I think you underestimate the state of the art in OCR.
I think you overestimate it. CAR systems at banks have a relatively low recognition rate (compared to humans, anyhow), and they're only looking at a limited number of possibilities. It hits a point where you start spending lots more money to recognize only a few more percent of the entries. It quickly gets impractical to do at any significant scale.
I'd have to be really bored to even think about it.
How bored do you have to be to type in multiple messages about not doing something, about how bored you would be doing it, after specifically reading messages from other people about doing what it is you'd have to be really bored to even think about doing?
unless you link it to a database that contains what you're looking for.
You know, as I was scanning my book collection and using Amazon to match up titles/authors to the barcodes (and, incidentally, realizing just how large a percentage of my collection is out of print OR too old to even have a barcode), I was thinking that that's exactly what I needed... a CDDB-style database for bar codes.
My husband, meanwhile, is bemoaning the fact that he stuck our "From the music collection of..." stickers over the barcodes on our CD cases ("That's the one thing on the label we'll never need, right?")
Are there any other other office layout horror stories like this one?
Safelite. 1992 or so. They'd moved most of corporate out of state, after denying they were going to do it. What remained was a vast cube farm full of collections people, taking up an entire floor of the building. Other than the elevator core and the copier/supply room and a perimeter of offices, nary a real wall in sight.
They kept promising they wouldn't move the rest of the company... even after, one Monday, everyone came to work and the cube walls were gone. Anything tacked to the walls was neatly stacked on the nearest desk, and the desks were still laid out in cube-farm fashion. It was eerie.
It hampered productivity, needless to say. Imagine a roomful of people all spaced exactly ten feet apart on the phone (headphones, mostly) saying "You say you can't pay this? It's only a $100 deductible. Could you sell your stereo?"
The saddest part was that they explained that we shouldn't worry that we were going to be moved, the cubicle walls for the new offices were backordered, so they were going to take ours and we'd get the new ones when they came in. No, wait, that wasn't the saddest part, the saddest part was the collectors that believed it.
(As a programmer, I had one of the perimeter offices. We pleaded HVAC problems and kept our doors closed. Oh, and the company packed up and moved shortly thereafter.)
There is nothing related here to justify the headline.
Which is kind of funny, because as near as I can tell, Hotmail already collapsed under the load.
I run a mailing list server. For some peculiar reason, I've got people who insist on subscribing with Hotmail accounts (even though they could subscribe with the forwarded-to account and post with the Hotmail address just fine).
They get automatically unsubscibed about every three to five days, because Hotmail is bouncing their mail with a permanent error. This has been going on for about three months. I've seriously considered just blacklisting Hotmail altogether, but I figure if people want to keep resubscribing and resubscribing and resubscribing, that's their lookout. The ping message they get a week after the bounce tells them Hotmail is hosed, so they have to know it's happening.
For quite some time, the Phoenyx' website was hosted elsewhere. It made sense; it's a mailing list server, and the "real" phoenyx.net was a UUCP mail processor with no IP address. It would have (at the time) cost a couple-three hundred dollars a month to have a permanent connection, and for what? It's not a website, it's a mail server that happens to have a web presence. Mail's been around a lot longer than pretty pictures, too.
http://www.sita.int/ for one. Sort of an airline-specific, proprietary Internet kind of thing, oddly enough. Older than the Internet, too, I think. Certainly older than the "information superhighway" Internet.
Why don't US companies register their domains in the ".us" TLD?
No, it's because there's a really stupid naming convention in place for the.us domain. I have a.us domain: phoenyx.wichita.ks.us. I also have a.net: phoenyx.net. Which one do you think people are going to correctly type? (Okay, neither, but you see the problem.) I'd need phoenyx.witchita and phoenyx.whichita too.
I could live with phoenyx.us or phoenyx.net.us, if that was all it was. (I'd like, but probably get sued for, phoenyx.r.us, though.)
The primary cost of insurance is not based on how safe it is for your ego-centric self, it is based on liability for harm to others in an accident. Yes, most collision are not into brick walls they are into other people!
Actually, the problem usually isn't liability insurance. The problem is usually theft.
I rented one (or one was rented for me, rather) once. Okay, it was a decent little car, if excessively cute, but thanks to that stupid ad campaign, everytime I went to the car I felt compelled to say "Hi!" to it.
I was driving a Ford Windstar (ObTWIAVBP: minivan built on a Taurus frame) and thinking how large it was compared to my (oldstyle) Capri, when I was passed by an RV towing one. I mean, I'm used to seeing them towing Sidekicks and other little bitty cars. Geez. I guess everything's relative.
(Oh, and this is where the Ford fanatics say "Of course you want a spare car. You drive a Chevy.")
Four, actually. Close down, which you mentioned, and...
4.) Keep running. Not all [web]sites are there to make money. Some have been around since before anyone *tried* to make money (and since before the web part of the net became the be-all and end-all).
Don't underestimate the hobby site. Some people are really serious about their hobbies.
But I'd really like to see a study about laptop computers
Dunno about "a study," but there are laptops certified for use on board commercial/passenger aircraft. (As I recall, it's a combination FCC/FAA thing: the FAA says "if it meets FCC code such-and-such, it's okay.") I know, because my former employer had to buy some for cockpit use.
However, the POI for that airline still has to sign off on that particular model, etc., so it isn't as if you can walk on, as a passenger, and say "See the sticker? This meets code!" and expect to be able to use it.
Of course, one laptop manufacturer cheerfully explained that although all of their laptops would meet code, they only had the rugged-built (and, more to the point, expensive) models actually certified as such.
Used to be one of these at a bowling alley here in town. Coolest machine around, until the electromagnet turned everything (including/especially the balls) around it into a permanent magnet.
We stopped bowling when they got rid of it. I think there was a connection.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you overestimate it. CAR systems at banks have a relatively low recognition rate (compared to humans, anyhow), and they're only looking at a limited number of possibilities. It hits a point where you start spending lots more money to recognize only a few more percent of the entries. It quickly gets impractical to do at any significant scale.
How bored do you have to be to type in multiple messages about not doing something, about how bored you would be doing it, after specifically reading messages from other people about doing what it is you'd have to be really bored to even think about doing?
Man.
You are bored.
You know, as I was scanning my book collection and using Amazon to match up titles/authors to the barcodes (and, incidentally, realizing just how large a percentage of my collection is out of print OR too old to even have a barcode), I was thinking that that's exactly what I needed... a CDDB-style database for bar codes.
My husband, meanwhile, is bemoaning the fact that he stuck our "From the music collection of..." stickers over the barcodes on our CD cases ("That's the one thing on the label we'll never need, right?")
"On the Internet, no one can tell you're a dog^WGreat Horned Antelope."
Nope. It used to (in the US, anyhow), but not in a lot of years.
Google for "terry carroll" or the "copyright faq" for references on this and many other nifty copyright questions.
Well, it's true of a blackmailee in Kansas having to go to New York. Assuming her testimony is needed at all, of course.
Practical law isn't as pretty as theoretical. Sorry.
Actually, no. That's what .int was for.
Nope. The blackmailee has to get to North Carolina on their own nickel to appear in court. Feh.
Safelite. 1992 or so. They'd moved most of corporate out of state, after denying they were going to do it. What remained was a vast cube farm full of collections people, taking up an entire floor of the building. Other than the elevator core and the copier/supply room and a perimeter of offices, nary a real wall in sight.
They kept promising they wouldn't move the rest of the company... even after, one Monday, everyone came to work and the cube walls were gone. Anything tacked to the walls was neatly stacked on the nearest desk, and the desks were still laid out in cube-farm fashion. It was eerie.
It hampered productivity, needless to say. Imagine a roomful of people all spaced exactly ten feet apart on the phone (headphones, mostly) saying "You say you can't pay this? It's only a $100 deductible. Could you sell your stereo?"
The saddest part was that they explained that we shouldn't worry that we were going to be moved, the cubicle walls for the new offices were backordered, so they were going to take ours and we'd get the new ones when they came in. No, wait, that wasn't the saddest part, the saddest part was the collectors that believed it.
(As a programmer, I had one of the perimeter offices. We pleaded HVAC problems and kept our doors closed. Oh, and the company packed up and moved shortly thereafter.)
Which is kind of funny, because as near as I can tell, Hotmail already collapsed under the load.
I run a mailing list server. For some peculiar reason, I've got people who insist on subscribing with Hotmail accounts (even though they could subscribe with the forwarded-to account and post with the Hotmail address just fine).
They get automatically unsubscibed about every three to five days, because Hotmail is bouncing their mail with a permanent error. This has been going on for about three months. I've seriously considered just blacklisting Hotmail altogether, but I figure if people want to keep resubscribing and resubscribing and resubscribing, that's their lookout. The ping message they get a week after the bounce tells them Hotmail is hosed, so they have to know it's happening.
This is grounds for taking away a domain name?
For quite some time, the Phoenyx' website was hosted elsewhere. It made sense; it's a mailing list server, and the "real" phoenyx.net was a UUCP mail processor with no IP address. It would have (at the time) cost a couple-three hundred dollars a month to have a permanent connection, and for what? It's not a website, it's a mail server that happens to have a web presence. Mail's been around a lot longer than pretty pictures, too.
http://www.sita.int/ for one. Sort of an airline-specific, proprietary Internet kind of thing, oddly enough. Older than the Internet, too, I think. Certainly older than the "information superhighway" Internet.
No, it's because there's a really stupid naming convention in place for the .us domain. I have a .us domain: phoenyx.wichita.ks.us. I also have a .net: phoenyx.net. Which one do you think people are going to correctly type? (Okay, neither, but you see the problem.) I'd need phoenyx.witchita and phoenyx.whichita too.
I could live with phoenyx.us or phoenyx.net.us, if that was all it was. (I'd like, but probably get sued for, phoenyx.r.us, though.)
Hasn't Moller been saying that for several decades or so?
Actually, the problem usually isn't liability insurance. The problem is usually theft.
You say that like it's a bad thing. I'd pay extra to have that. On other people's cars, anyway.
I rented one (or one was rented for me, rather) once. Okay, it was a decent little car, if excessively cute, but thanks to that stupid ad campaign, everytime I went to the car I felt compelled to say "Hi!" to it.
I was driving a Ford Windstar (ObTWIAVBP: minivan built on a Taurus frame) and thinking how large it was compared to my (oldstyle) Capri, when I was passed by an RV towing one. I mean, I'm used to seeing them towing Sidekicks and other little bitty cars. Geez. I guess everything's relative.
(Oh, and this is where the Ford fanatics say "Of course you want a spare car. You drive a Chevy.")
Four, actually. Close down, which you mentioned, and...
4.) Keep running. Not all [web]sites are there to make money. Some have been around since before anyone *tried* to make money (and since before the web part of the net became the be-all and end-all).
Don't underestimate the hobby site. Some people are really serious about their hobbies.
Dunno about "a study," but there are laptops certified for use on board commercial/passenger aircraft. (As I recall, it's a combination FCC/FAA thing: the FAA says "if it meets FCC code such-and-such, it's okay.") I know, because my former employer had to buy some for cockpit use.
However, the POI for that airline still has to sign off on that particular model, etc., so it isn't as if you can walk on, as a passenger, and say "See the sticker? This meets code!" and expect to be able to use it.
Of course, one laptop manufacturer cheerfully explained that although all of their laptops would meet code, they only had the rugged-built (and, more to the point, expensive) models actually certified as such.
United, at least, usually has a channel on the in-flight music thingymadoodle that lets you listen to the radio traffic.
Used to be one of these at a bowling alley here in town. Coolest machine around, until the electromagnet turned everything (including/especially the balls) around it into a permanent magnet.
We stopped bowling when they got rid of it. I think there was a connection.
But that isn't what was said.
without ad revenues many sites would not be able to even exist. Ads help keep most sites free. (emphasis mine)
Phoenyx Internet Roleplaying is free (as in beer and as in "ad-free"), but certainly not to me. But I expect lunatics like me to be in the minority.
Running code is a person under the law.
Oh, sure. "Separate but equal," right? What are you, some kind of code-racist? Hmph.