I agree that ISO 8601 is much better,
but people will still put the year last
in informal usage no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise.
Among the countries that I've visited (not an exhaustive list
obviously), only the US (usually) uses "/" as the separator. The others
usually use "." or "-". And only the
US has the month first. So an informal convention that usually works for me when there is
ambiguity is to
interpret "/"
as meaning month first, anything else day first.
A pet peeve with cars is the stupid engine light that gives no clue what
the problem is. I have no idea if it's some lower-priority thing like a
polution sensor slightly out of spec or something where I need to stop
immediately to avoid engine damage. (I know you can buy the code readers,
but I don't carry one around in my car typically.)
So the Tesla, with all its sophistication, says 'Car needs service. Car
may not restart.' WTF? They might as well replace it with an
engine light to save money.
I do agree that 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.'
is a little better, but not much.
One thing that still puzzles me about the early space explorations is
the extremely poor quality of the audio. When I see film clips of those
days, I often cannot understand what they are saying at all; "Houston,
we have a problem" would be like "Hous-acch w-cch acch a pracch-acch".
At first I thought it might be that the extra bandwidth needed for clean
audio would be prohibitively expensive in those days, yet they were able to transmit
live video very early on, which of course uses far more bandwidth.
Wouldn't the barely intelligible audio be a safety issue,
or is it just that I'm not trained to understand it? Does anyone with
historical knowledge know what the deal with this was?
Actually, if they have 5-6 million, they might as well just use it up on appeals rather than paying the MPAA. In the best case there's a minuscule chance of finding an uncorrupted, rational judge who understands how the Internet works and that an informational link to content they don't host isn't the same as hosting or distributing the content. In any case, once it's exhausted, they declare bankruptcy, and the MPAA will have nothing to collect.
I'm not sure you understand the problem. The outgoing service (free
public wireless) allows only outgoing ports 80 and 443, whether I'm
using ssh, http, or whatever. The destination (my home) blocks incoming ports 80
and 443. It is impossible to get from one to the other without
going through a commercial 3rd-party service, which is the point of my
complaint.
To me, it seems that providers that prohibit home servers (either by
TOS or by actually blocking e.g. port 80) are in violation of FCC-10-201
(net neutrality).
There is simply no valid reason to prohibit incoming ports. This
issue is not bandwidth - most home servers use far less than say
streaming video. In any case if it's abused, the providers can use
their existing procedures to deal with bandwidth abusers.
This is really at the heart of network neutrality. The only reason
I can see for prohibiting incoming ports is to prevent
individuals from competing with commercial interests that provide
network services. Personally, it really PO's me that my ISP blocks
ports 80 and 443. I keep my files on a home server, and although I can
access them via ssh, many public wifi services (e.g. at hospitals) block every port, in and out, except 80 and 443. I can't really
complain about the public wifi (well, I can complain, but they'll just
tell me that it's a free courtesy they're under no obligation to provide,
so if you don't like it, don't use it). So, to
access my personal files, I need to use a 3rd party's commercial server
(cloud or VPN) that allows port 80.
(As for the dynamic DNS, that hasn't been a serious problem for me - my ISP keeps
it fixed as long as my cable modem is powered and connected, and the IP only
changes when I restart the cable modem. Anyway, that is a secondary and minor problem.)
Last summer I had a huge colony of yellow jackets living in my wall.
Maybe not as exciting as killer hornets, but still terrifying
to me at the time.
The first sign was coming home to find dozens of yellow jackets in my
basement, which congregated around the light after I turned it on. I
caught most of them with a butterfly net. Next day, same thing. Two
days later, they worked their way up to my bedroom, apparently having
eaten through the radiator pipe seal. I focused on my bedroom, catching
maybe a dozen per day and increasing. They flew out of my printer when
I printed a page. Flying insect killer would only kill the ones I
hit directly. I started to feel like I was living in the kind of
nightmare you see in movies.
I found their entrance hole in the wall outside the house, with
hundreds coming in and out. I tried spraying hornet/wasp killer
deep into the hole, but no luck. I was warned against sealing the
hole, since they would escape into the house, chewing their way through
the wall if necessary.
Being a cheapskate, I didn't want to an exterminator to rip open the
wall, with repairs to the wall that might have cost thousands, as was
suggested. Instead, I ran a shop vac hose next to the opening, sucking
up any wasp that tried to enter or leave the hole. After 24 hours, the
shop vac was 1/3 full of solid wasp mass, maybe 10000 of them as a
guesstimate. I left it running for a week, each day finding fewer.
Then I ran it during the day every couple of days, finding less each time.
After a month or so, a batch of new queens and drones came out
among the workers, and
eventually nothing.
There might have been 50K, maybe even 100K total. It was interesting how the queens were very robust
and hard to kill compared to the smaller workers.
Close to wintertime, when I was pretty sure they were all gone, I sealed the
hole with putty.
I read they don't often return to the same nest, and luckily there was
no sign of them this year.
Amazingly, I wasn't stung even once throughout all of this, although
I was very careful, donning a raincoat, gloves, and a butterfly net over
my head in the beginning. On the other hand, my GF was stung a couple of times on her face
at her house, causing lots of pain and swelling, just by casually walking next to a bush where they had a nest
in the ground.
I flush mine out by giving it a Class-A compulsory directive to compute
pi to the last digit. Since the
value of pi is a transcendental figure without resolution, this is a task
it can never complete.
Nice marketing plan. Thingsquare will provide software for all the
little devices as an open-source reference design (hyped as "Open
Source" everywhere on their web site), which will encourage
companies to use it (and then likely close it, being BSD) for devices
they manufacture. This will
provide Thingsquare with a large collection of compatible devices with
little effort on their part. On the other hand, it is all useless
without a server to manage everything, which of course is provided by Thingsquare
and closed source.
All this is fine and well, but anyone expecting a truly open source
network of devices should keep this in mind. For practical purposes, most everything
may likely end up closed source.
Japanese is more regular than English, and it is SOV order instead of SVO order.
Interesting - it sounds like Japanese is an RPN version of English's infix notation
(where the verb is a binary "operation" acting on noun arguments).
I wonder how that affects thought processes - with RPN, you wouldn't
need the (often erroneous or omitted) parenthetical commas that
makes long English sentences so confusing.
At least this one makes some attempt, if incompetent, to
isolate the AC. Some years ago I bought a
battery charger (from a shabby convenience store while
traveling)
that had exactly 3 components: a capacitor in series with
the AC, a rectifier diode, and a zener.
Before 2001 nobody ever hear the US Govt use terms like "Fatherland". Now it's in everyday use. Fatherland Security. Now that sounds fascist. The USDR should be able to rally behind that!
"Fatherland" is antiquated and sexist. "Homeland" is the gender-neutral,
politically-correct modern term.
I think Google Glass would be more acceptable in public (if still
nerdy) if there were a version with no camera embedded,
for use just for display to the user. I realize that limits its
use somewhat, but if you just want to surf the web or watch
videos it should be fine. Or perhaps have a detachable camera that's
obvious that it's been detached.
It is creepy to have that
little camera eye pointed at me, whether or not it is recording.
Even if there is a red recording light (I don't know whether
or not there is), I still don't know that it's
not recording surreptitiously (with software that turns off the red light).
I would be greatly annoyed by anyone with a phone camera constantly
pointed at me while I'm talking to them (unless I've consented
to an interview or photo). Google Glass is no different.
Although this doesn't answer the article's question, I think it is relevant to
the topic.
One of my peeves (that sometimes has been the cause of actual problems and
misunderstandings) is the ambiguous dates that result from the American
tradition of using the month,day,year order vs. most of the rest of the world's
day,month,year.
Most people here would probably agree that year,month,day is the best
standard because it's logical, sorts easily, and virtually no one writes
year,day,month. However, the rest of the world is not logical, and
people will continue to use their local standards for better or worse,
even though "we" know better.
Given that, I've noticed that Americans typically separate the fields
with slash "/" and everyone else with either dash "-" or dot ".". But
not always. I've seen Americans use dashes (often less-educated
ones, not sure why) and I've seen Europeans use slashes (though rarely).
Here is my modest proposal. Always use "/" for the American
convention, and always use "-" or "." for the non-American convention.
So today is 3/10/2013 or 10-3-2013 or 10.3.2013, completely unambiguously.
There is also Mnemosyne, which I use and some prefer. See e.g.
http://www.xamuel.com/anki-vs-mnemosyne/ . Personally, I like the bare-bones
interface and simplicity of Mnemosyne; Anki has become too fancy for me. I've customized Mnemosyne (in python) so I can
go through a deck extremely quickly with one hand (using only the 'a-s-d-f-g' or
'h-j-k-l-;' keys as scoring keys for everything, depending on which hand is free, with any of these
keys also serving the purpose of the 'show answer' key); I don't see how it could
possibly be more efficient.
in a downloading case the cost of the infringed products must be considered. Man Down is available of iTunes for $2.39 (US$2.00) and Tonight Tonight at $1.79 (US$1.50)....
I wish people wouldn't confuse "cost" with "price". The cost
of a product is how much money it takes to manufacture one unit.
The price of a product is how much it is sold for. Gross profit = price - cost.
And using leet-speak obfuscations in a deliberate attempt to evade detection of these words, all in one post to boot, is even more
of a red flag. You think they don't look for that? Anyway, good luck next time you try to fly.
I certainly can't blame anyone for trying to inflate numbers by utilizing a loophole left by Google or YouTube; I would probably do the same thing if it meant making more money.
Ever heard of "ethics"? People with your attitude do not make the world a better place. If you found a wallet with money someone lost, I guess you'd keep it since it would mean more money for you.
Instead of using the electrode to
destroy the nucleus accumbens, what would happen if instead
they stimulated it? Could that provide neural
impulses similar to those the drug produces, eliminating the craving?
Or is some other deeper stimulation possible to achieve this?
What would the ethics be if a person could be brain-stimulated to be in a
state of euphoria on demand, or even continuous euphoria, without the physical
addiction or woozy systemic effects of drugs? Suppose it didn't interfere
with productivity (or even increased it)?
Re: Flash crashes
These only effect people who ARE algorithmic trading. The prices bounce back to their real market valuation again and again...
Unless you happen to have an open stop-loss order. Then you can be badly burned, as I have been personally.
In another flash crash, I made a lot of money due to a very low open bid,
but then the SEC decided to nullify all trades during that particular flash crash. You can't win.
This is still inconvenient, because the unsubscribe link requires you to enter your email address.
This requires a redundant step by the user (who may make a typo).
I have several email addresses forwarded to one place, and when an email says it was sent to
"undisclosed recipients" I have no idea which one I need to unsubscribe without a
tedious analysis of the header. I don't think an average user could do such a header analysis.
Finally, I'm just plain suspicious of any site asking me to type in my email
address. If they already know it, why are they asking?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that ISO 8601 is much better, but people will still put the year last in informal usage no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise. Among the countries that I've visited (not an exhaustive list obviously), only the US (usually) uses "/" as the separator. The others usually use "." or "-". And only the US has the month first. So an informal convention that usually works for me when there is ambiguity is to interpret "/" as meaning month first, anything else day first.
A pet peeve with cars is the stupid engine light that gives no clue what the problem is. I have no idea if it's some lower-priority thing like a polution sensor slightly out of spec or something where I need to stop immediately to avoid engine damage. (I know you can buy the code readers, but I don't carry one around in my car typically.)
So the Tesla, with all its sophistication, says 'Car needs service. Car may not restart.' WTF? They might as well replace it with an engine light to save money.
I do agree that 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.' is a little better, but not much.
One thing that still puzzles me about the early space explorations is the extremely poor quality of the audio. When I see film clips of those days, I often cannot understand what they are saying at all; "Houston, we have a problem" would be like "Hous-acch w-cch acch a pracch-acch". At first I thought it might be that the extra bandwidth needed for clean audio would be prohibitively expensive in those days, yet they were able to transmit live video very early on, which of course uses far more bandwidth.
Wouldn't the barely intelligible audio be a safety issue, or is it just that I'm not trained to understand it? Does anyone with historical knowledge know what the deal with this was?
Actually, if they have 5-6 million, they might as well just use it up on appeals rather than paying the MPAA. In the best case there's a minuscule chance of finding an uncorrupted, rational judge who understands how the Internet works and that an informational link to content they don't host isn't the same as hosting or distributing the content. In any case, once it's exhausted, they declare bankruptcy, and the MPAA will have nothing to collect.
I'm not sure you understand the problem. The outgoing service (free public wireless) allows only outgoing ports 80 and 443, whether I'm using ssh, http, or whatever. The destination (my home) blocks incoming ports 80 and 443. It is impossible to get from one to the other without going through a commercial 3rd-party service, which is the point of my complaint.
To me, it seems that providers that prohibit home servers (either by TOS or by actually blocking e.g. port 80) are in violation of FCC-10-201 (net neutrality).
This was brought up before on Slashdot http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/07/30/2322253/google-argues-against-net-neutrality with specific reference to Google Fiber's TOS prohibition of incoming ports. The complaint is described in http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf . I wish someone would pursue this against all major providers, not just Google Fiber.
There is simply no valid reason to prohibit incoming ports. This issue is not bandwidth - most home servers use far less than say streaming video. In any case if it's abused, the providers can use their existing procedures to deal with bandwidth abusers.
This is really at the heart of network neutrality. The only reason I can see for prohibiting incoming ports is to prevent individuals from competing with commercial interests that provide network services. Personally, it really PO's me that my ISP blocks ports 80 and 443. I keep my files on a home server, and although I can access them via ssh, many public wifi services (e.g. at hospitals) block every port, in and out, except 80 and 443. I can't really complain about the public wifi (well, I can complain, but they'll just tell me that it's a free courtesy they're under no obligation to provide, so if you don't like it, don't use it). So, to access my personal files, I need to use a 3rd party's commercial server (cloud or VPN) that allows port 80.
(As for the dynamic DNS, that hasn't been a serious problem for me - my ISP keeps it fixed as long as my cable modem is powered and connected, and the IP only changes when I restart the cable modem. Anyway, that is a secondary and minor problem.)
Last summer I had a huge colony of yellow jackets living in my wall. Maybe not as exciting as killer hornets, but still terrifying to me at the time.
The first sign was coming home to find dozens of yellow jackets in my basement, which congregated around the light after I turned it on. I caught most of them with a butterfly net. Next day, same thing. Two days later, they worked their way up to my bedroom, apparently having eaten through the radiator pipe seal. I focused on my bedroom, catching maybe a dozen per day and increasing. They flew out of my printer when I printed a page. Flying insect killer would only kill the ones I hit directly. I started to feel like I was living in the kind of nightmare you see in movies.
I found their entrance hole in the wall outside the house, with hundreds coming in and out. I tried spraying hornet/wasp killer deep into the hole, but no luck. I was warned against sealing the hole, since they would escape into the house, chewing their way through the wall if necessary.
Being a cheapskate, I didn't want to an exterminator to rip open the wall, with repairs to the wall that might have cost thousands, as was suggested. Instead, I ran a shop vac hose next to the opening, sucking up any wasp that tried to enter or leave the hole. After 24 hours, the shop vac was 1/3 full of solid wasp mass, maybe 10000 of them as a guesstimate. I left it running for a week, each day finding fewer. Then I ran it during the day every couple of days, finding less each time.
After a month or so, a batch of new queens and drones came out among the workers, and eventually nothing. There might have been 50K, maybe even 100K total. It was interesting how the queens were very robust and hard to kill compared to the smaller workers.
Close to wintertime, when I was pretty sure they were all gone, I sealed the hole with putty. I read they don't often return to the same nest, and luckily there was no sign of them this year.
Amazingly, I wasn't stung even once throughout all of this, although I was very careful, donning a raincoat, gloves, and a butterfly net over my head in the beginning. On the other hand, my GF was stung a couple of times on her face at her house, causing lots of pain and swelling, just by casually walking next to a bush where they had a nest in the ground.
I flush mine out by giving it a Class-A compulsory directive to compute pi to the last digit. Since the value of pi is a transcendental figure without resolution, this is a task it can never complete.
Nice marketing plan. Thingsquare will provide software for all the little devices as an open-source reference design (hyped as "Open Source" everywhere on their web site), which will encourage companies to use it (and then likely close it, being BSD) for devices they manufacture. This will provide Thingsquare with a large collection of compatible devices with little effort on their part. On the other hand, it is all useless without a server to manage everything, which of course is provided by Thingsquare and closed source.
All this is fine and well, but anyone expecting a truly open source network of devices should keep this in mind. For practical purposes, most everything may likely end up closed source.
Doesn't DuckDuckGo have US servers? I would trust ixquick.com more.
Interesting - it sounds like Japanese is an RPN version of English's infix notation (where the verb is a binary "operation" acting on noun arguments).
I wonder how that affects thought processes - with RPN, you wouldn't need the (often erroneous or omitted) parenthetical commas that makes long English sentences so confusing.
At least this one makes some attempt, if incompetent, to isolate the AC. Some years ago I bought a battery charger (from a shabby convenience store while traveling) that had exactly 3 components: a capacitor in series with the AC, a rectifier diode, and a zener.
Well, "Needs Work" is an improvement over "Emerging", which was the lowest category when my kid was in school several years ago.
"Fatherland" is antiquated and sexist. "Homeland" is the gender-neutral, politically-correct modern term.
Well, it's possible that without pirates to spread word of mouth, you might have only gotten 100 genuine version users. Who knows.
You picked a bad example, because this is actually the one that the patent is applied for. Notice "PATENT PENDING: Copyright 2011 Slip Fit Manufacturing." A search will show applicant David Brueske as a representative of "Yelm Farm & Pet And Slipfit Manufacturing". http://transportation-services.findthedata.org/l/1413764/Yelm-Farm-And-Pet-And-Slipfit-Manufacturing
I think Google Glass would be more acceptable in public (if still nerdy) if there were a version with no camera embedded, for use just for display to the user. I realize that limits its use somewhat, but if you just want to surf the web or watch videos it should be fine. Or perhaps have a detachable camera that's obvious that it's been detached.
It is creepy to have that little camera eye pointed at me, whether or not it is recording. Even if there is a red recording light (I don't know whether or not there is), I still don't know that it's not recording surreptitiously (with software that turns off the red light).
I would be greatly annoyed by anyone with a phone camera constantly pointed at me while I'm talking to them (unless I've consented to an interview or photo). Google Glass is no different.
Although this doesn't answer the article's question, I think it is relevant to the topic.
One of my peeves (that sometimes has been the cause of actual problems and misunderstandings) is the ambiguous dates that result from the American tradition of using the month,day,year order vs. most of the rest of the world's day,month,year.
Most people here would probably agree that year,month,day is the best standard because it's logical, sorts easily, and virtually no one writes year,day,month. However, the rest of the world is not logical, and people will continue to use their local standards for better or worse, even though "we" know better.
Given that, I've noticed that Americans typically separate the fields with slash "/" and everyone else with either dash "-" or dot ".". But not always. I've seen Americans use dashes (often less-educated ones, not sure why) and I've seen Europeans use slashes (though rarely).
Here is my modest proposal. Always use "/" for the American convention, and always use "-" or "." for the non-American convention. So today is 3/10/2013 or 10-3-2013 or 10.3.2013, completely unambiguously.
There is also Mnemosyne, which I use and some prefer. See e.g. http://www.xamuel.com/anki-vs-mnemosyne/ . Personally, I like the bare-bones interface and simplicity of Mnemosyne; Anki has become too fancy for me. I've customized Mnemosyne (in python) so I can go through a deck extremely quickly with one hand (using only the 'a-s-d-f-g' or 'h-j-k-l-;' keys as scoring keys for everything, depending on which hand is free, with any of these keys also serving the purpose of the 'show answer' key); I don't see how it could possibly be more efficient.
I wish people wouldn't confuse "cost" with "price". The cost of a product is how much money it takes to manufacture one unit. The price of a product is how much it is sold for. Gross profit = price - cost.
And using leet-speak obfuscations in a deliberate attempt to evade detection of these words, all in one post to boot, is even more of a red flag. You think they don't look for that? Anyway, good luck next time you try to fly.
Ever heard of "ethics"? People with your attitude do not make the world a better place. If you found a wallet with money someone lost, I guess you'd keep it since it would mean more money for you.
Instead of using the electrode to destroy the nucleus accumbens, what would happen if instead they stimulated it? Could that provide neural impulses similar to those the drug produces, eliminating the craving? Or is some other deeper stimulation possible to achieve this?
What would the ethics be if a person could be brain-stimulated to be in a state of euphoria on demand, or even continuous euphoria, without the physical addiction or woozy systemic effects of drugs? Suppose it didn't interfere with productivity (or even increased it)?
Unless you happen to have an open stop-loss order. Then you can be badly burned, as I have been personally.
In another flash crash, I made a lot of money due to a very low open bid, but then the SEC decided to nullify all trades during that particular flash crash. You can't win.
This is still inconvenient, because the unsubscribe link requires you to enter your email address. This requires a redundant step by the user (who may make a typo).
I have several email addresses forwarded to one place, and when an email says it was sent to "undisclosed recipients" I have no idea which one I need to unsubscribe without a tedious analysis of the header. I don't think an average user could do such a header analysis.
Finally, I'm just plain suspicious of any site asking me to type in my email address. If they already know it, why are they asking?