Offhand, I'd say so they know which websites to place their recruiting banner ads on... it's no secret that Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine recruitment offices target high school students, is it?
For pointing out that the desparity is between rich and poor families, and not between whites and blacks/latinos/whatever, the conclusion most journalists seem to jump to. I would also point out that there will always be disparities, and the government shouldn't be in the business of forcibly changing people's priorities. However, you don't answer the question: where should children whose parents chose not to pay for internet access for them get the experience they will probably need for decent jobs? Schools? Libraries? Churches? Government grants? "Universal access" laws requiring ISPs to give away access to poor families? The "free Internet" movement seems to be dying a slow death, but shouldn't the business model of advertising supported internet access be just as viable as broadcast radio and television? Granted, Katz feels that his function is not to provide answers, but to provoke discussion of the issues, but at least you could try to enumerate some of the alternatives.
If he's getting housing provided, and doesn't have to pay U.S. taxes on the $50/hour, it sounds like a great deal. If it's in Tokyo and he has to provide his own food and housing then he should be getting at least $100/hour. Also, there's a huge spread between what companies charge for consultants time and what the consultant actually gets; i.e. when Oracle was billing customers $150/hour for my services, I was only getting about $35/hour.
See, the problem with wind power is -- it only works when the wind is blowing!!! They're putting the windmills in the Columbia Gorge (between Oregon and Washington) because it's one of the windiest places in the United State (the same reason it's THE best place in the US for windsurfing). They're not building more wind farms in California presumably because, other than Altamount pass, they can't find any sites where a strong wind blows almost all the time.
A simular argument can be made for solar -- it's most efficient where there's a high amount of solar radiation (i.e. no cloud cover). That's why they're not building solar power plants in Oregon and Washington! Wouldn't work very well in SanFrancisco either, but seems like it would be a natural for the Mojave...
Suppose I have a competitor I want to put out of business. All I'd need to do is hijack an email gateway and spam the world with an ad for my competitor's product, and they would be out big bucks. So you can only fine the advertiser if you can prove he gave money to the spammer to annoy people... which sort of requires you to find the spammer first, doesn't it?
Considering some of the poorly written stories Hollywood had turned into movies, I've been eagerly awaiting an Ender movie. However, the trilogy as a whole probably could never be made into a movie for the same reason attempts at Dune and The Lord of the Rings failed miserably, namely there's way too much story there!
1) What's to keep somebody from grabbing another artists' material, re-tagging it with thier own tag, and thereby "stealing" the revenue?
2) What's to keep an artist from getting an account on an ISP, and setting up a robot to continuously download the artists' tagged content, thereby generating money for nothing?
3) Tags can easily be defeated by cryptographic or steganographic techniques.
Agreed, PS2 hardware would be good for simulations, especially if beowulf-like software to run them in parallel were developed. But the MSNBC article specifically mentions missle guidance, not simulation.
Forgive if I sound like a Microsoft appologist (I still think their software sucks) but this lawsuit is bullshit.
2.6% of that MICROS~1 work force is black, but only 7 people are joining the lawsuit. That means there's about 570 other blacks at MS that DON'T think MS is engaging in systematic discrimination, or at least don't think they have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the lawsuit, or they would have joined for a share of that $5 billion prize money. (Beats the heck out of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, doesn't it?) Maybe the 1.2% of black employees that are suing weren't promoted because they were incompetent, while the 98.8% that aren't suing WERE competetent and were rewarded proportional to their contributions to the company.
Also, were does that 2.6% number come from? My guess is from voluntary reporting on employment application forms. Now, if half the black employees are like me and always decline to give that information, then blacks ARE proportionately represented. Also, the article fails to mention that 23% of MS employees identify themselves as minorities, so it seems it's not quite the exclusive domain of pasty white boys.
Some open questions:
What percentage of employees of software firms in general are black? When I worked at Intel, it seemed like less than 1% of the employees were black. For some reason, blacks appear to be extremely underrepresented in an industry that hires ANY nationality based almost entirely on competence. What percentage of open source developers are black? What percentage of college grads with CS degrees are black? If their aren't any qualified black applying for jobs, you can't hire them, can you?
Military experts say
PlayStations could provide the
kind of sophisticated graphics
for missile guidance systems, or
remote control of pilotless
drones for surveillance or
bombing runs.
I'm no military expert, but it seems to me that hardware optimized for converting data into 3D images (console games) is NOT the best harware to use for converting 3D images into models of the real world (optical recognition/computer vision systems mentioned above). What good is rapid pixel fill rates, texel rates, polygon rates etc. when you're not trying to generate pictures, but rather decompose pictures into atomic components, which is pretty much the reverse process. So either a) I'm an idiot. b) The "miltary experts" are idiots, or c) Jim Miklaszewski and the MSNBC editorial staff are idiots. Which is it?
Rather than run multiple simultaneous threads on a single massively complicated CPU with 8 instruction units, why not simply put 8 very simple CPUs on the same die (at equal or less cost) and just run SMP? Why is SMT considered a "win", when most benchmarks are single-threaded anyway? Seems like we're moving in the direction of complexity for complexity's sake here...
NetZero stock has tanked. In a desparate attempt to prop up it's value, it's officers are attempting to find ANYTHING of value. Patents are a tangible asset. NetZero has NotZero chance of winning this lawsuit, but as long as they're still litigating it, the worthless patents are listed as assets on the balance sheet.
In the end, this will not keep NetZero out of the bankruptcy courts. Perhaps some Linux millionaire could pick up the patents cheap after bankruptcy, just to prevent anyone else from using this obnoxious business model?
Large animals need a LOT more food than small animals to survive. Most of the large animal species thrived in conditions of plentiful food, then went extinct when food became scarce. Any credible explanation of the extinction of dinosaurs must explain why larger animals died out whilst smaller ones survived; shortage of food caused by climactic change and possible poisoning of PLANTS by acid rain fits this criterion. The suggestion that an excess of carbon dioxide killed the dinosaurs is absurd; this would have resulted in MORE food, since plants thrive on carbon dioxide (unless the carbon dioxide caused global warming, which in turn caused desertification of much of the planet. Also, the extinction occured over a much larger time period of time than poisons would have remained in the atmosphere.
Conclusion: This report is 99 and 44/100ths percent pure bull!
The message they are sending to students is: "If you know of a flaw in the school's security, whatever you do, DON'T report it, or you'll be branded an EVIL HACKER!" They're also creating an adversarial, "Us vs. them" relationship, which only encourages malicious computer use.
What the system adminstrator at my college did when he discovered a student bright enough to break the pathetic computer security was... he immediately HIRED them, at which point they were on the same side, and did everything they could to prevent other students from breaking in!
Electric Trolley: What's the difference between a "trolley" and the New York Subway or LA Subway, the Chicago El, the Seattle Monorail, or the light rail systems in Portland, San Jose and many other cities? They're all electric "buses" running on track. The only real difference: they're all safer, more reliable, and faster than the old trolley cars!
Pneumatic tubes: Still in use in the drive-up teller lanes of almost every bank in the country.
Amiga: Great technology -- for 1984. But software availability, not hardware or OS, are what sells computers. And as the author himself says, the Amiga IS making a comeback, at least in name.
WordStar: The user interface SUCKED! But I'm sure there are still editors out there that will emulate it for you.
Wax Cylinder: Forget to open your windows in the summer, and the damn things MELT! Can anybody name even one thing that a wax cylinder does better than digital media? Anybody out there wanna back up their hard drive to a wax cylinder? No, didn't think so.
Slide Rule: Offers much less precision than a microprocessor, but it sure is slower AND harder to learn to use! In side-by-side compairison, skilled abacus users were able to add columns of numbers faster than hand-held calculator, so I can see still using those (and some people still do). I can't imaging ANYBODY prefering a slide rule to a digital computer.
Reel Mower: Used one; didn't like it. Simple to difficult to push to mow more than 100 sqare feet or so, and, due to the complete lack of sheilding on the blades, probably more dangerous than a power mower. And, does it mulch or bag your clippings for you? Don't think so. Wanna go back to old tech, try using sheep or goats instead...
Automatic Watch: Ever seen the Seiko Kinectic watch? It's self winding... and also about 3 times as large and heavy as your basic quartz electric watch.
Airship: Ok, of the ten of these, this is the only one I actually agree with! These could be used for selective logging, instead of low earth orbit satellites, as construction cranes, to replace most of the low-speed applications of helicopters, etc. instead of just as advertising billboards. With new materials and solar technology, these could be much cheaper than heavier than air planes. However, their performance in high winds probably still leaves something to be desired.
You can't tax bits going over a wire. Instead of buying CDs, simply download your executables over the 'net, hence no tax. "Boxes" of Linux or Star Office are not free, and hence should be taxed as a percentage of the purchase price.
Sure there's a little more responsibility in a real dog, but a $2000.00 fake dog is almost totally insane. I can't believe some people buy these things.
Funny. Most people say almost the same exact thing about these!
Slashdot Mirror
Offhand, I'd say so they know which websites to place their recruiting banner ads on... it's no secret that Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine recruitment offices target high school students, is it?
ACLU Press Release
The only good thing about this, is that now when the school bully demands your lunch money, you can give him the finger -- and get away with it.
For pointing out that the desparity is between rich and poor families, and not between whites and blacks/latinos/whatever, the conclusion most journalists seem to jump to. I would also point out that there will always be disparities, and the government shouldn't be in the business of forcibly changing people's priorities. However, you don't answer the question: where should children whose parents chose not to pay for internet access for them get the experience they will probably need for decent jobs? Schools? Libraries? Churches? Government grants? "Universal access" laws requiring ISPs to give away access to poor families? The "free Internet" movement seems to be dying a slow death, but shouldn't the business model of advertising supported internet access be just as viable as broadcast radio and television? Granted, Katz feels that his function is not to provide answers, but to provoke discussion of the issues, but at least you could try to enumerate some of the alternatives.
If he's getting housing provided, and doesn't have to pay U.S. taxes on the $50/hour, it sounds like a great deal. If it's in Tokyo and he has to provide his own food and housing then he should be getting at least $100/hour. Also, there's a huge spread between what companies charge for consultants time and what the consultant actually gets; i.e. when Oracle was billing customers $150/hour for my services, I was only getting about $35/hour.
A simular argument can be made for solar -- it's most efficient where there's a high amount of solar radiation (i.e. no cloud cover). That's why they're not building solar power plants in Oregon and Washington! Wouldn't work very well in SanFrancisco either, but seems like it would be a natural for the Mojave...
Time to get rid of that CBR stock... I guess it's just as well I didn't shell out $800 to save my newborn's cord blood, isn't it?
Suppose I have a competitor I want to put out of business. All I'd need to do is hijack an email gateway and spam the world with an ad for my competitor's product, and they would be out big bucks. So you can only fine the advertiser if you can prove he gave money to the spammer to annoy people... which sort of requires you to find the spammer first, doesn't it?
Considering some of the poorly written stories Hollywood had turned into movies, I've been eagerly awaiting an Ender movie. However, the trilogy as a whole probably could never be made into a movie for the same reason attempts at Dune and The Lord of the Rings failed miserably, namely there's way too much story there!
1) What's to keep somebody from grabbing another artists' material, re-tagging it with thier own tag, and thereby "stealing" the revenue?
2) What's to keep an artist from getting an account on an ISP, and setting up a robot to continuously download the artists' tagged content, thereby generating money for nothing? 3) Tags can easily be defeated by cryptographic or steganographic techniques.
So I can use my television set as a video camera then? Great!
Agreed, PS2 hardware would be good for simulations, especially if beowulf-like software to run them in parallel were developed. But the MSNBC article specifically mentions missle guidance, not simulation.
2.6% of that MICROS~1 work force is black, but only 7 people are joining the lawsuit. That means there's about 570 other blacks at MS that DON'T think MS is engaging in systematic discrimination, or at least don't think they have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the lawsuit, or they would have joined for a share of that $5 billion prize money. (Beats the heck out of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, doesn't it?) Maybe the 1.2% of black employees that are suing weren't promoted because they were incompetent, while the 98.8% that aren't suing WERE competetent and were rewarded proportional to their contributions to the company.
Also, were does that 2.6% number come from? My guess is from voluntary reporting on employment application forms. Now, if half the black employees are like me and always decline to give that information, then blacks ARE proportionately represented. Also, the article fails to mention that 23% of MS employees identify themselves as minorities, so it seems it's not quite the exclusive domain of pasty white boys.
Some open questions: What percentage of employees of software firms in general are black? When I worked at Intel, it seemed like less than 1% of the employees were black. For some reason, blacks appear to be extremely underrepresented in an industry that hires ANY nationality based almost entirely on competence. What percentage of open source developers are black? What percentage of college grads with CS degrees are black? If their aren't any qualified black applying for jobs, you can't hire them, can you?
I'm no military expert, but it seems to me that hardware optimized for converting data into 3D images (console games) is NOT the best harware to use for converting 3D images into models of the real world (optical recognition/computer vision systems mentioned above). What good is rapid pixel fill rates, texel rates, polygon rates etc. when you're not trying to generate pictures, but rather decompose pictures into atomic components, which is pretty much the reverse process. So either a) I'm an idiot. b) The "miltary experts" are idiots, or c) Jim Miklaszewski and the MSNBC editorial staff are idiots. Which is it?
Rather than run multiple simultaneous threads on a single massively complicated CPU with 8 instruction units, why not simply put 8 very simple CPUs on the same die (at equal or less cost) and just run SMP? Why is SMT considered a "win", when most benchmarks are single-threaded anyway? Seems like we're moving in the direction of complexity for complexity's sake here...
In the end, this will not keep NetZero out of the bankruptcy courts. Perhaps some Linux millionaire could pick up the patents cheap after bankruptcy, just to prevent anyone else from using this obnoxious business model?
Conclusion: This report is 99 and 44/100ths percent pure bull!
By law, YOUR liability limit is only $50 if you report the loss within 3 days, so the $50 limit makes sense.
What the system adminstrator at my college did when he discovered a student bright enough to break the pathetic computer security was... he immediately HIRED them, at which point they were on the same side, and did everything they could to prevent other students from breaking in!
I agree, 3 years of exposure is totally insufficient to draw conclusions from.
Pneumatic tubes: Still in use in the drive-up teller lanes of almost every bank in the country.
Amiga: Great technology -- for 1984. But software availability, not hardware or OS, are what sells computers. And as the author himself says, the Amiga IS making a comeback, at least in name.
WordStar: The user interface SUCKED! But I'm sure there are still editors out there that will emulate it for you.
Wax Cylinder: Forget to open your windows in the summer, and the damn things MELT! Can anybody name even one thing that a wax cylinder does better than digital media? Anybody out there wanna back up their hard drive to a wax cylinder? No, didn't think so.
Slide Rule: Offers much less precision than a microprocessor, but it sure is slower AND harder to learn to use! In side-by-side compairison, skilled abacus users were able to add columns of numbers faster than hand-held calculator, so I can see still using those (and some people still do). I can't imaging ANYBODY prefering a slide rule to a digital computer.
Reel Mower: Used one; didn't like it. Simple to difficult to push to mow more than 100 sqare feet or so, and, due to the complete lack of sheilding on the blades, probably more dangerous than a power mower. And, does it mulch or bag your clippings for you? Don't think so. Wanna go back to old tech, try using sheep or goats instead...
Automatic Watch: Ever seen the Seiko Kinectic watch? It's self winding... and also about 3 times as large and heavy as your basic quartz electric watch.
Airship: Ok, of the ten of these, this is the only one I actually agree with! These could be used for selective logging, instead of low earth orbit satellites, as construction cranes, to replace most of the low-speed applications of helicopters, etc. instead of just as advertising billboards. With new materials and solar technology, these could be much cheaper than heavier than air planes. However, their performance in high winds probably still leaves something to be desired.
You can't tax bits going over a wire. Instead of buying CDs, simply download your executables over the 'net, hence no tax. "Boxes" of Linux or Star Office are not free, and hence should be taxed as a percentage of the purchase price.
Funny. Most people say almost the same exact thing about these!
My sister gave me one of these for my wedding.
Good point -- wasn't Francis Drake a pirate AND a national hero in Britain?