People don't pay for more reality. I can walk down the street for free. I can (indeed, will) get stuck in traffic without ponying up to Disney. Things that are commonplace do not require a park. Things that are extra-ordinary, different, outside the norm, that require effort to create, can be found in Disneyworld. That doesn't mean we should look down on anything that isn't real, everyday stuff. The world needs imagination.
Besides, if I visit a museum, all I'll see is a bunch of art and paintings- art is just a reflection of life, not the real thing. It's for people who can't handle reality. So are literature, movies, TV, computer games, plays, and in fact any form of entertainment at all. Or at least, that seems to be the thrust of your arguement. Just because someone may want to view or experience fantasy once in a while doesn't mean they "can't handle the real world".
I think we've seen it about three times now. It wasn't even a "story" in the sense of "news" the first time. The horse is DEAD, Katz, you can stop beating it now. The horse is most of the way to being glue at this point.
"Disneyworld is for people who can't cope with the real world"? Is it possible you are unaware the Disneyworld is in fact a THEME PARK? What on Earth do you want, a theme park that's just like the real world? Amusement rides are SUPPOSED to be different from reality.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we've removed all the roller coasters from the Disney and Six Flags parks because rides are for people who can't handle reality. Instead, we've replaced them with concrete strips which perfectly simulate walking along an ordinary sidewalk. Visit Cubicle World, where you can spend 8 hours taking tech support calls. Marvel at Lawn Mowing Land, where you can mow a large segment of ordinary lawn. Don't forget to visit Stuck In Traffic, which perfectly simulates sitting in an immobile car on a hot LA freeway for three hours."
Katz claims to be looking for answers and insights, but that's a lie. The very title of his article shows he's already made up his mind. "The Tragedy of Technology" doesn't leave a lot of suspense about the expected results of his data gathering. It's as if I announced I was going to write an article about which Slashdot writers were good and which aren't, but before I even began reading their work, I announce the title of my article will be "Why Jon Katz sucks so damn bad". The decision has been made, the results will be forced to conform to the desired result, any actual thought or data gathering is a formality and a sham, as is Katz's piece of non-investigative reporting. What utter tripe. In the future, Katz, at least have the courtesy to PRETEND you're going to listen to facts, information, and arguments before you come to your conclusion.
"Life speeds up the death of a planet". I cannot imagine a sillier, more nonsensical statement. You've never seen any planet besides this one with life on it, nor that apparently ever had life. In addition, what does "the death of a planet" mean? You can't possibly say it means the death of the lifeforms on the planet, since presumably no lifeforms die on a planet with no life, not at any speed. You can't say it means the death of the environment, because without life, all environments are the same- if we turn our air to sulphuric acid, we die, but the air isn't any worse from an objective standpoint- Venus already has an acidic atmostphere and it's still there. The planet hasn't suffered any. You can't think "death of a planet" refers to the actual planet itself, since that's a zillion ton hunk of rock that will still be orbiting the sun long after we're gone- still round, still in one piece. We sure aren't going to be breaking it in half anytime soon.
I'd like to see your data- how many planets have you seen die that had life on them, and how many planets have you seen die that did not, and how long did each one take to die, and how did you know when they'd died?
Try to make some tiny modicum of sense in the future.
That's a myth. The people in the suits are actors and actresses... I worked there for quite some time. The characters typically ARE under surveilence by security, however. (Several teenagers in a Six Flags park once decided it would be funny to beat up the guy in the Fred Flintstone suit. Anyone at Disneyland who decides to pull a similar stunt is going to fail. Miserably.)
As for the "They didn't like my t-shirt", issue. Disney doesn't have a dress code, but the parks are intended to be someplace you can take you kids without a problem. Like ALL places of business which are trying to maintain a particular atmosphere (Nice restaurants, formal balls, etc.) if you wear something inappropriate, they'll ask you to leave. They, like every business I've ever been in, have one of those "reserves the right to refuse service to anyone..." signs.
You make a lot of interesting assertions, there. I don't think most of them are true. I'm fairly sure that people live longer lives, and infant mortality rates are lower, in most parts of the world. There may be areas which are exceptions, but those are largely caused by sociopolitical factors, not technoligcal ones. In a country where the government has decided to wipe out a given segment of the population, no amount of antibiotics will help. But I think you're underestimating how unpleasant life can be in a world where if you get sick, and you don't happen to die (No anitbiotics!) and you make it to a doctor, he sticks leeches on you. A world where most people didn't need to NAME their children until age 1 or 2, because the odds of an infant surviving were so low there was no point in getting attached to it. What percentage of the population did the black plague wipe out? We cannot even conceive of a disaster on that scale hitting us. You live in a paradise, and people in a third world county may not have what you've got, but they've still got more than their ancestors did.
1. I worked for Disney for quite a while at their Disneyland park in Anaheim, CA. There is a strong tendancy among people writing about Disney to bash the company, as if their desire to have every day at the park go flawlessly is bad. Disney has high standards, and I found them to be an exacting company to work for- they require every "cast member" (the Disney term for somone working in Disneyland) to do their absolute best at all times. They give a lot in return, however. Good pay, good benifits, and a strong sense of community- corporate culture that is lacking in many large companies these days. In short, I enjoyed working for them, and I wish every company I work for could be as well run. They know what they're doing.
2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections, childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio, most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago, I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge. Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us any good.
1. I worked for Disney for quite a while at their Disneyland park in Anaheim, CA. There is a strong tendancy among people writing about Disney to bash the company, as if their desire to have every day at the park go flawlessly is bad. Disney has high standards, and I found them to be an exacting company to work for- they require every "cast member" (the Disney term for somone working in Disneyland) to do their absolute best at all times. They give a lot in return, however. Good pay, good benifits, and a strong sense of community- corporate culture that is lacking in many large companies these days. In short, I enjoyed working for them, and I wish every company I work for could be as well run. They know what they're doing.
2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections, childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio, most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago, I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge. Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us any good.
I've never heard of TRUSTe, and judging from what I read here, I haven't missed anything. Even the most blantant, outright abuses go unpunished. Not that I expect TRUSTe to have the power to punish a company, but at least remove the TRUSTe seal from their web page. As it is now, I truly wonder if there's ANYTHING a company could do to convince TRUSTe to refuse them a TRUSTe mark. So far, nothing. It's a meaningless rubber stamp, present on any web page which wants it, with no bearing at all on privacy.
If memory serves, there was a class action lawsuit a while ago against Prodigy. Prodigy was installing the custom "connect to us" software, similar to the contents of an AOL CD, and included, without mentioning it, a bit of code which scanned your hard drive for financial software such as Quicken, and if it found it, it sent your financial data to Prodigy. Prodigy's users eventually discovered this and sued, winning a token settlement (a few free hours of connect time, I think.) I could be wrong about this- does anybody else remember it? In any event, it seems the same idea as RealJukebox, and the fact that Prodigy didn't get slapped hard enough for it makes me think Real won't either.
So they release software and publish an essentially dishonest privacy statement, collecting data they don't tell you they're collecting. When they get caught, they announce "Oh, okay, we'll stop. Here's a patch." Given that they've already demonstrated a desire and willingness to breach my privacy and lie about it, I see no reason to assume the patch does anything other than disguise the method by which they collect data. It is, after all, closed source.
I started a naming convention in my office of RHPS characters brad janet riffraff magenta frank so far. Waiting for more to use frank, ralph, betty, and colombia.
This software is being sold to customers in a panic- they're unthinkingly grabbing at anything that claims to be able to save them from the big, lurid spectacle of a school massacre. The great thing about seling something to someone who's buying it unthinkingly is that they won't critically evaluate it for quite a while. The quality of your product is immaterial, because by the time people realize it's junk, you've cashed in your stock options and retired as a millionaire to the Bahamas. If I were the guy making this software, I wouldn't even bother writing a program to analyze the answers students give to the questions. I'd just ask bunch of questions, then spit out a random answer. I get paid the same, yes?
Uh, I'm not sure choosing an island with Monitor lizards on it was such a good idea. They're very large, very dangerous. Even supposing the network has some staff waiting in the wings to save anyone who looks like they're going to die of starvation, exposure, or whatnot, a Monitor Lizard can kill someone quite rapidly... Every day that goes by makes me more glad I don't have a TV.
A while ago, I saw a feature story on an evening news show about a restaurant in Scotland called McDonald's. The McDonalds company sued to make the owner change the name, which turned out to be a mistake because the owner was THE McDonald of Clan McDonald, and Scottish law is pretty biased toward his side. McDonalds (the company) backed down pretty quick when they realized he had the power to force THEM to change the name of all their fast food joints (in Scotland), if he so choose.
I'm not really sure that citizens of highly civilized countries consume more. Consumption is a two way street- you can't measure it without knowing what I produce. A hydroelectric dam doesn't really consume water- you get water and electricty back out. A citizen of the US doesn't just eat and breathe, he produces products, or knowledge, or food, or whatever his job is. Since we export knowledge and technology, our net consumption is probably negative. In addition, your number of 95% looks made up. Where'd it come from?
Hey, no need to apologize. It's good to see someone besides Americans getting into the business of idiotic patent claims. We've had a monopoly on this industry for far to long, it's time to make "head-up-ass-patent" a global effort.
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve to have neither". --Ben Franklin.
My apoligies if I've misattributed this quote. The point it makes is valid. We have to find better ways to make our schools safe than violating everybody's rights. My ancestors fought and DIED for freedom- now I should throw that away so I'll be SAFE? I have nothing but comtempt for anyone so self absorbed they place their own safety above the hard won freedoms we have in this country.
"I don't want to feel this way. You have done this to me."
It's all your fault, I'm just an innocent good person turned into a psycho by the evil "Everyone Else, Who Must Be Blamed For All My Problems Because If I Blamed Myself I'd Have To Try And Be Less Of A Complete Git". Woe is me, it sure sucks to be a young member of one of the richest, freest societies in the history of mankind. Nothing, including my own whinyness and self-absorbtion, is my fault.
Caution: I do not believe that "whinyness" is a real word. I DO believe that you know what I meant when I used it.
Re:Combat Armor isn't that far off, after all...
on
Project Grizzly
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· Score: 1
That's because this version is designed to stop bears, and bears rarely use napalm. If you took the same basic design and changed it for a super marine, you'd eliminate some features and put in others. The Genesis suit mentioned in the site sounds flexible enough to get up if knocked over, bulletproof, Axe-weilding-Hells-Angel proof, heat proof, and it's got a prototype budget of $1.5 million. A military suit would have a much bigger budget, allowing for better materials, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
People don't pay for more reality. I can walk down the street for free. I can (indeed, will) get stuck in traffic without ponying up to Disney. Things that are commonplace do not require a park. Things that are extra-ordinary, different, outside the norm, that require effort to create, can be found in Disneyworld. That doesn't mean we should look down on anything that isn't real, everyday stuff. The world needs imagination.
Besides, if I visit a museum, all I'll see is a bunch of art and paintings- art is just a reflection of life, not the real thing. It's for people who can't handle reality. So are literature, movies, TV, computer games, plays, and in fact any form of entertainment at all. Or at least, that seems to be the thrust of your arguement. Just because someone may want to view or experience fantasy once in a while doesn't mean they "can't handle the real world".
I think we've seen it about three times now. It wasn't even a "story" in the sense of "news" the first time. The horse is DEAD, Katz, you can stop beating it now. The horse is most of the way to being glue at this point.
"Disneyworld is for people who can't cope with the real world"? Is it possible you are unaware the Disneyworld is in fact a THEME PARK? What on Earth do you want, a theme park that's just like the real world? Amusement rides are SUPPOSED to be different from reality.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we've removed all the roller coasters from the Disney and Six Flags parks because rides are for people who can't handle reality. Instead, we've replaced them with concrete strips which perfectly simulate walking along an ordinary sidewalk. Visit Cubicle World, where you can spend 8 hours taking tech support calls. Marvel at Lawn Mowing Land, where you can mow a large segment of ordinary lawn. Don't forget to visit Stuck In Traffic, which perfectly simulates sitting in an immobile car on a hot LA freeway for three hours."
Katz claims to be looking for answers and insights, but that's a lie. The very title of his article shows he's already made up his mind. "The Tragedy of Technology" doesn't leave a lot of suspense about the expected results of his data gathering. It's as if I announced I was going to write an article about which Slashdot writers were good and which aren't, but before I even began reading their work, I announce the title of my article will be "Why Jon Katz sucks so damn bad". The decision has been made, the results will be forced to conform to the desired result, any actual thought or data gathering is a formality and a sham, as is Katz's piece of non-investigative reporting. What utter tripe. In the future, Katz, at least have the courtesy to PRETEND you're going to listen to facts, information, and arguments before you come to your conclusion.
"Life speeds up the death of a planet". I cannot imagine a sillier, more nonsensical statement. You've never seen any planet besides this one with life on it, nor that apparently ever had life. In addition, what does "the death of a planet" mean? You can't possibly say it means the death of the lifeforms on the planet, since presumably no lifeforms die on a planet with no life, not at any speed. You can't say it means the death of the environment, because without life, all environments are the same- if we turn our air to sulphuric acid, we die, but the air isn't any worse from an objective standpoint- Venus already has an acidic atmostphere and it's still there. The planet hasn't suffered any. You can't think "death of a planet" refers to the actual planet itself, since that's a zillion ton hunk of rock that will still be orbiting the sun long after we're gone- still round, still in one piece. We sure aren't going to be breaking it in half anytime soon.
I'd like to see your data- how many planets have you seen die that had life on them, and how many planets have you seen die that did not, and how long did each one take to die, and how did you know when they'd died?
Try to make some tiny modicum of sense in the future.
That's a myth. The people in the suits are actors and actresses... I worked there for quite some time. The characters typically ARE under surveilence by security, however. (Several teenagers in a Six Flags park once decided it would be funny to beat up the guy in the Fred Flintstone suit. Anyone at Disneyland who decides to pull a similar stunt is going to fail. Miserably.)
As for the "They didn't like my t-shirt", issue. Disney doesn't have a dress code, but the parks are intended to be someplace you can take you kids without a problem. Like ALL places of business which are trying to maintain a particular atmosphere (Nice restaurants, formal balls, etc.) if you wear something inappropriate, they'll ask you to leave. They, like every business I've ever been in, have one of those "reserves the right to refuse service to anyone..." signs.
You make a lot of interesting assertions, there. I don't think most of them are true. I'm fairly sure that people live longer lives, and infant mortality rates are lower, in most parts of the world. There may be areas which are exceptions, but those are largely caused by sociopolitical factors, not technoligcal ones. In a country where the government has decided to wipe out a given segment of the population, no amount of antibiotics will help. But I think you're underestimating how unpleasant life can be in a world where if you get sick, and you don't happen to die (No anitbiotics!) and you make it to a doctor, he sticks leeches on you. A world where most people didn't need to NAME their children until age 1 or 2, because the odds of an infant surviving were so low there was no point in getting attached to it. What percentage of the population did the black plague wipe out? We cannot even conceive of a disaster on that scale hitting us. You live in a paradise, and people in a third world county may not have what you've got, but they've still got more than their ancestors did.
I have two things to say on this subject:
1. I worked for Disney for quite a while at their Disneyland park in Anaheim, CA. There is a strong tendancy among people writing about Disney to bash the company, as if their desire to have every day at the park go flawlessly is bad. Disney has high standards, and I found them to be an exacting company to work for- they require every "cast member" (the Disney term for somone working in Disneyland) to do their absolute best at all times. They give a lot in return, however. Good pay, good benifits, and a strong sense of community- corporate culture that is lacking in many large companies these days. In short, I enjoyed working for them, and I wish every company I work for could be as well run. They know what they're doing.
2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections, childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio, most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago, I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge. Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us any good.
I have two things to say on this subject:
1. I worked for Disney for quite a while at their Disneyland park in Anaheim, CA. There is a strong tendancy among people writing about Disney to bash the company, as if their desire to have every day at the park go flawlessly is bad. Disney has high standards, and I found them to be an exacting company to work for- they require every "cast member" (the Disney term for somone working in Disneyland) to do their absolute best at all times. They give a lot in return, however. Good pay, good benifits, and a strong sense of community- corporate culture that is lacking in many large companies these days. In short, I enjoyed working for them, and I wish every company I work for could be as well run. They know what they're doing.
2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections, childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio, most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago, I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge. Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us any good.
I've never heard of TRUSTe, and judging from what I read here, I haven't missed anything. Even the most blantant, outright abuses go unpunished. Not that I expect TRUSTe to have the power to punish a company, but at least remove the TRUSTe seal from their web page. As it is now, I truly wonder if there's ANYTHING a company could do to convince TRUSTe to refuse them a TRUSTe mark. So far, nothing. It's a meaningless rubber stamp, present on any web page which wants it, with no bearing at all on privacy.
If memory serves, there was a class action lawsuit a while ago against Prodigy. Prodigy was installing the custom "connect to us" software, similar to the contents of an AOL CD, and included, without mentioning it, a bit of code which scanned your hard drive for financial software such as Quicken, and if it found it, it sent your financial data to Prodigy. Prodigy's users eventually discovered this and sued, winning a token settlement (a few free hours of connect time, I think.) I could be wrong about this- does anybody else remember it? In any event, it seems the same idea as RealJukebox, and the fact that Prodigy didn't get slapped hard enough for it makes me think Real won't either.
So they release software and publish an essentially dishonest privacy statement, collecting data they don't tell you they're collecting. When they get caught, they announce "Oh, okay, we'll stop. Here's a patch." Given that they've already demonstrated a desire and willingness to breach my privacy and lie about it, I see no reason to assume the patch does anything other than disguise the method by which they collect data. It is, after all, closed source.
I started a naming convention in my office of RHPS characters brad janet riffraff magenta frank so far. Waiting for more to use frank, ralph, betty, and colombia.
This software is being sold to customers in a panic- they're unthinkingly grabbing at anything that claims to be able to save them from the big, lurid spectacle of a school massacre. The great thing about seling something to someone who's buying it unthinkingly is that they won't critically evaluate it for quite a while. The quality of your product is immaterial, because by the time people realize it's junk, you've cashed in your stock options and retired as a millionaire to the Bahamas. If I were the guy making this software, I wouldn't even bother writing a program to analyze the answers students give to the questions. I'd just ask bunch of questions, then spit out a random answer. I get paid the same, yes?
Uh, I'm not sure choosing an island with Monitor lizards on it was such a good idea. They're very large, very dangerous. Even supposing the network has some staff waiting in the wings to save anyone who looks like they're going to die of starvation, exposure, or whatnot, a Monitor Lizard can kill someone quite rapidly... Every day that goes by makes me more glad I don't have a TV.
A while ago, I saw a feature story on an evening news show about a restaurant in Scotland called McDonald's. The McDonalds company sued to make the owner change the name, which turned out to be a mistake because the owner was THE McDonald of Clan McDonald, and Scottish law is pretty biased toward his side. McDonalds (the company) backed down pretty quick when they realized he had the power to force THEM to change the name of all their fast food joints (in Scotland), if he so choose.
I'm not really sure that citizens of highly civilized countries consume more. Consumption is a two way street- you can't measure it without knowing what I produce. A hydroelectric dam doesn't really consume water- you get water and electricty back out. A citizen of the US doesn't just eat and breathe, he produces products, or knowledge, or food, or whatever his job is. Since we export knowledge and technology, our net consumption is probably negative. In addition, your number of 95% looks made up. Where'd it come from?
Hey, no need to apologize. It's good to see someone besides Americans getting into the business of idiotic patent claims. We've had a monopoly on this industry for far to long, it's time to make "head-up-ass-patent" a global effort.
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve to have neither". --Ben Franklin.
My apoligies if I've misattributed this quote. The point it makes is valid. We have to find better ways to make our schools safe than violating everybody's rights. My ancestors fought and DIED for freedom- now I should throw that away so I'll be SAFE? I have nothing but comtempt for anyone so self absorbed they place their own safety above the hard won freedoms we have in this country.
"I don't want to feel this way. You have done this to me."
It's all your fault, I'm just an innocent good person turned into a psycho by the evil "Everyone Else, Who Must Be Blamed For All My Problems Because If I Blamed Myself I'd Have To Try And Be Less Of A Complete Git". Woe is me, it sure sucks to be a young member of one of the richest, freest societies in the history of mankind. Nothing, including my own whinyness and self-absorbtion, is my fault.
Caution: I do not believe that "whinyness" is a real word. I DO believe that you know what I meant when I used it.
That's because this version is designed to stop bears, and bears rarely use napalm. If you took the same basic design and changed it for a super marine, you'd eliminate some features and put in others. The Genesis suit mentioned in the site sounds flexible enough to get up if knocked over, bulletproof, Axe-weilding-Hells-Angel proof, heat proof, and it's got a prototype budget of $1.5 million. A military suit would have a much bigger budget, allowing for better materials, etc.