The main ethical thing I've seen that worries me, is the damage done to the chromosomes (or whatever) during cloning, which could cause health problems. I thought I read that the cloned animals were having some problems. Introducing a human into the world that would be burdened by cloning-caused illnesses is just plain wrong.
What is *up* with this guy, anyway? Does he have a suite of disabilities or something, or is he just a nut? (From what little I could piece together of him from various sources, the "nut" theory seems more plausible.)
Does anyone really believe he had half a million bucks of wearable computers on him that he really needed? And that he suffered brain damage from having them rebooted? Was this supposed to be posted on April 1st or something?
Anybody who is trying to board a plane in this day and age with a whack of unnecessary electrodes and hardware placed all over his body, is just looking for trouble (or more likely, publicity).
I've travelled many Airlines, and Air Canada is luxurious and incredibly careful as compared to any of the others I've used (never lost a bag, never damaged anything, for me). And any increased level of security (for a rather suspicious whack of hardware) is solely due to attempts to protect Canada's neighbor to the south from terrorist activities.
Getting this guy any press at all for his supposed problems is just ludicrous.
It's the rapidly changing, undocumented, and proprietary API's and protocols than need to be opened up, to stop their anti-competitive behaviour.
Whether or not the source is available for Word, is less important than whether or not the format (with the monopoly share of the market) can be used interchangeably on different platforms by different vendors, or whether Microsoft keeps it closed and changing.
I really don't ever want to see Microsoft's source.
Anyways, with their track record, I'd go with a Maxtor NAS or any other company before Iomega, and even if there would be only Iomega in that market,
Maxtor NAS units are unreliable pieces of junk. We had three of them, and three of them are now non-functional. Of course, now that they changed from BSD to W2K, I'm sure they're *much* more reliable (shudder).
I'd make my own solution with off the shelf parts before trusting my data to them
Of all the lower cost solutions, I've found this to consistently be the best bet. A bit more work initially, but less work, and more control in the long run. When we contacted Maxtor for assistance in recovering data off of one of their pooched units, they informed us that the data isn't their responsibility, and offered no help. (Yes, we did have backups, and got relatively recent data off of that; but a tiny bit of help in recovery would have been better than just being told that the integrity of the data wasn't their problem.)
So MS releases some source (seeing their.NET in serious jeopardy), which could in theory be compiled on different platforms. If someone went through the herculean porting effort, do you think MS would actually let you *run* anything or *distribute* anything, without some serious licensing fees? Don't fool yourself.
Another essential purpose that PDA's have come to serve for me is for quick voice memos (which I eventually transcribe when I'm not driving, or otherwise unable to write). Again, without a built-in mic, it's still problematic. I might pick one up anyway for the coolness factor, but I'll probably wait until someone hits it with a cool Linux PDA with the right hardware features (at least on par with the CE units).
If it *is* less modular, that is solely because they knew that there would be regulatory attempts to separate it in the future, and they *intentionally* made it hard to separate.
It's common sense knowledge that modular design and programming is indeed the best way to design things. With their resources, talent, and money, if they couldn't design it in a modular fashion, it was because they decided to do it that way for political reasons.
So the fact it may be difficult is moot. That's a demon of their own creation, that they should be forced to deal with.
D'oh! I was almost going to defend them, saying it was probably just a manufacturing delay, and they got some cheap Nokia parts to do them in the interim. Then I did a very un-slashdot-like thing, and read the article, and this passage jumped out at me:
"For instance, the California Department of Corporations raided an online gambling venture tied to Hop-On in 1999 for allegedly fleecing investors out of as much as $20 million. And last month, the state suspended Hop-On's corporate status, saying it had failed to pay $400 and file its tax returns for two years in a row."
While I truly despise "trial by media," and try not to fall victim to believing everything I read, I gotta say those statements are pretty scary.
PDA Stands for Personal Digital Assistant. One of the key things such an assistant needs to be able to do is remind you about appointments and other things. And the Zaurus doesn't have a speaker???
From the user manual: "Volume setting allows you to adjust the volume of the stereo headphones to listen to the Media Player and Voice Recorder files, or the alarm, keyclicks, and screentaps." So no tactile feedback, no reminders, no nothing, without headphones. Man, they blew it on this one feature. I'd probably buy one, otherwise. The poor mute little beast.
If this is true, it has to be one of the first units that ever billed itself a PDA, that did not have a speaker on it. I'm not about to wear my earphones all the time to be reminded of things.
Can someone at least tell me that this thing can go "beep beep beep"? If not, doesn't anyone else see this as a showstopper, despite all of it's other coolness?
(Heh, heh, heh, I smell a Microsoft conspiracy; hey, Sharp, we won't cancel your PocketPC licenses for your other products, as long as you severly cripple your Linux Zaurus in a non-obvious way:-)
Your grammer, punctuation, and spelling are excellent. Your grammar, punctuation (no comma here) and spelling make me cry.
Sigh... Attacked by someone who is presuming to be an expert. How unusual on/, and wonderfully constructive. Please see The Case of the Serial Comma, as one, among many, sources who discuss this common fallacy.
Man, giving a kid some credit for grammar and punctiona *far* and *above* the average seen here, and people try to tear me and him apart. Nice. Oh well, to be expected, I guess.
On a related, but important note, you appear to have a valuable skill that is all too lacking in adults in this industry. Your grammer, punctuation, and spelling are excellent. That alone will help you stand out among other techies. Combine that with your technical skills, and I'm sure you have some exciting years ahead of you.
The labour laws are frustrating, and need to be changed. But in the meanwhile, enjoy yourself, learn lotsa cool stuff, and be ready to hit the ground running in the workforce when the time comes. You'll have such a huge headstart on others.
Also, they can't stop you from being self-employed. While the signing of contracts would be a limiting factor there, with your parents help, there should be some possibilities. If you create a great technology, and sell it off to someone, that shouldn't be subject to employment regulations. (Hmmmm, would a 13 year old have to file a tax claim for a $2M capital gain?:-) I guess it'd fall on the parent's tax claim.)
I agree that X has done remote stuff for ages. Two big points (well small points, with big effects) make it sub-optimal as compared to VNC or other solutions:
1) No persistence. You can not disconnect a virtual session, and reconnect it from another location. In almost all cases, if your connection is dropped, the application die. This lack of persistence is a bit problem.
2) Requires incoming connections. Due to the unusual (but very cool) client/server inversion, when you start an X application, it connects back to your server. This requires an *incoming* connection, which is far more problematic for firewalls, NAT's, proxies, corporate networks, and such. VNC, HotMail via HTTP, and other webtop-ish things, work on strictly outgoing TCP/IP connections, making them firewall friendly.
I have no idea what kind of structure a large mass vat-grown steak (fish or beef) would develop, but I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to induce the cells to create their own structure by passing electric currents through the chunk as it forms, and/or to use a ceramic rod as a substitute for a bone to provide an initial alignment.
I think it'd be simpler than that; post-processing of chopping it up minutely and repacking it in familiar textures should be the easy part. Sounds gross, but in practice, I bet it could be pretty good:-)
Years ago, at a JavaOne, Sun bragged about their "webtop", which was based upon their iPlanet software. It sounded like a dream come true: all Sun employees had little authentication devices for coming up with their keys; they could fire up any Java enabled browser, bang in their keys, and access all their email, newsgroups, web pages (including publishing) and so forth anywhere that an internet connection was available.
I thought it was terribly exciting. But I haven't much from it since, so I'm guessing it was yet another big hype job from Sun, with little to support it.
I tried out the iPlanet demo a few months later, but it was horribly confusing and complicated to set up, and I never was able to actually get it running. Not exactly ready for prime time. (It was an acquisition, I believe, that was never properly integrated and deployed in a slick package.) Recently, I think Sun has made some rumblings about iPlanet, so maybe it will be resurrected in a more usable fashion.
The idea of divorcing oneself from a specific piece of hardware for their desktop is going to be the future. If you think about it, the popularity of HotMail and other web-based mail services is very much a specific case of this for email. By making the application web-centric, you free yourself from specific hardware.
One step in the right direction for non-web email is using IMAPI instead of POP. I made the switch awhile ago, and am feeling much more "mobile" with the mail stored on a central server, especially given that a large chunk of my work revolves around email. Any machine running Windows or Linux has a browser or mail client that support MAPI, and I can get at all my messages.
The biggest problem with this is that other than email and browsing (which is inherently portable), few applications have been made to work in such a distributed fashion. Also, even when an application has been done in such a manner, the ubiquity of connectivity is an issue. If you're away from the home or office, or on a plane, or elsewhere, live connectivity can be a problem. This issue will be reduced with time, as airlines add internet connectivity, CDPD and other wide area connectivity becomes more prevalent.
But the apps are still an issue.
For those who haven't checked it out, VNC deserves a good look. You can create a virtual desktop on Windows (or more importantly, Linux:-), which can be access from any Java-enabled browser (or more efficiently, using the VNC client application, which is open source, and heavily ported).
In a slightly more archaic fashion, the textual VNC equivalent, "screen" (standard in RedHat and other Linux distributions) is a powerful and oft-overlooked utility, which I consider essential for anyone using a command line. Disappearing windows or disconnected telnet sessions become irrelevant with screen, which also allows shared sessions, history, and other amazing stuff.
Regarding VNC, the performance isn't as good as PC Anywhere, but it's usable with 28.8K+, in my experience. There's nothing like going to your hotel, and firing up an X session that is actually running at your house.
I firmly believe the "webtop" or it's equivalent (please God, not.NET) will be the future of the internet. The Linux/Open Source community needs to be careful to make sure it isn't.NET services that dominant this, and that there are other alternatives that meet the same needs as well, or preferrably better. (Or if.NET does dominate, the government or the business community makes sure that the protocols are open.)
In the (in)famous 3-D Simpsons when Homer wanders into the freaky 3-D realm, the equation floating in the background [e^(pi*i)=-1] is infact a form of Euler's equation, one of the most important equations in math. In it's traditional form, [e^(pi*i)]+1=0 it relates the 5 most important constants in math.
Why do I tend to believe that the math jokes in that 3D sequence were injected by the geeks (and I use that term respectfully) who did the rendering, rather than the writers. Dunno, there were a few other "in jokes" rendering-wise, that made me think most of the visual math humour in that sequence were done by the company that did the rendering. Could be wrong, though.
There certainly is a lot of other good math humour in the show, tho'
While this is far from being free energy, it is a pretty interesting way of deriving power from the tides.
Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think tides and waves are quite distinct. Waves are caused by wind across water (which is why they can vary greatly), while tides are caused by the pull of lunar gravity (and are very predictable). Tide tables are published years in advance, wave forecast are part of the daily weather forecast.
The unit described makes use of the height difference across waves, and has nothing to do with tides, from what I can see.
In the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, there is a small tidal power plan (experimental, I think). Basically as the tidal water flows in and flows out due to the big change in tides (highest in the world), power is generated.
It seems to me that there is more potential (so to speak:-) in tidal energy, as the energy in moving massive amounts of relatively heavy water up and down six feet (or 20 in the case of the bay of Fundy) would be enormous.
Of course, the construction costs to harness it, might be more than proportionately higher.
It seems to me, one big advantage to the tides is that they're 100% reliable, whereas wave action (like wind, and solar) will vary based upon weather.
-me
Re:Huh? Jail time for fighting spam?
on
ORBZ Shuts Down
·
· Score: 2
Let me get this straight. An organization whose sole purpose is fighting spam, is being shut down and afraid of facing jail time due to a bug in Lotus notes?
Hmmm, this just doesn't make any sense, so maybe it would best be defended with the Chewbacca Defense.
(Sigh, maybe some day I'll get all my comments in one post. I feel like George Costanza, coming up with the witty comeback long after the fact. "The jerk store just called, and they're all out of you!")
-me
Re:Huh? Jail time for fighting spam?
on
ORBZ Shuts Down
·
· Score: 2
One more point: if he's being sued for something done in the past, whether or not he shuts down Orbz is irrelevant, liability-wise. If he has been given a cease-and-desists (or else face prosecution), would not simply skipping Lotus servers meet that requirement, and prevent any future liability?
Surely he can't be held liable by whoever is suing him, for scanning the 99.9% of non-Lotus SMTP servers out there.
-me
Huh? Jail time for fighting spam?
on
ORBZ Shuts Down
·
· Score: 2
Let me get this straight. An organization whose sole purpose is fighting spam, is being shut down and afraid of facing jail time due to a bug in Lotus notes?
Can we find out who the suing party is, so folks can let this company and their state representatives know what they think of this?
Also, could not Lotus notes servers be identified (I would imagine they spit out an ID string like other SMTP servers) and this bug either worked around, or the Lotus servers ignored? It seems that would be more constructive than shutting down.
"This would be a great time for someone to sweep it up.;) cough*OpenBeOS*cough*"
Right. Even in this post.COM boom era, *any* two letter.com domain (it could be xq.com) is going to be worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions; and take into account that be.com is a two-letter domain that represents the shortest, most popular, and somewhat existential verb in the english language...
I somehow doubt OpenBeOS will just "sweep" this one up:-) Maybe Coke or Pepsi or some other megaconglomerate as part of a major ad compaign. But not OpenBeOS.
Slashdot Mirror
The main ethical thing I've seen that worries me, is the damage done to the chromosomes (or whatever) during cloning, which could cause health problems. I thought I read that the cloned animals were having some problems. Introducing a human into the world that would be burdened by cloning-caused illnesses is just plain wrong.
-me
Actually, folks, you have me to thank for the release of this product.
:-)
This lower cost unit most certainly wouldn't have been releas6ed if I hadn't just purchased the top of the line Radeon for more than twice that
Regardless, I like the unit, and the Tivo-like functions (and great remote) are well worth it.
You're all quite welcome. Go enjoy the price break.
-me
So instead of being slightly out of date, it will break completely. That idea is right up there with the lead balloon...
-me
What is *up* with this guy, anyway? Does he have a suite of disabilities or something, or is he just a nut? (From what little I could piece together of him from various sources, the "nut" theory seems more plausible.)
Does anyone really believe he had half a million bucks of wearable computers on him that he really needed? And that he suffered brain damage from having them rebooted? Was this supposed to be posted on April 1st or something?
Anybody who is trying to board a plane in this day and age with a whack of unnecessary electrodes and hardware placed all over his body, is just looking for trouble (or more likely, publicity).
I've travelled many Airlines, and Air Canada is luxurious and incredibly careful as compared to any of the others I've used (never lost a bag, never damaged anything, for me). And any increased level of security (for a rather suspicious whack of hardware) is solely due to attempts to protect Canada's neighbor to the south from terrorist activities.
Getting this guy any press at all for his supposed problems is just ludicrous.
-me
It's the rapidly changing, undocumented, and proprietary API's and protocols than need to be opened up, to stop their anti-competitive behaviour.
Whether or not the source is available for Word, is less important than whether or not the format (with the monopoly share of the market) can be used interchangeably on different platforms by different vendors, or whether Microsoft keeps it closed and changing.
I really don't ever want to see Microsoft's source.
-me
Of all the lower cost solutions, I've found this to consistently be the best bet. A bit more work initially, but less work, and more control in the long run. When we contacted Maxtor for assistance in recovering data off of one of their pooched units, they informed us that the data isn't their responsibility, and offered no help. (Yes, we did have backups, and got relatively recent data off of that; but a tiny bit of help in recovery would have been better than just being told that the integrity of the data wasn't their problem.)
-me
So MS releases some source (seeing their .NET in serious jeopardy), which could in theory be compiled on different platforms. If someone went through the herculean porting effort, do you think MS would actually let you *run* anything or *distribute* anything, without some serious licensing fees? Don't fool yourself.
-me
Another essential purpose that PDA's have come to serve for me is for quick voice memos (which I eventually transcribe when I'm not driving, or otherwise unable to write). Again, without a built-in mic, it's still problematic. I might pick one up anyway for the coolness factor, but I'll probably wait until someone hits it with a cool Linux PDA with the right hardware features (at least on par with the CE units).
-me
If it *is* less modular, that is solely because they knew that there would be regulatory attempts to separate it in the future, and they *intentionally* made it hard to separate.
It's common sense knowledge that modular design and programming is indeed the best way to design things. With their resources, talent, and money, if they couldn't design it in a modular fashion, it was because they decided to do it that way for political reasons.
So the fact it may be difficult is moot. That's a demon of their own creation, that they should be forced to deal with.
-me
While I truly despise "trial by media," and try not to fall victim to believing everything I read, I gotta say those statements are pretty scary.
-me
PDA Stands for Personal Digital Assistant. One of the key things such an assistant needs to be able to do is remind you about appointments and other things. And the Zaurus doesn't have a speaker???
:-)
From the user manual: "Volume setting allows you to adjust the volume of the stereo headphones to listen to the Media Player and Voice Recorder files, or the alarm, keyclicks, and screentaps." So no tactile feedback, no reminders, no nothing, without headphones. Man, they blew it on this one feature. I'd probably buy one, otherwise. The poor mute little beast.
If this is true, it has to be one of the first units that ever billed itself a PDA, that did not have a speaker on it. I'm not about to wear my earphones all the time to be reminded of things.
Can someone at least tell me that this thing can go "beep beep beep"? If not, doesn't anyone else see this as a showstopper, despite all of it's other coolness?
(Heh, heh, heh, I smell a Microsoft conspiracy; hey, Sharp, we won't cancel your PocketPC licenses for your other products, as long as you severly cripple your Linux Zaurus in a non-obvious way
-me
Man, giving a kid some credit for grammar and punctiona *far* and *above* the average seen here, and people try to tear me and him apart. Nice. Oh well, to be expected, I guess.
-me
On a related, but important note, you appear to have a valuable skill that is all too lacking in adults in this industry. Your grammer, punctuation, and spelling are excellent. That alone will help you stand out among other techies. Combine that with your technical skills, and I'm sure you have some exciting years ahead of you.
:-) I guess it'd fall on the parent's tax claim.)
The labour laws are frustrating, and need to be changed. But in the meanwhile, enjoy yourself, learn lotsa cool stuff, and be ready to hit the ground running in the workforce when the time comes. You'll have such a huge headstart on others.
Also, they can't stop you from being self-employed. While the signing of contracts would be a limiting factor there, with your parents help, there should be some possibilities. If you create a great technology, and sell it off to someone, that shouldn't be subject to employment regulations. (Hmmmm, would a 13 year old have to file a tax claim for a $2M capital gain?
-me
I agree that X has done remote stuff for ages. Two big points (well small points, with big effects) make it sub-optimal as compared to VNC or other solutions:
1) No persistence. You can not disconnect a virtual session, and reconnect it from another location. In almost all cases, if your connection is dropped, the application die. This lack of persistence is a bit problem.
2) Requires incoming connections. Due to the unusual (but very cool) client/server inversion, when you start an X application, it connects back to your server. This requires an *incoming* connection, which is far more problematic for firewalls, NAT's, proxies, corporate networks, and such. VNC, HotMail via HTTP, and other webtop-ish things, work on strictly outgoing TCP/IP connections, making them firewall friendly.
-me
-me
Years ago, at a JavaOne, Sun bragged about their "webtop", which was based upon their iPlanet software. It sounded like a dream come true: all Sun employees had little authentication devices for coming up with their keys; they could fire up any Java enabled browser, bang in their keys, and access all their email, newsgroups, web pages (including publishing) and so forth anywhere that an internet connection was available.
:-), which can be access from any Java-enabled browser (or more efficiently, using the VNC client application, which is open source, and heavily ported).
.NET) will be the future of the internet. The Linux/Open Source community needs to be careful to make sure it isn't .NET services that dominant this, and that there are other alternatives that meet the same needs as well, or preferrably better. (Or if .NET does dominate, the government or the business community makes sure that the protocols are open.)
I thought it was terribly exciting. But I haven't much from it since, so I'm guessing it was yet another big hype job from Sun, with little to support it.
I tried out the iPlanet demo a few months later, but it was horribly confusing and complicated to set up, and I never was able to actually get it running. Not exactly ready for prime time. (It was an acquisition, I believe, that was never properly integrated and deployed in a slick package.) Recently, I think Sun has made some rumblings about iPlanet, so maybe it will be resurrected in a more usable fashion.
The idea of divorcing oneself from a specific piece of hardware for their desktop is going to be the future. If you think about it, the popularity of HotMail and other web-based mail services is very much a specific case of this for email. By making the application web-centric, you free yourself from specific hardware.
One step in the right direction for non-web email is using IMAPI instead of POP. I made the switch awhile ago, and am feeling much more "mobile" with the mail stored on a central server, especially given that a large chunk of my work revolves around email. Any machine running Windows or Linux has a browser or mail client that support MAPI, and I can get at all my messages.
The biggest problem with this is that other than email and browsing (which is inherently portable), few applications have been made to work in such a distributed fashion. Also, even when an application has been done in such a manner, the ubiquity of connectivity is an issue. If you're away from the home or office, or on a plane, or elsewhere, live connectivity can be a problem. This issue will be reduced with time, as airlines add internet connectivity, CDPD and other wide area connectivity becomes more prevalent.
But the apps are still an issue.
For those who haven't checked it out, VNC deserves a good look. You can create a virtual desktop on Windows (or more importantly, Linux
In a slightly more archaic fashion, the textual VNC equivalent, "screen" (standard in RedHat and other Linux distributions) is a powerful and oft-overlooked utility, which I consider essential for anyone using a command line. Disappearing windows or disconnected telnet sessions become irrelevant with screen, which also allows shared sessions, history, and other amazing stuff.
Regarding VNC, the performance isn't as good as PC Anywhere, but it's usable with 28.8K+, in my experience. There's nothing like going to your hotel, and firing up an X session that is actually running at your house.
I firmly believe the "webtop" or it's equivalent (please God, not
-me
What, no sed version available???
There certainly is a lot of other good math humour in the show, tho'
-me
-ComicBookGuy
The unit described makes use of the height difference across waves, and has nothing to do with tides, from what I can see.
In the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, there is a small tidal power plan (experimental, I think). Basically as the tidal water flows in and flows out due to the big change in tides (highest in the world), power is generated.
It seems to me that there is more potential (so to speak
Of course, the construction costs to harness it, might be more than proportionately higher.
It seems to me, one big advantage to the tides is that they're 100% reliable, whereas wave action (like wind, and solar) will vary based upon weather.
-me
Hmmm, this just doesn't make any sense, so maybe it would best be defended with the Chewbacca Defense.
(Sigh, maybe some day I'll get all my comments in one post. I feel like George Costanza, coming up with the witty comeback long after the fact. "The jerk store just called, and they're all out of you!")
-me
One more point: if he's being sued for something done in the past, whether or not he shuts down Orbz is irrelevant, liability-wise. If he has been given a cease-and-desists (or else face prosecution), would not simply skipping Lotus servers meet that requirement, and prevent any future liability?
Surely he can't be held liable by whoever is suing him, for scanning the 99.9% of non-Lotus SMTP servers out there.
-me
Let me get this straight. An organization whose sole purpose is fighting spam, is being shut down and afraid of facing jail time due to a bug in Lotus notes?
Can we find out who the suing party is, so folks can let this company and their state representatives know what they think of this?
Also, could not Lotus notes servers be identified (I would imagine they spit out an ID string like other SMTP servers) and this bug either worked around, or the Lotus servers ignored? It seems that would be more constructive than shutting down.
-me
Wow, it's remarkably similar to the lead item in this recent story. What a rip off! :-)
-me
I somehow doubt OpenBeOS will just "sweep" this one up
-me