See, this is what confuses me. It's all CO2/global warming one day and all Peak Oil(tm) the next. So if we're running out of oil, what's the problem? And if we want a biomass economy, isn't the extra CO2 and longer growing season a plus? And as for your wine analogy, the yeast doesn't die, it goes dormant mostly because it ran out of food. If the yeast actually poisoned itself, it would have long since gone extinct, but it hasn't. There's yeast everywhere. It tends to escape and find new food sources to live off of.
Modernize - the bottomless pit to throw consulting dollars into. Most attempts to rewrite a legacy app into a modern language have met with failure by way of the modern language becomming obsolete before the project is finished. One such project I witnessed ended up with 7 years of VB development being scrapped after a merger - in favor of the other company's unfinished conversion of their legacy app. Either way, there was a scheduled conversion from VB6 to.NET that hadn't even begun (and the app still was still heavily dependent on the legacy app to finish most tasks.) Ugh.
Yes, damn it, 5 minutes to reach full brightness is far too long. Especially if I only have to go into the room for a minute or so. Now, from personal experiance, the lower K bulbs (2700, 3000) come on much faster, but have a more yellowish light to them. The higher K bulbs (3500+) come on much slower (as much as 2 seconds to start producing light - which is slow enough that I used to reflexively flick the switch again) and take far longer to reach full brightness. A lot of consumers might not realize this and think the bulbs are junk.
The concern is basically what happens when an organization starts to get involved in fundraising. Next thing you know, you've got someone in charge of fundraising. Their goal is to bring in as much revenue as possible. This goal will naturally tend to conflict with the core goals of the Wikipedia - making a simple and useful resource available, and keeping it uncluttered. It starts with google text ads, but then you're on the slippery slope and the next thing you know, there's a flash ad overlayed on the screen where you have to try and punch the monkey. Then the Wikipedia turns into the rest of the internet, people stop caring and go elsewhere. Those that stay on message and on target stick around much longer.
I'm 30 years old, and while I thought space exploration was neat when I was younger, today I mostly see it as just a very well funded astronomy club. There is no value in going to the Moon or to Mars. If you really want to get my interest, you've got to think bigger than that. Send probes directed at the 30 nearest stars in an attempt to find an earth like planet and try to colonize it. Now, if you build a self sustaining space station as a precursor to an extra-solar expedition, I might be interested. As it is, the current station is, at best, a sad joke.
Personally, I blame the French. As near as I can tell, it's the French that gave us the concept of "Moral rights to a work." Or, the idea that once you create something, it's wrong for anyone else to ever touch it. That and Mickey Mouse pretty much explains the current state of copyright around the world. Just once, I'd like to see one of those spoiled billionaires come out and say, "The public domain is a good thing. I look forward to seeing the world enjoy my art unfettered by the chains of major media organizations." But they're all greedy bastards, so much better to not extend copyright.
Free market economies do not "just happen" to distribute wealth. It goes to those who work, in proportion to how hard they work and how skilled they are.
I'd like to believe that, sir, I really would. Except I know that free markets are not really as free as we'd like to believe. By and large, the extremely rich maintain and increase their wealth through a number of mechanisms. They have connections. They know politicians, and other heads of industry. They enact protectionist laws. The reason lawyers and doctors make so much money is that they have erected barriers to entry to their professions. To practice law, one must attend an expensive law school before being allowed to take the bar. Along with the needless complexity of the court system dictates that leagal endeavors will be very expensive. The medical profession is very similar. While I don't dispute that quality surgery is likely to be expensive, day to day medical care should not be. Doctors, however, stand as the gateway between the people and most medications. I suffer from excema. About once a year, I need a new tube of cream to treat the occasional outbreak. The tube costs $4.15, but I have to pay for a $200 doctor visit before I can get one.
And of course, the rich generally begin life with a great deal of wealth. They have access to better nutrition and schools. They inherit the business connections of their fathers. They attain positions of power not through merit, but as an accident of birth. Which also implies that my own child is just that much more unlikely to attain those positions of power. There are a lot of policy changes that can be made to rectifiy this sort of situation. Eliminate protectionist laws. Reinstate the estate tax. Actually, just treat it as any other taxable gift, because that's what an inheritance is: A gift you make when you die. Eliminate incentives for the poor to remain poor. There are far too many of them to list here. Just a few ideas anyway. I don't mind the rich getting rich on their own merit. But for every James Sinegal (Costco founder) out there, there are 100 asshats riding on daddy's (or grandpa's) coattails.
The cost of development has also soared for Blizzard as well. 3D modeling gets expenisve very quickly. It takes more artists and more programmers. Expectations for sound have increased - both in terms of the sound track and the sound effects. This means hiring actual actors and sound effects guys instead of having a programmer spend 2 days recording a few odd sounds.
Yes, Blizzard makes really awesome games, but they're spending as much as EA is on each title. When a game flops, or if they invest a lot of time and can't get it to market for whatever reason, they're in a world of hurt. Actually, blizzard is probably sitting on such a cash hoard at this point, they'll be ok for a very long time, but other developers could really get burned.
If historical eugenic efforts and the current policies of the People's Republic of China are anything to go by, then reduction of the human population is highly politically incorrect.
Did I ever advocate draconian government programs? I think not. Actually, I think you make my point for me. Voluntary birth control is vitally important, otherwise famine, disease, war, or despotic governments will bring it about. I've done my part - one kid and one vasectomy. Although, that was as much pragmatism as principle; kids are too expensive right now. OMFG! I just demonstrated market forces reigning in population!
A car that's twice as efficient means that oil runs out in sixty years, not thirty. And doesn't it still take a lot of fossil energy to build one of these hybrid cars?
Again, people adjust to changing conditions. High gas prices also saw a modest increase in people taking public transportation. And really, if we're so close to peak oil and peak coal, why are we so obsessed with carbon emissions? In 100 years, net carbon emissions will be virtually nil all on their own! Gosh.
Well, no, I don't believe that using fossil fuels as quickly as possible will make our planet unlivable. And for massive human suffering and death supposes the stupid people hypothisis - that rather than make adjustments in our individual lives we'll just stand around and wait to die. The second point is that supplies will not just continue along at current levels until one day, there isn't anything left. There is an incremental cost to retrieving each successive unit of energy from the ground. We're seeing that right now with oil and people are already investing in more efficient cars and alternatives like ethanol and biodiesel. On the other hand, no one's really running around trying to find a replacement for coal just yet. There's still far too much easily extractable coal available.
Now, there are somethings I think we can agree on. Population reduction is a good thing. Fewer people sharing finite resources will lead to more resources available per person. Now, if you think that there's a future in biomass, and I certainly do, you might also be forced to agree that warmer temps and more CO2 will boost production.
If it's not enough to quit over, just shut up and do your job. Telling your boss that you don't want to do the project because you dissapprove of it will just get you flagged as a whiner and maybe fired. In submitters boss' position, that's what I'd do. Anyone that wasn't top talent would be fired and replaced. Now, if you're a great worker and a great talent, this is still something that will come back to bite you come review time and may cost you a raise. So either do the work like a pro or go somewhere else. And submitter has already stated that while he disapproves, it's not enough to refuse to do the work. The money is more important than his principles.
Uh, dude, think about what you just said. The surest way to reduce the consumption of unsustainable energy is to use it up. As oil and coal supplies start to run low (probably less than 20 years for oil, 100 for coal), people will find other alternatives.
Hell, with the higher energy prices of the last few years, wood stoves have been selling like crazy (here in Minnesota). Not really a great solution to the problem, though. Even the high efficiancy stoves still emit quite a bit of smoke and other fine particles. High oil prices have lead to a boom in hybrids and ethanol.
Nope, still a violation of copyright law. The US would still regard it as counterfit anywhere outside of Antigua and importation would still be illegal. Making it outside of the US is still a violation of US copyright law. On the other hand, it would be terribly difficult to police. The Antiguans would be free to set up a web site where anyone could download the latest from hollywood without fear of being shutdown. (just a fear of running out of bandwidth). Think of it as sailing out to international waters to retransmit Major League Baseball. You could be sued and or prosecuted as soon as you set foot back in the US again (or sooner if you have assets in any US jurisdiction). In short, the Antiguans could enjoy a lot of free movies and music, but that would mean very little to the rest of the world. PS, IANAL.
If someone leaves an AP on and open...I think that is pretty much a free invite to join in...
I don't. I don't lock the door to my house, but if you come in uninvited, watch my TV and eat my snacks, I'll have you arrested for trespassing. This kid should have found out what network he was connecting to and asked permission first. In any event, the sentence should reflect the crime. The law he's charged under has a maximum sentence of 3 years. I'd really be surprised if he got more than 30 days. Then again, courts can be a little erratic and he's in Singapore.
You probably mean, "move to a state." DC isn't a state. Whatever isn't being used for governement buildings should probably be given back to Maryland. Then those asshats will hopefully finally shut up. Or maybe they can form a new state with Northern Virginia. Anyone who's lived elsewhere in Virginia can tell you it's really a separate state already.
Here's what I've been seeing lately. A spammer will send out 30 variants of the same message with a bunch of random text appended inserted at various locations. 95% of these messages will be filtered, but 1 might my inbox. This approach isn't that widespread yet, but it's growing. This is part of the arms race nature of the beast. What most of us have come to realize is that there isn't a magic bullet to fix the problem. It will take legislation, technical measures, and law enforcement involvement to bring this under control.
Some things that I think are needed:
Better means of rejecting mail originating from selected countries. No one in China sends me legitimate mail.
Agressive federal legislation allowing mail server operators to dictate policies for their servers. If my mail server says 'no UCE', then sending UCE should send you to federal PMITA prison.
Agressive persuit of botnets and their operators. Botnets are one of the biggest tools of internet criminal organizations.
Server and desktop filtering of mail. A lot of this is already done, but Microsoft really needs to ship Outlook with a useful (bayesian or other trainable) integrated mail filter. Useful mail filters should be a standard feature of all email programs, whether pine, mutt, eudora, outlook, elm, evolution, or whatever the cool kids are using these days.
Technical measures such as SPF or other technologies to indicate authorized servers.
Google reminds me more of 3M. They're essentially a research company. 3M makes a ton of products, but at the heart of it all is a huge R&D company. They invent all kinds of things and the vast majority of them go nowhere. But a few big successes generate a ton of revenue and a lot of other products are profitable in their little niches. Yet for every scotchbrit pad or post-it note, there are thousands of products developed that tank, but the expertise generated often gets funneled back into other areas. Google is a lot like this. They're out developing products that people might want. After that, they then find ways to make money off of it. And as other people have noted, Google has a lot of good products out there that are very popular and starting to generate revenue in several ways. Google Maps, Picassa, GMail, just to name a few.
Meh, I seem to read about an amazing new breakthrough on these pages every other week. I'll believe it when I see it, which seems to be about 10% of the time.
The DMCA is a big bundle of laws and regulations. The takedown provision is one of the few areas that actually mostly works. Most of it is still bad, such as the anti-circumvention provision. It's part of the lawmaker idiocy that thinks that new and special laws are required for the Internet. The reality is that in 99.9% of cases, existing law already (more than) adequately adresses the activities in question.
By the way, if I'm a US citizen, running a company based in Switzerland, hosting a site through a UK company, with servers based in Canada - does this law apply? How about if the domain is registered through a US company, but me, the company, the host, and the servers are all based outside the US?
If you transmit anything to anyone in the US in violation of the act then you can be prosecuted as soon as you step foot in the US. Federal courts take a very expansive view of their jurisdiction.
What some of the economics yahoos and politicians always overlook is that these online worlds tend to be very transitory. 3 years ago, Everquest was a big deal. Now, whatever you had in Everquest is pretty much worthless. So if you did start taxing all this virtual economy, there would have to be depreciation schedules, loss reporting, etc. In the end, it's pretty much a zero sum game.
We have to remember that it's a game. Taxing WoW transactions would be comparable to taxing a football team everytime they made a first down.
Slashdot Mirror
See, this is what confuses me. It's all CO2/global warming one day and all Peak Oil(tm) the next. So if we're running out of oil, what's the problem? And if we want a biomass economy, isn't the extra CO2 and longer growing season a plus? And as for your wine analogy, the yeast doesn't die, it goes dormant mostly because it ran out of food. If the yeast actually poisoned itself, it would have long since gone extinct, but it hasn't. There's yeast everywhere. It tends to escape and find new food sources to live off of.
Modernize - the bottomless pit to throw consulting dollars into. Most attempts to rewrite a legacy app into a modern language have met with failure by way of the modern language becomming obsolete before the project is finished. One such project I witnessed ended up with 7 years of VB development being scrapped after a merger - in favor of the other company's unfinished conversion of their legacy app. Either way, there was a scheduled conversion from VB6 to .NET that hadn't even begun (and the app still was still heavily dependent on the legacy app to finish most tasks.) Ugh.
Yes, damn it, 5 minutes to reach full brightness is far too long. Especially if I only have to go into the room for a minute or so. Now, from personal experiance, the lower K bulbs (2700, 3000) come on much faster, but have a more yellowish light to them. The higher K bulbs (3500+) come on much slower (as much as 2 seconds to start producing light - which is slow enough that I used to reflexively flick the switch again) and take far longer to reach full brightness. A lot of consumers might not realize this and think the bulbs are junk.
The concern is basically what happens when an organization starts to get involved in fundraising. Next thing you know, you've got someone in charge of fundraising. Their goal is to bring in as much revenue as possible. This goal will naturally tend to conflict with the core goals of the Wikipedia - making a simple and useful resource available, and keeping it uncluttered. It starts with google text ads, but then you're on the slippery slope and the next thing you know, there's a flash ad overlayed on the screen where you have to try and punch the monkey. Then the Wikipedia turns into the rest of the internet, people stop caring and go elsewhere. Those that stay on message and on target stick around much longer.
I'm 30 years old, and while I thought space exploration was neat when I was younger, today I mostly see it as just a very well funded astronomy club. There is no value in going to the Moon or to Mars. If you really want to get my interest, you've got to think bigger than that. Send probes directed at the 30 nearest stars in an attempt to find an earth like planet and try to colonize it. Now, if you build a self sustaining space station as a precursor to an extra-solar expedition, I might be interested. As it is, the current station is, at best, a sad joke.
I heard that the DNF team is waiting to use Chineese Democracy for the sound track.
Or, to summarize the article, treat them the same as you would your comic books!
Personally, I blame the French. As near as I can tell, it's the French that gave us the concept of "Moral rights to a work." Or, the idea that once you create something, it's wrong for anyone else to ever touch it. That and Mickey Mouse pretty much explains the current state of copyright around the world. Just once, I'd like to see one of those spoiled billionaires come out and say, "The public domain is a good thing. I look forward to seeing the world enjoy my art unfettered by the chains of major media organizations." But they're all greedy bastards, so much better to not extend copyright.
Free market economies do not "just happen" to distribute wealth. It goes to those who work, in proportion to how hard they work and how skilled they are.
I'd like to believe that, sir, I really would. Except I know that free markets are not really as free as we'd like to believe. By and large, the extremely rich maintain and increase their wealth through a number of mechanisms. They have connections. They know politicians, and other heads of industry. They enact protectionist laws. The reason lawyers and doctors make so much money is that they have erected barriers to entry to their professions. To practice law, one must attend an expensive law school before being allowed to take the bar. Along with the needless complexity of the court system dictates that leagal endeavors will be very expensive. The medical profession is very similar. While I don't dispute that quality surgery is likely to be expensive, day to day medical care should not be. Doctors, however, stand as the gateway between the people and most medications. I suffer from excema. About once a year, I need a new tube of cream to treat the occasional outbreak. The tube costs $4.15, but I have to pay for a $200 doctor visit before I can get one.
And of course, the rich generally begin life with a great deal of wealth. They have access to better nutrition and schools. They inherit the business connections of their fathers. They attain positions of power not through merit, but as an accident of birth. Which also implies that my own child is just that much more unlikely to attain those positions of power. There are a lot of policy changes that can be made to rectifiy this sort of situation. Eliminate protectionist laws. Reinstate the estate tax. Actually, just treat it as any other taxable gift, because that's what an inheritance is: A gift you make when you die. Eliminate incentives for the poor to remain poor. There are far too many of them to list here. Just a few ideas anyway. I don't mind the rich getting rich on their own merit. But for every James Sinegal (Costco founder) out there, there are 100 asshats riding on daddy's (or grandpa's) coattails.
If the DOD focused some effort on wireless teledildonics as a weapon, the world would be a better place.
Don't you think that might cause a world war that never ends?
The cost of development has also soared for Blizzard as well. 3D modeling gets expenisve very quickly. It takes more artists and more programmers. Expectations for sound have increased - both in terms of the sound track and the sound effects. This means hiring actual actors and sound effects guys instead of having a programmer spend 2 days recording a few odd sounds.
Yes, Blizzard makes really awesome games, but they're spending as much as EA is on each title. When a game flops, or if they invest a lot of time and can't get it to market for whatever reason, they're in a world of hurt. Actually, blizzard is probably sitting on such a cash hoard at this point, they'll be ok for a very long time, but other developers could really get burned.
My point is, people make adjustments.
If historical eugenic efforts and the current policies of the People's Republic of China are anything to go by, then reduction of the human population is highly politically incorrect.
Did I ever advocate draconian government programs? I think not. Actually, I think you make my point for me. Voluntary birth control is vitally important, otherwise famine, disease, war, or despotic governments will bring it about. I've done my part - one kid and one vasectomy. Although, that was as much pragmatism as principle; kids are too expensive right now. OMFG! I just demonstrated market forces reigning in population!
A car that's twice as efficient means that oil runs out in sixty years, not thirty. And doesn't it still take a lot of fossil energy to build one of these hybrid cars?
Again, people adjust to changing conditions. High gas prices also saw a modest increase in people taking public transportation. And really, if we're so close to peak oil and peak coal, why are we so obsessed with carbon emissions? In 100 years, net carbon emissions will be virtually nil all on their own! Gosh.
Well, no, I don't believe that using fossil fuels as quickly as possible will make our planet unlivable. And for massive human suffering and death supposes the stupid people hypothisis - that rather than make adjustments in our individual lives we'll just stand around and wait to die. The second point is that supplies will not just continue along at current levels until one day, there isn't anything left. There is an incremental cost to retrieving each successive unit of energy from the ground. We're seeing that right now with oil and people are already investing in more efficient cars and alternatives like ethanol and biodiesel. On the other hand, no one's really running around trying to find a replacement for coal just yet. There's still far too much easily extractable coal available.
Now, there are somethings I think we can agree on. Population reduction is a good thing. Fewer people sharing finite resources will lead to more resources available per person. Now, if you think that there's a future in biomass, and I certainly do, you might also be forced to agree that warmer temps and more CO2 will boost production.
If it's not enough to quit over, just shut up and do your job. Telling your boss that you don't want to do the project because you dissapprove of it will just get you flagged as a whiner and maybe fired. In submitters boss' position, that's what I'd do. Anyone that wasn't top talent would be fired and replaced. Now, if you're a great worker and a great talent, this is still something that will come back to bite you come review time and may cost you a raise. So either do the work like a pro or go somewhere else. And submitter has already stated that while he disapproves, it's not enough to refuse to do the work. The money is more important than his principles.
Uh, dude, think about what you just said. The surest way to reduce the consumption of unsustainable energy is to use it up. As oil and coal supplies start to run low (probably less than 20 years for oil, 100 for coal), people will find other alternatives.
Hell, with the higher energy prices of the last few years, wood stoves have been selling like crazy (here in Minnesota). Not really a great solution to the problem, though. Even the high efficiancy stoves still emit quite a bit of smoke and other fine particles. High oil prices have lead to a boom in hybrids and ethanol.
Nope, still a violation of copyright law. The US would still regard it as counterfit anywhere outside of Antigua and importation would still be illegal. Making it outside of the US is still a violation of US copyright law. On the other hand, it would be terribly difficult to police. The Antiguans would be free to set up a web site where anyone could download the latest from hollywood without fear of being shutdown. (just a fear of running out of bandwidth). Think of it as sailing out to international waters to retransmit Major League Baseball. You could be sued and or prosecuted as soon as you set foot back in the US again (or sooner if you have assets in any US jurisdiction). In short, the Antiguans could enjoy a lot of free movies and music, but that would mean very little to the rest of the world. PS, IANAL.
If someone leaves an AP on and open...I think that is pretty much a free invite to join in...
I don't. I don't lock the door to my house, but if you come in uninvited, watch my TV and eat my snacks, I'll have you arrested for trespassing. This kid should have found out what network he was connecting to and asked permission first. In any event, the sentence should reflect the crime. The law he's charged under has a maximum sentence of 3 years. I'd really be surprised if he got more than 30 days. Then again, courts can be a little erratic and he's in Singapore.
move to a different state
You probably mean, "move to a state." DC isn't a state. Whatever isn't being used for governement buildings should probably be given back to Maryland. Then those asshats will hopefully finally shut up. Or maybe they can form a new state with Northern Virginia. Anyone who's lived elsewhere in Virginia can tell you it's really a separate state already.
Some things that I think are needed:
Google reminds me more of 3M. They're essentially a research company. 3M makes a ton of products, but at the heart of it all is a huge R&D company. They invent all kinds of things and the vast majority of them go nowhere. But a few big successes generate a ton of revenue and a lot of other products are profitable in their little niches. Yet for every scotchbrit pad or post-it note, there are thousands of products developed that tank, but the expertise generated often gets funneled back into other areas. Google is a lot like this. They're out developing products that people might want. After that, they then find ways to make money off of it. And as other people have noted, Google has a lot of good products out there that are very popular and starting to generate revenue in several ways. Google Maps, Picassa, GMail, just to name a few.
Meh, I seem to read about an amazing new breakthrough on these pages every other week. I'll believe it when I see it, which seems to be about 10% of the time.
The DMCA is a big bundle of laws and regulations. The takedown provision is one of the few areas that actually mostly works. Most of it is still bad, such as the anti-circumvention provision. It's part of the lawmaker idiocy that thinks that new and special laws are required for the Internet. The reality is that in 99.9% of cases, existing law already (more than) adequately adresses the activities in question.
NWN 2 has been advertising like crazy. That's usually a very bad sign. Good sequels don't need advertising.
By the way, if I'm a US citizen, running a company based in Switzerland, hosting a site through a UK company, with servers based in Canada - does this law apply? How about if the domain is registered through a US company, but me, the company, the host, and the servers are all based outside the US?
If you transmit anything to anyone in the US in violation of the act then you can be prosecuted as soon as you step foot in the US. Federal courts take a very expansive view of their jurisdiction.
What some of the economics yahoos and politicians always overlook is that these online worlds tend to be very transitory. 3 years ago, Everquest was a big deal. Now, whatever you had in Everquest is pretty much worthless. So if you did start taxing all this virtual economy, there would have to be depreciation schedules, loss reporting, etc. In the end, it's pretty much a zero sum game.
We have to remember that it's a game. Taxing WoW transactions would be comparable to taxing a football team everytime they made a first down.