You enjoyed that one, huh? You're right, it was cheesy. We need the original riveting Star Trek fight scene where our hero manages to put commas not only in his dialogue but also his attacks... against a man in a rubber lizard suit.
Trek fans are hilarious. They are even more hilarious when they turn on each other.
It's a movie, relax. If you didn't like the "modernized plot" they opted for, don't watch it. If you would rather watch a journey through space, watch a journey through space. Today's movies are made to target the largest cross section of audience to maximize income. You certainly won't find me watch Star Wars 1-3 anytime soon because of this.
Yeah, but this amazingly intrusive technology was planning for that:
(i) scanning storage files of the user's computer to identify any digital media content files stored therein,(ii) uploading a list of any identified digital media content files to the host computer system, and(iii) adding to the list any digital media content files that the user purchases from the purchasing component of the host computer system
You would think it would end at notifying the mothership that you are in possession of that file. Nope, from the details:
For each digital media file on the list, the Uploader finds the matching source file and transcodes the media into a format supported by the system components, if necessary.
Man, I can't wait to install that uploader only to find my entire MP3 collection has been transformed to.lala and no longer works unless I pay for it. Sounds a bit like my medical records.
Is there any hash function that actually is secure?
Of course the good ol' rot13 !
Not secure enough, better apply it twice for double protection.
You can tell the men from the boys by how many times they do things. Like when I restart my computer, I do it three times to make sure it will work when the things start back up inside it.
'moving in an orderly fashion toward the theater exits'
An elderly application was trampled to death today as everyone struggled to exit the Sha One theater after someone screamed that an unknown assailant had a knife. After the panic, there was no evidence of injuries from the alleged attack and police are still investigating the presence of an actual weapon.
Lawyers have really managed to convince the population at large that they their art is magic... when in fact they ultimately do something directly analogous to what I did in high school speech: do some research and present an opinion in a persuasive manner.
Well, I hate lawyers more than the next guy but they do more than that. I mean, do you know your state's law code (those books are huge)? Do you know all case histories on a particular subject? Do you have access to every single one of these cases? Do you spend 40+ hours a week reading this stuff? Is being misinformed dangerous when you're talking about the law?
It reminds me so much of the free energy nuts like this guy that haven't spent years and years studying physics and are missing something that invalidates all of their work. Should we have to take them seriously? Even after their proven wrong, they seem to persist. I assure you it would be far worse in law cases. Do you really want to have to page through that for a law case? Should a lawyer or judge really be held accountable for not taking every average citizen's two cents into account for a case? I think not. I am arguing for the "do nothing, ex parte blogging is fine the way it is" scenario presented in the paper. I am definitely against people being unable to discuss cases and pro-free speech but we are almost always massively uninformed so leave it as nothing more than blogging.
.. the law lobby will try to make it illegal for the "proles" to discuss case law.
Uh, I don't think the Stanford Law Review was advocating that. From the lengthy PDF they do try analyze (if you can call it that) what would happen under different types of reform. They list them as such:
Do Nothing
Do Too Much
Regulate Parties and Amici
An Open Invitation to Blog
Regulate the Court
I think the most outlandish thing they are proposing is stated as wildly outlandish (Do Too Much):
Instead of doing nothing, a code of ethics could theoretically attempt to do a great deal. Regulation could be draconian: no online discussion of pending Supreme Court cases by any licensed attorney. Such a rule would obviously go too far. It would impoverish public debate regarding the Supreme Court's work, and it would be wildly unconstitutional.
Not making it illegal, just regulating it heavily.
I haven't read all of the 39 pages of this report but from what I gather, I don't see why this should be any different than scientific blogging (or, in pre-internet terms, armchair science).
Example: I read Bryan William Jones' blog. It sometimes has scientific topics although rarely anything new. Let's say Dr. Jones makes some important discovery in a field he is not an expert in... like bird behavior. And it's a significant contribution to that field. Maybe he realizes what he's discovered and maybe he doesn't know the intricacies of bird behavior so he blogs about it.
Is this a peer reviewed published piece of research? No. Is it important to the field? It might be. Should he get credit? Yes. Should bird behaviorists be required to read every blog on the internet looking for a breakthrough? No. Could it go unnoticed? Yes. Will this happen often? Highly unlikely. Will Dr. Jones rare footage of the endangered African Upside-down tufted titmouse's in flight mating dance be a hit to the general public who like little birdies? Probably.
I see lawyering in a similar light. You expect the laywers and judges involved in a case to be completely on top of everything and knowledgable about everything (try to suppress laughter, please). But of course someone like Groklaw's PJ could bust out a piece of work putting more of the puzzle together than any of the inept dinosaurs running the show. Similar questions and answers may follow this scenario as in the case of the blogging scientist. Most importantly, that this position may be popular with the public but it's not a part of the case unless someone involved takes note and makes it so and puts it into the spotlight (or Bird Behavioral Journal in the former example).
That said, there is one serious flaw in this analogy. Science is usually correct or wrong. And usually easily decided (upon reflection, perhaps I should have used something more hotly contested like quantum theory instead of a bird dance). Law, as we all know here, is not only many shades of gray but also something that many people on the internet get emotional about (which is a good thing) and think they are experts in (which is a bad thing). I have not read the legal minutiae of my state or even country. I know the popular things and I extrapolate on them--almost always erroneously.
In short, I would opine that it would be a violation of free speech to outlaw it and dangerous if not stupid to make it legally important. There is a reason for the BAR exam. If you have not passed that, you probably just want to be a citizen on a soapbox instead of a legal target.
Blogging is by and large a disposable medium that can be morphed into important things by the appropriate people. It is satisfying to express one's ideas like I am doing right now. Leave it that way.
They're giving laptops to "low-performing school districts with limited resources", but surely to actually use those laptops in lessons, the schools will have to spend even more of their limited resources setting up an infrastructure and new teaching plans?
What's interesting about this is this part from the article:
The child must sign a document promising simply to try to "do something great" for their state, families -- and themselves -- with the laptop.
It doesn't sound like they're putting these laptops in the hands of the children for the purpose of teachers utilizing them as teaching tools. And of course, with such a bold new technology, I would expect the teachers not to use them at all at first. Then learn to use them as an augmenting learning tool. And maybe the final stage five years from now is to have the textbook on the laptop and all that jazz.
I know a school teacher in the Bronx and from what she tells me it sounds like all other attempts to improve the learning process have failed or actually deterred from it. She sounds like she'd be willing to try anything.
Keep in mind that these laptops are probably going to cost the same as a couple of new textbooks. Who cares if it fails? It'd be great if a few kids did do something great for their state and family with these laptops.
Well, from their calculator, they do include parking costs and they have a table for Maintenance (4.67 cents per mile on a medium car) and Tires (0.85 cents per mile on a medium car).
And I think they're banking on things like if you are married and one of you drives and one rides the train or bus, you can cut down to one vehicle maybe:
If you can live with one less vehicle in your household, you would save an additional $5,576 in car ownership cost (full-coverage insurance, license, registration, taxes, depreciation and finance charge).
I like public transportation but in DC, the metro rail sucks. It sucks something fierce. The stops in DC are so so limited. I still end up taking taxis for most of the places I want to go... or plan for an hour walk. I go to NYC and it's like heaven--I do not care of the condition of the train. DC rails shut down at midnight on a weeknight... and sometimes you wait 15+ minutes for the next train. Transferring is almost out of the question. Wish it worked for me for my job but it doesn't. It barely works for me on my drinking expeditions.
This is about hardware changing, not the web. If the CPU manufacturers were still concentrating on X Ghz chips instead of Y core chips, Mozilla wouldn't be doing this. Intel and AMD have spoken and the software world better pay attention.
Mozilla is interested in providing a better user experience and they're correct in taking full advantage of your hardware. As multicore chips become cheaper and cheaper to fabricate and they show up in netbooks with low frequencies, this is going to pay off big time.
As chipmakers demo 64 or 128 core chips, why aren't we coding and being trained in Erlang? Why aren't schools teaching this as a mandatory class? Why aren't old applications being broken down and analyzed to multithread components that don't interact? Why isn't the compiler theory concentrating on how to automate this (if possible)?
It's becoming obvious the number of cores is going to far outweigh the number of applications we'll be running five years from now (so you can't leave it up to the OS) so why isn't this a bigger concentration now in application development?
I understand a lot of server side stuff can take advantage of this (in the nature of serving many clients at once) but it's only a matter of time before it's typical on the desktop.
Probably blocked everything VoIP related to force airphones on you.
From the article:
I'm trying to get some critical production tasks done, and the rep I work with emailed me to call her. Thinking I was so tricky and cool, I fired up Skype and dialed out. Massive failure. For some reason the sound is horrendously choppy and thin sounding. It was completely unusable. I didn't get a chance to speak and see how I sounded on the other end. I tried dialing the Skype test call, but I only caught every other word.
You could be experiencing a difference of bandwidth versus latency. Although the two are related, you could be suffering high latency with Skype's servers. You might try pinging those servers compared to pinging www.google.com. If you are experiencing high latency, Skype uses UDP rather than TCP (like normal web traffic). If I remember correctly, UDP packets are many small packets which may perform badly over connections of very high latency. Your bandwidth readings on a TCP sight might look just large enough to use Skype but since it's a UDP service it could be unusable.
Another possibility is that Gogo is demoting UDP traffic in some sort of QoS scheme to ensure that things like e-mail and regular HTTP traffic aren't slow or interrupted because 4 people are using Skype.
"So, uh, I heard your computer wouldn't start because it's missing a hard drive. This is very common in our neighborhood. You're lucky though, I happen to be fully bonded and certified at returning computers without hard drives to their normal working states... "
Also, Murdoch, please be sure to notify Google that you don't want their help in gaining readership. I would also like to hear how you explain MySpace's massive success... you only host that for free because it's user created content? You can't afford a staff with the money these sites bring in?
Good luck, you're going to need it. I would claim a move that reduces readership in any way is a bold move by any news source.
Fact #1: Microsoft's strategy when it comes to software sales: sexy > stable > performance.
Myth #1: Windows is only getting faster and better.
Fact #2: MS Marketing's job is to convince you that Myth #1 is true while at the same time maintaining sex appeal.
Fact #3: Windows 7 is still Windows.
I'm going to assume you're talking very very large data centers here as it wouldn't make sense to streamline this for a few "blocks." But I think this is an already pretty pervasive idea. Why, we have already talked about Google's ideas on server 'blocks' and data 'pod' technology for their sharded databases. While I'm not sure if this high level design inherently affects relational databases negatively, it sure seems to be the future of data centers.
Google's strategy sounds even more like homogeneous Lego blocks than either of the two article's solutions.
Are these really the "best" that American comics has to offer? The submitter hits on the fact that the bulk of the comics that reach U.S. readers are superhero stories from two or three big publishers. The list of authors represented in this book reads like a roster of the exceptions to the rule -- the people who have made names for themselves by getting their offbeat comics published, usually by one or two or three of the better-funded "indie" publishers (Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, Last Gasp). What about the comics that simply aren't reaching an audience because they weren't created by a known "name"? Was any attempt made to hunt them down and represent them in this book? Or is this just the same old club, getting together and congratulating themselves yet again?
Disclaimer: I'm the submitter.
I'm sorry you feel that way about this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, perhaps it was made for me and not for you. But I will cherish it and probably look for 2006, 2007 and 2009 when it comes out.
If you know of such truly indie unheard of comics, the link on the summary has a submission page for suggestions of Lynda Barry and Co. to consider.
The author must be North American (i.e., from Canada, the United States, or Mexico).
Work published between September 1, 2007, and August 31, 2008, is eligible for the 2009 volume.
The 2010 volume will cover work published from 9/1/08 through 8/31/09, and so on.
Individual issues, collections, original graphic novels, and self--published comics (including mini-comics) are eligible for consideration.
We must see your comics in order to consider them! Please send one copy of each book you publish to us at the address below.
Please label each book submitted with contact information and release date.If this information isn't clearly printed in the book, you must write it on a Post--it note and stick that on the cover.
Also for the people tagging this article XKCD and Sinfest, webcomics are eligible:
Are Web comics eligible?
Yes, Web comics are eligible, if they were first posted within the eligibility dates (September 1, 2007, through August 31, 2008, for this next edition). Send hard copy, carefully labeled as to date of first posting and URL, to us at the Houghton Mifflin address.
Nothing would make me happier than to see a mom and pop printing press featured in one of these books. I ordered two things from Paping on the cheap and their website gave me reason to believe they do all the woodcuts by hand.
... but contrary to official postings from 'General British' himself...
If you bother to read the official document hosted by GamePolitics, Garriott claims that letter was fabricated while he was in quarantine from his space flight. And he claims its true intent was to deprive him of stock options he would have if he were terminated involuntarily. Since it sounded as voluntary termination in the letter, he no longer had these stock options:
22. Shortly after the "quarantine call," NCsoft prepared and presented an "open letter" to Mr. Garriott, announcing Mr Garriott's departure from the company. That letter was drafted by NCsoft but purported to be from Mr. Garriott to the Tabula Rasa players. The letter announced that Mr. Garriott was "leaving NCsoft to purse [new] interests." Though NCsoft's letter omitted details about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Garriott's departure, Mr. Garriott saw no reason at the time to object to these omissions, and he did not object to NCsoft posting the letter on the Tabula Rasa website.
23. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it appears that NCsoft's "open letter" was a prelude to the wrongful conduct by NCsoft to come.
E. NCsoft Re-Characterized Mr. Garriott's Termination as a Voluntary Departure, Depriving Mr. Garriott of the Full Value of His Stock Options.
Seems to boil down to whether or not his termination was voluntary or involuntary that determines if he could have exercised $27 million (not $24 million) in stock options.
It's true. Both sides use CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, etc heavily. And yet there is no new laws proposed to regulate CNN. Probably because it's less anonymous but also because it's considered "the press" and the phrase "government regulating the press" in America is worse than insulting your favorite sports team.
You know, it would be an interesting strategy to turn the bittorrent protocol into a means of disseminating news and blogs as well as large files. I mean they're just smaller files but could have huge legal implications for regulations of it. It would be nice to see (and make sense bandwidth wise) CNN distributing their video content with embedded advertisements in torrents. How popular would they be? I'm not sure. But it would give P2P advocates a case to cry foul when the government tries to regulate the software & protocol.
I guess "Now I can't share DVDs" just doesn't sound as patriotic as "The government is controlling and censoring a new press outlet and must be stopped."
Recently a company that monitors peer-to-peer networks said it found classified information about the systems used on board the president's helicopter in a shared folder on a computer in Iran, after a file containing the data was accidentally leaked on a peer-to-peer network last summer.
It's true, I saw these files and it appears our nation's most important secrets have been released to one of our most dangerous enemies. They are a move-by-move account of every Freecell game played by Obama. From that, the Iranians have been able to extrapolate his strategy for the Iraq theater and predict his every move, ergo, peer to peer file sharing must be stopped.
Reading this story kind of makes me want to draw up a huge exploded view diagram of Marine One with Hello Kitty on a treadmill in the middle of the cabin powering the main rotor... and then seed it as top secret documents on Bittorrent.
Slashdot Mirror
I know, let's have Picard fight himself!
You enjoyed that one, huh? You're right, it was cheesy. We need the original riveting Star Trek fight scene where our hero manages to put commas not only in his dialogue but also his attacks ... against a man in a rubber lizard suit.
Trek fans are hilarious. They are even more hilarious when they turn on each other.
It's a movie, relax. If you didn't like the "modernized plot" they opted for, don't watch it. If you would rather watch a journey through space, watch a journey through space. Today's movies are made to target the largest cross section of audience to maximize income. You certainly won't find me watch Star Wars 1-3 anytime soon because of this.
The Onion News Network has an informative brief piece on this entitled Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'.
...you can record it. Case closed.
Yeah, but this amazingly intrusive technology was planning for that:
(i) scanning storage files of the user's computer to identify any digital media content files stored therein,(ii) uploading a list of any identified digital media content files to the host computer system, and(iii) adding to the list any digital media content files that the user purchases from the purchasing component of the host computer system
You would think it would end at notifying the mothership that you are in possession of that file. Nope, from the details:
For each digital media file on the list, the Uploader finds the matching source file and transcodes the media into a format supported by the system components, if necessary.
Man, I can't wait to install that uploader only to find my entire MP3 collection has been transformed to .lala and no longer works unless I pay for it. Sounds a bit like my medical records.
Is there any hash function that actually is secure?
Of course the good ol' rot13 !
Not secure enough, better apply it twice for double protection.
You can tell the men from the boys by how many times they do things. Like when I restart my computer, I do it three times to make sure it will work when the things start back up inside it.
'moving in an orderly fashion toward the theater exits'
An elderly application was trampled to death today as everyone struggled to exit the Sha One theater after someone screamed that an unknown assailant had a knife. After the panic, there was no evidence of injuries from the alleged attack and police are still investigating the presence of an actual weapon.
Lawyers have really managed to convince the population at large that they their art is magic... when in fact they ultimately do something directly analogous to what I did in high school speech: do some research and present an opinion in a persuasive manner.
Well, I hate lawyers more than the next guy but they do more than that. I mean, do you know your state's law code (those books are huge)? Do you know all case histories on a particular subject? Do you have access to every single one of these cases? Do you spend 40+ hours a week reading this stuff? Is being misinformed dangerous when you're talking about the law?
It reminds me so much of the free energy nuts like this guy that haven't spent years and years studying physics and are missing something that invalidates all of their work. Should we have to take them seriously? Even after their proven wrong, they seem to persist. I assure you it would be far worse in law cases. Do you really want to have to page through that for a law case? Should a lawyer or judge really be held accountable for not taking every average citizen's two cents into account for a case? I think not. I am arguing for the "do nothing, ex parte blogging is fine the way it is" scenario presented in the paper. I am definitely against people being unable to discuss cases and pro-free speech but we are almost always massively uninformed so leave it as nothing more than blogging.
.. the law lobby will try to make it illegal for the "proles" to discuss case law.
Uh, I don't think the Stanford Law Review was advocating that. From the lengthy PDF they do try analyze (if you can call it that) what would happen under different types of reform. They list them as such:
I think the most outlandish thing they are proposing is stated as wildly outlandish (Do Too Much):
Instead of doing nothing, a code of ethics could theoretically attempt to do a great deal. Regulation could be draconian: no online discussion of pending Supreme Court cases by any licensed attorney. Such a rule would obviously go too far. It would impoverish public debate regarding the Supreme Court's work, and it would be wildly unconstitutional.
Not making it illegal, just regulating it heavily.
I haven't read all of the 39 pages of this report but from what I gather, I don't see why this should be any different than scientific blogging (or, in pre-internet terms, armchair science).
... like bird behavior. And it's a significant contribution to that field. Maybe he realizes what he's discovered and maybe he doesn't know the intricacies of bird behavior so he blogs about it.
Example: I read Bryan William Jones' blog. It sometimes has scientific topics although rarely anything new. Let's say Dr. Jones makes some important discovery in a field he is not an expert in
Is this a peer reviewed published piece of research? No. Is it important to the field? It might be. Should he get credit? Yes. Should bird behaviorists be required to read every blog on the internet looking for a breakthrough? No. Could it go unnoticed? Yes. Will this happen often? Highly unlikely. Will Dr. Jones rare footage of the endangered African Upside-down tufted titmouse's in flight mating dance be a hit to the general public who like little birdies? Probably.
I see lawyering in a similar light. You expect the laywers and judges involved in a case to be completely on top of everything and knowledgable about everything (try to suppress laughter, please). But of course someone like Groklaw's PJ could bust out a piece of work putting more of the puzzle together than any of the inept dinosaurs running the show. Similar questions and answers may follow this scenario as in the case of the blogging scientist. Most importantly, that this position may be popular with the public but it's not a part of the case unless someone involved takes note and makes it so and puts it into the spotlight (or Bird Behavioral Journal in the former example).
That said, there is one serious flaw in this analogy. Science is usually correct or wrong. And usually easily decided (upon reflection, perhaps I should have used something more hotly contested like quantum theory instead of a bird dance). Law, as we all know here, is not only many shades of gray but also something that many people on the internet get emotional about (which is a good thing) and think they are experts in (which is a bad thing). I have not read the legal minutiae of my state or even country. I know the popular things and I extrapolate on them--almost always erroneously.
In short, I would opine that it would be a violation of free speech to outlaw it and dangerous if not stupid to make it legally important. There is a reason for the BAR exam. If you have not passed that, you probably just want to be a citizen on a soapbox instead of a legal target.
Blogging is by and large a disposable medium that can be morphed into important things by the appropriate people. It is satisfying to express one's ideas like I am doing right now. Leave it that way.
They're giving laptops to "low-performing school districts with limited resources", but surely to actually use those laptops in lessons, the schools will have to spend even more of their limited resources setting up an infrastructure and new teaching plans?
What's interesting about this is this part from the article:
The child must sign a document promising simply to try to "do something great" for their state, families -- and themselves -- with the laptop.
It doesn't sound like they're putting these laptops in the hands of the children for the purpose of teachers utilizing them as teaching tools. And of course, with such a bold new technology, I would expect the teachers not to use them at all at first. Then learn to use them as an augmenting learning tool. And maybe the final stage five years from now is to have the textbook on the laptop and all that jazz.
I know a school teacher in the Bronx and from what she tells me it sounds like all other attempts to improve the learning process have failed or actually deterred from it. She sounds like she'd be willing to try anything.
Keep in mind that these laptops are probably going to cost the same as a couple of new textbooks. Who cares if it fails? It'd be great if a few kids did do something great for their state and family with these laptops.
I mean, how are you going to mitigate the blitzkrieg campaign IBM has launched against SPARC while you're busy with the merger details?
And I think they're banking on things like if you are married and one of you drives and one rides the train or bus, you can cut down to one vehicle maybe:
If you can live with one less vehicle in your household, you would save an additional $5,576 in car ownership cost (full-coverage insurance, license, registration, taxes, depreciation and finance charge).
I like public transportation but in DC, the metro rail sucks. It sucks something fierce. The stops in DC are so so limited. I still end up taking taxis for most of the places I want to go ... or plan for an hour walk. I go to NYC and it's like heaven--I do not care of the condition of the train. DC rails shut down at midnight on a weeknight ... and sometimes you wait 15+ minutes for the next train. Transferring is almost out of the question. Wish it worked for me for my job but it doesn't. It barely works for me on my drinking expeditions.
The web is changing ...
This is about hardware changing, not the web. If the CPU manufacturers were still concentrating on X Ghz chips instead of Y core chips, Mozilla wouldn't be doing this. Intel and AMD have spoken and the software world better pay attention.
Mozilla is interested in providing a better user experience and they're correct in taking full advantage of your hardware. As multicore chips become cheaper and cheaper to fabricate and they show up in netbooks with low frequencies, this is going to pay off big time.
Why isn't everyone doing this?
As chipmakers demo 64 or 128 core chips, why aren't we coding and being trained in Erlang? Why aren't schools teaching this as a mandatory class? Why aren't old applications being broken down and analyzed to multithread components that don't interact? Why isn't the compiler theory concentrating on how to automate this (if possible)?
It's becoming obvious the number of cores is going to far outweigh the number of applications we'll be running five years from now (so you can't leave it up to the OS) so why isn't this a bigger concentration now in application development?
I understand a lot of server side stuff can take advantage of this (in the nature of serving many clients at once) but it's only a matter of time before it's typical on the desktop.
Probably blocked everything VoIP related to force airphones on you.
From the article:
I'm trying to get some critical production tasks done, and the rep I work with emailed me to call her. Thinking I was so tricky and cool, I fired up Skype and dialed out. Massive failure. For some reason the sound is horrendously choppy and thin sounding. It was completely unusable. I didn't get a chance to speak and see how I sounded on the other end. I tried dialing the Skype test call, but I only caught every other word.
Sounds like he could connect, it was just choppy.
You could be experiencing a difference of bandwidth versus latency. Although the two are related, you could be suffering high latency with Skype's servers. You might try pinging those servers compared to pinging www.google.com. If you are experiencing high latency, Skype uses UDP rather than TCP (like normal web traffic). If I remember correctly, UDP packets are many small packets which may perform badly over connections of very high latency. Your bandwidth readings on a TCP sight might look just large enough to use Skype but since it's a UDP service it could be unusable.
Another possibility is that Gogo is demoting UDP traffic in some sort of QoS scheme to ensure that things like e-mail and regular HTTP traffic aren't slow or interrupted because 4 people are using Skype.
"So, uh, I heard your computer wouldn't start because it's missing a hard drive. This is very common in our neighborhood. You're lucky though, I happen to be fully bonded and certified at returning computers without hard drives to their normal working states ... "
Michael Scott could see through that.
This shit went down right in Jesus' hometown!
Theft makes baby Jesus cry!
Also, Murdoch, please be sure to notify Google that you don't want their help in gaining readership. I would also like to hear how you explain MySpace's massive success ... you only host that for free because it's user created content? You can't afford a staff with the money these sites bring in?
Good luck, you're going to need it. I would claim a move that reduces readership in any way is a bold move by any news source.
Fact #1: Microsoft's strategy when it comes to software sales: sexy > stable > performance.
Myth #1: Windows is only getting faster and better.
Fact #2: MS Marketing's job is to convince you that Myth #1 is true while at the same time maintaining sex appeal.
Fact #3: Windows 7 is still Windows.
Is this the future of data center design?
I'm going to assume you're talking very very large data centers here as it wouldn't make sense to streamline this for a few "blocks." But I think this is an already pretty pervasive idea. Why, we have already talked about Google's ideas on server 'blocks' and data 'pod' technology for their sharded databases. While I'm not sure if this high level design inherently affects relational databases negatively, it sure seems to be the future of data centers.
Google's strategy sounds even more like homogeneous Lego blocks than either of the two article's solutions.
Mod me down, boys.
Are these really the "best" that American comics has to offer? The submitter hits on the fact that the bulk of the comics that reach U.S. readers are superhero stories from two or three big publishers. The list of authors represented in this book reads like a roster of the exceptions to the rule -- the people who have made names for themselves by getting their offbeat comics published, usually by one or two or three of the better-funded "indie" publishers (Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, Last Gasp). What about the comics that simply aren't reaching an audience because they weren't created by a known "name"? Was any attempt made to hunt them down and represent them in this book? Or is this just the same old club, getting together and congratulating themselves yet again?
Disclaimer: I'm the submitter.
I'm sorry you feel that way about this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, perhaps it was made for me and not for you. But I will cherish it and probably look for 2006, 2007 and 2009 when it comes out.
If you know of such truly indie unheard of comics, the link on the summary has a submission page for suggestions of Lynda Barry and Co. to consider.
Also for the people tagging this article XKCD and Sinfest, webcomics are eligible:
Are Web comics eligible?
Yes, Web comics are eligible, if they were first posted within the eligibility dates (September 1, 2007, through August 31, 2008, for this next edition). Send hard copy, carefully labeled as to date of first posting and URL, to us at the Houghton Mifflin address.
Nothing would make me happier than to see a mom and pop printing press featured in one of these books. I ordered two things from Paping on the cheap and their website gave me reason to believe they do all the woodcuts by hand.
I love that.
... but contrary to official postings from 'General British' himself ...
If you bother to read the official document hosted by GamePolitics, Garriott claims that letter was fabricated while he was in quarantine from his space flight. And he claims its true intent was to deprive him of stock options he would have if he were terminated involuntarily. Since it sounded as voluntary termination in the letter, he no longer had these stock options:
22. Shortly after the "quarantine call," NCsoft prepared and presented an "open letter" to Mr. Garriott, announcing Mr Garriott's departure from the company. That letter was drafted by NCsoft but purported to be from Mr. Garriott to the Tabula Rasa players. The letter announced that Mr. Garriott was "leaving NCsoft to purse [new] interests." Though NCsoft's letter omitted details about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Garriott's departure, Mr. Garriott saw no reason at the time to object to these omissions, and he did not object to NCsoft posting the letter on the Tabula Rasa website.
23. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it appears that NCsoft's "open letter" was a prelude to the wrongful conduct by NCsoft to come.
E. NCsoft Re-Characterized Mr. Garriott's Termination as a Voluntary Departure, Depriving Mr. Garriott of the Full Value of His Stock Options.
Seems to boil down to whether or not his termination was voluntary or involuntary that determines if he could have exercised $27 million (not $24 million) in stock options.
ZOMG, they use television too.
It's true. Both sides use CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, etc heavily. And yet there is no new laws proposed to regulate CNN. Probably because it's less anonymous but also because it's considered "the press" and the phrase "government regulating the press" in America is worse than insulting your favorite sports team.
You know, it would be an interesting strategy to turn the bittorrent protocol into a means of disseminating news and blogs as well as large files. I mean they're just smaller files but could have huge legal implications for regulations of it. It would be nice to see (and make sense bandwidth wise) CNN distributing their video content with embedded advertisements in torrents. How popular would they be? I'm not sure. But it would give P2P advocates a case to cry foul when the government tries to regulate the software & protocol.
I guess "Now I can't share DVDs" just doesn't sound as patriotic as "The government is controlling and censoring a new press outlet and must be stopped."
Recently a company that monitors peer-to-peer networks said it found classified information about the systems used on board the president's helicopter in a shared folder on a computer in Iran, after a file containing the data was accidentally leaked on a peer-to-peer network last summer.
It's true, I saw these files and it appears our nation's most important secrets have been released to one of our most dangerous enemies. They are a move-by-move account of every Freecell game played by Obama. From that, the Iranians have been able to extrapolate his strategy for the Iraq theater and predict his every move, ergo, peer to peer file sharing must be stopped.
... and then seed it as top secret documents on Bittorrent.
Reading this story kind of makes me want to draw up a huge exploded view diagram of Marine One with Hello Kitty on a treadmill in the middle of the cabin powering the main rotor