The article seems to suggest that this will make insurance cheaper.
I saw the BBC's news report on TV on this a couple of days ago. They did say that this is how the insurance companies are marketing it, but the reporter came over as being pretty sceptical of it actually doing so.
Well, that's easily solved. We just need do one of those google hacks - get enough links pointing to a site with a given keyword, and you can put any site on the top of that list. (cough... "French military defeats"... cough... "miserable failure"... etc).
[hehehe... imagining the/. response to that suggestion - picking a site to google hack 'http'... and everyone says: "oooh! oooh! let it be mine! pleeeeeease?";-) ]
You may be right - a similar wave in the opposite direction will cancel it out.
But where are you going to find an island-sized lump of rock that you can drop into the ocean at a few hour's notice to generate such a wave?
(plus I'm ignoring the fact that both the original wave and the cancelling wave would actually have circular ripple patterns going in all directions, so the cancelling effect would only really work head on)
You've only just noticed, eh? Methinks you've had your head stuck in the sands of the character-based terminal a bit too long.
The only reason I can think of to keep using 80 character lines now is if you're writing in COBOL (which forces the issue). For anything else, you can either write your lines as long as you need them (if you're programming), or you turn on word-wrap (if you're doing anything else).
When I say 'as long as you need them', that isn't an invitation to write programs with 700-character lines; I mean, there's still a requirement for a degree of common sense, even for programmers;), but sticking to 80 characters is truly limiting, especially these days when everyone has screens and editors that are capable of so much more.
I hesitate to say so, especially on Slashdot, but I have made a deliberate effort with my site www.BadPuns.com keep the file sizes small and good for dialup.:)
(Gad, I hate being a self-publicist... make me feel so cheap)
(Even CafePress is offering it alongside their tshirts and stuff, though as with their other products, they're quite expensive)
I think the difference with this one is the specific machine, and the speed it produces the book. That's only really important if you're standing in front of the machine at the time.
Maybe we'll get book vending machines outside the supermarkets, and all the bookstores will close down? Or then again, maybe not. If I'm buying books, I like to browse around the store, see what it's got... Find a cover that appeals to me... read a random page to see if I like the writing. A book machine in the mall won't do that for me, so I'll still go to the book store. Or I'll use mail order... in which case it doesn't really make any difference to you whether it takes five minutes or five hour to print, because the shipping time will make that irrelevant
There are a *lot* of companies out there with that kind of attitude. A hacked server is not seen as a problem unless it's immediately noticable - that is, the page has been defaced or the machine has gone down completely. If you can't see the problem, people will tend to ignore it.
And therein lies the problem. As a consumer, there are thousands of companies I could buy from online, but as long as security is given such low priority, how can I trust any of them?
Finally, something sensibily argued and well put, after all those posts yelling about the first amendment without actually putting any argument across about why it's a good thing. And yet, I see the mods are still fighting over whether to mod you up or down.
You made a lot of good points here, but the single most important one bears repetition: An individual's right to free speech must stop where it infringes on other peoples' rights.
If I start publishing your most personal secrets in a national newspaper, which right is more important? My right to free speech or your right to privacy?
Good arguments can be made for both, but at the end of the day in order for the legal system to be able to make the decision, one must be placed higher than the other. In the US, it is free speech that is at the top of the tree; in the EU, we tend to favour privacy and other personal rights. Free speech still exists, and is still hugely important, but it is not the *most* important right.
A long time ago, on a platform far away (well, Amiga actually), there was a game called Agony.
It was a pretty simplistic little side scrolling shoot-em-up, which probably wouldn't have deserved anyone's attention if it hadn't been for it's awe inspiring sound track (and graphics too, but a lot of games had those).
The sound track of Agony was the reason I bought the game, and I still have the intro MOD file in my music play list tucked away among all the MP3s; it was that good.
So in answer to the heartfelt wish from the original post, there you have it - a game that sold well primarily because of it's audio. Just a pity it was so many years ago.
Stock price graphs that look like that are fairly common; all companies have bad patches.
But it's not often that you see one where the origin of the graph is so close to zero. Usually it looks like a major dip in the price, but only because the scale is between 200 and 220 or something like that. But this graph actually goes right down to 4, from a peak of 20. That's serious bad news for any company.
I don't know the story behind this particular patent case, but in the broader argument about patents, I've given up.
I've decided that the best thing now would be for the whole computer industry just to stop and wait for twenty years. When all these stupid patents finally expire, then the rest of us can start actually doing stuff with our computers. Until then, we may as well all just go home, because as I see it, just about anything I do is going to tread on someone's intellecual property. (and I use the word 'intellectual' in it's loosest possible sense)
Slashdot Mirror
The article seems to suggest that this will make insurance cheaper.
I saw the BBC's news report on TV on this a couple of days ago. They did say that this is how the insurance companies are marketing it, but the reporter came over as being pretty sceptical of it actually doing so.
Hehe. Nope - it got me too.
;-)
My first thought was "Oooh. Space Soldiers... how long now until Starship Troopers is a reality?"
But solder? Nah. That's not nearly as exciting, is it?
Well, that's easily solved. We just need do one of those google hacks - get enough links pointing to a site with a given keyword, and you can put any site on the top of that list. (cough... "French military defeats"... cough... "miserable failure"... etc).
/. response to that suggestion - picking a site to google hack 'http'... and everyone says: "oooh! oooh! let it be mine! pleeeeeease?" ;-) ]
[hehehe... imagining the
You may be right - a similar wave in the opposite direction will cancel it out.
But where are you going to find an island-sized lump of rock that you can drop into the ocean at a few hour's notice to generate such a wave?
(plus I'm ignoring the fact that both the original wave and the cancelling wave would actually have circular ripple patterns going in all directions, so the cancelling effect would only really work head on)
Okay. Let's see...
Microsoft releases a patch for Windows that fixes bugs. The patch is 250 meg.
The next day, Apple releases an update for OSX that adds new features. The update is 43 meg.
Compare and contrast.
This sounds like something out of a Far Side comic. Gary Larson would have had a field day with this. I can picture it already...
You've only just noticed, eh? Methinks you've had your head stuck in the sands of the character-based terminal a bit too long.
;), but sticking to 80 characters is truly limiting, especially these days when everyone has screens and editors that are capable of so much more.
The only reason I can think of to keep using 80 character lines now is if you're writing in COBOL (which forces the issue). For anything else, you can either write your lines as long as you need them (if you're programming), or you turn on word-wrap (if you're doing anything else).
When I say 'as long as you need them', that isn't an invitation to write programs with 700-character lines; I mean, there's still a requirement for a degree of common sense, even for programmers
I hesitate to say so, especially on Slashdot, but I have made a deliberate effort with my site www.BadPuns.com keep the file sizes small and good for dialup. :)
(Gad, I hate being a self-publicist... make me feel so cheap)
Forget about replacing HTTP - let's deal with the real problem protocol first: SMTP.
Please! Someone give us a secure email protocol that doesn't allow address spoofing.
I wanna drive a pod racer round that track. :-D
There's actually quite a lot of Print-On-Demand (POD) publishers out there these days.
Have a look at Publish And Be Damned for example.
(Even CafePress is offering it alongside their tshirts and stuff, though as with their other products, they're quite expensive)
I think the difference with this one is the specific machine, and the speed it produces the book. That's only really important if you're standing in front of the machine at the time.
Maybe we'll get book vending machines outside the supermarkets, and all the bookstores will close down? Or then again, maybe not. If I'm buying books, I like to browse around the store, see what it's got... Find a cover that appeals to me... read a random page to see if I like the writing. A book machine in the mall won't do that for me, so I'll still go to the book store. Or I'll use mail order... in which case it doesn't really make any difference to you whether it takes five minutes or five hour to print, because the shipping time will make that irrelevant
"You've got a descision to make, Neo. Save Morpheus, or save yourself."
Plants have this amazing ability to turn sunlight into usable energy. They're even quite good at it in the shade.
And now a scientist has worked out how to do it as well using plant protiens. Wow.
I'm frankly amazed this didn't come much sooner. Especially with the genetic technologies they're playing with these days.
Not frightening; evil - big difference.
If they drain all the oil out of the tar pits, it'll really mess up the plot for that episode of Futurama.
There is, in fact, a little CD-sized booklet that comes with the iPod
This booklet is the size of CD? What? Are they being deliberately ironic, or something?
I mean - Darl McBride almost looks like JR Ewing! (Well sort of).
JR Who?
I thought E-Wing was a Star Wars fighter.
I was thinking Godzilla or The Abyss.
There are a *lot* of companies out there with that kind of attitude. A hacked server is not seen as a problem unless it's immediately noticable - that is, the page has been defaced or the machine has gone down completely. If you can't see the problem, people will tend to ignore it.
And therein lies the problem. As a consumer, there are thousands of companies I could buy from online, but as long as security is given such low priority, how can I trust any of them?
Being attacked by a think tank? Sounds like we need to get Marvin to go and talk to it into submission.
("What a depressingly stupid tank.")
Finally, something sensibily argued and well put, after all those posts yelling about the first amendment without actually putting any argument across about why it's a good thing. And yet, I see the mods are still fighting over whether to mod you up or down.
You made a lot of good points here, but the single most important one bears repetition: An individual's right to free speech must stop where it infringes on other peoples' rights.
If I start publishing your most personal secrets in a national newspaper, which right is more important? My right to free speech or your right to privacy?
Good arguments can be made for both, but at the end of the day in order for the legal system to be able to make the decision, one must be placed higher than the other. In the US, it is free speech that is at the top of the tree; in the EU, we tend to favour privacy and other personal rights. Free speech still exists, and is still hugely important, but it is not the *most* important right.
A long time ago, on a platform far away (well, Amiga actually), there was a game called Agony.
It was a pretty simplistic little side scrolling shoot-em-up, which probably wouldn't have deserved anyone's attention if it hadn't been for it's awe inspiring sound track (and graphics too, but a lot of games had those).
The sound track of Agony was the reason I bought the game, and I still have the intro MOD file in my music play list tucked away among all the MP3s; it was that good.
So in answer to the heartfelt wish from the original post, there you have it - a game that sold well primarily because of it's audio. Just a pity it was so many years ago.
The grammar police will track you down in the end, you know!
;-)
:-D
"We" is actually first person plural, not third person. Third person would be 'he', 'she' or 'it'.
Still, at least you got "there", "their" and "they're" right.
Now I'm going to go back and actually read the content of what you said...
Stock price graphs that look like that are fairly common; all companies have bad patches.
But it's not often that you see one where the origin of the graph is so close to zero. Usually it looks like a major dip in the price, but only because the scale is between 200 and 220 or something like that. But this graph actually goes right down to 4, from a peak of 20. That's serious bad news for any company.
I don't know the story behind this particular patent case, but in the broader argument about patents, I've given up.
I've decided that the best thing now would be for the whole computer industry just to stop and wait for twenty years. When all these stupid patents finally expire, then the rest of us can start actually doing stuff with our computers. Until then, we may as well all just go home, because as I see it, just about anything I do is going to tread on someone's intellecual property. (and I use the word 'intellectual' in it's loosest possible sense)