Slashdot Mirror
The Best and Worst Technologies of 2003?
Phoe6 asks: "Last year, at Hexadecimals discussion group we shared a news that Worst Technology of 2002 was TIA (Total Information Awareness by DARPA).
What is the Worst Technology of 2003? For the Best, Time Magazine seems to have adjudged Steve Jobs' iTunes as the Invention of 2003.
What are your ratings?"
I'll not saying best or worst though.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
Oh, the horror...
I'd say the PowerMac G5. For one thing, its a completely new design internally, losing a lot of the legacy of old Mac OS machines. (Which they can do since they don't need to support a 20 year old BIOS or OS.) Another advancement is the attention spent on creating a case that can effectively, efficiently, and quietly cooling the new design.
Rutan's rocket ship! Broke the sound barrier in 2003, though it's suborbital spaceflight will be in 2004.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
While I agree that the Slashdot DDoS attack caused many people quite a bit of annoyance and frustration, I think leaving the impact at that is very short sighted.
Firstly, I don't think the blame for this DDoS can be centered on just one person or group. Obviously, those who attacked Slashdot are to blame, as are Slashdot's sysadmins, and the people at Arrowpoint. And secondly, the costs of this are much greater than you might think.
I have an eight year old daughter. We had a family pet - a rabbit, black, named Midnight, and my daughter was very fond of it. Midnight, sadly, passed away about two months ago. A week or two after Midnight died, my daughter came to me in tears and asked me, "Daddy, why won't God bring Midnight back? I've been praying like Deacon Simmons told me to."
Naturally, I had to think about how to respond to this. I finally answered, "well, honey, God is a little like Slashdot. He can seem arbitrary, cruel, and unresponsive, but he's really a nice guy who's just a little out of touch and is a little slow at responding to requessts."
This was fine, and I thought that would be the end of it. However, when Slashdot went down last week, my daughter burst into my den, positively sobbing and wailing, and managed to choke out "Daddy! Daddy! I can't get to Slashdot!" "Honey," I said, "it's just a website." But, between sobs, she said, "but you said God is just like Slashdot, remember? Does this mean God is dead?"
I tried to console her as best I could, but nothing seemed to work. When Slashdot came back up, she seemed to return to normal, but she hasn't been quite the same since. She doesn't ask me about God so much any more, and she seems less interested in Church.
As a good Christian, I will turn the other cheek, and not call for the punishment of those responsible. But to the heinous criminals and negligents responsible for this, I must ask, how do you feel about destroying a small girl's sense of innocence and wonder about the world? About crushing her childish dreams and idealism? About shattering her faith in God and his benevolence? About possibly having crushed her soul and emotion forever, leaving her to live the rest of her days in spiritual agony as a broken, scarred husk of a person?
I hope all of you think long and hard about what you've done. What is the soul of a child worth, next to a few double-checks of the router?
Thank you.
This has to be the least welcome technology to have come to the public's attention in 2003. Thanks alot, Diebold.
Not Found
The requested URL
link here: http://web.media.mit.edu/~hayes/mas863/urinecontro l.html
And remember, urine control
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
How about Serial ATA drives which became popular this year. It was about time that the old fashioned ribbon cables were replace with something more modern.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
...also known as "Beagle 2". I don't have to say which one this belongs to, do I?
This signature is intentionally left blank.
Linux Kernel 2.6
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Just to touch on the other topic posted here about DVD burners the fact that there is multiple formats out has got to be the worst. I don't think the VHS/BETA fight took this long to figure out a winner. One format would help everyone in the long run and its about time we got to it!
Make me your friend. All my friends get +1 modifier and I need friends :)
I was reading an article in a recent issue of DefenseNews recently where they were reporting that a lot of TIA isn't being scraped, it's being given over to private contractors to perform. The feds still think it's a wonderful idea to track everything we do, they just don't want to so directly involved for political reasons. Private companies are not subject to these sorts of pressures and have considerable leeway on how much tracking of customer information they perform. So DARPA is looking to them to do most of the work and simply provide the government with the processed information.
Remember folks, just because CNN says that TIA is over doesn't make it so, necessarily. The privacy vs. terrorist-defense war isn't over -- it's just beginning. And next time, the government won't be so bloody obvious about what it's trying to do.
GMD
watch this
Lemmie see if I got this straight. Inferior camera, none of the advantages of digital apply here, costs more than a disposable film camera.... what's the advantage again? Okay, I can see saving one use film strips, so it is 100% reusable, but that is the only benifit. OTOH, now that it can be hacked, there may be one benifit. A cheap digital that you can take in poor environemntal conditions and not feel bad about wrecking it. ALso, you can use it in situation where you know you will destroy it, such as taking close up pics of explosions, etc.
you're forgetting the true technological breakthrough that Iraq's technologists made when they perfected cloaking for said WMDs ;)
Software Freedom Day!.
I'm just glad this year passed without further proliferation of those damned singing plastic fishes.
Best: Super Model Cloning Kit
Worst: GE Bathtub Toaster ( fresh hot toast while you bathe )
I hope they don't sell it to the Romulans or we're all fucked!
Hardware central have a great review of the year here: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/edi torials/5139/1/
Personally I cant decide what I would class as the worst. There's plenty to praise and plenty to whine about.
It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Is this listed as a "worst" or a "best"? I'll assume "worst" in the context of slashdot, but it is irrelevant, so assume "best" if you want. Either way...
Even though I'll be marked Troll, I have to say this is the dumbest thing I've read in the past week. Longhorn is nonexistant as a operating system. It is a concept in the minds of project managers, designers, and a few MS fanboys/girls. They have some work done, maybe some betas that do fandangly something-somethings, but imagine all the cancelling of features and unintended feature creep that will occur between now and it's released date of 2006(?). Anything that exists as "Longhorn" today, will bare only slight resemblance to the "Longhorn" that will be released "whenever". So if you are calling it a "best" then hold your guns, it could diminish into a pile of steaming poo in 2 years and not ever be released. if you are calling it a "worst", then also hold your guns. It could improve into a top-notch computer operating system by learning from mistakes of the past.
Simply mentioning such a premature thing as the best/worst of 2003 it idiotic. Longhorn has not had any significant impact on anyone at all.
"Then XP came out and turned their world upside down. Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that."
I did exactly that on my parents machine. It wasn't hard. Most people who have used a previous version of windows to a moderate (daily) extent would be able to find information on how to go about doing so.
"Longhorn is going to come out, and users buying a new Dell or Gateway will get it automatically"
Have people you know buy locally. You'll get better support, better hardware and you can probably have them install whatever OS you want or do it yourself. "If it aint broke, don't fix it"
The radio tags for billing/tracking. There's a technology with a lot of promise for being very, very cool, and at the same time, possessing vast potential for abuse.
I can see the arms race now. RFID tags, RFID countermeasures.
Stores selling things by RFID, and claiming countermeasures are the providence of theives (echos of RIAA, MPAA).
Sigh.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
The evidence SCO invented to claim ownership of Linux.
I woke up on Christmas to little kids driving up and down the street on gopeds and mopeds outside my parent's house. At first I thought they were battery powered and didn't go very fast, but I was apparently wrong. They honk at each other and idle them outside, polluting the air in more ways than one. They fly down the road faster than anyone without traffic sense should be allowed. And people wonder why americans are generally overweight and unhealthy.
So in evaluating technologies as best and worst, are there any personal feelings people rate these with? Personally I would say that improvements to communication and travel are good because it brings family and friends closer - 1200 miles doesn't seem as far as it used to, and it's a lot cheaper to get there (It was actually cheaper for me to drive home for Christmas than fly this year). On the other hand, people like my father refuse to use a self-propelled lawn mower because it forces him to get some routine exercise. He wouldn't say it's a bad technology, just not useful to him.
Shudder...
You are so very correct, yet I can't help but wonder if leaving off the "DUMBASS" might have helped.
:-)
It is possible that if you had left off the "DUMBASS" the poster whom you corrected might have seen your post and thought, "hark, a link _would_ be more useful than a URL. I shall use that next time." Instead, with your technique, the poster might think, "Oh my, I am truly a DUMBASS. Since I can't do anything right I may as well not post at all... sniff," and we would miss the benefit of his knowledge.
Thank you for your informative viewpoint, but please keep in mind that we all learn faster we use our polite voices. Have a nice day!
TW
Vaporware is a 'never has been'
Abandonware is a 'had it, but sold/disposed/threw it out'.
We know he had them, the UN knows he had them, *he* knew he had them. His Kurdish and Iranian victims certainly knew he had them.
Go back a few years and ask Al Gore about Saddams WMD's. Ask Hans Blix. Ask Tom Daschle. Jaques Chirac. John Kerry. Madeline Albright. See what they say.
They were all campaigning hard to go to war, because we knew (or they told us) that Saddam had, and was building more, WMD's. Now, because Bush says the same things and actually does something about it, suddenly it's all a falsehood. An 'illegal war'.
Why weren't you yelling "vaporware" when Clinton attacked with those cruise missiles?
The real question is...what happened to all that stuff? Did he, in fact, dispose of it? Well WTF didn't he provide unambiguous proof of that? Or is it merely buried out in the desert, like they did with some frontline aircraft.
"It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
--Sen Hillary Clinton, Oct 10, 2002
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
--President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
Easily the best technology of 2003 was the Slashdot Dupe-Post-Checker(c). Using the up-to-now unknown technologies of "regular expressions" and "pattern matching", the wiz-kid staff at Slashdot was finally able to automatically check if a story had already been posted before.
Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.. that isn't due out until 2004, right? Or maybe it's just vaporware..