This is exactly what patents *should* be used for: secure rewards for innovators who take the risk of bringing out a future-leading product.
The US auto companies who had a product vision apparently inspired by Country & Western music unfortunately passed on the opportunity, and now they'll have to pay.
Don't assume a domain that appears unused is being squatted. It might be used for email, and it might have various unpublished subdomains that are being used.
I wish they would cover the entire ocean surface. There is a lot of interesting stuff out there, and last time I checked they only show the coastlines. Would be fun to see tankers in the middle of the ocean, killer waves on the loose, plastic garbage collected in the middle of the south pacific, tiny sailboats in the middle of nowwhere, reefs, whales, giant squid, narwhal - maybe even Cthulhu is out there somewhere.
The UN Human Rights Council was recently taken over by extremist Islamic states, who redefined the role of the council as protecting the world from "abuses" of free speech.
So China now has an ally in the UN.
In a few years, "unislamic" content providers will start to feel the heat.
I give money to Oxfam. They take my money, and use it to run their charity, which includes helping people as well as doing some overhead like, for example, creating ads and managing ad campaigns. Seems like a perfectly good use of my donation.
But now I find out that some of these efforts have been sabotaged, stealing part of the money I donated!
Not only does Oxfam have standing to sue, I would think Oxfam donors have also been wronged.
But worst of all, of course, is the loss of aid to the people who really need it. Hijack an Oxfam ad today, and another child goes hungry tomorrow.
And before you say that a collection of hashes would be vulnerable to a re-encoding attack, no, they wouldn't be, if they were hashes of the right features of the video. You don't do a hash of the bits of the file, you do a hash of the properties of the video. Properties being things like: is this pixel/group of pixels surrounded by darker or lighter pixels/groups of pixels in each compass direction. Similar approach with audio.
The really surprising thing about your post is it sounds like you think Google is stupid. I doubt you really believe that.
>They can just trivially re-encode.
No. You're thinking of cryptographic hashes where a one-bit change in the input leads to a totally different signature. This wouldn't be that kind of hash. It would most likely be a collection of a lot of hashes for each video, amalgamated into one or more signatures for each video.
If I explained the basics of the problem to my eight year old and pointed her in the right direction toward the solution, she would be able to figure it out.
>To prevent that, it seems, you would need to solve a hard-AI problem
Not really. There are simple techniques for doing robust signature creation and checking, without solving any hard AI problem.
Camera makers should just change the orientation of their lenses, as Panasonic recently did with one of their models. I'd be surprised if their new approach gives more bang for the buck than that. Most cameras/phones have PLENTY of physical depth, it's just not used because of the way camera sensors are oriented.
I was expecting an announcement about Hubble images. There must be millions of them by now, but there isn't a great way to access them. Sure, NASA announces a new image once in a while; they come out in dribs and drabs. It would be great to see Google's take on Hubble image accessibility.
Late comments, even very good ones, get almost no mod points.
Fixing this would help encourage civilized dialog by keeping some of the good quality commenters interested.
It's fine to reward early posters. But the magnitude of the effect is way out of proportion to what it needs to be, and it means that many excellent comments go unmoderated, just because they came an hour after the story instead of ten minutes.
Many games appeal to the reptilian brain. It's not easy to fit highbrow content into such a framework. That is not to say it can't be done, but the fact that it hasn't been done isn't really surprising.
Here's my proposal. Everyone on slashdot with a clue (see item 3) participates in an ISS Takedown. The International Space Station is what's wasting a lot of money, and it's also part of the road to further money-wasting projects like a manned trip to mars. How will the takedown work? I dunno, I was thinking lots of very big mirrors on sunny days, around the world, focused with the help of DIY semi-automated tools coordinated through the Internet, could maybe stress the cooling systems just enough to send it over the brink and require all the occupants to return home. Then it's just a matter of time. Is this feasible? I doubt it. Maybe prayer and waving dead chickens would help.
How does this achieve NASA's education objectives? It would be a huge story, not only because the ISS would be done with, but the entire program would have to be rebooted. They'd get coverage everywhere, and people would learn about their projects and programs.
>The two guys who did this were AVERAGING about 40-45 miles per day.
That's hard core, if not hard to believe. If you walk 4 miles an hour, which is a pretty fast pace especially carrying a pack, that's over 10 hours of solid walking a day. If it's true, these guys are not experiencing much of the trails compared to what normal hikers would.
Figure up at six, hit the trail by 6:30, eat on the run, take an hour's worth of 10 minute breaks during the day, plus an hour for lunch, and an hour to make camp. That puts you in a position to start preparing dinner at around 6:30 PM. Cook (or add water to you dried peas or whatever), eat, and hit the sack at 10:00PM or so. Maybe get a bath in once in a while. Thanks for sharing the link. Look forward to checking it out.
As you have noticed, podcasts generally suck - too much egotism, friendpotism, and what-I-had-for-breakfast.
Instead, check out IT Conversations. Hopefully others will suggest additional similar sources of high quality interviews and talks beyond just the NPR stuff, which often tends to be a rehash of what appeared on the Interweb several days earlier.
Let me turn the question around. Can e-books provide any benefit whatsoever to the user that they could not get just as well from plain HTML text and images? I'd argue not.
* Cancel movie rental subscription (Netflix) * Get movies and some books from the library * Cancel old unused website costing a monthly fee * Scour credit card statements, found another forgotton hosting account, cancelled it * Called auto insurance company and raised deductible for collision to $1000 * Bought a stovetop espresso maker so we don't need to buy good coffee by the cup now * Continued living with our old outdated computer monitor * No cable, no gaming accounts * No alchohol, no drugs, no lottery tickets * Pay things on time and avoid late fees * Remember if taxes take 50%, you have to earn $2 for each $1 you spend. * Stop buying stuff. * Get cheaper broadband plan * Cancel unused text messaging on wife's cell phone ($5/mo) * Cancel unused roaming plan ($5/mo) * Cancel unused Canada roaming addon ($3/mo) * Cancel unused "nights start at 7PM" addon on cell plan ($5/mo) * Ask nicely and get $10/mo unlimited cell data plan, including modem use (Sprint, Treo 650) instead of faster Cingular $40/mo+ plan * Refrain from getting car. Get exercise instead.
Lots of little amounts, and some big ones. They add up.
> From my blog "The open eleven steps to telecommuting" > 4) Install a DHCP demon on the local server to allocate local IP addresses
I wish you would translate this to English for us non-IT users who would like to do it at home. It would be great to have a single master machine at home from which new systems could pull their configuration. But a lot of what you wrote is Greek to me. How do I install a DHCP daemon, and on which OS? How is remote reimaging done? Please provide more juicy detail, thank you!
To get back on topic, I would just request IT people, before you smash perfectly good (maybe slightly outdated) equipment, think about donating it to your local school system, library, or charity. I've seen our IT person destroy nice but slightly old laptops, and then lie about doing it. From that day onward I never viewed him in the same light, fwiw.
Second thing, if you can not donate them, at least give them to an appropriate disposal facility that knows how to properly treat hazardous waste. Having a lead-free environment is a Really Good Thing.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly what patents *should* be used for: secure rewards for innovators who take the risk of bringing out a future-leading product.
The US auto companies who had a product vision apparently inspired by Country & Western music unfortunately passed on the opportunity, and now they'll have to pay.
Don't assume a domain that appears unused is being squatted. It might be used for email, and it might have various unpublished subdomains that are being used.
Staring at a console? Ewww. Ever heard of GroundWork?
I wish they would cover the entire ocean surface. There is a lot of interesting stuff out there, and last time I checked they only show the coastlines. Would be fun to see tankers in the middle of the ocean, killer waves on the loose, plastic garbage collected in the middle of the south pacific, tiny sailboats in the middle of nowwhere, reefs, whales, giant squid, narwhal - maybe even Cthulhu is out there somewhere.
Nice username! But judging by your userid (525388), you got that short name quite some time ago.
The UN Human Rights Council was recently taken over by extremist Islamic states, who redefined the role of the council as protecting the world from "abuses" of free speech.
So China now has an ally in the UN.
In a few years, "unislamic" content providers will start to feel the heat.
BT stole part of my donation to Oxfam.
I give money to Oxfam. They take my money, and use it to run their charity, which includes helping people as well as doing some overhead like, for example, creating ads and managing ad campaigns. Seems like a perfectly good use of my donation.
But now I find out that some of these efforts have been sabotaged, stealing part of the money I donated!
Not only does Oxfam have standing to sue, I would think Oxfam donors have also been wronged.
But worst of all, of course, is the loss of aid to the people who really need it. Hijack an Oxfam ad today, and another child goes hungry tomorrow.
And before you say that a collection of hashes would be vulnerable to a re-encoding attack, no, they wouldn't be, if they were hashes of the right features of the video. You don't do a hash of the bits of the file, you do a hash of the properties of the video. Properties being things like: is this pixel/group of pixels surrounded by darker or lighter pixels/groups of pixels in each compass direction. Similar approach with audio.
The really surprising thing about your post is it sounds like you think Google is stupid. I doubt you really believe that.
>They can just trivially re-encode.
No. You're thinking of cryptographic hashes where a one-bit change in the input leads to a totally different signature. This wouldn't be that kind of hash. It would most likely be a collection of a lot of hashes for each video, amalgamated into one or more signatures for each video.
If I explained the basics of the problem to my eight year old and pointed her in the right direction toward the solution, she would be able to figure it out.
>To prevent that, it seems, you would need to solve a hard-AI problem
Not really. There are simple techniques for doing robust signature creation and checking, without solving any hard AI problem.
It will be great to get confirmation that there are no health effects.
However, the problem of perception remains.
Unfortunately, home values are adversely affected when some people think, rightly or wrongly, that there is a cancer-ray in the neighborhood.
Not cell phones?
Must be the Chemtrails
Really, read that one for a good laugh.
Camera makers should just change the orientation of their lenses, as Panasonic recently did with one of their models. I'd be surprised if their new approach gives more bang for the buck than that. Most cameras/phones have PLENTY of physical depth, it's just not used because of the way camera sensors are oriented.
I was expecting an announcement about Hubble images. There must be millions of them by now, but there isn't a great way to access them. Sure, NASA announces a new image once in a while; they come out in dribs and drabs. It would be great to see Google's take on Hubble image accessibility.
Early comments get most of the mod points.
Late comments, even very good ones, get almost no mod points.
Fixing this would help encourage civilized dialog by keeping some of the good quality commenters interested.
It's fine to reward early posters. But the magnitude of the effect is way out of proportion to what it needs to be, and it means that many excellent comments go unmoderated, just because they came an hour after the story instead of ten minutes.
What? Me, bitter? Heh.
Truly a milestone for Lego on their march toward their destiny as rulers of the planet.
I, for one, welcome our Lego overlords.
Many games appeal to the reptilian brain. It's not easy to fit highbrow content into such a framework. That is not to say it can't be done, but the fact that it hasn't been done isn't really surprising.
Here's my proposal. Everyone on slashdot with a clue (see item 3) participates in an ISS Takedown. The International Space Station is what's wasting a lot of money, and it's also part of the road to further money-wasting projects like a manned trip to mars. How will the takedown work? I dunno, I was thinking lots of very big mirrors on sunny days, around the world, focused with the help of DIY semi-automated tools coordinated through the Internet, could maybe stress the cooling systems just enough to send it over the brink and require all the occupants to return home. Then it's just a matter of time. Is this feasible? I doubt it. Maybe prayer and waving dead chickens would help.
How does this achieve NASA's education objectives? It would be a huge story, not only because the ISS would be done with, but the entire program would have to be rebooted. They'd get coverage everywhere, and people would learn about their projects and programs.
>The two guys who did this were AVERAGING about 40-45 miles per day.
That's hard core, if not hard to believe. If you walk 4 miles an hour, which is a pretty fast pace especially carrying a pack, that's over 10 hours of solid walking a day. If it's true, these guys are not experiencing much of the trails compared to what normal hikers would.
Figure up at six, hit the trail by 6:30, eat on the run, take an hour's worth of 10 minute breaks during the day, plus an hour for lunch, and an hour to make camp. That puts you in a position to start preparing dinner at around 6:30 PM. Cook (or add water to you dried peas or whatever), eat, and hit the sack at 10:00PM or so. Maybe get a bath in once in a while. Thanks for sharing the link. Look forward to checking it out.
As you have noticed, podcasts generally suck - too much egotism, friendpotism, and what-I-had-for-breakfast.
Instead, check out IT Conversations. Hopefully others will suggest additional similar sources of high quality interviews and talks beyond just the NPR stuff, which often tends to be a rehash of what appeared on the Interweb several days earlier.
Let me turn the question around. Can e-books provide any benefit whatsoever to the user that they could not get just as well from plain HTML text and images? I'd argue not.
Presumably any such improvement will be licensable (or just plain doable -- maybe they already have it in the labs) by Intel as well.
Here's what we did:
* Cancel movie rental subscription (Netflix)
* Get movies and some books from the library
* Cancel old unused website costing a monthly fee
* Scour credit card statements, found another forgotton hosting account, cancelled it
* Called auto insurance company and raised deductible for collision to $1000
* Bought a stovetop espresso maker so we don't need to buy good coffee by the cup now
* Continued living with our old outdated computer monitor
* No cable, no gaming accounts
* No alchohol, no drugs, no lottery tickets
* Pay things on time and avoid late fees
* Remember if taxes take 50%, you have to earn $2 for each $1 you spend.
* Stop buying stuff.
* Get cheaper broadband plan
* Cancel unused text messaging on wife's cell phone ($5/mo)
* Cancel unused roaming plan ($5/mo)
* Cancel unused Canada roaming addon ($3/mo)
* Cancel unused "nights start at 7PM" addon on cell plan ($5/mo)
* Ask nicely and get $10/mo unlimited cell data plan, including modem use (Sprint, Treo 650) instead of faster Cingular $40/mo+ plan
* Refrain from getting car. Get exercise instead.
Lots of little amounts, and some big ones. They add up.
The thought of multiple people touching my monitor just grates. Even if it is horizontal, and even if that is the idea. Purell, anyone?
http://universe.google.com/ [finally making Hubble images easy; follow-on to Earth]
http://audio.google.com/ [logical extension of current offerings]
http://calendar.google.com/ [a top productivity app]
http://todo.google.com/ [productivity app, maybe 37signals purchase?]
http://contacts.google.com/ [productivity app, maybe LinkedIn purchase?]
http://teach.google.com/ [for teachers, organizing materials]
http://learn.google.com/ [for students of all ages]
http://bookmarks.google.com/ [del.icio.us type service]
https://storage.google.com/ [personal storage space]
http://welcometotheinterweb.google.com/ [something, I don't know what, for the next billion Internet users]
> From my blog "The open eleven steps to telecommuting"
> 4) Install a DHCP demon on the local server to allocate local IP addresses
I wish you would translate this to English for us non-IT users who would like to do it at home. It would be great to have a single master machine at home from which new systems could pull their configuration. But a lot of what you wrote is Greek to me. How do I install a DHCP daemon, and on which OS? How is remote reimaging done? Please provide more juicy detail, thank you!
To get back on topic, I would just request IT people, before you smash perfectly good (maybe slightly outdated) equipment, think about donating it to your local school system, library, or charity. I've seen our IT person destroy nice but slightly old laptops, and then lie about doing it. From that day onward I never viewed him in the same light, fwiw.
Second thing, if you can not donate them, at least give them to an appropriate disposal facility that knows how to properly treat hazardous waste. Having a lead-free environment is a Really Good Thing.