So they don't know if it was a "statistical fluctuation" - it may have been in fact the Higgs boson. Basically, they don't know.
Point is, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. For those of you who don't know what that means, it's very important - it would help us better understand radioactive decay and just the universe in general - the Higgs boson has also been called "the God particle." Its existence would in theory allow time travel - it would also allow us to jump in and out of dimensions - so whether or not it exists is indeed very important - but they need to stop reporting on "oops" and "maybe's" until they have a definitive answer. No use in getting our hopes up just to dash them away...
If dogs can sniff out cancer, than that means that certain cells have a "scent," otherwise the dogs are probably just smelling cigarette smoke. But say they can "smell" certain cells and differentiate them from others. Well, there is a lot more research to be done there...can they sniff out heart-attacks before they happen, by smelling someone's breath and determining their risk factor? Can they sniff out diseases and prevent epidemics by someone's breath? Smell may in fact be the key to the next-generation of preventative medicine and curing illnesses before they take hold.
Getting paid to drop out of college? These kids are going to need that $100,000 just to pay back the loans they've already taken, only now they'll have nothing to show for it. Now, if you're already about to fail out this is a great idea, but otherwise, I think it's really dumb. College is not just about learning, it's an experience in of itself, where we learn who we really are, what we really want to do in life, etc. Coming out of high school I thought I knew it all, I thought I could start my own company, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, blah blah blah. How wrong I was - I could not handle a company with the limited experience I had at that point in my life, and I ended up figuring out I really didn't want to be a doctor, but rather go into IT. And I'm much happier for it! Had I dropped out of college, and taken this guy's deal, I would've had no degree, and a failed company with a lot of debt. I'm not saying nobody can do it, there's many cases of those that did, but they are a vast minority - most people would fail miserably and then have no degree to fall back on, not to mention missing out on the whole college experience.
Only idiots would take this deal, and shame on this guy for offering it - unless his intent of course is to eliminate his future competition now:-)
One of the key selling points that entices a lot of novice users to buy an Apple over a PC is lack of malware/virii. The other key selling points being ease of use/reliability/stability. This latest outbreak, while not particularly damaging, and while not really a threat as the user still must "install it," is getting a ton of media attention and is thus removing the "cloak of invulnerability" that Macs have been advertised to have against malware and virii. So now when a novice user, who doesn't know any better, has to choose between the more expense Mac vs a cheaper PC, will the remaining key selling points be enough to entice them to pay the higher premium? Many people switch solely on the reason of not dealing with virii/malware, but now that they will have to deal with that (whether or not it's true is irrelevant as in many novices minds Macs are now vulnerable) they might just stick with their PC.
Bottom line - this is going to really hurt Apple a lot more than most people realize, as they will no longer have the novice users switching just to avoid virii and malware. Apple's "cloak of invulnerability" has been removed...and whether the remaining key selling points will sustain them remains to be seen.
kiss my as...terisk! Asterisk is a key part of Skype's popularity and is where VOIP and video phone conferencing is trending towards these days. I wonder if this will be the death of Skype?
I can "see" why the blind would like this! (excuse the bad joke!)
Then again, how would a blind person, who has never been able to see before, be able to function in a world where all of a sudden (s)he could see? (s)He would be overwhelmed, and would have to re-learn everything - walking, etc., as his/her balance and entire life to that point had been based upon their other senses...I wonder if anyone has taken into account if any blind people actually "want" to see? I mean I can't see in the 4th dimension, but if you told me I could, would I really want to? I'm guessing many people wouldn't want to (at least not permanently).
Why is it that more and more people are willing to give up freedoms and privacy for what "appears" to be increased safey?
To me, if 10,000 more people "escape getting a deserved ticket" in order to maintain my freedom of driving (no black boxes in cars), I am fine with that!
To take the point further, I would say if 10,000 more people (myself and family included) had to DIE to keep our right to privacy alive (no ridiculous procedures at the airport, no black boxes, no video cameras ANYWHERE, no big brother, period!) I would say it would be a welcome trade! Why don't more people think this way? What's the point of living if you aren't free and have no privacy?
Instead, people say "if giving up my privacy/freedom/etc. would save even 1 life, it's worth it!" I *strongly* disagree...freedom first!!!
Better idea - make all music/mp3s free - however - either add advertisements for like 5 seconds at the beginning of each song (annoying but doable), OR, somehow incorporate a url or a link or an option into mp3 players and computers so that if you "like" a song you've downloaded, you can choose to contribute $1 or some amount to the artist. I think artists would make much more money this way, I mean I would certainly contribute for songs I liked, and it would ALL go to the artist and not the stupid record companies. Plus it would encourage artists to make every song good, rather than coming up with "filler" songs to fill a CD.
Then again, of course record companies would never do this, as they'd go out of business...but would they really be missed?
Is spam any unsolicited email sent out to 20 or more recipients? If so, this is spam.
Is spam any unsolicited commercial email sent out to 20 or more recipients? If so, this is not spam.
Is spam any unsolicited advertorial email sent out to more than 1 person? If so, this is not spam.
Is spam any unsolicited email sent to more than 1 person? If so, this is spam.
The problem here is we need a legal definition of spam to define what it is. Then once the public knows what spam is, we can prosecute those who send it illegally, and stop wasting our damn time arguing what it is. Personally, I like the definition of any unsolicited email sent to more than 20 people...regardless of the content.
So now we know why all these banks across the world have been failing...let's blame it on hackers now, and not the banks! If world bank goes under, now they have an excuse!
Can anyone tell me why on Earth you would have computers with such sensitive data connected to the outside world/internet? Why were they not on their own private network, behind tons of firewalls and other security devices? Are Bankers that stupid? Apparently they can protect physical items very well, but not electronic information...
when exactly are they going to explain how it is done? I would be interested to know...and I'm sure if they release the details, someone somewhere in the world will have a fix up within hours.
Then again, once it is posted, I predict that all the major internet sites will go down within hou
Your analogy about drowning in 6 feet of water versus 600 is not completely accurate.
A more correct analogy would be two kids that can't swim are on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and one ties himself to an anchor, and then they both jump in. The kid that tied himself to an anchor knew the consequences, but did so anyways. Now in this scenario we would essentially be untying the kid from the anchor and bringing him back up to the surface so that he could have the same chance to save himself as the kid that didn't tie himself to the anchor.
Basically, what I'm saying is, why should we reward stupidity? I personally think it would be better to let the kid who does 0% of the work for the first half of a semester get a 0% so that even if he does "try hard" for the rest of the semester and get a 100%, he will still fail. If someone does half of what they are expected to, and learns half of the material, now we are going to let them get by with a 75% (C) in a class rather than fail their dumb ass back to kindergarten?
I'm all for motivating kids to not give up and to keep trying, but telling them they can do nothing for half of a semester as long as they do well during the other half is lunacy. Perhaps telling them that they can do double the work the second half of the semester in order to "redo" what they missed the first semester would be a much better idea, at least that way we are rewarding hard work and diligence. In addition, the kid who gets a B this way will end up working harder for his B than the kid who tried all semester long.
Quite simply, even if they shut Directi down, another company will take over the job of hiding the spammers for one simple reason: money. The spammers can afford to pay a company to hide them because they are making bank. Amazingly, about 1% of all spam emails actually result in a sale! So if you send out 1,000,000 emails, you can expect 10,000 sales! If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.
Now on the other hand, why do we even bother to try to pass spamming laws? Talk about another waste of time and money. If we pass a law saying all spam email must contain the words "unsolicited email" in the subject line, everyone will set their servers to block such email and therefore the spammers will certainly not put that in the subject line. So now we have to spend even more money to try and track the spammers down, which in essence we can't do because they pay companies like Directi money to hide their domains, IPs, etc.
Bottom line, this is an endless loop, and if anyone has any REAL suggestions on how to get rid of spammers, or how to force companies to stop hiding them and their domains, I'd love to hear it.
I really don't see the point in these privacy policies. They are written in the most boring, impossible-to-comprehend way in the hopes that no one will actually take the time to figure out what the policy is. Because let's face it, if everyone knew that Slashdot's privacy policy allows them to sell your email address and first born child (just kidding!), no one would sign up on the site. So companies word these statements in a way that discourages anyone from reading them, yet still covers their ass if they get sued.
I really think something needs to be done about this, because 99.9% of people don't read lengthy EULAs and privacy policies simply because they are too long, boring, and difficult to understand, yet we are agreeing to conditions we probably would never agree to if we knew about them. Perhaps a law stating that the policies must be written at a sixth grade level, use small and non-legal words wherever possible, and come with a 1-page summary of the major rights. I think that would be a fantastic idea.
it's called SPF records...if you have them no one can send spam out as you or use your address as a reply-to...right? right?
isn't that why they were invented? wait, they don't work that way? whaaaaat?!
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think Global Warming is a good thing. Melt all the damn ice shelves for all I care, more fresh water for us all, and better weather to boot. So what if the ocean levels rise a good 5 ft? I think the temperature benefits and the increased fresh water is a small price to pay for that. Plus the land we lose due to islands submerging will be made up in the form of land farther north or south that will now be viable.
Also, if you look at the history of the Earth over the past few hundred thousand years, you will see the global temps are always rising and falling. I think our greenhouse gases may contribute to it a little bit, but come on, I'm sure there's some global temperature cycle most people are not taking into account.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing? Seriously, maybe people need to start thinking and questioning for themselves instead of always saying "wow, I heard Global Warming is bad, let's stop it!"
...but do astronauts really need a machine to separate solid wastes from liquid ones? Can't they just piss in one place and shit in another? Seriously now...they can get to the moon, fly a rocket, and conduct experiments in no gravity, but they can't freakin' shit in one place and piss in another? And they don't always have to shit in a toilet full of water, either...that would certainly help separate solids from liquids. I never cease to be amazed by the stupidity of smart people.
but don't parachutes need air resistance to work? If there is no atmosphere/air on Mars, why in the world do we have a parachute on the lander? I would think it would be about as effective as opening a parachute in space...as in nothing happens. Also, "captured while its in the air" might not be an appropriate way to summarize the article as there is no air on Mars.
Can someone please explain why we are wasting our money putting a parachute on the lander? Is it really just for this "cool picture" that NASA posted?
Slashdot Mirror
So they don't know if it was a "statistical fluctuation" - it may have been in fact the Higgs boson. Basically, they don't know. Point is, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. For those of you who don't know what that means, it's very important - it would help us better understand radioactive decay and just the universe in general - the Higgs boson has also been called "the God particle." Its existence would in theory allow time travel - it would also allow us to jump in and out of dimensions - so whether or not it exists is indeed very important - but they need to stop reporting on "oops" and "maybe's" until they have a definitive answer. No use in getting our hopes up just to dash them away...
If dogs can sniff out cancer, than that means that certain cells have a "scent," otherwise the dogs are probably just smelling cigarette smoke. But say they can "smell" certain cells and differentiate them from others. Well, there is a lot more research to be done there...can they sniff out heart-attacks before they happen, by smelling someone's breath and determining their risk factor? Can they sniff out diseases and prevent epidemics by someone's breath? Smell may in fact be the key to the next-generation of preventative medicine and curing illnesses before they take hold.
Getting paid to drop out of college? These kids are going to need that $100,000 just to pay back the loans they've already taken, only now they'll have nothing to show for it. Now, if you're already about to fail out this is a great idea, but otherwise, I think it's really dumb. College is not just about learning, it's an experience in of itself, where we learn who we really are, what we really want to do in life, etc. Coming out of high school I thought I knew it all, I thought I could start my own company, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, blah blah blah. How wrong I was - I could not handle a company with the limited experience I had at that point in my life, and I ended up figuring out I really didn't want to be a doctor, but rather go into IT. And I'm much happier for it! Had I dropped out of college, and taken this guy's deal, I would've had no degree, and a failed company with a lot of debt. I'm not saying nobody can do it, there's many cases of those that did, but they are a vast minority - most people would fail miserably and then have no degree to fall back on, not to mention missing out on the whole college experience.
:-)
Only idiots would take this deal, and shame on this guy for offering it - unless his intent of course is to eliminate his future competition now
One of the key selling points that entices a lot of novice users to buy an Apple over a PC is lack of malware/virii. The other key selling points being ease of use/reliability/stability. This latest outbreak, while not particularly damaging, and while not really a threat as the user still must "install it," is getting a ton of media attention and is thus removing the "cloak of invulnerability" that Macs have been advertised to have against malware and virii. So now when a novice user, who doesn't know any better, has to choose between the more expense Mac vs a cheaper PC, will the remaining key selling points be enough to entice them to pay the higher premium? Many people switch solely on the reason of not dealing with virii/malware, but now that they will have to deal with that (whether or not it's true is irrelevant as in many novices minds Macs are now vulnerable) they might just stick with their PC. Bottom line - this is going to really hurt Apple a lot more than most people realize, as they will no longer have the novice users switching just to avoid virii and malware. Apple's "cloak of invulnerability" has been removed...and whether the remaining key selling points will sustain them remains to be seen.
kiss my as...terisk! Asterisk is a key part of Skype's popularity and is where VOIP and video phone conferencing is trending towards these days. I wonder if this will be the death of Skype?
I can "see" why the blind would like this! (excuse the bad joke!) Then again, how would a blind person, who has never been able to see before, be able to function in a world where all of a sudden (s)he could see? (s)He would be overwhelmed, and would have to re-learn everything - walking, etc., as his/her balance and entire life to that point had been based upon their other senses...I wonder if anyone has taken into account if any blind people actually "want" to see? I mean I can't see in the 4th dimension, but if you told me I could, would I really want to? I'm guessing many people wouldn't want to (at least not permanently).
Why is it that more and more people are willing to give up freedoms and privacy for what "appears" to be increased safey? To me, if 10,000 more people "escape getting a deserved ticket" in order to maintain my freedom of driving (no black boxes in cars), I am fine with that! To take the point further, I would say if 10,000 more people (myself and family included) had to DIE to keep our right to privacy alive (no ridiculous procedures at the airport, no black boxes, no video cameras ANYWHERE, no big brother, period!) I would say it would be a welcome trade! Why don't more people think this way? What's the point of living if you aren't free and have no privacy? Instead, people say "if giving up my privacy/freedom/etc. would save even 1 life, it's worth it!" I *strongly* disagree...freedom first!!!
Stranger in Store: "Hey, can I borrow your cell phone real quick to call my wife?"
You: "Sure."
Stranger in Store (to cashier):"I love this plasma Hi-Def 1080p TV! *Swipe!* Nevermind, don't need your phone anymore, my wife isn't picking up.""
You:"OK, no problem."
10 minutes later...
You: "Oh, craaaaaaap!!!!"
Better idea - make all music/mp3s free - however - either add advertisements for like 5 seconds at the beginning of each song (annoying but doable), OR, somehow incorporate a url or a link or an option into mp3 players and computers so that if you "like" a song you've downloaded, you can choose to contribute $1 or some amount to the artist. I think artists would make much more money this way, I mean I would certainly contribute for songs I liked, and it would ALL go to the artist and not the stupid record companies. Plus it would encourage artists to make every song good, rather than coming up with "filler" songs to fill a CD. Then again, of course record companies would never do this, as they'd go out of business...but would they really be missed?
"I broke my neck because my GPS told me to turn left and I ran into a wall..."
"I didn't mean to pee on the wall, but my GPS told me it was a urinal..."
"I only ran through your sushi-kitchen because my GPS told me it was the quickest route to the bathroom..."
*sigh*
Is spam any unsolicited commercial email sent out to 20 or more recipients? If so, this is not spam.
Is spam any unsolicited advertorial email sent out to more than 1 person? If so, this is not spam.
Is spam any unsolicited email sent to more than 1 person? If so, this is spam.
The problem here is we need a legal definition of spam to define what it is. Then once the public knows what spam is, we can prosecute those who send it illegally, and stop wasting our damn time arguing what it is. Personally, I like the definition of any unsolicited email sent to more than 20 people...regardless of the content.
What's even more stupid is the fact that "stupider" isn't a word.
So now we know why all these banks across the world have been failing...let's blame it on hackers now, and not the banks! If world bank goes under, now they have an excuse!
Can anyone tell me why on Earth you would have computers with such sensitive data connected to the outside world/internet? Why were they not on their own private network, behind tons of firewalls and other security devices? Are Bankers that stupid? Apparently they can protect physical items very well, but not electronic information...
when exactly are they going to explain how it is done? I would be interested to know...and I'm sure if they release the details, someone somewhere in the world will have a fix up within hours.
Then again, once it is posted, I predict that all the major internet sites will go down within hou
(error 404)
Your analogy about drowning in 6 feet of water versus 600 is not completely accurate.
A more correct analogy would be two kids that can't swim are on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and one ties himself to an anchor, and then they both jump in. The kid that tied himself to an anchor knew the consequences, but did so anyways. Now in this scenario we would essentially be untying the kid from the anchor and bringing him back up to the surface so that he could have the same chance to save himself as the kid that didn't tie himself to the anchor.
Basically, what I'm saying is, why should we reward stupidity? I personally think it would be better to let the kid who does 0% of the work for the first half of a semester get a 0% so that even if he does "try hard" for the rest of the semester and get a 100%, he will still fail. If someone does half of what they are expected to, and learns half of the material, now we are going to let them get by with a 75% (C) in a class rather than fail their dumb ass back to kindergarten?
I'm all for motivating kids to not give up and to keep trying, but telling them they can do nothing for half of a semester as long as they do well during the other half is lunacy. Perhaps telling them that they can do double the work the second half of the semester in order to "redo" what they missed the first semester would be a much better idea, at least that way we are rewarding hard work and diligence. In addition, the kid who gets a B this way will end up working harder for his B than the kid who tried all semester long.
That the first website to support this technology will be a porn site? It will be finished in 3...2...1...
Quite simply, even if they shut Directi down, another company will take over the job of hiding the spammers for one simple reason: money. The spammers can afford to pay a company to hide them because they are making bank. Amazingly, about 1% of all spam emails actually result in a sale! So if you send out 1,000,000 emails, you can expect 10,000 sales! If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.
Now on the other hand, why do we even bother to try to pass spamming laws? Talk about another waste of time and money. If we pass a law saying all spam email must contain the words "unsolicited email" in the subject line, everyone will set their servers to block such email and therefore the spammers will certainly not put that in the subject line. So now we have to spend even more money to try and track the spammers down, which in essence we can't do because they pay companies like Directi money to hide their domains, IPs, etc.
Bottom line, this is an endless loop, and if anyone has any REAL suggestions on how to get rid of spammers, or how to force companies to stop hiding them and their domains, I'd love to hear it.
I really think something needs to be done about this, because 99.9% of people don't read lengthy EULAs and privacy policies simply because they are too long, boring, and difficult to understand, yet we are agreeing to conditions we probably would never agree to if we knew about them. Perhaps a law stating that the policies must be written at a sixth grade level, use small and non-legal words wherever possible, and come with a 1-page summary of the major rights. I think that would be a fantastic idea.
I can't believe I just wasted 5 minutes of my 12-hour-a-day allotment of World of Warcraft playing time to read this...
it's called SPF records...if you have them no one can send spam out as you or use your address as a reply-to...right? right? isn't that why they were invented? wait, they don't work that way? whaaaaat?!
That's what they get for advertising that they sell "fast, reliable, secure computers" when virtually all of them ship with Windows :-)
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think Global Warming is a good thing. Melt all the damn ice shelves for all I care, more fresh water for us all, and better weather to boot. So what if the ocean levels rise a good 5 ft? I think the temperature benefits and the increased fresh water is a small price to pay for that. Plus the land we lose due to islands submerging will be made up in the form of land farther north or south that will now be viable.
Also, if you look at the history of the Earth over the past few hundred thousand years, you will see the global temps are always rising and falling. I think our greenhouse gases may contribute to it a little bit, but come on, I'm sure there's some global temperature cycle most people are not taking into account.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing? Seriously, maybe people need to start thinking and questioning for themselves instead of always saying "wow, I heard Global Warming is bad, let's stop it!"
how do you blog with "just a few clicks of a mouse?"
Perhaps the Special Counsel should be fired for "being a total idiot."
...but do astronauts really need a machine to separate solid wastes from liquid ones? Can't they just piss in one place and shit in another? Seriously now...they can get to the moon, fly a rocket, and conduct experiments in no gravity, but they can't freakin' shit in one place and piss in another? And they don't always have to shit in a toilet full of water, either...that would certainly help separate solids from liquids. I never cease to be amazed by the stupidity of smart people.
but don't parachutes need air resistance to work? If there is no atmosphere/air on Mars, why in the world do we have a parachute on the lander? I would think it would be about as effective as opening a parachute in space...as in nothing happens. Also, "captured while its in the air" might not be an appropriate way to summarize the article as there is no air on Mars.
Can someone please explain why we are wasting our money putting a parachute on the lander? Is it really just for this "cool picture" that NASA posted?