Pictures are great, but how about hardware specs? What good is the box if it's just an Amiga 4000 repackaged?
When will they lose the credit cards?
on
Beaming Money
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· Score: 1
The problem with all these new transaction schemes is they all use credit cards for transactions, which is just about the most antiquated, brain-dead scheme around. It's easy to base electronic transactions on credit cards, because it just involves sending a 16-digit number plus expiration date and a name. That's lame because no matter how secure your transaction, credit cards themselves are inherently insecure. Just because my wireless payment gizmo is secure doesn't mean the waiter in a restaurant can't nab my credit card number and use it to order junk over the phone.
We need a payment mechanism that isn't so inherently insecure. One excellent one was that of the now defuct DigiCash. E-cash is great because it's anonymous, up until the point you try to cheat with it by using it twice. Credit card companies can't track you for marketing purposes. There's no simple 16-digit number guarding your account.
Of course the problem with e-cash, if you can call it a problem, is that you're going to have to pay a surcharge to use it. With credit cards, the companies make enough money off of people who run up interest charges, plus the vendor's fee, that the consumer doesn't need to pay any surcharges.
How about some kind of a compromise? How about an e-cash account where you can borrow money from it, and it racks up interest charges if you don't pay it back by the end of the month, but the company has no way of tracking your individual transactions, because you can check out the money in lump sums and they don't know who you're paying?
Wow, now they are building computers out of neurons. It's a fun idea, like the Tinkertoy computer, but not very useful. Neurons are much slower than electrical circuits. And how exactly does the researcher propose to build "computers that can figure out for themselves what to do"? Shocked, is he, that computers today are so "dumb"? If we knew how to build a computer as he is describing, we could have done it already with neural networks in software, rather than using his tedious mushware procedure. We already have computers built out of neurons. They're called brains, and they're not very fast at doing certain types of calculations. I don't see how the researcher proposes to fix this.
If you want a good biological trick to make faster computers, try calculating at the chemical level, using DNA, as some have proposed. Massively parallel computation. Now that could be fast!
What do you mean the creators make nothing? I understand Linus is doing just fine at Transmeta. And as far as we know, at this time, does Transmeta hold any IP?
The point is that people who create something need to survive, but they don't need to make money from the thing they created. Perhaps what they created helps someone else to survive. For example, perhaps a struggling hospital can survive because they are using Linux and free software to run their equipment. So, more people have a chance to survive as a result of Linux. So if Linux doesn't help Linus to survive, maybe it helps other people to survive. Isn't that just as much a contribution to the greater good? Now somebody else may be doing something that helps Linus survive.
Hah! And ten years from now, when Nintendo doesn't exist or doesn't support the N64, and neither do the game manufacturers, and I drop my cartridge on the floor, where do I go?
To my trusty CD-ROM backup and UltraHLE, that's where.
In this article it says the actors are completely computer generated - that nothing is scanned from humans. Then they tell you about how they put sensors on this guy and scanned in his movements!
He spent a fair amount of time touting the portability of Linux. He explained how easy it was to compile on a new platform by just typing "make." He mentioned Sun helping port Linux to the Sparc. He indicated that Apple had something to fear from promoting Linux on the Mac, despite the fact that they helped put it there.
Then he turns around at the end and dismisses Linux as "tied to the Intel platform"! He claims that Apple will move in on the Windows/Intel/Linux rubble and take over. I'm sorry, but the analogy to armies breaks down here. A free operating system can't run out of food or be weakened by a battle.
What if Intel decided to keep their instruction set secret, so that AMD and Cyrix couldn't make clones? You'd have to sign an NDA to write a compiler. Don't you think that would be entirely counterproductive for the computer industry? This is exactly the same thing. Nobody should stand for hardware that doesn't come with instructions on how to use it, or at least have them available.
OK, now it's *cool* to support Linux, but what about FreeBSD, or BeOS, or some little operating system I want to crank up in my spare time? Hardware device interface specifications should be freely available.
All you have to do is match up the product UPC with an ID number on NetGrocer (www.netgrocer.com). Your computer can then automatically order the items over the Internet.
Of course, you'd probably have it save up a list of items and send out an order at a specific time of the week. Then you could modify the list as needed. You'd also know when to expect the package. Also, when you used a box of cereal, instead of replacing that exact brand, you might program it to select randomly from a list of cereals, or other breakfast food. (On NetGrocer you can only get non-perishable items.)
Whatever the software to let you order groceries, it had better be open source!
Why do they need all that data? Are they ever going to look at it? What if they hadn't collected as much in the first place? Would they be much worse off than they are now? Can't they just back up the most important stuff?
How about compressing the data? Not just lzh or something, but things like peaks/troughs and other statistically significant items? Once the raw data has been around for a while, say a year, they can reduce it to what's significant. If later they change their mind, realize they need the original raw data, too bad! They'll just have to revise their algorithms for the future. No big loss.
They already make car CD players. There's your shock resistance. Now add some computer hardware. This has obviously been done in the Empeg's case. There you have it! It's all been done, it just needs to be put together.
Slashdot Mirror
Pictures are great, but how about hardware specs? What good is the box if it's just an Amiga 4000 repackaged?
The problem with all these new transaction schemes is they all use credit cards for transactions, which is just about the most antiquated, brain-dead scheme around. It's easy to base electronic transactions on credit cards, because it just involves sending a 16-digit number plus expiration date and a name. That's lame because no matter how secure your transaction, credit cards themselves are inherently insecure. Just because my wireless payment gizmo is secure doesn't mean the waiter in a restaurant can't nab my credit card number and use it to order junk over the phone.
We need a payment mechanism that isn't so inherently insecure. One excellent one was that of the now defuct DigiCash. E-cash is great because it's anonymous, up until the point you try to cheat with it by using it twice. Credit card companies can't track you for marketing purposes. There's no simple 16-digit number guarding your account.
Of course the problem with e-cash, if you can call it a problem, is that you're going to have to pay a surcharge to use it. With credit cards, the companies make enough money off of people who run up interest charges, plus the vendor's fee, that the consumer doesn't need to pay any surcharges.
How about some kind of a compromise? How about an e-cash account where you can borrow money from it, and it racks up interest charges if you don't pay it back by the end of the month, but the company has no way of tracking your individual transactions, because you can check out the money in lump sums and they don't know who you're paying?
Comments?
Wow, now they are building computers out of neurons. It's a fun idea, like the Tinkertoy computer, but not very useful. Neurons are much slower than electrical circuits. And how exactly does the researcher propose to build "computers that can figure out for themselves what to do"? Shocked, is he, that computers today are so "dumb"? If we knew how to build a computer as he is describing, we could have done it already with neural networks in software, rather than using his tedious mushware procedure. We already have computers built out of neurons. They're called brains, and they're not very fast at doing certain types of calculations. I don't see how the researcher proposes to fix this.
If you want a good biological trick to make faster computers, try calculating at the chemical level, using DNA, as some have proposed. Massively parallel computation. Now that could be fast!
What do you mean the creators make nothing? I understand Linus is doing just fine at Transmeta. And as far as we know, at this time, does Transmeta hold any IP?
The point is that people who create something need to survive, but they don't need to make money from the thing they created. Perhaps what they created helps someone else to survive. For example, perhaps a struggling hospital can survive because they are using Linux and free software to run their equipment. So, more people have a chance to survive as a result of Linux. So if Linux doesn't help Linus to survive, maybe it helps other people to survive. Isn't that just as much a contribution to the greater good? Now somebody else may be doing something that helps Linus survive.
Hah! And ten years from now, when Nintendo doesn't exist or doesn't support the N64, and neither do the game manufacturers, and I drop my cartridge on the floor, where do I go?
To my trusty CD-ROM backup and UltraHLE, that's where.
In this article it says the actors are completely computer generated - that nothing is scanned from humans. Then they tell you about how they put sensors on this guy and scanned in his movements!
He spent a fair amount of time touting the portability of Linux. He explained how easy it was to compile on a new platform by just typing "make." He mentioned Sun helping port Linux to the Sparc. He indicated that Apple had something to fear from promoting Linux on the Mac, despite the fact that they helped put it there.
Then he turns around at the end and dismisses Linux as "tied to the Intel platform"! He claims that Apple will move in on the Windows/Intel/Linux rubble and take over. I'm sorry, but the analogy to armies breaks down here. A free operating system can't run out of food or be weakened by a battle.
What if Intel decided to keep their instruction set secret, so that AMD and Cyrix couldn't make clones? You'd have to sign an NDA to write a compiler. Don't you think that would be entirely counterproductive for the computer industry? This is exactly the same thing. Nobody should stand for hardware that doesn't come with instructions on how to use it, or at least have them available.
OK, now it's *cool* to support Linux, but what about FreeBSD, or BeOS, or some little operating system I want to crank up in my spare time? Hardware device interface specifications should be freely available.
How old is that song? Hasn't the copyright expired by now?
I think the words "This way in" are for the people installing the cards on motherboards.
Maybe if you install it backwards it turns on the ID feature?
All you have to do is match up the product UPC with an ID number on NetGrocer (www.netgrocer.com). Your computer can then automatically order the items over the Internet.
Of course, you'd probably have it save up a list of items and send out an order at a specific time of the week. Then you could modify the list as needed. You'd also know when to expect the package. Also, when you used a box of cereal, instead of replacing that exact brand, you might program it to select randomly from a list of cereals, or other breakfast food. (On NetGrocer you can only get non-perishable items.)
Whatever the software to let you order groceries, it had better be open source!
Why do they need all that data? Are they ever going to look at it? What if they hadn't collected as much in the first place? Would they be much worse off than they are now? Can't they just back up the most important stuff?
How about compressing the data? Not just lzh or something, but things like peaks/troughs and other statistically significant items? Once the raw data has been around for a while, say a year, they can reduce it to what's significant. If later they change their mind, realize they need the original raw data, too bad! They'll just have to revise their algorithms for the future. No big loss.
They already make car CD players. There's your shock resistance. Now add some computer hardware. This has obviously been done in the Empeg's case. There you have it! It's all been done, it just needs to be put together.