However, I do have a couple of minor observations. Objective simplicity is a laudable goal, but it conflicts with the goals of flexibility, performance, and ability to meet the requirements of the subject matter (if the subject matter is complex). There are always tradeoffs to be made.
And, it could be argued that a profusion of WADF's is a good thing in that it puts a wide variety of ideas out there, which should (in theory) yield a higher chance of something good showing up.
I can think of more fun things to do with TVs and bricks...
Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
This concept of being immune to death, and how that affects people, reminds me of an online novel previously reported here called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Interesting stuff.
Call me pessimistic, but I doubt this would help. I think the root problem is that too many Americans ARE actually afraid, paranoid, uninformed, and vindictive. Whether you represent them in large blocks or small blocks is not important - the percentages don't lie.
I think the only way to address this is to reduce the power of the mainstream media, while enhancing their independence. For example, if elected, I would propose eliminating advertising during the news hour, which would eliminate the incentive to dramatize the news to get better ratings and sell commercials. I would also introduce legislation aimed at preventing administration officials from giving reporters they don't like the cold shoulder (maybe by seating reporters randomly at press conferences and not pre-screening them).
One other thing we should do now: implement approval voting. This is a no-brainer, and will go a long way towards fixing the artificial advantage enjoyed by the two major parties.
I play and teach traditional Irish dance music on fiddle, tin whistle and concert flute (no jokes please), guitar, tenor banjo, and bodhran. It's fun music and very challenging to play well. Plus I don't really have RIAA issues to deal with;)
I've often heard there's a correlation between programming and musical skills. Don't know if that's true in general, but in my case I guess it applies...And I have a friend, also a programmer, who is an excellent bassist. He plays 7- and 8-string custom monster basses, one of which was in Bass Player magazine a while back.
Also, I used to practice kung fu (northern and southern animal styles mainly, with a smattering of wing chun and pa kua)... did that for six years or so, then got married and suddenly didn't have the time;)
I didn't read the article very thoroughly, so take this comment with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that Open Source has little to do with Open Standards, except coincidentally. I could very easily write a closed-source application that implements an open standard, or I could write an open-source application that uses a proprietary data format.
To me, these are apples and oranges and the article refers to the terms ambiguously. I'm all for government supporting open standards, but I'm leery of supporting a particular development methodology such as open source. Security though, IMHO, is a valid basis for supporting open source (due to increased peer review).
One other question: who gets to determine whether a given software package "supports" a given open standard? I'm sure Microsoft would say that IE supports CSS 2, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. Likewise, there's probably always going to be something that somebody could use to say that it's not 100% supported. Seems to me there's a continuum here, and more definition is needed.
I agree. When you take a car on the road, you're not in your own home. You're on public property, and what you do affects other people even if you *don't* hit them. You don't have a right to privacy with respect to your driving record in this case IMHO.
Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. This guy got what he deserved.
>If you were purchasing a PDA right now, >would you choose Palm, Handspring, or >avoid them entirely?
I faced this decision two weeks ago after my Palm died, and ended up buying a Pocket PC (Dell Axim X5 Pro). There were specific features I wanted (like voice memo) that were only available in high-end Palm units, if at all, but are pretty much standard on PPC. The cheapest Palm OS device I could find with voice memo, for example, was $399. For $50 less, my Axim has voice memo, dual expansion slots, a 400MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, 802.11b networking, and a docking cradle. The apps are comparable.
Say what you want about Windoze for Pocket PC, but the value proposition for me was a no-brainer. I'm really enjoying my new toy;)
Our company just implemented a large ACH (automated clearinghouse) app for GoldLeaf Technologies, in C#. They didn't laugh us out of the sales call, and neither are their customers doing it to them. The application and the platform it runs on both rock.
I like Java as much as the next guy (I'm certified in it), but from my perspective the only things Java has on.NET these days are portability, feature-completeness, and availability of free solutions. I expect both these advantages to go away pretty soon (go Mono!).
I wrote letters a couple of days ago to my representative and senator about this bill, but if I can get down there from Alpharetta I'll be there at 2:00. This bill can't be allowed to pass.
>>Not sure to what extent it was practiced >>with ancient slaves but selective breeding >>is certainly a reason why the US has so many >>great black athlete's currently
IMHO that's not very certain. Got any evidence of it? I think it's reasonable that an environment influences the evolution of its population, but as far as I'm aware there's limited evidence that evolution is the main source of success of US athletes, and even less evidence that that evolution was directed by other humans.
First, the article doesn't discuss where these honeypots were set up; to me this is required information since the risks (both of malicious connection and of spam on those malicious connections) vary by location. If my WLAN is in a "safe" environment I'm going to worry less about this.
Second, there was a big blurb on the article advertising SurfControl, a spam-filtering product. So I will treat everything in this article skeptically.
And the corollary to that is, what about technical users that DO like eye-candy (like me)? I like graphical "fluff" as long as my machine has the horsepower to handle it, and the nice effects don't keep me from doing stuff I need to do.
My wife is a licensed architect (a real one), and I studied it for four years. Now with 20 years programming experience, my title is "Software Architect". She hates that, and I suppose a similar legal issue to that of engineers exists.
Licensing requirements should be based on the project at hand - not all projects should require licensed professionals. For example I shouldn't need a licensed software dude to put together a web page; similarly I don't need a licensed civil engineer to put up a non-loadbearing wall in my garage. However, if I were designing flight control software for an airliner, it would be reasonable.
The liability issue is a sticking point - architects get sued more than anyone I know. I don't know what the solution to that is.
Another issue is that the comparison of software engineering to hardware engineering only stands up to so much scrutiny. Software is a much more abstract and mutable medium and a project can easily get beyond a given person's ability to grasp. In hardware you can usually address this by physically separating the components; we're making progress in achieving separation in software components but it's still evolving.
Well, I don't know about desktop LCD monitors, but I'm running 1600x1200 on my 15" Dell laptop. I don't know of many similar-sized CRT's that can hit that res, especially with the clarity my LCD has.
They have a new model with a 1920x1200 15.4" WUXGA display.
Original article: >> I suspect that the huge dent in the case, >> indicating some sort of collision, trauma, >> impact, stampede or other violence might >> have something to do with that.
Response: > The (albeit few) family members (and others) > that has a Linux distribution haven't got > nearly as much troubles as the ones using > That-Other system.
Last I checked, not even Linux could do much about a big dent in the side of a machine. Unless the dent was caused by frustration with That-Other system.
Keep aware of local concerts by international artists, and go to them. In many cases, because of the smaller audience for this music, the performers are available to talk to the audience and they sell their CDs directly.
I listen to (and play) Irish dance music, and over the last few years I've gotten most of my CDs directly from the musicians' hands. Everybody and his brother in Ireland has a CD, and when they tour they always have them for sale.
Well, I have mod points but thought it would be better to respond.
I don't feel that tabs imply much with regard to order, and as a result I don't feel that they are very useful for 'controlling and guiding' program flow. Next and Back buttons in a wizard are better for that. Tabs *are* very useful for allowing users to navigate in a random-access manner (though not very space-efficient for that purpose), and for reducing the amount of information shown at once.
As for tabs as a browser feature, they work well for that too, since in my usage most pages viewed are unrelated to each other, at least in terms of order.
This technology sounds like a more complicated (and expensive) version of the already-complicated and expensive LCD technology we have. Furthermore, it doesn't sound like the technology will work well with the OLED's that are just starting to come out.
Given a choice between "3D" LCD and 2D OLED, I'll take OLED, thank you very much.
While people are recommending books, I'll throw one in: Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. The book deals with formal systems and other topics, and won the Pulitzer prize - well worth reading.
Slashdot Mirror
Wish I had points with which to mod you up.
However, I do have a couple of minor observations. Objective simplicity is a laudable goal, but it conflicts with the goals of flexibility, performance, and ability to meet the requirements of the subject matter (if the subject matter is complex). There are always tradeoffs to be made.
And, it could be argued that a profusion of WADF's is a good thing in that it puts a wide variety of ideas out there, which should (in theory) yield a higher chance of something good showing up.
Yours are still valid concerns though.
I can think of more fun things to do with TVs and bricks...
This concept of being immune to death, and how that affects people, reminds me of an online novel previously reported here called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Interesting stuff.
But then you can't sell it. Duh ;)
Call me pessimistic, but I doubt this would help. I think the root problem is that too many Americans ARE actually afraid, paranoid, uninformed, and vindictive. Whether you represent them in large blocks or small blocks is not important - the percentages don't lie.
I think the only way to address this is to reduce the power of the mainstream media, while enhancing their independence. For example, if elected, I would propose eliminating advertising during the news hour, which would eliminate the incentive to dramatize the news to get better ratings and sell commercials. I would also introduce legislation aimed at preventing administration officials from giving reporters they don't like the cold shoulder (maybe by seating reporters randomly at press conferences and not pre-screening them).
One other thing we should do now: implement approval voting . This is a no-brainer, and will go a long way towards fixing the artificial advantage enjoyed by the two major parties.
I play and teach traditional Irish dance music on fiddle, tin whistle and concert flute (no jokes please), guitar, tenor banjo, and bodhran. It's fun music and very challenging to play well. Plus I don't really have RIAA issues to deal with ;)
;)
I've often heard there's a correlation between programming and musical skills. Don't know if that's true in general, but in my case I guess it applies...And I have a friend, also a programmer, who is an excellent bassist. He plays 7- and 8-string custom monster basses, one of which was in Bass Player magazine a while back.
Also, I used to practice kung fu (northern and southern animal styles mainly, with a smattering of wing chun and pa kua)... did that for six years or so, then got married and suddenly didn't have the time
I didn't read the article very thoroughly, so take this comment with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that Open Source has little to do with Open Standards, except coincidentally. I could very easily write a closed-source application that implements an open standard, or I could write an open-source application that uses a proprietary data format.
To me, these are apples and oranges and the article refers to the terms ambiguously. I'm all for government supporting open standards, but I'm leery of supporting a particular development methodology such as open source. Security though, IMHO, is a valid basis for supporting open source (due to increased peer review).
One other question: who gets to determine whether a given software package "supports" a given open standard? I'm sure Microsoft would say that IE supports CSS 2, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. Likewise, there's probably always going to be something that somebody could use to say that it's not 100% supported. Seems to me there's a continuum here, and more definition is needed.
I agree. When you take a car on the road, you're not in your own home. You're on public property, and what you do affects other people even if you *don't* hit them. You don't have a right to privacy with respect to your driving record in this case IMHO.
Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. This guy got what he deserved.
>If you were purchasing a PDA right now,
;)
>would you choose Palm, Handspring, or
>avoid them entirely?
I faced this decision two weeks ago after my Palm died, and ended up buying a Pocket PC (Dell Axim X5 Pro). There were specific features I wanted (like voice memo) that were only available in high-end Palm units, if at all, but are pretty much standard on PPC. The cheapest Palm OS device I could find with voice memo, for example, was $399. For $50 less, my Axim has voice memo, dual expansion slots, a 400MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, 802.11b networking, and a docking cradle. The apps are comparable.
Say what you want about Windoze for Pocket PC, but the value proposition for me was a no-brainer. I'm really enjoying my new toy
Our company just implemented a large ACH (automated clearinghouse) app for GoldLeaf Technologies, in C#. They didn't laugh us out of the sales call, and neither are their customers doing it to them. The application and the platform it runs on both rock.
.NET these days are portability, feature-completeness, and availability of free solutions. I expect both these advantages to go away pretty soon (go Mono!).
I like Java as much as the next guy (I'm certified in it), but from my perspective the only things Java has on
For a debunking of the Fable of the Keys article, check out this article. Liebowitz and Margolis are biased and their arguments flawed.
I wrote letters a couple of days ago to my representative and senator about this bill, but if I can get down there from Alpharetta I'll be there at 2:00. This bill can't be allowed to pass.
>>Not sure to what extent it was practiced
>>with ancient slaves but selective breeding
>>is certainly a reason why the US has so many
>>great black athlete's currently
IMHO that's not very certain. Got any evidence of it? I think it's reasonable that an environment influences the evolution of its population, but as far as I'm aware there's limited evidence that evolution is the main source of success of US athletes, and even less evidence that that evolution was directed by other humans.
Same situation with me. Thank you Speakeasy!
First, the article doesn't discuss where these honeypots were set up; to me this is required information since the risks (both of malicious connection and of spam on those malicious connections) vary by location. If my WLAN is in a "safe" environment I'm going to worry less about this.
Second, there was a big blurb on the article advertising SurfControl, a spam-filtering product. So I will treat everything in this article skeptically.
And the corollary to that is, what about technical users that DO like eye-candy (like me)? I like graphical "fluff" as long as my machine has the horsepower to handle it, and the nice effects don't keep me from doing stuff I need to do.
The Onion is posting *real* news today...
My wife is a licensed architect (a real one), and I studied it for four years. Now with 20 years programming experience, my title is "Software Architect". She hates that, and I suppose a similar legal issue to that of engineers exists.
Licensing requirements should be based on the project at hand - not all projects should require licensed professionals. For example I shouldn't need a licensed software dude to put together a web page; similarly I don't need a licensed civil engineer to put up a non-loadbearing wall in my garage. However, if I were designing flight control software for an airliner, it would be reasonable.
The liability issue is a sticking point - architects get sued more than anyone I know. I don't know what the solution to that is.
Another issue is that the comparison of software engineering to hardware engineering only stands up to so much scrutiny. Software is a much more abstract and mutable medium and a project can easily get beyond a given person's ability to grasp. In hardware you can usually address this by physically separating the components; we're making progress in achieving separation in software components but it's still evolving.
Well, I don't know about desktop LCD monitors, but I'm running 1600x1200 on my 15" Dell laptop. I don't know of many similar-sized CRT's that can hit that res, especially with the clarity my LCD has.
They have a new model with a 1920x1200 15.4" WUXGA display.
Original article:
>> I suspect that the huge dent in the case,
>> indicating some sort of collision, trauma,
>> impact, stampede or other violence might
>> have something to do with that.
Response:
> The (albeit few) family members (and others)
> that has a Linux distribution haven't got
> nearly as much troubles as the ones using
> That-Other system.
Last I checked, not even Linux could do much about a big dent in the side of a machine. Unless the dent was caused by frustration with That-Other system.
Keep aware of local concerts by international artists, and go to them. In many cases, because of the smaller audience for this music, the performers are available to talk to the audience and they sell their CDs directly.
I listen to (and play) Irish dance music, and over the last few years I've gotten most of my CDs directly from the musicians' hands. Everybody and his brother in Ireland has a CD, and when they tour they always have them for sale.
No, it's still slashdotted from when this story was posted two days ago ;)
Well, I have mod points but thought it would be better to respond.
I don't feel that tabs imply much with regard to order, and as a result I don't feel that they are very useful for 'controlling and guiding' program flow. Next and Back buttons in a wizard are better for that. Tabs *are* very useful for allowing users to navigate in a random-access manner (though not very space-efficient for that purpose), and for reducing the amount of information shown at once.
As for tabs as a browser feature, they work well for that too, since in my usage most pages viewed are unrelated to each other, at least in terms of order.
This technology sounds like a more complicated (and expensive) version of the already-complicated and expensive LCD technology we have. Furthermore, it doesn't sound like the technology will work well with the OLED's that are just starting to come out.
Given a choice between "3D" LCD and 2D OLED, I'll take OLED, thank you very much.
While people are recommending books, I'll throw one in: Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. The book deals with formal systems and other topics, and won the Pulitzer prize - well worth reading.