Your kids" legal and illegal are spending my tax money regardless of whether I like it or not even though I have not burdened society with my godforsaken spawn.
Secondly, the reason you can't get into hospitals is not because illegals aren't messing with the system, but because only 5% of the people that have insurance cause 90% of the medical costs in this nation. And most of them aren't illegals... Usually the obsese unhealthy heart and medical conditional types. You don't see me on the streets screaming "FAT PEOPLE MAKE ME PAY MORE INSURANCE PREMIUMS! SEND THEM BACK!"
Illegals turn your nice community into a shit pile and your house gets broken into constantly
Really? I've had no problem with native crackheads breaking into my car just to steal a case of CDRs and and these guys were born and raised in the good old usa. Being a foreigner doesn't make a criminal. I'd rather live next to immigrants than my current neighbors and I'm sure you would too (hey at least I don't live across the river in Camden)
Oh, and your teenage kids can't jobs because all the low skill jobs that teenagers used to do are taken by illegals (mowing lawns, bussing tables, etc).
Well... Why don't they get a job at Best Buy, Gamestop, or some other retail store that requires you do learn good english skills and communication with the customer. Oh wait... Most native brats these days couldn't speak proper English if they wanted to... And they don't want to.
You know... I avoided my entire life working at jobs you mentioned and I've been working since I was 15.
Wrong! Only a court can set a legal precedent... Out of court settlements are just that, out of court agreements to "Not sue, if X, Y and Z terms are met."
And just because a court decides in a certain way doesn't mean the precedent is legally binding.
It just means that it has been tried in court and chances are if the same incident (or similar) was tried in court again that it would receive the same verdict and judges often time use other cases to decide how to rule.
However... If the prior judge was insane, smoking crack, or just plain nuts and you made an appeal to another court and they said "Yeah... This guy is nuts... We don't know why he ruled that way... Case overturned!"
And even then... When you have juries involved you can get totally different outcomes at different trials so precedants are nothing but speculation on what would happen the next time it gets tried in court.
Salt in the wounds?
Sure, but doesn't mean you can't teach your replacment a thing or two about being a bad employee.
You: "Ok Vishnu, when you write code make sure you never use indents... Managment hates that. And keep everything on same line. Oh and never ever EVER comment your code unless you want to talk about your current mood and what you had for breakfast that morning."
Vishnu: "I see..."
You: "Oh... Also... Make sure you take your phone off the hook and never delete your voicmail so that no one can leave you a message. It will make you look uber busy... Make sure you never reply to his emails regardless of what the urgency is because he'll think that you are working hard and too busy to play with email all day. And you'll get a raise pronto."
Vishnu: "What does 'uber' mean?"
You: "It means you know what you are talking about... You should use uber in every sentence when you are talking to the Boss in the states. You'll get a raise for sure. Also... When he does call make sure you have some of the Punab music...
Vishnu: "Punjabi..."
You: "Whatever... Just make sure it is playing playing really loudly in the background every time he calls. He will apprecieate your culture."
Vishnu: "Oh thanks for your wise teachings..."
You: "No sweat. And one more thing do you read Slashdot?"
Vishnu: "What is that?"
You: "Oh great... If you don't know what Slashdot is... You'll loose your job for sure!"
Vishnu: "Oh no!"
You: "Well buddy... I'll clue you in. Reading Slashdot is more important than actually doing any work at your job and you should always have it open at work and hit refresh every few minutes to see if there are any new stories. Then if you see anything that you don't have authority to talk about you need to make a comment with outrageous claims so that you get what they call 'modded up' and everyone will think that you are the head honcho and you'll great a raise for sure! Not only that but the more mod ups you get, the better karma you'll have!"
Vishu: "Oh blessed karma! Thank you American sir!"
You: "Anytime."
Experience tells me that such predictions are more wrong than they are right.
Depends on who making the prediction...
If it is lone column writer on some newspaper claiming that we will have Fusion power by 2015 because he saw a science fiction movie then chances are it won't happen.
If it is a small group of scientists with PHDs in nuclear science saying we will have fusion power by 2015 because they have done computer models then it is more likley to happen.
If it is a larger group of government officials, world leaders, and scientists saying we will have fusion by 2015 because they have allocated 1 Trillion dollars to the project then I'd say they will most likley be able to pull it off.
Also some trends are self fufilling prophecies. Take More's Law for example. There isn't anything that is a law about this trend and could up and stop anyday now. However, because this is the goal the market has set for itself, companies know they are expected to keep up with this trend.
With that in mind it we use Moore's law (and assume that this trend can continue) we can safley assume by 2018 (or 2020) that we will have enough MIPS or FLOPS (100 billion MIPS) in a $1,000 hardware to simulate all the several trillion neurons of a human mind in parallel and therefore StrongAI will at least be theoretically possible by this time.
Of course we might need to take other things into account, but this is a better prediction of the future because it is based off current trends rather than saying "Look... We have a cars... And we have airplanes and they are both improving on their own field every year... Oh I have a cool idea... Someone could combine them and we can have flying cars in about 40 years!"
Without thinking about the social or technical problems one might be faced with a drunk driver flying their car into a building at 300mph. That said... The reason we don't have flying cars today is because we still can't drive the ones on the ground safely (40,000 died to car related accidents last year)
Speaking of which... (And if you want to talk about future trends and predictions) You should check out the talks given at the Singularity Summit. Sebastian Thrun (the head dev on the Stanley winning car at the DARPA 2005 grand challenge) gives a good talk on automated car technology and his goal to eventually see computers replace people as the drivers. We might not see anything for another 10 years to reach the market, but we know this stuff is feasible given enough research and technical effort. It will be interesting to see what the 2007 Urban Challenge will bring... And it will be more important than any of these CNN predictions.
Actually, airbursts are apparently quite common with even Iron metorites...
Take the Meteor Crater in Arizona for example. Throughout its history (after being discovered and acknowledged to be a impact from a space object) people thought they could find a rather large iron core. There were many owners of the site who set up drilling/mining projects so they could find the "grand prize" of this object.
However, all this time they could never find this no matter how deep they went, but all over the site was plenty of iron and other minerals like coesite and stishovite (and the special quartz you can only make when you have high energy impacts like an abomb).
So it is pretty much speculated that the object had an airburst right before it impacted turning into plasma. The crater was created through raw energy of this explosion rather than the object burrying itself into the earth.
Think about it like this...
The video game and computer game industry make more money than TV and movies combined.
But the porn industry makes more money than the TV, Music, and video game industry combined.
Yet we don't hear mainstream media talking about porn all that often other than the "Think of the children!" diatribes by hotair pundits.