I often have the impression that the Slashdot community is dominated (in forum participation at least) by people who live in English-speaking countries, especially the UK and, obviously, the US. I wonder how true that is. Are there any stats on Slashdot demographics?
People always think of the best outcome when a new technology is created
This statement is a bit too clear-cut. AFAIK, history - and in particular the Industrial Revolution - begs to differ with you. It seems technological progress is often met with rejection - sometimes even accompanied with violence. People being scared of the potentially devastating effects of machines on their lives. A famous example is related here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Excerpt: "The principal objection of the Luddites was against the introduction of new wide-framed automated looms that could be operated by cheap, relatively unskilled labour, resulting in the loss of jobs for many skilled textile workers."
And this got an Insightful moderation (5 points)???
Grand-parent said:
Governments don't appear interested it dealing with this.
I don't necessarily have confidence that the government could implement solutions to control spam, but at least different countries could cooperate to fight spam - maybe that's what GP mpe meant.
Instead, we have governments the world over (Europe, US,...) passing laws to limit file sharing, as if this was a more significant problem to society and the economy.
GP said:
Probably because it isn't the (alleged) profits of the entertainments industry being affected.
I share this opinion more and more. It's sad. Governments, who should be protecting us the little guys (we have the votes...but don't always use them), seem more interested in protecting the interests of corporations (which have the economic power).
I mean look at French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He's famous for exchanging favors with his friends CEOs of mega-companies. What has he been doing with his infamous Hadopi three strikes law for instance? Aren't there BIGGER problems to solve for a government than copyright infringement?
>First was from 130 kilos down to 80 kilos. I did this through eating 1500 kcal per day exclusing green veggies AND doing >intensive cardio on the treadmill five times a week, hitting 500kcal on the calorie counter each time.
What do you mean "exclusing"? Did you mean "excluding" or did you mean "only"? If you never ate protein then that's why you lost so much of it...in your muscle, because of cellular turn-over. But surely I am misunderstanding?
That being said...Generally speaking lowering the calorie intake is a starting principle to lose fat, but studies have shown that even a balanced (lower-calorie) diet, will make you lose muscle as well. If you do endurance exercises, you will also lose muscles, sometimes even more. On the other hand, it seems working those muscles out with weights (or machines) prevents muscle loss...even if it means not gaining a much as with a normal calorie level.
I read that in Jogging International magazine. A long time ago. I wish I had the time to find actual references, it feels cheap to mention something like this without references - sorry for that.
Thanks Tim. It seems to me though this is tied to the bank, isn't it? Several people here have mentioned Citi in the US, but I don't think many other banks offer this. A few years ago PayPal had an attempt at such a service but for some reason they scraped it away.
BTW, can someone post a list of vendors of virtual temporary credit cards? A search on the Web didn't lead to much last time. This would obviously be something very useful for Internet purchase safety, if anything (tired of vendors who don't even encrypt account passwords). Why oh why isn't that service more pervasive?
Here in the UK our wonderful government outsources the implementation of its wonderful data retention policies to "contractors". A lot of private data about a huge number of people in the UK got lost in the wild, stolen or otherwise, in recent years. Subcontracting enables the government to shift the blame. How convenient. Somehow subcontracting enables some to get rid of their accountability.
Right before immigration checks, the USCIS banner says that they strive to welcome anyone with courtesy. Maybe they forgot to tell their employees about that.
No I don't think so. I am fairly sure I didn't have to do that last time I checked in for my round-trip to the US from the UK. The credit card should only be for identification. As long as they can see your passport, which is mandatory anyway, you shouldn't have to present your CC.
I agree with your point, but just to be the Devil's Advocate here: the consequences of addiction to chocolate are not exactly as bad as those you get from cocaine or heroin addiction. That being said, I dislike that harmless substances like cannabis are forbidden whereas alcohol isn't.
Most people don't care or don't know about this possibility, and effectively, very few will disable the initial instructions. Those instructions are not annoying the recipients but their callers. So, they should be removed by default by the phone company. They do not help anybody.
And I'll give the example of the McLibel case where the court ruled that the UK libel law breached the European Convention on Human Rights and fined the UK for damages.
Thing is, who is Apple's audience? At least from the perspective of buying a phone? Is their target demographics essentially composed of Slashdot geeks who keep abreast of the latest technology news?
Apple has done a remarkable, I mean, incredibly impressive job of winning Joe Public as a consumer of electronics. Their products are reliable, simple to use, and beautiful. Think of the ease-of-use of Mac OS, the beauty of the G4 laptop when it came out compared to every other laptop on the market at the time, the cool design of the iPod, the inherent coolness of the iPhone (object, graphical touch interface etc.).
I wonder if most of the people who bought an iPhone really care about the non-open, locked-down aspect of the iPhone. As a geek, evolutions in the offering of phones on the market such as Android sound completely natural to me, but IMHO most people don't need or want to hack their phones. I have a feeling that most people (who bought the iPhone) don't even know about Google Voice, and could care less about developing and selling applications for the iPhone.
Exactly. I'm really tired of this overloading of what the new buzzwords mean. Same story with component-oriented development in 1999/2000, same story with Web services (there were companies - e.g. Salesforce I think - who were doing text scraping of Web pages and they claimed that was "Web Services". I am not kidding), and same story now with cloud computing.
But it is very sad though when the ante is upped not by another set of marketing people for commercial interests, but by a disinterested party who is supposed to have geek knowledge.
Thanks for the information. Honestly, I would never have guessed Zittrain had any decent computer knowledge considering the confusion he demonstrated throughout his article.
>Zittrain knows his stuff. He was friends with Postel
Oh. Of course. He must be a very good computer scientist, then.:-)
Seriously though, is the term "the cloud" a substitute for "the Internet", now? Enough with this please.
Thanks for the effort of posting the instructions, however this seems to promote usage of Tor as a proxy system, which is not what Tor is for. Someone pointed out in this thread that Tor is for anonymization, not simple proxy-ing. Using Tor to access music is not just overkill: it can somewhat hurt people who actually need its service.
How will musicians, writers, movie studios, news organizations, software companies etc even approach covering the costs of producing their work if the first person who buys it can make infinite number of copies and share them with the whole world?
1) musicians make money out of concerts
2) writers: I don't see the demise of the printed book anytime soon
3) news organizations do not own the news. If you think they don't "copy" news/data already made available, think again. News outlets survive because they (are supposed to) provide an added-value such as commentaries, opinion pieces, etc.
4) movie studios make money from cinema entries, an experience which you cannot copy. Piracy has not diminished their revenue (studies), neither for that nor DVDs
5) software companies make money out of maintenance and contract for upgrades. Necessary model even for Open Source s/w (see Red Hat).
I hope artists can get a better deal for themselves and increasing availability of channels apart from traditional record companies may give them a better negotiating position. Free market will take care of it.
Considering the majors have a quasi-monopoly on the market, it's hard to trust that it will take care of it so easily.
Please mod parent up (why is it still only 4 Insightful as I am reading it?).
Epine, this is a brilliant post. There are so many powerful ideas in it. Out of curiosity, where have you learnt about those? Personal experience? You sound like someone who is into personal development or at least has read books on the topic.
"I was listening to you the other day and I started to get this feeling, so I started to wonder if there was more to your story." The first five words will catch most women off guard, the rest of it is fairly non-directive, and the woman will regard it as a small trophy that you, as a man, admit to having emotional responses.
Simply brilliant. But as you say, the best thing in all regards is to remain authentic, as in: truthful to your feelings.
Meetup.com: absolutely. I live in a city (London) where social interactions are notoriously difficult. Due to an injury I had to stop sporty activities, so I needed something else to occupy my evenings without staying at home. I discovered meetup.com 5 months ago as a way to go out and do stuff with others (I love going to arty events and things like that but my friends are not always available).
My social life is pretty amazing now. The point is that you get to meet people sharing the same interests, or like Petrus said, sometimes purely for socialising.
The power of this is that a lot of people are basically a bit shy - even in those socialising groups - and will just love it if you come to them and start chatting. Much, much easier than in a bar with completely random strangers, if you ask this introvert (but social-loving) geek.
I made so many friendly acquaintances I now see regularly and a even a few new friends (I use this term sparingly) - I highly recommend it. There must be other Web sites of that kind BTW.
Mod parent up. Free cycle hire schemes are a huge success and are spreading all over the world.
In France it did not start in Paris, actually, but in Lyon with the Velov (Velib in Paris). The Velov not only incited people to use free bikes to commute, it actually made more people use their own bikes.
There is no question this type of plan is the way forward for cities. Less congestion, less pollution, faster commute, healthier city dwellers, etc. The list of advantages is huge.
The US film industry rating system is very secretive, as exposed by the very enlightening and entertaining documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia description:
The film discusses disparities the filmmaker sees in ratings and feedback: between Hollywood and independent films, between homosexual and heterosexual sexual situations, between male and female sexual depictions, and between violence and sexual content.
[...]
The director used a private investigator [...] to unmask the identities of the ratings and appeals board members.
DB design is a pretty good analogy for the concept
I have to take issue with you on this.
So if Address2 is optional, you would want to split Address into its own table with a parent key pointing back to the user entry.
Sure. That works for the database layer because you assume a query language that let you directly access the Address2 table/entity class.
Not so much so in programming languages.
In programs, the concept of navigation is fundamental. For instance you want to give the implementor of the User class
the possiblity to navigate from User to the Address2 possibly held by User, but only in that direction,
by looking at the corresponding field/attribute.
You do not want to give access to all the possible instances of Address2. There isn't / should not be any "select * from Address2 where user_key = 'myUser.key'" (unless in SQL or OQL of course, again, that's at the DB access layer,
not at the business object layer).
You do not want to break practices of neat programming structures (be they in OO or in procedural languages) that are meant
to prevent maintenance from becoming nightmarish and costly. Yes, you could program a Address(2)Accessor class of some sort
(increasing the complexity of your program - are you going to do this for every entity/class?), make that one a singleton
(urrghh) if a desperate attempt to keep control of your program, but that will only make things more difficult to deal with in
the long, medium and short term.
In summary, while I think you make interesting points, I'm just saying one has to be very careful when making DB analogies
for programming languages. Maybe a car analogy though... ?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Very good point.
I often have the impression that the Slashdot community is dominated (in forum participation at least) by people who live in English-speaking countries, especially the UK and, obviously, the US. I wonder how true that is. Are there any stats on Slashdot demographics?
Apologies: I realize this is a bit off-topic.
This statement is a bit too clear-cut. AFAIK, history - and in particular the Industrial Revolution - begs to differ with you. It seems technological progress is often met with rejection - sometimes even accompanied with violence. People being scared of the potentially devastating effects of machines on their lives. A famous example is related here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Excerpt: "The principal objection of the Luddites was against the introduction of new wide-framed automated looms that could be operated by cheap, relatively unskilled labour, resulting in the loss of jobs for many skilled textile workers."
Could this possibly sound familiar?
And this got an Insightful moderation (5 points)???
Grand-parent said:
Governments don't appear interested it dealing with this.
I don't necessarily have confidence that the government could implement solutions to control spam, but at least different countries could cooperate to fight spam - maybe that's what GP mpe meant.
Instead, we have governments the world over (Europe, US,...) passing laws to limit file sharing, as if this was a more significant problem to society and the economy.
GP said:
Probably because it isn't the (alleged) profits of the entertainments industry being affected.
I share this opinion more and more. It's sad. Governments, who should be protecting us the little guys (we have the votes...but don't always use them), seem more interested in protecting the interests of corporations (which have the economic power).
I mean look at French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He's famous for exchanging favors with his friends CEOs of mega-companies. What has he been doing with his infamous Hadopi three strikes law for instance? Aren't there BIGGER problems to solve for a government than copyright infringement?
Dammit.
What do you mean "exclusing"? Did you mean "excluding" or did you mean "only"? If you never ate protein then that's why you lost so much of it...in your muscle, because of cellular turn-over. But surely I am misunderstanding?
That being said...Generally speaking lowering the calorie intake is a starting principle to lose fat, but studies have shown that even a balanced (lower-calorie) diet, will make you lose muscle as well. If you do endurance exercises, you will also lose muscles, sometimes even more. On the other hand, it seems working those muscles out with weights (or machines) prevents muscle loss...even if it means not gaining a much as with a normal calorie level.
I read that in Jogging International magazine. A long time ago. I wish I had the time to find actual references, it feels cheap to mention something like this without references - sorry for that.
Thanks Tim. It seems to me though this is tied to the bank, isn't it? Several people here have mentioned Citi in the US, but I don't think many other banks offer this. A few years ago PayPal had an attempt at such a service but for some reason they scraped it away.
BTW, can someone post a list of vendors of virtual temporary credit cards? A search on the Web didn't lead to much last time. This would obviously be something very useful for Internet purchase safety, if anything (tired of vendors who don't even encrypt account passwords). Why oh why isn't that service more pervasive?
Here in the UK our wonderful government outsources the implementation of its wonderful data retention policies to "contractors". A lot of private data about a huge number of people in the UK got lost in the wild, stolen or otherwise, in recent years. Subcontracting enables the government to shift the blame. How convenient. Somehow subcontracting enables some to get rid of their accountability.
Right before immigration checks, the USCIS banner says that they strive to welcome anyone with courtesy. Maybe they forgot to tell their employees about that.
No I don't think so. I am fairly sure I didn't have to do that last time I checked in for my round-trip to the US from the UK. The credit card should only be for identification. As long as they can see your passport, which is mandatory anyway, you shouldn't have to present your CC.
I agree with your point, but just to be the Devil's Advocate here: the consequences of addiction to chocolate are not exactly as bad as those you get from cocaine or heroin addiction. That being said, I dislike that harmless substances like cannabis are forbidden whereas alcohol isn't.
Most people don't care or don't know about this possibility, and effectively, very few will disable the initial instructions. Those instructions are not annoying the recipients but their callers. So, they should be removed by default by the phone company. They do not help anybody.
You go to court for traffic offenses?!?!
You must be new here. Er...I mean, in the US.
In the US you can challenge a traffic fine by going to court. So it's a Good Thing.
Very good point.
And I'll give the example of the McLibel case where the court ruled that the UK libel law breached the European Convention on Human Rights and fined the UK for damages.
Apple has done a remarkable, I mean, incredibly impressive job of winning Joe Public as a consumer of electronics. Their products are reliable, simple to use, and beautiful. Think of the ease-of-use of Mac OS, the beauty of the G4 laptop when it came out compared to every other laptop on the market at the time, the cool design of the iPod, the inherent coolness of the iPhone (object, graphical touch interface etc.).
I wonder if most of the people who bought an iPhone really care about the non-open, locked-down aspect of the iPhone. As a geek, evolutions in the offering of phones on the market such as Android sound completely natural to me, but IMHO most people don't need or want to hack their phones. I have a feeling that most people (who bought the iPhone) don't even know about Google Voice, and could care less about developing and selling applications for the iPhone.
Just my guess.
Any child who's played a strategy game knows this for a fact: Resources is the first thing you should make sure you have plenty of.
Or any adult who's played Starcraft.
But it is very sad though when the ante is upped not by another set of marketing people for commercial interests, but by a disinterested party who is supposed to have geek knowledge.
>Zittrain knows his stuff. He was friends with Postel
Oh. Of course. He must be a very good computer scientist, then. :-)
Seriously though, is the term "the cloud" a substitute for "the Internet", now? Enough with this please.
Thanks for the effort of posting the instructions, however this seems to promote usage of Tor as a proxy system, which is not what Tor is for. Someone pointed out in this thread that Tor is for anonymization, not simple proxy-ing. Using Tor to access music is not just overkill: it can somewhat hurt people who actually need its service.
How will musicians, writers, movie studios, news organizations, software companies etc even approach covering the costs of producing their work if the first person who buys it can make infinite number of copies and share them with the whole world?
1) musicians make money out of concerts
2) writers: I don't see the demise of the printed book anytime soon
3) news organizations do not own the news. If you think they don't "copy" news/data already made available, think again. News outlets survive because they (are supposed to) provide an added-value such as commentaries, opinion pieces, etc.
4) movie studios make money from cinema entries, an experience which you cannot copy. Piracy has not diminished their revenue (studies), neither for that nor DVDs
5) software companies make money out of maintenance and contract for upgrades. Necessary model even for Open Source s/w (see Red Hat).
I hope artists can get a better deal for themselves and increasing availability of channels apart from traditional record companies may give them a better negotiating position. Free market will take care of it.
Considering the majors have a quasi-monopoly on the market, it's hard to trust that it will take care of it so easily.
Please mod parent up (why is it still only 4 Insightful as I am reading it?).
Epine, this is a brilliant post. There are so many powerful ideas in it. Out of curiosity, where have you learnt about those? Personal experience? You sound like someone who is into personal development or at least has read books on the topic.
"I was listening to you the other day and I started to get this feeling, so I started to wonder if there was more to your story." The first five words will catch most women off guard, the rest of it is fairly non-directive, and the woman will regard it as a small trophy that you, as a man, admit to having emotional responses.
Simply brilliant. But as you say, the best thing in all regards is to remain authentic, as in: truthful to your feelings.
My social life is pretty amazing now. The point is that you get to meet people sharing the same interests, or like Petrus said, sometimes purely for socialising. The power of this is that a lot of people are basically a bit shy - even in those socialising groups - and will just love it if you come to them and start chatting. Much, much easier than in a bar with completely random strangers, if you ask this introvert (but social-loving) geek.
I made so many friendly acquaintances I now see regularly and a even a few new friends (I use this term sparingly) - I highly recommend it. There must be other Web sites of that kind BTW.
In France it did not start in Paris, actually, but in Lyon with the Velov (Velib in Paris). The Velov not only incited people to use free bikes to commute, it actually made more people use their own bikes.
There is no question this type of plan is the way forward for cities. Less congestion, less pollution, faster commute, healthier city dwellers, etc. The list of advantages is huge.
And it works very well.
Forget about the Dean Kamen's Segway mirage... :-)
Excerpt from the Wikipedia description:
The film discusses disparities the filmmaker sees in ratings and feedback: between Hollywood and independent films, between homosexual and heterosexual sexual situations, between male and female sexual depictions, and between violence and sexual content.
[...]
The director used a private investigator [...] to unmask the identities of the ratings and appeals board members.
DB design is a pretty good analogy for the concept
I have to take issue with you on this.
So if Address2 is optional, you would want to split Address into its own table with a parent key pointing back to the user entry.
Sure. That works for the database layer because you assume a query language that let you directly access the Address2 table/entity class.
Not so much so in programming languages.
In programs, the concept of navigation is fundamental. For instance you want to give the implementor of the User class the possiblity to navigate from User to the Address2 possibly held by User, but only in that direction, by looking at the corresponding field/attribute.
You do not want to give access to all the possible instances of Address2. There isn't / should not be any "select * from Address2 where user_key = 'myUser.key'" (unless in SQL or OQL of course, again, that's at the DB access layer, not at the business object layer).
You do not want to break practices of neat programming structures (be they in OO or in procedural languages) that are meant to prevent maintenance from becoming nightmarish and costly. Yes, you could program a Address(2)Accessor class of some sort (increasing the complexity of your program - are you going to do this for every entity/class?), make that one a singleton (urrghh) if a desperate attempt to keep control of your program, but that will only make things more difficult to deal with in the long, medium and short term.
In summary, while I think you make interesting points, I'm just saying one has to be very careful when making DB analogies for programming languages. Maybe a car analogy though... ? :-)