Explain to my why I wouldn't just set up a server that serves dowloads using a gaming protocol. Then I don't have to wait for your gaming crap to finish to get my large downloaded file. Oh, is your latency too high to frag your opponent? Cry me a river, bitch.
Once this catches on, traffic shaping is going to have to be much smarter.
How about this: Black holes form all the time in places where the density of the surrounding matter is very low (like our upper atmosphere) so it encounters very little additional mass before it decays. But should one form only a few inches from hundreds of tons of iron (like in the LHC) it can start to gobble huge mass before decay can catch up.
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Now I don't really think this is the case, but to say it happens in nature so therefore we're safe is NOT true. High energy cosmic rays seldom run into thousand ton slabs of steel.
The argument that airless planets also get bombarded is better, but the density of the first few centimeters of surface is, in almost all cases, much less than iron. Then wouldn't neutron stars get blasted to black holes all the time? Well, who's to say they don't? Also, even neutron stars generally have an "atmosphere" made of an accretion disk. So a cosmic ray strike on the surface may still be rare.
Causing a black hole strike on the dense inside walls of the LHC may be one of the few places in the universe where these conditions exist.
Here's one of those times text just doesn't convey enough. The word "actually" above sounds like you don't believe I have been on the net 25 years. To be clear: I have.
Yes, my so-called "blog" is just a series of Usenet submissions. Apparently my earlier ones from 1984 either didn't make the cut or were lost through technical mistakes.
I'll admit that I used to love alt.*. How long ago? Back before censorship destroyed it. Back before email addresses had @ signs. Hell, back before spam if you can imagine such a thing.
Those were the days. Now you kids get off my lawn!
I'm a huge P.K. Dick fan. I've read most everything he wrote (not all his work is great, but there are plenty of gems).
And I'm a huge Scott fan. When I saw Alien in its theatrical release, it changed my life--I was stunned by its greatness.
But I have to say that "Blade Runner" needs the Voice Over. The director's cut requires help--the heavy editing and VO were desperation moves, but correct ones.
I consider myself a cinema buff, not a member of the great unwashed with no sci-fi exposure for context. So save your flames. Regardless if you agree or not, I prefer the original version. So how do I get the version with VO on DVD?
Yes, you must extend your child's life by any means necessary. Make sure you spend on EVERY possible long-shot method of eeking out even one more precious second. No price is too steep--other wise you are a terrible parent.
Because, let's face it. If you can prevent the one-in-a-thousand chance of getting some exotic cancer which can be cured with some soon-to-be-discovered cell procedure, then your child will never die!
I guess this will justify also every extreme spending to prevent any one possible way they might die. So I guess you will also spend a few thousand bucks on Lego Brick Tracheotomy Kit, because, you know, otherwise.... (Well, they don't work yet, but we expect them to be useful in the future.)
a heuristic method can handle the problem -- a deterministic algorithm cannot.
I disagree with this assessment. Given that there are only a finite number of sensors in the touch screen, a algorithm can indeed calculate an outcome for every possible case--completely deterministic.
In fact, heuristics are in almost all cases actually 100% deterministic.
Also, on a pedantic note, the definition of algorithm requires the deterministic part. When we talk of non-deterministic machines (where non-deterministic non-algorithms would play) this precludes CPU-controlled devices which are simple finite-state machines.
Your observation, therefore, is even more to the point: So I can't write a program to figure out user input? WTF?
Seems silly to me. Why not just make the distinction between "Engineer" and "Engineer certified by such-and-such agency" rather than between "Dude with some paper" and "Engineer"? Seems like that would both address your concerns and acknowledge that many people call themselves engineers (whether they SHOULD or not).
I agree that if an audit trail really is required almost all the communications currently done would have to be redesigned. This would be a GOOD THING. Just don't expect it to be easy since it requires REPLACING ALL CURRENT SYSTEMS.
Here's a movie of me getting my Master's from Harvard. Notice that when my specialization is read, you can hear the announcer say "Software Engineering."
So I have a degree in software engineering and then I go out and design software. That would make me a, uh, um, er.... I guess I'll have cards made up that say "Dude who can design and create software."
it's possible to draw a progress bar at the background of your taskbar icon
.
Back in the day, when our application was doing something requiring a progress bar, we'd rewrite the WINDOW TITLE from "MyApp v2.3" to "13% - MyApp v2.3" (then "14% - MyApp v2.3", etc).
What do you know? A progress bar that works even when the program is minimized since the TITLE is written into the taskbar button.
But not all programmers did this. So guess what? Not all programmers are going to make calls to the ProgressIcon API either.
So to fob this off as an improvement over XP is really disingenuous.
(Disclosure: I am not an MS basher. I run Vista Home Basic on my home PC--I think it's OK. Of course I removed the UAC and all the gadgets.)
OK, I run a hospital network, so I see medical data whizzing around more than most people. Here's a typical example:
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A doctor dictates his diagnosis into a microphone on a PC. It becomes a data file. It sits in his output queue. It is then sent to a server to be electronically signed (a Word Macro is run). It sits on it's input queue until done then sits in its output queue. Then it gets sent to an HL7 routing engine where it sits on queues. Then on to our medical database. This generates some billing info which goes to the HL7 router then on to a private company in Tennessee, which sends results to a website....
Now I'm sure there will be controls on who can get at the medical database. But what about the data whizzing around the network? Tell me about the audit trail that lets me know who saw some of the info generated by that one encounter. Because it sat on at least 7 machines in 3 states for some amount of time.
And now you want each of those machines to check to see if the patient has signed off on that machine getting the info? Good luck with that.
And if someone shows up unresponsive in the ER, how do we send the X-ray to the remote radiologist if the patient can't release the data? And if 'emergencies' override that control, expect to see EVERY encounter be an emergency.
So individuals with hand weapons cannot hurt US Army soldiers? Thank goodness! I had heard that 5,000 of them are dead at the hands of rebels in Iraq, but I guess that couldn't have happened.
A song downloaded by 2 different accounts, modified in a text editor to have the same email address are IDENTICAL byte-for-byte. Therefore, no personal info watermarking is done.
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So the scenario where a fake address is inserted is a very real possibility.
If you find the iPod of a young student, won't the email address be the "purchaser," i.e., the holder of the credit card used to purchase the songs? Wouldn't that luring email likely go to the parents of the student (and likely get you in trouble)?
But the upper end relies on being in geosynch orbit or there'd have to be a bunch of rockets keeping it up. The moon rotates once per MONTH. Where is the geosynch for a one-month orbit? We know radius = cuberoot((G*M)/w^2). Putting in 7.36x10^22 kg for the mass of the moon, and 29.5 days for a rotation, we get a radius of about 432 MILLION KILOMETERS!
I'd say it's MUCH more likely one will be built for the Earth than for the Moon.
"So, who will step forward and remove such authorities from the CA list?"
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I will. I just removed COMODO from my trusted CA list in my browser.
Now we have the situation that is analogous to firewall rules per site. I don't trust you, so I won't allow connections to you. But what if the infraction has long since been cleaned up? What mechanism is there for a site to contact every network admin on earth to beg for forgiveness?
Now that thousands of people like me no longer allow their browser to trust COMODO, how can they ever erase the stain? Good question....
So let's say I want to learn at my own pace about, I dunno, watchmaking. You claim I'd be better off with an Apple laptop and a specialized watchmaking program than I would with access to Wikipedia, Google, timezone.com, and Youtube.
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First of all, please point me to the watchmaking educational software, because this I've gotta see. Believe me, I've looked for just such a beast. And on a practical note, how does that software get updated? Because the info on websites seems to keep up without any effort on my part. Now substitute a fast-moving, cutting edge subject like, say, quantum computing for watchmaking and these challenges get much, much harder.
And if your argument is "Well, the kids shouldn't be learning about watchmaking," then I say you have no business in the education field.
I'm sure when you studied kids learning about the signing of the Constitution, the machine without internet beats a machine with internet. But if you want them to learn about something a little more current, fuggedaboudit.
Personally, I think computers don't mesh well with most ciricula (and I was an IT professor for 12 years). For the school, the entire idea of providing laptops to students is misguided. As a parent, I would buy my own kid a machine with internet access (as I did for my kids) and keep the school out of it.
If the ISPs were required by law to temporarily disable or even permanently terminate all internet connections that have ANY computer that is sending out quantities of spam...."
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So if a housekeeper using her desktop on my hospital network gets infected by malware, no doctor in the hospital can use email? Hmmm...I foresee no problems whatsoever. Let's do it!
They'll survive anything short of global thermonuclear warfare.
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They'll survive anything short of someone misplacing the key. Keeping the key in a central repository or distributing pieces of it makes it vulnerable to destruction. And decentralizing the key (give everyone a copy) makes the system less secure.
I guess you need a partition that allows N people to each have a unique piece of the key, but only x pieces are required to reconstruct the whole. If x << N AND x > 1, you might have a shot.
"I don't understand how these are a big issue though, as there are plenty of street cameras, traffic cameras, and store cameras in most major cities."
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So once the first person put up the first camera, he thus granted license for 24x7 surveillance of the entire populace? Why should anyone have any problem with it, others are doing it!
I guess I'll go out and murder my grandmother. Hey, I don't understand why this is a big issue as there are plenty of other murders in most major cities.
If someone is unethical, pointing out that other people are also unethical should NOT be a justification.
Norville Barnes's explanation of the hula-hoop is extremely apropos here. That phrase was used in the film "The Hudsucker Proxy" to justify a mad plan.
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Let's hope this plan has the same unlikely happy result.
I'm pretty tired of having to explain this to everyone who thinks the world is a flat featureless plane:
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No, satellite doesn't work on my steep north-facing lot. And a dish atop a 60 foot pole is not practical for several reasons I won't bother to re-iterate.
Wireless? Not even a cell phone worked where I live until just THIS YEAR. I'm hoping eventually some actual wireless internet connectivity will arrive (current estimates indicate 2012).
Slashdot Mirror
Explain to my why I wouldn't just set up a server that serves dowloads using a gaming protocol. Then I don't have to wait for your gaming crap to finish to get my large downloaded file. Oh, is your latency too high to frag your opponent? Cry me a river, bitch. Once this catches on, traffic shaping is going to have to be much smarter.
.
Now I don't really think this is the case, but to say it happens in nature so therefore we're safe is NOT true. High energy cosmic rays seldom run into thousand ton slabs of steel.
The argument that airless planets also get bombarded is better, but the density of the first few centimeters of surface is, in almost all cases, much less than iron. Then wouldn't neutron stars get blasted to black holes all the time? Well, who's to say they don't? Also, even neutron stars generally have an "atmosphere" made of an accretion disk. So a cosmic ray strike on the surface may still be rare.
Causing a black hole strike on the dense inside walls of the LHC may be one of the few places in the universe where these conditions exist.
Yes, my so-called "blog" is just a series of Usenet submissions. Apparently my earlier ones from 1984 either didn't make the cut or were lost through technical mistakes.
I'll admit that I used to love alt.*. How long ago? Back before censorship destroyed it. Back before email addresses had @ signs. Hell, back before spam if you can imagine such a thing.
Those were the days. Now you kids get off my lawn!
And I'm a huge Scott fan. When I saw Alien in its theatrical release, it changed my life--I was stunned by its greatness.
But I have to say that "Blade Runner" needs the Voice Over. The director's cut requires help--the heavy editing and VO were desperation moves, but correct ones.
I consider myself a cinema buff, not a member of the great unwashed with no sci-fi exposure for context. So save your flames. Regardless if you agree or not, I prefer the original version. So how do I get the version with VO on DVD?
Hey, pipl found some of my blog posts from 1985! That means I've been posting on the internet for 25 years. All the rest of you are noobs!
Because, let's face it. If you can prevent the one-in-a-thousand chance of getting some exotic cancer which can be cured with some soon-to-be-discovered cell procedure, then your child will never die!
I guess this will justify also every extreme spending to prevent any one possible way they might die. So I guess you will also spend a few thousand bucks on Lego Brick Tracheotomy Kit, because, you know, otherwise.... (Well, they don't work yet, but we expect them to be useful in the future.)
Now where do I put the /sarcasm tag?
a heuristic method can handle the problem -- a deterministic algorithm cannot.
I disagree with this assessment. Given that there are only a finite number of sensors in the touch screen, a algorithm can indeed calculate an outcome for every possible case--completely deterministic.
In fact, heuristics are in almost all cases actually 100% deterministic. Also, on a pedantic note, the definition of algorithm requires the deterministic part. When we talk of non-deterministic machines (where non-deterministic non-algorithms would play) this precludes CPU-controlled devices which are simple finite-state machines.
Your observation, therefore, is even more to the point: So I can't write a program to figure out user input? WTF?
Seems silly to me. Why not just make the distinction between "Engineer" and "Engineer certified by such-and-such agency" rather than between "Dude with some paper" and "Engineer"? Seems like that would both address your concerns and acknowledge that many people call themselves engineers (whether they SHOULD or not).
I agree that if an audit trail really is required almost all the communications currently done would have to be redesigned. This would be a GOOD THING. Just don't expect it to be easy since it requires REPLACING ALL CURRENT SYSTEMS.
So I have a degree in software engineering and then I go out and design software. That would make me a, uh, um, er.... I guess I'll have cards made up that say "Dude who can design and create software."
it's possible to draw a progress bar at the background of your taskbar icon
.
Back in the day, when our application was doing something requiring a progress bar, we'd rewrite the WINDOW TITLE from "MyApp v2.3" to "13% - MyApp v2.3" (then "14% - MyApp v2.3", etc).
What do you know? A progress bar that works even when the program is minimized since the TITLE is written into the taskbar button.
But not all programmers did this. So guess what? Not all programmers are going to make calls to the ProgressIcon API either.
So to fob this off as an improvement over XP is really disingenuous.
(Disclosure: I am not an MS basher. I run Vista Home Basic on my home PC--I think it's OK. Of course I removed the UAC and all the gadgets.)
.
A doctor dictates his diagnosis into a microphone on a PC. It becomes a data file. It sits in his output queue. It is then sent to a server to be electronically signed (a Word Macro is run). It sits on it's input queue until done then sits in its output queue. Then it gets sent to an HL7 routing engine where it sits on queues. Then on to our medical database. This generates some billing info which goes to the HL7 router then on to a private company in Tennessee, which sends results to a website....
Now I'm sure there will be controls on who can get at the medical database. But what about the data whizzing around the network? Tell me about the audit trail that lets me know who saw some of the info generated by that one encounter. Because it sat on at least 7 machines in 3 states for some amount of time.
And now you want each of those machines to check to see if the patient has signed off on that machine getting the info? Good luck with that.
And if someone shows up unresponsive in the ER, how do we send the X-ray to the remote radiologist if the patient can't release the data? And if 'emergencies' override that control, expect to see EVERY encounter be an emergency.
Horribly, I think he's right.
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Whew, what a load off my mind!
.
So the scenario where a fake address is inserted is a very real possibility.
If you find the iPod of a young student, won't the email address be the "purchaser," i.e., the holder of the credit card used to purchase the songs? Wouldn't that luring email likely go to the parents of the student (and likely get you in trouble)?
Geosynchronous orbit for the moon exceeds 400 MILLION kilometers. That'd be a damn long cable....
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But the upper end relies on being in geosynch orbit or there'd have to be a bunch of rockets keeping it up. The moon rotates once per MONTH. Where is the geosynch for a one-month orbit? We know radius = cuberoot((G*M)/w^2). Putting in 7.36x10^22 kg for the mass of the moon, and 29.5 days for a rotation, we get a radius of about 432 MILLION KILOMETERS!
I'd say it's MUCH more likely one will be built for the Earth than for the Moon.
.
I will. I just removed COMODO from my trusted CA list in my browser.
Now we have the situation that is analogous to firewall rules per site. I don't trust you, so I won't allow connections to you. But what if the infraction has long since been cleaned up? What mechanism is there for a site to contact every network admin on earth to beg for forgiveness?
Now that thousands of people like me no longer allow their browser to trust COMODO, how can they ever erase the stain? Good question....
.
First of all, please point me to the watchmaking educational software, because this I've gotta see. Believe me, I've looked for just such a beast. And on a practical note, how does that software get updated? Because the info on websites seems to keep up without any effort on my part. Now substitute a fast-moving, cutting edge subject like, say, quantum computing for watchmaking and these challenges get much, much harder.
And if your argument is "Well, the kids shouldn't be learning about watchmaking," then I say you have no business in the education field.
I'm sure when you studied kids learning about the signing of the Constitution, the machine without internet beats a machine with internet. But if you want them to learn about something a little more current, fuggedaboudit.
Personally, I think computers don't mesh well with most ciricula (and I was an IT professor for 12 years). For the school, the entire idea of providing laptops to students is misguided. As a parent, I would buy my own kid a machine with internet access (as I did for my kids) and keep the school out of it.
.
So if a housekeeper using her desktop on my hospital network gets infected by malware, no doctor in the hospital can use email? Hmmm...I foresee no problems whatsoever. Let's do it!
.
They'll survive anything short of someone misplacing the key. Keeping the key in a central repository or distributing pieces of it makes it vulnerable to destruction. And decentralizing the key (give everyone a copy) makes the system less secure.
I guess you need a partition that allows N people to each have a unique piece of the key, but only x pieces are required to reconstruct the whole. If x << N AND x > 1, you might have a shot.
.
So once the first person put up the first camera, he thus granted license for 24x7 surveillance of the entire populace? Why should anyone have any problem with it, others are doing it!
I guess I'll go out and murder my grandmother. Hey, I don't understand why this is a big issue as there are plenty of other murders in most major cities.
If someone is unethical, pointing out that other people are also unethical should NOT be a justification.
.
Let's hope this plan has the same unlikely happy result.
You know... for kids.
.
No, satellite doesn't work on my steep north-facing lot. And a dish atop a 60 foot pole is not practical for several reasons I won't bother to re-iterate.
Wireless? Not even a cell phone worked where I live until just THIS YEAR. I'm hoping eventually some actual wireless internet connectivity will arrive (current estimates indicate 2012).