Uhm... while the action is IMHO stupid and pointless, your comment makes no sense at all.
What *is* 'the spirit of the internet', and what is "internet" you are referring to in the first place? If you are talking about TCP/IP network, then there is no "spirit". There are RFCs, and i don't think you can find one which specs which ports should or should not be blocked.
"Open and unrestricted"? As in, a bunch of open mail relays avialable to spammers, for example? Thanks, but no thanks:)
Also, what do you mean "supposed"? By whom?
As for "especially by companies": as of now, MOST of the internet is owned (as in, lines and networking equipment) by those "companies" you seem to hate so much.
In short, get off your political horse, and instead of whining go build some program to help use other UDP ports if this action is so against your spirit.
I'm not sure what they decided the competition would be...
If person2person chat programs with voice capabilities, then whoever provides the software (I know Yahoo messenger and ICQ can do that, although it's not VoIP) should be able to make it switch ports easily.
If companies (such as the one I use to call Russia if/when I ever do:) - then the company can easily change ports on its system too - it's not like anything is using some sort of public infrastructure which is all set to UDP port 46 (like, say, you could actually break mail by blocking port 25, I suppose, because any mail transport depends on gazilion computers listening on 25, and not only sender/reciever pairs).
Or is my logic flawed somewhere and the port block like that would achieve the desired effect?
From what I understand, it is a mail filter which determines what to filter out based on a statistics-based machine learning system called "Bayesian Learning".
Although these days definitions vary, the origin of ther term is very exact anhd comes from medieval educational system.
From http://www.athena.edu/intro/eidos/eidosdef.html: Grammar, rhetoric and logic constituted the Trivium while arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music comprised the Quadrivium: combined, these fields of study were called the Seven Liberal Arts.
Interestingly, unlike most modern "liberal arts == no science" ideas, in the original, 4 out of 3 were sciences, although classifying logic as science is shaky considering it was not the mathematical logic taught in discrete math these days.
Two comments: 1) On-topic: Your Russian professor is probably one of those fsck-ed up immigrants (russian or otherwise) who came to US with some weird ideas about what it's like here, got a shock when reality disagreed with their dreams and got angry at USA for it. Usually, they are not the brightest of immigrants, and I would advise you to listen to those who appreciate what they have gained by moving to US.
Having spent over 1/2 my life in USSR, I will gladly attest to the fact that the freedom (other than freedom to be a drunkard) in the US is a lot bigger than in USSR. Including freedom of the press.
If you think US is so bad, feel free to move to another country - yet another freedom that people in USSR lacked till 1990s. Such people are a lot worse than those who claim "USA is the best" without having seen anywhere else to compare - at least, the latter are consistent.
2) Off-topic: the fact that he is a professor of Russian, means that quite possible that he is an idiot, from my experience. As one of the examples, my wife's Prof is a total moron, both life-wise and also in terms of knowing his subject. So were some others I've encountered.
> Are they going to get rich making reports like this? I think not.
Actually, they will. The more people believe their FUD, the more "research" and "protecting the environment" jobs are going to be avialable to them.
Unlike *real* disciplines, where you need to take an existing problem and get a job/grant/etc... to solve it, environmentalists need to first CERATE the perception of the problem for which they then ask the money (donation, or - even worse - my tax dollars) to research/fix.
When all the tree-huggers dramatically reduce their resource-consumption (work for non-government money, not drive SUVs, not drive if there's a public transportation avioalable like in NYC, etc...), I will start taking their claims taht they care about environment more than I do seriously.
Now, my memory may be going bad, but IIRC, the second purpose of "stealth" technology (besides being harder to detect by searching radars) is to be a more difficult target for a missile to lock on. If that is correct, then even if the plane is detected via any of the "stealth-defeating" ground systems, it's STILL a lot less likely to get shot down than non-stealth one would be, thus making it a technology worth the money spent on it.
Which is why you're more suited for hiring manager at a bar than to work in admissions office of an ***academic institution***.
Although some boneheads like you seem to work in such places... case in point: my best friends older brother. Applied for a bunch of grad schools. Results:
UCLA: accepted CalTech: accepted Princeton: accepted (and finishing his CS PhD from there now, while holding a research job at IBM) City University of New York graduate center: declined "due to insufficient academic experience".
Oh, and BTW, those same exact kids who enjoy activities in school/college, tend to live vastly more interesting lives. I travelled all over former Soviet Union while in HS (combination of math competitions and tourism), spent time around interesting people of all ages, and learnt a bunch of stuff along the way - from postgrad-level math to lathe/milling work to playing guitar to climbing cliffs. Only thing didn't learn was shopping and getting high - guess that makes me a loser in your eyes. I'm ashamed! Ashamed, i tell you!
The Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune roughly 30 to 100 AU from the Sun containing many small icy bodies. It is now considered to be the source of the short-period comets.
> You have female friends? As a female this surprises me.
I fail to see why you'd be surprised?
If you were referring to him being anti-female, all I can say is: I'm not mysoginistic (sp?) for most part, but ALL (100%) of the mega-forwarded crap I've been sent (totalling over 1000 pieces over the years by my estimate), was sent by women, mostly friends and relatives. Crap = urban legents, stupid petitions, chain letters, etc... Some came from women who were just plain dumb, some from women who generally were VERY intelligent (including my mom, who probably has better IQ than me overall:)
If you refer to the fact that he (/.-ing geek) has any female friends: I used to have TONS of female friends, precisely due to the qualities which made me the uber-geek undesirable for dating:)
[ then again, those same qualities were one of the reasons my wife said "yes" when I proposed, so not all is lost for us geeks as species;) ]
> But consider yourself lucky -- most slashdotters would kill to be in your position.
Actually, i would guess those male/.ters who have been in that position might disagree - having lots of female friends will not benefit ones romantic life, and may actually mean a lot less sucess with women (usually - although not always - female friend is a woman who thinks you're a nifty guy to get help/advice/psychological support from but not good/hot enough to date. That means you spend more time socializing with them - detracting from time avialable for romantic life; and may also mean a lot of women don't see you as the dateable type, for whatever reason).
Well, one feature that would actually make isql useable would be "command line" history (and yes, I know about Sqsh:)
BTW, I was right - my comment got modded down as Troll. Three cheers for/. moderators, valuing 1984-like political uniformity over level-headed analysis by someone who happened to deal with real issues and comment from real world point of view!
Maaan i'd be afraid to live in a world ruled by average/.-ters...
This will likely modded down well below such gems as AC comment that Bush destroyed WTC (Modded +1 Insiteful), but still...
Fact: This legistaltion (Patriot Act) is not designed to affect Joe Average Citizen PERIOD, as far as banking is concerned. There is, as Sybase stated (quite correctly), a well defined list of entities with whom financial institutions can not deal with. The list is VERY small (being an employee of a trading company, I get compliance lists in company-wide e-mail virtually every week).
Fact: In part, this regulation is designed with the same purpose as "Have you ever been member of nazis/Communist party?" question on INS forms. Its purpose is NOT to stop ex-nazis from entering US (who'd say the truth answering that question?), but to give INS legal ground to deport ex-nazis once they are found out, for lying on INS form. The same way, US Patriot act allows US govt. to go after any financial institution which does help terrorists financially and lies about it.
Fact: the Sybase software is there simply to make sure that Joe Schmoe Bank Programmer who codes trading systems doesn't have to break their brains trying to find out a way to help his company comply with the legistaltion. So don't go bashing Sybase for trying to make a buck solving an actual problem requiring programming solution. Bash them for having Fsck-ed up isql if you want to find a real reson to yell at them. <g>
1) "citizens of Ghana who are being paid less than their services are really worth".
Actually, as has been already explained by previous posters, they are being paid at least as much (or probably a lot more) than their services are really worth. IANAE[conomist], but any compensation [ worth of labour resource ], has to be viewed relative to Cost-of-living, not in absolute value.
If I work as a data entry here in US, I will probably earn enough to have a very modest living with no luxuries. In their economy, they do the same exact job and probably earn way above average salary - and thus can purchase more in terms of necessities of life than I would on the same job in NYC.
2)"lose to the American/Canadians who are unemployed".
How are American/Canadians who are unemployed part of this equasion? Neither Ghanans[sp?] who do the work, nor the companies that shift jobs, have absolutely any obligation - legal, moral or otherwise - to employ every single person they can within their [insert locale of appropriate scale - neighbourhood,town,city,state,country)].
There may be economically beter to keep jobs local on smaller scale - after all, if you don't employ people locally but sell locally, they would have less money to spend on your product. On a national scale, this logic no longer applies with the same strength either.
As noted before, always check on price-comparison web site, like Pricewatch.
Another advice is to try to combine 1-2 parts to be bought from the single retailer.
* Processor: Good point, but ARMs are coming.
* Memory: Not if you get a GOOD PalmOS handheld.
Take a look at HandEra sometime.
It has SD and CF slots. Which means up to
256M+512M=768M max storage capacity
(current capacities of largest SD and CF cards).
* Resolution: HandEra has 320x240 QVGA screen.
Incredible thing (Yes, I own a HandEra).
Sony Clie has 320x320, which is bigger and more
backwards compatible with old 160x160, yet
not as easy to extend into true VGA later on as
QVGA.
A dedicated media chip ought to enable MP3
playback better than anything else, even a
faster processor. I'd kill to have that added
to HandEra.
That's a negative. It may differ by industries, but in banking, wireless messaging is quite popular. Us techie types get 2-way RIM pagers (same hardware as Blackberries, differnt OS/functionality), and banking types get BBs.
QUITE useful in many situations.
[ including being able to let my family know i'm alive via e-mail at 9:15am on 9/11, when all cell phones in Downtown manhattan were dead. I was in 1WTC on the 2-d floor when #1 hit, and straight under impact point of 2WTC at the moment of #2. ]
More to the point, being able to communicate from arbitrary location is a great time saver => dramatically increased productivity.
And the keyboard is not all that hard to use once you get a hang of it.
Actually no. This could apply to a group even as small as 1+1 under certain conditions.
Think auction strategy, and two people wishing to bid on an item and both having X amount of money.
Now run this experiment on them.
choosing $3/$4 would be a losing strategy, as the $1 advantage of competitor would mean you losing the whole auction.
Since real-life economics is about finite resources (Eco101), entire life can be thought of as an auction. Yes, if you had unlimited resources, $3/$4 is a better strategy. But once you take into account that $4 would let the opponent buy things which you would not be able to buy because of him, $2/$2 is better.
> 1) There were COs in the WTC and the Amex
> building, both of which are totally destroyed.
Sorry, wrong here.
AmEx building, aka 3WFC, sustained *some*
structural damage but is not destroyed and probably will be useable within a year.
(half of the building was owned by or company so i know for sure).
In USSR there were no Legos when I grew up (late 70s-80s), but Erector equivalents were VERY popular, and my favorites.
Hmm... after seing comments (and reading an article a while ago about Engineering vs. Lego/Erector use by kids in England) I feel that this theory has some confirming data in fUSSR - the popularity of such toys might be among the factor explaining the fact that many more people chose engineering/technical specialties, and that many fUSSR immigrants in USA easily find themselves a career in programming even if they had no previous education/experience in any related field.
All I can say is - my future kid(s) will definitely get to play with Erector set equivalents, be they boys or girls (ok, gotta post quick while wife is not watching - she'd rather see a daughter playing with dolls:)))
Slashdot Mirror
What *is* 'the spirit of the internet', and what is "internet" you are referring to in the first place? If you are talking about TCP/IP network, then there is no "spirit". There are RFCs, and i don't think you can find one which specs which ports should or should not be blocked.
"Open and unrestricted"? As in, a bunch of open mail relays avialable to spammers, for example? Thanks, but no thanks :)
Also, what do you mean "supposed"? By whom?
As for "especially by companies": as of now, MOST of the internet is owned (as in, lines and networking equipment) by those "companies" you seem to hate so much.
In short, get off your political horse, and instead of whining go build some program to help use other UDP ports if this action is so against your spirit.
-DVK.
If person2person chat programs with voice capabilities, then whoever provides the software (I know Yahoo messenger and ICQ can do that, although it's not VoIP) should be able to make it switch ports easily.
If companies (such as the one I use to call Russia if/when I ever do
Or is my logic flawed somewhere and the port block like that would achieve the desired effect?
Cheers,
DVK
A couple of URLs quickly found on Google:/ section-7.html a ssets/images/week09.pdf
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ai-faq/neural-nets/part3
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/courseware/cse5230/
Also, any decent AI/machine learning textbook ought to cover the topic.
-DVK
Although these days definitions vary, the origin of ther term is very exact anhd comes from medieval educational system.
From http://www.athena.edu/intro/eidos/eidosdef.html:
Grammar, rhetoric and logic constituted the Trivium while arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music comprised the Quadrivium: combined, these fields of study were called the Seven Liberal Arts.
Interestingly, unlike most modern "liberal arts == no science" ideas, in the original, 4 out of 3 were sciences, although classifying logic as science is shaky considering it was not the mathematical logic taught in discrete math these days.
-DVK
Two comments:
1) On-topic: Your Russian professor is probably one of those fsck-ed up immigrants (russian or otherwise) who came to US with some weird ideas about what it's like here, got a shock when reality disagreed with their dreams and got angry at USA for it. Usually, they are not the brightest of immigrants, and I would advise you to listen to those who appreciate what they have gained by moving to US.
Having spent over 1/2 my life in USSR, I will gladly attest to the fact that the freedom (other than freedom to be a drunkard) in the US is a lot bigger than in USSR. Including freedom of the press.
If you think US is so bad, feel free to move to another country - yet another freedom that people in USSR lacked till 1990s. Such people are a lot worse than those who claim "USA is the best" without having seen anywhere else to compare - at least, the latter are consistent.
2) Off-topic: the fact that he is a professor of Russian, means that quite possible that he is an idiot, from my experience. As one of the examples, my wife's Prof is a total moron, both life-wise and also in terms of knowing his subject. So were some others I've encountered.
-DVK
Not sure what the poster you replied to prefers, but I HAVE lived in both countries, and can attest that USSR was a lot less free than US.
Moreover, the same can be said about Russia, although obviously to lesser degree.
Any American who thinks US is less free than Cuba ought to go biu himself a ticket and live in Cuba.
-DVK
> Are they going to get rich making reports like this? I think not.
Actually, they will. The more people believe their FUD, the more "research" and "protecting the environment" jobs are going to be avialable to them.
Unlike *real* disciplines, where you need to take an existing problem and get a job/grant/etc... to solve it, environmentalists need to first CERATE the perception of the problem for which they then ask the money (donation, or - even worse - my tax dollars) to research/fix.
When all the tree-huggers dramatically reduce their resource-consumption (work for non-government money, not drive SUVs, not drive if there's a public transportation avioalable like in NYC, etc...), I will start taking their claims taht they care about environment more than I do seriously.
-DVK
Hmm... a "Head and Shoulders"-based open-source software? You have found The Truth!!!
*ducking* as irate x-philes try to throw rotten chunks of alien vegetables at me.
-DVK
Now, my memory may be going bad, but IIRC, the second purpose of "stealth" technology (besides being harder to detect by searching radars) is to be a more difficult target for a missile to lock on. If that is correct, then even if the plane is detected via any of the "stealth-defeating" ground systems, it's STILL a lot less likely to get shot down than non-stealth one would be, thus making it a technology worth the money spent on it.
-DVK
Which is why you're more suited for hiring manager at a bar than to work in admissions office of an ***academic institution***.
Although some boneheads like you seem to work in such places... case in point: my best friends older brother. Applied for a bunch of grad schools. Results:
UCLA: accepted
CalTech: accepted
Princeton: accepted (and finishing his CS PhD from there now, while holding a research job at IBM)
City University of New York graduate center: declined "due to insufficient academic experience".
Oh, and BTW, those same exact kids who enjoy activities in school/college, tend to live vastly more interesting lives. I travelled all over former Soviet Union while in HS (combination of math competitions and tourism), spent time around interesting people of all ages, and learnt a bunch of stuff along the way - from postgrad-level math to lathe/milling work to playing guitar to climbing cliffs. Only thing didn't learn was shopping and getting high - guess that makes me a loser in your eyes. I'm ashamed! Ashamed, i tell you!
-DVK
You know you've been spending too much time on /. when you read the last sentence of the above reply as "It may experience a slashdot effect".
-DVK
The Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune roughly 30 to 100 AU from the Sun containing many small icy bodies. It is now considered to be the source of the short-period comets.
P.S. Google's your friend.
Hope this helps.
-Daniel
> You have female friends? As a female this surprises me.
:)
:)
;) ]
/.ters who have been in that position might disagree - having lots of female friends will not benefit ones romantic life, and may actually mean a lot less sucess with women (usually - although not always - female friend is a woman who thinks you're a nifty guy to get help/advice/psychological support from but not good/hot enough to date. That means you spend more time socializing with them - detracting from time avialable for romantic life; and may also mean a lot of women don't see you as the dateable type, for whatever reason).
I fail to see why you'd be surprised?
If you were referring to him being anti-female, all I can say is: I'm not mysoginistic (sp?) for most part, but ALL (100%) of the mega-forwarded crap I've been sent (totalling over 1000 pieces over the years by my estimate), was sent by women, mostly friends and relatives. Crap = urban legents, stupid petitions, chain letters, etc... Some came from women who were just plain dumb, some from women who generally were VERY intelligent (including my mom, who probably has better IQ than me overall
If you refer to the fact that he (/.-ing geek) has any female friends: I used to have TONS of female friends, precisely due to the qualities which made me the uber-geek undesirable for dating
[ then again, those same qualities were one of the reasons my wife said "yes" when I proposed, so not all is lost for us geeks as species
> But consider yourself lucky -- most slashdotters would kill to be in your position.
Actually, i would guess those male
Cheers,
DVK
BTW, I was right - my comment got modded down as Troll. Three cheers for /. moderators, valuing 1984-like political uniformity over level-headed analysis by someone who happened to deal with real issues and comment from real world point of view! /.-ters...
Maaan i'd be afraid to live in a world ruled by average
-DVK
Fact: This legistaltion (Patriot Act) is not designed to affect Joe Average Citizen PERIOD, as far as banking is concerned.
There is, as Sybase stated (quite correctly), a well defined list of entities with whom financial institutions can not deal with. The list is VERY small (being an employee of a trading company, I get compliance lists in company-wide e-mail virtually every week).
Fact: In part, this regulation is designed with the same purpose as "Have you ever been member of nazis/Communist party?" question on INS forms. Its purpose is NOT to stop ex-nazis from entering US (who'd say the truth answering that question?), but to give INS legal ground to deport ex-nazis once they are found out, for lying on INS form. The same way, US Patriot act allows US govt. to go after any financial institution which does help terrorists financially and lies about it.
Fact: the Sybase software is there simply to make sure that Joe Schmoe Bank Programmer who codes trading systems doesn't have to break their brains trying to find out a way to help his company comply with the legistaltion. So don't go bashing Sybase for trying to make a buck solving an actual problem requiring programming solution. Bash them for having Fsck-ed up isql if you want to find a real reson to yell at them. <g>
-DVK
N1 rocket (Saturn V equivalent if memeory servers me well).
Cheers,
Dan
1) "citizens of Ghana who are being paid less than their services are really worth".
Actually, as has been already explained by previous posters, they are being paid at least as much (or probably a lot more) than their services are really worth. IANAE[conomist], but any compensation [ worth of labour resource ], has to be viewed relative to Cost-of-living, not in absolute value.
If I work as a data entry here in US, I will probably earn enough to have a very modest living with no luxuries. In their economy, they do the same exact job and probably earn way above average salary - and thus can purchase more in terms of necessities of life than I would on the same job in NYC.
2)"lose to the American/Canadians who are unemployed".
How are American/Canadians who are unemployed part of this equasion? Neither Ghanans[sp?] who do the work, nor the companies that shift jobs, have absolutely any obligation - legal, moral or otherwise - to employ every single person they can within their [insert locale of appropriate scale - neighbourhood,town,city,state,country)].
There may be economically beter to keep jobs local on smaller scale - after all, if you don't employ people locally but sell locally, they would have less money to spend on your product. On a national scale, this logic no longer applies with the same strength either.
-DVK
Another advice is to try to combine 1-2 parts to be bought from the single retailer.
Advice 3: watch bargain web sites, especially http://www.techbargains.com/ and Anandtech Hot Deals forum.
My advice for various retailers:
- http://www.directron.com/
(great source for cases, and various mechanocal necessities and cables)
- Dell Peripherals, if you manage to catch the needed part (drives/etc...) during a good sale.
- Someone already mentioned http://www.newegg.com
- Another site i have found to have great price and service in the past is Z-Buy.com
These sites account for most of the insides and peripherals of my self-built Athlon 1.3G box.Hope this helps,
DVK
Handera 330 has had this for a while (CF and SD/MM slots).
-DVK
You are incorrect on most of these points:
* Processor: Good point, but ARMs are coming.
* Memory: Not if you get a GOOD PalmOS handheld.
Take a look at HandEra sometime.
It has SD and CF slots. Which means up to
256M+512M=768M max storage capacity
(current capacities of largest SD and CF cards).
* Resolution: HandEra has 320x240 QVGA screen.
Incredible thing (Yes, I own a HandEra).
Sony Clie has 320x320, which is bigger and more
backwards compatible with old 160x160, yet
not as easy to extend into true VGA later on as
QVGA.
A dedicated media chip ought to enable MP3
playback better than anything else, even a
faster processor. I'd kill to have that added
to HandEra.
-Daniel
That's a negative. It may differ by industries, but in banking, wireless messaging is quite popular. Us techie types get 2-way RIM pagers (same hardware as Blackberries, differnt OS/functionality), and banking types get BBs.
QUITE useful in many situations.
[ including being able to let my family know i'm alive via e-mail at 9:15am on 9/11, when all cell phones in Downtown manhattan were dead. I was in 1WTC on the 2-d floor when #1 hit, and straight under impact point of 2WTC at the moment of #2. ]
More to the point, being able to communicate from arbitrary location is a great time saver => dramatically increased productivity.
And the keyboard is not all that hard to use once you get a hang of it.
-DVK
Actually no. This could apply to a group even as small as 1+1 under certain conditions.
Think auction strategy, and two people wishing to bid on an item and both having X amount of money.
Now run this experiment on them.
choosing $3/$4 would be a losing strategy, as the $1 advantage of competitor would mean you losing the whole auction.
Since real-life economics is about finite resources (Eco101), entire life can be thought of as an auction. Yes, if you had unlimited resources, $3/$4 is a better strategy. But once you take into account that $4 would let the opponent buy things which you would not be able to buy because of him, $2/$2 is better.
-DVK
I live in Queens, NY.
My Eathlink DSL went out on 11th, and
didn't start working till several days later.
And it flakes out every day since then.
-DVK
> 1) There were COs in the WTC and the Amex
> building, both of which are totally destroyed.
Sorry, wrong here.
AmEx building, aka 3WFC, sustained *some*
structural damage but is not destroyed and probably will be useable within a year.
(half of the building was owned by or company so i know for sure).
-DVK
Hmm... after seing comments (and reading an article a while ago about Engineering vs. Lego/Erector use by kids in England) I feel that this theory has some confirming data in fUSSR - the popularity of such toys might be among the factor explaining the fact that many more people chose engineering/technical specialties, and that many fUSSR immigrants in USA easily find themselves a career in programming even if they had no previous education/experience in any related field.
All I can say is - my future kid(s) will definitely get to play with Erector set equivalents, be they boys or girls (ok, gotta post quick while wife is not watching - she'd rather see a daughter playing with dolls :)))
Cheers, Daniel