I AM MARYAM BARIACHA, WIDOW OF THE LATE SYGOBI BARIACHA. BEFORE HE DIED, MY HUSBAND ARRANGED FOR THE CAPTURE OF 17,000 LINUX DESKTOPS IN MY COUNTRY OF NIGERIA. THEY HAVE BEEN TAKEN HOSTAGE BY MICROSOFT, WHO IS WILLING TO PAY A FEE TOTALLING $17,000,000 TO PREVENT THEM FROM BEING RELEASED. AS A RESIDENT OF NIGERIA, I AM NOT ALLOWED TO COLLECT THIS MONEY, BUT IF AN INDIVIDUAL FROM OUTSIDE OUR COUNTRY STEPS UP, THEY CAN BE THE LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR MY HUSBAND...
Something I was unaware of, I thought it was a botched translation of something in English. But someone on the original site made an important point in a comment. The reporters were writing in Hebrew, and the output was supposed to be in Dutch. Only Babelfish doesn't do Hebrew, if it's the one accessible through Altavista. It does English and French to Dutch, and it also does Japanese, Russian and Chinese to English. But it doesn't do Hebrew either way. So I'm curious how this article originally got mangled. Either it wasn't the Babelfish I'm thinking of, it was a different site and wasn't Babelfish at all but some other web site, or it was a commercial program that botched this.
Also, as was also pointed out, someone at some newspaper writes an embassy about something and causes a diplomatic incident, gee, sounds like someone's awfully touchy. Reminds me of how those Mohammed cartoons caused a large part of the Muslim community to want to go Jihad over some newspaper from Sweden or one of the countries around there.
I love Babelfish, I think it's a great system for giving a rough idea of what the words in another language (in my case, of course, anything other than English) mean, or giving you a somewhat passable translation of your language into another. But anyone who's looked at the output of Babelfish should know, or should have reason to know, that it is not perfect and is basically good for getting the 'gist' of the item, the ideas. Which is about all you can do with automated translation. We do have an advantage, I think it's been said that, in English, anyway, that you can lose about 1/3 of the words in a sentence and still get the idea across. So there is some redundancy and that does help, but, it is an automated system and lacks judgment. And apparently, so did the people who used it and didn't warn the recipient.
Maybe it's me, but when I've posted a message where someone wrote something in a foreign (to me) language, and I replied to them, I included a note - in that language - indicating I am using a computer translation and it may have errors. And I do a cross-check by translating it back that the note that it may have errors won't.:)
So let me get this straight, some people used an automated translation system, without bothering to tell the person whom they were sending a somewhat important message, that the message had to be translated using software? I guess they never thought that translation software commonly has errors. It will do a reasonable job but it guesses, and sometimes it guesses wrong. I suppose they have never looked at a web page written in some other language and seen it translated to English. Anyone having used any computer system should know there is a possibility of error - in fact, strong probability if not guaranteed certainty - in automated processing of tasks which require human judgment. To be a little erudite here, I will throw in the gratuitous foreign language comment that judgment, is, primus inter pares, the hardest part of any task, because it cannot be automated, (or maybe I'll weasel out a bit by claiming it is extremely hard to automate). (For those that don't know latin, the phrase means 'first among equals', e.g. I mean all the tasks are hard, but some are harder, and on the difficulty scale, judgment is top of the list.)
Language translation is an art, because there can often be more than one way to phrase the sentence, and in some cases, there may not be an exact equivalence between the two languages for the term used. Even in English there are still problems; the term 'free software' has a problem because the word 'free' can be used in two completely different meanings depending on whether one means free of restrictions (what is sometimes called 'software libre') and 'free of cost'. But sometimes the term has no ambiguity even if one of the words does. When we speak of free speech, we mean the right to say what one pleases (within very narrow restrictions) without fear of government reprisal; it does not necessarily mean that you get to hear the person's opinions without someone paying for them, as in the case of TV and newspaper columnists. Knowing when an ambiguity is present and when it isn't is a judgement call. And that's something computers have a very hard time doing.
The other poster (caffeinemessiah) was right, the headline should have read Morons trusting the legendary untrustworthiness of Babelfish for official work spark minor diplomatic row.
I am talking about software being free in a purely financial sense.
I don't like twisting the language to fit anyone's marketing agenda, and the way the FSF use the word free strikes me as doing that, so I tend to avoid it.
Actually, it is the FSF that has been trying to remove the use of 'free' in the context of a piece of software not having typical proprietary restrictions (as opposed to a piece of software being free of charge) by using the term software libre (the Spanish term for free software) by using the term for free as in 'liberty', not as in 'beer'.
This wouldn't happen in the U.S. because the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act provides federal protection with respect to warranties, and severs the warranty from an item repaired out of warranty from any part not affected by the repaired area. From Wikipedia:Magnuson-Moss act was enacted by Congress in response to the widespread misuse by merchants of express warranties and disclaimers. So, for example, if you have an automobile and you have a non-manufacturer install a new air conditioner, this then voids your warranty on the air conditioner but does not void your warranty, for example, on the engine, the radio, or the transmission. Which is reasonable. So, it could be argued that replacing the operating system voids your (nonexistent) warranty on the operating system, but should not affect repair warranty on the hardware.
I would find it odd that the U.K. would have a warranty law which was less protective of customers than the U.S., and has been around since 1975. You may want to write or call one of your MPs and complain about that.
I have a program - I have no idea where I got it from, and I've probably had it for 20 years - named Browse. And that's what it does. That's all it does. It allows you to browse text files, either move up or down a line, or a screen at a time, or go to the top or bottom of the file. Handles files which use either CRLF, CR or LF for end of line so you can view MSDOS or Unix/Mac text files. It's an MSDos program, browse.com, maximum memory it uses is 16K. No, you didn't misread me, not 16meg, 16K; no matter how large a text file you give it, the program only uses 16K of memory. The program file itself is exactly 1,024 bytes.
I'm not sure what's wrong, but when I go to the site, I don't find anything. No article, no link to an article, no link to an external item (like a sound), no player to run an external sound, nothing. It certainly is funny that the article is completely missing.:(
But I use Netscape, maybe it has some wierd feature that doesn't work. So I then tried the site on Internet Explorer and the Flashplayer comes up. Which is damned funny, because Flash does work in Netscape. So I have no idea why this doesn't work.
Anyway, having listened to his article, he does have some funny points, but at times I thought I was listening to someone speak French or Spanish; it was nearly incomprehensible at times. Does the guy think he has to make a twenty minute speech in a minute and ten seconds? There was a movie - I think it was The American President where one of the characters tells the other he needs to cut down on caffeine. This guy is waaay beyond a cafeine buzz; to misquote Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!, this would be a good week for the guy to quit taking amphetamines.
I am absolutely amazed at the stunningly new idea of using a nuclear weapon to stop, prevent or ameliorate some potential disaster on earth. Gee, whiz, why didn't
someonethinkofthatideabefore?
I asked a question similar to this in my journal entry on Slashdot, on Wednesday, March 23, 2005, (the question I made was rejected for Ask Slashdot). I asked the question - which has never been answered - and apparently (at that time) - no one could offer any suggestion for a "universal hard drive format" other than FAT32. With the development of the NTFS r/w driver for linux this may have changed. But I know of no ReiserFS or EXT2/EXT3 driver for Windows.
The Tracfone prepaid service offers a simple phone (or at least it did when I had it several years ago) for around $50, and you can buy service for as low as $10 a month for about 10 minutes of use (the minutes not used roll over up to one year), if all someone wants is an inexpensive phone for limited use. For about an additional $100 you can buy a one year contract with about 150 minutes to use during the year. Since the phone only costs around $50 and there is no contract (you don't have to buy more air time or continue service), you could still keep it, for example, if all you want is a phone to call 9-1-1 or want to pay a very expensive rate (like $1.75 a minute, I suspect) to use a cell phone that doesn't have service by paying for calls with a credit card), it's extremely unlikely they will sell you a very huge featured phone. They sell Tracfone at some gas stations and many 7-11s.
Actually, I went to their website, looked it up and found the rates are even better than I thought they were.
According to their website, they sell a really simple, reconditioned Nokia 1100 phone for $9.95 and includes 20 minutes of airtime. Also they've cut the monthly renewal fee to $4.95. One example that popped up will sell you a phone (not sure if it's that one or a more expensive one, but if it isn't the rate might even be less), a year's service and 800 minutes of airtime for $140.00 (might actually be $139.99), which comes out to about 19c a minute and if they use their phone about an hour a month this should be more than enough. Figure out that if you include the phone, it comes out to $11.67 a month. I hope this information may be useful for you. In fact, I think I'm going to go buy one and see if I can transfer my number over since I am moving and have to get my own phone now separate from the one that is on my family plan.
This has been a problem with ALL media that is not readable without technology. Or even if the people who know the language die off; we couldn't read hieroglyphics if we hadn't found the Rosetta Stone.
Anyone have a wire recorder handy? They were very popular back in the (19)20s and 30s. Oh yes, can someone loan me a Dictaphone or a dictaphone belt? How about a phonograph that plays 78rpm records? How about even having a phonograph? 8 Track tape? Now, as for computer formats, does anyone have any 80 Column punch cards? Teletype or a paper tape reader? 12" magnetic tape reels, or tape drive that reads 7 track coding (as opposed to newer 9 track), presuming that they even have tape any more? Or most of the stuff used with mainframe computers. How about 8 inch or 5 1/2 inch diskette? Got any Zip disks? Now, do you have any.LBR or.ARC archive files? What about EBCDIC, read any files coded using it lately?
When was the last time you handled a photograph that had a negative? I handle probably a dozen images or more a day when I'm going through digital pictures on my computer, but it's probably been ten years since I had a picture that had a photographic negative. But we might have pictures and plates as far back as the 1890s when the camera was first developed, it's highly unlikely you can get duplicates made, or if you can, it's going to require a specialty photographic processor and is probably expensive. Does anyone even use film anymore for "home movies" or are we using video tape and now video disc? The cost differential between video and film is about 50 to 1, e.g. for $3 you can buy a high-quality tape that will record 2 hours vs. 3 minutes for 8mm, if film is even that cheap; I haven't had to buy 8mm film for twenty years. What happens to those old movies? If we we can even view them, it's usually because they have been converted to tape or disc.
Oh, yes, video tape. Movies are going all disc now, and as a result most video stores are selling their tape collections at low prices ($1 per tape) because the space and cost of disc has become much more advantageous; in the space of three video tapes you can probably store ten or more discs. Which begs the question, if either the HD-DVD or BLU RAY format wars get settled, shouldn't we expect all videos to go to that format? (Or maybe they'll just release in both, in either case, you'll either need two machines os eventually they'll have to develop a dual-format machine to read both.) Oh yes, I forgot the earlier videodisc format that came out long before CDs.
The changing of storage formats has caused problems even with open format standards - let alone troubles over files using proprietary or non-standard formats - as we have changed technology. This has been noted for years and is a big problem with non-profits with limited resources - such as libraries - which might have to convert data from one device or file format to another as older systems become obsolete and data is trapped on those systems if not converted. Lots and lots of data produced at significant expense have either been lost or is inaccessible because the systems that coded it are failing as parts become unavailable and machines cannot be maintained, and where they can be, it's a huge expense to do so.
I routinely get bounce headers (for invalid destination addresses) from places where they are receiving mail which has been forged under one of the domain names I own (I happen to own over 20 domains and only about 2 or 3 of them would ever send any mail). All of the domains that I would send mail from have three IP addresses listed in the SPF records in the DNS: the fixed IP address that I get DSL supplied from Cavalier Telephone (for mail sent by my computer); the IP address of Cavalier Telephone's mail server (for mail my computer sends through them); the IP address of the webserver that holds my blog (when it sends out mail messages). No other IP address should be considered authentic and my SPF records indicate this. Yet I routinely get bounce messages from places sending bounces to me for spam which has been joe jobbed by someone else using one of my domain names. Maybe some places are rejecting forged mail from other places, but I still see places that apparently don't bother to check SPF records when they do exist.
There was a huge uproar in Southern California recently when a pizza plase started accepting Pesos for payment. Legally, there is nothing stopping them. I once visited Niagra Falls. Within about 10 miles of the border, the stores on the U.S. Side would take Canadian dollars and give change in U.S. Get further away from the border and Canadian is worthless. When I visited Canada, there wasn't a single place that wasn't happy to take U.S. Currency. About the only places that will take Canadian outside of the border area are tourist traps like South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina (they did when I visited there about ten years ago) and probably Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota (can't say, haven't been there in maybe 35 years).
For a home loan, for example, the bank could a) loan you the money, and you pay it to the owners, or b) pay the owners directly. a) consists of you temporarily possessing $150,000, which you do, indeed, have to pay income taxes on, even if it was only yours for a few seconds. (Yes, you'd possibly also get a large deduction, but it would not equal out.)
Uh, not correct. If someone gives you money for no reason without obligation, it's a "gift" and if it's above a certain factor, they owe a gift tax but you do not owe tax on the gift, because it is not considered income. If someone gives you money in exchange for something done for them (either before or after you are paid), it's considered "income" and is subject to taxation depending on how much you made and what you're doing. If someone loans you money that you are required to pay back, it is a loan, you do not have ownership of that money, and thus, it is not income and is not taxable. It's only if you either don't pay it back or are forgiven part of it that it may be considered income. As long as you have to give it back, it's not taxable.
Even with a good credit score and a highly paying job, some people simply can't get mortgages. For example, musicians.
Banks will refuse to give a mortgage, even if you've made $100,000 in each of the last ten years, because there's no guarantee that you will be able to make that amount again in the future. Well, the answer to that is spend between $25 to $200 depending on the state, incorporate (or form an LLC depending on what type of operation you need), and then appoint yourself to a corporate office. You may have to spend a few dollars to order a commercial phone line and perhaps pay for a business address to receive mail. Now, you have a legitimate "employer" and an actual office, rather than listing yourself as being self-employed. Generally problems like that occur because of people who (in this case) have more money than sense. If you're making $100,000 a year and are self-employed, you should either be incorporated or operating through an LLC because of tax and other benefits, liability protection, plus corporate credit availability. A relative of mine operates a business which makes less than $40,000 a year does so in corporate form for those reasons. A lot of things that are non-deductable overhead for you as an individual - and paid out of post-tax dollars - become deductible expenses for a corporate entity and are paid from pre-tax dollars, also reducing your tax liability. You just have to do the paperwork right, don't commit fraud and it is almost impossible to have the corporate existence challenged.
Umm, you do know that if you take the cheque you are given as payment to the issuing bank, they will generally cash it for you free of charge.*
Incorrect. Banks nowadays will charge a non-accountholder a $4 or $5 fee to cash a check drawn on that bank. I discovered this fee structure after being out of work for some time, and basically scrounging around doing small jobs for enough to keep me in eating money, so not really having a checking account. So I get a check for $25 for doing some work as a notary public. I hadn't had a bank account for quite a while as I had run out of money and (then) banks required a minimum $100 to open an account and to average $100 each day to have an account or they charged you anywhere from $4 to $7 a month. Well, as it turned out, the bank this check was drawn on would allow me to open a checking account for free with no minimum balance, so it was acceptable to do that instead.
Nowadays, I can buy a new keyboard for US$3.99 at a computer store. If dirtiness is that big an issue, might it make more sense to just buy another keyboard every month or two, then donate your (barely used) keyboard to some local computer club or non-profit? Keyboards are so cheap these days I routinely keep one or two in a box in the closet in case one becomes difficult to use or acts funny.
--
Paul Robinson - My Blog
The money didn't come out of the bank's pocket, it came out of the merchant's pocket. Banks are in a pretty strong position when a merchant sends them a charge that the cardholder didn't authorize.
Incorrect. If a merchant accepts a transaction without signature, then the merchant is responsible for the charge if the charge is disputed and the merchant can't prove validity. On the other hand, when the merchant accepts a transaction with a signature, unless the bank can prove the signature on the slip did not match the signature on the card (which is pretty hard when it's someone using a stolen card), then the bank is liable for the transaction if disputed. In fact, I'm not sure, but it is possible if the transaction is signed at all that the merchant is not liable. Now, in the older days before 100% validation, a merchant had a "floor limit", say $25 or $50, and the merchant could approve a transaction for that amount without calling it in; over that limit, they had to call for verification. Now, on a transaction below floor limit, if the amount was below that and disputed, I believe the merchant would be liable. Since the floor limit is now essentially zero (all transactions obtain approval), the merchant is not liable as long as they get a signature. The customer can still dispute the charge which means the bank is liable for fraudulent signature (and probably pin-based) transactions as well. But the merchant is only liable for transactions without a signature. Now, if anyone reading this has specific evidence of a policy change to the contrary from Visa or Mastercard (or Amex, Discover or Carte Blanche), please inform me.
This woman was in a department store and was purchasing something. As she approached the counter, she handed the clerk her credit card. The clerk went to use the machine but it apparently wasn't working, so she had to use a phone to call in the card. A short time later, a security guard came over and grabbed the customer. The cashier had actually called in a code to have the guard come by. The clerk said that she realized the woman was committing identity theft.
The astonished customer couldn't believe it, and asked the cashier how on earth she knew. She said, "Because that's my name on the card, and that's my credit card that had been stolen."
I do not buy music from any site that uses DRM. As for the embedding of the user's personal information in a non-encrypted format, I don't see that as a problem. Here, there's been no attempt to hide what is going on. And as I see it, I don't see it as a problem; it's only going to matter if you're out distributing files. It is conceivably possible that if you lost your iPod or it was stolen someone might be uploading the songs you have on it to file sharing sites, but I see that as a very tiny issue and not very likely; if the files were traced it would allow the theft to be tracked back to the person who has a stolen or lost iPod.
I think the issue of the user identification not being encrypted is a red herring; many, many times people have been unhappy about surrepticious recording of people's information, especially in encrypted and hidden formats. Here, the information is openly being stored; seems like some people are talking out of both sides of their mouth. If it's open they don't like the idea, if it was encrypted they would be upset about hidden information being present.
It's been said that people want the ability to do what they want with music, and I remember reading in at least one other forum - and perhaps others - it was said that one of the things that should be done is not to impose DRM but to mark songs with the original purchaser. It wouldn't penalize people who made multiple copies for their own use (nobody else would see them), it really wouldn't be that significant for people who shared MP3s with small numbers of their friends, it would really only be a problem for people bulk-uploading files to file sharing sites, or either giving them out to lots of their friends, or giving them out to friends who are giving them out to lots of other people.
Navigator 9... includes several new components while giving some old ones the boot. This release will no longer ship with mail or composer...
This reviewer apparently has not used any recent releases of Netscape (as I have). I am currently using Netscape version 7.2, now, to write this article (I abandoned Internet Explorer a long time ago due to security issues; I only use it when I get a site that will only work with IE). I have Netscape 8.1 installed, but I don't use it a whole lot, because (1) they moved the menus from the left side to the right side (2) they removed the print button, and (most significant) (3) they removed mail and composer. Without mail as part of the program it has reduced functionality. With mail as part of the program I can just click on 'Window' and 'Mail' to send a message; otherwise I have to go to the start menu and find whatever the hell the program is that is the mail suite spun out of Mozilla, Evolution? (I looked it up in the start menu; it's called Thunderbird.) I used to use composer and sometimes I use it when I need to build a table, so while it's unfortunate I can live without it. Mail and composer has been gone since at least 8.1, was this guy unaware of this?
The premium paid for higher-end storage is decidedly nonlinear. For marginally more reliable or faster storage, you pay about a factor of ten. One example I'm familiar with is Hitachi. We had a 64TB HDS array a few years ago that was worth roughly $2M. We could have purchased an equivalent amount of commodity storage for probably $200k at the time, but didn't. Why would we spend the extra money? Speed, configurability, expandability, and reliability.
Well, let's see, on the other hand, you could have spent $800K, and bought 4 of the "commodity" systems for less than 1/2 of the cost of the proprietary system. Now, given this, you can either have 4 machines each to handle 1/4 of all the requests, and maybe get at least as fast a response time, or have such a system which unless you have 4 consecutive failures gives you quad reliability. You talk about every system being dual reliable, but here, it still looks like, for a lot less money you can install quad reliability and for less than 1/2 of the high priced equipment you get twice as much reliability.
Is the $2 million system 4 times as reliable as commodity hardware? Or should I ask, is it 8 times as reliable as commodity hardware since it costs 10 times as much? Or is the capabilities so far superior that they justify a 100% increase in price?
Now, maybe there are other figures and maybe there is a serious justification for such a huge price premium, but again, it still sounds like people are paying a lot more money because of FUD from disk drive manufacturers.
I have read the points he is making, and the example given that he wants some proof related to the issue of Universality, as well as the cell site given. And while I do think I do have quite a bit of intelligence, I do not understand any of this. I don't get what the change states are, and I don't understand what he is trying to solve. I believe there is an old rule - never ascribe to malice what can equally be explained by stupidity - which would apply here.
Maybe I've been spoiled by the cellular automata rules in the (Martin Conway) game of Life, and maybe because of that I don't get this. At least, that's what I am trying to understand, is he saying that eventually the set of rules for these two states have a particular sequence that repeats, so that no matter what state it is in, eventually it will cycle to that state again, or what?
Someone - it might be Kurt Vonnegut - once stated that anyone who can't explain what they are doing to a six-year-old is a fraud. Probably because the average six-year-old is brighter than most adults. So there is the possibility the whole thing is a scam, but if so, he's far to much of a cheapskate to be running it, since most really good scams depend on the greed of the mark. (Read my blog for an example.) But I'm willing to give Wolfram the benefit of the doubt and say that his real problem is that while the subject is extremely esoteric, he has failed to make the issue understandable by the people who would be expected to solve it. Programmers - like myself - are exceptionally good at puzzles, and some - again, like myself (no false modesty here) - are fairly bright and are willing to take on a challenge, the problem is that we as problem solvers have to be able to understand the problem in order to solve it.
I think either he needs to explain what he wants to solve better, or he needs to hire someone bright who can translate what he is trying to determine to others so they can understand it. I think, were he to provide a better explanation of what he is interested in discovering, he'd have a better chance of getting people to try and solve it. This presumes he actually wants a solution and that this is not some advertising scheme to sell more of his books. (If that were the case, he'd really need to throw more money at it. He could always rig the rules such that you can't really win.) But since you could read them on-line I don't see where that's all that much of an issue.
So I'll grant the premise that he is seriously looking for a solution to a legitimate problem. (A "legitimate problem" is one where the person wants a solution, e.g. when I lose my car keys before I'm going to go somewhere I have a legitimate problem.) But he definitely needs to find a way to explain it better if he actually wants it solved, or throw more money at it in order to make people smell blood.
Slashdot Mirror
I AM MARYAM BARIACHA, WIDOW OF THE LATE SYGOBI BARIACHA. BEFORE HE DIED, MY HUSBAND ARRANGED FOR THE CAPTURE OF 17,000 LINUX DESKTOPS IN MY COUNTRY OF NIGERIA. THEY HAVE BEEN TAKEN HOSTAGE BY MICROSOFT, WHO IS WILLING TO PAY A FEE TOTALLING $17,000,000 TO PREVENT THEM FROM BEING RELEASED. AS A RESIDENT OF NIGERIA, I AM NOT ALLOWED TO COLLECT THIS MONEY, BUT IF AN INDIVIDUAL FROM OUTSIDE OUR COUNTRY STEPS UP, THEY CAN BE THE LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR MY HUSBAND...
Something I was unaware of, I thought it was a botched translation of something in English. But someone on the original site made an important point in a comment. The reporters were writing in Hebrew, and the output was supposed to be in Dutch. Only Babelfish doesn't do Hebrew, if it's the one accessible through Altavista. It does English and French to Dutch, and it also does Japanese, Russian and Chinese to English. But it doesn't do Hebrew either way. So I'm curious how this article originally got mangled. Either it wasn't the Babelfish I'm thinking of, it was a different site and wasn't Babelfish at all but some other web site, or it was a commercial program that botched this.
Also, as was also pointed out, someone at some newspaper writes an embassy about something and causes a diplomatic incident, gee, sounds like someone's awfully touchy. Reminds me of how those Mohammed cartoons caused a large part of the Muslim community to want to go Jihad over some newspaper from Sweden or one of the countries around there.
I love Babelfish, I think it's a great system for giving a rough idea of what the words in another language (in my case, of course, anything other than English) mean, or giving you a somewhat passable translation of your language into another. But anyone who's looked at the output of Babelfish should know, or should have reason to know, that it is not perfect and is basically good for getting the 'gist' of the item, the ideas. Which is about all you can do with automated translation. We do have an advantage, I think it's been said that, in English, anyway, that you can lose about 1/3 of the words in a sentence and still get the idea across. So there is some redundancy and that does help, but, it is an automated system and lacks judgment. And apparently, so did the people who used it and didn't warn the recipient.
Maybe it's me, but when I've posted a message where someone wrote something in a foreign (to me) language, and I replied to them, I included a note - in that language - indicating I am using a computer translation and it may have errors. And I do a cross-check by translating it back that the note that it may have errors won't. :)
So let me get this straight, some people used an automated translation system, without bothering to tell the person whom they were sending a somewhat important message, that the message had to be translated using software? I guess they never thought that translation software commonly has errors. It will do a reasonable job but it guesses, and sometimes it guesses wrong. I suppose they have never looked at a web page written in some other language and seen it translated to English. Anyone having used any computer system should know there is a possibility of error - in fact, strong probability if not guaranteed certainty - in automated processing of tasks which require human judgment. To be a little erudite here, I will throw in the gratuitous foreign language comment that judgment, is, primus inter pares, the hardest part of any task, because it cannot be automated, (or maybe I'll weasel out a bit by claiming it is extremely hard to automate). (For those that don't know latin, the phrase means 'first among equals', e.g. I mean all the tasks are hard, but some are harder, and on the difficulty scale, judgment is top of the list.)
Language translation is an art, because there can often be more than one way to phrase the sentence, and in some cases, there may not be an exact equivalence between the two languages for the term used. Even in English there are still problems; the term 'free software' has a problem because the word 'free' can be used in two completely different meanings depending on whether one means free of restrictions (what is sometimes called 'software libre') and 'free of cost'. But sometimes the term has no ambiguity even if one of the words does. When we speak of free speech, we mean the right to say what one pleases (within very narrow restrictions) without fear of government reprisal; it does not necessarily mean that you get to hear the person's opinions without someone paying for them, as in the case of TV and newspaper columnists. Knowing when an ambiguity is present and when it isn't is a judgement call. And that's something computers have a very hard time doing.
The other poster (caffeinemessiah) was right, the headline should have read Morons trusting the legendary untrustworthiness of Babelfish for official work spark minor diplomatic row.
Paul Robinson - My Blog
This wouldn't happen in the U.S. because the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act provides federal protection with respect to warranties, and severs the warranty from an item repaired out of warranty from any part not affected by the repaired area. From Wikipedia:Magnuson-Moss act was enacted by Congress in response to the widespread misuse by merchants of express warranties and disclaimers. So, for example, if you have an automobile and you have a non-manufacturer install a new air conditioner, this then voids your warranty on the air conditioner but does not void your warranty, for example, on the engine, the radio, or the transmission. Which is reasonable. So, it could be argued that replacing the operating system voids your (nonexistent) warranty on the operating system, but should not affect repair warranty on the hardware.
I would find it odd that the U.K. would have a warranty law which was less protective of customers than the U.S., and has been around since 1975. You may want to write or call one of your MPs and complain about that.
I have a program - I have no idea where I got it from, and I've probably had it for 20 years - named Browse. And that's what it does. That's all it does. It allows you to browse text files, either move up or down a line, or a screen at a time, or go to the top or bottom of the file. Handles files which use either CRLF, CR or LF for end of line so you can view MSDOS or Unix/Mac text files. It's an MSDos program, browse.com, maximum memory it uses is 16K. No, you didn't misread me, not 16meg, 16K; no matter how large a text file you give it, the program only uses 16K of memory. The program file itself is exactly 1,024 bytes.
I'm not sure what's wrong, but when I go to the site, I don't find anything. No article, no link to an article, no link to an external item (like a sound), no player to run an external sound, nothing. It certainly is funny that the article is completely missing. :(
But I use Netscape, maybe it has some wierd feature that doesn't work. So I then tried the site on Internet Explorer and the Flashplayer comes up. Which is damned funny, because Flash does work in Netscape. So I have no idea why this doesn't work.
Anyway, having listened to his article, he does have some funny points, but at times I thought I was listening to someone speak French or Spanish; it was nearly incomprehensible at times. Does the guy think he has to make a twenty minute speech in a minute and ten seconds? There was a movie - I think it was The American President where one of the characters tells the other he needs to cut down on caffeine. This guy is waaay beyond a cafeine buzz; to misquote Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!, this would be a good week for the guy to quit taking amphetamines.
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I am absolutely amazed at the stunningly new idea of using a nuclear weapon to stop, prevent or ameliorate some potential disaster on earth. Gee, whiz, why didn't someone think of that idea before?
I asked a question similar to this in my journal entry on Slashdot, on Wednesday, March 23, 2005, (the question I made was rejected for Ask Slashdot). I asked the question - which has never been answered - and apparently (at that time) - no one could offer any suggestion for a "universal hard drive format" other than FAT32. With the development of the NTFS r/w driver for linux this may have changed. But I know of no ReiserFS or EXT2/EXT3 driver for Windows.
Actually, I went to their website, looked it up and found the rates are even better than I thought they were.
According to their website, they sell a really simple, reconditioned Nokia 1100 phone for $9.95 and includes 20 minutes of airtime. Also they've cut the monthly renewal fee to $4.95. One example that popped up will sell you a phone (not sure if it's that one or a more expensive one, but if it isn't the rate might even be less), a year's service and 800 minutes of airtime for $140.00 (might actually be $139.99), which comes out to about 19c a minute and if they use their phone about an hour a month this should be more than enough. Figure out that if you include the phone, it comes out to $11.67 a month. I hope this information may be useful for you. In fact, I think I'm going to go buy one and see if I can transfer my number over since I am moving and have to get my own phone now separate from the one that is on my family plan.
This has been a problem with ALL media that is not readable without technology. Or even if the people who know the language die off; we couldn't read hieroglyphics if we hadn't found the Rosetta Stone.
Anyone have a wire recorder handy? They were very popular back in the (19)20s and 30s. Oh yes, can someone loan me a Dictaphone or a dictaphone belt? How about a phonograph that plays 78rpm records? How about even having a phonograph? 8 Track tape? Now, as for computer formats, does anyone have any 80 Column punch cards? Teletype or a paper tape reader? 12" magnetic tape reels, or tape drive that reads 7 track coding (as opposed to newer 9 track), presuming that they even have tape any more? Or most of the stuff used with mainframe computers. How about 8 inch or 5 1/2 inch diskette? Got any Zip disks? Now, do you have any .LBR or .ARC archive files? What about EBCDIC, read any files coded using it lately?
When was the last time you handled a photograph that had a negative? I handle probably a dozen images or more a day when I'm going through digital pictures on my computer, but it's probably been ten years since I had a picture that had a photographic negative. But we might have pictures and plates as far back as the 1890s when the camera was first developed, it's highly unlikely you can get duplicates made, or if you can, it's going to require a specialty photographic processor and is probably expensive. Does anyone even use film anymore for "home movies" or are we using video tape and now video disc? The cost differential between video and film is about 50 to 1, e.g. for $3 you can buy a high-quality tape that will record 2 hours vs. 3 minutes for 8mm, if film is even that cheap; I haven't had to buy 8mm film for twenty years. What happens to those old movies? If we we can even view them, it's usually because they have been converted to tape or disc.
Oh, yes, video tape. Movies are going all disc now, and as a result most video stores are selling their tape collections at low prices ($1 per tape) because the space and cost of disc has become much more advantageous; in the space of three video tapes you can probably store ten or more discs. Which begs the question, if either the HD-DVD or BLU RAY format wars get settled, shouldn't we expect all videos to go to that format? (Or maybe they'll just release in both, in either case, you'll either need two machines os eventually they'll have to develop a dual-format machine to read both.) Oh yes, I forgot the earlier videodisc format that came out long before CDs.
The changing of storage formats has caused problems even with open format standards - let alone troubles over files using proprietary or non-standard formats - as we have changed technology. This has been noted for years and is a big problem with non-profits with limited resources - such as libraries - which might have to convert data from one device or file format to another as older systems become obsolete and data is trapped on those systems if not converted. Lots and lots of data produced at significant expense have either been lost or is inaccessible because the systems that coded it are failing as parts become unavailable and machines cannot be maintained, and where they can be, it's a huge expense to do so.
Paul Robinson - My BlogI routinely get bounce headers (for invalid destination addresses) from places where they are receiving mail which has been forged under one of the domain names I own (I happen to own over 20 domains and only about 2 or 3 of them would ever send any mail). All of the domains that I would send mail from have three IP addresses listed in the SPF records in the DNS: the fixed IP address that I get DSL supplied from Cavalier Telephone (for mail sent by my computer); the IP address of Cavalier Telephone's mail server (for mail my computer sends through them); the IP address of the webserver that holds my blog (when it sends out mail messages). No other IP address should be considered authentic and my SPF records indicate this. Yet I routinely get bounce messages from places sending bounces to me for spam which has been joe jobbed by someone else using one of my domain names. Maybe some places are rejecting forged mail from other places, but I still see places that apparently don't bother to check SPF records when they do exist.
Paul Robinson — My BlogUh, not correct. If someone gives you money for no reason without obligation, it's a "gift" and if it's above a certain factor, they owe a gift tax but you do not owe tax on the gift, because it is not considered income. If someone gives you money in exchange for something done for them (either before or after you are paid), it's considered "income" and is subject to taxation depending on how much you made and what you're doing. If someone loans you money that you are required to pay back, it is a loan, you do not have ownership of that money, and thus, it is not income and is not taxable. It's only if you either don't pay it back or are forgiven part of it that it may be considered income. As long as you have to give it back, it's not taxable.
Paul Robinson — My BlogBanks will refuse to give a mortgage, even if you've made $100,000 in each of the last ten years, because there's no guarantee that you will be able to make that amount again in the future. Well, the answer to that is spend between $25 to $200 depending on the state, incorporate (or form an LLC depending on what type of operation you need), and then appoint yourself to a corporate office. You may have to spend a few dollars to order a commercial phone line and perhaps pay for a business address to receive mail. Now, you have a legitimate "employer" and an actual office, rather than listing yourself as being self-employed. Generally problems like that occur because of people who (in this case) have more money than sense. If you're making $100,000 a year and are self-employed, you should either be incorporated or operating through an LLC because of tax and other benefits, liability protection, plus corporate credit availability. A relative of mine operates a business which makes less than $40,000 a year does so in corporate form for those reasons. A lot of things that are non-deductable overhead for you as an individual - and paid out of post-tax dollars - become deductible expenses for a corporate entity and are paid from pre-tax dollars, also reducing your tax liability. You just have to do the paperwork right, don't commit fraud and it is almost impossible to have the corporate existence challenged.
Incorrect. Banks nowadays will charge a non-accountholder a $4 or $5 fee to cash a check drawn on that bank. I discovered this fee structure after being out of work for some time, and basically scrounging around doing small jobs for enough to keep me in eating money, so not really having a checking account. So I get a check for $25 for doing some work as a notary public. I hadn't had a bank account for quite a while as I had run out of money and (then) banks required a minimum $100 to open an account and to average $100 each day to have an account or they charged you anywhere from $4 to $7 a month. Well, as it turned out, the bank this check was drawn on would allow me to open a checking account for free with no minimum balance, so it was acceptable to do that instead.
Paul Robinson — My BlogNowadays, I can buy a new keyboard for US$3.99 at a computer store. If dirtiness is that big an issue, might it make more sense to just buy another keyboard every month or two, then donate your (barely used) keyboard to some local computer club or non-profit? Keyboards are so cheap these days I routinely keep one or two in a box in the closet in case one becomes difficult to use or acts funny.
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Paul Robinson - My Blog
Incorrect. If a merchant accepts a transaction without signature, then the merchant is responsible for the charge if the charge is disputed and the merchant can't prove validity. On the other hand, when the merchant accepts a transaction with a signature, unless the bank can prove the signature on the slip did not match the signature on the card (which is pretty hard when it's someone using a stolen card), then the bank is liable for the transaction if disputed. In fact, I'm not sure, but it is possible if the transaction is signed at all that the merchant is not liable. Now, in the older days before 100% validation, a merchant had a "floor limit", say $25 or $50, and the merchant could approve a transaction for that amount without calling it in; over that limit, they had to call for verification. Now, on a transaction below floor limit, if the amount was below that and disputed, I believe the merchant would be liable. Since the floor limit is now essentially zero (all transactions obtain approval), the merchant is not liable as long as they get a signature. The customer can still dispute the charge which means the bank is liable for fraudulent signature (and probably pin-based) transactions as well. But the merchant is only liable for transactions without a signature. Now, if anyone reading this has specific evidence of a policy change to the contrary from Visa or Mastercard (or Amex, Discover or Carte Blanche), please inform me.
-- Paul Robinson - My BlogThis woman was in a department store and was purchasing something. As she approached the counter, she handed the clerk her credit card. The clerk went to use the machine but it apparently wasn't working, so she had to use a phone to call in the card. A short time later, a security guard came over and grabbed the customer. The cashier had actually called in a code to have the guard come by. The clerk said that she realized the woman was committing identity theft.
The astonished customer couldn't believe it, and asked the cashier how on earth she knew. She said, "Because that's my name on the card, and that's my credit card that had been stolen."
-- Paul Robinson - My BlogI do not buy music from any site that uses DRM. As for the embedding of the user's personal information in a non-encrypted format, I don't see that as a problem. Here, there's been no attempt to hide what is going on. And as I see it, I don't see it as a problem; it's only going to matter if you're out distributing files. It is conceivably possible that if you lost your iPod or it was stolen someone might be uploading the songs you have on it to file sharing sites, but I see that as a very tiny issue and not very likely; if the files were traced it would allow the theft to be tracked back to the person who has a stolen or lost iPod.
I think the issue of the user identification not being encrypted is a red herring; many, many times people have been unhappy about surrepticious recording of people's information, especially in encrypted and hidden formats. Here, the information is openly being stored; seems like some people are talking out of both sides of their mouth. If it's open they don't like the idea, if it was encrypted they would be upset about hidden information being present.
It's been said that people want the ability to do what they want with music, and I remember reading in at least one other forum - and perhaps others - it was said that one of the things that should be done is not to impose DRM but to mark songs with the original purchaser. It wouldn't penalize people who made multiple copies for their own use (nobody else would see them), it really wouldn't be that significant for people who shared MP3s with small numbers of their friends, it would really only be a problem for people bulk-uploading files to file sharing sites, or either giving them out to lots of their friends, or giving them out to friends who are giving them out to lots of other people.
Paul Robinson — My BlogThis reviewer apparently has not used any recent releases of Netscape (as I have). I am currently using Netscape version 7.2, now, to write this article (I abandoned Internet Explorer a long time ago due to security issues; I only use it when I get a site that will only work with IE). I have Netscape 8.1 installed, but I don't use it a whole lot, because (1) they moved the menus from the left side to the right side (2) they removed the print button, and (most significant) (3) they removed mail and composer. Without mail as part of the program it has reduced functionality. With mail as part of the program I can just click on 'Window' and 'Mail' to send a message; otherwise I have to go to the start menu and find whatever the hell the program is that is the mail suite spun out of Mozilla, Evolution? (I looked it up in the start menu; it's called Thunderbird.) I used to use composer and sometimes I use it when I need to build a table, so while it's unfortunate I can live without it. Mail and composer has been gone since at least 8.1, was this guy unaware of this?
Paul Robinson — My BlogWell, let's see, on the other hand, you could have spent $800K, and bought 4 of the "commodity" systems for less than 1/2 of the cost of the proprietary system. Now, given this, you can either have 4 machines each to handle 1/4 of all the requests, and maybe get at least as fast a response time, or have such a system which unless you have 4 consecutive failures gives you quad reliability. You talk about every system being dual reliable, but here, it still looks like, for a lot less money you can install quad reliability and for less than 1/2 of the high priced equipment you get twice as much reliability.
Is the $2 million system 4 times as reliable as commodity hardware? Or should I ask, is it 8 times as reliable as commodity hardware since it costs 10 times as much? Or is the capabilities so far superior that they justify a 100% increase in price?
Now, maybe there are other figures and maybe there is a serious justification for such a huge price premium, but again, it still sounds like people are paying a lot more money because of FUD from disk drive manufacturers.
-- Paul Robinson - My BlogI have read the points he is making, and the example given that he wants some proof related to the issue of Universality, as well as the cell site given. And while I do think I do have quite a bit of intelligence, I do not understand any of this. I don't get what the change states are, and I don't understand what he is trying to solve. I believe there is an old rule - never ascribe to malice what can equally be explained by stupidity - which would apply here.
Maybe I've been spoiled by the cellular automata rules in the (Martin Conway) game of Life, and maybe because of that I don't get this. At least, that's what I am trying to understand, is he saying that eventually the set of rules for these two states have a particular sequence that repeats, so that no matter what state it is in, eventually it will cycle to that state again, or what?
Someone - it might be Kurt Vonnegut - once stated that anyone who can't explain what they are doing to a six-year-old is a fraud. Probably because the average six-year-old is brighter than most adults. So there is the possibility the whole thing is a scam, but if so, he's far to much of a cheapskate to be running it, since most really good scams depend on the greed of the mark. (Read my blog for an example.) But I'm willing to give Wolfram the benefit of the doubt and say that his real problem is that while the subject is extremely esoteric, he has failed to make the issue understandable by the people who would be expected to solve it. Programmers - like myself - are exceptionally good at puzzles, and some - again, like myself (no false modesty here) - are fairly bright and are willing to take on a challenge, the problem is that we as problem solvers have to be able to understand the problem in order to solve it.
I think either he needs to explain what he wants to solve better, or he needs to hire someone bright who can translate what he is trying to determine to others so they can understand it. I think, were he to provide a better explanation of what he is interested in discovering, he'd have a better chance of getting people to try and solve it. This presumes he actually wants a solution and that this is not some advertising scheme to sell more of his books. (If that were the case, he'd really need to throw more money at it. He could always rig the rules such that you can't really win.) But since you could read them on-line I don't see where that's all that much of an issue.
So I'll grant the premise that he is seriously looking for a solution to a legitimate problem. (A "legitimate problem" is one where the person wants a solution, e.g. when I lose my car keys before I'm going to go somewhere I have a legitimate problem.) But he definitely needs to find a way to explain it better if he actually wants it solved, or throw more money at it in order to make people smell blood.
I explain this comment in more detail on my blog.