The web site isn't very specific about what you get for $5k/yr.
You get to use the name & claim that a larger organization is backing you, with no details as to what sort of backup you get. You get marketing, but nothing specific other than use of the name and logo They'll take care of billing -- thankyou, but I'm quite glad to take on the arduous task of depositing the check. You get a referrals from a region, but how large is the region, how many referrals, and is the region exclusively yours?
I'd want to have some guarentees brfore plunking down my wad of cash. Preferably a pay-as-you go approach. Send me a paying customer and I'll fork over a portion of the proceeds from that customer. If the lead is mine but helped by the brand name or a lead from a referal then I'll fork over a smaller percentage. if I independently get a customer then it's all mine! Billing is great, but an organization that will take care of collections is really useful -- make sure that I actually get paid for the work I do!
This may be a good deal, but it'll take a lot more details before I could make an informed decision.
A model plane, processor, wireless card, directional antenna and GPS. Send the drone off to scout for access ponts -- either email the data back using the access points found or download the data after the drone returns.
This'd be great on vacations. If it's fast enough, send it ahead of you on your intended route, and leapfrog from one access point to the next. If it's too slow, send it out on reccy mission when you stop for the night. By the time you're checked in & done with dinner you'll know where to go to get on the net.
I was thinking more on the lines of a nanotech virus that adds you to the collective conciousness, rather than something that will kill you.
The major point I was trying for is that we really can't control this. We can discuss whether or not such a network of conciousness is desirable or not, but if it is feasible somebody somewhere will do it.
In addition to our not being able to limit this research/implementation. There is a strong possibility that somebody could force the cooperation upon unwilling & in many cases unsuspecting individuals by releasing self-replication mechano-biological entities into the wild.
If we wish to not pursue this approach, then it requires that all people throughout the entire world abstain. If just one [person, group, organization, government] in the entire world decides to procede, how is he to be stopped? If nanobots are released into the wild, like a computer virus, how do we protect against them? Fail once, and you are infected, become a part of the global conciousness, and will contribute. At the very least you will supply your body as a breeding ground for more nanotech virii.
Not everybody has the wealth or the knowledge to embark upon this path, but it takes just one person in the billions on the planet -- or two, one with money and one with greed & knowledge.
Any doubts that this would happen? The US developed the atomic bomb during WW2. Germany was working on it. Recently released documents show that Japan was also close to achieving an atomic device. Today over a dozen coutrys have atomic weapons.
How successful has the world been at slowing genetic experiments? While governmants, organizations & people talk about whether & how to pursue the research, other researchers announce their accomplishments. The talk of control becomes moot.
What world power could afford to not follow this approach, if nothing else than to ostensibly gain enough knowledge about the technology to thwart a foe's attempts to use it!
What good is the electric light. You need a gas light to see the dim glow!
Cars! You need a mechanic to ride along to keep it running. Just toys for rich playboys.
ATT gave up the right to enter the computer business in exchange for keeping the monopoly on phone service for a few more years. What possible use could there be for C & UNIX outside of a few research instituions?
IBM let the PC industry slip through their fingers because they viewed them as toys, nothing there that should distract them from their mainframe business.
I doubt that anybody will really know the answer to your question, no matter what it's asked about, except in hindsight.
I used to own an Accutron, later an HP watch with LED display, then a Seiko digital... but it's been years since I wore a watch, at least to tell time.
There's time on: the cell phone & PDA in my pocket. There's a PC, VCR, TV, or microwave in every room of the house. Radios in the cars. PC or workstation in every office & lab at work. Just why would I bother with a watch?
The only one I now own is an ornately engraved pocket watch, but carried as jewelry, not for the time.
You say that "...I almost always see the best potential moves right away..." that sounds like parrallel processes happenned, even though your subsequent analysis is a serial process. the serial processes are more explicit & you're more concious of them.
A later poster mentions that he "is good at tactics" but can't manage the entire board at one time. This also sounds like fertile ground for parrallelism.
Just my opinion, it's not like I'm actually an experienced go player nor have I tried to program the game.
The trend towards Massively Parallel Computers, such as the STARAN developed in the 50s/60s at Goodyear Aerospace Corporation by Ken Batcher were discarded for the most part. Pipelined machines were easier to design, cheaper to build, and easier to program (i.e. could use existing languages).
It would seem that a Massively Parallel Processor would be ideal for this applications, especially a STARAN with it's large Content Addressable Memory. Or do I, as a former STARAN user & developer of similar machines, just see this as a nail since I have the hammer in my posession?
The robots described in this article don't seem to be true robots either. Their remote control is much more sophisticated than their WW2 German ancestors, they still lack autonomy.
In addition, the modern military has been using flying robots extensivly: UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles) that were first used by the Israelis, have been in the US arsenal for decades and have seen action since the Gulf War.
"If you are a search engine located in or serving pages to a particular country, you must obey the court rulings of that country in this regard."
A guy I work with (in the USA) is a Chinese (PRC) citizen and he has his personal web site hosted with a Russion ISP. Just where is he "located"? Is he located in the US, where he is physically present, in Russia where the ISP is (BTW I really can't be sure where the ISP's server is physically located), or is he "located" in China since some countries (e.g. Italy) have laws which always apply to their citizens no matter where they physically happen to be.
He may actually "located" in all three or four places simultaneously in a legal sense!
You have no idea where the guy accessing your site is from either -- you have the same set of problems determining where he is "located" as you had trying to determine where you are "located". It's even more of a problem -- at least you're likely to know your physicall location & citizenship, your visitors may not be so forthcoming with the data.
Re:Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public
on
What, Me Worry?
·
· Score: 2
There was a time when the US had a budget surplus. Money was actually "returned" to the states.
Many economists believe that this was the impetus that started the Great Depression. Keynes theory was that deficit spending couls restore the economy, and it worked. I'm not an economist, and certainly not a theoretician, but it's hard to argue with success!
Re:Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public
on
What, Me Worry?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I'm probbaly not the best person to explain this, but:
Classical theory: is the belief that the markets are perfectly in balance, self-correcting, and nothing should be done to disrupt this equilibrium.
Keynsian Economics: Keynes formulated an alternative, arguing that governments should step in with deficit spending in order to boost the economy in times of recession. The theory came from his observation of the Great Depression. His theory was eventually implemented (the great public works projects in the US) and the depression was brought to an end. He is the only economist to have an entire field of economics named after him -- Keynsein Economics.
Monetarist Theory: The failure of Keysian Economics was the stagflation of the 70s. Friedman stepped in with a Nobel prize winning theory -- Monitarist Theory -- that states that inflation is a monetary problem. he came up with the concept of velocity & acceleration of money, and the idea that you could control the supply of money. This is the basis of interest rate adjustments.
This sketchy outline should lead you to sites on the web that'll give a clearer & more complete explanation than I am capable of. I found this site: The Virtual Economy that looks like a good start.
Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public
on
What, Me Worry?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Declare war on asteroids. Like most wars, this'll increase government spending and provide stimulus to the global economy.
Unlike other wars, in this one no one gets killed, only asteroids.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with science, it's an attempt by politicians to justify deficit spending (rightly so in my view) by scaring the public at large.
The big draw of debit cards was that they work just like credit cards. Have people forgotten this was a selling point: "Use your checking account anywhere that accepts credit cards."?
If I use my debit card as a debit card in the local market the bank owning the machine charges me an access fee.
If I use my debit card but hit the credit button instead I don't get charged an access fee! The bank that the market has an account with charges the market a credit card fee in this situation.
I've been in this business too long. My premeturely grey & balding skull just can't comprehend.
I can remember when my company -- an aerospace company yet -- and others would actually build value by improving their competitive position, doing R&D, letting their employees learn, and improving the company's inherent capabilities & knowledge. They'd use the down time when the economy was in a slump to get ready for the next upturn.
What a concept, actually prepare for the inevitable market slump and improve revenues/profits.
Would that happen today? Naw, that'd mean looking beyond the next quarter! Even if a company wanted too, their managment would be crusified by the Wall St. analysts & their investors.
The fact that delays are deterministic is what makes an OS real-time. It doesn't have to be fast.
Speed to reboot doesn't just depend on your particular RTOS, it depends what portions of the OS you've linked into your application, and your custom drivers, hardware to initialize, perhaps synchronization with other equipment. There can be tremendous additional delays before a system actually boots, but it's still real-time.
Finally, there's nothing that says the same OS is used everywhere. I worked on a board that was an upgrade to an existing system. It ran one OS, a daughtercard designed at another facility used a second OS. The shelf it plugged into used yet a third OS in its packs.
Embedded systems (70s) used to be a big loop with a goto at the end. A couple of libraries provided hardware interface. I've worked on projects (still flying) where the processor, instruction set, assembler, compiler, linker were an in-house design, so every detail was well understood.
Now we start with an OS that's many times larger & more complex than the entire application used to be. Often it's a proprietary OS that is executable only, but even if you get the source nobody has time to really develop an understanding.
Is this additional complexity making it easier to field an application but at the cost of reliability & usability? Have we gone too far?
BTW: I'm no longer in Aerospace, but still working on high availability embedded systems.
That's exactly the point. I'm not allowed to purchase a means of expression available to others.
I should have the same access to whatever available forum, including the net. I don't expect it to be given to me, I am willing to pay a reasonable fee, but a cable company has a monopoly in my area. The traditional remedy for such a situation has been regulation. There are charges on your phone bill to fund facilities to assure affordable minimum levels of phone access to areas that would not be commercially served otherwise: remote areas, inner cities.
Free (as in speech, not dollars) access to the net is now as importent a medium as a telephone. So let me buy or rent a bit of the net for my own.
Their goal is to make a profit, but the 1st amendment DOES affect them. They may not actively support my constitutional rights but they cannot limit my rights via their business practices.
This is especially egregious because they have a monopoly. This is the reasoning behind regulation by the FCC (e.g. equal access to radio & TV time, access to incumbent carriers' telephony facilities, the right to erect antennas for TV reception).
The Bradford Robotic Telescope is a web enabled telescope in West Yorkshire, England. It's open to anyone (registration required). You submit a request for an observation, the request is queued, and the telescope automatically makes the observation when conditions are favorable. You get an email informing you that your image is available.
If you're into immediate gratification, the most recent 500 observations are also available. The Yorkshire weather isn't always cooperative, so it might be a while before you get your image.
It's not the same as putting your eye to the lens, but I don't have room for a 46cm telescope, and viewing conditions are far from ideal anywhere in New Jersey!
I certainly hope that some of the affected companies go directly to the WorldCom managers and their accountants to recoup their loss. Hold them personally accountable and maybe other execs will start running companies for long-term results.
The only thing better would be if those of us who lost jobs, retirement, 401k and/or stock options would get to redistribute the money the execs stole from the company amongst themselves!
I'll certainly get Alton's book, and I'd never miss am episode of Good Eats, but...
If you like the science behind cooking, you must get a copy of "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" by Harold McGee. The book has a primer on chemistry in the back. In addition to the science of cooking (e.g. the biology of yeast, chemical changes to create alcohol, the physics of distilation) it gives you the history (when beer was discoverred, [ir]religous use of wine). A friend who is a CIA graduate had this book as a textbook in his science course.
McGee also has other books in the same vein.
If you're interested in actual cookery, though, reach for James Beard's books. His "Theory & Practice of Good Cooking" is arranged by types of cookery. There's a section on baking there're details of what baking is, followed by a highly detailed recipe for baked ham. After the initial detailed recipe he assumes you know what you're doing and provides you with less detailed recipes that show you the variety of food you can make with this technique (e.g. bread, ribs).
Beard also has books titled "Beard on *". "Beard on Bread" and "Beard on Pasta" come to mind. These are a very similar format to T&P, but concentrate an a particular type of food.
Slashdot Mirror
The web site isn't very specific about what you get for $5k/yr.
You get to use the name & claim that a larger organization is backing you, with no details as to what sort of backup you get. You get marketing, but nothing specific other than use of the name and logo They'll take care of billing -- thankyou, but I'm quite glad to take on the arduous task of depositing the check. You get a referrals from a region, but how large is the region, how many referrals, and is the region exclusively yours?
I'd want to have some guarentees brfore plunking down my wad of cash. Preferably a pay-as-you go approach. Send me a paying customer and I'll fork over a portion of the proceeds from that customer. If the lead is mine but helped by the brand name or a lead from a referal then I'll fork over a smaller percentage. if I independently get a customer then it's all mine! Billing is great, but an organization that will take care of collections is really useful -- make sure that I actually get paid for the work I do!
This may be a good deal, but it'll take a lot more details before I could make an informed decision.
Right, I DO have a life, right? Occasionally?!
Thanks for the reminder. I do occasionally remember to not take the PC, PDA & cellphone. Not often enough, though.
A model plane, processor, wireless card, directional antenna and GPS. Send the drone off to scout for access ponts -- either email the data back using the access points found or download the data after the drone returns.
This'd be great on vacations. If it's fast enough, send it ahead of you on your intended route, and leapfrog from one access point to the next. If it's too slow, send it out on reccy mission when you stop for the night. By the time you're checked in & done with dinner you'll know where to go to get on the net.
I was thinking more on the lines of a nanotech virus that adds you to the collective conciousness, rather than something that will kill you.
The major point I was trying for is that we really can't control this. We can discuss whether or not such a network of conciousness is desirable or not, but if it is feasible somebody somewhere will do it.
In addition to our not being able to limit this research/implementation. There is a strong possibility that somebody could force the cooperation upon unwilling & in many cases unsuspecting individuals by releasing self-replication mechano-biological entities into the wild.
Do we really have a choice, though?
If we wish to not pursue this approach, then it requires that all people throughout the entire world abstain. If just one [person, group, organization, government] in the entire world decides to procede, how is he to be stopped? If nanobots are released into the wild, like a computer virus, how do we protect against them? Fail once, and you are infected, become a part of the global conciousness, and will contribute. At the very least you will supply your body as a breeding ground for more nanotech virii.
Not everybody has the wealth or the knowledge to embark upon this path, but it takes just one person in the billions on the planet -- or two, one with money and one with greed & knowledge.
Any doubts that this would happen? The US developed the atomic bomb during WW2. Germany was working on it. Recently released documents show that Japan was also close to achieving an atomic device. Today over a dozen coutrys have atomic weapons.
How successful has the world been at slowing genetic experiments? While governmants, organizations & people talk about whether & how to pursue the research, other researchers announce their accomplishments. The talk of control becomes moot.
What world power could afford to not follow this approach, if nothing else than to ostensibly gain enough knowledge about the technology to thwart a foe's attempts to use it!
At best, the technology will just be delayed.
Eat your heart out!
What good is the electric light. You need a gas light to see the dim glow!
Cars! You need a mechanic to ride along to keep it running. Just toys for rich playboys.
ATT gave up the right to enter the computer business in exchange for keeping the monopoly on phone service for a few more years. What possible use could there be for C & UNIX outside of a few research instituions?
IBM let the PC industry slip through their fingers because they viewed them as toys, nothing there that should distract them from their mainframe business.
I doubt that anybody will really know the answer to your question, no matter what it's asked about, except in hindsight.
I used to own an Accutron, later an HP watch with LED display, then a Seiko digital ... but it's been years since I wore a watch, at least to tell time.
There's time on: the cell phone & PDA in my pocket. There's a PC, VCR, TV, or microwave in every room of the house. Radios in the cars. PC or workstation in every office & lab at work. Just why would I bother with a watch?
The only one I now own is an ornately engraved pocket watch, but carried as jewelry, not for the time.
You say that "...I almost always see the best potential moves right away..." that sounds like parrallel processes happenned, even though your subsequent analysis is a serial process. the serial processes are more explicit & you're more concious of them.
A later poster mentions that he "is good at tactics" but can't manage the entire board at one time. This also sounds like fertile ground for parrallelism.
Just my opinion, it's not like I'm actually an experienced go player nor have I tried to program the game.
The trend towards Massively Parallel Computers, such as the STARAN developed in the 50s/60s at Goodyear Aerospace Corporation by Ken Batcher were discarded for the most part. Pipelined machines were easier to design, cheaper to build, and easier to program (i.e. could use existing languages).
It would seem that a Massively Parallel Processor would be ideal for this applications, especially a STARAN with it's large Content Addressable Memory. Or do I, as a former STARAN user & developer of similar machines, just see this as a nail since I have the hammer in my posession?
The robots described in this article don't seem to be true robots either. Their remote control is much more sophisticated than their WW2 German ancestors, they still lack autonomy.
In addition, the modern military has been using flying robots extensivly: UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles) that were first used by the Israelis, have been in the US arsenal for decades and have seen action since the Gulf War.
"If you are a search engine located in or serving pages to a particular country, you must obey the court rulings of that country in this regard."
A guy I work with (in the USA) is a Chinese (PRC) citizen and he has his personal web site hosted with a Russion ISP. Just where is he "located"? Is he located in the US, where he is physically present, in Russia where the ISP is (BTW I really can't be sure where the ISP's server is physically located), or is he "located" in China since some countries (e.g. Italy) have laws which always apply to their citizens no matter where they physically happen to be.
He may actually "located" in all three or four places simultaneously in a legal sense!
You have no idea where the guy accessing your site is from either -- you have the same set of problems determining where he is "located" as you had trying to determine where you are "located". It's even more of a problem -- at least you're likely to know your physicall location & citizenship, your visitors may not be so forthcoming with the data.
There was a time when the US had a budget surplus. Money was actually "returned" to the states.
Many economists believe that this was the impetus that started the Great Depression. Keynes theory was that deficit spending couls restore the economy, and it worked. I'm not an economist, and certainly not a theoretician, but it's hard to argue with success!
I'm probbaly not the best person to explain this, but:
Classical theory: is the belief that the markets are perfectly in balance, self-correcting, and nothing should be done to disrupt this equilibrium.
Keynsian Economics: Keynes formulated an alternative, arguing that governments should step in with deficit spending in order to boost the economy in times of recession. The theory came from his observation of the Great Depression. His theory was eventually implemented (the great public works projects in the US) and the depression was brought to an end. He is the only economist to have an entire field of economics named after him -- Keynsein Economics.
Monetarist Theory: The failure of Keysian Economics was the stagflation of the 70s. Friedman stepped in with a Nobel prize winning theory -- Monitarist Theory -- that states that inflation is a monetary problem. he came up with the concept of velocity & acceleration of money, and the idea that you could control the supply of money. This is the basis of interest rate adjustments.
This sketchy outline should lead you to sites on the web that'll give a clearer & more complete explanation than I am capable of. I found this site: The Virtual Economy that looks like a good start.
Declare war on asteroids. Like most wars, this'll increase government spending and provide stimulus to the global economy.
Unlike other wars, in this one no one gets killed, only asteroids.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with science, it's an attempt by politicians to justify deficit spending (rightly so in my view) by scaring the public at large.
The big draw of debit cards was that they work just like credit cards. Have people forgotten this was a selling point: "Use your checking account anywhere that accepts credit cards."?
If I use my debit card as a debit card in the local market the bank owning the machine charges me an access fee.
If I use my debit card but hit the credit button instead I don't get charged an access fee! The bank that the market has an account with charges the market a credit card fee in this situation.
I've been in this business too long. My premeturely grey & balding skull just can't comprehend.
I can remember when my company -- an aerospace company yet -- and others would actually build value by improving their competitive position, doing R&D, letting their employees learn, and improving the company's inherent capabilities & knowledge. They'd use the down time when the economy was in a slump to get ready for the next upturn.
What a concept, actually prepare for the inevitable market slump and improve revenues/profits.
Would that happen today? Naw, that'd mean looking beyond the next quarter! Even if a company wanted too, their managment would be crusified by the Wall St. analysts & their investors.
The fact that delays are deterministic is what makes an OS real-time. It doesn't have to be fast.
Speed to reboot doesn't just depend on your particular RTOS, it depends what portions of the OS you've linked into your application, and your custom drivers, hardware to initialize, perhaps synchronization with other equipment. There can be tremendous additional delays before a system actually boots, but it's still real-time.
Finally, there's nothing that says the same OS is used everywhere. I worked on a board that was an upgrade to an existing system. It ran one OS, a daughtercard designed at another facility used a second OS. The shelf it plugged into used yet a third OS in its packs.
Embedded systems (70s) used to be a big loop with a goto at the end. A couple of libraries provided hardware interface. I've worked on projects (still flying) where the processor, instruction set, assembler, compiler, linker were an in-house design, so every detail was well understood.
Now we start with an OS that's many times larger & more complex than the entire application used to be. Often it's a proprietary OS that is executable only, but even if you get the source nobody has time to really develop an understanding.
Is this additional complexity making it easier to field an application but at the cost of reliability & usability? Have we gone too far?
BTW: I'm no longer in Aerospace, but still working on high availability embedded systems.
That's exactly the point. I'm not allowed to purchase a means of expression available to others.
I should have the same access to whatever available forum, including the net. I don't expect it to be given to me, I am willing to pay a reasonable fee, but a cable company has a monopoly in my area. The traditional remedy for such a situation has been regulation. There are charges on your phone bill to fund facilities to assure affordable minimum levels of phone access to areas that would not be commercially served otherwise: remote areas, inner cities.
Free (as in speech, not dollars) access to the net is now as importent a medium as a telephone. So let me buy or rent a bit of the net for my own.
Their goal is to make a profit, but the 1st amendment DOES affect them. They may not actively support my constitutional rights but they cannot limit my rights via their business practices.
This is especially egregious because they have a monopoly. This is the reasoning behind regulation by the FCC (e.g. equal access to radio & TV time, access to incumbent carriers' telephony facilities, the right to erect antennas for TV reception).
If you're into immediate gratification, the most recent 500 observations are also available. The Yorkshire weather isn't always cooperative, so it might be a while before you get your image.
It's not the same as putting your eye to the lens, but I don't have room for a 46cm telescope, and viewing conditions are far from ideal anywhere in New Jersey!
It's obvious -- they are SO advanced that we puny /.ers are incapable of comprehending the reason.
Act of God!? It's Act of Management.
I certainly hope that some of the affected companies go directly to the WorldCom managers and their accountants to recoup their loss. Hold them personally accountable and maybe other execs will start running companies for long-term results.
The only thing better would be if those of us who lost jobs, retirement, 401k and/or stock options would get to redistribute the money the execs stole from the company amongst themselves!
I'll certainly get Alton's book, and I'd never miss am episode of Good Eats, but ...
If you like the science behind cooking, you must get a copy of "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" by Harold McGee. The book has a primer on chemistry in the back. In addition to the science of cooking (e.g. the biology of yeast, chemical changes to create alcohol, the physics of distilation) it gives you the history (when beer was discoverred, [ir]religous use of wine). A friend who is a CIA graduate had this book as a textbook in his science course.
McGee also has other books in the same vein.
If you're interested in actual cookery, though, reach for James Beard's books. His "Theory & Practice of Good Cooking" is arranged by types of cookery. There's a section on baking there're details of what baking is, followed by a highly detailed recipe for baked ham. After the initial detailed recipe he assumes you know what you're doing and provides you with less detailed recipes that show you the variety of food you can make with this technique (e.g. bread, ribs).
Beard also has books titled "Beard on *". "Beard on Bread" and "Beard on Pasta" come to mind. These are a very similar format to T&P, but concentrate an a particular type of food.
Good Eats!