The first thing I see when I open the envelope is what looks like a bill, no disclaimer to the contrary. I had to open the folded paper up to find the disclaimer. When I saw the "bill" the first thing I thought was that this looks like some sort of scam.
Advisorty Alert
I filled out the USPS mail fraud complaint form linked to by the Advisory Alert. They even have a category for this "False Bill or Notice: Directory Solicitation." Sounds like mail fraud to me.
My bad. It was a typo in index of the reader I was quoting from. The actual article had the name correctly printed, but I copied it from the incorrect index.
I have asked numerous people and no one has been able to answer this question.
Why does Moore get credit for this "law" and the "Moore machine"?
A.M. Turning in Mind, October 1950 p433-460 discussed both his predictions on the growth of computers (p442) and had diagrams and equations for what is now called in computer engineering a "Moore machine" (p440).
I will agree with anyone who says that Moore refined Turning's ideas. The way Turning predicted growth is hard to use as any sort of "law." However, the state diagram in Turning's article is pretty clear. I would call it a Turning machine rather than a Moore machine if I had my say.
Maybe someone here can finally provide me with a reason why Moore gets all the credit for Turning's ideas.
To me it seems clear that Moore had read Turning's article 15 years prior and used it as a basis for his ideas. Should Turning be given some credit?
The following is my personal opinion, please do your own research on this company.
These guys are notorious for setting up review sites to promote their own products. They use employees to falsely promote their products on different message boards. Resellerratings has had to clear some of this companies sites reviews because they were getting too many fraudulent positive reviews mixed in with the negative reviews.
If you notice this article was submitted by one of their employees. When did/. start taking ads?
IMO, this is one of those companies that gives Internet commerce a bad name.
I will second Terry Goodkind for the fantasy side of things.
Wizard's First Rule has got to be the best book I've ever read. The only book in that series that disappointed was "Blood of the Fold", it just didn't have a strong ending. Besides that one, the rest of the books listed above are excellent. He changes style slightly in the later books to try something different.
I love how he creates many different stories and pieces to the puzzle that create the plot that comes together at the end of the book. Some of it I figure out, some of it I don't, and some of it is a complete surprise (but that does fit when one goes back and checks). As soon as he publishes a new book in the series I start reading it within the first week after he has published it.
I do like Piers Anthony that the poster said he has read plenty of. Many people have suggested Neil Stephenson, which I've really liked the books that I've read. Stephen Barnes is good with alternative history fiction, a good example being Lion's Blood (not a happy story though).
If you like Tolkien/D&D type worlds, Elizabeth Moon is pretty good. Not quite to the same caliber as those mentioned above. The series is:
Sheepfarmer's Daughter (Deed of Paksenarrion, Book 1) Divided Allegiance (Book 2) Oath of Gold (Book 3) Surrender None: The Legacy of Gird (earlier period of time) Liar's Oath (After Surrender None)
The first three books, I believe are also sold as one large book called "The Deeds of Paksenarrion". It contains Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold.
Reading these books in the order above matters. For example, Liar's Oath gets terrible reviews if you read it before Surrender None. It gets good reviews if it is the last thing read.
I am not impressed with SMS on my phone at all. I live in the Bay Area, CA, USA and it is far worse than any two-way pager I've had in the past. On average it seems to take 2+ hours to send a message and about 10% of them never arrive (no actual data taken, just rough impression). I've given up on it for anything other than little love messages to my gf, which don't really matter when they arrive.
I don't know how much it has to do with my phone as I will check the phone an hour or two later and it still shows it as trying to send. I've been meaning to look into what the problem is, but never got around to it. This article seems to confirm that it isn't just me.
I remembered that article in Wired immediately when it was mentioned here. I loved that article, and that was back when the magazine was actually worth reading IMO.
I didn't even notice that it was written by Neal Stephenson at the time. No wonder it has stuck with me.
This was true. Tom Pabst of Tom's Hardware Guide did a video of taking the heatsink off of an AMD machine and watching the CPU fry.
In response to that AMD started putting on die thermal sensors in their CPUs and motherboard manufacturers added C.O.P. (CPU Overheating Protection).
So if you have a recent AMD CPU and motherboard with C.O.P., it isn't an issue.
They still aren't as good as Intel where the CPU slows down in response to overheating, rather than completely shutting down. But it is a large step in the right direction and should keep AMD users from frying processors.
I agree with your two points, but I don't think corporations on their own are "responsible hands."
US Corporations have such a great history of doing what is in the publics best interest. The recent corn crop story on Slashdot is a perfect example.
I don't agree with the "Paint it Black" military approach either. I don't trust the military any more than corporations anyways. I think it is beneficial to research into nanotechnology, but I do think restrictions should be made on companies doing the research. History has shown that those researching potentially dangerous areas do not act responsibly.
I believe I am somewhere in between Bill Joy and Ray Kurtzweil, although I am probably farther to the Bill Joy side. In "Why the future doesn't need us" Joy writes:
"Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-centry technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control."
I do not see how creating very strong restrictions on self-replication would really harm research. They can still design the bots and research how they perform. One could even provide a limited supply source. I don't think that it asks too much of these companies to create only the necessary number of nanobots.
For those unfamiliar with the gray-goo discussed here, another quote from Bill Joy's article:
"Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the 'gray goo problem.' Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term 'gray goo' emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valueable.
The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.
Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident. Ooops."
Some people seem to think that the article encouraged the laissez-faire approach. I got the impression that the author encouraged an approach similar to the biotech industry. Personally, I wouldn't mind a little stronger than that.
1.37x10^(-4) hours (137uh if you like), convert that to seconds (multiply by 3600) and you get 0.494. I am not sure how you got 137ms.
O.K., if you want the slightly more accurate version here it is. I looked up how far away the satellite I was on was (DirectWay has a few) and it is approximately 22,300 miles away.
22,300 miles * 4 = 89,200 miles
89,200 miles / 186,282 miles per second (speed of light in a vacuum) = 0.4788 s = 479ms
500ms is close enough for government work:)
If you want more accurate than that one would have to factor in the part of the trip that takes place in the atmosphere (and the change in atmosphere), but that will only raise the latency.
I'm not sure if your post was meant to be a flame, but I thought I'd respond in case someone was too lazy to do the math.
I live in a rural part of the bay area right now (Santa Cruz Mountains). No DSL or cable is available and they are not likely to be offered any time soon.
I gave DirectWay a try, but the latency is absolutely horrid. I get about 150ms latency on my modem (which isn't very good), but with DirectWay I was getting 1s -- even as high as 2s on a bad day. The best I have heard anyone get is around 800ms.
There is no way to do much better than that with geosynchronous satellites. For a satellite to be geosynchronous it needs to be about 23,000 miles up. Thus a ping has to go from me to the satellite, from the satellite to the ground station, from the ground station to the satellite, and from the satellite to me. That's approximately 92,000 miles. The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 670,000,000 mph. That comes out to about 500ms. Since we aren't dealing with a vacuum and there is overhead, we aren't even going to see anything like that. A good modem connection can get around 100ms, which is 5 times better than the ideal for satellite or about 10 times better than what I was getting.
I really was hoping the low orbit satellite systems would take off, because that would have significantly cut down the latency. Unfortunately, all those systems seem to have gone bankrupt or been canceled.
For anyone doing anything that requires good latency (ssh, games, etc.) satellite internet is going to be slower than a modem.
That's the main thing I got out of a quick skim. It's your responsibility to protect your pass code, but if their system is compromised and someone places an order on your account, it's your fault and they are not liable for any damages that you suffer.
The typical BS that is in almost all EULA.
Re: If phony, please provide link.
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
I read the first few pages of links and unless I missed something I could not find any retraction. I did a few alternate searches to look for any retractions or anyone saying that the article was phony. I searched the LA Times site for any retraction.
The latest statement from the Bush administration on the matter is that they promise not to put Arabs in concentration camps.
Especially with John Ashcroft camps
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
It seems it may be coming to that. John Aschcroft has started building the first camp for US citizens Bush and him label "enemy combatants," where their constitutional rights are revoked.
In May, Bush unsigned the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty which was a treaty opposing crimes against humanity. Why would Bush unsign such a treaty unless he had plans on committing crimes against humanity?
This administration truly scares me.
There is tons of evidence that the Bush administration has been heavily involved with those funding terrorism. Al Queda is a CIA trained military operation. The person funding the September 11th bombings was in Washington, DC meeting with the Bush administration starting on September 4th and was sitting down with Colin Powell discussing "terrorism" when the attacks occurred.
See Global Research or searches on Google for more information. Global research does present many different articles, some authors more credible than others in an effort to present many views. Keep that in mind when perusing their site.
Plans for an oil pipeline through Afghanistan were started by the oil industry in 1996. It is interesting that the majority of the Bush administration has oil interests. It is interesting that the people Bush proposes to put in power in Afghanistan are former employees of oil companies. It is clear that attacking Afghanistan does nothing against terrorism, but I will be very surprised if the oil industries are not heavily involved after we are done killing people there.
It is amazing how self-serving this administration is and how the mainstream media is just starting to catch up with some of this. I find it sad that most Americans are not following what is really going on; otherwise, we could impeach the Bush administration out of office. I bet most Republicans still support this bloody administration, all hail Hitler Bush!
Re:Government size isnt important to me
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
You actually think the CIA fights drugs? They are one of the largest drug operations in the world. Just do a search for "CIA drugs" on google. *sarcasm* I am not sure there is enough evidence */sarcasm*. The first hit is even www.ciadrugs.com.
It shook for about 10 seconds here. I am in the green area (Moderate, light damage) on the USGS map (already filled out the survey). We got a few things knocked off the edge of counters, and a stain glass window that sitting a window sill fell and broke. It should have been secured. I can't say no damage, but it was pretty light none the less. The only thing these little ones really do for me is hope that the epicenter isn't really bad.
To the best of my knowledge, if you give out your cell phone number, it is not illegal for them to call it. I believe they can even sell the number you gave them to telemarketers, and since you provided the number, it is legal for them to use it. From my understanding, giving your phone number to a company (whether it be home or cell) is basically automatically opting-in.
One really needs to be careful giving out one's cell phone to companies. About the only time I give my cell phone out to companies is mechanics, and I ask them how they will be using my phone number first.
I personally found that this survey was more interesting than Dr. Turkle. Turkle talks a lot about the ideas of interface and windows. I got the impression from reading her that she was as messed up as some of the people she was interviewing. I found her to not be very scientific and seemed to mostly write about the most extreme cases. She uses cases like: "'RL is just one more window,' he repeats, 'and it's not usually my best one.'" I found that she seemed to write about people with some serious issues.
In addition, she did not seem to have a very good understanding of technology, for example she talked about the "electrodes" in computers. What are the electrodes in computers?
With not exactly the same areas covered, William J. Mitchell's City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. I thought Mitchell had a better grasp of the technologies involved and their overall influence. I am probably pretty biased though, Mitchell's writing was more geek and less psychologist.
She seemed to be studying "MUDs" more than RPG gamers, but maybe that is what you meant. She called them MUDs, but she seemed to be spending more time on MUCKs from what I gathered.
If you notice that 31.7% of those surveyed were students, it is not surprising that 27.6% had hosehold incomes of less than $30K. Not all of those students are college students, but the mean age of players was 25.7 years. I bet a good portion of that "lower class" is college students. I do not exactly consider college students "lower class." College students may be poor, but just to be able to go to college requires a certain level of priviledge.
Placing students' work on a public CVS repository would make the situation worse. The professor would end up with most of the assignments turned in done in similar ways. All the assignments would have the hardest part done in a way similar to the first student to figure it out.
A lot of students will not go through the process of figuring out something for themselves unless they are forced to. The idea of education is to learn. I think students should be able to find general information on what they are looking for online, but if they can find the exact solution they will not figure it out themselves.
Normally I love the idea of open source, but in this case I think it is a bad idea. Now after the assignment is due and turned in, I think students have the right to post their assignments open source if they like (as long as it does not include any code provided by the instructor or others). Though, that forces the instructor to come up with a new assignment the next time the class is taught (if they realize).
The article states that the Microsoft funded ATL was offering additional chances at the computers they were giving away for those that CC'd them on the letters they sent in. Does that not by itself illustrate how big of a problem we have with Microsoft? I would not be surprised if we find out that Microsoft had paid people to write letters directly -- that would be consistent with their behavior.
I agree that the question CmdrTaco asks is flawed. In the real world, what happens if you steal code from another company? What happens if you use GPL code in a commercial product? I think these are firable offenses.
UCSC's CS/CE department uses a program to detect not only exact matches, but very similar assignments. Renaming all the variables will still turn up a match. Of course, the professor and then a group of professors looks over anything turned up before action is taken against the student (one warning, then expulsion).
I fully support the use of programs like these. If someone can not write the programs themselves, they do not deserve the degree. What happens when they are asked to write a program from scratch when they get a job? The manager should be able to expect them to be able to do the basics if they have a degree. Most professors allow a certain level of collaboration. At UCSC, students are generally allowed to work with others , but they have to credit those students they worked with in documentation. This does not include sharing code, each student is expected to complete their own assignment.
I really can only see cheaters being against these kinds of programs. This statement sounds too much like the big brother stuff, but I think in this case it applies.
Slashdot Mirror
I got one in the mail today 4/30/2003.
The first thing I see when I open the envelope is what looks like a bill, no disclaimer to the contrary. I had to open the folded paper up to find the disclaimer. When I saw the "bill" the first thing I thought was that this looks like some sort of scam.
Advisorty Alert
I filled out the USPS mail fraud complaint form linked to by the Advisory Alert. They even have a category for this "False Bill or Notice: Directory Solicitation." Sounds like mail fraud to me.
Do you mean organic chemgistry?
Hey, oxidants happen.
I think you are overreacting ;)
My bad. It was a typo in index of the reader I was quoting from. The actual article had the name correctly printed, but I copied it from the incorrect index.
I have asked numerous people and no one has been able to answer this question.
Why does Moore get credit for this "law" and the "Moore machine"?
A.M. Turning in Mind, October 1950 p433-460 discussed both his predictions on the growth of computers (p442) and had diagrams and equations for what is now called in computer engineering a "Moore machine" (p440).
I will agree with anyone who says that Moore refined Turning's ideas. The way Turning predicted growth is hard to use as any sort of "law." However, the state diagram in Turning's article is pretty clear. I would call it a Turning machine rather than a Moore machine if I had my say.
Maybe someone here can finally provide me with a reason why Moore gets all the credit for Turning's ideas.
To me it seems clear that Moore had read Turning's article 15 years prior and used it as a basis for his ideas. Should Turning be given some credit?
The following is my personal opinion, please do your own research on this company.
These guys are notorious for setting up review sites to promote their own products. They use employees to falsely promote their products on different message boards. Resellerratings has had to clear some of this companies sites reviews because they were getting too many fraudulent positive reviews mixed in with the negative reviews.
If you notice this article was submitted by one of their employees. When did /. start taking ads?
IMO, this is one of those companies that gives Internet commerce a bad name.
You have now been warned.
ResellerRating's OC System
OCZ Memory: Are they able to regain consumer trust?
Update on 'OCZ EXPOSED'
Come on Taco. I love the site, but is searching previous articles before submitting really that hard?
Lately, we should rename him CmdrDuplicate.
I will second Terry Goodkind for the fantasy side of things.
Wizard's First Rule has got to be the best book I've ever read. The only book in that series that disappointed was "Blood of the Fold", it just didn't have a strong ending. Besides that one, the rest of the books listed above are excellent. He changes style slightly in the later books to try something different.
I love how he creates many different stories and pieces to the puzzle that create the plot that comes together at the end of the book. Some of it I figure out, some of it I don't, and some of it is a complete surprise (but that does fit when one goes back and checks). As soon as he publishes a new book in the series I start reading it within the first week after he has published it.
I do like Piers Anthony that the poster said he has read plenty of. Many people have suggested Neil Stephenson, which I've really liked the books that I've read. Stephen Barnes is good with alternative history fiction, a good example being Lion's Blood (not a happy story though).
If you like Tolkien/D&D type worlds, Elizabeth Moon is pretty good. Not quite to the same caliber as those mentioned above. The series is:
Sheepfarmer's Daughter (Deed of Paksenarrion, Book 1)
Divided Allegiance (Book 2)
Oath of Gold (Book 3)
Surrender None: The Legacy of Gird (earlier period of time)
Liar's Oath (After Surrender None)
The first three books, I believe are also sold as one large book called "The Deeds of Paksenarrion". It contains Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold.
Reading these books in the order above matters. For example, Liar's Oath gets terrible reviews if you read it before Surrender None. It gets good reviews if it is the last thing read.
I am not impressed with SMS on my phone at all. I live in the Bay Area, CA, USA and it is far worse than any two-way pager I've had in the past. On average it seems to take 2+ hours to send a message and about 10% of them never arrive (no actual data taken, just rough impression). I've given up on it for anything other than little love messages to my gf, which don't really matter when they arrive.
I don't know how much it has to do with my phone as I will check the phone an hour or two later and it still shows it as trying to send. I've been meaning to look into what the problem is, but never got around to it. This article seems to confirm that it isn't just me.
I remembered that article in Wired immediately when it was mentioned here. I loved that article, and that was back when the magazine was actually worth reading IMO.
I didn't even notice that it was written by Neal Stephenson at the time. No wonder it has stuck with me.
This was true. Tom Pabst of Tom's Hardware Guide did a video of taking the heatsink off of an AMD machine and watching the CPU fry.
In response to that AMD started putting on die thermal sensors in their CPUs and motherboard manufacturers added C.O.P. (CPU Overheating Protection).
So if you have a recent AMD CPU and motherboard with C.O.P., it isn't an issue.
They still aren't as good as Intel where the CPU slows down in response to overheating, rather than completely shutting down. But it is a large step in the right direction and should keep AMD users from frying processors.
I agree with your two points, but I don't think corporations on their own are "responsible hands."
US Corporations have such a great history of doing what is in the publics best interest. The recent corn crop story on Slashdot is a perfect example.
I don't agree with the "Paint it Black" military approach either. I don't trust the military any more than corporations anyways. I think it is beneficial to research into nanotechnology, but I do think restrictions should be made on companies doing the research. History has shown that those researching potentially dangerous areas do not act responsibly.
I believe I am somewhere in between Bill Joy and Ray Kurtzweil, although I am probably farther to the Bill Joy side. In "Why the future doesn't need us" Joy writes:
"Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-centry technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control."
I do not see how creating very strong restrictions on self-replication would really harm research. They can still design the bots and research how they perform. One could even provide a limited supply source. I don't think that it asks too much of these companies to create only the necessary number of nanobots.
For those unfamiliar with the gray-goo discussed here, another quote from Bill Joy's article:
"Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the 'gray goo problem.' Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term 'gray goo' emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valueable.
The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.
Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident. Ooops."
Some people seem to think that the article encouraged the laissez-faire approach. I got the impression that the author encouraged an approach similar to the biotech industry. Personally, I wouldn't mind a little stronger than that.
1.37x10^(-4) hours (137uh if you like), convert that to seconds (multiply by 3600) and you get 0.494. I am not sure how you got 137ms.
:)
O.K., if you want the slightly more accurate version here it is. I looked up how far away the satellite I was on was (DirectWay has a few) and it is approximately 22,300 miles away.
22,300 miles * 4 = 89,200 miles
89,200 miles / 186,282 miles per second (speed of light in a vacuum) = 0.4788 s = 479ms
500ms is close enough for government work
If you want more accurate than that one would have to factor in the part of the trip that takes place in the atmosphere (and the change in atmosphere), but that will only raise the latency.
I'm not sure if your post was meant to be a flame, but I thought I'd respond in case someone was too lazy to do the math.
I live in a rural part of the bay area right now (Santa Cruz Mountains). No DSL or cable is available and they are not likely to be offered any time soon.
I gave DirectWay a try, but the latency is absolutely horrid. I get about 150ms latency on my modem (which isn't very good), but with DirectWay I was getting 1s -- even as high as 2s on a bad day. The best I have heard anyone get is around 800ms.
There is no way to do much better than that with geosynchronous satellites. For a satellite to be geosynchronous it needs to be about 23,000 miles up. Thus a ping has to go from me to the satellite, from the satellite to the ground station, from the ground station to the satellite, and from the satellite to me. That's approximately 92,000 miles. The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 670,000,000 mph. That comes out to about 500ms. Since we aren't dealing with a vacuum and there is overhead, we aren't even going to see anything like that. A good modem connection can get around 100ms, which is 5 times better than the ideal for satellite or about 10 times better than what I was getting.
I really was hoping the low orbit satellite systems would take off, because that would have significantly cut down the latency. Unfortunately, all those systems seem to have gone bankrupt or been canceled.
For anyone doing anything that requires good latency (ssh, games, etc.) satellite internet is going to be slower than a modem.
That was a great demo. I was paying more attention to the Dawn demo than the GeForce FX :)
That's the main thing I got out of a quick skim. It's your responsibility to protect your pass code, but if their system is compromised and someone places an order on your account, it's your fault and they are not liable for any damages that you suffer.
The typical BS that is in almost all EULA.
I read the first few pages of links and unless I missed something I could not find any retraction.
I did a few alternate searches to look for any retractions or anyone saying that the article was phony. I searched the LA Times site for any retraction.
The latest statement from the Bush administration on the matter is that they promise not to put Arabs in concentration camps.
It seems it may be coming to that. John Aschcroft has started building the first camp for US citizens Bush and him label "enemy combatants," where their constitutional rights are revoked.
LA Times: Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision, which can also be found in the LA Times archive (for money).
Ashcroft Following Nazi Example.
Bush presses ahead with "enemy combatant".
In May, Bush unsigned the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty which was a treaty opposing crimes against humanity. Why would Bush unsign such a treaty unless he had plans on committing crimes against humanity?
This administration truly scares me.
There is tons of evidence that the Bush administration has been heavily involved with those funding terrorism. Al Queda is a CIA trained military operation. The person funding the September 11th bombings was in Washington, DC meeting with the Bush administration starting on September 4th and was sitting down with Colin Powell discussing "terrorism" when the attacks occurred.
See Global Research or searches on Google for more information. Global research does present many different articles, some authors more credible than others in an effort to present many views. Keep that in mind when perusing their site.
Plans for an oil pipeline through Afghanistan were started by the oil industry in 1996. It is interesting that the majority of the Bush administration has oil interests. It is interesting that the people Bush proposes to put in power in Afghanistan are former employees of oil companies. It is clear that attacking Afghanistan does nothing against terrorism, but I will be very surprised if the oil industries are not heavily involved after we are done killing people there.
It is amazing how self-serving this administration is and how the mainstream media is just starting to catch up with some of this. I find it sad that most Americans are not following what is really going on; otherwise, we could impeach the Bush administration out of office. I bet most Republicans still support this bloody administration, all hail Hitler Bush!
You actually think the CIA fights drugs? They are one of the largest drug operations in the world. Just do a search for "CIA drugs" on google. *sarcasm* I am not sure there is enough evidence */sarcasm*. The first hit is even www.ciadrugs.com.
It shook for about 10 seconds here. I am in the green area (Moderate, light damage) on the USGS map (already filled out the survey). We got a few things knocked off the edge of counters, and a stain glass window that sitting a window sill fell and broke. It should have been secured. I can't say no damage, but it was pretty light none the less. The only thing these little ones really do for me is hope that the epicenter isn't really bad.
To the best of my knowledge, if you give out your cell phone number, it is not illegal for them to call it. I believe they can even sell the number you gave them to telemarketers, and since you provided the number, it is legal for them to use it. From my understanding, giving your phone number to a company (whether it be home or cell) is basically automatically opting-in.
One really needs to be careful giving out one's cell phone to companies. About the only time I give my cell phone out to companies is mechanics, and I ask them how they will be using my phone number first.
I personally found that this survey was more interesting than Dr. Turkle. Turkle talks a lot about the ideas of interface and windows. I got the impression from reading her that she was as messed up as some of the people she was interviewing. I found her to not be very scientific and seemed to mostly write about the most extreme cases. She uses cases like: "'RL is just one more window,' he repeats, 'and it's not usually my best one.'" I found that she seemed to write about people with some serious issues.
In addition, she did not seem to have a very good understanding of technology, for example she talked about the "electrodes" in computers. What are the electrodes in computers?
With not exactly the same areas covered, William J. Mitchell's City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. I thought Mitchell had a better grasp of the technologies involved and their overall influence. I am probably pretty biased though, Mitchell's writing was more geek and less psychologist.
She seemed to be studying "MUDs" more than RPG gamers, but maybe that is what you meant. She called them MUDs, but she seemed to be spending more time on MUCKs from what I gathered.
If you notice that 31.7% of those surveyed were students, it is not surprising that 27.6% had hosehold incomes of less than $30K. Not all of those students are college students, but the mean age of players was 25.7 years. I bet a good portion of that "lower class" is college students. I do not exactly consider college students "lower class." College students may be poor, but just to be able to go to college requires a certain level of priviledge.
Placing students' work on a public CVS repository would make the situation worse. The professor would end up with most of the assignments turned in done in similar ways. All the assignments would have the hardest part done in a way similar to the first student to figure it out.
A lot of students will not go through the process of figuring out something for themselves unless they are forced to. The idea of education is to learn. I think students should be able to find general information on what they are looking for online, but if they can find the exact solution they will not figure it out themselves.
Normally I love the idea of open source, but in this case I think it is a bad idea. Now after the assignment is due and turned in, I think students have the right to post their assignments open source if they like (as long as it does not include any code provided by the instructor or others). Though, that forces the instructor to come up with a new assignment the next time the class is taught (if they realize).
The article states that the Microsoft funded ATL was offering additional chances at the computers they were giving away for those that CC'd them on the letters they sent in. Does that not by itself illustrate how big of a problem we have with Microsoft? I would not be surprised if we find out that Microsoft had paid people to write letters directly -- that would be consistent with their behavior.
I agree that the question CmdrTaco asks is flawed. In the real world, what happens if you steal code from another company? What happens if you use GPL code in a commercial product? I think these are firable offenses.
UCSC's CS/CE department uses a program to detect not only exact matches, but very similar assignments. Renaming all the variables will still turn up a match. Of course, the professor and then a group of professors looks over anything turned up before action is taken against the student (one warning, then expulsion).
I fully support the use of programs like these. If someone can not write the programs themselves, they do not deserve the degree. What happens when they are asked to write a program from scratch when they get a job? The manager should be able to expect them to be able to do the basics if they have a degree. Most professors allow a certain level of collaboration. At UCSC, students are generally allowed to work with others , but they have to credit those students they worked with in documentation. This does not include sharing code, each student is expected to complete their own assignment.
I really can only see cheaters being against these kinds of programs. This statement sounds too much like the big brother stuff, but I think in this case it applies.