Uhm... so what's preventing someone from taking a baseball bat or some coffee to the system? If the autopilot system is out of comission, it simply can't work...
Sure, if you don't mind the plane crashing immediately after you do this, that's a great idea.
You can't fly a modern passenger jet without electronics. End of story.
T1: Then let us simply turn off all electronics in the plane and coast into the target!
T2: You are infinitely smart! Now let us kill ourselves!
Disabling the electronics crashes the plane. Modern passenger jets are fly-by-wire -- there is no direct physical linkage between the controls and the actuators. Without a computer in the middle to send the commands, the plane doesn't fly.
So, we've got the lawyers on one side saying "this evidence should be allowed", and the judges saying "no, it shouldn't". Under the current system, where the judge prevails, apparently this is "chilling". I'm presuming that if the lawyers were to prevail (and therefore be able to admit any "scientific" evidence they damn well pleased), the effect would not be "chilling".
Hmmm. Excuse me while I chew on that one for a second.
Daubert itself suggests the following criteria for determining admissability:
1) is the evidence based on a testable theory or technique; 2) has the theory or technique been peer reviewed; 3) in the case of a particular technique, does it have a known error rate and stan-dards controlling the techniques operation; and 4) is the underlying science generally accepted?
Not seeing any problems with that so far. I'm also not seeing any good examples of cases which failed because obviously valid expert testimony was barred from the court room. I further note that the anti-Daubert website (see the PDF) claims that "Scientific evidence and opinion is especially crucial in toxic tort cases, when a plaintiff relies on scientific experts to demonstrate causality". That, to me, sounds remarkably similar to: "Shaky science allows us to sue to living shit out of anybody we want to, because even a 1% increase in the occurance of a particular disease sounds scary, and some scientist somewhere will be willing to testify in court for a few bucks."
I don't mean to sound overly cynical, but when I see lawyers complaining about (what judges define as) bad science being disallowed from the courtroom, you're going to have to do a bit better to convince me that I should be up in arms about this.
Mozilla 1.4 on Win 98, Win ME, and Win XP -- NetFlix works fine in all of them for me.
why did she have to name him Ethan?
on
The Bug
·
· Score: 2, Funny
My first name is Ethan. It's a very unusual name, to the point where I'm completely unaccustomed to anyone else sharing my name. Sure, I've heard of a few other Ethans, but I've never actually met one. So whenever I heard the name "Ethan", that's me.
...Ethan isn't exactly a well-rounded Renaissance Man. He has a single friend at the office, and they barely talk. Otherwise, Ethan is irritable, distant, and often loses himself in his own logic-gated thoughts.
....
But hopefully, you aren't Ethan. Even if you have no friends, no girlfriend, nothing, you still might play video games or watch TV or something (read?). Ethan, it seems, makes no effort to find even brief happiness. His life is joyless.
It's really weird reading something like that when my brain keeps wanting to associate the name "Ethan" with "me".
Authors, please name all main characters -- particularly those with serious personality flaws -- David. Davids are used to sharing their name with millions of other people. The name "Ethan", on the other hand, should only appear in Penthouse Letters, when describing studly guys with twelve-inch cocks servicing four women at once.
I am a TiVo owner. Are you suggesting that the fact that TiVo tells somebody that, say, 9.2% of TiVo owners watched a particular commercial is an invasion of my privacy?
I support this sort of data gathering. The less crappy, brainless advertising out there the better.
Do they need a new TiVo technology to know that all ads are skipped ?
I've had a TiVo for three years now, and I don't skip all ads. First, some shows are compelling enough that I watch them live, and am forced to suffer through ads as a result. Second, ads for products that I'm actually interested in are worth watching, as are genuinely funny and creative ads (I love the Jack in the Box Chipotle Chicken Sandwich commercial). Not all advertising is evil.
I can accept that there may have been a great flood long ago, but it is one hell of a stretch to call the Biblical flood "historically verified". The Biblical flood includes elements such as Noah's ark, which are very obviously fantasy. The use of "historically verified" and "Noah's ark" in the same sentence sets off some pretty big warning bells.
The reason these companies want to eliminate the GPL from consideration is obvious: the GPL prohibits them from incorporating other people's work into their proprietary software.
No, actually copyright law is what prevents them from incorporating other people's work. The GPL gives permission to use the code in specified ways -- it's copyright law that provides all of the restrictions.
That is hogwash. Your tax dollars get wasted on many other things, the least of which would be uninsured drivers who are injured.
And where do you think the insurance company got the money to pay for the idiot-without-seatbelt's medical bills? Did it just materialize out of thin air? No, of course not -- they collected it from all the other drivers, most of whom wear seatbelts.
I admit that saying "my tax dollars" was a vast oversimplification, but the fact is that my insurance payments, tax dollars, and numerous other payments help pay these idiot's medical bills. Ticketing them for not wearing seatbelts doesn't seem like such an onerous burden in the face of that.
ABS just looks at which wheels are locking up, then adjusts brake pressure so it doesn't lockup. It doesn't stop the car faster, it just gives you control while stopping.
Yes, ABS does stop your car faster. If you slam on the brakes in a car without ABS, your tires will lock up and you will skid. The friction between your tires and the roadsurface drops to the (much lower) coefficient of kinetic friction. With ABS, the wheels will keep turning during the braking process, and the friction between tires and road is much greater (coefficient of static friction), giving you better stopping power.
This only applies, of course, when you would have actually locked up the wheels -- but that's why ABS exists in the first place. If nobody ever locked up their wheels and started to skid, we wouldn't need ABS.
I already hate the fact that seatbelts are too tight and that there are laws mandating their use (especially here in MN where you can be ticketed for not wearing one while having no other violations).
And I hate the fact that some of my tax dollars go towards patching up idiots who were badly injured in accidents because they were not wearing seatbelts.
The work of people like us makes the work of people like you possible. So: nyah nyah na-nyah nyah.
Huh? I never said that I didn't know how a transistor (or parser, for that matter) works. I said that most people around here probably don't, and I'd still bet a hefty sum of money on that.
I find it rather hard to believe that Knuth's analysis of algorithms of Sorting and Searching have/will become out dated.
Really? When's the last time you wrote your own implementation of a search or sort algorithm?
I haven't done so in a decade. Every language I use has built-in implementations which are more than fast enough for my purposes. Likewise with virtually all such basic algorithms -- they have been implemented, and generally very well, in libraries. Computers are fast enough now that even a "good enough" general implementation of an algorithm is more than fast enough in virtually every case (and for the other cases, that's when you need to haul out the books).
I'm not saying that it is useless to know how sort algorithms work, but suggesting that it's relevant in the day-to-day work of a typical software developer (which is what you seem to be implying) is very misguided, in my opinion. In the same vein, most programmers couldn't explain how a transistor works if their lives depended on it, and I don't see that as such a huge problem, either.
Just out of curiosity, do you know how a transistor works? I'd wager that most folks around here don't, any more than they could write an implementation of QuickSort without having to look it up.
As a software developer, I'm not sure what this buys me. I can prove that if my software is a 100% correct implementation of the ideal system decribed in Z, then it's bug-free.
In other words, I can prove that if my software is 100% bug-free, it's bug-free. Woohoo. This doesn't address the case where my program doesn't fully conform to the Z specification, does it?
I have both a PS2 and a GameCube, and for me there is no contest. Crystal Chronicles is realtime, multiplayer, and the art style is absolutely fantastic. The whole dynamic of virtually requiring constant verbal communication between players should be a refreshing change of pace from most multiplayer titles.
If you have a significant other who plays games, a GameCube, and two GBAs, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up when it comes out.
I hate responding to myself, but I need to point out one more thing.
Red is a color. I think we can all agree on this. So is pink. Even very light pink is still a color. The hue in all of these cases is exactly the same, of course -- red. Only the saturation is changing.
At some point (saturation == 0), the color will cease to be "pink" and instead be "white". At this point, you apparently say that it is no longer a "color" but is instead something else. What exactly happens between saturation == 0.001 and saturation == 0 that makes it no longer a color? I truly don't understand.
And if she were talking about a subtractive color wheel, she'd be right.
No, she wouldn't. The primary subtractive colors are cyan, yellow, and magenta, not red, yellow, and blue as most people believe.
Green is only a primary color in the additive color wheel (light), which just happens to be how our eyes work...
I'm not sure what you mean by "just happens to be how our eyes work" -- nothing with respect to color is relevant without talking about how our eyes (and brains) work, since color is purely a mental phenomenon.
Also, the parent is right, black and white are NOT colors, they are merely the absorption or reflection of light.
So are green, pink, and every other color. What's your point?
Color as we know it is defined by the presence of cones (as opposed to rods) in the retina. Cones are only sensitive to blue, green and red, while rods are sensitive to the darks and the lights (also known as tints when lightening, or shades when darkening.).
As far as I know, the absence or non-functioning of rods would not prevent you from being able to perceive the color white, for instance. Assuming I'm right, that would shoot a giant hole through your "white's not a color" argument. Granted, your night vision would be non-existant, and likely you would have other sorts of vision weirdness, but you should still be able to see in bright light. I could be wrong about this, and would love to see you point me to some research about this. I have a feeling that you haven't seen or done any, though.
(There are some people, though it is rare, who can see a fourth primary color.)
I know that there was some speculation about tetrachromats, but I wasn't aware that this had been conclusively proven. Do you have a link?
Last time I checked, black and white weren't colors.
Black and white aren't hues. They most certainly are colors, regardless of what your elementary school teacher told you. She probably also taught you that the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, too...
My hands are a bit larger than average, and I find the GBA SP infinitely more comfortable than the original GBA. My hands used to cramp within minutes from the GBA (and generally my neck, too, from the awkward contortions necessary to see the screen), while I can hold the GBA SP for at least an hour before it begins to get uncomfortable.
My wife, who has much smaller hands, is also perfectly comfortable holding the GBA SP. I can easily accept that it would be uncomfortable for someone with gorilla hands, but it seems fine for those of us with relatively ordinary-sized hands.
teach people how to find their spiritual nature as opposed to brainwashing them to buy stuff they don't need.
Are you suggesting that teaching people to "find their spiritual nature" is not brainwashing? Funny, I've always thought that Good Little (Christians|Muslims|Jews|etc.) were the most brainwashed people I've ever met.
I thought this was common knowledge. I remember reading about it when I was in elementary school. Still pretty cool, of course, but this isn't some grand secret.
But Joe Programmer works for The Company. Therefore, acting as a representative of The Company, he can quite legally release the stuff under GPL.
Bullshit. The fact that someone works for a company does not ipso facto give them the right to negotiate contracts. For instance, if Justin had publicly said "Hey, AOL's monthly charges are now all $0.00! Have fun, everybody!" he would be instantly fired and his statements would be unenforceable, as he does not have the right to make such decisions. Likewise, his job does not entail the right to stipulate licenses (GPL in this case) on behalf of the company, so any such statements he makes are utterly meaningless. This is the only sane way for a company to operate -- imagine if the janitors from two companies negotiated a major deal, and the companies were both then bound to obey it simply because two of their employees made an agreement with one another.
If a used car salesman gave away fifty sports cars for free before his boss noticed what he was doing, do you think that the recipients would ever get their free cars? Of course not, as the employee is acting completely outside of his bounds and any such contracts he negotiates are unenforceable.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhm... so what's preventing someone from taking a baseball bat or some coffee to the system? If the autopilot system is out of comission, it simply can't work...
Sure, if you don't mind the plane crashing immediately after you do this, that's a great idea.
You can't fly a modern passenger jet without electronics. End of story.
T1: Then let us simply turn off all electronics in the plane and coast into the target!
T2: You are infinitely smart! Now let us kill ourselves!
Disabling the electronics crashes the plane. Modern passenger jets are fly-by-wire -- there is no direct physical linkage between the controls and the actuators. Without a computer in the middle to send the commands, the plane doesn't fly.
So, we've got the lawyers on one side saying "this evidence should be allowed", and the judges saying "no, it shouldn't". Under the current system, where the judge prevails, apparently this is "chilling". I'm presuming that if the lawyers were to prevail (and therefore be able to admit any "scientific" evidence they damn well pleased), the effect would not be "chilling".
Hmmm. Excuse me while I chew on that one for a second.
Daubert itself suggests the following criteria for determining admissability:
1) is the evidence based on a testable theory or technique;
2) has the theory or technique been peer reviewed;
3) in the case of a particular technique, does it have a known error rate and stan-dards
controlling the techniques operation; and
4) is the underlying science generally accepted?
Not seeing any problems with that so far. I'm also not seeing any good examples of cases which failed because obviously valid expert testimony was barred from the court room. I further note that the anti-Daubert website (see the PDF) claims that "Scientific evidence and opinion is especially crucial in toxic tort cases, when a plaintiff relies on scientific experts to demonstrate causality". That, to me, sounds remarkably similar to: "Shaky science allows us to sue to living shit out of anybody we want to, because even a 1% increase in the occurance of a particular disease sounds scary, and some scientist somewhere will be willing to testify in court for a few bucks."
I don't mean to sound overly cynical, but when I see lawyers complaining about (what judges define as) bad science being disallowed from the courtroom, you're going to have to do a bit better to convince me that I should be up in arms about this.
Mozilla 1.4 on Win 98, Win ME, and Win XP -- NetFlix works fine in all of them for me.
My first name is Ethan. It's a very unusual name, to the point where I'm completely unaccustomed to anyone else sharing my name. Sure, I've heard of a few other Ethans, but I've never actually met one. So whenever I heard the name "Ethan", that's me.
...Ethan isn't exactly a well-rounded Renaissance Man. He has a single friend at the office, and they barely talk. Otherwise, Ethan is irritable, distant, and often loses himself in his own logic-gated thoughts.
....
But hopefully, you aren't Ethan. Even if you have no friends, no girlfriend, nothing, you still might play video games or watch TV or something (read?). Ethan, it seems, makes no effort to find even brief happiness. His life is joyless.
It's really weird reading something like that when my brain keeps wanting to associate the name "Ethan" with "me".
Authors, please name all main characters -- particularly those with serious personality flaws -- David. Davids are used to sharing their name with millions of other people. The name "Ethan", on the other hand, should only appear in Penthouse Letters, when describing studly guys with twelve-inch cocks servicing four women at once.
Thanks, I'd really appreciate it.
How does this invade your privacy?
I am a TiVo owner. Are you suggesting that the fact that TiVo tells somebody that, say, 9.2% of TiVo owners watched a particular commercial is an invasion of my privacy?
I support this sort of data gathering. The less crappy, brainless advertising out there the better.
Do they need a new TiVo technology to know that all ads are skipped ?
I've had a TiVo for three years now, and I don't skip all ads. First, some shows are compelling enough that I watch them live, and am forced to suffer through ads as a result. Second, ads for products that I'm actually interested in are worth watching, as are genuinely funny and creative ads (I love the Jack in the Box Chipotle Chicken Sandwich commercial). Not all advertising is evil.
I can accept that there may have been a great flood long ago, but it is one hell of a stretch to call the Biblical flood "historically verified". The Biblical flood includes elements such as Noah's ark, which are very obviously fantasy. The use of "historically verified" and "Noah's ark" in the same sentence sets off some pretty big warning bells.
The reason these companies want to eliminate the GPL from consideration is obvious: the GPL prohibits them from incorporating other people's work into their proprietary software.
No, actually copyright law is what prevents them from incorporating other people's work. The GPL gives permission to use the code in specified ways -- it's copyright law that provides all of the restrictions.
That is hogwash. Your tax dollars get wasted on many other things, the least of which would be uninsured drivers who are injured.
And where do you think the insurance company got the money to pay for the idiot-without-seatbelt's medical bills? Did it just materialize out of thin air? No, of course not -- they collected it from all the other drivers, most of whom wear seatbelts.
I admit that saying "my tax dollars" was a vast oversimplification, but the fact is that my insurance payments, tax dollars, and numerous other payments help pay these idiot's medical bills. Ticketing them for not wearing seatbelts doesn't seem like such an onerous burden in the face of that.
ABS just looks at which wheels are locking up, then adjusts brake pressure so it doesn't lockup. It doesn't stop the car faster, it just gives you control while stopping.
Yes, ABS does stop your car faster. If you slam on the brakes in a car without ABS, your tires will lock up and you will skid. The friction between your tires and the roadsurface drops to the (much lower) coefficient of kinetic friction. With ABS, the wheels will keep turning during the braking process, and the friction between tires and road is much greater (coefficient of static friction), giving you better stopping power.
This only applies, of course, when you would have actually locked up the wheels -- but that's why ABS exists in the first place. If nobody ever locked up their wheels and started to skid, we wouldn't need ABS.
I already hate the fact that seatbelts are too tight and that there are laws mandating their use (especially here in MN where you can be ticketed for not wearing one while having no other violations).
And I hate the fact that some of my tax dollars go towards patching up idiots who were badly injured in accidents because they were not wearing seatbelts.
Do you want a cookie?
The work of people like us makes the work of people like you possible. So: nyah nyah na-nyah nyah.
Huh? I never said that I didn't know how a transistor (or parser, for that matter) works. I said that most people around here probably don't, and I'd still bet a hefty sum of money on that.
I find it rather hard to believe that Knuth's analysis of algorithms of Sorting and Searching have/will become out dated.
Really? When's the last time you wrote your own implementation of a search or sort algorithm?
I haven't done so in a decade. Every language I use has built-in implementations which are more than fast enough for my purposes. Likewise with virtually all such basic algorithms -- they have been implemented, and generally very well, in libraries. Computers are fast enough now that even a "good enough" general implementation of an algorithm is more than fast enough in virtually every case (and for the other cases, that's when you need to haul out the books).
I'm not saying that it is useless to know how sort algorithms work, but suggesting that it's relevant in the day-to-day work of a typical software developer (which is what you seem to be implying) is very misguided, in my opinion. In the same vein, most programmers couldn't explain how a transistor works if their lives depended on it, and I don't see that as such a huge problem, either.
Just out of curiosity, do you know how a transistor works? I'd wager that most folks around here don't, any more than they could write an implementation of QuickSort without having to look it up.
As a software developer, I'm not sure what this buys me. I can prove that if my software is a 100% correct implementation of the ideal system decribed in Z, then it's bug-free.
In other words, I can prove that if my software is 100% bug-free, it's bug-free. Woohoo. This doesn't address the case where my program doesn't fully conform to the Z specification, does it?
I have both a PS2 and a GameCube, and for me there is no contest. Crystal Chronicles is realtime, multiplayer, and the art style is absolutely fantastic. The whole dynamic of virtually requiring constant verbal communication between players should be a refreshing change of pace from most multiplayer titles.
If you have a significant other who plays games, a GameCube, and two GBAs, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up when it comes out.
OTOH, if it is not THEIR algorithm, it can not be called 'PageRank'.
Unless the term is trademarked (is it?), you can call whatever the hell you want "PageRank" and nobody can do a thing about it.
Yes, the same way we forgot how to read ancient Greek and Latin.
I hate responding to myself, but I need to point out one more thing.
Red is a color. I think we can all agree on this. So is pink. Even very light pink is still a color. The hue in all of these cases is exactly the same, of course -- red. Only the saturation is changing.
At some point (saturation == 0), the color will cease to be "pink" and instead be "white". At this point, you apparently say that it is no longer a "color" but is instead something else. What exactly happens between saturation == 0.001 and saturation == 0 that makes it no longer a color? I truly don't understand.
And if she were talking about a subtractive color wheel, she'd be right.
No, she wouldn't. The primary subtractive colors are cyan, yellow, and magenta, not red, yellow, and blue as most people believe.
Green is only a primary color in the additive color wheel (light), which just happens to be how our eyes work...
I'm not sure what you mean by "just happens to be how our eyes work" -- nothing with respect to color is relevant without talking about how our eyes (and brains) work, since color is purely a mental phenomenon.
Also, the parent is right, black and white are NOT colors, they are merely the absorption or reflection of light.
So are green, pink, and every other color. What's your point?
Color as we know it is defined by the presence of cones (as opposed to rods) in the retina. Cones are only sensitive to blue, green and red, while rods are sensitive to the darks and the lights (also known as tints when lightening, or shades when darkening.).
As far as I know, the absence or non-functioning of rods would not prevent you from being able to perceive the color white, for instance. Assuming I'm right, that would shoot a giant hole through your "white's not a color" argument. Granted, your night vision would be non-existant, and likely you would have other sorts of vision weirdness, but you should still be able to see in bright light. I could be wrong about this, and would love to see you point me to some research about this. I have a feeling that you haven't seen or done any, though.
(There are some people, though it is rare, who can see a fourth primary color.)
I know that there was some speculation about tetrachromats, but I wasn't aware that this had been conclusively proven. Do you have a link?
Last time I checked, black and white weren't colors.
Black and white aren't hues. They most certainly are colors, regardless of what your elementary school teacher told you. She probably also taught you that the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, too...
My hands are a bit larger than average, and I find the GBA SP infinitely more comfortable than the original GBA. My hands used to cramp within minutes from the GBA (and generally my neck, too, from the awkward contortions necessary to see the screen), while I can hold the GBA SP for at least an hour before it begins to get uncomfortable.
My wife, who has much smaller hands, is also perfectly comfortable holding the GBA SP. I can easily accept that it would be uncomfortable for someone with gorilla hands, but it seems fine for those of us with relatively ordinary-sized hands.
teach people how to find their spiritual nature as opposed to brainwashing them to buy stuff they don't need.
Are you suggesting that teaching people to "find their spiritual nature" is not brainwashing? Funny, I've always thought that Good Little (Christians|Muslims|Jews|etc.) were the most brainwashed people I've ever met.
I thought this was common knowledge. I remember reading about it when I was in elementary school. Still pretty cool, of course, but this isn't some grand secret.
But Joe Programmer works for The Company. Therefore, acting as a representative of The Company, he can quite legally release the stuff under GPL.
Bullshit. The fact that someone works for a company does not ipso facto give them the right to negotiate contracts. For instance, if Justin had publicly said "Hey, AOL's monthly charges are now all $0.00! Have fun, everybody!" he would be instantly fired and his statements would be unenforceable, as he does not have the right to make such decisions. Likewise, his job does not entail the right to stipulate licenses (GPL in this case) on behalf of the company, so any such statements he makes are utterly meaningless. This is the only sane way for a company to operate -- imagine if the janitors from two companies negotiated a major deal, and the companies were both then bound to obey it simply because two of their employees made an agreement with one another.
If a used car salesman gave away fifty sports cars for free before his boss noticed what he was doing, do you think that the recipients would ever get their free cars? Of course not, as the employee is acting completely outside of his bounds and any such contracts he negotiates are unenforceable.