I always find it...funny, shall we say, that if MS does something like this, it's because they're want to "Attempt To Dominate Robotics." But you can bet that if Google released a set of tools that do the EXACT same thing, people would be cheering, celebrating how Google is dedicated to open source, and then ignore how the software is constantly data-mining. Give the MS bashing a rest. Not only is it no longer true, it's dangerous, as just focusing on Microsoft leaves Google and Apple free to do whatever they want without any kind of check.
It's always very difficult when religion and medicine clash. If you're a doctor, chances are good that at some point, someone will refuse treatment because of their religious beliefs. Most of the time it's "Whatever, you'll be in pain for the next two weeks, but that's your choice." but it's gets much much harder if say, a little girl is brought in with a fever that's getting worse. "No problem, give her some basic meds, and she'll be good to go." you'd think, and then her parents show up and say, "You can't give her any medication." And you know that without it, the girl WILL die, or at best have severe brain damage. Try to explain this to the parents, and they just say, "It's our beliefs, no medicine can be given." And legally, you can't do anything, and if you DO give the girl medicaiton and save her life, you can and will be sued for malpractice.
I don't mind religion, so long as it doesn't harm anyone, but people who would actually think, "We would rather our child die then be given medicine." I just don't understand.
Yes. I would be dumbstruck if they didn't. The ONLY reason they would leave it, is if every book on the Kindle app was the exact same price as the ones on the iBook, and even then, they'd only do it to not piss off the people who got books from Amazon, heh, and even then, I doubt they'd keep it for long.
I disagree with point one, but then again, I've just talked with other techy people, I have no clue what this'll do in the open market, It could go for the same target as the Wii, and get that, Or it could not. Opinion seems rather meh on it.
As for point two, Yes. I have no doubt they'll do this, they won't budge from pricing if you used a big crowbar.
But! I think they will do something else also. Expect the Kindle App to get dropped from the App store and disabled on people's iPad's and maybe even iPhones because "It replicated functions done by Apple." That, I think will really annoy people. The people who are interested in the iBook function, most likely HAVE a ebook reader on their iPhone, probably Kindle App, and if you say, "Oh! We're removing it. You have to use ours. And your books won't cross over. And they'll cost 5 bucks more." People will be screaming for your blood. This will be interesting to watch unfold.
The problem with probes on Mars and the like, is just what the article said. A good space program that would advance science would take a huge ammount of money. The public is a very easily bored creature, just look what happened after Apollo 11. "Well, we made it to the moon! Wait, why are we going back? we DID that already."
The public is very cold on science for science's sake, you have to have photo ops. A trip to the moon would get interest going, get money flowing so they can DO the important stuff. You have to get the public on your side, and, sadly, there's no big Russian menace for the public to cry out, "We must beat them!" Quite a few people thought that once we beat the Russians to the Moon, well, that was fun, no need to go back. Hopefully people will realize how important the space program is, but something tells me that it won't be soon, and it won't be until we get something inspiring. Deep space voyages, while important, won't inspire anyone. Landing on the Moon or Mars? That will.
Ahh, once again, the power of the internet proves that the majority of people are pretty stupid. Of course, we already knew that because of Myspace. Yay glitter!
Wait wait wait...You mean to say they actually had a REASON for leaveing the lights on, and it's not a effort by the Man to remove the Milky Way from the night sky? MADNESS I say! And I for one will not hear of it!
They put those light on to make the sky black and featureless, and that's the only logical and sensible explanation.
Gain the right to use GUI? I don't mean to be insightful, but in my opinion, it's that kind of attitude that is really holding Linux back. A user doesn't want to have to fight with a command line, learn commands and whatnot just to be able to use a GUI. Thinking like this is going to keep Linux to the people who want to use it, not convert anyone.
I'm no historian, but they both have logical backgrounds. QWERTY keyboards were designed with Typewriters in mind. The layout of the keys had to be spaced so that the arms of the typewriter would not get jammed when typing fast. Nowadays we use it because we always have, and any other layout wouldn't offer a big enough boost in speed to qualify for the change, not to mention that QWERTY is a standard.
As for Clockwise...I'm not positive, but isn't that the way the old sundials "turned"? They just used what they were used to, as there's no good reason to make it go counter-clockwise.
It's currently way to easy for a bot or some very low paid Chinese, Indian, African, etc to sign up for bogus accounts to send spam out of from all of the major email providers, blogging sites, etc.
You've kinda put you finger on the problem right there. CAPTCHA's are designed so that Bots fail them, and Humans pass them. What about when you have some poor guy in India getting paid a nickel per account he signs up? There's no way to stop that, save some weird..."5 new accounts on this IP per day" or something stupid. Calling a number would work, as would Credit Cards, I believe Second Life had something like that, and it worked, heh, as when they took it Away, SL was kinda flooded by spammers and the like.
The problem there is, if Google makes it harder for a person to get a account, say, for example, they have to call a number, and talk to a human, People will get annoyed and go somewhere else.
People can be very picky when they're weighing the "Security vs. Ease of Use" scale.
Dunno...I see a whole bunch of ways this can go wrong. First, Lets assume...oh...1 in a thousand people in NY actually send in a photo or video. There's 8.2 million people in New York, so that'd be 8,2000 pictures and videos. All of these need to be looked at closly, to make sure that they're important, and if so, what it shows. That's a lot of time and effort, and I don't know how good it'll be.
It has great Potential, but that may be all it is, a great idea on paper.
True, most live events have a delay, I believe the moon mission had a 5 minute (about) delay. The difference was this delay was because of the ol' laws of physics. With China...It may be for a different reason. As an example, I believe that China's first manned mission was not shown until it had actually lifted off, then all the channels switched to the "Breaking news story!" to show it rocketing upwards. I recall something about that, but of course, I could be wrong.
Hmm..Well, while I wish the Chinese astronauts the best of luck and hope they get back safely, I doubt that the film is going to be "Live" More likely? A nice safe delay of, oh...a hour to make sure that nothing gets shown that's not supposed to be shown.
China has too much media control to trust something as unpredictable as live TV, especially in a situation where so many things could go wrong.
On that note, good luck! Maybe this'll get us off our asses and back up into space! A little competition never hurt nobody.
Very true. I couldn't agree with you more, there's only so many ways to use a UI interface. You click on the icons. That's it. Oh sure, you may use a mouse, or a touch screen, but you still click on the icons. You may have a fancy fold out menu that organizes the icons, but you still just CLICK on the ICONS.
Well, would that be second language, or "Known" language? I'd have to say English is the most known language in the US, but it'd definatly number 1 on second languages.
In all seriousness, there's are a number of problems whith this, and it was the same problem the Pioneer probe had. How do you show them what it's made of? how do you show "Hit this" with a picture when they may never have "Hit" anything?
It's like the Arrow showing the path of the Pioneer spacecraft. Assume that you've never ever seen a arrow before. That increidably simple diagram would make no sense at all. The problem with communicating with a alien species is that we may have no frame of reference other than Math, (That's assuming the laws of math are constant) and that's not really useful for the works of Shakesphere or Bach.
Ahh, excellent. People need to get over the "Apple is the loyal underdog, they would never ever hurt me." mindset. I'm not saying anything against Apple, but you have to realize where the company stands.
You could make the argument that China only said that it would not rain during the opening ceremonies. Which is like me saying that I can control rain, since it will not rain next Tuesday from 5-8 p.m.
Can I control the weather? Tune in next week to find out!
It's very hard to prove a negative. You could also claim that a squig of nutmeg around your neck will prevent alien abductions.
The tests of various rain-making programs have been more or less a wash. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, or to look at it a diffrent way, sometimes it rains and sometimes it does not. I'll believe it when they can A) stop rain on demand, or B) start rain on demand. If you can't do either, sell your snake oil somewhere else.
I agree. I don't want a nice pretty, "Ohh, look how it flies across the screen!" desktop. I want it to do exactly what I tell it, as quickly as possible.
Shiny =/= good. This looks interesting, but not something that I would ever use. It's not easier to use, it just looks fancy, not to mention that the scenarios that they suggest are a bit far fetched at best. Are people really arguing about the average rainfall and the weather?
Slashdot Mirror
I always find it...funny, shall we say, that if MS does something like this, it's because they're want to "Attempt To Dominate Robotics." But you can bet that if Google released a set of tools that do the EXACT same thing, people would be cheering, celebrating how Google is dedicated to open source, and then ignore how the software is constantly data-mining. Give the MS bashing a rest. Not only is it no longer true, it's dangerous, as just focusing on Microsoft leaves Google and Apple free to do whatever they want without any kind of check.
It's always very difficult when religion and medicine clash. If you're a doctor, chances are good that at some point, someone will refuse treatment because of their religious beliefs. Most of the time it's "Whatever, you'll be in pain for the next two weeks, but that's your choice." but it's gets much much harder if say, a little girl is brought in with a fever that's getting worse. "No problem, give her some basic meds, and she'll be good to go." you'd think, and then her parents show up and say, "You can't give her any medication." And you know that without it, the girl WILL die, or at best have severe brain damage. Try to explain this to the parents, and they just say, "It's our beliefs, no medicine can be given." And legally, you can't do anything, and if you DO give the girl medicaiton and save her life, you can and will be sued for malpractice.
I don't mind religion, so long as it doesn't harm anyone, but people who would actually think, "We would rather our child die then be given medicine." I just don't understand.
Yes. I would be dumbstruck if they didn't. The ONLY reason they would leave it, is if every book on the Kindle app was the exact same price as the ones on the iBook, and even then, they'd only do it to not piss off the people who got books from Amazon, heh, and even then, I doubt they'd keep it for long.
I disagree with point one, but then again, I've just talked with other techy people, I have no clue what this'll do in the open market, It could go for the same target as the Wii, and get that, Or it could not. Opinion seems rather meh on it.
As for point two, Yes. I have no doubt they'll do this, they won't budge from pricing if you used a big crowbar.
But! I think they will do something else also. Expect the Kindle App to get dropped from the App store and disabled on people's iPad's and maybe even iPhones because "It replicated functions done by Apple." That, I think will really annoy people. The people who are interested in the iBook function, most likely HAVE a ebook reader on their iPhone, probably Kindle App, and if you say, "Oh! We're removing it. You have to use ours. And your books won't cross over. And they'll cost 5 bucks more." People will be screaming for your blood. This will be interesting to watch unfold.
We're running a PR campaign in order to get the money to run the science program.
The problem with probes on Mars and the like, is just what the article said. A good space program that would advance science would take a huge ammount of money. The public is a very easily bored creature, just look what happened after Apollo 11. "Well, we made it to the moon! Wait, why are we going back? we DID that already."
The public is very cold on science for science's sake, you have to have photo ops. A trip to the moon would get interest going, get money flowing so they can DO the important stuff. You have to get the public on your side, and, sadly, there's no big Russian menace for the public to cry out, "We must beat them!" Quite a few people thought that once we beat the Russians to the Moon, well, that was fun, no need to go back. Hopefully people will realize how important the space program is, but something tells me that it won't be soon, and it won't be until we get something inspiring. Deep space voyages, while important, won't inspire anyone. Landing on the Moon or Mars? That will.
Ahh, once again, the power of the internet proves that the majority of people are pretty stupid. Of course, we already knew that because of Myspace. Yay glitter!
Wait wait wait...You mean to say they actually had a REASON for leaveing the lights on, and it's not a effort by the Man to remove the Milky Way from the night sky? MADNESS I say! And I for one will not hear of it!
They put those light on to make the sky black and featureless, and that's the only logical and sensible explanation.
Gain the right to use GUI? I don't mean to be insightful, but in my opinion, it's that kind of attitude that is really holding Linux back. A user doesn't want to have to fight with a command line, learn commands and whatnot just to be able to use a GUI. Thinking like this is going to keep Linux to the people who want to use it, not convert anyone.
I shall also post, and get another achievement, as whoever has the most achievements is the best! :-D And I shall take that crown, oh yes...one day...
I'm no historian, but they both have logical backgrounds. QWERTY keyboards were designed with Typewriters in mind. The layout of the keys had to be spaced so that the arms of the typewriter would not get jammed when typing fast. Nowadays we use it because we always have, and any other layout wouldn't offer a big enough boost in speed to qualify for the change, not to mention that QWERTY is a standard.
As for Clockwise...I'm not positive, but isn't that the way the old sundials "turned"? They just used what they were used to, as there's no good reason to make it go counter-clockwise.
It's currently way to easy for a bot or some very low paid Chinese, Indian, African, etc to sign up for bogus accounts to send spam out of from all of the major email providers, blogging sites, etc.
You've kinda put you finger on the problem right there. CAPTCHA's are designed so that Bots fail them, and Humans pass them. What about when you have some poor guy in India getting paid a nickel per account he signs up? There's no way to stop that, save some weird..."5 new accounts on this IP per day" or something stupid. Calling a number would work, as would Credit Cards, I believe Second Life had something like that, and it worked, heh, as when they took it Away, SL was kinda flooded by spammers and the like.
The problem there is, if Google makes it harder for a person to get a account, say, for example, they have to call a number, and talk to a human, People will get annoyed and go somewhere else.
People can be very picky when they're weighing the "Security vs. Ease of Use" scale.
Dunno...I see a whole bunch of ways this can go wrong. First, Lets assume...oh...1 in a thousand people in NY actually send in a photo or video. There's 8.2 million people in New York, so that'd be 8,2000 pictures and videos. All of these need to be looked at closly, to make sure that they're important, and if so, what it shows. That's a lot of time and effort, and I don't know how good it'll be.
It has great Potential, but that may be all it is, a great idea on paper.
But, I thought it went against everything /. STANDS for to actually RTFA. Don't you believe in Slashdot anymore?
True, most live events have a delay, I believe the moon mission had a 5 minute (about) delay. The difference was this delay was because of the ol' laws of physics. With China...It may be for a different reason. As an example, I believe that China's first manned mission was not shown until it had actually lifted off, then all the channels switched to the "Breaking news story!" to show it rocketing upwards. I recall something about that, but of course, I could be wrong.
Hmm..Well, while I wish the Chinese astronauts the best of luck and hope they get back safely, I doubt that the film is going to be "Live" More likely? A nice safe delay of, oh...a hour to make sure that nothing gets shown that's not supposed to be shown.
China has too much media control to trust something as unpredictable as live TV, especially in a situation where so many things could go wrong.
On that note, good luck! Maybe this'll get us off our asses and back up into space! A little competition never hurt nobody.
Very true. I couldn't agree with you more, there's only so many ways to use a UI interface. You click on the icons. That's it. Oh sure, you may use a mouse, or a touch screen, but you still click on the icons. You may have a fancy fold out menu that organizes the icons, but you still just CLICK on the ICONS.
Well, would that be second language, or "Known" language? I'd have to say English is the most known language in the US, but it'd definatly number 1 on second languages.
In all seriousness, there's are a number of problems whith this, and it was the same problem the Pioneer probe had. How do you show them what it's made of? how do you show "Hit this" with a picture when they may never have "Hit" anything?
It's like the Arrow showing the path of the Pioneer spacecraft. Assume that you've never ever seen a arrow before. That increidably simple diagram would make no sense at all. The problem with communicating with a alien species is that we may have no frame of reference other than Math, (That's assuming the laws of math are constant) and that's not really useful for the works of Shakesphere or Bach.
I think the actual quote is "You can cheat a honest man, but not make a fool out of him."
Ahh, excellent. People need to get over the "Apple is the loyal underdog, they would never ever hurt me." mindset. I'm not saying anything against Apple, but you have to realize where the company stands.
You could make the argument that China only said that it would not rain during the opening ceremonies. Which is like me saying that I can control rain, since it will not rain next Tuesday from 5-8 p.m.
Can I control the weather? Tune in next week to find out!
It's very hard to prove a negative. You could also claim that a squig of nutmeg around your neck will prevent alien abductions.
The tests of various rain-making programs have been more or less a wash. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, or to look at it a diffrent way, sometimes it rains and sometimes it does not. I'll believe it when they can A) stop rain on demand, or B) start rain on demand. If you can't do either, sell your snake oil somewhere else.
I agree. I don't want a nice pretty, "Ohh, look how it flies across the screen!" desktop. I want it to do exactly what I tell it, as quickly as possible.
Shiny =/= good. This looks interesting, but not something that I would ever use. It's not easier to use, it just looks fancy, not to mention that the scenarios that they suggest are a bit far fetched at best. Are people really arguing about the average rainfall and the weather?