The Palm Pilot wasn't truly a copy of the Newton, nor was it an improvement. It was a step down. The Newton was Apple's typical Icarus approach: it accepted human handwriting anywhere on the screen and tried to convert that to text. Some people had success with it, but in any case it became a target of ridicule for the mistakes it made in recognition. Palm attempted less and thus succeeded more: the Pilot accepted input only in a dedicated area of the screen, and only in a specific stylized form (Graffiti). There were many technical advantages to this approach: only one part of the screen needed a high resolution for input; you'd didn't have to deal with arbitrary handwriting; character recognition is easier than cursive recognition, especially on a weak CPU; and recognition errors happen only at the character scale instead of the word scale. Thus approach that was less technically ambitious worked better and dominated the PDA market for a few years.
Oh, but I'd love to live in a world where robots did all the work. Where I showed up to work one day a week to code the robots a bit, and spent the rest of my time in leisure pursuits. The only problem is that won't happen. We constantly want more. If we were happy with our current standard of living we could steadily reduce the workweek for decades to come. But instead Americans are working ever longer and harder.
No, right now we have solved the problem of scarcity at a level Marx never dreamed of. If we wanted to, we could eliminate (not just reduce) poverty, homelessness, and hunger in America. It would take a massive shift in values, but it would not be technically or economically difficult. If we aren't doing these things now, why should we think that robotics (or any other technological improvements) will change that? No, we'll just keep working our asses off so we can get shiny new cell phones every six months.
But all that will probably be denounced as socialism by some knee-jerk American. As far as I'm concerned, the advanced societies of this century are the ones being built in Western Europe. They are not perfect, but they are trying new things and consciously trying to leverage the economic and political successes of the last 55 years into better societies. America is falling behind, and that worries me.
Those self-swipe card readers are double-edged swords. It's very convenient to swipe my card while the cashier is doing something else like scanning my groceries. On the other hand, when I hand my credit card to a good cashier he or she will hold it until I've signed the receipt, and then check the signature on the card to the one I just made. If I swipe the card myself, it's usually back in my wallet before the receipt has even printed. This makes signature checking almost useless.
Re:I try to avoid them altogether.
on
Fake ATM Fraud Expose
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Because it's easy to make a fake card and use a stolen 4-digit PIN, but it's hard to make a fake retina.
If something is unconstitutional, it is also illegal. The converse is not generally true.
Example: slavery is unconstitutional. Therefore it is illegal. That there are or are not laws against it doesn't matter. If there were a law saying I could own a slave, and that slave sued for his freedom, the courts would strike down slavery on constitutional grounds (cf Dred Scott).
Example: jaywalking is illegal. It does not happen to be unconstitutional; the laws against it could be repealed.
If SCO claims the GPL violates some constitutional clause on copyrights, then they are implicitly claiming that the GPL is illegal. (That claim happens to look very weak to me, but I'm not a lawyer so I can't speak with any authority on it.)
Find a carrier that doesn't charge that fee. (I think T-Mobile is one.) Call up Sprint and say "I'm thinking of switching to $CARRIER because they don't charge a number portability fee and they can give me $GOOD_DEAL anyway." I can almost guarantee you that Sprint will waive the fee for you and probably give you some sweet deal to stay with them.
In some countries, advertisements are required to list the price after tax, as are menus and so on. It's very convenient, especially for tourists who are having enough trouble figuring out how much cash they have without having to estimate taxes that may not make any sense to them.
Congressmen and senators try to funnel pork back home. Presidents don't need to. Texas will vote for Bush in 2004. He'd rather spend the money in Pennsylvania or Michigan.
Clearly, what these people are trying to do by developing for antiquaited hardware is drive the value up so they can sell theirs on eBay. But I'm on to their underwear-stealing ways!
And you think all the anonymous posts on/. are true? Just because someone sounds like they're giving secret, insider information and posting as an AC doesn't mean there's a shred of truth to it. They could just be trolls, paid shills, or people lying to feel important. Moderators seem to put far too much credence into these rumor-mongering stories. I don't understand why so many people who are supposedly savvy to the dangers of believing everything you read turn right around and do just that.
The problem with this is that another company will come out with a similar product and claim it can store twice the number of songs, while in fact it has the same storage capacity. In fine print on the bottom of the box they'll explain how they got the song count estimate (i.e. a lower bitrate), but the average consumer will be fooled. That's why we buy milk based on volume instead of how many cookies you can dip in it.
Bytes or megahertz? Most people have trouble telling you what joules, newtons, amperes, or volts are. Ask someone what a volt measures and he'll probably tell you something like "power, like high voltage lines have more power", and if you're lucky he'll say "electricity" instead of "power". It's not just computer technology that people have trouble with. The average person, even the average person with a large general vocabulary, has a terrible scientific and technical vocabulary in all fields.
More terms the median person should understand properly but doesn't: calories [as on food labels] stomach organic transmission [as in a car] condensation [as in the process] transistor cellular exponential These are common words that people use either incorrectly or without a correct understanding.
As though using more syllables implies hyper-intelligence.
Sure it does. Why do you think Bush uses words like "misunderestimate" or "subliminable"? What, did you think it's just because he's unintelligent and ignorant? Ha, surely America would not elect such a president.
You're completely right. Cutting me off from cable TV will not strike terror into my heart. A DoS attack on whitehouse.gov might terrorize Rove and Fleischer, but no one else will really care unless it's hyped up. Is it really that terrible if terrorists simultaneously cut all the fiber into a building? It might mean some lost work time, but within hours all those lines will be repaired.
For terrorists to be effective, they have to strike at something so important we'd be willing to go to war over it. If Canada had destroyed the WTC, we very likely would have gone to war with them over it. If Canada had foricbly occupied Montana, we very likely would have gone to war with them over it. If Canada had spammed every single US internet user, it would be an international incident but we would not go to war over it. Historically, the only things people have gone to war over are (in the economic sense) land, labor, and capital, and occasionally over pride. They'll fight over territory, resources, people, and in some cases pride. They will not fight over the internet, over backhoes, or over copyright law violations.
One reason that so many Americans supported the conquest of Iraq was pride. After 9/11, the onset of a serious recession, and the repeated denouncements of US foreign policy by countries Americans had considered "loyal" to them, the American national ego was severely bruised. Thus when a demagogue like Bush promised them a pride-boosting military victory and hit it in language of defending against some invented menace, Americans jumped for it. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified to the invading country in much the same way as the 1939 invasion of Poland. This may explain why Europeans, who remember the consequences of such thinking, could not understand why so many Americans were so avidly in support of a war of aggression.
This reminds me of the reaction of "security" people when they see WHOIS entries for their companies for the first time.
I love this. More and more companies now are deliberately removing their physical address information from the web because it's cheaper for them to only process email. Sure enough these companies always have a good address in WHOIS and because of the increasing rarity of snail mail, I usually get a much better response than I would have it I had emailed them.
Another good thing you usually get is a phone number and the name of an employee or at least an internal department. After waiting on hold with a company for half an hour, I did a WHOIS and called someone who I believe was the head of their IT department. Sure enough, I got through to the "next available agent" in under 30 seconds.
I've always wondered by cars can't get HUDs like fighter planes have. I'd love to see my speed etc. projected onto the windshield so I don't have to take my eyes off the road.
Slashdot Mirror
The Palm Pilot wasn't truly a copy of the Newton, nor was it an improvement. It was a step down. The Newton was Apple's typical Icarus approach: it accepted human handwriting anywhere on the screen and tried to convert that to text. Some people had success with it, but in any case it became a target of ridicule for the mistakes it made in recognition. Palm attempted less and thus succeeded more: the Pilot accepted input only in a dedicated area of the screen, and only in a specific stylized form (Graffiti). There were many technical advantages to this approach: only one part of the screen needed a high resolution for input; you'd didn't have to deal with arbitrary handwriting; character recognition is easier than cursive recognition, especially on a weak CPU; and recognition errors happen only at the character scale instead of the word scale. Thus approach that was less technically ambitious worked better and dominated the PDA market for a few years.
Oh, but I'd love to live in a world where robots did all the work. Where I showed up to work one day a week to code the robots a bit, and spent the rest of my time in leisure pursuits. The only problem is that won't happen. We constantly want more. If we were happy with our current standard of living we could steadily reduce the workweek for decades to come. But instead Americans are working ever longer and harder.
No, right now we have solved the problem of scarcity at a level Marx never dreamed of. If we wanted to, we could eliminate (not just reduce) poverty, homelessness, and hunger in America. It would take a massive shift in values, but it would not be technically or economically difficult. If we aren't doing these things now, why should we think that robotics (or any other technological improvements) will change that? No, we'll just keep working our asses off so we can get shiny new cell phones every six months.
But all that will probably be denounced as socialism by some knee-jerk American. As far as I'm concerned, the advanced societies of this century are the ones being built in Western Europe. They are not perfect, but they are trying new things and consciously trying to leverage the economic and political successes of the last 55 years into better societies. America is falling behind, and that worries me.
If you own an ATM, getting money out of it isn't an act of criminal brilliance. So if I'm not too smart, that would make you...
Those self-swipe card readers are double-edged swords. It's very convenient to swipe my card while the cashier is doing something else like scanning my groceries. On the other hand, when I hand my credit card to a good cashier he or she will hold it until I've signed the receipt, and then check the signature on the card to the one I just made. If I swipe the card myself, it's usually back in my wallet before the receipt has even printed. This makes signature checking almost useless.
Because it's easy to make a fake card and use a stolen 4-digit PIN, but it's hard to make a fake retina.
If something is unconstitutional, it is also illegal. The converse is not generally true.
Example: slavery is unconstitutional. Therefore it is illegal. That there are or are not laws against it doesn't matter. If there were a law saying I could own a slave, and that slave sued for his freedom, the courts would strike down slavery on constitutional grounds (cf Dred Scott).
Example: jaywalking is illegal. It does not happen to be unconstitutional; the laws against it could be repealed.
If SCO claims the GPL violates some constitutional clause on copyrights, then they are implicitly claiming that the GPL is illegal. (That claim happens to look very weak to me, but I'm not a lawyer so I can't speak with any authority on it.)
The Constitution very much does apply to private contracts. For example, it is the reason I cannot enter into a contract with you to sell a slave.
Find a carrier that doesn't charge that fee. (I think T-Mobile is one.) Call up Sprint and say "I'm thinking of switching to $CARRIER because they don't charge a number portability fee and they can give me $GOOD_DEAL anyway." I can almost guarantee you that Sprint will waive the fee for you and probably give you some sweet deal to stay with them.
In some countries, advertisements are required to list the price after tax, as are menus and so on. It's very convenient, especially for tourists who are having enough trouble figuring out how much cash they have without having to estimate taxes that may not make any sense to them.
Congressmen and senators try to funnel pork back home. Presidents don't need to. Texas will vote for Bush in 2004. He'd rather spend the money in Pennsylvania or Michigan.
Clearly, what these people are trying to do by developing for antiquaited hardware is drive the value up so they can sell theirs on eBay. But I'm on to their underwear-stealing ways!
Plus, who pays extra money to have their domain registered anonymously except when they have something to hide?
That and the mosquito flies a little wobbly for a while. :)
(Yeah, I know, mosquitos don't absorb our blood into theirs; they just "digest" it, so to speak.)
point taken :)
Mosquitoes aren't attracted by odors per se. They're attracted by CO2, which you don't have much of a choice except to exhale.
And you think all the anonymous posts on /. are true? Just because someone sounds like they're giving secret, insider information and posting as an AC doesn't mean there's a shred of truth to it. They could just be trolls, paid shills, or people lying to feel important. Moderators seem to put far too much credence into these rumor-mongering stories. I don't understand why so many people who are supposedly savvy to the dangers of believing everything you read turn right around and do just that.
The problem with this is that another company will come out with a similar product and claim it can store twice the number of songs, while in fact it has the same storage capacity. In fine print on the bottom of the box they'll explain how they got the song count estimate (i.e. a lower bitrate), but the average consumer will be fooled. That's why we buy milk based on volume instead of how many cookies you can dip in it.
Bytes or megahertz? Most people have trouble telling you what joules, newtons, amperes, or volts are. Ask someone what a volt measures and he'll probably tell you something like "power, like high voltage lines have more power", and if you're lucky he'll say "electricity" instead of "power". It's not just computer technology that people have trouble with. The average person, even the average person with a large general vocabulary, has a terrible scientific and technical vocabulary in all fields.
e are common words that people use either incorrectly or without a correct understanding.
More terms the median person should understand properly but doesn't:
calories [as on food labels]
stomach
organic
transmission [as in a car]
condensation [as in the process]
transistor
cellular
exponential
Thes
You're completely right. Cutting me off from cable TV will not strike terror into my heart. A DoS attack on whitehouse.gov might terrorize Rove and Fleischer, but no one else will really care unless it's hyped up. Is it really that terrible if terrorists simultaneously cut all the fiber into a building? It might mean some lost work time, but within hours all those lines will be repaired.
For terrorists to be effective, they have to strike at something so important we'd be willing to go to war over it. If Canada had destroyed the WTC, we very likely would have gone to war with them over it. If Canada had foricbly occupied Montana, we very likely would have gone to war with them over it. If Canada had spammed every single US internet user, it would be an international incident but we would not go to war over it. Historically, the only things people have gone to war over are (in the economic sense) land, labor, and capital, and occasionally over pride. They'll fight over territory, resources, people, and in some cases pride. They will not fight over the internet, over backhoes, or over copyright law violations.
One reason that so many Americans supported the conquest of Iraq was pride. After 9/11, the onset of a serious recession, and the repeated denouncements of US foreign policy by countries Americans had considered "loyal" to them, the American national ego was severely bruised. Thus when a demagogue like Bush promised them a pride-boosting military victory and hit it in language of defending against some invented menace, Americans jumped for it. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified to the invading country in much the same way as the 1939 invasion of Poland. This may explain why Europeans, who remember the consequences of such thinking, could not understand why so many Americans were so avidly in support of a war of aggression.
I love this. More and more companies now are deliberately removing their physical address information from the web because it's cheaper for them to only process email. Sure enough these companies always have a good address in WHOIS and because of the increasing rarity of snail mail, I usually get a much better response than I would have it I had emailed them.
Another good thing you usually get is a phone number and the name of an employee or at least an internal department. After waiting on hold with a company for half an hour, I did a WHOIS and called someone who I believe was the head of their IT department. Sure enough, I got through to the "next available agent" in under 30 seconds.
I've always wondered by cars can't get HUDs like fighter planes have. I'd love to see my speed etc. projected onto the windshield so I don't have to take my eyes off the road.
Bullet time was done first and best in 2001 by Max Payne.