I responded to the other guy. You probably have a point, but there is actually evidence that Enron tampered with the power infrastructure after California voted to "deregulate" energy and allow the price to float in the late 90's, before Enron's bankruptcy in 2000-2001. They started shutting down plants, exporting energy out of the state, and then importing it back in when prices were something like 2000% higher than they had been before "deregulation." It was a brief but dramatic episode.
But can't we begin working on a new medium now, that will grow gradually alongside paper journals and eventually replace them, once all of those brilliant old people have died off? It will only take one or two more generations of children before everybody is at least internet-proficient, if not able to build their own boxes.
Please have a look at the documentary "Enron -- The Smartest Guys in the Room." There are taped conversations of low-level energy traders at Enron doing things like calling the managers of power plants and telling them to find a creative reason to trigger a "forced outage."
Whether or not California has enough power plants today is a separate issue. The fact is that as soon as California let the price of electricity in the state float, Enron used the opportunity to engineer a shortage with their monopoly in order to jack up the price.
Also, I don't give a fuck "about ruthless industry magnates sacrificing the poor US workers and moving plants to China," you obviously have mistaken me for some sort of altruist like the rest of the baa-baa sheep here. We act like we're capitalists here but we have protectionist, nationalistic immigration and trade policies, and a price floor on labor, designed to prevent foreigners and immigrants from competing in our marketplace. We extol the virtues of free markets and then bitch and moan when markets equalize as a result of globalization. Give me a fucking break. Even you feel like you have to "justify" it by "assuring me" that "good Americans" are still getting the profits. Fuck you, hypocrite.
"Extreme Programming" or "XP" is actually a software development methodology. However, the headline writer seems to have used it in a context which means "This programming is challenging."
Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but please try to remember that this is Slashdot. The publication is targeted at the nerdy sorts who are likely to have knowledge of software development methods... so please, try to keep these things in mind when writing headlines? I literally thought you meant that Phoenix was programmed and maintained using XP. That would have been an interesting tech article, but it doesn't appear to be anywhere near that in-depth.
FTFA: "'Building the sequences is an extreme programming challenge every single day,' [Robinson] added."
That has literally nothing to do with XP. It's just the one phrase from the article with the biggest "woah, like cool dude!" factor. Give me a fucking break.
It's possible that the engineer was himself referring to the XP method, but even if that was the case, whoever wrote the original article and whoever wrote the Slashdot headline were obviously both clueless about what he was referring to.
I don't think the actual article has to do with the XP methodology, though, the headline writer was just too dumb to avoid referencing XP 'cause he didn't know about it.
Not that it'll ever come out, but the point is there
Please look into things before you run your mouth, the release date for Spore is September 8th, 2008, and it can already be pre-ordered on Direct2Drive.
Yeah, but what is the likelihood that Yahoo! will ever be worth that? Do you really think that they can meaningfully compete with Google in the long-term? What you are talking about is increasing your risk. A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, as they say. Maybe Yahoo!'s stockholders don't want to increase their risk right now -- after all, there is a banking crisis going on and federal accounting methods still don't have a reliable way to keep track of the risks assumed by credit derivatives.
Stop and consider that it is possible that selling the company would be the best long-term move -- maybe Yahoo!'s stockholders would rather pull their money out of Yahoo! now and put it into rental properties while they're still cheap, since the housing bubble recently burst with all of the mortgage write-downs from the investment banks.
However, when service providers complain about the negative effects of millions of people using P2P on their backbones, and take action to correct this, same said slashdot geeks get their panties in a bunch and cry fowl.
The difference is that when me and my roommate throttle our bittorrent traffic, we're both doing so voluntarily and we both know that it's being done. Comcast, on the other hand, pretends not to do it and then does it anyway without our knowledge. If my roommate surreptitiously throttled me without discussing it first, and lied to me about it, then yeah, I'd be pissed. That doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be throttled. Big difference.
This is just as baseless and hysterical as the original claim that China hired the hackers. Would you guys try not to let your tinfoil hats show so much?
Stop and think about my example. One of the primary sources of competition for Japanese auto manufacturers in the U.S. is locally-based auto manufacturers, like Ford. If those Japanese companies (or even German companies, for that matter) could hire hackers to cut off the power to large municipalities that supported locally-based auto factories, it would necessarily drive up the cost of American automobiles because the power shortages would reduce the amount of time available for production, increase the cost of production, and in turn create a shortage. This would increase demand for the more reasonably priced foreign automobiles, so there could be a greed incentive (increased sales/revenue/stock prices) for the company owners or managers to hire the hackers.
This sort of tactic would be feasible for any sort of industrialist / manufacturing corporation. Producers of disposable lighters, pencils, computer hardware... the list is practically endless. Cutting off the power paralyzes the economy, and that's exactly what companies exporting to America want -- increased demand.
By triggering rolling blackouts in California, Enron did attack the infrastructure. It wasn't their primary goal, of course, but as I said, a lack of power paralyzes the entire economy. We depend on it. Enron preyed on California's economic prosperity for their own gain, and it isn't inconceivable that another company could do the same.
Just to touch on the power outage issue, that's not the sort of thing corporate spies do.
You must have forgotten about Enron already. Granted, they had some unique motivations (energy in cali was deregulated so they could turn off the power to create artificial price spikes), but I could probably stretch my imagination and name a few foreign companies that would benefit from power shortages in the U.S.... like Japanese automobile manufacturers!
In short, to say it's regular old corporate espionage when you're talking about a communist country is pretty much the same as saying "those working on behalf of the government and military" because most of the corporations are in fact owned by the government or military.
Wow, that is an excellent point. Those damn commies.
Did Red China really hire the hackers?
on
China's Cyber-Militia
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military
Can they prove that? This sounds like regular old corporate espionage -- nothing unusual or even foreign there. Is xenophobia starting to take hold, or are those statements substantiated? No time to RTFA.
Okay, I've gotta hand it to you, that was pretty slick. I've never been to a shrink to get diagnosed with any "social development disorder," but potential candidates might be narcissism or sociopathy. Other than that you won your $20.
Nihilists can have passion, they just have to realize that their passions are products of their biology and that everything that's important to them, including their own lives, is insignificant in the scheme of the universe. Of course, as an agnostic nihilist, I'd have to further qualify that it's probably insignificant.
Anyway, regarding your other reply, you're right, passions moved me to take gross liberties with my knee-jerk comprehension of your statements. Sorry about that.
Don't worry about me though, I'm genuinely happy and have meaningful friendships. Try not to forget about our race's centuries-long history of tribalism and feudalism... preying on some while nurturing others isn't an incompatible set of behaviors.
P.S. Everyone should walk away from their partner when they find something "better." Let's say I marry someone, and they turn out to be physically abusive... should I stay with them out of blind commitment?
What you fail to realize is that most people walk away when they find something "better" -- some people are just more aware of the fact that a healthy relationship is something you cultivate over time, and that the hot blonde strutting down the street is probably not "better" than your 5-year marriage, even if she's prettier than your spouse (or richer, or got better SAT scores, or whatever tickles your fancy).
You imposed your opinions on the entirety of humanity when you stated in absolutist terms that nihilists are given "way too much admiration in the 20th century." I was actually less imposing by identifying myself with a group of like-minded people ("we") instead of just stating opinions as self-evident fact.
"An attempt to repress your feelings of guilt..." man, your smugness never ends, does it? That armchair pop-psychology just shows that you really, really want to get under my skin and you'll grasp at straws to do it.
I think the only part you've gotten right here is that you should be afraid -- very, very afraid. The tide of modernism is eroding everything you hold dear.
The only moral of the story here is that an arrogant, ethics-free mercenary with access to any tool he pleases is given way too much admiration in the twenty first century.
Says who? You? You're just a pompous, self-righteous, moralist dickweed. Don't impose your anachronistic opinions on the rest of us. We don't agree with you.
But shouldn't the sample still be collected from a different spot? I don't think we're worried about hurting the Martian ecosystem here or anything, we just want accurate samples.
Pshaw, go take a high-level Investment Analysis class or Econometrics and tell me finance isn't complicated. It's not just paperwork or balancing a checkbook, there's strategy. Simply "functioning in the modern business world" is much different than being a finance professional.
I agree that I thought "anarcho-capitalist" was retarded, but for a different reason; namely that for capitalism to function, property rights are required. For property rights to work, there needs to be a centralized gov't with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force -- otherwise markets will become less efficient as people become more concerned with defending their assets than capitalizing. Keynesian economics is good for reducing the class gap and stimulating competition, but don't think for a second that it is inherently necessary for capitalism to function.
You do commit some fallacies of your own here -- you can't forget how idealistic anarchists are. Even though anarchy would immediately develop into tribalism, and feudalism from there, to the anarchist, as soon as tribalism and tribal violence enter the equation, "anarchy" has failed because through the exercise of force, temporary social hierarchy is established. In other words, while the federalist wants central gov't to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, the anarchist wants to make all use of force illegitimate.
They are of course quite naive to think that the use of force can be made de facto illegitimate without some central authorty to govern what is and is not legitimate.
PS Freedom of the individual is the highest purpose of government systems -- the most common laws in existence, those against murder, theft and rape, are all maintained in order to protect the freedom of the individual from the tyranny of his neighbors.
Man, I am damn tempted to go set up shop at the flea market with some magnets and crystals now, along with some free little pamphlets about the cancerous dangers of Wi-Fi radiation and cell phone signals.
Slashdot Mirror
I responded to the other guy. You probably have a point, but there is actually evidence that Enron tampered with the power infrastructure after California voted to "deregulate" energy and allow the price to float in the late 90's, before Enron's bankruptcy in 2000-2001. They started shutting down plants, exporting energy out of the state, and then importing it back in when prices were something like 2000% higher than they had been before "deregulation." It was a brief but dramatic episode.
But can't we begin working on a new medium now, that will grow gradually alongside paper journals and eventually replace them, once all of those brilliant old people have died off? It will only take one or two more generations of children before everybody is at least internet-proficient, if not able to build their own boxes.
Please have a look at the documentary "Enron -- The Smartest Guys in the Room." There are taped conversations of low-level energy traders at Enron doing things like calling the managers of power plants and telling them to find a creative reason to trigger a "forced outage."
Whether or not California has enough power plants today is a separate issue. The fact is that as soon as California let the price of electricity in the state float, Enron used the opportunity to engineer a shortage with their monopoly in order to jack up the price.
Also, I don't give a fuck "about ruthless industry magnates sacrificing the poor US workers and moving plants to China," you obviously have mistaken me for some sort of altruist like the rest of the baa-baa sheep here. We act like we're capitalists here but we have protectionist, nationalistic immigration and trade policies, and a price floor on labor, designed to prevent foreigners and immigrants from competing in our marketplace. We extol the virtues of free markets and then bitch and moan when markets equalize as a result of globalization. Give me a fucking break. Even you feel like you have to "justify" it by "assuring me" that "good Americans" are still getting the profits. Fuck you, hypocrite.
"Extreme Programming" or "XP" is actually a software development methodology. However, the headline writer seems to have used it in a context which means "This programming is challenging."
Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but please try to remember that this is Slashdot. The publication is targeted at the nerdy sorts who are likely to have knowledge of software development methods ... so please, try to keep these things in mind when writing headlines? I literally thought you meant that Phoenix was programmed and maintained using XP. That would have been an interesting tech article, but it doesn't appear to be anywhere near that in-depth.
FTFA: "'Building the sequences is an extreme programming challenge every single day,' [Robinson] added."
That has literally nothing to do with XP. It's just the one phrase from the article with the biggest "woah, like cool dude!" factor. Give me a fucking break.
It's possible that the engineer was himself referring to the XP method, but even if that was the case, whoever wrote the original article and whoever wrote the Slashdot headline were obviously both clueless about what he was referring to.
I don't think the actual article has to do with the XP methodology, though, the headline writer was just too dumb to avoid referencing XP 'cause he didn't know about it.
Not that it'll ever come out, but the point is there
Please look into things before you run your mouth, the release date for Spore is September 8th, 2008, and it can already be pre-ordered on Direct2Drive.
Yeah, but what is the likelihood that Yahoo! will ever be worth that? Do you really think that they can meaningfully compete with Google in the long-term? What you are talking about is increasing your risk. A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, as they say. Maybe Yahoo!'s stockholders don't want to increase their risk right now -- after all, there is a banking crisis going on and federal accounting methods still don't have a reliable way to keep track of the risks assumed by credit derivatives.
Stop and consider that it is possible that selling the company would be the best long-term move -- maybe Yahoo!'s stockholders would rather pull their money out of Yahoo! now and put it into rental properties while they're still cheap, since the housing bubble recently burst with all of the mortgage write-downs from the investment banks.
However, when service providers complain about the negative effects of millions of people using P2P on their backbones, and take action to correct this, same said slashdot geeks get their panties in a bunch and cry fowl.
The difference is that when me and my roommate throttle our bittorrent traffic, we're both doing so voluntarily and we both know that it's being done. Comcast, on the other hand, pretends not to do it and then does it anyway without our knowledge. If my roommate surreptitiously throttled me without discussing it first, and lied to me about it, then yeah, I'd be pissed. That doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be throttled. Big difference.
This is just as baseless and hysterical as the original claim that China hired the hackers. Would you guys try not to let your tinfoil hats show so much?
Stop and think about my example. One of the primary sources of competition for Japanese auto manufacturers in the U.S. is locally-based auto manufacturers, like Ford. If those Japanese companies (or even German companies, for that matter) could hire hackers to cut off the power to large municipalities that supported locally-based auto factories, it would necessarily drive up the cost of American automobiles because the power shortages would reduce the amount of time available for production, increase the cost of production, and in turn create a shortage. This would increase demand for the more reasonably priced foreign automobiles, so there could be a greed incentive (increased sales/revenue/stock prices) for the company owners or managers to hire the hackers.
This sort of tactic would be feasible for any sort of industrialist / manufacturing corporation. Producers of disposable lighters, pencils, computer hardware ... the list is practically endless. Cutting off the power paralyzes the economy, and that's exactly what companies exporting to America want -- increased demand.
By triggering rolling blackouts in California, Enron did attack the infrastructure. It wasn't their primary goal, of course, but as I said, a lack of power paralyzes the entire economy. We depend on it. Enron preyed on California's economic prosperity for their own gain, and it isn't inconceivable that another company could do the same.
Hey, military leaders are intelligent. Nobody was pretending to call it 'military wisdom' or anything.
I have to betray my lack of geeky coder cred here and ask whether or not "10001010 10011110" actually means anything.
P.S. in hindsight, I'll never know if you're really a talented shrink, or just a moderately good private eye. P.P.S. psychology is my minor.
Just to touch on the power outage issue, that's not the sort of thing corporate spies do.
You must have forgotten about Enron already. Granted, they had some unique motivations (energy in cali was deregulated so they could turn off the power to create artificial price spikes), but I could probably stretch my imagination and name a few foreign companies that would benefit from power shortages in the U.S. ... like Japanese automobile manufacturers!
In short, to say it's regular old corporate espionage when you're talking about a communist country is pretty much the same as saying "those working on behalf of the government and military" because most of the corporations are in fact owned by the government or military.
Wow, that is an excellent point. Those damn commies.
Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military
Can they prove that? This sounds like regular old corporate espionage -- nothing unusual or even foreign there. Is xenophobia starting to take hold, or are those statements substantiated? No time to RTFA.
Okay, I've gotta hand it to you, that was pretty slick. I've never been to a shrink to get diagnosed with any "social development disorder," but potential candidates might be narcissism or sociopathy. Other than that you won your $20.
Nihilists can have passion, they just have to realize that their passions are products of their biology and that everything that's important to them, including their own lives, is insignificant in the scheme of the universe. Of course, as an agnostic nihilist, I'd have to further qualify that it's probably insignificant.
Anyway, regarding your other reply, you're right, passions moved me to take gross liberties with my knee-jerk comprehension of your statements. Sorry about that.
Don't worry about me though, I'm genuinely happy and have meaningful friendships. Try not to forget about our race's centuries-long history of tribalism and feudalism ... preying on some while nurturing others isn't an incompatible set of behaviors.
P.S. Everyone should walk away from their partner when they find something "better." Let's say I marry someone, and they turn out to be physically abusive ... should I stay with them out of blind commitment?
What you fail to realize is that most people walk away when they find something "better" -- some people are just more aware of the fact that a healthy relationship is something you cultivate over time, and that the hot blonde strutting down the street is probably not "better" than your 5-year marriage, even if she's prettier than your spouse (or richer, or got better SAT scores, or whatever tickles your fancy).
You imposed your opinions on the entirety of humanity when you stated in absolutist terms that nihilists are given "way too much admiration in the 20th century." I was actually less imposing by identifying myself with a group of like-minded people ("we") instead of just stating opinions as self-evident fact.
"An attempt to repress your feelings of guilt ..." man, your smugness never ends, does it? That armchair pop-psychology just shows that you really, really want to get under my skin and you'll grasp at straws to do it.
I think the only part you've gotten right here is that you should be afraid -- very, very afraid. The tide of modernism is eroding everything you hold dear.
The only moral of the story here is that an arrogant, ethics-free mercenary with access to any tool he pleases is given way too much admiration in the twenty first century.
Says who? You? You're just a pompous, self-righteous, moralist dickweed. Don't impose your anachronistic opinions on the rest of us. We don't agree with you.
But shouldn't the sample still be collected from a different spot? I don't think we're worried about hurting the Martian ecosystem here or anything, we just want accurate samples.
Pshaw, go take a high-level Investment Analysis class or Econometrics and tell me finance isn't complicated. It's not just paperwork or balancing a checkbook, there's strategy. Simply "functioning in the modern business world" is much different than being a finance professional.
But do you actually know it to be correct, or are you just saying that it could be correct?
I agree that I thought "anarcho-capitalist" was retarded, but for a different reason; namely that for capitalism to function, property rights are required. For property rights to work, there needs to be a centralized gov't with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force -- otherwise markets will become less efficient as people become more concerned with defending their assets than capitalizing. Keynesian economics is good for reducing the class gap and stimulating competition, but don't think for a second that it is inherently necessary for capitalism to function.
You do commit some fallacies of your own here -- you can't forget how idealistic anarchists are. Even though anarchy would immediately develop into tribalism, and feudalism from there, to the anarchist, as soon as tribalism and tribal violence enter the equation, "anarchy" has failed because through the exercise of force, temporary social hierarchy is established. In other words, while the federalist wants central gov't to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, the anarchist wants to make all use of force illegitimate.
They are of course quite naive to think that the use of force can be made de facto illegitimate without some central authorty to govern what is and is not legitimate.
PS Freedom of the individual is the highest purpose of government systems -- the most common laws in existence, those against murder, theft and rape, are all maintained in order to protect the freedom of the individual from the tyranny of his neighbors.
Man, I am damn tempted to go set up shop at the flea market with some magnets and crystals now, along with some free little pamphlets about the cancerous dangers of Wi-Fi radiation and cell phone signals.