You can't roll back network apps. I always remember when DejaNews was the best news archiver. One day I hit it, and they had changed the whole thing. The new version of the site just blew chunks compared to the old one; less easy to navigate, ugly colors, etc., no really great new functions, and prone to crash the browser. For a while, whenever some site did that I'd say "they Deja'd it". This has been part of the success of Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo! which has changed a bit, but rather conservatively. I continue to use them on a regular basis. When Slashdot caved in to all the doofuses that insisted it use CSS, what did I get? Pages that occasionally rendered text on top of eachother and had to be re-loaded. Nothing new that really mattered, and the new features that are added now could probably be done without CSS.
But I digress. If your apps are delivered over the 'net, you may be prevented from downgrading. Of course some things *have* to be delivered over the 'net so it's unavoidable. And of course if it's really bad, hopefully enough people will agree with you so that the free market will provide an alternative, which is what happened to DejaNews (or did they get bought?). It's just that switching is often a bigger hassle than downgrading.
My thoughts too. In the states you have to check local zoning. That's usually at the city or county level, but to be safe check to make sure the state doesn't care. Then at the lower levels you may have community covenants or home owner's associations. It's not impossible though. In Springfield, VA where I grew up there was a ham who had some towers on his property not much smaller than this. His neighbors must have hated him, but it was all legal. It may have been grandfathered in from before though, since things seem to have gotten more restrictive.
Well, the way you've put that they both kill 50 people a year at the current rates. In the long term though, the one that infects half a million is probably more dangerous because the bug has more chances to mutate into something more nasty.
I'm no fan of network centric computing being used everywhere eiither; one of my favorite quips to use against advocates is: "I can't use my word processor, the network is down".
That said, I think it would be foolish to ignore the potential. Common sense applies. Obviously a web browser is an inherently network-oriented app. Anything DB-driven, where the DB is updated frequently and is too large to store locally is also a candidate. The word processor could even pull modules from the internet--as long as they were cached locally for when the network is not available.
Common sense and good design can give us the best of both worlds. It's just a question of finding the time, and the brains with the common sense; but isn't that always the problem.
Which is why I always trudge down to H&R Block, and sit in front of a Real Person (TM) who not only does the data entry, but can also call over a manager (who might actually be a CPA) if he/she gets in trouble. Also, I get some limited liability coverage (although you are still responsable for having all your forms). Followed by... in all the years I've sent it in through Block, I've never been audited or had the IRS send back a correction (like they did once when I did it myself).
If you want to risk spending days of your time doing taxes yourself, and wonder whether or not the software carried the decimal properly, then by all means buy software, set it up, and do it yourself. If you value your time, have a Real Person (TM), either a retail outfit like Block, or (probably more expensive) a CPA do it.
Of course if your taxes are trivial this advice doesn't apply. When I've been able to use the EZ form, I've done it myself no problem; but this year I've got a move across state lines and a number of other issues. No way would I even think about it. The time saved and piece of mind is well worth it. Plus they usually have free coffee.
Could bring a whole new meaning to the expression "spelling/grammar nazi" if the Chicoms decide to start rejecting queries with too many non-OED words.
Tiananmen = "Lock say" (this is actually the westernized way of saying the date, which I found through my un-censored USA Google search).
Other censored phrases can be replaced with more obscure stuff. lakfjdslkdj for democracy, etc. Of course the censors will just clamp down on that. It will be an arms race, just like spam, and just as spam always gets through, so will censored material. Come on, you know you want to enlarge y0\/r d3mocrasee p3nis.
So yeah, the Google execs look like they caved in, but they probably realize this will work as well as... DRM. To the young Chinese hackers: Gentlemen, start your compilers.
Tubes are on the way out. Will there be encryption key exchange between an LCD panel and the player, with the LCD panel containing a fully integrated encryption engine? Then what?
I can see somebody taking an array of fiber-optic cables and making a grid with the same resolution as the LCD, and capturing signal that way. I'd actually like to see that, just for the pure artistry of it.
When, oh when, will sanity come back to intellectual property. Somewhere between the GNU zealots who want everything to be free, and the corporate nazis who want you to spend 20 years in prison for downloading 5 minutes of music without permission, there must be sanity.
If most software isn't boxed, then how can it possibly oppress anybody? Answer: either more software is boxed than the FS zealots will admit, or the importance of the boxed software is out of proportion with that which is not boxed. Either way, the FS zealot argument falls apart. Either boxed software is an important piece of turf in the battle, or it isn't. Minimizing its importance is a "Jedi mind trick" that FS zealots like to use, but it only works on the weak.
It's almost as bad as the "you can sell support" argument; but must... restrain... self...
A careful balance has to be struck between learning everything that comes along and not learning anything. If the IT industry can trick you into learning all kinds of new crap, then you lose. Learning how to evaluate what's worth learning is as important, perhaps more important, than being able to learn. In the mid 90s I said, a bit tongue-in-cheek, that going through my whole career without learning Java was one of my goals. I dabbled a bit out of curiousity, but I think it's fair to say I came very close to achieving my goal. I haven't coded a single production app in Java yet. Of course if I had been put in a position where I was paid to do it, I would have done it, but I was able to out-maneuver it. Today I still code in C, and I couldn't be happier.
Yeah, and then when you get that simulation running we'll probably realize that there are a million different chemicals that can impact the performance of the neurons, and that we don't even know about half of them yet. Toss in local concentrations, thermal variations, etc. and you'll either need killer software or a lot more bits.
Yet Anotehr Slasdhot Page View Generator. Brilliant! Instead of quoting exchange rates based on the unit denomination of the two countries (as is customary), quote them using one of either country's smaller denominations. In this case, US pennies. You only need one person to misread it and think that the exchange rate has a misplaced decimal. If it will make you feel any better, I almost fell for this myself. I've said it before and I'll say it again, errors on/. stories aren't mistakes. They're pure pageview generating genius! Hats off.
I think your argument actually works in favor of my point. The lawyers made a new law that involved ammending the Texas constitution in order to solve the problem that they created, and of course they just made it worse. Of course as you can tell from my previous post, I'm not exactly in love with the insurance companies either.
Sure. But it's not the "healthcare system"s fault. It's the legal system's fault. You know. Those guys who sue so often that the insurance on everything gets jacked sky-high, propogating down to the customer? You know. They beurocratic types who created the "system" that separates cost from the consumer. Why don't you call up your local hospital and ask for a price list? Try to pull it up online. Can't get it? Hmmmm... why is that? I'd like to see a breakdown on how much of what gets payed out by the buyer's clubs (a company that processes payments for doctor's visits is not an insurance company, it's a buyers club, but I digress). Anyway, I'd like to know how much of these "healthcare" costs are really legal costs. Quite a bit I wager. Don't worry though. The same lawyers who created this system have a solution for the problems they created. I think it involves more laws or something.
I doubt anybody actually wants to hear what most air guitar playing sounds like. They had better keep this thing away from karaoke machines. A deadly feedback loop might form between the two, resulting in music so bad that the waves might actually cause the planet to resonate and destroy all live as we know it.
Meh. If the time is right for *you* then it's time to start a business. There was this old gas station where I went to school. Outside was a sign that said "since 1936" give or take a year. I always used to think, "Wow, that guy opened up a business during the Great Depression, and it's still doing well". OTOH, a lot of companies that were founded during the earlier go-go "robber barron" era of the late 19th century came through the Depression, and are still with us in some form. I think you and your own personal circumstances, talents, and abilities are the biggest factors, not the general mood. Also, let's face it--there is a lot of chance involved. We like to think that the best ideas win, but sometimes the best idea walks in the door 5 minutes after the VC handed money to a bad idea. Of course if your idea is so much better, you might get money from somebody else; but it's more likely your idea is only marginally better. No big loss to society, just a loss to you.
The velocity of the "needle" across the surface is inherently constant with a cylinder. With a disk the RPMs are constant but it spirals in so you have to compensate for this frequency drift when recording. I wonder how well that worked? I've heard that when cylinders competed with disks they were regarded as having higher fidelity. The reason they failed is eerily similar to the beta vs. VHS debate: cylinders couldn't record as long. Also, if you do the math you find it's much harder to pack the same ammount of surface area into a box of cylinders than it is for disks. So cylinders were more expensive and could hold less music. The difference in quality wasn't enough to overcome that, and disks won.
This reminds me of the story of the man who slowly got more tired and eventually spent most of his time propped up in a chair, barely responsive. His family had assumed it was early senility, and/or old age. His doctors never caught on and the diagnosis stuck. Eventually, someone reviewed his case and discovered that he was unusually hypthyroid, and that his metabolism had simply slowed to an incredibly slow pace. He was given synthroid and slowly brought back to a normal metabolism. There was no cognitive impairment, since there was no brain damage. They tried to keep newspapers, TV, etc away from him but he eventually found out. It was all for naught: he had an inoperable tumor. There was some speculation that the tumor had actually begun to grow about the same time as his metabolic decline began. The tumor wasn't operable at the time he woke up either, so the Rip Van Winkle effect didn't buy him anything. Although metabolic suspension is an intriguing and radical idea for someone with an inoperable tumor, I've never heard anybody seriously suggest it as a treatment option for obvious reasons. The man died about 6 weeks after waking up. Sorry, I can't recall where I read this. It was a long time ago.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't roll back network apps. I always remember when DejaNews was the best news archiver. One day I hit it, and they had changed the whole thing. The new version of the site just blew chunks compared to the old one; less easy to navigate, ugly colors, etc., no really great new functions, and prone to crash the browser. For a while, whenever some site did that I'd say "they Deja'd it". This has been part of the success of Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo! which has changed a bit, but rather conservatively. I continue to use them on a regular basis. When Slashdot caved in to all the doofuses that insisted it use CSS, what did I get? Pages that occasionally rendered text on top of eachother and had to be re-loaded. Nothing new that really mattered, and the new features that are added now could probably be done without CSS.
But I digress. If your apps are delivered over the 'net, you may be prevented from downgrading. Of course some things *have* to be delivered over the 'net so it's unavoidable. And of course if it's really bad, hopefully enough people will agree with you so that the free market will provide an alternative, which is what happened to DejaNews (or did they get bought?). It's just that switching is often a bigger hassle than downgrading.
My thoughts too. In the states you have to check local zoning. That's usually at the city or county level, but to be safe check to make sure the state doesn't care. Then at the lower levels you may have community covenants or home owner's associations. It's not impossible though. In Springfield, VA where I grew up there was a ham who had some towers on his property not much smaller than this. His neighbors must have hated him, but it was all legal. It may have been grandfathered in from before though, since things seem to have gotten more restrictive.
Well, the way you've put that they both kill 50 people a year at the current rates. In the long term though, the one that infects half a million is probably more dangerous because the bug has more chances to mutate into something more nasty.
I'm no fan of network centric computing being used everywhere eiither; one of my favorite quips to use against advocates is: "I can't use my word processor, the network is down".
That said, I think it would be foolish to ignore the potential. Common sense applies. Obviously a web browser is an inherently network-oriented app. Anything DB-driven, where the DB is updated frequently and is too large to store locally is also a candidate. The word processor could even pull modules from the internet--as long as they were cached locally for when the network is not available.
Common sense and good design can give us the best of both worlds. It's just a question of finding the time, and the brains with the common sense; but isn't that always the problem.
By... ummm... shaming them... umm... wait.. I think I see a possible flaw in this plan.
I gave up waiting and switched to KMyMoney
I hope it didn't actually K your money.
Which is why I always trudge down to H&R Block, and sit in front of a Real Person (TM) who not only does the data entry, but can also call over a manager (who might actually be a CPA) if he/she gets in trouble. Also, I get some limited liability coverage (although you are still responsable for having all your forms). Followed by... in all the years I've sent it in through Block, I've never been audited or had the IRS send back a correction (like they did once when I did it myself).
If you want to risk spending days of your time doing taxes yourself, and wonder whether or not the software carried the decimal properly, then by all means buy software, set it up, and do it yourself. If you value your time, have a Real Person (TM), either a retail outfit like Block, or (probably more expensive) a CPA do it.
Of course if your taxes are trivial this advice doesn't apply. When I've been able to use the EZ form, I've done it myself no problem; but this year I've got a move across state lines and a number of other issues. No way would I even think about it. The time saved and piece of mind is well worth it. Plus they usually have free coffee.
AFAIK, the original purpose of patents, In the US, was To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts
Could bring a whole new meaning to the expression "spelling/grammar nazi" if the Chicoms decide to start rejecting queries with too many non-OED words.
Tiananmen = "Lock say" (this is actually the westernized way of saying the date, which I found through my un-censored USA Google search).
Other censored phrases can be replaced with more obscure stuff. lakfjdslkdj for democracy, etc. Of course the censors will just clamp down on that. It will be an arms race, just like spam, and just as spam always gets through, so will censored material. Come on, you know you want to enlarge y0\/r d3mocrasee p3nis.
So yeah, the Google execs look like they caved in, but they probably realize this will work as well as... DRM. To the young Chinese hackers: Gentlemen, start your compilers.
That little gem has even appeared in The Washington Post. When even old time print media is coasting on the spell checker, maybe it's a lost cause.
Tubes are on the way out. Will there be encryption key exchange between an LCD panel and the player, with the LCD panel containing a fully integrated encryption engine? Then what?
I can see somebody taking an array of fiber-optic cables and making a grid with the same resolution as the LCD, and capturing signal that way. I'd actually like to see that, just for the pure artistry of it.
When, oh when, will sanity come back to intellectual property. Somewhere between the GNU zealots who want everything to be free, and the corporate nazis who want you to spend 20 years in prison for downloading 5 minutes of music without permission, there must be sanity.
If most software isn't boxed, then how can it possibly oppress anybody? Answer: either more software is boxed than the FS zealots will admit, or the importance of the boxed software is out of proportion with that which is not boxed. Either way, the FS zealot argument falls apart. Either boxed software is an important piece of turf in the battle, or it isn't. Minimizing its importance is a "Jedi mind trick" that FS zealots like to use, but it only works on the weak.
It's almost as bad as the "you can sell support" argument; but must... restrain... self...
A careful balance has to be struck between learning everything that comes along and not learning anything. If the IT industry can trick you into learning all kinds of new crap, then you lose. Learning how to evaluate what's worth learning is as important, perhaps more important, than being able to learn. In the mid 90s I said, a bit tongue-in-cheek, that going through my whole career without learning Java was one of my goals. I dabbled a bit out of curiousity, but I think it's fair to say I came very close to achieving my goal. I haven't coded a single production app in Java yet. Of course if I had been put in a position where I was paid to do it, I would have done it, but I was able to out-maneuver it. Today I still code in C, and I couldn't be happier.
Yeah, and then when you get that simulation running we'll probably realize that there are a million different chemicals that can impact the performance of the neurons, and that we don't even know about half of them yet. Toss in local concentrations, thermal variations, etc. and you'll either need killer software or a lot more bits.
Yet Anotehr Slasdhot Page View Generator. Brilliant! Instead of quoting exchange rates based on the unit denomination of the two countries (as is customary), quote them using one of either country's smaller denominations. In this case, US pennies. You only need one person to misread it and think that the exchange rate has a misplaced decimal. If it will make you feel any better, I almost fell for this myself. I've said it before and I'll say it again, errors on /. stories aren't mistakes. They're pure pageview generating genius! Hats off.
as I get closer to coming back to the States and my broadband connection, I'm beginning to wonder what the life expectancy of my PC will be
Now that's a geek.
But the temple and tree thwart even greater speed, and a passing contractor says they soon will be removed.
Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction, thinks otherwise.
Just a bit Ironic, eh?
I think your argument actually works in favor of my point. The lawyers made a new law that involved ammending the Texas constitution in order to solve the problem that they created, and of course they just made it worse. Of course as you can tell from my previous post, I'm not exactly in love with the insurance companies either.
The solution is to move away from algorithmic software and adopt a non-algorithmic, signal-based, synchronous software model.
Will we get synergy with that?
Sure. But it's not the "healthcare system"s fault. It's the legal system's fault. You know. Those guys who sue so often that the insurance on everything gets jacked sky-high, propogating down to the customer? You know. They beurocratic types who created the "system" that separates cost from the consumer. Why don't you call up your local hospital and ask for a price list? Try to pull it up online. Can't get it? Hmmmm... why is that? I'd like to see a breakdown on how much of what gets payed out by the buyer's clubs (a company that processes payments for doctor's visits is not an insurance company, it's a buyers club, but I digress). Anyway, I'd like to know how much of these "healthcare" costs are really legal costs. Quite a bit I wager. Don't worry though. The same lawyers who created this system have a solution for the problems they created. I think it involves more laws or something.
I doubt anybody actually wants to hear what most air guitar playing sounds like. They had better keep this thing away from karaoke machines. A deadly feedback loop might form between the two, resulting in music so bad that the waves might actually cause the planet to resonate and destroy all live as we know it.
Meh. If the time is right for *you* then it's time to start a business. There was this old gas station where I went to school. Outside was a sign that said "since 1936" give or take a year. I always used to think, "Wow, that guy opened up a business during the Great Depression, and it's still doing well". OTOH, a lot of companies that were founded during the earlier go-go "robber barron" era of the late 19th century came through the Depression, and are still with us in some form. I think you and your own personal circumstances, talents, and abilities are the biggest factors, not the general mood. Also, let's face it--there is a lot of chance involved. We like to think that the best ideas win, but sometimes the best idea walks in the door 5 minutes after the VC handed money to a bad idea. Of course if your idea is so much better, you might get money from somebody else; but it's more likely your idea is only marginally better. No big loss to society, just a loss to you.
The velocity of the "needle" across the surface is inherently constant with a cylinder. With a disk the RPMs are constant but it spirals in so you have to compensate for this frequency drift when recording. I wonder how well that worked? I've heard that when cylinders competed with disks they were regarded as having higher fidelity. The reason they failed is eerily similar to the beta vs. VHS debate: cylinders couldn't record as long. Also, if you do the math you find it's much harder to pack the same ammount of surface area into a box of cylinders than it is for disks. So cylinders were more expensive and could hold less music. The difference in quality wasn't enough to overcome that, and disks won.
This reminds me of the story of the man who slowly got more tired and eventually spent most of his time propped up in a chair, barely responsive. His family had assumed it was early senility, and/or old age. His doctors never caught on and the diagnosis stuck. Eventually, someone reviewed his case and discovered that he was unusually hypthyroid, and that his metabolism had simply slowed to an incredibly slow pace. He was given synthroid and slowly brought back to a normal metabolism. There was no cognitive impairment, since there was no brain damage. They tried to keep newspapers, TV, etc away from him but he eventually found out. It was all for naught: he had an inoperable tumor. There was some speculation that the tumor had actually begun to grow about the same time as his metabolic decline began. The tumor wasn't operable at the time he woke up either, so the Rip Van Winkle effect didn't buy him anything. Although metabolic suspension is an intriguing and radical idea for someone with an inoperable tumor, I've never heard anybody seriously suggest it as a treatment option for obvious reasons. The man died about 6 weeks after waking up. Sorry, I can't recall where I read this. It was a long time ago.