How is this different, other than being able to run in parallel, from the game of Life, that's been around for at *least* a dozen years, and has pllenty of computer simulation versions?
Or, for that matter, Core Wars, which I've heard about, and I think was around in the *early* seventies, if not earlier.
First, I noticed some folks, in their replies, complaining that it didn't have enough action (or should that be blood). Has *anyone* here *ever* watched a Hitchcock movie? How 'bout the scene in Aliens, where the corpscum gets his...he opens the door, and there's an alien...cut the scene. It said it *all*, without the gore.
Second, from what y'all say, it sounds like the ending is taken from Spielberg (who I loathe)... such as the ending of Close Encounters, where Spielberg's spent around two hours saying, "I've got something REALLY IMPORTANT, and mystical to say"...and then says *nothing*.
Oh, yes, and third: d'you suppose this would have had the same response, had it been titiled something like, "The Blair Vicar Project"? As someone with a lot of friends who *are* witches... and many of whom are *also* programmers, sysadmins, physicists, etc, this obthers me a bit.
I haven't been over to Sun's site yet, but I suspect I understand why they posted this: is M$ *so* obsessed with spying on other companies, so that they don't get ahead of the self-proclaimed industry leader, that they'll steal something *so* petty as a mission statement?
I mean, after all, most bloody companies out here have a missions statement that includes, usually last, chief place, "...to provide value for stockholders..."; that is, to make money for the CEO and the others with serious stockholdings. What's the *point* of a mission statement, other than to try to show that human resources, or whatever they call themselves, have some purpose (other than to not hire people, not promote people, not transfer people, but just talk to 'em and shuffle papers)?
Before I start, my qualifications: I've been a programmer, dba, software engineer, technical architect, configuration manager, and sysadmin, on mainframes, pcs, *and* UNIX for coming up on 19 years. I've worked for companies from 6 people, including the boss and his wife, to Ameritech.
You wrote: > The documents should describe all aspects of the coding phase that is about to begin.
Define "describe all aspects". I have worked from design docs that I think Boing did, in the early eighties, that were pseudocode, and I have worked from vaguely-worded memos, and I have worked from verbal descriptions. Personally, when I do it *right*, I prefer flow charts. So, just how detailed will these documents *be*? If they're down to the pseudocode level, they'll take as long as the coding phase.
> Then the documents are peer-reviewed, polished and submitted under document control.
Define peer review. Most places I've worked, *if* they had peer review, it was dumped on someone already overworked, who then maybe skimmed it, and said, "looks fine to me".
> Questions: > In your experience, how often are design documents revisited after the project?
Never, except for *possibly* some poor programmer trying to figure out what this thing *does*, so they can fix what's broken, or enhance it, years after everyone else involved is long gone.
> Have design documents helped in technology transfers (that is, have they been more helpful than the > source code alone)?
That depends on the level of the design documents. You might consider that they define what has to go in, what has to come out, what *must* be stored (not what they *think* they want to store, for some possibility that they might look at it in the future), and conditions *must* be looked for, along with some style standards, and a *real* architecture, appropriate to the project (not ridiculously overengineered, nor kludged together as they go), and leave the lower level details to the folks actually doing the work.
> Are engineers good at writing design documents?
Few (I'm an exception). Unfortunately, competant tech writers are few and far between, and even more rarely *hired* by management.
> Have you been able to read design documents written by other engineers?
Some.
> Have old design documents been kept up to date with the changes in the implementation?
Never. Ever. Not in nonprofits, not in colleges, not in mortgage co's....
> Has the quality of your products been better because of design documentation?
Depended on the documentation. Note that 80% of the time, btw, that documentation is the *last* thing done.... (B-{)}
First of all, do I note a problem in the algorithm here? The one that *seems* to imply that the only techie women are programmers?
My...late... wife was a chem and radiochem lab tech, and I have good (female) friends who are physicists, psychologists, etc...of course, they're all sf fans, too....
Then, of course, there's the other obvious conclusion: so, y'all make money (or are underpaid but salaried)...but have no time or energy for a partner, or to play with the toys you can afford with this money, or.... because you're working in a bloody *sweatshop* (air conditioned, unless that goes off at 18:00 - BFD).
At one point, while I was working for a Big Co., that shall remain nameless (but is a Baby Bell in the midwest US), my...wife... *semi*-jokingly threatened to sue 'em for alienation of affection.
Used to be, most people on call (y'know, what they did before pagers?), or working late shifts, got a shift differential (more money), and if you worked over 40 hrs/week, you got overtime. Salaried...they can say "whatever it takes", and not have to worry.
All the same kind of stuff our parents and grandparents fought, by creating unions to protect them from asshole managers and bosses (anyone wanna argue *that* statement, in 75%-85% of the case?)...but, we're "professionals", that's only for "working class folks",...and all kinds of other denial, as abused folks often do.
How many of you are *really* compensated for what you do...how much vacation, or comp time? Ha, ha. How many of you would be *really* affected by capital gains taxes on all your Big Money stocks you live on (as opposed to put away for when you can retire, and have some money that's not enough to do much, and you're too old to do all that stuff you wanted to do)?
Hell, I'm paid "reasonably", and, based on the tax debates three years or so ago, I earn more money than two-thirds of the folks in this country...and I have, oh, $20 in stock earnings/year....
But unions are *so*, so...un-chic (says the mgmt of the two dozen or so companies that own 90% of all media, in the (not-so-liberal) media.
About your review...first of all, with a title like that, one might start to assume that the author is a MS flunky himself. You must admit that it strongly suggests that interpretation.
Then, you write: > Aside from Daddy Warbucks, billionaires aren't very popular. Beyond the > obvious reasons - envy and resentment - they tend to be a strong-willed, > arrogant lot. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan - don't generally get to be billionaires > through sensitivity and thoughtfulness.
That's, ahh, a sort of left-handed compliment, rather than a criticism. Of course, there's *no* possibility that billionaires got to be that way through means that broke other people, broke other companies, trashed neighborhoods, towns, and cities, and left people poorer. That couldn't *possiblly* be any reason for disenchantment with 'em. It couldn't be such things as, to quote J.P. Morgan, since you mention him, "The public be damned".
> And for the many entrenched individualistic, Libertarian elements of the Net and > Web, he is a nightmare: monopolistic and greedy and the purveyor of > over-priced, ever obsolete, buggy software that exploits consumers and > promotes computing ignorance
Why is it that you feel that there is *no* element that is not in the mainstream, that is against Gates & Co., that is not on the right? In fact, an awful lot of what you say in the paragraph above is much more of the attitude of those of us on the *left*, rather than some libertarian fellow travelers, such as the dba who I used to work with last year, who didn't feel that monopoly was bad.
> According to Gary Rivlin, author of the new book "The Plot to Get Bill Gates," > (Times Business, $US 25), the people who hate Gates and are out to get him - > the likes of Scott McNealy of Sun, Marc Andreessen and James Barksdale of > Netscape, venture capitalist John Doerr, various anti-trust lawyers and > government officials have become a culture all their own.
So any group of serious competitors, who might be afraid that someone ten and twenty and thirty times their size, who has a history of grinding competitors into bankruptcy by such tactics as what, in international trade, is called dumping, or by simply making serious, and illegal, attempts to close the market to them (vide the post, late last year, I believe, on slashdot, by the guy who went to 10 OEMs, and could not buy a pc without a MS operating system (except, of course, for IBM, who offered OS/2), are a "culture of their own"? Lawyers who may, occasionally, actually believe in anti-trust laws, and laws intended to promote competition, are part of this "culture"?
> This book is the story of these idiosyncratic, sometimes rabid cabal of Silicon > Valley muck-a-mucks known within Microsoft as "Captain Ahab's Club" for > their obsessive pursuit of Redmond's own contemporary version of Moby
They are rabid, because they'd like a share of the pie? Funny, I don't remember this kind of vituperation when, a mere dozen years ago, it was IBM and the Seven Dwarfs, and the government used anti-trust laws against IBM...unless, of course, IBM is Faceless (tm), and MS is Bill the Gates.
> For many of these people, says Rivlin, Gates has become an obsession. They > talk and think about him constantly. He is always looking over their shoulder, > the invisible man at every business meeting. What would Gates do? What does > he think? What is he up to? They dump on him behind his back, then swoon at > the sight of him.
Ahh, they talk of him? As in, "how do we write software that can deal with all the bugs, and undocumented bad code usage, in his software"? And I'd really like to know who it is that "swoons" over the sight of him.
> Even the most savage assaults seem mostly to annoy him, like the original Godzilla swatting down > those pesky jet fighters.
The *original, original* Godzilla, as in the first movie, was Not Nice...and was *killed*, at the end, by something the size, or smaller (it's been a while, y'know), than piranha (anti-trust lawyers?)
> If you can judge a man by his enemies, Gates looks better. Rivlin doesn't show us anyone more > agile or noble.
Is thissupposed to mean that Gates looks to any degree noble? One might say that Stalin, then, looked noble, based on his enemies (us, among others).
> He has an amazing capacity to re-engineer himself - thus his company -- no small skill in so fluid and > brutally competitive a marketplace.
But isn't that what he's really all about - not goshawowie software, but marketing? I mean, how else could Word push down WorPerfect, or Internet Exploder take so much from Netscape, for so little software value?
> The open source and free software movements - the literal antitheses of Microsoft and it's business > philosophy -- have gained a strong foothold on the ^^^
Oh, and on the nit-picky side, that sohuld be "its" (belonging to it), not "it's" (contraction of 'it is').
> There is, nonetheless, an unyielding blandness about the man that makes it as difficult to hate him > as to like him.
And this...do I take it that you are unfamiliar with the idea that the worst part of the majority of evil is that it is so *banal*?
it has *nothing* to do with technology. We got *exactly* the same in the sixties, though nowhere *near* so over the top. It's just gotten worse and worse over the years.
Funny, that's at the same time that media mergermania's been going on. About 10 years ago, Molly Ivins looked around, in a column, and noted that something like 90% of *ALL* the media in this country were owned by 29 corporations. You will recall that there have been mergers, since then.
The fact is, we have almost *no* "independant* media.
To the folks who criticise you by saying that folks must lap it up, since they publish want sells...wrong. They publish what they *want*. Welcome to the fact of a company town. Yes, I've argued with [Ll]ibertarians over the years, and their response has always been, "you don't like it, start your own, or leave". I don't see anyone competing right now. Got a gigabuck or two to spare, guys?
And then, of course, there's the point that if this occupies all the media space, then they don't have to cover anything else, like why we don't fully fund Head Start, or public education, or the space program, or the tax cut for the rich (that is, including the owners of the media).
Welcome to unbridled capitalism...and why it was bridled by our parents and rgandparents in the first place.
Well, yes...since the speaker from the SSI talked about it, *and* the *two* Environmental Impact Statements already done, WHEN HE SPOKE AT THE MONTHLY PHILA. S.F. SOC. MEETING AROUND 1982.
And no, we are *NOT* talking about broadcast power, we're talking about it being beamed to receivers in places like the desert, from whence it would be fed into the power grid. Also, the power levels being discussed back then were around a few watts/meter sq., not enough to cook a vulture. Again, we're *NOT* talking about SDI-style Power Beams (tm) here.
It would be the least polluting source of the electric power that we can produce...and before anyone starts arguing, consider: a) nuclear wastes; b) acid rain; c) river and estuary water warming from coolants; d) mining; e) transporting oil (Exon Valdez) and natural gas (pipelines).
So...let's *go* for it, already. They've been babbling about it for half my life. I'd be *ecstatic* to go up there to help build it.
I dunno, but I can't believe ohw many ignorant slashdoters there are. I had higher expectations of 'em. Except for Mary CW, and CountZero, almost all of you seem to think that "sci-fi" == science fiction.
WRONG
I once came up, on rasff, with a distinction, and had a number fo folks find it acceptable: skiffy (how fans tend to pronounce it) is a) people who think most sf is tv or movie b) reviewers, whose knowledge of science or sf, would fit in a shot glass, and leave plenty of room, and who think Godzilla movies are sf, and c) movie producers, whose ! ( IQ > shoe_size ), who think "it's got special effects; it doesn't need plot, or acting, or writers..."
Real sf? It's 99.9% written (I probably own several times as many sf & f books as all the skiffy movies ever made), and has to have *some* clue of what their writing about...and has to tell a good story. I ought to also point out that a good number of both the authors and the active fans are computer folks, like me, or other techies, or technically-trained (my late wife, the chem/radiochem lab tech, several authors who are physicists, or chemists, a number of fan friends who work at Fermilab, and another fan friend who works at the Cape).
And why treat sf seriously? Well...someone, I think Sam Moskowitz, once described the evolution of sf as: '20-'30's Prof. Whatisname invents an electronic chicken-plucker, and here's how it works; 30'-40's Prof Whatisname invents an electronic chickenplucker, and has these adventures with it; 40-50's Prof W. invented that thing, and here's how it affected society, and 50- How that changed society affected the individual - what are the consequences of all that inventing.
So...what were the consequences of videocams (e.g., Rodney King), or satellites (Mission to Planet Earth), or....
Then, of course, there's CP Snow's famous essay on the two cultures, which are more seperate than ever...is sf not a bridge?? I don't suppose *any* of the folks who get the degree might go into science writing (say, like Isaac Asimov...)
Lessee, upper management decides on deadlines, and us lowly techno-peasants, who are lucky if we are consulted on how long it will take, and are almost *never* asked whether something's doable, or even whether it *should* be done, get to do the work.
Yup, sounds right.
Lackey: Sire! The peasants are revolting! Bill the G: They *certainly* are....
So, is this sponsored by MacroSloth? If not, I can tell 'em where they can get a *large* supply of long-lasting leeches...like, drive to Seattle and make a right to Redmond.....
mark "how would you like the Evil Empire bashed today?"
Ok, I was also there...in fact, by sheer chance (running into some friends in downtown Philly), I happened into opening night of Star Wars.
Yes, it was incredible. And yes, there was *also* analogously as much marketing *then* as there is *now*. There were the same complaints of Lucas "selling out". Don't you remember the Ewok's Xmas special on TV?...Hmmm, been a while, maybe it was Han, Leia, Luke, and Chewy, with the yet- to-be-seen Ewoks.
Explain to me this phrase, "selling out", or "hype", as well as calling Lucas a "self-defined" Hollywood rebel.
From my view, Lucas is in the movie business. He wants to make good, enjoyable movies, that are *not* written by a committee, as 99% of all of them are. With all the merchandizing, he was able, 20-odd years ago, to set up ILM, and his ranch, and set himself up to be able to afford to create the movies he wanted, and to be taken seriously (i.e., he had enough $$$ of his own) to be able to raise the money to make the movies, and distribute them.
Don't want to be commercial? Ever seen Mike Jittlov's Wizard of Speed and Time? That *is* Jittlov, and he's a really nice guy...but won't compromise to reach the audience he really *should*. Lucas wants to reach the audience.
Selling out, in many cases, is a phrase I've noticed used by folks who don't pull the big bucks themselves, and by those who seem to think that anyone who actually manages to appeal to the masses, in terms they understand, and in a really meaningful way, has "sold out". Has John Williams sold out, or has he brought more folks into classical music?
Then there's your appellation of "self-defined" rebel. In Hollywood terms, I'd say he is. He doesn't have a committee writing and rewriting his scripts; he doesn't take a novel and run it through a blender, and poor in artificial sweetner, "lite" beer, and Chock Full 'O Egos.
So, tell me, once you see the story, whether he's "sold out". And then define your terms.
I hung out on a non-Xian newsgroup for a bunch of years, and was one of the proponants of a Big 8 version of it. This, unfortunately, looks all too real, like the kind of post we used to get every Sept. and Feb., when the new students got their Net account, and discovered that Everyone Does Not Think Like They Do in Rock City, TN, or Podunk, IL.
File under the heading of "people who ought to live on a farm, and never look at tv or a computer".
The scary thing is, of course, that these fruitcakes *are* out there, and not only can get guns, but get organized, as witnessed by the birth control clinic murders and bombings over the years
Do you think you're a techie, or are you just a wannabe? In either case, you're an ignorant idiot.
1) there ain't enough nuclear material in Cassini for a bomb; 2) it isn't shaped for a bomb (and without that, even if there is enough material, it'll just melt or vaporize), and 3) it's encased in enough solid material that in the *extremely* unlikely event that it was so far off course that it hit the atmosphere and reentered (incredibly unlikely, Bruce Willis' POS Armaturkey aside), it would wind up as a lump on the bottom of the ocean, most likely (the planet *is* covered 70% with water, y'know).
Slashdot Mirror
How is this different, other than being able to run in parallel, from the game of Life, that's been around for at *least* a dozen years, and has pllenty of computer simulation versions?
Or, for that matter, Core Wars, which I've heard about, and I think was around in the *early* seventies, if not earlier.
Got a *long* way to go to pass the Turing test.
mark
First, I noticed some folks, in their replies, complaining that it didn't have enough action (or should that be blood). Has *anyone* here *ever* watched a Hitchcock movie? How 'bout the scene in Aliens, where the corpscum gets his...he opens the door, and there's an alien...cut the scene. It said it *all*, without the gore.
Second, from what y'all say, it sounds like the ending is taken from Spielberg (who I loathe)... such as the ending of Close Encounters, where Spielberg's spent around two hours saying, "I've got something REALLY IMPORTANT, and mystical to say"...and then says *nothing*.
Oh, yes, and third: d'you suppose this would have had the same response, had it been titiled something like, "The Blair Vicar Project"? As someone with a lot of friends who *are* witches... and many of whom are *also* programmers, sysadmins, physicists, etc, this obthers me a bit.
mark
I haven't been over to Sun's site yet, but I suspect I understand why they posted this: is M$ *so* obsessed with spying on other companies, so that they don't get ahead of the self-proclaimed industry leader, that they'll steal something *so* petty as a mission statement?
I mean, after all, most bloody companies out here have a missions statement that includes, usually last, chief place, "...to provide value for stockholders..."; that is, to make money for the CEO and the others with serious stockholdings. What's the *point* of a mission statement, other than to try to show that human resources, or whatever they call themselves, have some purpose (other than to not hire people, not promote people, not transfer people, but just talk to 'em and shuffle papers)?
mark
Before I start, my qualifications: I've been a programmer, dba, software engineer, technical
architect, configuration manager, and sysadmin, on mainframes, pcs, *and* UNIX for coming
up on 19 years. I've worked for companies from 6 people, including the boss and his wife, to Ameritech.
You wrote:
> The documents should describe all aspects of the coding phase that is about to begin.
Define "describe all aspects". I have worked from design docs that I think Boing did, in the
early eighties, that were pseudocode, and I have worked from vaguely-worded memos, and
I have worked from verbal descriptions. Personally, when I do it *right*, I prefer flow charts.
So, just how detailed will these documents *be*? If they're down to the pseudocode level,
they'll take as long as the coding phase.
> Then the documents are peer-reviewed, polished and submitted under document control.
Define peer review. Most places I've worked, *if* they had peer review, it was dumped on
someone already overworked, who then maybe skimmed it, and said, "looks fine to me".
> Questions:
> In your experience, how often are design documents revisited after the project?
Never, except for *possibly* some poor programmer trying to figure out what this thing *does*,
so they can fix what's broken, or enhance it, years after everyone else involved is long gone.
> Have design documents helped in technology transfers (that is, have they been more helpful than the
> source code alone)?
That depends on the level of the design documents. You might consider that they define what has to
go in, what has to come out, what *must* be stored (not what they *think* they want to store, for
some possibility that they might look at it in the future), and conditions *must* be looked for,
along with some style standards, and a *real* architecture, appropriate to the project (not
ridiculously overengineered, nor kludged together as they go), and leave the lower level details to
the folks actually doing the work.
> Are engineers good at writing design documents?
Few (I'm an exception). Unfortunately, competant tech writers are few and far between, and
even more rarely *hired* by management.
> Have you been able to read design documents written by other engineers?
Some.
> Have old design documents been kept up to date with the changes in the implementation?
Never. Ever. Not in nonprofits, not in colleges, not in mortgage co's....
> Has the quality of your products been better because of design documentation?
Depended on the documentation. Note that 80% of the time, btw, that documentation is the
*last* thing done.... (B-{)}
mark roth-whitworth
First of all, do I note a problem in the algorithm here? The one that *seems* to imply that the only techie women are programmers?
...late... wife was a chem and radiochem lab tech, and I have good (female) friends who are physicists, psychologists, etc...of course, they're all sf fans, too....
...wife... *semi*-jokingly threatened to sue 'em for alienation of affection.
My
Then, of course, there's the other obvious conclusion: so, y'all make money (or are underpaid but salaried)...but have no time or energy for a partner, or to play with the toys you can afford with this money, or.... because you're working in a bloody *sweatshop* (air conditioned, unless that goes off at 18:00 - BFD).
At one point, while I was working for a Big Co., that shall remain nameless (but is a Baby Bell in the midwest US), my
Used to be, most people on call (y'know, what they did before pagers?), or working late shifts, got a shift differential (more money), and if you worked over 40 hrs/week, you got overtime. Salaried...they can say "whatever it takes", and not have to worry.
All the same kind of stuff our parents and grandparents fought, by creating unions to protect them from asshole managers and bosses (anyone wanna argue *that* statement, in 75%-85% of the case?)...but, we're "professionals", that's only for "working class folks",...and all kinds of other denial, as abused folks often do.
How many of you are *really* compensated for what you do...how much vacation, or comp time? Ha, ha.
How many of you would be *really* affected by capital gains taxes on all your Big Money stocks you live on (as opposed to put away for when you can retire, and have some money that's not enough to do much, and you're too old to do all that stuff you wanted to do)?
Hell, I'm paid "reasonably", and, based on the tax debates three years or so ago, I earn more money than two-thirds of the folks in this country...and I have, oh, $20 in stock earnings/year....
But unions are *so*, so...un-chic (says the mgmt of the two dozen or so companies that own 90% of all media, in the (not-so-liberal) media.
mark
About your review...first of all, with a title like that, one might start to assume that the author is a MS
flunky himself. You must admit that it strongly suggests that interpretation.
Then, you write:
> Aside from Daddy Warbucks, billionaires aren't very popular. Beyond the
> obvious reasons - envy and resentment - they tend to be a strong-willed,
> arrogant lot. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan - don't generally get to be billionaires
> through sensitivity and thoughtfulness.
That's, ahh, a sort of left-handed compliment, rather than a criticism. Of course, there's *no* possibility
that billionaires got to be that way through means that broke other people, broke other companies,
trashed neighborhoods, towns, and cities, and left people poorer. That couldn't *possiblly* be any reason for
disenchantment with 'em. It couldn't be such things as, to quote J.P. Morgan, since you mention him,
"The public be damned".
> And for the many entrenched individualistic, Libertarian elements of the Net and
> Web, he is a nightmare: monopolistic and greedy and the purveyor of
> over-priced, ever obsolete, buggy software that exploits consumers and
> promotes computing ignorance
Why is it that you feel that there is *no* element that is not in the mainstream, that is against Gates & Co.,
that is not on the right? In fact, an awful lot of what you say in the paragraph above is much more of the
attitude of those of us on the *left*, rather than some libertarian fellow travelers, such as the dba who
I used to work with last year, who didn't feel that monopoly was bad.
> According to Gary Rivlin, author of the new book "The Plot to Get Bill Gates,"
> (Times Business, $US 25), the people who hate Gates and are out to get him -
> the likes of Scott McNealy of Sun, Marc Andreessen and James Barksdale of
> Netscape, venture capitalist John Doerr, various anti-trust lawyers and
> government officials have become a culture all their own.
So any group of serious competitors, who might be afraid that someone ten and twenty and thirty
times their size, who has a history of grinding competitors into bankruptcy by such tactics as
what, in international trade, is called dumping, or by simply making serious, and illegal, attempts
to close the market to them (vide the post, late last year, I believe, on slashdot, by the guy who
went to 10 OEMs, and could not buy a pc without a MS operating system (except, of course,
for IBM, who offered OS/2), are a "culture of their own"? Lawyers who may, occasionally,
actually believe in anti-trust laws, and laws intended to promote competition, are part of this
"culture"?
> This book is the story of these idiosyncratic, sometimes rabid cabal of Silicon
> Valley muck-a-mucks known within Microsoft as "Captain Ahab's Club" for
> their obsessive pursuit of Redmond's own contemporary version of Moby
They are rabid, because they'd like a share of the pie? Funny, I don't remember this kind of vituperation
when, a mere dozen years ago, it was IBM and the Seven Dwarfs, and the government used anti-trust
laws against IBM...unless, of course, IBM is Faceless (tm), and MS is Bill the Gates.
> For many of these people, says Rivlin, Gates has become an obsession. They
> talk and think about him constantly. He is always looking over their shoulder,
> the invisible man at every business meeting. What would Gates do? What does
> he think? What is he up to? They dump on him behind his back, then swoon at
> the sight of him.
Ahh, they talk of him? As in, "how do we write software that can deal with all the bugs, and undocumented
bad code usage, in his software"? And I'd really like to know who it is that "swoons" over the sight
of him.
> Even the most savage assaults seem mostly to annoy him, like the original Godzilla swatting down
> those pesky jet fighters.
The *original, original* Godzilla, as in the first movie, was Not Nice...and was *killed*, at
the end, by something the size, or smaller (it's been a while, y'know), than piranha (anti-trust lawyers?)
> If you can judge a man by his enemies, Gates looks better. Rivlin doesn't show us anyone more
> agile or noble.
Is thissupposed to mean that Gates looks to any degree noble? One might say that Stalin, then, looked
noble, based on his enemies (us, among others).
> He has an amazing capacity to re-engineer himself - thus his company -- no small skill in so fluid and
> brutally competitive a marketplace.
But isn't that what he's really all about - not goshawowie software, but marketing? I mean, how else
could Word push down WorPerfect, or Internet Exploder take so much from Netscape, for so little
software value?
> The open source and free software movements - the literal antitheses of Microsoft and it's business
> philosophy -- have gained a strong foothold on the ^^^
Oh, and on the nit-picky side, that sohuld be "its" (belonging to it), not "it's" (contraction of 'it is').
> There is, nonetheless, an unyielding blandness about the man that makes it as difficult to hate him
> as to like him.
And this...do I take it that you are unfamiliar with the idea that the worst part of the majority of evil
is that it is so *banal*?
mark
(with a cc to Jon)
John,
it has *nothing* to do with technology. We got *exactly* the same in the sixties, though nowhere *near* so over the top. It's just gotten worse and worse over the years.
Funny, that's at the same time that media mergermania's been going on. About 10 years ago, Molly Ivins looked around, in a column, and noted that something like 90% of *ALL* the media in this country were owned by 29 corporations. You will recall that there have been mergers, since then.
The fact is, we have almost *no* "independant* media.
To the folks who criticise you by saying that folks must lap it up, since they publish want sells...wrong. They publish what they *want*. Welcome to the fact of a company town. Yes, I've argued with [Ll]ibertarians over the years, and their response has always been, "you don't like it, start your own, or leave". I don't see anyone competing right now. Got a gigabuck or two to spare, guys?
And then, of course, there's the point that if this occupies all the media space, then they don't have to cover anything else, like why we don't fully fund Head Start, or public education, or the space program, or the tax cut for the rich (that is, including the owners of the media).
Welcome to unbridled capitalism...and why it was bridled by our parents and rgandparents in the first place.
Well, yes...since the speaker from the SSI talked about it, *and* the *two* Environmental Impact Statements already done, WHEN HE SPOKE AT THE MONTHLY PHILA. S.F. SOC. MEETING AROUND 1982.
And no, we are *NOT* talking about broadcast power, we're talking about it being beamed to receivers in places like the desert, from whence it would be fed into the power grid. Also, the power levels being discussed back then were around a few watts/meter sq., not enough to cook a vulture. Again, we're *NOT* talking about SDI-style Power Beams (tm) here.
It would be the least polluting source of the electric power that we can produce...and before anyone starts arguing, consider:
a) nuclear wastes;
b) acid rain;
c) river and estuary water warming from
coolants;
d) mining;
e) transporting oil (Exon Valdez) and
natural gas (pipelines).
So...let's *go* for it, already. They've been babbling about it for half my life. I'd be *ecstatic* to go up there to help build it.
mark
I dunno, but I can't believe ohw many ignorant
slashdoters there are. I had higher expectations
of 'em. Except for Mary CW, and CountZero, almost
all of you seem to think that "sci-fi" == science
fiction.
WRONG
I once came up, on rasff, with a distinction,
and had a number fo folks find it acceptable:
skiffy (how fans tend to pronounce it) is
a) people who think most sf is tv or movie
b) reviewers, whose knowledge of science or
sf, would fit in a shot glass, and leave
plenty of room, and who think Godzilla
movies are sf, and
c) movie producers, whose ! ( IQ > shoe_size ),
who think "it's got special effects; it
doesn't need plot, or acting, or
writers..."
Real sf? It's 99.9% written (I probably own
several times as many sf & f books as all the
skiffy movies ever made), and has to have
*some* clue of what their writing about...and
has to tell a good story. I ought to also point
out that a good number of both the authors and
the active fans are computer folks, like me, or
other techies, or technically-trained (my
late wife, the chem/radiochem lab tech, several
authors who are physicists, or chemists, a
number of fan friends who work at Fermilab, and
another fan friend who works at the Cape).
And why treat sf seriously? Well...someone, I
think Sam Moskowitz, once described the evolution
of sf as:
'20-'30's Prof. Whatisname invents an
electronic chicken-plucker, and here's
how it works;
30'-40's Prof Whatisname invents an electronic
chickenplucker, and has these
adventures with it;
40-50's Prof W. invented that thing, and
here's how it affected society, and
50- How that changed society affected the
individual - what are the consequences
of all that inventing.
So...what were the consequences of videocams
(e.g., Rodney King), or satellites (Mission to
Planet Earth), or....
Then, of course, there's CP Snow's famous essay
on the two cultures, which are more seperate than
ever...is sf not a bridge?? I don't suppose *any*
of the folks who get the degree might go into
science writing (say, like Isaac Asimov...)
So...it's a throwaway, is it?
Try again.
mark
Shouldn't that be PitrOS?
mark "sorry, too much userfriendly, I s'pose..."
Lessee, upper management decides on deadlines,
and us lowly techno-peasants, who are lucky if
we are consulted on how long it will take,
and are almost *never* asked whether something's
doable, or even whether it *should* be done,
get to do the work.
Yup, sounds right.
Lackey: Sire! The peasants are revolting!
Bill the G: They *certainly* are....
mark "you knew that was coming"
So, is this sponsored by MacroSloth? If not, I
can tell 'em where they can get a *large* supply
of long-lasting leeches...like, drive to Seattle
and make a right to Redmond.....
mark "how would you like the Evil Empire
bashed today?"
Ok, I was also there...in fact, by sheer chance
(running into some friends in downtown Philly),
I happened into opening night of Star Wars.
Yes, it was incredible. And yes, there was *also*
analogously as much marketing *then* as there is
*now*. There were the same complaints of Lucas
"selling out". Don't you remember the Ewok's
Xmas special on TV?...Hmmm, been a while, maybe
it was Han, Leia, Luke, and Chewy, with the yet-
to-be-seen Ewoks.
Explain to me this phrase, "selling out", or
"hype", as well as calling Lucas a "self-defined"
Hollywood rebel.
From my view, Lucas is in the movie business. He
wants to make good, enjoyable movies, that are
*not* written by a committee, as 99% of all of
them are. With all the merchandizing, he was
able, 20-odd years ago, to set up ILM, and his
ranch, and set himself up to be able to afford
to create the movies he wanted, and to be taken
seriously (i.e., he had enough $$$ of his own)
to be able to raise the money to make the movies,
and distribute them.
Don't want to be commercial? Ever seen Mike
Jittlov's Wizard of Speed and Time? That *is*
Jittlov, and he's a really nice guy...but won't
compromise to reach the audience he really *should*. Lucas wants to reach the audience.
Selling out, in many cases, is a phrase I've
noticed used by folks who don't pull the big bucks
themselves, and by those who seem to think that
anyone who actually manages to appeal to the
masses, in terms they understand, and in a
really meaningful way, has "sold out". Has John
Williams sold out, or has he brought more folks
into classical music?
Then there's your appellation of "self-defined"
rebel. In Hollywood terms, I'd say he is. He
doesn't have a committee writing and rewriting
his scripts; he doesn't take a novel and run it
through a blender, and poor in artificial
sweetner, "lite" beer, and Chock Full 'O Egos.
So, tell me, once you see the story, whether he's
"sold out". And then define your terms.
I went over to look at this...
*sigh*
I hung out on a non-Xian newsgroup for a bunch of years, and was one of the proponants of a Big 8 version of it. This, unfortunately, looks all too real, like the kind of post we used to get every Sept. and Feb., when the new students got their Net account, and discovered that Everyone Does Not Think Like They Do in Rock City, TN, or Podunk, IL.
File under the heading of "people who ought to live on a farm, and never look at tv or a computer".
The scary thing is, of course, that these fruitcakes *are* out there, and not only can get guns, but get organized, as witnessed by the birth control clinic murders and bombings over the years
mark
Do you think you're a techie, or are you just a wannabe? In either case, you're an ignorant idiot.
1) there ain't enough nuclear material in Cassini for a bomb;
2) it isn't shaped for a bomb (and without that, even if there is enough material, it'll just melt or vaporize), and
3) it's encased in enough solid material that in the *extremely* unlikely event that it was so far off course that it hit the atmosphere and reentered (incredibly unlikely, Bruce Willis' POS Armaturkey aside), it would wind up as a lump on the bottom of the ocean, most likely (the planet *is* covered 70% with water, y'know).
mark