Do you ever get the feeling that electronic paper is going to be just around the corner for a long, long time?
it really does seem like a story on e-paper or biological-monitors gets posted about every month. i imagine that it's a technology people are just really excited about, but may not be fully practical cost-wise and otherwise for a while.
sort of like fridges that scan upc's inside to make grocery lists.. or flying cars..
As far as your GPA. Ignore it. I graduated with a 3.95 (in Business?) and have yet to have anyone ask. Real life isn't a stupid boring class exercise.
Thanks, school just got a lot less stressful. It confirms my notion that the only moment in life that marks matter is in finding a university. (and possibly, staying in university).
The thing with VoiceXML is, we probably won't be seeing an open-sourced engine for it. VoiceXML is a standard which works over telephones and VoIP, and thus needs complicated software to run.
Actually the price of IBM's VoiceServer (i think it's called) is around $40,000. All the ones I've found through research were aimed purely at large companies who'll likely host VoiceXML applications for others.
In this sort of situation, I don't see any point in paying royalties to the developers of this technology. These companies are the same which'll be selling the server software. How much money could they possibly need?
(Note: It would be really cool if somebody started developing a free-as-in-everything VoiceXML server.. I'm just not sure if anyone has that much time to devote, since the free text-to-speech technology is a little rough around the edges still)
I think its great to see companies and small businesses helping out otherwise internet-lacking communities like this. If only more companies would stop just trying to make a profit, and realise that you can occasionally improve the quality of life.. while still making a profit.
if a doctor operating on me used one of these light sabres and screwed up, i'd never see another star wars movie again!
but as long as they're called something else, I'll have no problem with star wars..
You get a challenge sent to you, and if you can use your private key to sign the challenge, you are allowed access.
the thing i wonder though, is couldn't you still sniff the packet just like you would a password, except rather than "mypassword6" you get "23857723984...653765846358" or something?
then use that to connect initially?
(except you'd still need to know how to decrypt the bash prompt, etc. but it wouldn't be entirely useless, i suppose, if you could capture certain actions somehow)
w3c is definitely a good place to be devising standards, but i was under the impression they're concerns were only with html and the other experimental or rare sgml languages which were starting to become evident in the 'web.
then, i see an abiword schema and some other things on the w3c site. it makes me wonder that one of two things are happening; either the w3c is expanding their expertise to other areas of programming (or scripting), or the web is expanding to be able to handle all data types.
of course, the latter has already happened to some degree, but i guess xml is acting as the shuttle bus which is just running a little late.
---
if the sun shines, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
every day, we hear stories about how all the venture capital has run out, and the free-services / free-software business model isn't working.
that's because you can't make money if your price tag is $0! but that's not the point. i can't help but think how long free software and free services have been available, but now that more people use them, everything fails?
if more people contribute their spare time and spare resources to a community of one sort or another, great things will continue to happen, just like they do today.
if you get over the idea that everyone needs to make lots of money to be happy, things are going to continue to change a lot.
---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
There's lots of services that are provided for free, and they can run with very little maintenance, with just server costs and that sort of thing. The busier sites realize they aren't able to profit, or at least make enough to pay the bills. They're then changing their strategy and business model, by charging for, at least, some aspect of their service.
What about all the people using these free services? What do they contribute back? Well, as free services disappear, people will start to learn that they need to replace these pay-sites with free sites. Almost everyone on the internet has some leftover webspace they can donate.. and many people have broadband and run linux, turning any computer into a server where services can be hosted.
Free services won't go away, they'll just be replaced with more smaller services linked together. This is no different from real-life communities (or, those of the long forgotten past) where people volunteer their time and efforts to make life better for everyone else. This is all the excitement of peer-to-peer, but it goes deeper when you realize, not everybody is out to make money.
---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
Bah. This part I disagree with completely. You don't have goals. You are an individual. You signed an employment contract, basically promising to devote your every waking hour to the company. Get over it. It's not like you're a slave and can't quit.
On slashdot, theres always someone talking and asking about employee contracts, so that's not my concern. (If you don't like a contract, don't sign it!)
You say individuals needn't have goals, not when they're at work anyhow. Maybe I'm young and naive, but I have a general idea of what I'm going to do in my life, and I'll use jobs to further my interests, with the side-effect of paying for my food.
I'm not afraid to make little money while doing things I love, but I'm not afraid of making good money doing the same. Because of this, I'm not going to let work get in the way of my goals.
Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is, maybe it only makes sense to have a passion for your employeer if you realize you're working towards your goals through the company. If your work is just a place you waste your day at to get some paychecks, then there's no reason you should go above and beyond what's expected.
---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
On top of looking at how places can overwork their employees, this is also an issue of company attachment. There's so much propaganda at a work place, if not just the feeling of company success as being 'good', and failures 'bad'.
As a side note, what do you think is a 'healthy' attachment to your company (if you're not the owner, etc.)? Should one feel obliged to work long overtime hours in order to further the goals of the place they work? Or should we always remember to work towards our own goals firstly?
The first thing that popped in my mind, using the current web in a way which computers can talk to each other to get relevant information, is rdf (the file-format most commonly used to get the headlines from news sites).
Altough there's nothing revolutionary about using other sites' headlines, I can just start to imagine what other ideas people'll have that'll use existing structures to build a real (ie, more useful) information empire.
Hacktivism doesn't directly imply website defacements and DOS attacks.. but thats all that's really been done. Of course there's exceptions..
has anyone on slashdot heard of "cult of the dead cow"? or their program "back orfice"? this is hacktivism as it was meant to be.
the problem is, people aren't creative enough.. they think "what can i do with the internet to deal with ?" and for some reason, the 'logical' answer is "hack their website!".. of course there'll be better examples, when someone takes the lead, uses their creativity and incredible talent, grabs the world by the ear and points out some incredible injustices..
so don't go bitchin' about "hacktivism".. feel free to bitch about individual acts, but 'hacktivism' is something most people involved in any opensource/freedom of speech/etc. are more familiar with than they realize..
Slashdot Mirror
make uninstall works if the developers included it, and many do. otherwise, you can read the Makefile and figure out what went where...
and don't forget, you can always view messages with a -1 threshold, newest first..
Do you ever get the feeling that electronic paper is going to be just around the corner for a long, long time?
it really does seem like a story on e-paper or biological-monitors gets posted about every month. i imagine that it's a technology people are just really excited about, but may not be fully practical cost-wise and otherwise for a while.
sort of like fridges that scan upc's inside to make grocery lists.. or flying cars..
Hm, that can't be right, I swear I heard it was supposed to be two raised to the power of 50, multiplied by 128.. hm.
Thanks, school just got a lot less stressful. It confirms my notion that the only moment in life that marks matter is in finding a university. (and possibly, staying in university).
yeah, i think someone actually fixed it.
nevermind, then.
I think they meant to link to this url.
Sorry, another post was posted while I was typing mine, announcing an open source VoiceXML interpreter. I suppose I spoke about 2 minutes too soon =)
Here's the link for OpenVXI 2.0.
The thing with VoiceXML is, we probably won't be seeing an open-sourced engine for it. VoiceXML is a standard which works over telephones and VoIP, and thus needs complicated software to run.
Actually the price of IBM's VoiceServer (i think it's called) is around $40,000. All the ones I've found through research were aimed purely at large companies who'll likely host VoiceXML applications for others.
In this sort of situation, I don't see any point in paying royalties to the developers of this technology. These companies are the same which'll be selling the server software. How much money could they possibly need?
(Note: It would be really cool if somebody started developing a free-as-in-everything VoiceXML server.. I'm just not sure if anyone has that much time to devote, since the free text-to-speech technology is a little rough around the edges still)
I think its great to see companies and small businesses helping out otherwise internet-lacking communities like this. If only more companies would stop just trying to make a profit, and realise that you can occasionally improve the quality of life.. while still making a profit.
and vote the other top stories down!
is talking teacher!
"Let's do letters!
U R A Q T"
if a doctor operating on me used one of these light sabres and screwed up, i'd never see another star wars movie again! but as long as they're called something else, I'll have no problem with star wars..
er, wait a second..
You get a challenge sent to you, and if you can use your private key to sign the challenge, you are allowed access.
the thing i wonder though, is couldn't you still sniff the packet just like you would a password, except rather than "mypassword6" you get "23857723984...653765846358" or something?
then use that to connect initially?
(except you'd still need to know how to decrypt the bash prompt, etc. but it wouldn't be entirely useless, i suppose, if you could capture certain actions somehow)
Although RSA/DSA encryption doesn't use a "password", usually isn't it a key generated using a phrase?
so, in the end, it's still using a password of sorts?
all i can say is alt+f4 / alt+w / ctrl+f4 (depending if you're using ie / netscape / opera).
any suggestions for a forum which does appreciate this sort of insight?
w3c is definitely a good place to be devising standards, but i was under the impression they're concerns were only with html and the other experimental or rare sgml languages which were starting to become evident in the 'web.
then, i see an abiword schema and some other things on the w3c site. it makes me wonder that one of two things are happening; either the w3c is expanding their expertise to other areas of programming (or scripting), or the web is expanding to be able to handle all data types.
of course, the latter has already happened to some degree, but i guess xml is acting as the shuttle bus which is just running a little late.
---
if the sun shines, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
..something ought to happen.
every day, we hear stories about how all the venture capital has run out, and the free-services / free-software business model isn't working.
that's because you can't make money if your price tag is $0! but that's not the point. i can't help but think how long free software and free services have been available, but now that more people use them, everything fails?
if more people contribute their spare time and spare resources to a community of one sort or another, great things will continue to happen, just like they do today.
if you get over the idea that everyone needs to make lots of money to be happy, things are going to continue to change a lot.
---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
There's lots of services that are provided for free, and they can run with very little maintenance, with just server costs and that sort of thing. The busier sites realize they aren't able to profit, or at least make enough to pay the bills. They're then changing their strategy and business model, by charging for, at least, some aspect of their service.
What about all the people using these free services? What do they contribute back? Well, as free services disappear, people will start to learn that they need to replace these pay-sites with free sites. Almost everyone on the internet has some leftover webspace they can donate.. and many people have broadband and run linux, turning any computer into a server where services can be hosted.
Free services won't go away, they'll just be replaced with more smaller services linked together. This is no different from real-life communities (or, those of the long forgotten past) where people volunteer their time and efforts to make life better for everyone else. This is all the excitement of peer-to-peer, but it goes deeper when you realize, not everybody is out to make money.
---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
Bah. This part I disagree with completely. You don't have goals. You are an individual. You signed an employment contract, basically promising to devote your every waking hour to the company. Get over it. It's not like you're a slave and can't quit.
On slashdot, theres always someone talking and asking about employee contracts, so that's not my concern. (If you don't like a contract, don't sign it!)
You say individuals needn't have goals, not when they're at work anyhow. Maybe I'm young and naive, but I have a general idea of what I'm going to do in my life, and I'll use jobs to further my interests, with the side-effect of paying for my food.
I'm not afraid to make little money while doing things I love, but I'm not afraid of making good money doing the same. Because of this, I'm not going to let work get in the way of my goals.
Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is, maybe it only makes sense to have a passion for your employeer if you realize you're working towards your goals through the company. If your work is just a place you waste your day at to get some paychecks, then there's no reason you should go above and beyond what's expected.
---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
On top of looking at how places can overwork their employees, this is also an issue of company attachment. There's so much propaganda at a work place, if not just the feeling of company success as being 'good', and failures 'bad'.
As a side note, what do you think is a 'healthy' attachment to your company (if you're not the owner, etc.)? Should one feel obliged to work long overtime hours in order to further the goals of the place they work? Or should we always remember to work towards our own goals firstly?
What have you found yourself doing?
The first thing that popped in my mind, using the current web in a way which computers can talk to each other to get relevant information, is rdf (the file-format most commonly used to get the headlines from news sites).
Altough there's nothing revolutionary about using other sites' headlines, I can just start to imagine what other ideas people'll have that'll use existing structures to build a real (ie, more useful) information empire.
Mario will rise from the dead to pummel both the hedgehog and the bandicoot.
is he describing the new super mario game for the dolphin system? it sounds really cool!
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p.s. its 6:42am and im just getting to sleep...
Hacktivism doesn't directly imply website defacements and DOS attacks.. but thats all that's really been done. Of course there's exceptions..
has anyone on slashdot heard of "cult of the dead cow"? or their program "back orfice"? this is hacktivism as it was meant to be.
the problem is, people aren't creative enough.. they think "what can i do with the internet to deal with ?" and for some reason, the 'logical' answer is "hack their website!".. of course there'll be better examples, when someone takes the lead, uses their creativity and incredible talent, grabs the world by the ear and points out some incredible injustices..
so don't go bitchin' about "hacktivism".. feel free to bitch about individual acts, but 'hacktivism' is something most people involved in any opensource/freedom of speech/etc. are more familiar with than they realize..