If this country needs more scientists, funding schools and having a much more integrated, learning intensive science curriculum before undergraduate studies would help more than a TV show.
I agree wholeheartedly. There are a slew of things that need improving in American K-12 schools (the "theory" of Creationism, anyone?). But in the mean time, if CSI leads more kids to get interested in science, that's a good thing in my book.
If the net effect of CSI is more students taking science courses, then I say "go CSI!" I've never even watched the show, but this country desperately needs young scientists. This reminds me of the effect "Top Gun" had on Air Force (yes, Air Force) recruitment.
As for prosecutors worrying about CSI making juries expect TV-like evidence, the judge sets the jury's expectations. In general, juries in the United States are seriously flawed due to the exemptions provided to most educated professionals. The bigger picture issues are more important than whether jurors are expecting to see CSI-style evidence.
This is marginally interesting to me for a few reasons:
AOL was probably the single most influential company in the early days of the online revolution. More people got online in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of AOL than any other company. It wasn't the Internet, and it had problems, but it was still the first step for millions of people. In that regard what happens to AOL is interesting in an anthropological/historical sense.
The fact that AOL is restructuring themselves means that they are at least attempting to survive. For a few years they've been utterly floundering. The corporate-speak ("I hope to pour a little accelerant on it") is disconcerting, but these restructurings actually take a lot of effort. It's difficult to overstate the amount of inertia that builds up in huge operations like AOL. It will be interesting to me to see if an old giant can get nimble and start delivering what people actually want.
Although they downplay the possibility of this being a precursor to a split of AOL, I wouldn't be surprised if they're watching to see what each of the divisions do. They may decide to spin one or more of them off or divide the company into two, three or four separate companies. This could be worth watching in light of the difficulties other large, diversified tech companies are having.
Admittedly, this isn't the most exciting Slashdot story in recent memory, but I have a soft spot in my heart for stories about AOL.
Re:OT: Google censoring American war crimes eviden
on
Firefox 1.0 Released
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· Score: 1
So how is your new marketing job at Dogpile going, btw?
Space Command has been around since 1982. Its four mission areas are:
Space forces support involves launching satellites and other high-value payloads into space using a variety of expendable launch vehicles and operating those satellites once in the medium of space.
Space control ensures friendly use of space through the conduct of counterspace operations encompassing surveillance, negation and protection.
Force enhancement provides weather, communications, intelligence, missile warning and navigation. Force enhancement is support to the warfighter.
Force application involves maintaining and operating a rapid response land-based ICBM force as the Air Force's only on-alert strategic deterrent.
And come on, is this someone you want to do business with:
This particular person might not be your best customer, but by getting rid of one bad customer in such a hamfisted manner, they'll likely piss off a far larger number of potential customers, who will never shop there after hearing about this treatment of customers.
Comparing Mother Theresa to anyone is ludicrous. The woman is headed for sainthood. But it's not as if Gordon Moore raped and pillaged his way to huge fortune. He built one of the companies that was responsible for the microcomputer revolution, which ushered in millions of jobs for people not just in America, but around the globe. What does Gordon Moore have on his conscience? How could you possibly know if he has more on his conscience than you do?
As for your supposed knowledge of what motivates people to get into politics, you've been standing in the echo chamber for too long. If you haven't ever operated in the world of politics, how can you say you know what motivates all of the people who become involved in it?
Judging the powerful from afar is an easy excercise in cynicism, but it doesn't make your judgements any more accurate.
As for politicians, having worked in Washington, D.C., I can tell you that the vast majority of the elected and appointed people I met had very little interest in padding their fortunes. Politics is in general a much more difficult means of obtaining wealth than going into business. Sure, there are people who rotate between business and politics, taking advantage of the linkage. But there are plenty of hardworking politicians at the state and national level who really do want to do some good. You may not agree with their political leanings, their methods, or their effectiveness, but to paint them all as greedy bastards, while satisfying, is quite an exaggeration.
Lucas knows his recent films have been panned by the people who loved the original Star Wars trilogy. But he doesn't care if the Slashdot crowd waits a week or two weeks or a year to see his films. He maintains creative control, he makes buttloads of money, and he sees the Star Wars universe as his creation, to do with as he will.
I understand something of what's going on in the minds of those folks. It's geeky and a bit weird, but sometimes you have to pay tribute to things (whether material or abstract) that have been a big part of your life.
In my case the soles of both boots cracked to such a degree that my green wool socks actually squirmed out and were visible. This is generally not considered very professional in military circles, so I had to go for my second pair. But this pair had been with me for something like four or five years, and it pained me to see them go. They were so comfortable, they felt more like hide on my feet than actual boots. They'd been to Ft. Irwin, Ft. Ord, Ft. Benning, Ft. Drum, Jungle Warfare School in Panama, and they finally died in Africa.
So after I retrieved by backup pair, I gathered a few guys, walked over to the trash pit, threw some gasoline on the old pair, and burned them while holding a salute. One of the guys played 'Taps' in Bobby McFerrin fashion.
People do weird things on deployment, but to bring it back to these programmers, when you're in the trenches (be they corporate or otherwise), sometimes it's important to engage in a bit of anthropomorphizing.
Or perhaps these guys in Ohio are nuts, and I am too.
The earlier-referenced Wikipedia entry answers your questions. The fact that the US has created wars, been involved in wars, and attempted to subvert other governments does not negate the fact that the Bush Doctrine is a far-reaching restructuring of US foreign policy.
Beyond the issues involved in stem cell research, the Bush Administration has shown a tremendous disregard for scientific method as the basis for informed policy. They have politicized science to such an alarming degree that a host of scientists have gone on record about it.
Some of the objectionable actions they made note of include:
Ordered massive changes to a section on global warming in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment. Eventually, the entire section was dropped.
Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.
Ignored advice from top Department of Energy nuclear materials experts who cautioned that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq weren't suitable for use to make nuclear weapons.
Established political litmus tests for scientific advisory boards. In one case, public health experts were removed from a CDC lead paint advisory panel and replaced with researchers who had financial ties to the lead industry.
Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.
Excluded scientists who've received federal grants from regulatory advisory panels while permitting the appointment of scientists from regulated industries.
To me this is fear of science - fear that scientific inquiry will derail Bush's political agenda, which is largely driven by religious fundamentalists and big business interests.
us geeks will end up being disapointed if we believe that Kerry will solve all our problems
I'm not sure what the "geek agenda" in American politics might be, as I feel that there are as many differences between geeks on "geek issues" as there are between average everyday Americans on average everyday issues.
Your statement about Kerry not being the cure-all is right on the money as far as I'm concerned. But on the issues that matter most to me, Kerry comes out ahead in my book. Compromise is definitely the name of the game in a representative democracy.
Yes, they're both rich white men. But aside from that there are a host of rather large differences.
For one thing, the Bush Doctrine is a serious departure from previous American foreign policy. Kerry has advocated an approach that relies on the sort of coalition-building that Bush Sr. used with such effectiveness in the first Gulf War.
Kerry believes that excessive tax cuts for those who make over $200k per year is counterproductive. Bush believes that tax cuts of any kind, particularly those that favor the wealthy, result in increased entrepreneurial activity, which pumps up the economy, resulting in more jobs for everyone. These differences definitely have an effect on economic policy.
On the environment, the candidates aren't even close. Kerry has a long history of working for the environment, and Bush doesn't even know what the word "environment" means.
Bush has to cater to his "Base" by nixing stem cell research. Kerry knows that science is not something to be feared.
I don't have that much faith in Apple's ability to compete.
Your argument seems a bit circular to me. Because Apple entered an existing market (remember that when the iPod was introduced many felt Apple had entered the market late) and blew away the competition there is now no competition to the iPod. But you seem to be saying that because there is no competition Apple won't be able to compete when other companies deliver products that match or exceed the iPod's capabilities.
Based on your comment about Apple being unlikely to drop the price of the iPod to $50, you seem to be thinking of price as the only criteria for success in a competitive marketplace. But price is not the only factor in this market, as Apple has shown repeatedly since the introduction of the iPod. Apple has been competing successfully against competitors that have been given rave reviews here on Slashdot, so your comment about lack of competition for the iPod rings hollow to me. It's kind of like saying until someone makes a perfect copy of the Ford Explorer and sells it for $10k less, the Ford Explorer has no competition in the SUV market.
As a side note, could we drop the whole, "Macs are more expensive than PCs" thing? Apple does not sell at the low end, but at the medium and high end their machines stack up very favorably in price to Dell and other competitors. If you want to buy a $700 computer, a PC wins hands down. But if you move upmarket, Macs often beat comparable PCs in price.
If you're trying to get people interested in your product, the first rule is don't offend people. Like it or not, there are folks out there who don't understand the difference between daemon and demon. If you're the tech guy trying to show management that OpenBSD is worth using, the new logo is going to be much more reassuring than the old one, particularly if you happen to be operating in the Bible Belt. You may laugh, but it's true.
This is about marketing - pure and simple. The people behind NetBSD have every right to make the OS more accessible to as wide a range of users as possible, and part of doing that involves making it look more professional and less like something thrown together by a bunch of gamers in their parents' basement.
The new logo is clean, elegant, shows motion, uses bold colors, and is readily distinguishable from any other OS-related logo. Having a professional logo doesn't make you evil, and it doesn't mean you've sold out. But for better or worse it does mean that people (and not just management types) will tend to take you more seriously.
I'm reminded of "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka. The absurdist tale is really all about the alienation of modern Man. We exist in vast societies that even as they become larger make our role in them and ability to cope smaller.
Does our fracturing into interest-based communities bode ill for the future? I'm not sure, but it does seem that at least here in the United States it has helped to create a society where people talk past each other, avoiding unpleasant in-person discussions about social issues or political issues. Instead we retreat behind virtual walls, haul out Blogger, and start pounding on each other.
It is of course possible that I'm looking at this the wrong way, because as towns and cities become increasingly impersonal, gobbled up by cloned shopping malls, the need to find people you can relate to on any level increases. Slashdot is a great example of this. How many people in my home town with whom I could share Slashdotish interests could I actually meet through random encounters in the computer section of the bookstore?
I guess this sort of immersive virtual technology is just like most technology in that it is value neutral. It all depends on how we humans make use of it.
I don't have anything against you or Google for that matter. My point was that the organization and the individual are not the same. On Slashdot a lot of people tend to portray individuals who hold opinions contrary to their own as evil, particularly if they are part of an organization with which they disagree.
The Google/China comment was intended to point to the reality most of us live in - we don't get to call all the shots. This even applies to Rosen when she was at the RIAA. The fact that you hold yourself accountable for the actions of the organization you work for is admirable, and it's the same position Rosen took. She knew she was reviled, but she took the heat and accepted it as part of her job. In that respect at least, she is not a hypocrite.
My feeling is that she is a hardass by nature, and she probably relished some aspects of being under fire at the RIAA, but now that she's out of that environment she may be getting a chance to see past the melee a bit.
No, but she is a person. Just like the people at Google who are trying to do the best thing in an imperfect world. After all, China deserves to have Google just like the rest of us.
That illustrates the problem with corporate spokespersons: What they say is essentially meaningless, a mere echo chamber of whatever will make their stockholders the most money.
You make a very valuable point, and it begs the question (for Americans at least): How does this compare to political spokespersons? Having worked in DC I can say that most people in Washington really are motivated primarily by ideology and a desire to improve the country. They differ in their belief about how the country should operate.
But I do wonder how much of what (for example) Scott McLellan says is what he truly believes? My guess is that like the representative of any large organization, he believes most of it, but certainly not all of it. He is the mouthpiece, and his job is to speak for the organization as a whole, not as an individual.
In this article Rosen revealed a bit of herself. She's not the one-dimensional creature that a lot of RIAA-haters have made her out to be. Her position at the RIAA was never easy:
The presumption in these attacks was that Rosen was calling the plays for the music business and not the other way around. She seems to prefer it that way; she gets paid $1 million a year to shelter the executives from criticism. But in fact, according to those closest to her, she's not the hard-liner in the crusade against file-sharing. Yes, she's the frontwoman. But there are five CEOs backing her up - and some of them make her look like Mary Poppins. "They still think they should put teenagers in jail," says technology guru Esther Dyson.
In fact, Rosen tried to steer the labels toward the online future long before they saw it coming. In the mid-'90s, Rosen brought Dyson to a conference of music executives to brief them on how technology would transform their business. Dyson described for them the inevitability of digital delivery, an eventuality Rosen says she had begun to understand but wanted her bosses to hear from an outsider. But as Dyson spoke, the label executives became defensive, then furious. By all accounts, the meeting devolved into a shouting match.
Sure, as the head honcho at the RIAA she was on the wrong side of a lot of issues, but she's not exactly Pol Pot either.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree wholeheartedly. There are a slew of things that need improving in American K-12 schools (the "theory" of Creationism, anyone?). But in the mean time, if CSI leads more kids to get interested in science, that's a good thing in my book.
As for prosecutors worrying about CSI making juries expect TV-like evidence, the judge sets the jury's expectations. In general, juries in the United States are seriously flawed due to the exemptions provided to most educated professionals. The bigger picture issues are more important than whether jurors are expecting to see CSI-style evidence.
Not yet. But give the RIAA and Hollywood time. They'll figure out a way to make 'em indefinite in duration. ;-)
This is marginally interesting to me for a few reasons:
- AOL was probably the single most influential company in the early days of the online revolution. More people got online in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of AOL than any other company. It wasn't the Internet, and it had problems, but it was still the first step for millions of people. In that regard what happens to AOL is interesting in an anthropological/historical sense.
- The fact that AOL is restructuring themselves means that they are at least attempting to survive. For a few years they've been utterly floundering. The corporate-speak ("I hope to pour a little accelerant on it") is disconcerting, but these restructurings actually take a lot of effort. It's difficult to overstate the amount of inertia that builds up in huge operations like AOL. It will be interesting to me to see if an old giant can get nimble and start delivering what people actually want.
- Although they downplay the possibility of this being a precursor to a split of AOL, I wouldn't be surprised if they're watching to see what each of the divisions do. They may decide to spin one or more of them off or divide the company into two, three or four separate companies. This could be worth watching in light of the difficulties other large, diversified tech companies are having.
Admittedly, this isn't the most exciting Slashdot story in recent memory, but I have a soft spot in my heart for stories about AOL.Space forces support involves launching satellites and other high-value payloads into space using a variety of expendable launch vehicles and operating those satellites once in the medium of space.
Space control ensures friendly use of space through the conduct of counterspace operations encompassing surveillance, negation and protection.
Force enhancement provides weather, communications, intelligence, missile warning and navigation. Force enhancement is support to the warfighter.
Force application involves maintaining and operating a rapid response land-based ICBM force as the Air Force's only on-alert strategic deterrent.
More info here.
This particular person might not be your best customer, but by getting rid of one bad customer in such a hamfisted manner, they'll likely piss off a far larger number of potential customers, who will never shop there after hearing about this treatment of customers.
Comparing Mother Theresa to anyone is ludicrous. The woman is headed for sainthood. But it's not as if Gordon Moore raped and pillaged his way to huge fortune. He built one of the companies that was responsible for the microcomputer revolution, which ushered in millions of jobs for people not just in America, but around the globe. What does Gordon Moore have on his conscience? How could you possibly know if he has more on his conscience than you do?
As for your supposed knowledge of what motivates people to get into politics, you've been standing in the echo chamber for too long. If you haven't ever operated in the world of politics, how can you say you know what motivates all of the people who become involved in it?
Judging the powerful from afar is an easy excercise in cynicism, but it doesn't make your judgements any more accurate.
What about the second wealthiest person in America? What about the members of Responsible Wealth? What about Gordon Moore, who in addition to founding Intel, has been giving away huge sums of money for decades? What about these 50 philanthropists?
As for politicians, having worked in Washington, D.C., I can tell you that the vast majority of the elected and appointed people I met had very little interest in padding their fortunes. Politics is in general a much more difficult means of obtaining wealth than going into business. Sure, there are people who rotate between business and politics, taking advantage of the linkage. But there are plenty of hardworking politicians at the state and national level who really do want to do some good. You may not agree with their political leanings, their methods, or their effectiveness, but to paint them all as greedy bastards, while satisfying, is quite an exaggeration.
In my case the soles of both boots cracked to such a degree that my green wool socks actually squirmed out and were visible. This is generally not considered very professional in military circles, so I had to go for my second pair. But this pair had been with me for something like four or five years, and it pained me to see them go. They were so comfortable, they felt more like hide on my feet than actual boots. They'd been to Ft. Irwin, Ft. Ord, Ft. Benning, Ft. Drum, Jungle Warfare School in Panama, and they finally died in Africa.
So after I retrieved by backup pair, I gathered a few guys, walked over to the trash pit, threw some gasoline on the old pair, and burned them while holding a salute. One of the guys played 'Taps' in Bobby McFerrin fashion.
People do weird things on deployment, but to bring it back to these programmers, when you're in the trenches (be they corporate or otherwise), sometimes it's important to engage in a bit of anthropomorphizing.
Or perhaps these guys in Ohio are nuts, and I am too.
Some of the objectionable actions they made note of include:
- Ordered massive changes to a section on global warming in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment. Eventually, the entire section was dropped.
- Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.
- Ignored advice from top Department of Energy nuclear materials experts who cautioned that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq weren't suitable for use to make nuclear weapons.
- Established political litmus tests for scientific advisory boards. In one case, public health experts were removed from a CDC lead paint advisory panel and replaced with researchers who had financial ties to the lead industry.
- Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.
- Excluded scientists who've received federal grants from regulatory advisory panels while permitting the appointment of scientists from regulated industries.
To me this is fear of science - fear that scientific inquiry will derail Bush's political agenda, which is largely driven by religious fundamentalists and big business interests.I'm not sure what the "geek agenda" in American politics might be, as I feel that there are as many differences between geeks on "geek issues" as there are between average everyday Americans on average everyday issues.
Your statement about Kerry not being the cure-all is right on the money as far as I'm concerned. But on the issues that matter most to me, Kerry comes out ahead in my book. Compromise is definitely the name of the game in a representative democracy.
Yes, they're both rich white men. But aside from that there are a host of rather large differences.
For one thing, the Bush Doctrine is a serious departure from previous American foreign policy. Kerry has advocated an approach that relies on the sort of coalition-building that Bush Sr. used with such effectiveness in the first Gulf War.
Kerry believes that excessive tax cuts for those who make over $200k per year is counterproductive. Bush believes that tax cuts of any kind, particularly those that favor the wealthy, result in increased entrepreneurial activity, which pumps up the economy, resulting in more jobs for everyone. These differences definitely have an effect on economic policy.
On the environment, the candidates aren't even close. Kerry has a long history of working for the environment, and Bush doesn't even know what the word "environment" means.
Bush has to cater to his "Base" by nixing stem cell research. Kerry knows that science is not something to be feared.
The differences go on and on and on...
Your argument seems a bit circular to me. Because Apple entered an existing market (remember that when the iPod was introduced many felt Apple had entered the market late) and blew away the competition there is now no competition to the iPod. But you seem to be saying that because there is no competition Apple won't be able to compete when other companies deliver products that match or exceed the iPod's capabilities.
Based on your comment about Apple being unlikely to drop the price of the iPod to $50, you seem to be thinking of price as the only criteria for success in a competitive marketplace. But price is not the only factor in this market, as Apple has shown repeatedly since the introduction of the iPod. Apple has been competing successfully against competitors that have been given rave reviews here on Slashdot, so your comment about lack of competition for the iPod rings hollow to me. It's kind of like saying until someone makes a perfect copy of the Ford Explorer and sells it for $10k less, the Ford Explorer has no competition in the SUV market.
As a side note, could we drop the whole, "Macs are more expensive than PCs" thing? Apple does not sell at the low end, but at the medium and high end their machines stack up very favorably in price to Dell and other competitors. If you want to buy a $700 computer, a PC wins hands down. But if you move upmarket, Macs often beat comparable PCs in price.
This is about marketing - pure and simple. The people behind NetBSD have every right to make the OS more accessible to as wide a range of users as possible, and part of doing that involves making it look more professional and less like something thrown together by a bunch of gamers in their parents' basement.
The new logo is clean, elegant, shows motion, uses bold colors, and is readily distinguishable from any other OS-related logo. Having a professional logo doesn't make you evil, and it doesn't mean you've sold out. But for better or worse it does mean that people (and not just management types) will tend to take you more seriously.
Does our fracturing into interest-based communities bode ill for the future? I'm not sure, but it does seem that at least here in the United States it has helped to create a society where people talk past each other, avoiding unpleasant in-person discussions about social issues or political issues. Instead we retreat behind virtual walls, haul out Blogger, and start pounding on each other.
It is of course possible that I'm looking at this the wrong way, because as towns and cities become increasingly impersonal, gobbled up by cloned shopping malls, the need to find people you can relate to on any level increases. Slashdot is a great example of this. How many people in my home town with whom I could share Slashdotish interests could I actually meet through random encounters in the computer section of the bookstore?
I guess this sort of immersive virtual technology is just like most technology in that it is value neutral. It all depends on how we humans make use of it.
*Picking self off floor after rolling around laughing* Thanks, man, I needed that.
But seriously, it is amazing how few companies actually understand the value of being perceived as honest.
The Google/China comment was intended to point to the reality most of us live in - we don't get to call all the shots. This even applies to Rosen when she was at the RIAA. The fact that you hold yourself accountable for the actions of the organization you work for is admirable, and it's the same position Rosen took. She knew she was reviled, but she took the heat and accepted it as part of her job. In that respect at least, she is not a hypocrite.
My feeling is that she is a hardass by nature, and she probably relished some aspects of being under fire at the RIAA, but now that she's out of that environment she may be getting a chance to see past the melee a bit.
No, but she is a person. Just like the people at Google who are trying to do the best thing in an imperfect world. After all, China deserves to have Google just like the rest of us.
You make a very valuable point, and it begs the question (for Americans at least): How does this compare to political spokespersons? Having worked in DC I can say that most people in Washington really are motivated primarily by ideology and a desire to improve the country. They differ in their belief about how the country should operate.
But I do wonder how much of what (for example) Scott McLellan says is what he truly believes? My guess is that like the representative of any large organization, he believes most of it, but certainly not all of it. He is the mouthpiece, and his job is to speak for the organization as a whole, not as an individual.