The other day I looked at the web site for the CBS streaming service and as far as I could tell it flat out refuses to tell you how much it costs per month. Now here, right in the summary, is the critical information CBS refused to part with.
I once tried to create a password on a site with some very complicated password rules. it rejected all of my 30 character random passwords no matter what I did to the generator. So I gave up and called tech support. It turns out that there are two sets of complicated password rules, and the one published on the web site is very wrong. For example, you had to use a special character. The web site helpfully listed half a dozen, but only three of them worked. My final password was only marginally better than Password, but the site accepted it so I gave up.
I think the site was the post office, but my memory may be wrong.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth I took my first theoretical computer science class. The professor drew a Turing machine on the blackboard and said "This is the program that runs forever without producing any output. I'm sure you've all written this program." So what happens if my computer is infinitely fast? One typo and it does an infinite amount of nothing, consuming an infinite amount of power. So if my wiring is good enough I crash the electric grid, and if it isn't my house bursts into flames.
Math and CS, even just programming, are very closely related. Both require the same sort of thinking, you have to be very clear, very precise, and not miss any details.
I just cancelled Amazon prime. I can tolerate their business practices, but now they are showing adds on Prime Video. Right now it's just a few, but this sort of thing always gets worse. If Netflix insists on showing ads I guess it's back to torrents. Sigh.
The whole thing is silly. Some sites might say they honor it, but there's no way to know if they actually honor it or just pretend to honor it. It's a lot easier to ignore DNT and just delete the cookie.
It's odd that they are trying to track how much people pay attention to privacy policies. I figure there's no point in reading them since they are all just complicated ways to say "We'll screw you whenever we want to."
CNN has retracted the story. When the story first went up they mentioned math in two places and music in one. Crazy people usually ban music before they ban math, so either it was music they banned or the whole story was nonsense.
1. Interview Darl McBride and ask him what his deal is.
2. Interview rms on any number of subjects.
3. When a version of Unity or Gnome shell comes out, do a quick video demo of it followed by comments from someone on the dev team explaining the rationale, and also someone who hates it venting about how much it sucks.
4. Interview former senator Dodd about the future of copyright
5. Interview some scientists about the Higgs boson.
6. Interview Sergei Brin about privacy.
7. Robots fighting.
8. Bruce Schneier about TSA
These are all things that would be interesting, but for the most part video is not the appropriate format. For everything except 1 and 3 a transcript is a much better idea, it's faster, it's easier to skip the fluff and get to the good part, and Google can find it for future reference. For 3 a transcript with screenshots is going to be quite sufficient. 7 actually merits a video.
For most of human history our ability to care for the sick has been limited by knowledge. It was relatively easy to do everything we knew how to do. So we have this idea that we need to do everything possible to help people. The trouble is our medical knowledge has rapidly outpaced our ability to pay for it. We argue a lot about how to give everyone the best medical care, but that just isn't possible. What we need to do is decide how much of our wealth we want to spend on medical care and then worry about spending it well.
I spent forty years listening to people like you. I went out, I socialized, met people, all that sort of thing. I never liked it. Everybody told me that I just needed practice and eventually I'd start to enjoy it. That never happened. I finally decided to ignore all that helpful advice and quit. Now I spend most of my time alone and I'm a much happier person.
The funny thing is that in all that time no one ever suggested that if I didn't enjoy social activities I shouldn't do them. For most people this seems to be inconceivable. So if you're a younger version of me and everyone is telling you to go out and practice your social skills just try taking a break. You may discover that you like it.
Why would any business want to use it? The bar that scans your drivers license gets some valuable information in the process. The porn site that asks for your credit card information to verify your age gets a credit card that they can use or sell. The bank that you ask for a loan gets all sorts of information, all of which it can sell or use to market itself. The current situation is bad for the customer, but the customer isn't the one who decides what verification system is used.
None of this will change until large numbers of people refuse to do business with companies that demand more information than they need. And that's never going to happen.
And there's the problem. The fact that we haven't had a terrorist attack is taken as evidence that all these "security" measures work. If there is another terrorist attack that will be taken as evidence that we need more "security".
Re:There should never be a settled issue in scienc
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Science vs. Homeopathy
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There are lots of settled issues in science. When you drop something, it goes down. So you come along and tell me that you have a brilliant new theory that says that things you drop will not, in fact, fall down. I call you an idiot and go about my business. Should I have tested your idea using the scientific method?
The trouble is that testing things is hard, but thinking up new crackpot ideas is easy. If we go about testing every crackpot idea we encounter we'll never get any actual work done. We have to think very hard about what ideas show some promise before we start testing stuff. If you think an idea is worth testing you can test it yourself, in the mean time stop whining and let the professionals get back to work.
Slashdot Mirror
The other day I looked at the web site for the CBS streaming service and as far as I could tell it flat out refuses to tell you how much it costs per month. Now here, right in the summary, is the critical information CBS refused to part with.
I think the site was the post office, but my memory may be wrong.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth I took my first theoretical computer science class. The professor drew a Turing machine on the blackboard and said "This is the program that runs forever without producing any output. I'm sure you've all written this program." So what happens if my computer is infinitely fast? One typo and it does an infinite amount of nothing, consuming an infinite amount of power. So if my wiring is good enough I crash the electric grid, and if it isn't my house bursts into flames.
I'm looking forward to headphones that cancel every sound except advertising.
Math and CS, even just programming, are very closely related. Both require the same sort of thinking, you have to be very clear, very precise, and not miss any details.
It's easy to make a program fast if you don't care much what it does.
I just cancelled Amazon prime. I can tolerate their business practices, but now they are showing adds on Prime Video. Right now it's just a few, but this sort of thing always gets worse. If Netflix insists on showing ads I guess it's back to torrents. Sigh.
The sex worker will be fun. Every 60 seconds it kicks you out of bed until you watch a video ad.
The whole thing is silly. Some sites might say they honor it, but there's no way to know if they actually honor it or just pretend to honor it. It's a lot easier to ignore DNT and just delete the cookie.
It's odd that they are trying to track how much people pay attention to privacy policies. I figure there's no point in reading them since they are all just complicated ways to say "We'll screw you whenever we want to."
CNN has retracted the story. When the story first went up they mentioned math in two places and music in one. Crazy people usually ban music before they ban math, so either it was music they banned or the whole story was nonsense.
You can save classic yourself, with noscript on the beta throws up it's hands and tosses you back to classic.
These are all things that would be interesting, but for the most part video is not the appropriate format. For everything except 1 and 3 a transcript is a much better idea, it's faster, it's easier to skip the fluff and get to the good part, and Google can find it for future reference. For 3 a transcript with screenshots is going to be quite sufficient. 7 actually merits a video.
Junkbusters seems to be dead. Privoxy is based on Junkbusters and last I heard was alive.
For most of human history our ability to care for the sick has been limited by knowledge. It was relatively easy to do everything we knew how to do. So we have this idea that we need to do everything possible to help people. The trouble is our medical knowledge has rapidly outpaced our ability to pay for it. We argue a lot about how to give everyone the best medical care, but that just isn't possible. What we need to do is decide how much of our wealth we want to spend on medical care and then worry about spending it well.
I spent forty years listening to people like you. I went out, I socialized, met people, all that sort of thing. I never liked it. Everybody told me that I just needed practice and eventually I'd start to enjoy it. That never happened. I finally decided to ignore all that helpful advice and quit. Now I spend most of my time alone and I'm a much happier person.
The funny thing is that in all that time no one ever suggested that if I didn't enjoy social activities I shouldn't do them. For most people this seems to be inconceivable. So if you're a younger version of me and everyone is telling you to go out and practice your social skills just try taking a break. You may discover that you like it.
Why would any business want to use it? The bar that scans your drivers license gets some valuable information in the process. The porn site that asks for your credit card information to verify your age gets a credit card that they can use or sell. The bank that you ask for a loan gets all sorts of information, all of which it can sell or use to market itself. The current situation is bad for the customer, but the customer isn't the one who decides what verification system is used. None of this will change until large numbers of people refuse to do business with companies that demand more information than they need. And that's never going to happen.
And there's the problem. The fact that we haven't had a terrorist attack is taken as evidence that all these "security" measures work. If there is another terrorist attack that will be taken as evidence that we need more "security".
There are lots of settled issues in science. When you drop something, it goes down. So you come along and tell me that you have a brilliant new theory that says that things you drop will not, in fact, fall down. I call you an idiot and go about my business. Should I have tested your idea using the scientific method? The trouble is that testing things is hard, but thinking up new crackpot ideas is easy. If we go about testing every crackpot idea we encounter we'll never get any actual work done. We have to think very hard about what ideas show some promise before we start testing stuff. If you think an idea is worth testing you can test it yourself, in the mean time stop whining and let the professionals get back to work.