Facebook, foursquare, and just plain old texting, all impact people's safety because of their improper use, mainly by drivers. Are we going to go after texting app developers when people get hurt while using such software?
It all depends on the specific programmer. Some are good a design, some are good at coding, some are good at testing, some are good at debugging, and so on. Rarely is a single person good at everything. Everyone has they own unique strengths and weaknesses.
Devices running iOS sell at a premium, to people who don't mind paying more for goods they consider superior. Of course people with extra money will be able to buy more advertised products! People who are more cost-conscious will tend to gravitate to Android, and will also likely be more wary of advertising.
If the pacemaker is in the heart, and it somehow got loose (maybe because of an imperfect installation), that could lead very quickly to a dead patient. Maybe they've tested for this, but the article doesn't say.
Archaeology demonstrates that survival over long periods of time is quite random and rare, and does not correlate well to the intent of the creator to preserve the creation for long periods of time. There are always unanticipated threats to the existence of these artifacts: war, natural disasters, rot, rust, erosion, language obsolescence, to name a few. The longer the time period, the more likely that some catastrophe will befall any given artifact.
Works that have survived for millennia tend to be items that were copied prolifically. A few of the many copies or items survive the ravages of time, but not because the creators anticipated all of the things that could destroy their work.
For example, none of the original manuscripts of the Bible have been found, as far as we know. But because those manuscripts were copied and translated so often, we have reasonably accurate copies of those original texts.
A million years from now, nothing much will be left of these new storage media. They will only survive if people in the future consider the information important enough to copy it to new media, and translate it into the new formats of the time.
Brazil wants to centralize "secure" email, run by the government. How long until the Brazilian government itself decides it wants a back door? I'm betting it will happen before the first end user signs up.
Any centralized system, once it reaches a critical mass, will become a very attractive target to the spies. Only decentralized systems--where NO ONE has the master key--have half a chance. A PGP-type system could come close, if somebody could figure out how to make it easy enough for non-technical users to use!
I tried the demo on my Nexus 7 using Chrome. The OS boots up, but there doesn't seem to be any way to activate the on-screen keyboard, so no way to send input to the window. Still, very impressive that it (mostly) works on Windows AND Android!
You are missing a major point. It's not just about being able to write a machine emulator in javascript, although that is a very impressive feat. Javascript has one major feature that no other language has: it runs natively, with no plugins required, in every modern Web browser. Javascript is realizing the dream that java aspired to: it runs on every modern computing platform.
As evidenced by the success of Google's Chromebooks, the Web browser is becoming, in and of itself, an operating system. There's a lot of old software out there that is still useful, but will never be rewritten. This kind of emulation might give some of that old software a new life.
The format was designed from the beginning to allow for new features to be added. The format is a binary record format. Each record begins with a record length and a record type indicator. New versions of Word added new record types, but they did not change the underlying structure of the document format. If your reader (Word 97) didn't know a record type (from Word 2003) it can safely skip over it and keep going.
This is very similar to HTML. An older browser might not know about the <video> tag, because that is an HTML 5 feature the older browser doesn't handle. But all of the older tags will work just fine, whether your browser is new or old. The addition of the <video> tag doesn't change the underlying HTML format, it just adds new capabilities, while still following the same rules the older browsers knew.
Word may have flaws, like every other piece of software ever written. But it does the job. Millions of not-so-computer-savvy people are able to created good-looking documents using it.
WordPerfect relied on the embedded codes model, but they never did get it completely right. For anything non-trivial, you pretty much had to go down to the code level, hand-placing the codes to make the text render properly. Copy-and-paste across formats was often disastrous.
Word's model might be conflicted, but it works. There are very few situations where the wysiwyg editor can't get the text to look like what you want.
If I'm creating a document, I don't really care whether the encoding is HTML or RTF or docx or whatever, I just want it to look right, and Word does that.
Microsoft changed the file format repeatedly -- with Word 95, Word 97, in 2000, and again in 2003 and more recently
What is he talking about?
Starting with Word 97, the file format didn't change at all until Word 2007. Word 97 could open files created by Word 2003, it would just ignore new features that were added in later versions.
Word 2007 introduced a completely accessible format, a zipped XML format, and it hasn't changed since. Microsoft even released free updates for older versions of Word so that they could open the 2007 format.
If the author wants to complain, he should at least get his facts straight!
What if Apple did maps? Oh yeah, they did! They made maps beautiful! But they aren't exactly dethroning Google Maps.
What does Watson have to do with search? Watson is amazing, but applying what it does well, to improving search, would likely be as monumental a task as creating Watson itself.
All it takes to break in is a hammer and 10 seconds.
Sure, they could put in bullet-proof glass and high-security doors. But those measures are prohibitively expensive for most businesses, and still aren't foolproof.
The same is true with computer security. There are basic precautions businesses should take, like putting all their equipment behind firewalls, for example. That's the equivalent of locking the front door. But security costs money, and makes life more difficult for those with legitimate access. These considerations must be balanced.
Fuel cells have been around for more than 100 years. The problem has always been the cost of manufacture, and getting fuel to the unit. Many companies make fuel cells today, on a commercial scale. But nobody has figured out yet how to get the cost down to where it makes sense to homeowners. A hydrogen fuel supply doesn't exactly make it easy to get the fuel to your unit. Natural gas is much more accessible, at least in the US. So good luck, I'm all for startups trying new things, but we've seen many startups come and go already!
My company, which has specialized in electronic medical records software for 20 years, has been gearing up for Obamacare for years already. Pieces of the legislation have already gone into effect, such as "meaningful use" standards. Doctors and hospitals have been scrambling to comply with all of the new regulations, and that means lots of business for companies like ours.
If you're just now thinking of starting a company to capitalize on Obamacare, you're already late to the party!
Apparently you are mistaken, since as I reply, your comment has a score of 4.
It is true that some people mod down comments because they disagree. But there are often other cooler heads who bring balance to the moderation.
Usually, controversial comments get modded down because there is no actual substance to the comments. And since such posters often start with an attitude of paranoia and overestimate their own importance, they DO get modded down, and they think they are proved right.
Honest is a good thing, of course. But if I post a comment that my favorite color is red, I'm being honest, but so what? Who cares?
The point of moderation is, or should be, to ensure that comments are relevant, insightful, interesting, or maybe even funny. That's why Slashdot succeeds, they let people moderate based on those important characteristics of comments. That makes the rest of us keep coming back to read--and respond to--them.
The article just focuses on the practical reasons why we should explore space, and argues that these goals can be satisfied more cheaply, and more efficiently, using robots. Fine! But we humans are ingrained with a need to explore, to do new and bold things. How can we possibly know what kinds of benefits will come from human space exploration?
It wasn't so long ago that my data processing department manager asked, "Why would you want to connect all your computers to each other using a network?" Even those who were pushing for that change had NO IDEA just how radically the earth would soon change because of the Internet. They didn't care. They just wanted to experiment with new technology, to follow it where it went.
There are always those who say, "Don't bother, it's not worth it" and those who say, "Go for it!" I hope I never fall into that first group.
This is an illustration of where mathematical models can run amok.
Every kind of model has its limits. Bohr, for example, envisioned atoms as a nucleus of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, with orbiting electrons. The model works well because it's something people can grasp. But the model has its limits, and there are many aspects of quantum behavior that cannot be explained by the Bohr model. The model is still useful because it does lead to many accurate scientific predictions.
A newer mathematical model, quantum mechanics, seeks to be even more accurate in its predictions than Bohr's model. It succeeded in many ways, and like the Bohr model, has led to many interesting discoveries. But it too has its limits.
In pure mathematics, exceeding three dimensions is effortless. Calculations involving four or more dimensions can easily be solved. But just because the mathematical model can do it, doesn't mean that the physical reality it attempts to model, can also do it. A model is designed to represent reality, but it is not itself reality. I suspect that all such mathematical models of the universe, which point to other dimensions, will eventually be shown to be purely mathematical.
There are EZ Tag readers on all the freeways in Houston, and have been for years, to track traffic congestion. Compaq Computer (remember them?) used readers to scan EZ Tags to track who came and went from their headquarters, well before they merged with HP. The Houston airport system, for a while, allowed EZ Tag customers to pay for parking using their EZ Tag.
It could be worse! They COULD use the GPS on your phone to track your every move, to find out who you are with and where you go, even when you aren't in your car. Oh but wait, they already do that!
Those are the key words: "Large software company." Large software companies tend to pigeonhole people into tiny roles, just do your little job and hand it on to the next person. No, you don't need a lot of talent for that. It's a good thing, because most rock-star programmers go NUTS in a big company, tied down by red tape like Gulliver in Lilliput.
In a small, innovative company, you need people who can do everything, without being told exactly what to do or how, and at lightning speed. In turn, the small companies really appreciate their work, which is what the rock stars crave even more than the gym memberships and discount clubs that the big companies offer.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, must be because I'm not on facebook, so I didn't see the news!
Facebook, foursquare, and just plain old texting, all impact people's safety because of their improper use, mainly by drivers. Are we going to go after texting app developers when people get hurt while using such software?
It all depends on the specific programmer. Some are good a design, some are good at coding, some are good at testing, some are good at debugging, and so on. Rarely is a single person good at everything. Everyone has they own unique strengths and weaknesses.
Devices running iOS sell at a premium, to people who don't mind paying more for goods they consider superior. Of course people with extra money will be able to buy more advertised products! People who are more cost-conscious will tend to gravitate to Android, and will also likely be more wary of advertising.
If the pacemaker is in the heart, and it somehow got loose (maybe because of an imperfect installation), that could lead very quickly to a dead patient. Maybe they've tested for this, but the article doesn't say.
Many people felt that the BetaMax VCR was better-designed than VHS. Maybe it was. But because it was not adopted by other manufacturers, it died.
The best design is not very useful if only one company uses it!
Archaeology demonstrates that survival over long periods of time is quite random and rare, and does not correlate well to the intent of the creator to preserve the creation for long periods of time. There are always unanticipated threats to the existence of these artifacts: war, natural disasters, rot, rust, erosion, language obsolescence, to name a few. The longer the time period, the more likely that some catastrophe will befall any given artifact.
Works that have survived for millennia tend to be items that were copied prolifically. A few of the many copies or items survive the ravages of time, but not because the creators anticipated all of the things that could destroy their work.
For example, none of the original manuscripts of the Bible have been found, as far as we know. But because those manuscripts were copied and translated so often, we have reasonably accurate copies of those original texts.
A million years from now, nothing much will be left of these new storage media. They will only survive if people in the future consider the information important enough to copy it to new media, and translate it into the new formats of the time.
Brazil wants to centralize "secure" email, run by the government. How long until the Brazilian government itself decides it wants a back door? I'm betting it will happen before the first end user signs up.
Any centralized system, once it reaches a critical mass, will become a very attractive target to the spies. Only decentralized systems--where NO ONE has the master key--have half a chance. A PGP-type system could come close, if somebody could figure out how to make it easy enough for non-technical users to use!
I tried the demo on my Nexus 7 using Chrome. The OS boots up, but there doesn't seem to be any way to activate the on-screen keyboard, so no way to send input to the window. Still, very impressive that it (mostly) works on Windows AND Android!
You are missing a major point. It's not just about being able to write a machine emulator in javascript, although that is a very impressive feat. Javascript has one major feature that no other language has: it runs natively, with no plugins required, in every modern Web browser. Javascript is realizing the dream that java aspired to: it runs on every modern computing platform.
As evidenced by the success of Google's Chromebooks, the Web browser is becoming, in and of itself, an operating system. There's a lot of old software out there that is still useful, but will never be rewritten. This kind of emulation might give some of that old software a new life.
They were. Microsoft published the format specifications in a physical book years ago. You can download the latest version here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/B/E/0BE8BDD7-E5E8-422A-ABFD-4342ED7AD886/Word97-2007BinaryFileFormat(doc)Specification.pdf
Actually not.
The format was designed from the beginning to allow for new features to be added. The format is a binary record format. Each record begins with a record length and a record type indicator. New versions of Word added new record types, but they did not change the underlying structure of the document format. If your reader (Word 97) didn't know a record type (from Word 2003) it can safely skip over it and keep going.
This is very similar to HTML. An older browser might not know about the <video> tag, because that is an HTML 5 feature the older browser doesn't handle. But all of the older tags will work just fine, whether your browser is new or old. The addition of the <video> tag doesn't change the underlying HTML format, it just adds new capabilities, while still following the same rules the older browsers knew.
Word may have flaws, like every other piece of software ever written. But it does the job. Millions of not-so-computer-savvy people are able to created good-looking documents using it.
WordPerfect relied on the embedded codes model, but they never did get it completely right. For anything non-trivial, you pretty much had to go down to the code level, hand-placing the codes to make the text render properly. Copy-and-paste across formats was often disastrous.
Word's model might be conflicted, but it works. There are very few situations where the wysiwyg editor can't get the text to look like what you want.
If I'm creating a document, I don't really care whether the encoding is HTML or RTF or docx or whatever, I just want it to look right, and Word does that.
Microsoft changed the file format repeatedly -- with Word 95, Word 97, in 2000, and again in 2003 and more recently
What is he talking about?
Starting with Word 97, the file format didn't change at all until Word 2007. Word 97 could open files created by Word 2003, it would just ignore new features that were added in later versions.
Word 2007 introduced a completely accessible format, a zipped XML format, and it hasn't changed since. Microsoft even released free updates for older versions of Word so that they could open the 2007 format.
If the author wants to complain, he should at least get his facts straight!
What if Apple did maps? Oh yeah, they did! They made maps beautiful! But they aren't exactly dethroning Google Maps.
What does Watson have to do with search? Watson is amazing, but applying what it does well, to improving search, would likely be as monumental a task as creating Watson itself.
All it takes to break in is a hammer and 10 seconds.
Sure, they could put in bullet-proof glass and high-security doors. But those measures are prohibitively expensive for most businesses, and still aren't foolproof.
The same is true with computer security. There are basic precautions businesses should take, like putting all their equipment behind firewalls, for example. That's the equivalent of locking the front door. But security costs money, and makes life more difficult for those with legitimate access. These considerations must be balanced.
Fuel cells have been around for more than 100 years. The problem has always been the cost of manufacture, and getting fuel to the unit. Many companies make fuel cells today, on a commercial scale. But nobody has figured out yet how to get the cost down to where it makes sense to homeowners. A hydrogen fuel supply doesn't exactly make it easy to get the fuel to your unit. Natural gas is much more accessible, at least in the US. So good luck, I'm all for startups trying new things, but we've seen many startups come and go already!
My company, which has specialized in electronic medical records software for 20 years, has been gearing up for Obamacare for years already. Pieces of the legislation have already gone into effect, such as "meaningful use" standards. Doctors and hospitals have been scrambling to comply with all of the new regulations, and that means lots of business for companies like ours.
If you're just now thinking of starting a company to capitalize on Obamacare, you're already late to the party!
Apparently you are mistaken, since as I reply, your comment has a score of 4.
It is true that some people mod down comments because they disagree. But there are often other cooler heads who bring balance to the moderation.
Usually, controversial comments get modded down because there is no actual substance to the comments. And since such posters often start with an attitude of paranoia and overestimate their own importance, they DO get modded down, and they think they are proved right.
Honesty isn't the main point of reader comments.
Honest is a good thing, of course. But if I post a comment that my favorite color is red, I'm being honest, but so what? Who cares?
The point of moderation is, or should be, to ensure that comments are relevant, insightful, interesting, or maybe even funny. That's why Slashdot succeeds, they let people moderate based on those important characteristics of comments. That makes the rest of us keep coming back to read--and respond to--them.
That seems like a good idea, but what happens if the Wayback Machine decides to change their link format?
The article just focuses on the practical reasons why we should explore space, and argues that these goals can be satisfied more cheaply, and more efficiently, using robots. Fine! But we humans are ingrained with a need to explore, to do new and bold things. How can we possibly know what kinds of benefits will come from human space exploration?
It wasn't so long ago that my data processing department manager asked, "Why would you want to connect all your computers to each other using a network?" Even those who were pushing for that change had NO IDEA just how radically the earth would soon change because of the Internet. They didn't care. They just wanted to experiment with new technology, to follow it where it went.
There are always those who say, "Don't bother, it's not worth it" and those who say, "Go for it!" I hope I never fall into that first group.
This is an illustration of where mathematical models can run amok.
Every kind of model has its limits. Bohr, for example, envisioned atoms as a nucleus of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, with orbiting electrons. The model works well because it's something people can grasp. But the model has its limits, and there are many aspects of quantum behavior that cannot be explained by the Bohr model. The model is still useful because it does lead to many accurate scientific predictions.
A newer mathematical model, quantum mechanics, seeks to be even more accurate in its predictions than Bohr's model. It succeeded in many ways, and like the Bohr model, has led to many interesting discoveries. But it too has its limits.
In pure mathematics, exceeding three dimensions is effortless. Calculations involving four or more dimensions can easily be solved. But just because the mathematical model can do it, doesn't mean that the physical reality it attempts to model, can also do it. A model is designed to represent reality, but it is not itself reality. I suspect that all such mathematical models of the universe, which point to other dimensions, will eventually be shown to be purely mathematical.
There are EZ Tag readers on all the freeways in Houston, and have been for years, to track traffic congestion. Compaq Computer (remember them?) used readers to scan EZ Tags to track who came and went from their headquarters, well before they merged with HP. The Houston airport system, for a while, allowed EZ Tag customers to pay for parking using their EZ Tag.
It could be worse! They COULD use the GPS on your phone to track your every move, to find out who you are with and where you go, even when you aren't in your car. Oh but wait, they already do that!
Those are the key words: "Large software company." Large software companies tend to pigeonhole people into tiny roles, just do your little job and hand it on to the next person. No, you don't need a lot of talent for that. It's a good thing, because most rock-star programmers go NUTS in a big company, tied down by red tape like Gulliver in Lilliput.
In a small, innovative company, you need people who can do everything, without being told exactly what to do or how, and at lightning speed. In turn, the small companies really appreciate their work, which is what the rock stars crave even more than the gym memberships and discount clubs that the big companies offer.
So...it ends up working out for everybody!