No doubt a *huge* concern with this unique case, and one of the many reasons for its publicity, is the danger of legal precedents. How would you predict the long-term effects of this case with other landmark cases such as Roe vs. Wade?
I don't see how anyone can say that George Washington would agree with this. I'm not even sure I do, though my personal greed gets in the way, and everything seems fine.:)
In reply to point 2, I can verify that the 3dfx drivers for Linux lag behind the Windows implementations. What makes me the angriest at that is how 3dfx wants to give the illusion of supporting Linux when other manufacturers won't.
This sounds like really interesting news actually. Linux outperforms Windows in nearly every category *except* gaming. Many games have been ported to Linux, but all those I know of are at least fractionally slower (I'm sure someone can point out an exception).
If Linux were to become a good foundation for future gaming consoles, we would see a lot more attention paid to building extraordinary (as opposed to merely working) drivers for various video cards, etc. I know many people who use Windows for the purpose of playing games due to this fact.
Also, if Linux were to become more of a gaming platform, we might see more games being released for it, instead of someone having to hack out a port to nearly everything we want to play.
All in all, this has at least some potential. Oh, and for the sceptics that I'm sure are already popping up, making Linux perform better in these areas will *not* degrade its usefulness in all the areas it already dominates. I would even highly doubt that it will take away any of the motivation for progress in other areas. I'd even argue that this would bring more attention to Linux in general with the possibility of having more intelligent people working on some of the details.
Not everyone who uses Windows is lame. Some haven't been exposed to anything else, so how can we judge them? There may be another Linus out there dialing into AOL on his Win2K machine just dying to find something better...
I happen to work with a woman from Thailand, and her variable names are all but impossible to determine meaning from. I would have thought that Thai could not exist with only the latin alphabet, but I've been proven wrong.
As for how things would be different if the majority of code was written in a different language (that a majority of programmers understood, much like English is today), I really think it would make very little difference. True, some languages express certain emotions, situations, etc. a little more precisely than English, but usually an example can be given comparing the same language in which English has a more detailed expression in describing something.
As for Perl, show my mom a program written in Perl and a French poem, and I guarantee you the Perl will look more foreign to her than the French. It's all perspective.
Funny, you just proved my point while trying to disprove it. I never made any assumptions about which number came next, you did. However, the pattern you mentioned is in fact a pattern and not a method of calculating a member of the group.
This is a method used to calculate *a* prime number. It's not unique in that manner. There are many others.
What it is *not* is a pattern to the prime numbers. Hell, there is no known pattern to the non-prime numbers either. Guess what though, I can take any power of two, and it won't be a prime number. Yes! I figured out the pattern!
Wait, here's another. Multiply the number five by any other number. Wow! I found another!
In short, the word pattern: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
There are many ways to calculate prime numbers, yes. Calculations are not patterns.
To help you out a bit, there is a pattern to the following series: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25,...
Can you guess this pattern? Good job. Know what the 1000th number in this list would be? Good job. Did you have to know the values of any other elements in the list, or did you just need to know the pattern? I think you understand.
Oh, and the 1000th prime number is 7919. Useful stuff to know.
My favorite unanswered questions like this are those which are easy to explain but relatively impossible to figure out. For example, no one has yet to discover *any* pattern in the prime numbers. I can explain that question to my grandmother. Difficult questions aren't always complicated to explain.
I have successfully used a "real" modem on a laptop that came with a winmodem without having to take out the winmodem or mess with it in any way (girlfriend's laptop, else I'd have just chunked it). Only problem you might run into is, depending on your choice of distribution, some sort of auto-detect that *thinks* it can use the winmodem and doesn't bother looking beyond that. Luckily, in my case, the *real* modem was the only one detected, so life was made easy.
I had a similar problem with trying to use a soundcard on an older computer with onboard sound. Red Hat 6.2 recognized the onboard sound and quit looking. It can be done, though. Being the grasshopper I am, it took a series of connecting/disconnecting the sound card and shutting down the machine. I've since learned that it's easier than that, so you might have a better idea.
Hope that helped. At least knowing something *can* be done can be motivational. *chuckle*
A person can walk in off the street with your name and old address and be given your forwarding information if you completed an official change of address. This is law; this is policy. You don't have to accept this argument, because your acceptance changes nothing.
If you don't believe me, go to your local post office and give it a shot. Now, what the USPS cannot do under any circumstance is give someone your new address based on your name alone. This has come up many times, and there are severe penalties if this is not adhered to. So, if some axe murderer is trying to kill you and knows where you live, don't fill out a change of adderss if you move and don't want this fiend to find you.
Now, if you can understand this much, surely you can understand that some annoying corporation with a handful of junk mail has the same rights and expectations of the USPS as your best friend does. The USPS cannot be biased as to who is grants any service/information/etc to. This is law; no acceptance required.
As I mentioned earlier, I know this is annoying, etc. I also know that some marketing companies have devised ways to abuse the system. In my opinion, your idea of mail forwarding would be a lot better.
There are many improvements I can think of, aside from forwarding. For example, most of my junk mail is either addressed to someone who lived in my apartment before me, or it is addressed to "Resident." To the USPS, an address is an address. Forwarding is considered to cut down on this type of spam because people have to know your name. The only other solution would be to deny forwarding information to anyone, as you suggested, and make them use your old address, but this just doesn't make sense in the eyes of the USPS. It's less user-friendly and more work. I don't see it happening, even though it would be better due to the abuse by mass-mailing companies.
If someone has your old mailing address and your name, the USPS is obligated to provide them with the forwarding information.
If you want to get picky about who gets to know your new adderss and who doesn't, don't use the USPS mail forwarding system. All you're basically doing is proving a link from your old mailbox to your new. You can't expect the USPS to decide for you whose mail gets forwarded and whose doesn't. You're the one who filled out the card.
Think about it. It won't make your head explode; I promise.
Everyone that works in the facility I'm in has to have a government security clearance, and I've heard the Postal Service has one of the toughest background checks of all government agencies. We already house the national address database, have secure facilities that resemble science fiction movies (retinal scanners, cages that trap unauthorized personnel, bomb-proof doors, etc.), and any mistake made here could be considered a federal offense.
So, my point is that we already have this database; we just don't have any associated email addresses yet, plus it would be completely voluntary. The USPS cannot force anyone to partake of their services, but they have an obligation to provide them to all citizens.
Oh, and the budget for last year was approximately $63 billion, and not a penny of that comes from the government. In fact, the USPS gives a few billion back to the government. If there's that much money from postage within a year, I don't see the Postal Service going anywhere anytime soon.
Besides, the USPS has a pretty elite group deep within that are attempting to show the power of open source...and turning a lot of heads in the process.
Well, I happen to be involved with this project. Let me offer a few thoughts, but remember that I'm not advocating anything just because of who pays me.
First, the whole spam problem. I don't know about you, but I get shitloads of spam mail in my mailbox. I mean, I'm having to take out my trash all the time, because it's filled with all of this crap. So, for you to get "spam email," it would be replacing spam you would already be getting. Read that twice; the only way to have email delivered to this mailbox is if:
You give this address to someone, or it gets confiscated in the same manner your present addresses can be (protect your email addresses better).
Someone was going to send you spam mail to your mailbox, since they had to know your physical mailing address first, not just your email address.
While I think both methods are extremely annoying, it's a hell of a lot simpler for me to press the 'D' key in pine than it is to chuck a handful of crap in the trash, hoping nothing important is lost in the process. Sometimes "real" mail gets lost in the midst of all the crap, and you mistakenly trash it. I'd jump at the chance to be able to set up a filtering system for *all* of my spam mail.
Think of it this way, it is illegal for the USPS to abuse its strict privacy policy, so all you'd have to lose by getting one of these email addresses is you can cut down on your physical junk mail. Hell, don't even use your USPS account., then you can be sure *everything* sent there is trash. Treat it like a virtual/dev/null. It can't hurt. Sure, some marketing companies will just send crap to both places, but if you never check the USPS account, who cares?
As for privacy, the USPS is really good at keeping information safe. Sure, they've got dumb slogans like "Is it secure? Of course! It's the United States Postal Service!" All those spammers get your mailing address from somewhere aside from the USPS, though, and the same would apply to an email account sponsored by them. If you can't keep from displaying your email address everywhere to be spammed, it's your own fault. I know I've got email accounts that have been in use for years at home with no traces of spam mail. You can't blame all your problems on other people/organizations.
Connect:Internet::Disconnect:People?
on
LonelyNet
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· Score: 1
I believe that truth can be found in both perspectives.
On one hand, the Internet has drawn such an interest that there is an abundance of people to interact with online, and in many ways this had lead people to interact with people much more then ever before. These people marrying someone they met online obviously feel a real connection with that person, so while the Internet may seem "impersonal" to some, it obviously isn't to others.
On the other hand, I do think it is true that the Internet is causing people to be less social on a more personal level. For many, this may not be so, but I would wager that most people still value qualities that the Internet cannot offer. As communication has improved, the direct connection between the people communicating has lessend, historically. Wouldn't you consider a hand-written letter more personal than a typed one? How about an email? Wouldn't all of these pale in comparison with "live" communication?
Still, there are many situations that are vastly improved by the different levels of abstraction offered through the Internet. Some people are far more open online than in person. Does this mean that the Internet is causing people to feel socially inadequate? I tend to think it simply gives people with less confidence a chance to speak and be heard. That can't be so bad, can it?
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No doubt a *huge* concern with this unique case, and one of the many reasons for its publicity, is the danger of legal precedents. How would you predict the long-term effects of this case with other landmark cases such as Roe vs. Wade?
I don't see how anyone can say that George Washington would agree with this. I'm not even sure I do, though my personal greed gets in the way, and everything seems fine.
In reply to point 2, I can verify that the 3dfx drivers for Linux lag behind the Windows implementations. What makes me the angriest at that is how 3dfx wants to give the illusion of supporting Linux when other manufacturers won't.
Yeah, right.
This sounds like really interesting news actually. Linux outperforms Windows in nearly every category *except* gaming. Many games have been ported to Linux, but all those I know of are at least fractionally slower (I'm sure someone can point out an exception).
If Linux were to become a good foundation for future gaming consoles, we would see a lot more attention paid to building extraordinary (as opposed to merely working) drivers for various video cards, etc. I know many people who use Windows for the purpose of playing games due to this fact.
Also, if Linux were to become more of a gaming platform, we might see more games being released for it, instead of someone having to hack out a port to nearly everything we want to play.
All in all, this has at least some potential. Oh, and for the sceptics that I'm sure are already popping up, making Linux perform better in these areas will *not* degrade its usefulness in all the areas it already dominates. I would even highly doubt that it will take away any of the motivation for progress in other areas. I'd even argue that this would bring more attention to Linux in general with the possibility of having more intelligent people working on some of the details.
Not everyone who uses Windows is lame. Some haven't been exposed to anything else, so how can we judge them? There may be another Linus out there dialing into AOL on his Win2K machine just dying to find something better...
Now this *is* interesting.
A good explanation and example of this can be found here.
I happen to work with a woman from Thailand, and her variable names are all but impossible to determine meaning from. I would have thought that Thai could not exist with only the latin alphabet, but I've been proven wrong.
As for how things would be different if the majority of code was written in a different language (that a majority of programmers understood, much like English is today), I really think it would make very little difference. True, some languages express certain emotions, situations, etc. a little more precisely than English, but usually an example can be given comparing the same language in which English has a more detailed expression in describing something.
As for Perl, show my mom a program written in Perl and a French poem, and I guarantee you the Perl will look more foreign to her than the French. It's all perspective.
Funny, you just proved my point while trying to disprove it. I never made any assumptions about which number came next, you did. However, the pattern you mentioned is in fact a pattern and not a method of calculating a member of the group.
This is a method used to calculate *a* prime number. It's not unique in that manner. There are many others.
What it is *not* is a pattern to the prime numbers. Hell, there is no known pattern to the non-prime numbers either. Guess what though, I can take any power of two, and it won't be a prime number. Yes! I figured out the pattern!
Wait, here's another. Multiply the number five by any other number. Wow! I found another!
In short, the word pattern: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
There are many ways to calculate prime numbers, yes. Calculations are not patterns.
To help you out a bit, there is a pattern to the following series: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25,
Can you guess this pattern? Good job. Know what the 1000th number in this list would be? Good job. Did you have to know the values of any other elements in the list, or did you just need to know the pattern? I think you understand.
Oh, and the 1000th prime number is 7919. Useful stuff to know.
My favorite unanswered questions like this are those which are easy to explain but relatively impossible to figure out. For example, no one has yet to discover *any* pattern in the prime numbers. I can explain that question to my grandmother. Difficult questions aren't always complicated to explain.
Now I can create a turtle using Java and a hare using C. Things get more realistic every day!
Now if only I could use my ultimate VB and AOL skills somehow...
I have successfully used a "real" modem on a laptop that came with a winmodem without having to take out the winmodem or mess with it in any way (girlfriend's laptop, else I'd have just chunked it). Only problem you might run into is, depending on your choice of distribution, some sort of auto-detect that *thinks* it can use the winmodem and doesn't bother looking beyond that. Luckily, in my case, the *real* modem was the only one detected, so life was made easy.
I had a similar problem with trying to use a soundcard on an older computer with onboard sound. Red Hat 6.2 recognized the onboard sound and quit looking. It can be done, though. Being the grasshopper I am, it took a series of connecting/disconnecting the sound card and shutting down the machine. I've since learned that it's easier than that, so you might have a better idea.
Hope that helped. At least knowing something *can* be done can be motivational. *chuckle*
Alright, last try, then I give up.
A person can walk in off the street with your name and old address and be given your forwarding information if you completed an official change of address. This is law; this is policy. You don't have to accept this argument, because your acceptance changes nothing.
If you don't believe me, go to your local post office and give it a shot. Now, what the USPS cannot do under any circumstance is give someone your new address based on your name alone. This has come up many times, and there are severe penalties if this is not adhered to. So, if some axe murderer is trying to kill you and knows where you live, don't fill out a change of adderss if you move and don't want this fiend to find you.
Now, if you can understand this much, surely you can understand that some annoying corporation with a handful of junk mail has the same rights and expectations of the USPS as your best friend does. The USPS cannot be biased as to who is grants any service/information/etc to. This is law; no acceptance required.
As I mentioned earlier, I know this is annoying, etc. I also know that some marketing companies have devised ways to abuse the system. In my opinion, your idea of mail forwarding would be a lot better.
There are many improvements I can think of, aside from forwarding. For example, most of my junk mail is either addressed to someone who lived in my apartment before me, or it is addressed to "Resident." To the USPS, an address is an address. Forwarding is considered to cut down on this type of spam because people have to know your name. The only other solution would be to deny forwarding information to anyone, as you suggested, and make them use your old address, but this just doesn't make sense in the eyes of the USPS. It's less user-friendly and more work. I don't see it happening, even though it would be better due to the abuse by mass-mailing companies.
Well, this is simple.
If someone has your old mailing address and your name, the USPS is obligated to provide them with the forwarding information.
If you want to get picky about who gets to know your new adderss and who doesn't, don't use the USPS mail forwarding system. All you're basically doing is proving a link from your old mailbox to your new. You can't expect the USPS to decide for you whose mail gets forwarded and whose doesn't. You're the one who filled out the card.
Think about it. It won't make your head explode; I promise.
Everyone that works in the facility I'm in has to have a government security clearance, and I've heard the Postal Service has one of the toughest background checks of all government agencies. We already house the national address database, have secure facilities that resemble science fiction movies (retinal scanners, cages that trap unauthorized personnel, bomb-proof doors, etc.), and any mistake made here could be considered a federal offense.
So, my point is that we already have this database; we just don't have any associated email addresses yet, plus it would be completely voluntary. The USPS cannot force anyone to partake of their services, but they have an obligation to provide them to all citizens.
Oh, and the budget for last year was approximately $63 billion, and not a penny of that comes from the government. In fact, the USPS gives a few billion back to the government. If there's that much money from postage within a year, I don't see the Postal Service going anywhere anytime soon.
Besides, the USPS has a pretty elite group deep within that are attempting to show the power of open source...and turning a lot of heads in the process.
Well, I happen to be involved with this project. Let me offer a few thoughts, but remember that I'm not advocating anything just because of who pays me.
First, the whole spam problem. I don't know about you, but I get shitloads of spam mail in my mailbox. I mean, I'm having to take out my trash all the time, because it's filled with all of this crap. So, for you to get "spam email," it would be replacing spam you would already be getting. Read that twice; the only way to have email delivered to this mailbox is if:
- You give this address to someone, or it gets confiscated in the same manner your present addresses can be (protect your email addresses better).
- Someone was going to send you spam mail to your mailbox, since they had to know your physical mailing address first, not just your email address.
While I think both methods are extremely annoying, it's a hell of a lot simpler for me to press the 'D' key in pine than it is to chuck a handful of crap in the trash, hoping nothing important is lost in the process. Sometimes "real" mail gets lost in the midst of all the crap, and you mistakenly trash it. I'd jump at the chance to be able to set up a filtering system for *all* of my spam mail.Think of it this way, it is illegal for the USPS to abuse its strict privacy policy, so all you'd have to lose by getting one of these email addresses is you can cut down on your physical junk mail. Hell, don't even use your USPS account., then you can be sure *everything* sent there is trash. Treat it like a virtual
As for privacy, the USPS is really good at keeping information safe. Sure, they've got dumb slogans like "Is it secure? Of course! It's the United States Postal Service!" All those spammers get your mailing address from somewhere aside from the USPS, though, and the same would apply to an email account sponsored by them. If you can't keep from displaying your email address everywhere to be spammed, it's your own fault. I know I've got email accounts that have been in use for years at home with no traces of spam mail. You can't blame all your problems on other people/organizations.
I believe that truth can be found in both perspectives.
On one hand, the Internet has drawn such an interest that there is an abundance of people to interact with online, and in many ways this had lead people to interact with people much more then ever before. These people marrying someone they met online obviously feel a real connection with that person, so while the Internet may seem "impersonal" to some, it obviously isn't to others.
On the other hand, I do think it is true that the Internet is causing people to be less social on a more personal level. For many, this may not be so, but I would wager that most people still value qualities that the Internet cannot offer. As communication has improved, the direct connection between the people communicating has lessend, historically. Wouldn't you consider a hand-written letter more personal than a typed one? How about an email? Wouldn't all of these pale in comparison with "live" communication?
Still, there are many situations that are vastly improved by the different levels of abstraction offered through the Internet. Some people are far more open online than in person. Does this mean that the Internet is causing people to feel socially inadequate? I tend to think it simply gives people with less confidence a chance to speak and be heard. That can't be so bad, can it?