Ingenious - I love this gene transfer and splicing stuff. These scientists should get a Nobel prize for this, this is way cooler than dynamite or nitroglycerine. How quickly can we get this ultra fuel into the mainstream. I hope it's quicker than those ultra efficient solar cells you can print onto any surface that were meant to revolutionize renewable energy - it's been years and I haven't heard hide nor hair of them. Anyone got an update on that tech?
There was no note in my suitcase at all eg "We took this item because it looked like a bomb". It was plain theft. No way to contact the TSA and get a human either.
I'm sure this isn't an isolated case - I bet theft is rife. I found out later that you NEVER put valuables in a suitcase in the USA. It must suck to live in the USA.
How the hell can you file a claim before you leave the airport? Since my bag is checked in am I supposed to have ESP? Also, at the destination end, I don't have a habit of opening my suitcases in a crowded smelly airport terminal. Northwest can suck my jocks.
I had a brand new Apple laptop (still in bubble wrap) in my suitcase. It was stolen by the baggage handlers at north west airlines (LA airport). Stupid me - I'm from Australia where you just DON"T expect this. I tried to complain to North West - they don't have ANY facility to complain about theft - they have NO contact numbers, and their web complaints form was broken. I never fly North West anymore.
Now, if that laptop had a tracking CHIP. I would get me a KNIFE, a Crocodile Dundee KNIFE and mosey my way down to LA. I'd recover my laptop. The thief would then need to have a hook fitted on his bloody arm stump.
In Australia a CD / DVD be around $40 (about US$37). Since this represents about $37 o' pure greed, it's no wonder t' people be votin' with their mouse. I say, when t' sea be rough, jump on t' starboard ship.
Arrr, ahoy landlubbers, we be PIRATES and YOU MPAA will be dancing the hempen jig.
Hello, a lot of US companies including newegg.com do not ship to Australia. For these, I have a virtual office in New York - it only costs a couple of hundred a year. They then put it in international mail for me. Works out cheap overall. Certainly beats the absurd retail prices we pay here for a lot of items. I buy a lot of items overseas. Some thing you just can't buy in the land of Oz.
I buy all my "fashion" from second hand clothing shops and "op shops". Far cheaper than ebay as I don't get stung with postage for each item.
Oh, my girlfriend would "never" buy second hand clothes. She thinks I'm a tramp for doing it. But hey, I spend about $300 per year on clothes as compared to about $3k.
I find the computer / electronic goods totally overpriced on EBay.
I visit discount stores online like newegg.com and check out the prices on some on the cutting edge gear and then it all becomes clear why I don't buy this stuff on EBay. I've bought about 12 electronic things on ebay - besides being old model, more than half of it was defective or substandard in some way.
After throwing a lot of gear out I resolved to buy new online.
Ebay think they have us by the Aussie short and curlies becuase we pay outrageous retail prices for electronic equipment in Australia. The real scam is that you can buy international, have it shipped, and still save a bucketwad of money over retail.
But don't tell anyone, they may try and tax it.
Cheers
I've already emailed a complaint through their contact system. I've had many happy transactions trough bank transfer from both a buyer and seller perspective. This is the ENTIRE reason for the rating system - so you know who you are dealing with before the transaction.
I will cancel my account tomorrow and simply buy new over the internet. With the overshopping that goes on on ebay, I'll probably even save some money and get new stuff rather than second hand.
Ebay is going the way of Microsoft, way way down under.
According to new Nasa research http://www.nasa.gov/news/highlights/index.html they can fully fund a new US$2 billion research project by selling the franchise to the revolving restaurant at the top and logo placement along the length of the ribbon itself. Already, they have received competitive bids from Chez Panisse, McDonalds, and Bert Farnsdale's New York hotdog stand. This is the start of the holy mothership of bidding wars.
Ok, having done a lot of work in Genetic Algorithms here is the elevator pitch.
A genetic algorithm is an algorithm that manipulates encoded problem solutions using a population of potential solutions. Each solution, or population member, in this case, is a set of racing car parameters. The genetic algorithm selects a couple of solutions and recombines parts of each to produce two new solutions using a recombination operator. Mutuation is normally added as well. The two new solutions are then "measured" for fitness; in the racing scenario a full scale simulation of the actual car is carried out. This produces a single value of fitness that is associated with the newly generated member.
The algorithm proceeds by selecting a couple of candidate parents; normally with random bias weighted toward fitter parents. The parents mate, new chidren produced, the children are measured, then integrated back into the population and they cycle continues.
The end result of all of this is that small "above average" solution components "accumulate" in the population at an exponential rate as time goes on. Of course, this only happens early in the first few generations before high "saturation" / convergence levels are reached. This is kind of cool because something good is happening at an exponential rate as time goes on; this is very useful when trying to solve problems with vast state spaces; eg the problem of finding a good racing car model where you need strong brew to find a resonable solution. Later on, most of the population members can often encode very fit solutions. This mathematical property (exponential accumulation) explains why the genetic algorithm is the algorithm of choice in nature, and also why an alarming proportion of PhD students are now studying genetic algorithms. This technique isn't new either, as Ratbag games have been using these techniques and other cool machine learning techniques for years to evolve the AI on their car titles such as "Dirt Track Racing" and "Powerslide".
Of course, we already know that this stuff works; as a quick trip to the zoo will show you what evolution has done to optimize the cheetah.
This is a very simplified view; there are a bunch of design issues such as encoding, premature convergence, crossover (recomination), reproduction methods, method of generation, population sizing, operator adaptation that make this whole field very interesting and addictive. Having written a dozen genetic algorithms and solved many many problem types using GAs they never cease to suprise me how powerful these methods are.
It is fairly easy (but not cheap) to request examination of a patent that has been granted on the grounds of prior art or obviousness. I refer you to Ashley Parker's lucid document
http://www.jolt.unc.edu/vol3/Parker-V3I2.pdf
to ponder the considerable problems in the reexamination system, including the $10,000 fee for proposing it plus considerable legal fees, maybe $10k - $100k +fees for filing it and researching it properly. If you are being asked for $5,000 in licensing fees for violating some frivolous patent it' a tough call. In 2003 the Commissioner ordered only 17 reexaminations of stupid patents. 17. This was somewhat better than 2001 when they only ordered 2. Wake up Commissioner!
Slugging it out in court is not an option for most small software companies as the average patent litigation fee through trial is cited to be 1.2 million.
Happy programming everyone. Maybe, just don't code anything more complicated than a REM statement as it will probably violate a whole bunch of patents.
let's face it; software patenting is a rich boys club; or another manifestation of the motto "the one with the most money wins". There are thousands of patents like this; scads of unoriginal montages of half-baked and recycled ideas, cleverly disguised and slopped up to the USPO, and approved, cha ching.
It takes this kind of outrage and political pressure to get one patent reviewed. What chance does the small software company have protecting itself against patents with a lineage of prior art? It's also a positive feedback system; patents breed patents, just look at the crazy exponential explosion of USPO patents over the last five years. And sitting in the middle of the web is the black widow, the USPO, raking in the fees while spending precious little fix the spiraling problem.
Once practical answer: maybe register your software company in the Cayman Islands or Vanuatu, or some other such place and take your international profits offshore. Better defensive legal system; and better protection against the system fueled by common-revenue-oriented legislation and wayward lawyers.
This isn't new. Morally nebulous web site owners around the world configure their sites to check the user agent and if they detect a search engine like Google, they send a page that will 'spamdex' the Google search results; a page that with keyword laden or otherwise garbage to the user but optimized for search. The temptation to corrupt the fair process of serving the same info to everyone is irrisistable, especially when there is money to be made from a well ranked mortgage/gambling/casino/hi risk loan/no credit card refused type site. Hypocritically, this appears to work in reverse for vendors like Microsoft. Although they don't like users spamdexing their search engines based on user agent discrimination; they are more than happy to serve the same flavor of evil to help sqash a competitor in their marketplace.
Today, Toms Hardware discovered that whenever Microsoft Windows renders text in a window corresponding to the GNU licence or LGNU public license, that the MS Windows Media Player 9 renders very low frequency notes during the screen display. Professor Henry Fingle Von HydroFin of UCLA found that people reading this license, using certain HI FI components, would suffer from extreme depression, nausia, hot flushes, general discomfort and rashes around the groin area. The Mozilla team have responded by coding subliminal flashing, taschitoscope style, in the main Firebird client the words "MICROSOFT SUCKS" when browsing any site that uses Active X tags.
Introducing the NEW Microsoft 3D EULA; a list box of EULA text with a couple of buttons, oh, and picture of Bill reaching out to grab your nads.
3D Windows will be a whole new release packed with new features such as the
- 3D blue screen of death
- the 3D EULA (previously mentioned)
- the 3D Microsoft Wallet; reaches right into your pocket and actually installs itself!
"Hi, I'm Cindy the seeing Doll powered by Windows CE. Before you can use me I need to tell you my EULA and you must say 'I accept' when I have finished. This process will take approximately three hours. At the end of this process you will be able to activate me by ringing a toll free Microsoft number and telling me my 16 digit activation number."... three hours twenty five minutes later
"Hi Cindy, how are you today?"
"Hello, I'm Cindy the talking doll and I would like to tell you about the new range of Smart Screens available from Microsoft. This will take approximately three hours. Are you ready to start?"
a wise man once said:-
"behind a lot of great solved problems is a totally useless result; the value therein lies not in its outcome but in the solution methodology and how it applies to the attainment of other results, some of which will be a trifle more interesting"
who also said
"never buy of the horse that is overridden as it will fetch less at the clackers"
Put a thousand monkeys in a room with a long domino chain and see what happens. I've never had a windows installation that lasted more that 12 months - I've had 2 hard drive crashes, and OS entropy attacks, etc. After some time typically core windows components go south, currently MS Media player currently crashes whenever you play anything and the uninstall program unders windows 2k shows that I have absolutely no installed applications so I can't remove anything apart from deleting the tree using the file manager.
This has lead to second order accumulation of dentritus on my machine.
If only Microsoft spent more time on methods in which the integrity of their installation can be verified and automatically remedied over the web:- their standard answer to reinstall windows is a miserable response. I have better things to do than spend a week of my time fixing up Bill problems. Hard drives decay, bits get read wrong, applications mess up the wrong areas - entropy is everywhere:- what does Windows do to remedy it? Well it never did anything for me... even reinstalling Windows over the top has killed all my settings in the past.
grr, am i more of a monkey than the guys that write Windoze?
if you are the lead then you should be doing regular merges of your coworker's code:- a merge tells all - it show them how little work they are producing, and gives you a chance to offer feedback about crusty programming style. You should be in their face offering to help at all times of the day. You should have 100% availability and be ready to drop any of your own work to immediatly help one of your team. You should also monitor if they are getting stuck, if they are stuck for more than 2 hours, *you* move in and help. If you do daily merges they will be very embarrassed to show you that they have written two lines of code in the diffs.
In short, if you can't get work out of your team then *you* are not doing your job properly. If you are not the lead, then your boss is not doing their job properly, in which case you need to tell them so, or leave the company or both.
it not free-on at all
on
Microsoft Freon
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Microsoft expect to lose money on the box and make on going money when you are on the net playing games or maybe just surfing with a souped up copy of Explorer. So it's not likely to be free-on at all.
Some marketing genius says: well lets attack the negative and code name it Freon. another marketing genius says: but isn't freon an unpopular gas? the first marketing genius: But people will think that it is FREE ON, did you see what I did there? Did you see that? second genius:Hey, the number one marketing word is FREE. You are a genius. first genius (smug mode on): Hey, I'm living proof that Micro$oft recruit from the top.
Slashdot Mirror
whoo harr, a sugar daddy always gets the wimmin
Ingenious - I love this gene transfer and splicing stuff. These scientists should get a Nobel prize for this, this is way cooler than dynamite or nitroglycerine. How quickly can we get this ultra fuel into the mainstream. I hope it's quicker than those ultra efficient solar cells you can print onto any surface that were meant to revolutionize renewable energy - it's been years and I haven't heard hide nor hair of them. Anyone got an update on that tech?
I'm sure this isn't an isolated case - I bet theft is rife. I found out later that you NEVER put valuables in a suitcase in the USA. It must suck to live in the USA.
How the hell can you file a claim before you leave the airport? Since my bag is checked in am I supposed to have ESP? Also, at the destination end, I don't have a habit of opening my suitcases in a crowded smelly airport terminal. Northwest can suck my jocks.
I had a brand new Apple laptop (still in bubble wrap) in my suitcase. It was stolen by the baggage handlers at north west airlines (LA airport). Stupid me - I'm from Australia where you just DON"T expect this. I tried to complain to North West - they don't have ANY facility to complain about theft - they have NO contact numbers, and their web complaints form was broken. I never fly North West anymore.
Now, if that laptop had a tracking CHIP. I would get me a KNIFE, a Crocodile Dundee KNIFE and mosey my way down to LA. I'd recover my laptop. The thief would then need to have a hook fitted on his bloody arm stump.
In Australia a CD / DVD be around $40 (about US$37). Since this represents about $37 o' pure greed, it's no wonder t' people be votin' with their mouse. I say, when t' sea be rough, jump on t' starboard ship.
Arrr, ahoy landlubbers, we be PIRATES and YOU MPAA will be dancing the hempen jig.
"... With Your Humongous New Cock." (actual subject header of spam email received)
Seriously, we haven't had this kind of inspired ribald poetry since William Shakespeare.
I say bring it on, we need the spam entertainment.
SAVE THE BOTNET - SPAM IS ART
Dans la viande a bon marche, il est poesie
Hello, a lot of US companies including newegg.com do not ship to Australia. For these, I have a virtual office in New York - it only costs a couple of hundred a year. They then put it in international mail for me. Works out cheap overall. Certainly beats the absurd retail prices we pay here for a lot of items. I buy a lot of items overseas. Some thing you just can't buy in the land of Oz.
I buy all my "fashion" from second hand clothing shops and "op shops". Far cheaper than ebay as I don't get stung with postage for each item.
Oh, my girlfriend would "never" buy second hand clothes. She thinks I'm a tramp for doing it. But hey, I spend about $300 per year on clothes as compared to about $3k.
I find the computer / electronic goods totally overpriced on EBay.
I visit discount stores online like newegg.com and check out the prices on some on the cutting edge gear and then it all becomes clear why I don't buy this stuff on EBay. I've bought about 12 electronic things on ebay - besides being old model, more than half of it was defective or substandard in some way.
After throwing a lot of gear out I resolved to buy new online. Ebay think they have us by the Aussie short and curlies becuase we pay outrageous retail prices for electronic equipment in Australia. The real scam is that you can buy international, have it shipped, and still save a bucketwad of money over retail. But don't tell anyone, they may try and tax it. Cheers
buy new online - you get new latest model stuff rather than old crap, and you won't pay much more for.
I've already emailed a complaint through their contact system. I've had many happy transactions trough bank transfer from both a buyer and seller perspective. This is the ENTIRE reason for the rating system - so you know who you are dealing with before the transaction. I will cancel my account tomorrow and simply buy new over the internet. With the overshopping that goes on on ebay, I'll probably even save some money and get new stuff rather than second hand. Ebay is going the way of Microsoft, way way down under.
According to new Nasa research http://www.nasa.gov/news/highlights/index.html they can fully fund a new US$2 billion research project by selling the franchise to the revolving restaurant at the top and logo placement along the length of the ribbon itself. Already, they have received competitive bids from Chez Panisse, McDonalds, and Bert Farnsdale's New York hotdog stand. This is the start of the holy mothership of bidding wars.
Ok, having done a lot of work in Genetic Algorithms here is the elevator pitch.
A genetic algorithm is an algorithm that manipulates encoded problem solutions using a population of potential solutions. Each solution, or population member, in this case, is a set of racing car parameters. The genetic algorithm selects a couple of solutions and recombines parts of each to produce two new solutions using a recombination operator. Mutuation is normally added as well. The two new solutions are then "measured" for fitness; in the racing scenario a full scale simulation of the actual car is carried out. This produces a single value of fitness that is associated with the newly generated member.
The algorithm proceeds by selecting a couple of candidate parents; normally with random bias weighted toward fitter parents. The parents mate, new chidren produced, the children are measured, then integrated back into the population and they cycle continues.
The end result of all of this is that small "above average" solution components "accumulate" in the population at an exponential rate as time goes on. Of course, this only happens early in the first few generations before high "saturation" / convergence levels are reached. This is kind of cool because something good is happening at an exponential rate as time goes on; this is very useful when trying to solve problems with vast state spaces; eg the problem of finding a good racing car model where you need strong brew to find a resonable solution. Later on, most of the population members can often encode very fit solutions. This mathematical property (exponential accumulation) explains why the genetic algorithm is the algorithm of choice in nature, and also why an alarming proportion of PhD students are now studying genetic algorithms. This technique isn't new either, as Ratbag games have been using these techniques and other cool machine learning techniques for years to evolve the AI on their car titles such as "Dirt Track Racing" and "Powerslide".
Of course, we already know that this stuff works; as a quick trip to the zoo will show you what evolution has done to optimize the cheetah.
This is a very simplified view; there are a bunch of design issues such as encoding, premature convergence, crossover (recomination), reproduction methods, method of generation, population sizing, operator adaptation that make this whole field very interesting and addictive. Having written a dozen genetic algorithms and solved many many problem types using GAs they never cease to suprise me how powerful these methods are.
http://www.jolt.unc.edu/vol3/Parker-V3I2.pdf
to ponder the considerable problems in the reexamination system, including the $10,000 fee for proposing it plus considerable legal fees, maybe $10k - $100k +fees for filing it and researching it properly. If you are being asked for $5,000 in licensing fees for violating some frivolous patent it' a tough call. In 2003 the Commissioner ordered only 17 reexaminations of stupid patents. 17. This was somewhat better than 2001 when they only ordered 2. Wake up Commissioner!
Slugging it out in court is not an option for most small software companies as the average patent litigation fee through trial is cited to be 1.2 million.
Happy programming everyone. Maybe, just don't code anything more complicated than a REM statement as it will probably violate a whole bunch of patents.
let's face it; software patenting is a rich boys club; or another manifestation of the motto "the one with the most money wins". There are thousands of patents like this; scads of unoriginal montages of half-baked and recycled ideas, cleverly disguised and slopped up to the USPO, and approved, cha ching.
It takes this kind of outrage and political pressure to get one patent reviewed. What chance does the small software company have protecting itself against patents with a lineage of prior art? It's also a positive feedback system; patents breed patents, just look at the crazy exponential explosion of USPO patents over the last five years. And sitting in the middle of the web is the black widow, the USPO, raking in the fees while spending precious little fix the spiraling problem. Once practical answer: maybe register your software company in the Cayman Islands or Vanuatu, or some other such place and take your international profits offshore. Better defensive legal system; and better protection against the system fueled by common-revenue-oriented legislation and wayward lawyers.
This isn't new. Morally nebulous web site owners around the world configure their sites to check the user agent and if they detect a search engine like Google, they send a page that will 'spamdex' the Google search results; a page that with keyword laden or otherwise garbage to the user but optimized for search. The temptation to corrupt the fair process of serving the same info to everyone is irrisistable, especially when there is money to be made from a well ranked mortgage/gambling/casino/hi risk loan/no credit card refused type site. Hypocritically, this appears to work in reverse for vendors like Microsoft. Although they don't like users spamdexing their search engines based on user agent discrimination; they are more than happy to serve the same flavor of evil to help sqash a competitor in their marketplace.
Today, Toms Hardware discovered that whenever Microsoft Windows renders text in a window corresponding to the GNU licence or LGNU public license, that the MS Windows Media Player 9 renders very low frequency notes during the screen display. Professor Henry Fingle Von HydroFin of UCLA found that people reading this license, using certain HI FI components, would suffer from extreme depression, nausia, hot flushes, general discomfort and rashes around the groin area. The Mozilla team have responded by coding subliminal flashing, taschitoscope style, in the main Firebird client the words "MICROSOFT SUCKS" when browsing any site that uses Active X tags.
Introducing the NEW Microsoft 3D EULA; a list box of EULA text with a couple of buttons, oh, and picture of Bill reaching out to grab your nads.
3D Windows will be a whole new release packed with new features such as the
- 3D blue screen of death
- the 3D EULA (previously mentioned)
- the 3D Microsoft Wallet; reaches right into your pocket and actually installs itself!
"Hi, I'm Cindy the seeing Doll powered by Windows CE. Before you can use me I need to tell you my EULA and you must say 'I accept' when I have finished. This process will take approximately three hours. At the end of this process you will be able to activate me by ringing a toll free Microsoft number and telling me my 16 digit activation number." ... three hours twenty five minutes later
"Hi Cindy, how are you today?"
"Hello, I'm Cindy the talking doll and I would like to tell you about the new range of Smart Screens available from Microsoft. This will take approximately three hours. Are you ready to start?"
who also said
"never buy of the horse that is overridden as it will fetch less at the clackers"
Put a thousand monkeys in a room with a long domino chain and see what happens. I've never had a windows installation that lasted more that 12 months - I've had 2 hard drive crashes, and OS entropy attacks, etc. After some time typically core windows components go south, currently MS Media player currently crashes whenever you play anything and the uninstall program unders windows 2k shows that I have absolutely no installed applications so I can't remove anything apart from deleting the tree using the file manager.
:- their standard answer to reinstall windows is a miserable response. I have better things to do than spend a week of my time fixing up Bill problems. Hard drives decay, bits get read wrong, applications mess up the wrong areas - entropy is everywhere :- what does Windows do to remedy it? Well it never did anything for me ... even reinstalling Windows over the top has killed all my settings in the past.
This has lead to second order accumulation of dentritus on my machine.
If only Microsoft spent more time on methods in which the integrity of their installation can be verified and automatically remedied over the web
grr, am i more of a monkey than the guys that write Windoze?
if you are the lead then you should be doing regular merges of your coworker's code :- a merge tells all - it show them how little work they are producing, and gives you a chance to offer feedback about crusty programming style. You should be in their face offering to help at all times of the day. You should have 100% availability and be ready to drop any of your own work to immediatly help one of your team. You should also monitor if they are getting stuck, if they are stuck for more than 2 hours, *you* move in and help. If you do daily merges they will be very embarrassed to show you that they have written two lines of code in the diffs.
In short, if you can't get work out of your team then *you* are not doing your job properly. If you are not the lead, then your boss is not doing their job properly, in which case you need to tell them so, or leave the company or both.
Microsoft expect to lose money on the box and make on going money when you are on the net playing games or maybe just surfing with a souped up copy of Explorer. So it's not likely to be free-on at all.
Some marketing genius says: well lets attack the negative and code name it Freon.
another marketing genius says: but isn't freon an unpopular gas?
the first marketing genius: But people will think that it is FREE ON, did you see what I did there? Did you see that?
second genius:Hey, the number one marketing word is FREE. You are a genius.
first genius (smug mode on): Hey, I'm living proof that Micro$oft recruit from the top.