Hate to point this out, but the stock market doesn't appear intelligent enough to differentiate well between good and bad business models. You do realise that Cisco has been completely eating shit these past months? They have massive sales worldwide, which wouldn't have been affected *that* much by the tech slowdown. Why? Because of obsolescence. Bandwidth usage will continue to rise, regardless of the speed of your processor. Telcos are now moving to IP backbones, and therefore buying 12000s and other serious hardware. Telcos buy a hell of alot more gear than an e-tailer, believe me.
The tech slowdown will have hurt them in the short term, but seriously, you don't think their redundancy packages are an excuse to shed weight they've put on in the mad rush to capitalise? Remember, smaller companies == more companies to make the same money == more sales reps/after sales services/engineers == lower profits on the same sales. At the end of the day, they're far better off dealing with less big customers. And what's happening? Idiots like Lee Iacocca say bullshit in Wired about how he thinks Yahoo has a better business model than Cisco! And this guy is supposed to be smart?? Jesus! The stock market is a total gamble. There's too many uneducated fools out there. I'm one of them, I am forced to admit. But I know the difference between a company relying on banner ads and capitalising on a hyperbolic profit curve!
The same thing is true that has been for all of time: the only safe long term investment is land.
Re:America: the country without a past...
on
American Gods
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· Score: 1
Immigration provides the US with a cyclical nature, one that is mostly unique to us.
I realise America's the country under discussion here, but I'd like to point out that this is in no way unique to America. The entire New World is like this. America has had influxes of Dutch, Irish, Africans (well, I don't know how you'd call them immigrants), Italians, Poles, Latin Americans over successive generations. My home, New Zealand, has had immigrant fluxes of English, Irish, Dalmations (Croatians), Polynesians, and now Asians. It's the same here in Australia, to a lesser extent with some, but it's a universal New World thing. I'm not baiting here, but it would do the US some good to realise they're not the only English colony out there:)
It strikes me that noone's talking about Gaiman, an author I love, but hell, it's the weekend.
Has anyone read Stardust? It's basically just a fairy tale, and I guess you'd call it a novella. Saying a Neil Gaiman book/comic/story is 'just a fairy tale' may seem apocryphal, so to put it another way, it's very a purified version of his normal fare. The people are simple and live in country bordering Faerie, the land of the.. well, fairies. A young man loses his heart to a faerie as he is about to marry, and the child is returned to his doorstep after birth. The young one goes on a quest. Pretty straight forward stuff. But well worth the read.
Gaiman and Pratchett have done alot to revive the notion of fairy tales as intelligent adult fare. The notion of storytelling being an art unto itself, not necessarily tied down by what so often passes for "human" dramatisation but is in truth often humdrum, is an old idea which has made a welcome return. Adults should use their imagination and read a few books like these, not just ones about submarines and lawyers. If you don't venture outside what you know, you'll never get to what you don't have.
By this same standard, any game which features characters with american names, and is in english, with allusions to the american culture, should be under similar scrutiny.
Good point, Talking Bull.
Ridiculous? Maybe so, but it doesn't make it right
on
Who Owns Your Culture?
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· Score: 2
The article presents the information as though it is equally invasive of some "generic" Polynesian culture. I'd like to point out that I'm from New Zealand, and most of the words quoted in the article are actually specific Maori words. The Easter Islanders share a very similar language despite massive geographic difference, as they share a probably-similar expansion point from the ancestral central Polynesian point, believed to be the Marquesas Islands by most scholars.
What I'm pointing out here is that, at best, a few cultures have been ripped off. At worst, one has been completely. I don't really believe that the Maori or Easter Islanders have any more right to restitution from the Danes than do the people of Scotland for what the Americans have done with Braveheart or Rob Roy, but I do believe that at least some measure of homage is warranted in all these cases. Presumably local economies benefit when films are made in their areas* which would do alot to quell protests in most Hollywood productions. One wonders how the American Indians feel about the wholesale ripoffs of their culture that have been going on for a hundred years, however.
*Though I don't know where the Scottish films were made
Liv Tyler may be prettier, but I'll bet the 800 lb gorilla would be a lot more fun.:)
Then you're not doing it right!
Re:At the risk of sounding ungrateful...
on
Thief of Time
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· Score: 1
Well at least we're not plagued by bullshit monsters from the Dungeon Dimensions anymore. Count de Magpyr was an amazingly fleshed-out villain for a one-shot. He may have seemed stereotypical, but the way he played off Granny made for an incredibly good story.
I'm a very visual guy, and I never really remember what books "look like." But I can tell you all about Carpe Jugulum: It's raining, there's steam coming off everything, and the entire story is told at massive pace over a couple of days.
Pratchett has really got an amazing art to his stuff these days. He doesn't let things develop over several weeks or whatever, he just plain kicks off. The stories often are half-way done before you realise the thread, and that's not because it's obscure, but because people continue being people the whole way through. They don't start becoming Wolverine-esque puppets for the sake of the story, they just fall into the plot, often totally unconsciously.
He may always follow conventional plots, but it's irrelevant. I hardly every remember the details of the ending of a book, but I remember very well the characters portrayed, and they always grow. Pratchett is a craftsman, pure and simple.
Re:UK Covers vs US Covers - CORRECTION
on
Thief of Time
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· Score: 1
Josh Kirby and Paul Kidby are two different human beings. Josh Kirby is the official cover artist, Paul Kidby is the guy who does alot of art based on Discworld and has worked on some of the illustrated guides. Confusing, I know!
Re:Best Pratchett's put out in a while...
on
Thief of Time
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· Score: 1
Ah, but who can know the mind of the once and future king? I think if he revealed too much about Carrot's inner workings, the whole foundation of the inevitable conclusion to the Discworld series would be put in jeopardy.
I've been of the firm belief for a number of years now that the final book will be Carrot's coronation. He held off on Magrat marrying Verence for a little while, but not quite long enough. Obviously writing has become so much fun that he wants to stretch things out a bit further and not take any of the available outs he's built into the story. Another would be Susan taking the job of Death so he can retire and be nice to cats. In the tradition of his buddy Neil Gaiman, things would hopefully come to a head all at once. But hopefully not at the risk of an "I can't be having with this" or a "woof, bloody woof: Millenium Hand and Shrimp."
Pratchett has his main characters, through whom the story is lived. Some other characters are despicable creatures like you and me, while others are just too large to really include in the run of human emotion. Vimes will always be his Rocky Balboa, while Carrot will always be a distant superhero. And while Vimes is an excellent narrator, it's left to the bottle in his desk drawer to really paint alot about him, and Granny has to be left out of the royal christening for us to see her vulnerability. Carrot is also irrational when Angua disappears, but to reveal too much about Carrot's mind would be too reveal far too much about the entire Discworld.
Yeah, I actually read the article about Bakshi and Kricfalusi after I posted it (lawks! exposed!) and found out I was dead wrong pretty quickly.
I actually dug Wizards, though. Again though, I think the main reason people I knew weren't into his stuff was his fetish for incorporating nazi footage into his animation. People just can't get past the "one medium, one thread to follow" idea. Though I must admit, if the creators of Titan AE had stuck to one rendering technique, it might have been vaguely watchable.
It's not Hollywood. The screenplay was written by Jackson himself, a New Zealander who's also directing it. It was also filmed entirely in New Zealand, with the majority of the effects work being done there as well. Sure, it's American money, but the direction is foreign.
I suggest you check out Bad Taste his first film, which was completed on weekends over a couple of years with friends, if I remember. You won't get it, it's mostly kiwi jokes. What you might get is Meet the Feebles a Muppets parody with some really sick shit in it. Basically, his roots are effects and schlock stuff. But he also did Heavenly Creatures, an excellent look at the Parker-Hume murder. If he's ever proven anything, it's that he's got incredible range.
That being said, I'm right with the group here suggesting you assume it's crap until you see it. I think TPM has prepared us all. The last guy who tried to do this, Ralph Bakshi, left it half finished. Don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure he died of cancer half way through. His Vaughn Bode-esque experimental animation put alot of people off, but in truth was quite an amazing adaptation. But perhaps a little too experimental for many peoples' liking. I'm certain Peter Jackson won't make the same mistake, being a true fan.
For a pretty interesting interview with John Kricfalusi (of Ren & Stimpy fame) discussing Bakshi, go here.
Anything on what these things are like security-wise? There's enough problems with wireless security right now. This is clearly going to be a major issue in whatever takes the fore in serious networked environments.
Re:Application Developers..
on
Smart Routers
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· Score: 1
Look, this doesn't have to be an IP-layer bit. This can easily be implemented in an MPLS QOS-style deal, where the packet is encapsulated at the ingress to the network, and stripped at the egress. Try getting round THAT in a TCP header. Layer 2-and-a-half is where the business takes place, not layer 3. As soon as you've left your PPP, Ethernet or NBMA segment, you can kiss your application settings goodbye.
A few have made strong points on the issue of copyright as it obviously refers to our favourite decryption software. While that's publishing the code of a readily available yet technically illegal product, don't we have more to worry about from legal campaigns? Anyone remember the 'Buried Angel' episode of the Simpsons, where it turned out to be an ad for a mall? And what about SuperGreg?
As clueless as the people who designed the opening credits and the title for Anti Trust were, some advertisers are getting pretty smart.
So is there anything in the wording of those that commissioned this to suggest what they'd do about it being used for commercial gain?
Well, we already do alot of what this does with syslog reports. Basically, if a machine comes up with a syslog error (eg, something connected to it, or something with which it has a meaningful connection, like an EBGP Multihop) then it notifies the monitoring centre. There's no repeated polling, because routers keep syslogs automatically, monitoring their interfaces. No need for excess traffic as it's event-based updates only. Does everything I think your model would be useful for.
I see a list of many hosts, but only one client monitoring all machines. This is the way all network monitoring is already done: one machine polling many others. So where does the point to point come in?
They didn't *read* the files until they were in the US. But they hacked machines that were in Russia to get that data. Are you saying my stereo isn't stolen until you get it back to your house, simply because you didn't use it?
Guy Pearce was interviewed on radio here and he said that the financiers couldn't find a distributor for it, so had to set up their own company to do it. Good on them, they probably made just as much cash on a smaller circuit without Paramount behind them as they would have on a bigger circuit *with* them. And maybe they can stay independent for their next release and pull in even more!
Incidentally, I haven't seen the disorder discussed yet. It's more than likely anterograde amnesia. Normal "Spelling"* amnesia means you have no long-term memories, usually past a given point - take a handy car accident as plot device here. Anterograde means you can't *form* memories.
There's a famous sufferer of this disease called simply 'M'** who has to be told what's going on every day. This was a decision made years ago (he may be dead by now, I'm not sure.) He woke up the day after surgery on his kidneys or somesuch and every day's been the same since, vis a vis Groundhog Day.
The really interesting part is that he learns skills very well. Like they gave him a "rearrange the hoops on the sticks without changing the order" puzzle every day for two weeks, and at the end of it, he could do it in seconds, though every time he swore he'd "never seen a puzzle like this in my life!"
Yes, and there are those who voted for a Presidential candidate based on his religion (with no apparent merit given to the tenets of said belief system), the fact that he's killed more people than anyone else, and his commitment to an unrealistic military program which seems to have little going for it other than the sheer cost of the thing.
Read Infinite Loop. It gives a very interesting perspective on this. I believe it was actually Jef Raskin that had been working on this theory while he was doing his Masters before even entering the industry. He knew he wanted to develop the Lisa with a GUI, and took the rest of the Lisa engineers to PARC to convince them of it.
Though, I must admit, I may have mixed up Raskin with someone else here. Either way, apparently the engineers took the trip, and Steve ad to be convinced it was his idea much, much later. Apparently this is the best way to get Steve to do anything.
Re:IDIOT! MS Outlook Express mostly safe on MacOS!
on
Window(s) on the World
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· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to point this out, but the stock market doesn't appear intelligent enough to differentiate well between good and bad business models. You do realise that Cisco has been completely eating shit these past months? They have massive sales worldwide, which wouldn't have been affected *that* much by the tech slowdown. Why? Because of obsolescence. Bandwidth usage will continue to rise, regardless of the speed of your processor. Telcos are now moving to IP backbones, and therefore buying 12000s and other serious hardware. Telcos buy a hell of alot more gear than an e-tailer, believe me.
The tech slowdown will have hurt them in the short term, but seriously, you don't think their redundancy packages are an excuse to shed weight they've put on in the mad rush to capitalise? Remember, smaller companies == more companies to make the same money == more sales reps/after sales services/engineers == lower profits on the same sales. At the end of the day, they're far better off dealing with less big customers. And what's happening? Idiots like Lee Iacocca say bullshit in Wired about how he thinks Yahoo has a better business model than Cisco! And this guy is supposed to be smart?? Jesus! The stock market is a total gamble. There's too many uneducated fools out there. I'm one of them, I am forced to admit. But I know the difference between a company relying on banner ads and capitalising on a hyperbolic profit curve!
The same thing is true that has been for all of time: the only safe long term investment is land.
I realise America's the country under discussion here, but I'd like to point out that this is in no way unique to America. The entire New World is like this. America has had influxes of Dutch, Irish, Africans (well, I don't know how you'd call them immigrants), Italians, Poles, Latin Americans over successive generations. My home, New Zealand, has had immigrant fluxes of English, Irish, Dalmations (Croatians), Polynesians, and now Asians. It's the same here in Australia, to a lesser extent with some, but it's a universal New World thing. I'm not baiting here, but it would do the US some good to realise they're not the only English colony out there:)
It strikes me that noone's talking about Gaiman, an author I love, but hell, it's the weekend.
Has anyone read Stardust? It's basically just a fairy tale, and I guess you'd call it a novella. Saying a Neil Gaiman book/comic/story is 'just a fairy tale' may seem apocryphal, so to put it another way, it's very a purified version of his normal fare. The people are simple and live in country bordering Faerie, the land of the.. well, fairies. A young man loses his heart to a faerie as he is about to marry, and the child is returned to his doorstep after birth. The young one goes on a quest. Pretty straight forward stuff. But well worth the read.
Gaiman and Pratchett have done alot to revive the notion of fairy tales as intelligent adult fare. The notion of storytelling being an art unto itself, not necessarily tied down by what so often passes for "human" dramatisation but is in truth often humdrum, is an old idea which has made a welcome return. Adults should use their imagination and read a few books like these, not just ones about submarines and lawyers. If you don't venture outside what you know, you'll never get to what you don't have.
Good point, Talking Bull.
The article presents the information as though it is equally invasive of some "generic" Polynesian culture. I'd like to point out that I'm from New Zealand, and most of the words quoted in the article are actually specific Maori words. The Easter Islanders share a very similar language despite massive geographic difference, as they share a probably-similar expansion point from the ancestral central Polynesian point, believed to be the Marquesas Islands by most scholars.
What I'm pointing out here is that, at best, a few cultures have been ripped off. At worst, one has been completely. I don't really believe that the Maori or Easter Islanders have any more right to restitution from the Danes than do the people of Scotland for what the Americans have done with Braveheart or Rob Roy, but I do believe that at least some measure of homage is warranted in all these cases. Presumably local economies benefit when films are made in their areas* which would do alot to quell protests in most Hollywood productions. One wonders how the American Indians feel about the wholesale ripoffs of their culture that have been going on for a hundred years, however.
*Though I don't know where the Scottish films were made
Then you're not doing it right!
Well at least we're not plagued by bullshit monsters from the Dungeon Dimensions anymore. Count de Magpyr was an amazingly fleshed-out villain for a one-shot. He may have seemed stereotypical, but the way he played off Granny made for an incredibly good story.
I'm a very visual guy, and I never really remember what books "look like." But I can tell you all about Carpe Jugulum: It's raining, there's steam coming off everything, and the entire story is told at massive pace over a couple of days.
Pratchett has really got an amazing art to his stuff these days. He doesn't let things develop over several weeks or whatever, he just plain kicks off. The stories often are half-way done before you realise the thread, and that's not because it's obscure, but because people continue being people the whole way through. They don't start becoming Wolverine-esque puppets for the sake of the story, they just fall into the plot, often totally unconsciously.
He may always follow conventional plots, but it's irrelevant. I hardly every remember the details of the ending of a book, but I remember very well the characters portrayed, and they always grow. Pratchett is a craftsman, pure and simple.
Josh Kirby and Paul Kidby are two different human beings. Josh Kirby is the official cover artist, Paul Kidby is the guy who does alot of art based on Discworld and has worked on some of the illustrated guides. Confusing, I know!
Ah, but who can know the mind of the once and future king? I think if he revealed too much about Carrot's inner workings, the whole foundation of the inevitable conclusion to the Discworld series would be put in jeopardy.
I've been of the firm belief for a number of years now that the final book will be Carrot's coronation. He held off on Magrat marrying Verence for a little while, but not quite long enough. Obviously writing has become so much fun that he wants to stretch things out a bit further and not take any of the available outs he's built into the story. Another would be Susan taking the job of Death so he can retire and be nice to cats. In the tradition of his buddy Neil Gaiman, things would hopefully come to a head all at once. But hopefully not at the risk of an "I can't be having with this" or a "woof, bloody woof: Millenium Hand and Shrimp."
Pratchett has his main characters, through whom the story is lived. Some other characters are despicable creatures like you and me, while others are just too large to really include in the run of human emotion. Vimes will always be his Rocky Balboa, while Carrot will always be a distant superhero. And while Vimes is an excellent narrator, it's left to the bottle in his desk drawer to really paint alot about him, and Granny has to be left out of the royal christening for us to see her vulnerability. Carrot is also irrational when Angua disappears, but to reveal too much about Carrot's mind would be too reveal far too much about the entire Discworld.
Well, possibly not as much as Nobby's..
Yeah, I actually read the article about Bakshi and Kricfalusi after I posted it (lawks! exposed!) and found out I was dead wrong pretty quickly.
I actually dug Wizards, though. Again though, I think the main reason people I knew weren't into his stuff was his fetish for incorporating nazi footage into his animation. People just can't get past the "one medium, one thread to follow" idea. Though I must admit, if the creators of Titan AE had stuck to one rendering technique, it might have been vaguely watchable.
It's not Hollywood. The screenplay was written by Jackson himself, a New Zealander who's also directing it. It was also filmed entirely in New Zealand, with the majority of the effects work being done there as well. Sure, it's American money, but the direction is foreign.
I suggest you check out Bad Taste his first film, which was completed on weekends over a couple of years with friends, if I remember. You won't get it, it's mostly kiwi jokes. What you might get is Meet the Feebles a Muppets parody with some really sick shit in it. Basically, his roots are effects and schlock stuff. But he also did Heavenly Creatures, an excellent look at the Parker-Hume murder. If he's ever proven anything, it's that he's got incredible range.
That being said, I'm right with the group here suggesting you assume it's crap until you see it. I think TPM has prepared us all. The last guy who tried to do this, Ralph Bakshi, left it half finished. Don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure he died of cancer half way through. His Vaughn Bode-esque experimental animation put alot of people off, but in truth was quite an amazing adaptation. But perhaps a little too experimental for many peoples' liking. I'm certain Peter Jackson won't make the same mistake, being a true fan.
For a pretty interesting interview with John Kricfalusi (of Ren & Stimpy fame) discussing Bakshi, go here.
Anything on what these things are like security-wise? There's enough problems with wireless security right now. This is clearly going to be a major issue in whatever takes the fore in serious networked environments.
Look, this doesn't have to be an IP-layer bit. This can easily be implemented in an MPLS QOS-style deal, where the packet is encapsulated at the ingress to the network, and stripped at the egress. Try getting round THAT in a TCP header. Layer 2-and-a-half is where the business takes place, not layer 3. As soon as you've left your PPP, Ethernet or NBMA segment, you can kiss your application settings goodbye.
Not everything exists at layer 3, chaps.
A few have made strong points on the issue of copyright as it obviously refers to our favourite decryption software. While that's publishing the code of a readily available yet technically illegal product, don't we have more to worry about from legal campaigns? Anyone remember the 'Buried Angel' episode of the Simpsons, where it turned out to be an ad for a mall? And what about SuperGreg?
As clueless as the people who designed the opening credits and the title for Anti Trust were, some advertisers are getting pretty smart.
So is there anything in the wording of those that commissioned this to suggest what they'd do about it being used for commercial gain?
Well, we already do alot of what this does with syslog reports. Basically, if a machine comes up with a syslog error (eg, something connected to it, or something with which it has a meaningful connection, like an EBGP Multihop) then it notifies the monitoring centre. There's no repeated polling, because routers keep syslogs automatically, monitoring their interfaces. No need for excess traffic as it's event-based updates only. Does everything I think your model would be useful for.
Um, what?
I see a list of many hosts, but only one client monitoring all machines. This is the way all network monitoring is already done: one machine polling many others. So where does the point to point come in?
They didn't *read* the files until they were in the US. But they hacked machines that were in Russia to get that data. Are you saying my stereo isn't stolen until you get it back to your house, simply because you didn't use it?
Doh! Good point!
where's the movie set? Check your shoelaces, I think you took that spade to the head pretty hard.
Incidentally, I haven't seen the disorder discussed yet. It's more than likely anterograde amnesia. Normal "Spelling"* amnesia means you have no long-term memories, usually past a given point - take a handy car accident as plot device here. Anterograde means you can't *form* memories.
There's a famous sufferer of this disease called simply 'M'** who has to be told what's going on every day. This was a decision made years ago (he may be dead by now, I'm not sure.) He woke up the day after surgery on his kidneys or somesuch and every day's been the same since, vis a vis Groundhog Day.
The really interesting part is that he learns skills very well. Like they gave him a "rearrange the hoops on the sticks without changing the order" puzzle every day for two weeks, and at the end of it, he could do it in seconds, though every time he swore he'd "never seen a puzzle like this in my life!"
Bow down Before the One you serve?
/smug
Yes, and there are those who voted for a Presidential candidate based on his religion (with no apparent merit given to the tenets of said belief system), the fact that he's killed more people than anyone else, and his commitment to an unrealistic military program which seems to have little going for it other than the sheer cost of the thing.
Oh wait! Clearly that's the *MAJORITY*.
Hm, sounds like an American:) George *demanded they give back the plane*. That's idiocy.
Read Infinite Loop. It gives a very interesting perspective on this. I believe it was actually Jef Raskin that had been working on this theory while he was doing his Masters before even entering the industry. He knew he wanted to develop the Lisa with a GUI, and took the rest of the Lisa engineers to PARC to convince them of it.
Though, I must admit, I may have mixed up Raskin with someone else here. Either way, apparently the engineers took the trip, and Steve ad to be convinced it was his idea much, much later. Apparently this is the best way to get Steve to do anything.
Calm down, Steve!
I have the feeling he meant the magnets could be stuck to the walls with, ooh, I dunno.. glue?? And then put metal stuff on the magnets??