sounds like it might make a very nice DSP chip. However lots of simple, non-contentious, non-overlapping floatingpoint computation is really not a problem most desktop or notebook users are struggling with. You've obviously never done graphics or sound pipeline programming.
History has proved over and over (and over and over) that personal trust is not an effective method of ensuring accurate reporting. "Cited Sources", of course, are worthless in such a context; all you have to do is cite an internally circulated Departmental memo (or whatever) which the public does not have access to. That is, after all, one of the main points of this project. And if the information is the slightest bit damning, most people will discount denials by the authoritative source (as well they should).
Other loopholes exist; I've seen many people here on/. taken in by the old "lookalike" trick, responding to trolls by "CndrTaco". But more importantly, it's all to easy for a source to set himself up to look trustworthy. All he has to do is post a few innocuous, unverifiable, believable, interesting, and utterly false stories to get a "following". Since nobody's going to call him out on them, he gets trust by default. And then when he posts the whopper about Cheney's secret Pope Assassination Squad, he's got the cred to make people believe it.
Oh, thank goodness! The magic of P2P will allow researchers to libel mercilessly without any fear of repercussions! Tell us again about the FREEMASONS!
When did "information wants to be free" become "information wants to be indemnified"?
Well, the same thing happens to Windows (think of all those horrible media player GUIs), but the single dominant toolkit, IMHO, helps keep developers in line. If Y had a good IDE with a good integrated window designer, I think that would go quite a long way towards acceptance.
Qt could help with this, by releasing a version using Y's native widgets.
As interesting as ion engines sound, it seems like they might be rather limited in use. After all, with such low acceleration, procedures such as leaving the orbit of a planet or moon might be impossible, or at least take decades. Anyone with more specific knowledge than the Beeb wanna weigh in?
The loopholes you mention are speculative, and don't strike me as extremely likely. An important phrase in law: bona fide. "[in] good faith". What that means, is that if you take a telemarketer to court, and he claims that he really was just doing a scientific survey to determine whether or not american households wanted to participate in such-and-such a once in a lifetime offer, and what their addresses and credit card numbers are, the judge will deliver a smackdown, because although the telemarketer may be technically conducting a survey, it is certainly not a bona fide survey.
Yeah, sure, I'll get a few calls from actual surveys and politicians. Whatever; those amount to a small fraction of the calls I get. But I very much doubt that I'll just start getting carpet-cleaning calls prefaced with "we're doing a survey" or "vote for me".
Well, if by 'work' you mean 'drive all direct marketing companies into bankruptcy and put all telemarketers out of a job and slaughter all their pets', you're right. This isn't gonna do that. For every name on the DNC list, there's five more that aren't.
But if you define 'work' as 'let people who don't want to be inundated with telemarketing calls, and know how to go about it', then yes yes yes it will work. True, it takes a little more know-how than going to a website and entering your phone number.
I have spam filters on my email address. I spent several hours sorting spam to feed the bayesian filter, and tweaking the filtering program I use to queue blocked messages, pending a confirmation from the sender. Now that it's up and running, it's a hands-off, low-maintenance solution that shields me from that particular annoyance, while imposing no real burden on myself or those who email me (I haven't had a single false-positive).
In contrast, up until now there was very little I could do about telemarketing calls. I could sign up for the DMA's DNC list--and block those few companies that actually gave a rat's ass. And I could recite the "Please take me off your list" incantation. But that latter one only stops one company at a time, and there's plenty of 'em to stop.
You know the old story about the two explorers facing the tiger, and one of them starts to run, and the other one asks him why he's bothering, to which the first replies "I don't have to outrun the tiger, I just have to outrun you"? The DNC list is a chance for those of us in the know to start running. It's not a universal solution that'll kill telemarketing, but it IS a solution for me.
Why all the gushing?
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
A very special "call for questions" today...Roblimo's favorite book of the 21st Century so far award for American Gods...a free speech activist....avoid triteness.
My Question:
Mr. Gaiman, what's wrong with Roblimo? Why does he keep humping your leg?
That's exactly what I mean by "unreliable pop-out connectors"; those X-Jack things were horrible. They didn't make a good connection much of the time, and under normal use they slowly ripped the card apart (I've seen many, many modems like that with the top and bottom halves forced away from each other, and a couple where the cord was tugged and the thing just ripped all the way out).
Ugh. Remember the first PCMCIA cards, specifically the modems and the NICs? Remember the horrible, easy-to-lose dongles, and the fragile and unreliable pop-out connectors? Remember how THEN double-height PCMCIA cards came into vogue, since they were actually big enough to fit on some real connectors? And now it's back to the teeny cards all over again. I can understand a small form factor for pocket PCs, but SD/SM/CF/whatever more than fill the niche for solid state storage, and CF also can do everything else, rather adroitly. And it isn't as though the digital road warriors among us are staggering under the weight of current PCMCIA cards, even the ones that are (HORROR!) big enough to stick an RJ-45 into. In conclusion, who the hell cares about form factor?
The TV and telephone are different, tho; nobody ever caught a virus from a telephone (Douglas Adams references aside), and you do in fact need a license to run a TV station. The point is that, as a computer user, you have the ability to unwittingly affect lots and lots of other people.
It's tempting to blame the vendors, and blame for stuff like the RPC holes should of course fall squarely on Microsoft's head, but keep in mind how successful trojan horses have been; some of the worst epidemics have required the uninformed cooperation of their victims.
Now we get to listen to all the little teenie bopper girls out there talk about makeup problems, who the cutest boy in class is, who kissed who behind whose back..Yeah... and with spellchecking, this time we'll actually be able to understand them.
Slashdot Mirror
sounds like it might make a very nice DSP chip. However lots of simple, non-contentious, non-overlapping floatingpoint computation is really not a problem most desktop or notebook users are struggling with.
You've obviously never done graphics or sound pipeline programming.
History has proved over and over (and over and over) that personal trust is not an effective method of ensuring accurate reporting. "Cited Sources", of course, are worthless in such a context; all you have to do is cite an internally circulated Departmental memo (or whatever) which the public does not have access to. That is, after all, one of the main points of this project. And if the information is the slightest bit damning, most people will discount denials by the authoritative source (as well they should).
/. taken in by the old "lookalike" trick, responding to trolls by "CndrTaco". But more importantly, it's all to easy for a source to set himself up to look trustworthy. All he has to do is post a few innocuous, unverifiable, believable, interesting, and utterly false stories to get a "following". Since nobody's going to call him out on them, he gets trust by default. And then when he posts the whopper about Cheney's secret Pope Assassination Squad, he's got the cred to make people believe it.
Other loopholes exist; I've seen many people here on
Oh, thank goodness! The magic of P2P will allow researchers to libel mercilessly without any fear of repercussions! Tell us again about the FREEMASONS!
When did "information wants to be free" become "information wants to be indemnified"?
"Greetings. My name is Ngaba Umbele. I am the former finance minister of, um, Australia....."
"That's not a DDOS. *pulls out Inbox*
Now THAT's a DDOS!"
Well, the same thing happens to Windows (think of all those horrible media player GUIs), but the single dominant toolkit, IMHO, helps keep developers in line. If Y had a good IDE with a good integrated window designer, I think that would go quite a long way towards acceptance.
Qt could help with this, by releasing a version using Y's native widgets.
As interesting as ion engines sound, it seems like they might be rather limited in use. After all, with such low acceleration, procedures such as leaving the orbit of a planet or moon might be impossible, or at least take decades. Anyone with more specific knowledge than the Beeb wanna weigh in?
an extremely small (but vocal) minority with problems
/me ducks fireballs
Ah! You mean Apple users!
No. Have you actually read this thread? Perhaps you should do so before posting.
The loopholes you mention are speculative, and don't strike me as extremely likely. An important phrase in law: bona fide. "[in] good faith". What that means, is that if you take a telemarketer to court, and he claims that he really was just doing a scientific survey to determine whether or not american households wanted to participate in such-and-such a once in a lifetime offer, and what their addresses and credit card numbers are, the judge will deliver a smackdown, because although the telemarketer may be technically conducting a survey, it is certainly not a bona fide survey.
Yeah, sure, I'll get a few calls from actual surveys and politicians. Whatever; those amount to a small fraction of the calls I get. But I very much doubt that I'll just start getting carpet-cleaning calls prefaced with "we're doing a survey" or "vote for me".
Oh, shit, you're right! Now it's not funny or topical anymore! Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention!
Well, if by 'work' you mean 'drive all direct marketing companies into bankruptcy and put all telemarketers out of a job and slaughter all their pets', you're right. This isn't gonna do that. For every name on the DNC list, there's five more that aren't.
But if you define 'work' as 'let people who don't want to be inundated with telemarketing calls, and know how to go about it', then yes yes yes it will work. True, it takes a little more know-how than going to a website and entering your phone number.
I have spam filters on my email address. I spent several hours sorting spam to feed the bayesian filter, and tweaking the filtering program I use to queue blocked messages, pending a confirmation from the sender. Now that it's up and running, it's a hands-off, low-maintenance solution that shields me from that particular annoyance, while imposing no real burden on myself or those who email me (I haven't had a single false-positive).
In contrast, up until now there was very little I could do about telemarketing calls. I could sign up for the DMA's DNC list--and block those few companies that actually gave a rat's ass. And I could recite the "Please take me off your list" incantation. But that latter one only stops one company at a time, and there's plenty of 'em to stop.
You know the old story about the two explorers facing the tiger, and one of them starts to run, and the other one asks him why he's bothering, to which the first replies "I don't have to outrun the tiger, I just have to outrun you"? The DNC list is a chance for those of us in the know to start running. It's not a universal solution that'll kill telemarketing, but it IS a solution for me.
in communist russia, snake eats dingo!
A court order IS a warrant.
A very special "call for questions" today...Roblimo's favorite book of the 21st Century so far award for American Gods...a free speech activist....avoid triteness.
My Question:
Mr. Gaiman, what's wrong with Roblimo? Why does he keep humping your leg?
That's exactly what I mean by "unreliable pop-out connectors"; those X-Jack things were horrible. They didn't make a good connection much of the time, and under normal use they slowly ripped the card apart (I've seen many, many modems like that with the top and bottom halves forced away from each other, and a couple where the cord was tugged and the thing just ripped all the way out).
Ugh. Remember the first PCMCIA cards, specifically the modems and the NICs? Remember the horrible, easy-to-lose dongles, and the fragile and unreliable pop-out connectors? Remember how THEN double-height PCMCIA cards came into vogue, since they were actually big enough to fit on some real connectors? And now it's back to the teeny cards all over again. I can understand a small form factor for pocket PCs, but SD/SM/CF/whatever more than fill the niche for solid state storage, and CF also can do everything else, rather adroitly. And it isn't as though the digital road warriors among us are staggering under the weight of current PCMCIA cards, even the ones that are (HORROR!) big enough to stick an RJ-45 into. In conclusion, who the hell cares about form factor?
You know that isn't the real Seth, right? Check the spelling next time.
The TV and telephone are different, tho; nobody ever caught a virus from a telephone (Douglas Adams references aside), and you do in fact need a license to run a TV station. The point is that, as a computer user, you have the ability to unwittingly affect lots and lots of other people.
It's tempting to blame the vendors, and blame for stuff like the RPC holes should of course fall squarely on Microsoft's head, but keep in mind how successful trojan horses have been; some of the worst epidemics have required the uninformed cooperation of their victims.
Ever gone to a site like jdfhawkejrhawk.museum? Same deal. Not that many people would accidentally go to www.slashdot.museum....
Now we get to listen to all the little teenie bopper girls out there talk about makeup problems, who the cutest boy in class is, who kissed who behind whose back..Yeah... and with spellchecking, this time we'll actually be able to understand them.
The problem with an EMP in your watch is after using it once you have to buy a new watch.
I'm afraid you stopped reading too soon. Here's the bit you missed:
Sucks big fat sweaty donkey balls:
* Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
RTFA. The legislation would make it legal to post a link to the rebuttal.
SECTION 4 - RESTRICTIONS ON USAGE
You may not use it to send spam!
You may not use it for a scam!