Or did you miss that whole MySpace thing, when everyone and their dog was embedding HTML in their little corner of the web? It wasn't pretty, but there's no denying there was demand.
Interesting how quickly the demand went away when MySpace's flexible system was compared to Facebook's easier-to-use, much-less-flexible system.
I think the lesson is that people prefer a purpose-built program that does one thing well to an open-ended program that lets them do anything they can think of... because most of what "people can think" of sucks to use.
Welcome to Siri. I'm still seriously surprised by some of the questions it can actually handle.
Siri is cool, but I wouldn't call using Siri "programming" until you can actually give Siri a sequence of tasks to perform and have her remember those tasks as a single named unit ("function") that can be re-executed later. (Or perhaps Siri can do something like that now and I just don't know about it?)
If nothing else, soft-science and government types get a taxpayer paid trip to South Africa for 2 weeks. Do you think they really want to FIX global warming?
Don't you ever get tired of your mindless, knee-jerk cynicism?
I think maybe at one time it might have been clever and refreshing to groundlessly accuse people of having a selfish ulterior motive for everything they do. But now that every single freaking person on the Internet automatically responds that way every time anyone does anything, it's just tedious and depressing.
We keep trying to add more raw data to the system - what's needed is to remove irrelevant data from the system.
According to TFA that is essentially what this software does. It doesn't collect data; rather it is alleged to be super-duper data mining software that figures out which parts of your existing gigantic databases are relevant and filters out the rest.
If it's just one or two photos, sure. But when you have three dozen people all filming the same event from three dozen different angles, the claim that all the evidence was fabricated becomes a bit less credible.
And what does that accomplish? The university gets to say that it cleaned up the problem by firing 3 people (maximum.) Three people take the fall, nothing happens.
The hope is that at the very least, the next time some asshole in a uniform decides he's gonna "show those dirty hippies what's what", he'll remember how things played out this time. Even if Mr. John Pike doesn't end up in jail, I doubt he will remember this week as a good week. And if he does end up in jail (as he should) then all the better -- that will really give the next guy pause.
Sure, if the bus is going where you want to go. If not, well... hopping on the bus and telling the driver to take you to (your specified location) isn't going to get you very far.
I mean, seriously, would you ship anything cross-country that could be tipped into a ditch and looted?
I'd imagine a vehicle smart enough to drive itself would also be smart enough to call the police when it gets tipped into a ditch. And even if the thieves do make it away with some loot, a self-driving truck will have oodles of video logs, GPS reports, etc etc so there will be lots of evidence pointing out who the thieves were.
... for doing everything they can to ensure that the range of Pakistani euphemisms and double-entendres expands to ever newer and more creative territory. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
Or, you know, we can spend i-don't-know-how-much into making a planet habitable. It could be done -- with lots of hard work and resources on it.
No. Short of the magical invention of energy sources and materials that are currently beyond even the wildest fantasies of human physicists and engineers, it cannot be done. If you think it can be done, you need to go back and get a more realistic sense of how large Earth-size planets actually are.
And of course, if we had those magical technologies, we could use them to keep Earth livable instead, making the expansion-into-space effort partially moot.
Getting the oppertunity to send that one key is tricky if you are in handcuffs.
Aha! I sense a market opportunity for my Fake Molar WiFi transmitter!
(it would beat the traditional cyanide-filled fake molar, anyway)
Better to have a key you hand over after a suitable number of threats which does the new key generation. You can always blame the cops for being technological cavemen and damaging your computer. He who touches it last acquires all blame.
Yes, but I think they usually disconnect the drive, make a copy of it using their own hardware, and then examine the copy, for that reason. Or if they don't, they should.
If it is broadcasting or in discoverable BT mode, no point; it will be found with simple sniffer tools.
Agreed; it would need to be completely passive until activated by a broadcast of the appropriate activation code (which would be based on your password, salted to avoid replay attacks, disguised as normal WiFi/bluetooth traffic, etc)
If they can go that far, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine the authorities ripping holes in the wall and tearing apart beds, couches, the ceiling, etc.
Very true, if they suspect that such a device exists. The hope is that they would think that by grabbing your computer they already have everything there is to grab, and wouldn't think to look elsewhere (in the walls, in the ceiling, in the plumbing, buried under the bench in the park where you sometimes bring your laptop to "check your email" on sunny days, etc)
The biggest threat to humanity by far is... humanity.
Not exactly. The actual threat is resource depletion. Humanity only gets truly nasty when there are no longer enough goodies to go around.
if we're stuck on Earth then you have a choice between a totalitarian state that would make 1984 look like utopia, or death.
You forgot the third option -- stabilizing the population at a size the planet can sustain. That should be doable without a totalitarian nightmare-state, "simply"(*) by improving living conditions to the point where people have the tools to control their reproduction and also the motivation to do so (i.e. a social safety net that works well enough that they no longer feel the need to bear multiple children as a sort of ad-hoc retirement plan)
(*) simply is in quotes because of course it's not really all that simple in the absolute sense; but when compared to developing a viable off-planet civilization, it is much simpler.
It is in our best interests as a race to expand beyond this planet so when this does inevitably happen, we can learn from that mistake and try something different on our other worlds.
I'd be the first to agree with the above -- if there were any other worlds. But there aren't any, in any usable sense. The other planets in our solar system are reachable, but they won't sustain human life. There might be planets in other solar systems that could sustain human life, but they aren't reachable.
If it's a sustainable human society that you're after (where "sustainable" == "can function on its own indefinitely without support from Earth"), there simply is no substitute for the planet our species evolved to live on.
We're all going to become happy fluffy hippies and live a sustainable lifestyle in little teepees where we'll end all conflict by singing happy songs and shit.
Great satire, and yet the survival plan you describe above is still much more realistic and attainable than the alternative proposed by Mr. Hawking.
Q: What's worse that a Fukushima-style radiation leak? A: A Fukushima-style radiation leak in a small, enclosed space that you're going to have to live in for the next 300 years.
Hmm, maybe keep your hidden partition off of the computer entirely, e.g. on a "Hello Kitty" USB stick that you keep in a secure location.
(I'm imagining going a step further and embedding said secure storage device inside the wall of your computer room, and communicating with it via bluetooth or Wi-Fi only.... but maybe that's getting to clever for my own good;^) )
The risk is too small to consider. Meteorites aren't even known to have killed anyone, anywhere.
You're right, of course. But the nice thing about making a power plant meteorite-safe is that doing so will probably also make it earthquake-safe, terrorist-safe, tsunami-safe, hurricane-safe, idiot-proof, and civil-war-safe.
When you're dealing with potential zip-code killers, it's not a bad idea to assume the worst can happen, even if you're pretty sure it won't.
In related news, all nuclear reactors were deemed unsafe againt a meteorite strike.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact they are. You bring up a good point.
As an engineering challenge, I'd like to see someone come up with a design for a nuclear plant such that the plant can be completely pulverized and still not cause radiation/contamination to spread to the surrounding area.
I don't know if such a thing is anywhere near possible, but until someone comes up with something like that, nuclear will be regarded as riskier than many of its competitors.
Buddy, Apple does what it wants -- they are *famous* for doing "teh stupid"
Yup, if there's one thing Apple is famous for, it's their inept decision making. That's why they are doing so poorly and their products are so unpopular.
Slashdot Mirror
Or did you miss that whole MySpace thing, when everyone and their dog was embedding HTML in their little corner of the web? It wasn't pretty, but there's no denying there was demand.
Interesting how quickly the demand went away when MySpace's flexible system was compared to Facebook's easier-to-use, much-less-flexible system.
I think the lesson is that people prefer a purpose-built program that does one thing well to an open-ended program that lets them do anything they can think of ... because most of what "people can think" of sucks to use.
Welcome to Siri. I'm still seriously surprised by some of the questions it can actually handle.
Siri is cool, but I wouldn't call using Siri "programming" until you can actually give Siri a sequence of tasks to perform and have her remember those tasks as a single named unit ("function") that can be re-executed later. (Or perhaps Siri can do something like that now and I just don't know about it?)
If nothing else, soft-science and government types get a taxpayer paid trip to South Africa for 2 weeks. Do you think they really want to FIX global warming?
Don't you ever get tired of your mindless, knee-jerk cynicism?
I think maybe at one time it might have been clever and refreshing to groundlessly accuse people of having a selfish ulterior motive for everything they do. But now that every single freaking person on the Internet automatically responds that way every time anyone does anything, it's just tedious and depressing.
We keep trying to add more raw data to the system - what's needed is to remove irrelevant data from the system.
According to TFA that is essentially what this software does. It doesn't collect data; rather it is alleged to be super-duper data mining software that figures out which parts of your existing gigantic databases are relevant and filters out the rest.
Though even then people can claim its shopped
If it's just one or two photos, sure. But when you have three dozen people all filming the same event from three dozen different angles, the claim that all the evidence was fabricated becomes a bit less credible.
And what does that accomplish? The university gets to say that it cleaned up the problem by firing 3 people (maximum.) Three people take the fall, nothing happens.
The hope is that at the very least, the next time some asshole in a uniform decides he's gonna "show those dirty hippies what's what", he'll remember how things played out this time. Even if Mr. John Pike doesn't end up in jail, I doubt he will remember this week as a good week. And if he does end up in jail (as he should) then all the better -- that will really give the next guy pause.
well then truck drivers will become truck guards.
Well maybe... but I prefer the "automated machine-gun turrets" solution.
So, in other words, you should take the Bus
Sure, if the bus is going where you want to go. If not, well... hopping on the bus and telling the driver to take you to (your specified location) isn't going to get you very far.
I mean, seriously, would you ship anything cross-country that could be tipped into a ditch and looted?
I'd imagine a vehicle smart enough to drive itself would also be smart enough to call the police when it gets tipped into a ditch. And even if the thieves do make it away with some loot, a self-driving truck will have oodles of video logs, GPS reports, etc etc so there will be lots of evidence pointing out who the thieves were.
... for doing everything they can to ensure that the range of Pakistani euphemisms and double-entendres expands to ever newer and more creative territory. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
Or, you know, we can spend i-don't-know-how-much into making a planet habitable. It could be done -- with lots of hard work and resources on it.
No. Short of the magical invention of energy sources and materials that are currently beyond even the wildest fantasies of human physicists and engineers, it cannot be done. If you think it can be done, you need to go back and get a more realistic sense of how large Earth-size planets actually are.
And of course, if we had those magical technologies, we could use them to keep Earth livable instead, making the expansion-into-space effort partially moot.
Getting the oppertunity to send that one key is tricky if you are in handcuffs.
Aha! I sense a market opportunity for my Fake Molar WiFi transmitter!
(it would beat the traditional cyanide-filled fake molar, anyway)
Better to have a key you hand over after a suitable number of threats which does the new key generation. You can always blame the cops for being technological cavemen and damaging your computer. He who touches it last acquires all blame.
Yes, but I think they usually disconnect the drive, make a copy of it using their own hardware, and then examine the copy, for that reason. Or if they don't, they should.
If it is broadcasting or in discoverable BT mode, no point; it will be found with simple sniffer tools.
Agreed; it would need to be completely passive until activated by a broadcast of the appropriate activation code (which would be based on your password, salted to avoid replay attacks, disguised as normal WiFi/bluetooth traffic, etc)
If they can go that far, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine the authorities ripping holes in the wall and tearing apart beds, couches, the ceiling, etc.
Very true, if they suspect that such a device exists. The hope is that they would think that by grabbing your computer they already have everything there is to grab, and wouldn't think to look elsewhere (in the walls, in the ceiling, in the plumbing, buried under the bench in the park where you sometimes bring your laptop to "check your email" on sunny days, etc)
The biggest threat to humanity by far is... humanity.
Not exactly. The actual threat is resource depletion. Humanity only gets truly nasty when there are no longer enough goodies to go around.
if we're stuck on Earth then you have a choice between a totalitarian state that would make 1984 look like utopia, or death.
You forgot the third option -- stabilizing the population at a size the planet can sustain. That should be doable without a totalitarian nightmare-state, "simply"(*) by improving living conditions to the point where people have the tools to control their reproduction and also the motivation to do so (i.e. a social safety net that works well enough that they no longer feel the need to bear multiple children as a sort of ad-hoc retirement plan)
(*) simply is in quotes because of course it's not really all that simple in the absolute sense; but when compared to developing a viable off-planet civilization, it is much simpler.
It is in our best interests as a race to expand beyond this planet so when this does inevitably happen, we can learn from that mistake and try something different on our other worlds.
I'd be the first to agree with the above -- if there were any other worlds. But there aren't any, in any usable sense. The other planets in our solar system are reachable, but they won't sustain human life. There might be planets in other solar systems that could sustain human life, but they aren't reachable.
If it's a sustainable human society that you're after (where "sustainable" == "can function on its own indefinitely without support from Earth"), there simply is no substitute for the planet our species evolved to live on.
We're all going to become happy fluffy hippies and live a sustainable lifestyle in little teepees where we'll end all conflict by singing happy songs and shit.
Great satire, and yet the survival plan you describe above is still much more realistic and attainable than the alternative proposed by Mr. Hawking.
Yes, but Uranium could.
Q: What's worse that a Fukushima-style radiation leak?
A: A Fukushima-style radiation leak in a small, enclosed space that you're going to have to live in for the next 300 years.
if Bill Gates finishes designing his reactor
This may be the most terrifying phrase I've ever read on Slashdot ;^)
Hmm, maybe keep your hidden partition off of the computer entirely, e.g. on a "Hello Kitty" USB stick that you keep in a secure location.
(I'm imagining going a step further and embedding said secure storage device inside the wall of your computer room, and communicating with it via bluetooth or Wi-Fi only.... but maybe that's getting to clever for my own good ;^) )
The risk is too small to consider. Meteorites aren't even known to have killed anyone, anywhere.
You're right, of course. But the nice thing about making a power plant meteorite-safe is that doing so will probably also make it earthquake-safe, terrorist-safe, tsunami-safe, hurricane-safe, idiot-proof, and civil-war-safe.
When you're dealing with potential zip-code killers, it's not a bad idea to assume the worst can happen, even if you're pretty sure it won't.
In related news, all nuclear reactors were deemed unsafe againt a meteorite strike.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact they are. You bring up a good point.
As an engineering challenge, I'd like to see someone come up with a design for a nuclear plant such that the plant can be completely pulverized and still not cause radiation/contamination to spread to the surrounding area.
I don't know if such a thing is anywhere near possible, but until someone comes up with something like that, nuclear will be regarded as riskier than many of its competitors.
You know, kind of like global warming.
Please don't bring up Global Warming in a Bitcoin thread. Doing that is like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters -- peoples' heads will explode.
Prosperity: the gift of stockbrokers and lawyers to the rest of us.
Maybe at one time that had some truth to it. Lately they've been keeping that gift for themselves.
Sure. But then you'd have to buy an iPhone.
... or eavesdrop on somebody else's iPhone.
Buddy, Apple does what it wants -- they are *famous* for doing "teh stupid"
Yup, if there's one thing Apple is famous for, it's their inept decision making. That's why they are doing so poorly and their products are so unpopular.