With you right up until 'allopathic'. The use of that word outs you as an 'alternative' medicine nutjob.
With you right up until 'nutjob'. The use of that word outs you as a judgmental pedant.
Whatever ColdWetDog's particular beliefs are, the facts remain the same: modern medicine's treatments for pain are indeed inadequate, but they're the best we have, and the American legal system treats addicts like societal scum who don't deserve help.
Then, of course, there's another perspective that must be considered: by using the particular word, ColdWetDog's post preemptively excludes the inevitable posts claiming that mainstream medicine is terribly off-base, but this woo-woo treatment from the rainforests of northern Niger is so much better!
I don't think they did get it right (I abandoned my Windows 8 trial after 15 minutes of pain), but it will be consistent. Once businesses are eventually forced to move to Windows 8 (or later), Microsoft will be able to market their tablets as not requiring any time to learn. Managers will love that.
Of course not. The "hassle" cost is pushed to the IT department's payroll, rather than the purchasing budget. The manager looks good ("This tablet works great! And to think those IT nerds wanted to spend $10000 to migrate off of Antique Word Processor!") and the hidden cost stays hidden until later ("Look at how much overtime IT put in. Why can't those nerds ever seem to get stuff done faster?")
Another Slashdot 'article' full of slant and hyperbole.
My thoughts exactly. None of this is news (or even noteworthy) to anyone following the medical industry. Drug patents are not on just a chemical, but on exact formulations and their use to treat specific diseases in specific ways. Double the strength of each pill and have doctors prescribe one daily rather than two, and it's a new patentable drug. Mix in a practically-irrelevant bit of aspirin and it's a new combination that relieves symptoms and pain!
It's not that Purdue was particularly evil in their marketing of the drug. They're no worse than anybody else. Of course, rather than decry the whole medicine business and its ludicrous inefficiencies and rent-seeking, the author picks one particular scapegoat for today's Two Minutes Hate.
Sadly, I think you're perfectly right about some of that. Windows 8's UI is built for a tablet, so it can look and function the same everywhere (ideally). There are still sites that only work on IE, and they mostly show up in the corporate world, where IE still reigns supreme. Anything non-Microsoft is a loose cannon, that you can't just expect to connect with all the existing legacy software from the 90s.
All together, corporate managers will say that the extra cost for the Windows tablets (and Windows desktops, and Windows servers) is worth it, just so everything works smoothly (from their perspective), with no understanding of how much more hassle it makes for the IT folks.
It must be a very hot cup of tea. The problem with that is, of course, that a very hot cup of tea will evaporate too quickly to perform the necessary calculations. A donut, on the other hand, can be dipped in the hot tea, and the tea trapped in the donut will not evaporate nearly as fast.
It's not that astounding. Why, when I was volunteering in Africa, I found some Chinese-made RJ-45 plugs that fit directly into my American laptop! Even the Chinese Ethernet switch worked perfectly with it!
On an airplane, I expect many bolts, rivets, and screws will all "fit directly."
What fun is a cool new toy if nobody knows you have it? The point of stealth is not that nobody knows it exists, but rather that nobody knows when it's coming toward them.
I posted a comment about mundane items being used in scientific research. Murder often involves mundane objects being used to kill someone. Coincidence? I think not!
That is what I meant. That sentence was mangled several times while revising, and apparently I posted a few revisions too early.
Technology-wise, this is an interesting discovery. It would have been equally interesting had the scientist used fly paper or chewing gum to hold the semiconductors together. Once upon a time, this site claimed to offer "news for nerds"... let's not water down the nerdy science with the lowest-common-denominator amazement that versatile materials have many uses.
The glass slides in the experiment contained silica, the same common material in sand across the globe.
There hasn't been any press release yet, but I suspect the scientist's underwear was made of cotton. That's right, the age-old textile material cotton has now found new use in the field of scientific research!
Also, we're still waiting on confirmation that the building's electrical wiring contained copper, but there is speculation that it may have been contaminated by other metals, complicating the analysis.
So the really interesting part of this story - that superconductivity can be induced in high-temperature materials that haven't been grown in proximity - is completely overshadowed by the tape that held the experiment together?
A story I've kept for years as inspiration. A hundred points to anyone who can find the source:
One of the best parts of high school was when my math teacher took a spare TI-83 and let me use it exclusively for the whole semester, under specific terms: Do something awesome with it, and he'd let me skip my final.
Three weeks later, I'd written a small text adventure. A few weeks after that, I had a trading game with a complex market. By the end of the year, I had turned that same trading game into a graphical one, where the goal was to sail around the world buying low and selling high. The more money you had, the more likely you were to be attacked, which also took place in stunning 1-bit color graphics. The game's actions were controlled through a menu system, which was also used to launch the game (as opposed to the various tools I'd written to do my homework for me).
He was impressed, and I was inspired. When I started applying to colleges, I finally knew what major I wanted: computer science.
Keep loaning out those calculators. A student might need one, and not even realize it.
According to their article in Wikipedia, it's also a company that lists the Department Of State and the Public Relations Society of America among their customers.
As soon as I saw that, my thought was "so that's where the kid thought he was".
I figure a script kiddie broke into the Blue Toad servers, found some documents talking about working with the government (perhaps the FBI in particular), then found the UDIDs, and jumped to the conclusion that they had broken into an FBI system involved in domestic surveillance. Then they release it as Anonymous in an act of misguided privacy activism, throwing in an agent's name (possibly even mentioned in the found files) for credibility.
I'm jumping to conclusions myself, though, and assuming that there's some shred of truth to anybody's statements.
My understanding is that while Data Matrix has better error correction for misread bits, it is not as resilient to damage as QR when it comes to missing chunks of the matrix. Its largest standard size also holds less than the largest QR code.
As an appropriately-trained historian I'd record it according to the available technology of the day (probably at least a handheld 3D laser scanner, by the time QR codes are forgotten) and archive it. Elsewhere, another historian will find a specification for a QR code reader, and eventually a third historian will find both in some archives and make the connection, then some overworked grad student (or the future equivalent of slave labor) will actually write the decoder, and some other historian will take the credit for the discovery.
Printed on the back side of the stone as a 6" square, the version 40 code has large enough pixels that a deep engraving could survive a century or two.
Thanks to the error correction algorithms and necessarily-lenient recognition, QR codes can be colorful, stylized, and smoothly integrated into most graphic designs.
Of course, the disconnect between nerds who know this and the artists who make the signs means we'll be stuck with ugly QR codes for a while.
QR codes can store more data than just a website address. In addition to a URL, name, dates, and a brief biography are reasonable things to include in a large QR code. Future readers could get the website if it's still around (or archived somewhere, assuming the URL follows a suitable format), but even if that's unavailable they could still get more information than just a name.
The problem here is that with more data included, the code's footprint will necessarily increase, or its details will get smaller. One's ugly, and the other's more fragile.
Think about it, who in their right mind would ever submit to a life of celibacy...
Anyone who thinks that their religion is more important than sex. That was easy.
It's like those guys that say homosexuality is a "choice". Ummmm....yeah....it is a choice for you because YOU'RE GAY
There's a wide spectrum of sexuality, and some folks are indeed in a place where they can choose their preference. Others aren't.
Thanks, though, for illustrating my point nicely: Regardless of facts, people (including you) often defer to stereotypes to make assumptions about a whole group.
And the Roman Catholic church is still thought to be full of pedophiles, even though it's only a few priests who actually are, and all government officials are accused of being corrupt, even though most are making an honest effort to do their jobs right.
All groups become stereotypes, based on whatever the most well-known characteristic of the group is at the time. It's a human mechanism for simplifying the complexities of a diverse society. 4chan, at least, has an administrator who could clean up or close/b/, but chooses not to. Moot chooses freedom over reputation, and by accepting that and using the other parts of 4chan, you are accepting that you are a part of the 4chan group. That means that you accept the stereotype will be applied to you.
This is not to suggest that people should not use the better parts of 4chan willingly, but merely to point out that they should understand what they're getting in to. Similarly, political candidates know they will be accused of corruption, and Catholic priests expect to face fears of pedophilia.
Slashdot Mirror
With you right up until 'allopathic'. The use of that word outs you as an 'alternative' medicine nutjob.
With you right up until 'nutjob'. The use of that word outs you as a judgmental pedant.
Whatever ColdWetDog's particular beliefs are, the facts remain the same: modern medicine's treatments for pain are indeed inadequate, but they're the best we have, and the American legal system treats addicts like societal scum who don't deserve help.
Then, of course, there's another perspective that must be considered: by using the particular word, ColdWetDog's post preemptively excludes the inevitable posts claiming that mainstream medicine is terribly off-base, but this woo-woo treatment from the rainforests of northern Niger is so much better!
I don't think they did get it right (I abandoned my Windows 8 trial after 15 minutes of pain), but it will be consistent. Once businesses are eventually forced to move to Windows 8 (or later), Microsoft will be able to market their tablets as not requiring any time to learn. Managers will love that.
Of course not. The "hassle" cost is pushed to the IT department's payroll, rather than the purchasing budget. The manager looks good ("This tablet works great! And to think those IT nerds wanted to spend $10000 to migrate off of Antique Word Processor!") and the hidden cost stays hidden until later ("Look at how much overtime IT put in. Why can't those nerds ever seem to get stuff done faster?")
Another Slashdot 'article' full of slant and hyperbole.
My thoughts exactly. None of this is news (or even noteworthy) to anyone following the medical industry. Drug patents are not on just a chemical, but on exact formulations and their use to treat specific diseases in specific ways. Double the strength of each pill and have doctors prescribe one daily rather than two, and it's a new patentable drug. Mix in a practically-irrelevant bit of aspirin and it's a new combination that relieves symptoms and pain!
It's not that Purdue was particularly evil in their marketing of the drug. They're no worse than anybody else. Of course, rather than decry the whole medicine business and its ludicrous inefficiencies and rent-seeking, the author picks one particular scapegoat for today's Two Minutes Hate.
Yes, but no one turns on a tablet and expects to see a windows desktop.
With Windows 8, users will turn on a desktop and see a Windows tablet! That's just as good!
Sadly, I think you're perfectly right about some of that. Windows 8's UI is built for a tablet, so it can look and function the same everywhere (ideally). There are still sites that only work on IE, and they mostly show up in the corporate world, where IE still reigns supreme. Anything non-Microsoft is a loose cannon, that you can't just expect to connect with all the existing legacy software from the 90s.
All together, corporate managers will say that the extra cost for the Windows tablets (and Windows desktops, and Windows servers) is worth it, just so everything works smoothly (from their perspective), with no understanding of how much more hassle it makes for the IT folks.
It must be a very hot cup of tea. The problem with that is, of course, that a very hot cup of tea will evaporate too quickly to perform the necessary calculations. A donut, on the other hand, can be dipped in the hot tea, and the tea trapped in the donut will not evaporate nearly as fast.
It's not that astounding. Why, when I was volunteering in Africa, I found some Chinese-made RJ-45 plugs that fit directly into my American laptop! Even the Chinese Ethernet switch worked perfectly with it!
On an airplane, I expect many bolts, rivets, and screws will all "fit directly."
What fun is a cool new toy if nobody knows you have it? The point of stealth is not that nobody knows it exists, but rather that nobody knows when it's coming toward them.
I posted a comment about mundane items being used in scientific research. Murder often involves mundane objects being used to kill someone. Coincidence? I think not!
That is what I meant. That sentence was mangled several times while revising, and apparently I posted a few revisions too early.
Technology-wise, this is an interesting discovery. It would have been equally interesting had the scientist used fly paper or chewing gum to hold the semiconductors together. Once upon a time, this site claimed to offer "news for nerds"... let's not water down the nerdy science with the lowest-common-denominator amazement that versatile materials have many uses.
The glass slides in the experiment contained silica, the same common material in sand across the globe.
There hasn't been any press release yet, but I suspect the scientist's underwear was made of cotton. That's right, the age-old textile material cotton has now found new use in the field of scientific research!
Also, we're still waiting on confirmation that the building's electrical wiring contained copper, but there is speculation that it may have been contaminated by other metals, complicating the analysis.
So the really interesting part of this story - that superconductivity can be induced in high-temperature materials that haven't been grown in proximity - is completely overshadowed by the tape that held the experiment together?
Fuck journalism.
Unless there are faster ones that aren't considered for comparison, such as secret military projects.
A story I've kept for years as inspiration. A hundred points to anyone who can find the source:
One of the best parts of high school was when my math teacher took a spare TI-83 and let me use it exclusively for the whole semester, under specific terms: Do something awesome with it, and he'd let me skip my final.
Three weeks later, I'd written a small text adventure. A few weeks after that, I had a trading game with a complex market. By the end of the year, I had turned that same trading game into a graphical one, where the goal was to sail around the world buying low and selling high. The more money you had, the more likely you were to be attacked, which also took place in stunning 1-bit color graphics. The game's actions were controlled through a menu system, which was also used to launch the game (as opposed to the various tools I'd written to do my homework for me).
He was impressed, and I was inspired. When I started applying to colleges, I finally knew what major I wanted: computer science.
Keep loaning out those calculators. A student might need one, and not even realize it.
According to their article in Wikipedia, it's also a company that lists the Department Of State and the Public Relations Society of America among their customers.
As soon as I saw that, my thought was "so that's where the kid thought he was".
I figure a script kiddie broke into the Blue Toad servers, found some documents talking about working with the government (perhaps the FBI in particular), then found the UDIDs, and jumped to the conclusion that they had broken into an FBI system involved in domestic surveillance. Then they release it as Anonymous in an act of misguided privacy activism, throwing in an agent's name (possibly even mentioned in the found files) for credibility.
I'm jumping to conclusions myself, though, and assuming that there's some shred of truth to anybody's statements.
My understanding is that while Data Matrix has better error correction for misread bits, it is not as resilient to damage as QR when it comes to missing chunks of the matrix. Its largest standard size also holds less than the largest QR code.
QR codes are the right tool for the job. Whether the job itself needs doing is a different matter entirely.
As an appropriately-trained historian I'd record it according to the available technology of the day (probably at least a handheld 3D laser scanner, by the time QR codes are forgotten) and archive it. Elsewhere, another historian will find a specification for a QR code reader, and eventually a third historian will find both in some archives and make the connection, then some overworked grad student (or the future equivalent of slave labor) will actually write the decoder, and some other historian will take the credit for the discovery.
Modern archaeologists couldn't read hieroglyphs when they were found, either.
Printed on the back side of the stone as a 6" square, the version 40 code has large enough pixels that a deep engraving could survive a century or two.
Thanks to the error correction algorithms and necessarily-lenient recognition, QR codes can be colorful, stylized, and smoothly integrated into most graphic designs.
Of course, the disconnect between nerds who know this and the artists who make the signs means we'll be stuck with ugly QR codes for a while.
Wrong. QR codes can store over 2KB of arbitrary binary data.
QR codes can store more data than just a website address. In addition to a URL, name, dates, and a brief biography are reasonable things to include in a large QR code. Future readers could get the website if it's still around (or archived somewhere, assuming the URL follows a suitable format), but even if that's unavailable they could still get more information than just a name.
The problem here is that with more data included, the code's footprint will necessarily increase, or its details will get smaller. One's ugly, and the other's more fragile.
Think about it, who in their right mind would ever submit to a life of celibacy...
Anyone who thinks that their religion is more important than sex. That was easy.
It's like those guys that say homosexuality is a "choice". Ummmm....yeah....it is a choice for you because YOU'RE GAY
There's a wide spectrum of sexuality, and some folks are indeed in a place where they can choose their preference. Others aren't.
Thanks, though, for illustrating my point nicely: Regardless of facts, people (including you) often defer to stereotypes to make assumptions about a whole group.
And the Roman Catholic church is still thought to be full of pedophiles, even though it's only a few priests who actually are, and all government officials are accused of being corrupt, even though most are making an honest effort to do their jobs right.
All groups become stereotypes, based on whatever the most well-known characteristic of the group is at the time. It's a human mechanism for simplifying the complexities of a diverse society. 4chan, at least, has an administrator who could clean up or close /b/, but chooses not to. Moot chooses freedom over reputation, and by accepting that and using the other parts of 4chan, you are accepting that you are a part of the 4chan group. That means that you accept the stereotype will be applied to you.
This is not to suggest that people should not use the better parts of 4chan willingly, but merely to point out that they should understand what they're getting in to. Similarly, political candidates know they will be accused of corruption, and Catholic priests expect to face fears of pedophilia.