And as a completely impressionable college student (who really needs an internship this summer), I have to say I was pretty impressed.
The two main points of his talk were a) we need to find a better paradigm for organizing the vast amounts of information we're being deluged with and b) we haven't found a good replacement yet for the mouse-and-keyboard model of human-computer interaction (he basically admitted that Microsoft's efforts at speech recognition so far have been a total failure), but we're going to keep trying.
After that he showed a couple of demonstrations. Of course, most of what he showed was probably hardcoded, but it was neat nonetheless. At one point, he just ran a search for "zero-carbon energy" and then used voice commands to sort the zillion results by type of origin (news vs. scientific papers vs. personal files). Later on he demoed a transparent display with gesture manipulation, and it was nice to see Microsoft isn't thinking about the flawed "Minority Report" model where you wave your hands in the air like an idiot, this was much more subdued: he used the surface of the desk he was behind to recognize a couple different gestures. Gorilla arm not included.
So yeah, I definitely recommend hitting up that video and slideshow link if you've got the time. Say what you want about Microsoft, but they aren't just resting on their laurels.
I gotta say, posting a link claiming the placebo effect is "diminishing over time" when that link is to a Slashdot article saying precisely the opposite is a new low.
Hell, you don't even have to click on the link: you can see what it actually says just by reading the URL!
Cranking out even more science graduates, according to the researchers, does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for science/tech jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students.
Or they could pay solid wages to the highest-performing students, and lesser wages to the less performing students. You know, the way the market is supposed to work.
Seriously, did they get grant money for this crap?
Don't count on it. The problem with virtualization is that it requires the virtualized OS to be as cooperative to the whole affair as possible, since it needs to be fooled into thinking it has unfettered access to the system, which in many ways is much harder than just getting the OS to run natively on the hardware. Windows and Linux are becoming more virtualization-friendly every day since their developers have realized that their operating systems are being virtualized on a regular basis, but since there is no Apple-approved way to virtualize OS X, it would be a fairly trivial matter for them to make it as unfriendly to virtualize as possible. If that doesn't sound like such a big deal, consider how many strange bugs there are in VMs where the virtualized operating system is TRYING to make it as easier on the VM.
Is Apple doing this at the moment? Probably not. Would they if they saw OS X virtualization becoming widespread against their will? Of course no one can say for sure, but I don't think anyone would put it past them either.
Our brains favor consistency over correctness... we're finally coming close to understanding the biological origins of conservativism. Here's hoping this research eventually leads to a cure.
Seems to me that "bloat" is completely relative and arbitrary.
It's not. While the Linux kernel is certainly less "bloated" than Windows, at its current size and efficiency it still causes major headaches for developers on embedded systems where every bit of performance counts, and the difference between a streamlined Linux and the current bloated Linux makes for considerable cost and power savings, in terms of processor speed and resources required.
Yes, so rather than get into a complicated debate about how large and accepted religious practice has to be before a supermarket chain grants it exceptions to its rules, why don't we sidestep the issue and say that banning people from a supermarket for wearing hoods is dumb?
(BTW, the correct spelling is 'Haruhiism'. Blaspheme like that again and we'll have you killed.)
C'mon: they already know everything about you- they have access to your e-mail, schedule, phone calls, documents, and pretty much anything- and now they're going to take over the energy industry too? Google is aiming for world domination! Wake up sheeple!
there were -many- people who bought it just to install Linux, for various reasons.
Bullshit. Where are these people? And why would they spend $600 for no reason other than to install Linux on a shiny black box which offers no advantages over a much cheaper and much more useful general-purpose computer?
Your statement actually has rather terrifying implications, since after 9/11 we saw a rush of hysterics that created a) illusory security practices like the nonsense we have to put up with at airports and b) several wars in the Middle East that have done anything but make us more safe. I can't help but think that when (not if) there is a break-in like you describe, the government is going to start keeping track of everyone who downloads nmap, etc.
Judges are not held accountable for their own bullshit. We just have to collectively hope they are fair, similar to dictators or kings. If they ruin lives, oh well.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong. The purpose of judges is to uphold the law. This is true even citizens think the law sucks. Personally I think it sucks that the law prevents me from walking into Wal-Mart and grabbing all the money I can from the cash registers, but even if the judge agrees with me, I'm going to be prosecuted.
Whether you agree with the it or not, the DMCA is extremely clear that RealDVD is illegal. There is no ambiguity in this case. As a result, the judge really had no choice but to enforce this ruling.
Yes, the DMCA is retarded. Yes, the ruling implies that we have the right to make backups of our DVDs but not the means to make those backups, which makes no fucking sense. But decisions like that are not the domain of judges, nor should they be, unless the law is unconstitutional, which the DMCA, despite its many flaws, is not. Judges exist to enforce the laws that Congress passes. If you think the laws suck, your legislators are the ones you should be griping about. The judge made the right call here.
It's an interesting theory, but when I think to myself, "Who is more likely to have the resources to pull off a massive distributed-denial-of-service attack against multiple large websites, a single Ukrainian blogger or the Russian government?", the latter seems the more likely candidate.
Imagine if Slashdot went down. Spam would be wiped out in a day, Linux audio would be bug free in a week, and next month we'd see the release of GNU Hurd.
Can I use that as my sig (with attribution, of course)? Seriously, that's classic.
Slightly shortened to accommodate the special event:
I asked my email-pal: "UNIX or Windoze?". He replied "UNIX". I said "Ah...me too!".
I asked my email-pal: "Linux or AIX?". He said "Linux, of course". I said "Me too".
I asked him: "Emacs or vi". He replied "Emacs". I said "Me too. Small world."
I asked him: "GNU Emacs or XEmacs?", and he said "GNU Emacs". I said "oh, me too."
I asked him, "GNU Emacs 22 or GNU Emacs 23?", and he replied "GNU Emacs 22". I said "DIE YOU OBSOLETE NO-GOOD SOCIALLY MALADJUSTED CELIBATE COMMIE FASCIST DORK!", and never emailed him again.
Fantastic! Now all we have to do to avoid the government pummeling our heads with powerful X-ray lasers is to... uh... pummel our heads with powerful X-ray lasers.
Slashdot Mirror
And as a completely impressionable college student (who really needs an internship this summer), I have to say I was pretty impressed.
The two main points of his talk were a) we need to find a better paradigm for organizing the vast amounts of information we're being deluged with and b) we haven't found a good replacement yet for the mouse-and-keyboard model of human-computer interaction (he basically admitted that Microsoft's efforts at speech recognition so far have been a total failure), but we're going to keep trying.
After that he showed a couple of demonstrations. Of course, most of what he showed was probably hardcoded, but it was neat nonetheless. At one point, he just ran a search for "zero-carbon energy" and then used voice commands to sort the zillion results by type of origin (news vs. scientific papers vs. personal files). Later on he demoed a transparent display with gesture manipulation, and it was nice to see Microsoft isn't thinking about the flawed "Minority Report" model where you wave your hands in the air like an idiot, this was much more subdued: he used the surface of the desk he was behind to recognize a couple different gestures. Gorilla arm not included.
So yeah, I definitely recommend hitting up that video and slideshow link if you've got the time. Say what you want about Microsoft, but they aren't just resting on their laurels.
Well, not totally.
I gotta say, posting a link claiming the placebo effect is "diminishing over time" when that link is to a Slashdot article saying precisely the opposite is a new low.
Hell, you don't even have to click on the link: you can see what it actually says just by reading the URL!
Have people made virtual machines of it yet? I usually run Ubuntu through VMware Player on Windows, could I grab an image right this second?
Cranking out even more science graduates, according to the researchers, does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for science/tech jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students.
Or they could pay solid wages to the highest-performing students, and lesser wages to the less performing students. You know, the way the market is supposed to work.
Seriously, did they get grant money for this crap?
Don't count on it. The problem with virtualization is that it requires the virtualized OS to be as cooperative to the whole affair as possible, since it needs to be fooled into thinking it has unfettered access to the system, which in many ways is much harder than just getting the OS to run natively on the hardware. Windows and Linux are becoming more virtualization-friendly every day since their developers have realized that their operating systems are being virtualized on a regular basis, but since there is no Apple-approved way to virtualize OS X, it would be a fairly trivial matter for them to make it as unfriendly to virtualize as possible. If that doesn't sound like such a big deal, consider how many strange bugs there are in VMs where the virtualized operating system is TRYING to make it as easier on the VM.
Is Apple doing this at the moment? Probably not. Would they if they saw OS X virtualization becoming widespread against their will? Of course no one can say for sure, but I don't think anyone would put it past them either.
Our brains favor consistency over correctness... we're finally coming close to understanding the biological origins of conservativism. Here's hoping this research eventually leads to a cure.
I heard you like contests, so I made a contest for your contest, so you can design the future while you design the future. Thanks, NASA.
Seems to me that "bloat" is completely relative and arbitrary.
It's not. While the Linux kernel is certainly less "bloated" than Windows, at its current size and efficiency it still causes major headaches for developers on embedded systems where every bit of performance counts, and the difference between a streamlined Linux and the current bloated Linux makes for considerable cost and power savings, in terms of processor speed and resources required.
This is a horrible purchase for Dell. This is like trying to jam three cows in your chicken coop. Ain't gonna work! Just look at this chart!
Yes, so rather than get into a complicated debate about how large and accepted religious practice has to be before a supermarket chain grants it exceptions to its rules, why don't we sidestep the issue and say that banning people from a supermarket for wearing hoods is dumb?
(BTW, the correct spelling is 'Haruhiism'. Blaspheme like that again and we'll have you killed.)
I'm having trouble keeping track of all the twitter-enabled devices being released. Someone should create a twitter feed to keep track of them all.
C'mon: they already know everything about you- they have access to your e-mail, schedule, phone calls, documents, and pretty much anything- and now they're going to take over the energy industry too? Google is aiming for world domination! Wake up sheeple!
That was a joke. Sort of.
there were -many- people who bought it just to install Linux, for various reasons.
Bullshit. Where are these people? And why would they spend $600 for no reason other than to install Linux on a shiny black box which offers no advantages over a much cheaper and much more useful general-purpose computer?
The next generation of scientists, brought up on Mythbusters, are going to be much more interesting than those in days gone by.
I had sort of assumed that all university tour guides were robots. They sure seemed that way to me.
Your statement actually has rather terrifying implications, since after 9/11 we saw a rush of hysterics that created a) illusory security practices like the nonsense we have to put up with at airports and b) several wars in the Middle East that have done anything but make us more safe. I can't help but think that when (not if) there is a break-in like you describe, the government is going to start keeping track of everyone who downloads nmap, etc.
Judges are not held accountable for their own bullshit. We just have to collectively hope they are fair, similar to dictators or kings. If they ruin lives, oh well.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong. The purpose of judges is to uphold the law. This is true even citizens think the law sucks. Personally I think it sucks that the law prevents me from walking into Wal-Mart and grabbing all the money I can from the cash registers, but even if the judge agrees with me, I'm going to be prosecuted.
Whether you agree with the it or not, the DMCA is extremely clear that RealDVD is illegal. There is no ambiguity in this case. As a result, the judge really had no choice but to enforce this ruling.
Yes, the DMCA is retarded. Yes, the ruling implies that we have the right to make backups of our DVDs but not the means to make those backups, which makes no fucking sense. But decisions like that are not the domain of judges, nor should they be, unless the law is unconstitutional, which the DMCA, despite its many flaws, is not. Judges exist to enforce the laws that Congress passes. If you think the laws suck, your legislators are the ones you should be griping about. The judge made the right call here.
I've been known to break things by commenting out important sections, but causing AIDS?? Someone is about to have a hell of a performance review.
It's an interesting theory, but when I think to myself, "Who is more likely to have the resources to pull off a massive distributed-denial-of-service attack against multiple large websites, a single Ukrainian blogger or the Russian government?", the latter seems the more likely candidate.
Imagine if Slashdot went down. Spam would be wiped out in a day, Linux audio would be bug free in a week, and next month we'd see the release of GNU Hurd.
Can I use that as my sig (with attribution, of course)? Seriously, that's classic.
You joke, but with Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal all down, I bet workplace productivity will see a bump today.
Apparently so many people were checking downforeveryoneorjustme.com in a panic that it crashed too. Ah, Twitterers.
Because Twitter is down and he's still recovering.
Slightly shortened to accommodate the special event:
I asked my email-pal: "UNIX or Windoze?". He replied "UNIX". I said "Ah...me too!".
I asked my email-pal: "Linux or AIX?". He said "Linux, of course". I said "Me too".
I asked him: "Emacs or vi". He replied "Emacs". I said "Me too. Small world."
I asked him: "GNU Emacs or XEmacs?", and he said "GNU Emacs". I said "oh, me too."
I asked him, "GNU Emacs 22 or GNU Emacs 23?", and he replied "GNU Emacs 22". I said "DIE YOU OBSOLETE NO-GOOD SOCIALLY MALADJUSTED CELIBATE COMMIE FASCIST DORK!", and never emailed him again.
Fantastic! Now all we have to do to avoid the government pummeling our heads with powerful X-ray lasers is to... uh... pummel our heads with powerful X-ray lasers.