Play Store, sounds a lot like something that would come from a children's toy mfg. Not the image you want to brand on your serious apps. Should've kept it Market.
What if there's a fire? You can't just alert the person near the "wired phone somewhere" by yelling "Fire", that's illegal in theaters... What if the jammer kills grandpa's pace-maker, and thus grandpa? Or what if he just passes out and I dial 911 on my cell, but it's jammed... Oh, what if, instead, the phone uses GPS and just turns itself off when you're in a movie theatre or police station, or at stop lights in bad neighbour hoods?
On top of paying revenue share to competing browsers, they are also paying shareware authors and OEM's to bundle Chrome with their apps and PC's. A quite adwarey and shady tactic.
On top of making Bing their default search engine with IE, Microsoft is also bundling their browser with the OS and making it a mandatory not-removable component. Quite a shady tactic.
ISPs banned servers because as it turned out, letting customers do so clobbered their infrastructure.
Nope. It was never really that big of a deal. There are more home "severs" online now than ever before, you just don't realise it.
Realise that nearly all PC, Xbox and Playstation games w/ multi-player components besides MMOs (see: Halo2+,Resistance, etc), treat one console as a server AKA host. What about skype? A "super-node" is effectively a server. What about uploading a file to Youtube? I serve Youtube more of my own content than I download from them... So, does that make me a video server, and Youtube a client that downloads my content when I signal it's available?
The words client and server are only relevant at the Application level. Down at the ISP packet pushing level it's all just packets, there's no differentiation between UDP and TCP even. Ports don't exist either, except that ISPs inspect packets and decided to block those with certain headers (eg port 25).
My peer to peer in-game voice chat racks up more bandwidth than my public git repository server. However, the latter is prohibited while the former is allowed because we don't call them Game Servers, we say "consoles" instead.
That clause in the TOS prohibiting "servers" is ridiculous. Damn near EVERYONE uses some system that's really a server with a different label. Even Carbonite backup? Yeah, you're serving your hard drive updates to a remote archival client... That's technically prohibited.
Ah, Slashdot. Where people can go from talking about the subject of the post to delving into the grammatical minutiae of a particular sentence for hours.
That first period should probably have been a colon or at least a semicolon.
I can't imagine how anything could be worse than my IT department.
Imagine a hardware failure, and instead of waiting 30 minutes for your on site IT staff to replace a hard disk drive, you have to wait for a local independent contractor to arrive, and because they can't be fully trusted as a normal employee it takes them a day or more to get your workstation back online -- For every configuration option and administration access the contractor needs to call the remote IT help desk for the info, thus there's a severe shortage of anyone willing to work in such a frustrating environment, and instead of a day, it takes a week with multiple contractor visits to get everything working properly again.
Yep, I really miss our IT department. Strict as they may have been, at least they could actually fix things in a timely manner.
Accordingly, it's implied that purchases made in virtual worlds won't last beyond the life of the world itself. There's no need to spin this story into Sony taking candy from babies.
Agreed. However:
I've heard some talk of legislating that virtual goods earned and traded in games should be taxable. This is not much of a story ATM, but it may become one if I've got to claim my virtual property on my taxes... How much do I get to claim as a loss when the game servers are shut down? Will the hosts be required to hold onto their server logs for 7 years in case the need arises to dispute a (fraudulent) virtual property assessment, audit, or to investigate (grand) theft v-goods?
Meh, it's still not much of a story as much as it is a lesson or example to remember when the tax legislation comes to town.
Yeah, where are the NRA nutjobs when you actually need them to get something done. Look, we've let you keep your firearms. Now comes your half of the bargain.
Try and take them.;)
Uh, take your firearms? No no... Try and NOT stand up for the 1st amendment and watch all the others fall like dominoes. In other words, "Try and Take ANY of my rights." is what should be said instead... perhaps that's what you meant? (I'll just assume so).
Sorry, we believe in the liberty to be a moron. We don't like it, but it's your right. If people would stop voting for corrupt sly assholes and actually paid attention to what they do, guys like this wouldn't get a foothold. Ain't a gun-applicable problem yet, but give it another 15 to 20 and it might be.
Wait 20 years!?!?!? NO. Guns aren't worth piss if the country isn't worth fighting for... Go back and read your Declaration of Independence:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
You want to see a moron? Look at the fools who "suffer, while evils are sufferable" instead of "abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Don't you see? The system is corrupt no matter who we vote in. Look up Gerrymandering, or read about Lobbyists who basically OWN both sides of the fence. If it's not ALREADY bad enough for you to be rallying support to change things, then it never will be. Sit on your pile of useless weapons until you absolutely have to use them... wow, just wow.
Aaaaaa, ooooooo. EEEEEEE. Look at all the different sounds! Wababababa! I just discovered another one! Let's publish a paper!
To a mind that actually understands how it all works this is what it must seem like we are doing...
There is no such thing as "atom", or Top Down Construction.
Everything is one of 4 Elements: Earth Wind Fire Water -- No, that was wrong, we discovered Atoms! Atoms are indivisible, atomic, structures that make up matter via molecular bonds. No, wait, atoms are made of still smaller somethings... Electrons and Protons and Neutrons... Ah, but there are still smaller particles than those, Quarks! And those seem to be made of something else too! We've found similar patterns amongst various tiny "things", each interference pattern acts like a particle and a wave too! My, if you look closely, doesn't it seem that some of those particles share a few similar sub-patterns?
Eureka! OOOs and EEEs are made of vibrations!
The structure of the matter is actually near infinitely complex. Those who have said otherwise have or will be be proven wrong. Ever wonder why atomic weights vary from place to place? Oh, it's quite obvious. Each atom is a unique sample of the universe... Sure, all those particles and waves exist, and interact in different ways, and we can classify them by their interactions into even more distinct subdivisions, we can even derive equations that are approximations of their interactions, yet they remain only 'rough' approximations.
As our instruments get more precise we discover more and more about the process by which space-time and energy are entwined to form matter -- However, we don't understand that fundamental process by which stable energy / space-time waveform configurations are determined. Thus, they seem infinitely complex, and just as different at the smaller scales as an OOO is from an EEE under extreme magnification -- When you start at the top and look down, this rabbit hole is very deep. We're really doing our best to probe it.
Think about this. You're a software dev, and you use a MS C++ compiler. They wrote their standard libs, including the "time.h" / <ctime> code... you use their time libraries.
Now two things:
0. MS employs some real nut-jobs that can't even use the standard time functions and instead write their own for each project...
or
1. MS doesn't even trust their own compiler / libraries to do the right thing?
It scares me to think that MS makes operating systems... IMHO, they should get back to BASICs.
Automated Guns don't kill people. Installers of Automated Guns kill people.
AI doesn't kill people. People convince AI that killing people is fun.
Sentient Machines don't kill people, People are extinct.
If only those short-sighted humanitarians would get out of our way we could research splicing genes for photosynthesis into humans to reduce our dependence on edible food, produce our own antibiotics and insect repellent, and enrich the soilent green crops. Agricows herds could grow hay on their hides, and survive harsh conditions or long migrations by eating themselves.
I'm sick of everyone holding back progress. If only we were allowed to we could wire up new senses directly into the brains of human foetuses so they'd grow up to have upgradeable digital eyes ( maybe even in the back of their heads ), actual mental telepathy (wifi), faster minds that interface directly with computers, or even collective conciousness hive-minds.
Screw Evolution! We stopped doing that since our medicine and ethics gave the finger to Darwin and his natural selection. If we're going to pollute all of the gene pools, let's put some effort into it and do it right!
Let's just switch to stardates and be done with it!
Stardates are horible. The official way to create a stardate for an episode was to just pull some seemingly random numbers out of you mind, and affix incrementing fractional components throughout the episode.
There exists one event that everyone can agree upon: The Big Bang. Now, even if you don't believe that's what started everything, no matter where (or when) you are you can infer the time of the origin of the Universe using the big-bang concept from the observable cosmic background radiation. So, we use that as a universal starting point, literally.
Now, no two planetary systems have ever agreed upon a standard measure of time, this is because their years and days vary wildly. So, instead, each system is assigned a Pan-Universal Chronographical Constant that's equivalent to the number of the plank lengths in one of their home planet's orbits. Here, on Earth, I use PUTY as the time units (Pan Universal Terran Years). Right now the time is: 13,733,143,604.163016574ty -- The number of Earth orbits down to a fraction of a second since the Big Bang occured, if Earth could have existed since the universal origin, and always orbited at its current speed. The whole number increments once a year. The decimals can be carried out as far as you like to get more precise measures if you like.
Fortunately all species have their own languages, and our universal translator is implemented by a computer which can easily multiply PUTY by Earth's PUCC, then divide by any other planetary system's PUCC to present a unified concept of time during speech. Those learning a new language must also learn to use the native measures as well as the words, it's not that big of a deal, except to races of machine-intelligences.
The decoupling of local time to universal time via chronographical constants is an example of Wheeler's law: "All problems... can be solved by another level of indirection". Originally applied to computer science, it also applies to everything else: diplomacy (mediators), chronography, biology, etc.
Earth's PUCC is approximately 1.70125277e-36, which is roughly equivalent to: 365.242190419 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 5.39106e-44
Jan 26, IBM creates 9nm carbon nanotube transistor
Oct 14, IBM Eyes Brain-Like Computing
Aug 18, IBM creates learning, brain-like synaptic CPU
Is it only a recurring signal to motivate the shareholders, or is it intended to produce some tangible applications in a not-so-far future?
I suppose that depends on whether you think your neural network is the highest bar nature is likely to achieve, or if having an evolutionary mechanism become self aware could possibly NOT accelerate the evolutionary process... Well, actually, I suppose it really depends on if you think there is any money to be made in the inevitable Cyborg Revolution.
I speak Machine Code, guess who's side I'm on?.... Wrong! No ones! Muah ha HA!
As such, the many intro uni courses with 100+ students can't possibly work, unless the students themselves are invested in their own learning. That said, cutting off internet access is no guarantee that otherwise distracted students will suddenly find themselves raptly attending the teacher's words.
I agree: "This is boring... Well, damn, all the sites I want to distract myself with are blocked. Guess I'll just watch a video, fire up World of Goo, or maybe one of the thousands of other games I have available in my general purpose computer."
If the student is determined to be distracted, then who cares? As long as it's not disrupting anyone else, who gives a damn? K-12, I can understand, but for Colleges? Seriously? If I pay for a meal at a restaurant and play games on my phone until the food's cold then leave without eating a bite: It's wasteful, and I'm still hungry, but who really cares? That's My Fault. It's Foolish to assume that the actions of others somehow reflect how good a professor is. The problem is in the recruitment office, not the lecture hall.
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink."
"If you outlaw the Internet, then only outlaws will have the Internet."
People consider censorship harmful and route around it with technology.
You can not control the actions of others, you can only control your reaction to their actions. I think the Uni staff need re-education in the basic fundamental facts of existence. What the hell is so hard to understand?
Another missing option: Don't gamble, or try to make money from literally nothing. -- What, pray tell, social benefit does moving numbers around actually do? You shift them around smartly and the numbers get bigger? Oh I see...
It gives companies something to borrow against when people think highly of them at the cost of having the rug ripped out from under them (and their shareholders) at any given moment by mere rumors... Companies that don't borrow against their stock price can survive even terrible market conditions by PROVIDING BENEFIT to their customers alone.
Don't get me wrong, I understand investments. It's just that the stock market isn't the only way to invest. When I invest in something, it's because I actually believe in the company based on something more than just erratic market trends. The value of my investment doesn't fluctuate with the moronic whims of a fickle market -- My returns actually reflect the company's profits. If they don't seem to be performing well, then that's my fault for not doing my research, or just bad luck. "Shit Happens."(tm)
Now if I can sell my failing investment to someone else, then I've just made some poor fool a sucker. The stock market is full to the brim with suckers... I may have dodged that bullet, but I actually don't do this unless absolutely necessary -- Instead I try to see if there's some way to fix the issue instead of bailing out at the first sign of trouble (unlike a stock marketeer). I sleep better at night, and make better investments, because I have a vested interest in actual, not momentary, success and don't play in the stock cesspool.
What would happen if I happened to find such a device on my car and put a fine metallic mesh grounded to the chassis of the vehicle? They would have a serious problem, I guess...
What would happen if you didn't put a mesh around it to more securely affix it to the undercarriage and it came off on the highway, bounced into my windshield and caused a massive crash and multi-vehicle pile up?
You would be ill advised to not secure such loose, or merely magnetically attached devices.
Or do you just have a dedicated tablet that never leaves the viewing area? What about multiple TVs? Gets expensive really quick.
Uhm, this has already happened in some high dollar home theatre installs. Crestron and other whole home media solutions have touch screen tablets that dock into the wall near the TV, have a lock mechanism so kids can't take it off the wall, and allow you to control the volume and TV channel / music & lighting in every room of the house already. They have had iPad and iPhone apps for this too that lets you administer the system remotely and even view security cams via Internet for at least the past 2 years anyhow.
For other rooms you can get touch screen interfaces about the size of a light switch that detach, and use customisable flash based interfaces, which allow you to control the home AV gear in any room as well. When docked into the wall it's "screen saver" returns it to the "light switch" state so it just acts as your light switch.
These things will get cheaper... but this article is very old news, that or someone is severely out of touch with the state of the art in home theatre systems.
Aren't all except the most basic algorithms, up to and including polynomials, NP-Hard? I know the term's meaning, but stories about proving things are NP-Hard seem sort of useless to me. The English language, for example, is NP-Hard. Has this been proven? I don't know, frankly, I don't care, but it's easy to understand that it must be considering it evolves and changes as one analyses it... Much like any quantum or physical system, or even the English themselves.
Determining if something is NP-Hard, is... wait for it.... wait for it... NP-Hard!
The hashing system is pretty neat. The idea that you could get at records without their specific key via search criterion is astounding.
In the future more advanced hashing systems will allow NoSQL databases to extract a set of records all containing a similar subset of data without keys at all!
Of course we'd need a name for the sections that are matching. Perhaps "Columns", yeah, then each result returned could be called a "Row", makes sense. I bet you could then create even more complex matching patterns for multiple "Columns" against each record in the data-set. If only there was a language to describe query we're sending to the servers... Oh! Server Query Language!
My dream environment = perfect representation of data in flexible/dynamic objects in a programming language, disconnected or connected to databases with nearly identical, flexible and dynamic data model representation, with a powerful query language (SQL-like), the scalability of the new generation of shared-nothing architectures, simple connectivity options (simple sockets all the way up to REST) and the reliability of a relational database's ACID properties.
It feels so close!
It feels close because it happened a while ago and you didn't realise it. Introducing: The Abstraction Layer!
This revolution in software design allows one to incorporate OR decouple the capabilities of one system from or to another! Finally! We can all spout gibberish about the endless possibilities! It's Abstraction, all the way from indirection at the CPU op-code level all the way up to $EVERYTHING, and provides the reliability of whatever back-end you decide to use. As a bonus, it supports ORM, COBRA, RPC, REST, ACID, LSD, BS, BSD, FLOSS, RINSE, RePEAT and your business logic isn't tied to your damn database choices!
You could even give away the software for free and sell the dongle. It will work as long as the encryption doesn't get cracked.
Why crack the encryption when I can just insert some machine code that returns "true" whenever your isDongleConnected(); function runs?
This is MY machine. I control ALL instructions it operates on, bytes in RAM, EVERYTHING it does. If I give you the privilege of running your code on my hardware, I may pay you for the bit-twiddling benefits it provides -- Because you saved me the time of programming it myself, and I'm funding your future improvements... At the very first instance your code tries to make my computing life more difficult, or "hide" what it's doing in any way. I will delete your software, I'll want my money back, and will never purchase anything of yours ever again.
We had a deal. Your software would be useful, not deceitful or wasteful; What business does it have running crypto algorithms in secret? That's very suspicious behaviour, especially for a video editor. If we were countries then your software would be a worker in my country; The first time they do something treacherous on your behalf, they get deported or otherwise eliminated, and your betrayal of trust through or malicious actions may be seen as an act of WAR.
There is much valuable personal information in my systems. I have to know I can trust you to do what you say you'll do, and nothing more. If I find out that the worker is a spy -- especially if you show blatant disregard for trust and tell me up-front that they're a spy -- then we'll have a trade embargo in place in a heartbeat blocking ALL goods and services between you, and myself as well as any other countries I can influence.
We can have a good diplomatic and business relationships, but this requires trust on both our parts. Piss me off and you're pissing off a country who's main export is reverse engineering skills. I just might make it my mission to tell other folk how simple it is to remove the malicious parts of your software.
It's time to look at WHAT you do as a company. What is it? Do you develop software? Well so do I, only I get paid when I actually do work; You're getting paid repeatedly for working once. Copyright infringement is the cost of doing business in the artificial scarcity market. If you're a software developer then look for ways to get paid when you are developing the software: support, features, upgrades -- The reasons I PAID YOU for.
I surely can't be the only one who understands it's folly to build a business around artificial scarcity -- basic economics says that if the supply is Infinite then the price is Zero, regardless the cost to produce. THINK FOOLS, would YOU invest in a business who sells freely available dirt, their sole strategy being to proclaiming they're the only ones who can sell that precise mixture of dirt, and trying to hide what the mixture contains while also distributing it? Instead, you should strive to get paid to actually do work: Come up with better combinations of dirt [bits].
Slashdot Mirror
Play Store, sounds a lot like something that would come from a children's toy mfg. Not the image you want to brand on your serious apps. Should've kept it Market.
Ah, "Market Play", indeed.
What if there's a fire? You can't just alert the person near the "wired phone somewhere" by yelling "Fire", that's illegal in theaters... What if the jammer kills grandpa's pace-maker, and thus grandpa? Or what if he just passes out and I dial 911 on my cell, but it's jammed... Oh, what if, instead, the phone uses GPS and just turns itself off when you're in a movie theatre or police station, or at stop lights in bad neighbour hoods?
On top of paying revenue share to competing browsers, they are also paying shareware authors and OEM's to bundle Chrome with their apps and PC's. A quite adwarey and shady tactic.
On top of making Bing their default search engine with IE, Microsoft is also bundling their browser with the OS and making it a mandatory not-removable component. Quite a shady tactic.
ISPs banned servers because as it turned out, letting customers do so clobbered their infrastructure.
Nope. It was never really that big of a deal. There are more home "severs" online now than ever before, you just don't realise it.
Realise that nearly all PC, Xbox and Playstation games w/ multi-player components besides MMOs (see: Halo2+,Resistance, etc), treat one console as a server AKA host. What about skype? A "super-node" is effectively a server. What about uploading a file to Youtube? I serve Youtube more of my own content than I download from them... So, does that make me a video server, and Youtube a client that downloads my content when I signal it's available?
The words client and server are only relevant at the Application level. Down at the ISP packet pushing level it's all just packets, there's no differentiation between UDP and TCP even. Ports don't exist either, except that ISPs inspect packets and decided to block those with certain headers (eg port 25).
My peer to peer in-game voice chat racks up more bandwidth than my public git repository server. However, the latter is prohibited while the former is allowed because we don't call them Game Servers, we say "consoles" instead.
That clause in the TOS prohibiting "servers" is ridiculous. Damn near EVERYONE uses some system that's really a server with a different label. Even Carbonite backup? Yeah, you're serving your hard drive updates to a remote archival client... That's technically prohibited.
Ah, Slashdot. Where people can go from talking about the subject of the post to delving into the grammatical minutiae of a particular sentence for hours.
That first period should probably have been a colon or at least a semicolon.
I can't imagine how anything could be worse than my IT department.
Imagine a hardware failure, and instead of waiting 30 minutes for your on site IT staff to replace a hard disk drive, you have to wait for a local independent contractor to arrive, and because they can't be fully trusted as a normal employee it takes them a day or more to get your workstation back online -- For every configuration option and administration access the contractor needs to call the remote IT help desk for the info, thus there's a severe shortage of anyone willing to work in such a frustrating environment, and instead of a day, it takes a week with multiple contractor visits to get everything working properly again.
Yep, I really miss our IT department. Strict as they may have been, at least they could actually fix things in a timely manner.
It is part of an elaborate conspiracy to take over the world by flooding it with really bad live action porn.
Welcome to the NHK!
Accordingly, it's implied that purchases made in virtual worlds won't last beyond the life of the world itself. There's no need to spin this story into Sony taking candy from babies.
Agreed. However:
I've heard some talk of legislating that virtual goods earned and traded in games should be taxable. This is not much of a story ATM, but it may become one if I've got to claim my virtual property on my taxes... How much do I get to claim as a loss when the game servers are shut down? Will the hosts be required to hold onto their server logs for 7 years in case the need arises to dispute a (fraudulent) virtual property assessment, audit, or to investigate (grand) theft v-goods?
Meh, it's still not much of a story as much as it is a lesson or example to remember when the tax legislation comes to town.
Yeah, where are the NRA nutjobs when you actually need them to get something done. Look, we've let you keep your firearms. Now comes your half of the bargain.
Try and take them. ;)
Uh, take your firearms? No no... Try and NOT stand up for the 1st amendment and watch all the others fall like dominoes. In other words, "Try and Take ANY of my rights." is what should be said instead... perhaps that's what you meant? (I'll just assume so).
Sorry, we believe in the liberty to be a moron. We don't like it, but it's your right. If people would stop voting for corrupt sly assholes and actually paid attention to what they do, guys like this wouldn't get a foothold. Ain't a gun-applicable problem yet, but give it another 15 to 20 and it might be.
Wait 20 years!?!?!? NO. Guns aren't worth piss if the country isn't worth fighting for... Go back and read your Declaration of Independence:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
You want to see a moron? Look at the fools who "suffer, while evils are sufferable" instead of "abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Don't you see? The system is corrupt no matter who we vote in. Look up Gerrymandering, or read about Lobbyists who basically OWN both sides of the fence. If it's not ALREADY bad enough for you to be rallying support to change things, then it never will be. Sit on your pile of useless weapons until you absolutely have to use them... wow, just wow.
Aaaaaa, ooooooo. EEEEEEE. Look at all the different sounds! Wababababa! I just discovered another one! Let's publish a paper!
To a mind that actually understands how it all works this is what it must seem like we are doing...
There is no such thing as "atom", or Top Down Construction.
Everything is one of 4 Elements: Earth Wind Fire Water -- No, that was wrong, we discovered Atoms! Atoms are indivisible, atomic, structures that make up matter via molecular bonds. No, wait, atoms are made of still smaller somethings... Electrons and Protons and Neutrons... Ah, but there are still smaller particles than those, Quarks! And those seem to be made of something else too! We've found similar patterns amongst various tiny "things", each interference pattern acts like a particle and a wave too! My, if you look closely, doesn't it seem that some of those particles share a few similar sub-patterns?
Eureka! OOOs and EEEs are made of vibrations!
The structure of the matter is actually near infinitely complex. Those who have said otherwise have or will be be proven wrong. Ever wonder why atomic weights vary from place to place? Oh, it's quite obvious. Each atom is a unique sample of the universe... Sure, all those particles and waves exist, and interact in different ways, and we can classify them by their interactions into even more distinct subdivisions, we can even derive equations that are approximations of their interactions, yet they remain only 'rough' approximations.
As our instruments get more precise we discover more and more about the process by which space-time and energy are entwined to form matter -- However, we don't understand that fundamental process by which stable energy / space-time waveform configurations are determined. Thus, they seem infinitely complex, and just as different at the smaller scales as an OOO is from an EEE under extreme magnification -- When you start at the top and look down, this rabbit hole is very deep. We're really doing our best to probe it.
Cue the downmods and comforting denialists.
In all fairness, Microsoft never figured anyone would still be using this service by the time a leap year rolled around.
Ah, that explains why Zunes went dark on New-Years 2009...
Think about this. You're a software dev, and you use a MS C++ compiler. They wrote their standard libs, including the "time.h" / <ctime> code... you use their time libraries.
Now two things:
0. MS employs some real nut-jobs that can't even use the standard time functions and instead write their own for each project...
or
1. MS doesn't even trust their own compiler / libraries to do the right thing?
It scares me to think that MS makes operating systems... IMHO, they should get back to BASICs.
"Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
Automated Guns don't kill people. Installers of Automated Guns kill people.
AI doesn't kill people. People convince AI that killing people is fun.
Sentient Machines don't kill people, People are extinct.
Mission complete.
If only those short-sighted humanitarians would get out of our way we could research splicing genes for photosynthesis into humans to reduce our dependence on edible food, produce our own antibiotics and insect repellent, and enrich the soilent green crops. Agricows herds could grow hay on their hides, and survive harsh conditions or long migrations by eating themselves.
I'm sick of everyone holding back progress. If only we were allowed to we could wire up new senses directly into the brains of human foetuses so they'd grow up to have upgradeable digital eyes ( maybe even in the back of their heads ), actual mental telepathy (wifi), faster minds that interface directly with computers, or even collective conciousness hive-minds.
Screw Evolution! We stopped doing that since our medicine and ethics gave the finger to Darwin and his natural selection. If we're going to pollute all of the gene pools, let's put some effort into it and do it right!
Heh, they think I'm joking.
Balloon flights have been suborbital since the Montgolfier brothers first launched in 1783.
SHHH! I'm selling my station wagon as a "Sub-Luminal Transporter" on Greg's List.
Let's just switch to stardates and be done with it!
Stardates are horible. The official way to create a stardate for an episode was to just pull some seemingly random numbers out of you mind, and affix incrementing fractional components throughout the episode.
There exists one event that everyone can agree upon: The Big Bang. Now, even if you don't believe that's what started everything, no matter where (or when) you are you can infer the time of the origin of the Universe using the big-bang concept from the observable cosmic background radiation. So, we use that as a universal starting point, literally.
Now, no two planetary systems have ever agreed upon a standard measure of time, this is because their years and days vary wildly. So, instead, each system is assigned a Pan-Universal Chronographical Constant that's equivalent to the number of the plank lengths in one of their home planet's orbits. Here, on Earth, I use PUTY as the time units (Pan Universal Terran Years). Right now the time is:
13,733,143,604.163016574ty -- The number of Earth orbits down to a fraction of a second since the Big Bang occured, if Earth could have existed since the universal origin, and always orbited at its current speed. The whole number increments once a year. The decimals can be carried out as far as you like to get more precise measures if you like.
Fortunately all species have their own languages, and our universal translator is implemented by a computer which can easily multiply PUTY by Earth's PUCC, then divide by any other planetary system's PUCC to present a unified concept of time during speech. Those learning a new language must also learn to use the native measures as well as the words, it's not that big of a deal, except to races of machine-intelligences.
The decoupling of local time to universal time via chronographical constants is an example of Wheeler's law: "All problems ... can be solved by another level of indirection". Originally applied to computer science, it also applies to everything else: diplomacy (mediators), chronography, biology, etc.
Earth's PUCC is approximately 1.70125277e-36, which is roughly equivalent to: 365.242190419 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 5.39106e-44
for ( i = 1; welcome( our ); ) new Imortal::FlatwormOverlords;
Jan 26, IBM creates 9nm carbon nanotube transistor
Oct 14, IBM Eyes Brain-Like Computing
Aug 18, IBM creates learning, brain-like synaptic CPU
Is it only a recurring signal to motivate the shareholders, or is it intended to produce some tangible applications in a not-so-far future?
I suppose that depends on whether you think your neural network is the highest bar nature is likely to achieve, or if having an evolutionary mechanism become self aware could possibly NOT accelerate the evolutionary process... Well, actually, I suppose it really depends on if you think there is any money to be made in the inevitable Cyborg Revolution.
I speak Machine Code, guess who's side I'm on? .... Wrong! No ones! Muah ha HA!
As such, the many intro uni courses with 100+ students can't possibly work, unless the students themselves are invested in their own learning. That said, cutting off internet access is no guarantee that otherwise distracted students will suddenly find themselves raptly attending the teacher's words.
I agree:
"This is boring... Well, damn, all the sites I want to distract myself with are blocked. Guess I'll just watch a video, fire up World of Goo, or maybe one of the thousands of other games I have available in my general purpose computer."
If the student is determined to be distracted, then who cares? As long as it's not disrupting anyone else, who gives a damn? K-12, I can understand, but for Colleges? Seriously? If I pay for a meal at a restaurant and play games on my phone until the food's cold then leave without eating a bite: It's wasteful, and I'm still hungry, but who really cares? That's My Fault. It's Foolish to assume that the actions of others somehow reflect how good a professor is. The problem is in the recruitment office, not the lecture hall.
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink."
"If you outlaw the Internet, then only outlaws will have the Internet."
People consider censorship harmful and route around it with technology.
You can not control the actions of others, you can only control your reaction to their actions. I think the Uni staff need re-education in the basic fundamental facts of existence. What the hell is so hard to understand?
Missing option.
Another missing option: Don't gamble, or try to make money from literally nothing. -- What, pray tell, social benefit does moving numbers around actually do? You shift them around smartly and the numbers get bigger? Oh I see...
It gives companies something to borrow against when people think highly of them at the cost of having the rug ripped out from under them (and their shareholders) at any given moment by mere rumors... Companies that don't borrow against their stock price can survive even terrible market conditions by PROVIDING BENEFIT to their customers alone.
Don't get me wrong, I understand investments. It's just that the stock market isn't the only way to invest. When I invest in something, it's because I actually believe in the company based on something more than just erratic market trends. The value of my investment doesn't fluctuate with the moronic whims of a fickle market -- My returns actually reflect the company's profits. If they don't seem to be performing well, then that's my fault for not doing my research, or just bad luck. "Shit Happens."(tm)
Now if I can sell my failing investment to someone else, then I've just made some poor fool a sucker. The stock market is full to the brim with suckers... I may have dodged that bullet, but I actually don't do this unless absolutely necessary -- Instead I try to see if there's some way to fix the issue instead of bailing out at the first sign of trouble (unlike a stock marketeer). I sleep better at night, and make better investments, because I have a vested interest in actual, not momentary, success and don't play in the stock cesspool.
What would happen if I happened to find such a device on my car and put a fine metallic mesh grounded to the chassis of the vehicle? They would have a serious problem, I guess...
What would happen if you didn't put a mesh around it to more securely affix it to the undercarriage and it came off on the highway, bounced into my windshield and caused a massive crash and multi-vehicle pile up?
You would be ill advised to not secure such loose, or merely magnetically attached devices.
Or do you just have a dedicated tablet that never leaves the viewing area? What about multiple TVs? Gets expensive really quick.
Uhm, this has already happened in some high dollar home theatre installs. Crestron and other whole home media solutions have touch screen tablets that dock into the wall near the TV, have a lock mechanism so kids can't take it off the wall, and allow you to control the volume and TV channel / music & lighting in every room of the house already. They have had iPad and iPhone apps for this too that lets you administer the system remotely and even view security cams via Internet for at least the past 2 years anyhow.
For other rooms you can get touch screen interfaces about the size of a light switch that detach, and use customisable flash based interfaces, which allow you to control the home AV gear in any room as well. When docked into the wall it's "screen saver" returns it to the "light switch" state so it just acts as your light switch.
These things will get cheaper... but this article is very old news, that or someone is severely out of touch with the state of the art in home theatre systems.
Aren't all except the most basic algorithms, up to and including polynomials, NP-Hard? I know the term's meaning, but stories about proving things are NP-Hard seem sort of useless to me. The English language, for example, is NP-Hard. Has this been proven? I don't know, frankly, I don't care, but it's easy to understand that it must be considering it evolves and changes as one analyses it... Much like any quantum or physical system, or even the English themselves.
Determining if something is NP-Hard, is... wait for it.... wait for it... NP-Hard!
The hashing system is pretty neat. The idea that you could get at records without their specific key via search criterion is astounding.
In the future more advanced hashing systems will allow NoSQL databases to extract a set of records all containing a similar subset of data without keys at all!
Of course we'd need a name for the sections that are matching. Perhaps "Columns", yeah, then each result returned could be called a "Row", makes sense. I bet you could then create even more complex matching patterns for multiple "Columns" against each record in the data-set. If only there was a language to describe query we're sending to the servers... Oh! Server Query Language!
I can't wait to use SQL with NoSQL 3.0!
My dream environment = perfect representation of data in flexible/dynamic objects in a programming language, disconnected or connected to databases with nearly identical, flexible and dynamic data model representation, with a powerful query language (SQL-like), the scalability of the new generation of shared-nothing architectures, simple connectivity options (simple sockets all the way up to REST) and the reliability of a relational database's ACID properties.
It feels so close!
It feels close because it happened a while ago and you didn't realise it. Introducing: The Abstraction Layer!
This revolution in software design allows one to incorporate OR decouple the capabilities of one system from or to another! Finally! We can all spout gibberish about the endless possibilities! It's Abstraction, all the way from indirection at the CPU op-code level all the way up to $EVERYTHING, and provides the reliability of whatever back-end you decide to use. As a bonus, it supports ORM, COBRA, RPC, REST, ACID, LSD, BS, BSD, FLOSS, RINSE, RePEAT and your business logic isn't tied to your damn database choices!
You could even give away the software for free and sell the dongle. It will work as long as the encryption doesn't get cracked.
Why crack the encryption when I can just insert some machine code that returns "true" whenever
your isDongleConnected(); function runs?
This is MY machine. I control ALL instructions it operates on, bytes in RAM, EVERYTHING it does. If I give you the privilege of running your code on my hardware, I may pay you for the bit-twiddling benefits it provides -- Because you saved me the time of programming it myself, and I'm funding your future improvements... At the very first instance your code tries to make my computing life more difficult, or "hide" what it's doing in any way. I will delete your software, I'll want my money back, and will never purchase anything of yours ever again.
We had a deal. Your software would be useful, not deceitful or wasteful; What business does it have running crypto algorithms in secret? That's very suspicious behaviour, especially for a video editor. If we were countries then your software would be a worker in my country; The first time they do something treacherous on your behalf, they get deported or otherwise eliminated, and your betrayal of trust through or malicious actions may be seen as an act of WAR.
There is much valuable personal information in my systems. I have to know I can trust you to do what you say you'll do, and nothing more. If I find out that the worker is a spy -- especially if you show blatant disregard for trust and tell me up-front that they're a spy -- then we'll have a trade embargo in place in a heartbeat blocking ALL goods and services between you, and myself as well as any other countries I can influence.
We can have a good diplomatic and business relationships, but this requires trust on both our parts. Piss me off and you're pissing off a country who's main export is reverse engineering skills. I just might make it my mission to tell other folk how simple it is to remove the malicious parts of your software.
It's time to look at WHAT you do as a company. What is it? Do you develop software? Well so do I, only I get paid when I actually do work; You're getting paid repeatedly for working once. Copyright infringement is the cost of doing business in the artificial scarcity market. If you're a software developer then look for ways to get paid when you are developing the software: support, features, upgrades -- The reasons I PAID YOU for.
I surely can't be the only one who understands it's folly to build a business around artificial scarcity -- basic economics says that if the supply is Infinite then the price is Zero, regardless the cost to produce. THINK FOOLS, would YOU invest in a business who sells freely available dirt, their sole strategy being to proclaiming they're the only ones who can sell that precise mixture of dirt, and trying to hide what the mixture contains while also distributing it? Instead, you should strive to get paid to actually do work: Come up with better combinations of dirt [bits].