...or the future of cheap omnipresent mass-market audio?
If the former, all this talk of wireless, 192KHz/32bit/etc could be corrent.
If the latter, forget it. The future of mass market audio is paired with the future of mass market displays - flat screen LCD monitors. They'll all have built in speakers and for everyone on the planet who doesn't read/., it'll be just fine and it will get rid of two more annoying objects on your desk.
I suppose you could look to getting wireless video and audio to your fancy new LCD w/speakers, but I think by the time that got hammered out, components will be so small that most people will migrate to iMac-style form factors.
Airplanes have been doing instrument landings in bad weather for decades before GPS came along, I would hope those systems are not abandoned just because GPS is shiny & new
I've been using yahoo toolbar for the last few years and it's a life saver. I have used to access the same set of bookmarks on countless office & home computers, even when I moved across the country for the summer. Check it out.
You just bookmark using the toolbar, instead of the native browser. You can import/export/organize/etc.
I think they limit you to 1000 but that hasn't been an issue for me yet.
For inventing the phrase "Space Fanboy" - you are now my personal hero.
Thank you - it's about time.
I'm as excited as any geek to have humans galavanting among the stars, but I don't feel it's going to happen, or that it even should happen, without sound economic principles. Wasting precious resources on symbolic efforts like the ISS & the space shuttle is not going to speed our return to the heavens.
When I was young and I read all about the moon program I was so excited to think that Mars must be right around the corner. Once I found out that to accomplish the moonshot required about 10% of the entire federal budget of the USA, I realized it was before it's time.
Cheap space travel will come one day, but just like cheap RAM and HD's, it's a long road.
re: serfdom & GM - the cartoon on that site may have been printed by GM but the book is not. It's a classic in economics, I heard of it a few months ago and just finished it and it's brilliant.
The basic point, analyzed from a multitude of angles, is that in order to provide for the promises of as socialist utopia (or any utopia for that matter) personal freedom (thought/speech/action) must be sacrificed completely. He makes a strong point that contrary to popular believe, economic freedoms are closely tied to freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. And that without the former, the latter will quickly disappear.
re: bullies
I have no doubt many people attracted to the capitalist system are greedy selfish bullies, but under a socialist regime those same people would still exist and they would merely be attracted to power & influence in the socialist state infrastructure. Unless you advocate giving people personality tests at a young age and shooting those who look like they might be bullies, then I don't see how socialism will fare any better.
Further, while I was tormented by bullies as much as anyone on/., I've come to realize that while I might hate them, once they grow up their aggressive nature sometimes gets things done that wouldn't happen under more introspective, analytical leadership.
The socialist utopia would work great if the only people in it were community minded open source programmers. But those wouldn't be the only people in it. And the bullies would soon rise to the top once again. At least in the current system you have enough freedom to steer clear of most of them.
oo.. I just remembered something.. more semantics perhaps...but still.
The National Post, for all its sins, does not advertise itself as an independant source. Anyone w/half a brain who reads it for 15 minutes will see that.
Indymedia does claim to be somehow independant, and yet clearly they are not.
But stock options do not make you a stockholder - they make you a lottery ticket holder.
A real stockholder suffers when the stock does poorly, and reaps the rewards when the company is doing well.
An options holder by contrast only gets the rewards, and never the pain.
I would wholeheartedly support any company that wanted to buy stock on the open market and give it to their employees as a bonus to do with what they wished.
Giving your employees options is not the same thing.
There are lots of viewpoints in the world that are neither "smash the state" nor "make lots of money & support Israel". If I see a link to Indymedia, I know I don't have to read it because I know what it will say. Real independant media couldn't be ignored because it wouldn't be so easily pigeon-holed.
I guess what I'm saying is that Indymedia may be independant from the established commercial media, but it is by no means independant of the left. It's a shame because I think it might be a much more valuable resource then.
Yes, I'm arguing the semantics of their chosen title, but I think it's an important idea to find opinions not beholden to the left or right, but merely to ideas & reason. And no, actually I see no reason why anyone's socialist/marxist thinking would be considered admirable - ever read "The Road to Serfdom"? Here's the abridged version:
Why is it that a site so proudly "independant" is so rigidly uniform in it's content?
If the National Post (rigidly right wing Canadian paper) will publish Linda McQuaig and others, why aren't there any divergent viewpoints on Indymedia?
>The real advantage here is that the efficiency of hydrogen as the >energy storage is much greater than the efficiency of chemical >batteries.
Please back this statement up - I am certain a hydrogen tank could store a great deal more energy than an equivalent sized battery, but I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "efficiency of... energy storage"
I disagree - as a recent convert to gmail I'm totally blown away by the thought that went into user-interface issues. That's a well I don't think the computer industry will empty anytime soon, so I'm sure those engineers will have lots to think about.
Congrats - I didn't want my rant to mean I'm not happy for anyone who gets their windfall, esp. if well deserved. The whole system just seems a little circuitous.
I can't find a reference, but I recall a very interesting survey asking people who much they would like to me making or how much they thought they should be making.
What they found was that on average, people at every income level felt they should be making about twice what they were.
In other words, weath & poverty (above a certain minimum) are largely relative, and contrary to left leaning thought, no matter how much you give people they'll always want, or say they need, more.
All the option apologists say options are necessary to motivate employees.
And yet, when successful, it seems options just motivate them to leave.
Funny.
Just remember where all the money to create those millionaires comes from - the shareholders. If existing shareholders are willing to suffer dilution and buyback expenses just to "motivate" talent, why not just pay them the equivalent in cash? It would save a whole lot of paperwork & accounting nightmares.
oh right I forgot, that doesn't let them move billions of compensation expenses out of the expense column and into the "financing activites" column.
What I don't understand is why anyone needs a wifi access point in their desktop. I know it could be useful in some circumstances, but far more useful, IMHO would be an on board adapter so you could just log onto your wifi network w/your desktop.
Google will care about this because they have to *pay* for all that storage.
With normal people, they can pay for it with ad revenue.
With a file system, they cannot.
Please don't pony out the idea that the ads will still get d/l or clicked on or whatever. If you're an advertiser, you are only willing to pay for human beings seeing your ad or clicking on it, out of their own free will. Otherwise, it's not worth paying for. If it becomes known that x% of ad clicks are actually automated gmail filesystem users, then ad buyers will pressure google for lower prices.
VOIP is a win on landlines because it's a more economical way to use bandwidth, and it's not highly regulated.
The major cost in a mobile phone situation is installing and maintaining a massive network of towers, and buying up licenses to use enough frequency bands to handle all their customers. Your bandwidth usage on your mobile has already been engineered down the the bare minimum. VOIP ain't going to help you there.
Oh wait, I forgot, the free net access fairies are going to install free public hot spots on every freakin' floor of every freakin' building in the world and our mobile phones will be wifi voip phones. The fairies will also manage to get themselves common-carrier status so they can't be sued for the illegal shit that will go over their airwaves. Then they manage the entire infrastructure for free so long as we build a shrine in their honour. Oh finally the glorious future has arrived and I can download warez & pr0n all day without ever getting a letter from my ISP.
whoah there.. nobody argued that self-knowledge did not increase responsibiltiy.
However an *OBSERVATION* was made that in our current society, increasing self-knowledge seems correlated with people:
a) ducking responsibility, claiming they were/are helpless in the face of genetic factors b) avoiding assigning blame to people in favour of uncontrollable genetic factors
It's true we all have genetic predispositions, but unless you don't believe in free will, we all have significant abilities to control ourselves in the face of those dispositions.
As a society, we have a choice in how we deal with those predispositions.
We can encourage people to exercise self-control and restraint of our genetic traits that might be harmful so that we can all get along and create a world worth living in.
Or we can encourage medical science to come up with ways to treat or "cure" people of their various unique characteristics.
I prefer the first option.
The second could take quite a while yet, and I don't believe it would be a world worth living in.
This is the second time that Microsoft has made grandiose announcements about how much space they will give away for free, but nothing has really changed - Yahoo stepped up to the plate immediately and gave everyone 100 MB.
Let's look at that more closely; Yahoo said they were going to give everyone 100 MB, then they did it. Microsoft has promised always promised the moon but we're all still waiting.
Why put up with it? Try out Yahoo mail - it's really really good, and it's really really 100 MB. Right now. Not tomorrow, or "soon", now.
Why would you doubt that ask? If I had google shares and no intention of selling them, there's no harm in naming an outlandish price, just in case some nutjob steps up to the plate & buys them.
Slashdot Mirror
...or the future of cheap omnipresent mass-market audio?
/., it'll be just fine and it will get rid of two more annoying objects on your desk.
If the former, all this talk of wireless, 192KHz/32bit/etc could be corrent.
If the latter, forget it. The future of mass market audio is paired with the future of mass market displays - flat screen LCD monitors. They'll all have built in speakers and for everyone on the planet who doesn't read
I suppose you could look to getting wireless video and audio to your fancy new LCD w/speakers, but I think by the time that got hammered out, components will be so small that most people will migrate to iMac-style form factors.
My 0.02 CDN
Airplanes have been doing instrument landings in bad weather for decades before GPS came along, I would hope those systems are not abandoned just because GPS is shiny & new
Magnet (Gnutella2) link:
D WXLI4F.LMAMHDQEYZ43V3PXC23UJTWAQ4FIRN7COL2VFHA&dn= LunarEclipse-10-2004.wmv&xs=http%3A//24.85.233.123 %3A6346/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Abitprint%3AV2N3APWWYTW 36GG5ERDTQC24RDWXLI4F.LMAMHDQEYZ43V3PXC23UJTWAQ4FI RN7COL2VFHA
0 7e7807f0f841ff0e6be84a397416|/
magnet:?xt=urn:bitprint:V2N3APWWYTW36GG5ERDTQC24R
Edonkey 2000:
ed2k://|file|LunarEclipse-10-2004.wmv|4731422|184
Amen! I'm so sick of "skinning" - make it look pretty one way and then concentrate on making it work well.
sorry - I missed the "cross platform" bit above. I have no idea if yahoo toolbar works on anything but wintel. oops.
I've been using yahoo toolbar for the last few years and it's a life saver. I have used to access the same set of bookmarks on countless office & home computers, even when I moved across the country for the summer. Check it out.
You just bookmark using the toolbar, instead of the native browser. You can import/export/organize/etc.
I think they limit you to 1000 but that hasn't been an issue for me yet.
For inventing the phrase "Space Fanboy" - you are now my personal hero.
Thank you - it's about time.
I'm as excited as any geek to have humans galavanting among the stars, but I don't feel it's going to happen, or that it even should happen, without sound economic principles. Wasting precious resources on symbolic efforts like the ISS & the space shuttle is not going to speed our return to the heavens.
When I was young and I read all about the moon program I was so excited to think that Mars must be right around the corner. Once I found out that to accomplish the moonshot required about 10% of the entire federal budget of the USA, I realized it was before it's time.
Cheap space travel will come one day, but just like cheap RAM and HD's, it's a long road.
re: serfdom & GM - the cartoon on that site may have been printed by GM but the book is not. It's a classic in economics, I heard of it a few months ago and just finished it and it's brilliant.
2 26 320618/104-7283673-0905557?v=glance
/., I've come to realize that while I might hate them, once they grow up their aggressive nature sometimes gets things done that wouldn't happen under more introspective, analytical leadership.
:)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
The basic point, analyzed from a multitude of angles, is that in order to provide for the promises of as socialist utopia (or any utopia for that matter) personal freedom (thought/speech/action) must be sacrificed completely. He makes a strong point that contrary to popular believe, economic freedoms are closely tied to freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. And that without the former, the latter will quickly disappear.
re: bullies
I have no doubt many people attracted to the capitalist system are greedy selfish bullies, but under a socialist regime those same people would still exist and they would merely be attracted to power & influence in the socialist state infrastructure. Unless you advocate giving people personality tests at a young age and shooting those who look like they might be bullies, then I don't see how socialism will fare any better.
Further, while I was tormented by bullies as much as anyone on
The socialist utopia would work great if the only people in it were community minded open source programmers. But those wouldn't be the only people in it. And the bullies would soon rise to the top once again. At least in the current system you have enough freedom to steer clear of most of them.
k I'm done
oo.. I just remembered something.. more semantics perhaps...but still.
The National Post, for all its sins, does not advertise itself as an independant source. Anyone w/half a brain who reads it for 15 minutes will see that.
Indymedia does claim to be somehow independant, and yet clearly they are not.
But stock options do not make you a stockholder - they make you a lottery ticket holder.
A real stockholder suffers when the stock does poorly, and reaps the rewards when the company is doing well.
An options holder by contrast only gets the rewards, and never the pain.
I would wholeheartedly support any company that wanted to buy stock on the open market and give it to their employees as a bonus to do with what they wished.
Giving your employees options is not the same thing.
That's a great article on Canwest - thank you.
But I still say indymedia is not indy.
There are lots of viewpoints in the world that are neither "smash the state" nor "make lots of money & support Israel". If I see a link to Indymedia, I know I don't have to read it because I know what it will say. Real independant media couldn't be ignored because it wouldn't be so easily pigeon-holed.
I guess what I'm saying is that Indymedia may be independant from the established commercial media, but it is by no means independant of the left. It's a shame because I think it might be a much more valuable resource then.
Yes, I'm arguing the semantics of their chosen title, but I think it's an important idea to find opinions not beholden to the left or right, but merely to ideas & reason. And no, actually I see no reason why anyone's socialist/marxist thinking would be considered admirable - ever read "The Road to Serfdom"? Here's the abridged version:
http://www.mises.org/TRTS.htm
Why is it that a site so proudly "independant" is so rigidly uniform in it's content?
If the National Post (rigidly right wing Canadian paper) will publish Linda McQuaig and others, why aren't there any divergent viewpoints on Indymedia?
>The real advantage here is that the efficiency of hydrogen as the >energy storage is much greater than the efficiency of chemical >batteries.
... energy storage"
Please back this statement up - I am certain a hydrogen tank could store a great deal more energy than an equivalent sized battery, but I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "efficiency of
I disagree - as a recent convert to gmail I'm totally blown away by the thought that went into user-interface issues. That's a well I don't think the computer industry will empty anytime soon, so I'm sure those engineers will have lots to think about.
Congrats - I didn't want my rant to mean I'm not happy for anyone who gets their windfall, esp. if well deserved. The whole system just seems a little circuitous.
I can't find a reference, but I recall a very interesting survey asking people who much they would like to me making or how much they thought they should be making.
What they found was that on average, people at every income level felt they should be making about twice what they were.
In other words, weath & poverty (above a certain minimum) are largely relative, and contrary to left leaning thought, no matter how much you give people they'll always want, or say they need, more.
Funny.
All the option apologists say options are necessary to motivate employees.
And yet, when successful, it seems options just motivate them to leave.
Funny.
Just remember where all the money to create those millionaires comes from - the shareholders. If existing shareholders are willing to suffer dilution and buyback expenses just to "motivate" talent, why not just pay them the equivalent in cash? It would save a whole lot of paperwork & accounting nightmares.
oh right I forgot, that doesn't let them move billions of compensation expenses out of the expense column and into the "financing activites" column.
totally on the money
What I don't understand is why anyone needs a wifi access point in their desktop. I know it could be useful in some circumstances, but far more useful, IMHO would be an on board adapter so you could just log onto your wifi network w/your desktop.
totally :)
Google will care about this because they have to *pay* for all that storage.
With normal people, they can pay for it with ad revenue.
With a file system, they cannot.
Please don't pony out the idea that the ads will still get d/l or clicked on or whatever. If you're an advertiser, you are only willing to pay for human beings seeing your ad or clicking on it, out of their own free will. Otherwise, it's not worth paying for. If it becomes known that x% of ad clicks are actually automated gmail filesystem users, then ad buyers will pressure google for lower prices.
There's no free lunch.
VOIP to mobile??? Are you freakin' nuts?
VOIP is a win on landlines because it's a more economical way to use bandwidth, and it's not highly regulated.
The major cost in a mobile phone situation is installing and maintaining a massive network of towers, and buying up licenses to use enough frequency bands to handle all their customers. Your bandwidth usage on your mobile has already been engineered down the the bare minimum. VOIP ain't going to help you there.
Oh wait, I forgot, the free net access fairies are going to install free public hot spots on every freakin' floor of every freakin' building in the world and our mobile phones will be wifi voip phones. The fairies will also manage to get themselves common-carrier status so they can't be sued for the illegal shit that will go over their airwaves. Then they manage the entire infrastructure for free so long as we build a shrine in their honour. Oh finally the glorious future has arrived and I can download warez & pr0n all day without ever getting a letter from my ISP.
Right.
whoah there.. nobody argued that self-knowledge did not increase responsibiltiy.
However an *OBSERVATION* was made that in our current society, increasing self-knowledge seems correlated with people:
a) ducking responsibility, claiming they were/are helpless in the face of genetic factors
b) avoiding assigning blame to people in favour of uncontrollable genetic factors
It's true we all have genetic predispositions, but unless you don't believe in free will, we all have significant abilities to control ourselves in the face of those dispositions.
As a society, we have a choice in how we deal with those predispositions.
We can encourage people to exercise self-control and restraint of our genetic traits that might be harmful so that we can all get along and create a world worth living in.
Or we can encourage medical science to come up with ways to treat or "cure" people of their various unique characteristics.
I prefer the first option.
The second could take quite a while yet, and I don't believe it would be a world worth living in.
This is the second time that Microsoft has made grandiose announcements about how much space they will give away for free, but nothing has really changed - Yahoo stepped up to the plate immediately and gave everyone 100 MB.
Let's look at that more closely; Yahoo said they were going to give everyone 100 MB, then they did it. Microsoft has promised always promised the moon but we're all still waiting.
Why put up with it? Try out Yahoo mail - it's really really good, and it's really really 100 MB. Right now. Not tomorrow, or "soon", now.
Why does anyone, let along
Why would you doubt that ask? If I had google shares and no intention of selling them, there's no harm in naming an outlandish price, just in case some nutjob steps up to the plate & buys them.