I think the only way to preserve data over the very long term (thousands of years) is to assume that whoever reads it in the future will be an alien (eg so different from us as to make any assumptions impossibile). Assume nothing about what we may have in common, and start from the basics. Any digital data that wants to be permanent in the same way that cuneaform tablets are permanent must contain not only data, but must begin with a complete description of what it takes to decode the data, starting from establishing a basic mathematical language. Very, very difficult. Perhaps we should be consulting linguists and archeologists when we're looking to put together these kinds of archives? Ask an archeologist, "What would make your job easier if you found it in the beginning of an ancient inscribed stone tablet? What kinds of things would aid you in translating it?" and go from there.
Smartphones have been available in one form or another for a while. While reviews are (nearly) unanimous that the Stinger isn't it, what's been the best smartphone so far? I love my Zaurus, and I might be interested in a GSM module for it, but I'm not sure that a huge screen on a phone is what I really want. I'm thinking that maybe the Ericsonn T68 is a good compromise. It does a lot, and it offers easy connectivity to just about any computer/pda if you prefer to use a dedicated device for surfing the web/etc.
Once upon a time, you could assemble Evil Ted from things that you bought at Radio Shack. But in the last several years, their stock of real electronics stuff has declined steadily. I'm not much of a hardware hacker, but I've started to notice that Radio Shack no longer usually has what I need when the soldering gun comes out. Now they just sell crappy computers, overpriced crappy stereo equipment, etc. They expanded to the point where there weren't enough geeks to support their original business plan, and the response was dropping those customers to the floor. I would've diversified the kinds of stores I had (maybe Radio Shack and RSNERD), but what do I know?
I don't know about the whole engaging characters & complex storylines in games thing. My favorite games have always been completely devoid of any storyline at all. Super Mario Bros had no real story line, but you could spend hours and hours playing it. Gran Turismo, Quake, and a whole bunch of more recent and great games have no real story line. What they DO have is fantastic playability and great graphics. I always found the little vignettes that advance the storyline to be little more than an annoyance, something that I had to wait to finish so I could get back to playing the game. Dragon's Lair sucked because it was nothing BUT movie clips with no game play at all. Give me a guy jumping on turtle shells for no clearly defined reason over that stuff any day.
I bought the Zaurus because it shared the single feature that I loved the most about my dear, departed Revo - a keyboard. Now that I've seen the new design, I'm salivating all over again. I LOVE this format, but history would indicate that I'm in the minority. Notice that there's no Revo MKII.
I'm assuming that you say this because you're not at a large university. My school depends on the attendance of graduate students and professors from abroad in order to function properly. In many departments foreign students make up more than half of the TA's. There simply is no one to do their job if they're not here, and yet at the beginning of the semester each department discovered that TA's and prof's had been denied their visas, despite full documentation from the school. We need to understand that the government is only creating the illusion of safety. What's really going on is a completely arbitrary process of visa denials. No explanation is ever offered when a student with a full ride gets turned away from the US embassy in China, because there is no explanation. They are doing this to appease the alarmists, but in fact there is no increase in safety.
I have a friend who is a graduate student from a Western European country. Every time he's flown to/from/within the US in the past year, he's been pulled out of line and searched. If he has a connection, they pull him out of line and search him again before boarding the plane. He's never been convicted of so much as jaywalking in his life, but he is guilty of having taken a vacation to Southeast Asia with his mother several years ago. If this is the quality of the risk-assessment we can expect, then excuse me for not feeling safer.
I've written Voicestream's Customer Care complaining about various aspects of their service. Recently, I sent them a letter complaining that: GPRS is way too expensive; only in the US do we get billed for incoming SMS messages. An actual HUMAN BEING responded to my email, and sent me a note explaining their SMS and GPRS pricing schedules, which of course has nothing to do with what I was complaining about. The humans in these call centers are often doing the same thing a computerized system does: responding to keywords, and ignoring the rest of your problem.
Its bad enough that the Chinese gov't can silence their own media. I wouldn't want to live in a world where fear of getting "banned" can silence the truth. This ain't 1650 - the emperor can't revoke our trading privileges for refusing to ketou. If China wants the foreign press to stop reporting bad things about China, then they should take it easy on their own citizens. We're not going to shut up.
It would be refreshing to see the directors of a company admit that they have no idea how they can make any money and return whatever their investors ponied up. The shareholders own the company, and if there's not even a glimmer of hope of the company ever being profitable (with Liquid I'm not sure that there ever was, but that's a separate issue) then the best thing is to admit defeat, cut your losses while there's still anything to cut, and close your doors.
I never used Opera much beyond playing until I got my Zaurus. While the thing is pretty much non-configurable, it does work well, and pages look surprisingly great considering how small the screen is. I'm hoping that this new engine will be coming to my little box too.
Re:What needs to happen...
on
ICANN Updates
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The problem with this idea is that its completely impossible to implement. There are no reliable ways of making sure that one person=one vote, no way of guaranteeing even participation geographically, economically, or any other way. Internet users nowadays are mostly people who log in to ISPs to use email and chat. They don't know what ICANN is, and don't care. Are you suggesting that voting on issues that affect so many naive users should be reduced to a tug-of war between nerds and corporations?
Who should, rightfully, get control of a country's top-level names? I have no doubt that Mr. Lawrie has done a good job, and for years with no pay at that, but he also isn't the one who built the infrastructure. I am not convinced that the government is always the best administrator, but why is looking to an undemocratic, unrepresentative corporation like ICANN any better?
making fun of this, please keep in mind that some of the best high-end amplifiers made today still use vaccuum tubes. Tubes are capable of making extremely high-quality sound, and whether this is because of their "warm sound" as enthusiasts claim or just because of sound degradation that sounds good to some people - well, that's just a matter of personal preference.
That there are any options for high-quality on-board audio at all - this can only be a good thing.
The original poster is, of course, entitled to his opinion. But the sense that I get from his post is that, because HE finds it boring, it shouldn't be included in such a list.
Am I being pretentious? Maybe. But I'm not a Maoist, and I don't believe that the cultural values of the masses are necessarily the best a society has to offer. There are lots of things that most people in the world don't/can't appreciate, but in many cases that's because they have no taste. Most high school kids think that Shakespeare sucks, but that doesn't mean that Shakespeare sucks, it means that they're idiots.
I don't like most classical music. I also don't like most jazz. But I'm not such a jerk as to suggest that these things have no value just because I don't like them. Nor am I silly enough to suggest that anyone will be listening to De La Soul in 100 years just because I like them now.
To paraphrase: "If I've never heard of it then it can't be any good."
Your logic is impeccable; judging the world this way must make your life very easy. I also salute you for declaring once and for all that a movie widely hailed as one of the best ever made isn't any good because "it's boring as hell." I suggest that you avoid the "classics" section of the bookstore - some of those books take HOURS to get through, and they don't even have any sex scenes!
I've got an iBook2 Rev1, which I bought less than a year ago for nearly $2k. Granted, the Rage M3 video card that Apple included was never the fastest mobile video chipset out there, but it SHOULD support at least some hardware acceleration - it certainly could under OS 9. My iBook's box had a nice big decal on it that said, "Made for OS X" - this should mean that the mature version takes full advantage of my hardware, not completely leapfrogs over it. When I bought this computer, DVD playback and CD burning were not supported, and now they are. I don't think I'm being unreasonable by expecting that some level of video acceleration will be added too.
You know, I'm Jewish and I keep hearing about this whole worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Apparently I'm not entered in their records correctly - could someone tell me who I need to write to so I can get my monthly check and my "How to manipulate the media" packet?
So we are just supposed to trust that the huge media conglomerate is doing something that is right and just, and NOT throwing its weight around to bully the small guy out of business. Because frivolous lawsuits that amount to nothing more than harassment of small critics/competitors/whistleblowsers are completely unknown. Please. In any case like this, I'm more likely to side with the little guy, just because I know that he's being picked on. And the bully knows that he can't defend himself.
Hopefully this will offer better results with Asian language word processing in OS X. Appleworks looks fine on screen, but refuses to print Chinese properly and has problems understanding cut and paste in Chinese. Office X allows you to write and print in Chinese just fine, but ONLY after running a conversion app that causes many of your menus to mutate into Japanese.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the only way to preserve data over the very long term (thousands of years) is to assume that whoever reads it in the future will be an alien (eg so different from us as to make any assumptions impossibile). Assume nothing about what we may have in common, and start from the basics. Any digital data that wants to be permanent in the same way that cuneaform tablets are permanent must contain not only data, but must begin with a complete description of what it takes to decode the data, starting from establishing a basic mathematical language. Very, very difficult. Perhaps we should be consulting linguists and archeologists when we're looking to put together these kinds of archives? Ask an archeologist, "What would make your job easier if you found it in the beginning of an ancient inscribed stone tablet? What kinds of things would aid you in translating it?" and go from there.
Smartphones have been available in one form or another for a while. While reviews are (nearly) unanimous that the Stinger isn't it, what's been the best smartphone so far? I love my Zaurus, and I might be interested in a GSM module for it, but I'm not sure that a huge screen on a phone is what I really want. I'm thinking that maybe the Ericsonn T68 is a good compromise. It does a lot, and it offers easy connectivity to just about any computer/pda if you prefer to use a dedicated device for surfing the web/etc.
Once upon a time, you could assemble Evil Ted from things that you bought at Radio Shack. But in the last several years, their stock of real electronics stuff has declined steadily. I'm not much of a hardware hacker, but I've started to notice that Radio Shack no longer usually has what I need when the soldering gun comes out. Now they just sell crappy computers, overpriced crappy stereo equipment, etc. They expanded to the point where there weren't enough geeks to support their original business plan, and the response was dropping those customers to the floor. I would've diversified the kinds of stores I had (maybe Radio Shack and RSNERD), but what do I know?
>My WRX didn't come with an EULA from Subaru saying >I could only run Amoco Premium in the tank and >couldn't change the air cleaner for a K&N
Dammit, if God intended your car to have free air flow, he would've put a a free-flow filtration system on your car to begin with!
I don't know about the whole engaging characters & complex storylines in games thing. My favorite games have always been completely devoid of any storyline at all. Super Mario Bros had no real story line, but you could spend hours and hours playing it. Gran Turismo, Quake, and a whole bunch of more recent and great games have no real story line. What they DO have is fantastic playability and great graphics. I always found the little vignettes that advance the storyline to be little more than an annoyance, something that I had to wait to finish so I could get back to playing the game. Dragon's Lair sucked because it was nothing BUT movie clips with no game play at all. Give me a guy jumping on turtle shells for no clearly defined reason over that stuff any day.
I'm only interested if they rename the PPC chip "Even Fatter Agnus".
I bought the Zaurus because it shared the single feature that I loved the most about my dear, departed Revo - a keyboard. Now that I've seen the new design, I'm salivating all over again. I LOVE this format, but history would indicate that I'm in the minority. Notice that there's no Revo MKII.
I'm assuming that you say this because you're not at a large university. My school depends on the attendance of graduate students and professors from abroad in order to function properly. In many departments foreign students make up more than half of the TA's. There simply is no one to do their job if they're not here, and yet at the beginning of the semester each department discovered that TA's and prof's had been denied their visas, despite full documentation from the school. We need to understand that the government is only creating the illusion of safety. What's really going on is a completely arbitrary process of visa denials. No explanation is ever offered when a student with a full ride gets turned away from the US embassy in China, because there is no explanation. They are doing this to appease the alarmists, but in fact there is no increase in safety.
I have a friend who is a graduate student from a Western European country. Every time he's flown to/from/within the US in the past year, he's been pulled out of line and searched. If he has a connection, they pull him out of line and search him again before boarding the plane. He's never been convicted of so much as jaywalking in his life, but he is guilty of having taken a vacation to Southeast Asia with his mother several years ago. If this is the quality of the risk-assessment we can expect, then excuse me for not feeling safer.
I've written Voicestream's Customer Care complaining about various aspects of their service. Recently, I sent them a letter complaining that: GPRS is way too expensive; only in the US do we get billed for incoming SMS messages. An actual HUMAN BEING responded to my email, and sent me a note explaining their SMS and GPRS pricing schedules, which of course has nothing to do with what I was complaining about. The humans in these call centers are often doing the same thing a computerized system does: responding to keywords, and ignoring the rest of your problem.
Its bad enough that the Chinese gov't can silence their own media. I wouldn't want to live in a world where fear of getting "banned" can silence the truth. This ain't 1650 - the emperor can't revoke our trading privileges for refusing to ketou. If China wants the foreign press to stop reporting bad things about China, then they should take it easy on their own citizens. We're not going to shut up.
It would be refreshing to see the directors of a company admit that they have no idea how they can make any money and return whatever their investors ponied up. The shareholders own the company, and if there's not even a glimmer of hope of the company ever being profitable (with Liquid I'm not sure that there ever was, but that's a separate issue) then the best thing is to admit defeat, cut your losses while there's still anything to cut, and close your doors.
You wouldn't call it that if you saw what the Atlas V was doing with the Ariane II out behind the launch pad.
I never used Opera much beyond playing until I got my Zaurus. While the thing is pretty much non-configurable, it does work well, and pages look surprisingly great considering how small the screen is. I'm hoping that this new engine will be coming to my little box too.
The problem with this idea is that its completely impossible to implement. There are no reliable ways of making sure that one person=one vote, no way of guaranteeing even participation geographically, economically, or any other way. Internet users nowadays are mostly people who log in to ISPs to use email and chat. They don't know what ICANN is, and don't care. Are you suggesting that voting on issues that affect so many naive users should be reduced to a tug-of war between nerds and corporations?
Who should, rightfully, get control of a country's top-level names? I have no doubt that Mr. Lawrie has done a good job, and for years with no pay at that, but he also isn't the one who built the infrastructure. I am not convinced that the government is always the best administrator, but why is looking to an undemocratic, unrepresentative corporation like ICANN any better?
making fun of this, please keep in mind that some of the best high-end amplifiers made today still use vaccuum tubes. Tubes are capable of making extremely high-quality sound, and whether this is because of their "warm sound" as enthusiasts claim or just because of sound degradation that sounds good to some people - well, that's just a matter of personal preference.
That there are any options for high-quality on-board audio at all - this can only be a good thing.
The original poster is, of course, entitled to his opinion. But the sense that I get from his post is that, because HE finds it boring, it shouldn't be included in such a list.
Am I being pretentious? Maybe. But I'm not a Maoist, and I don't believe that the cultural values of the masses are necessarily the best a society has to offer. There are lots of things that most people in the world don't/can't appreciate, but in many cases that's because they have no taste. Most high school kids think that Shakespeare sucks, but that doesn't mean that Shakespeare sucks, it means that they're idiots.
I don't like most classical music. I also don't like most jazz. But I'm not such a jerk as to suggest that these things have no value just because I don't like them. Nor am I silly enough to suggest that anyone will be listening to De La Soul in 100 years just because I like them now.
To paraphrase: "If I've never heard of it then it can't be any good."
Your logic is impeccable; judging the world this way must make your life very easy. I also salute you for declaring once and for all that a movie widely hailed as one of the best ever made isn't any good because "it's boring as hell." I suggest that you avoid the "classics" section of the bookstore - some of those books take HOURS to get through, and they don't even have any sex scenes!
I've got an iBook2 Rev1, which I bought less than a year ago for nearly $2k. Granted, the Rage M3 video card that Apple included was never the fastest mobile video chipset out there, but it SHOULD support at least some hardware acceleration - it certainly could under OS 9. My iBook's box had a nice big decal on it that said, "Made for OS X" - this should mean that the mature version takes full advantage of my hardware, not completely leapfrogs over it. When I bought this computer, DVD playback and CD burning were not supported, and now they are. I don't think I'm being unreasonable by expecting that some level of video acceleration will be added too.
Well, this article has a couple of hundred responses, so apparently the nerds themselves believe this is relevant.
You know, I'm Jewish and I keep hearing about this whole worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Apparently I'm not entered in their records correctly - could someone tell me who I need to write to so I can get my monthly check and my "How to manipulate the media" packet?
So we are just supposed to trust that the huge media conglomerate is doing something that is right and just, and NOT throwing its weight around to bully the small guy out of business. Because frivolous lawsuits that amount to nothing more than harassment of small critics/competitors/whistleblowsers are completely unknown. Please. In any case like this, I'm more likely to side with the little guy, just because I know that he's being picked on. And the bully knows that he can't defend himself.
Hopefully this will offer better results with Asian language word processing in OS X. Appleworks looks fine on screen, but refuses to print Chinese properly and has problems understanding cut and paste in Chinese. Office X allows you to write and print in Chinese just fine, but ONLY after running a conversion app that causes many of your menus to mutate into Japanese.
I use Voicestream, and I can SMS my friend that uses AT&T without any problems. I've never had that work with any other carrier though.