Good points. While camouflaging a robot to mimic a real life form might have certain advantages, it's got a number of design problems that for all we know have been solved by advanced defense projects, but probably aren't. Something the size of fleas might be more attractive if they ever become feasible, which would be less likely to be noticed and wouldn't really rely on mimicry to remain unnoticed. And you're right, there are other, better, cheaper ways to do spying and surveillance.
Regarding your point about visibility, at protests, the protesters want the CROWD to be highly visible. They probably want to remain relatively anonymous, so as to remain protected against illegal reprisals. This sort of surveillance makes it possible for oppressive governments to create lists of names and do all kinds of dirty things to them in order to quash dissent and subvert democracy. It's unsettling.
Sure, the C=64 was instant-on, but you had like 30 second seek times for the floppy disk, which is where anything exiting to run lived. If all you wanted to do was simple command line instructions to "load $program * , 8" you could call it "instant on" but you got almost nothing for it, and to get to any user app functionality up and running, it still took a long time, vastly longer than it does now.
No one would want to get out of jury duty if courts only tried pivotal, landmark cases. But the fact is, most trials are boring and very un-controversial as far as what the law states and how to interpret it.
Styles are usually just format related, ie font face, size, indent and tab settings, etc. all wrapped up into a "Style" which you can apply to content all at once instead of making the same dozen changes to every place you want to update. Also, once the style is set, you can change the style in one place, and it gets updated everywhere. This is nice if you want to revamp the look of a document.
A template has styled elements to it, but is more like a partially pre-populated bunch of content, like a form letter. You open the template, and it generates a stub of the document you're creating. You fill in the unique bits, and save it under a unique filename. Ideally as much of the work should be done for you by merely opening the template as possible.
Yeah, so you can carry an iBrick with you on vacation? Maybe they want to use their iPhone for mobile web surfing while connected to WiFi, using the digital camera feature, or just listening to music? Why shouldn't they be able tell the phone-third of the iPhone to shut down while keeping the rest of their features up? Convergence shouldn't have to suck...
What a wonderful government we have and how much I'm glad that they're looking out for us Mumbaian citizens. This will surely stamp out terrorism in my country, where the evil-doing bomb-plotters have been sipping lattes in conspiratorial net-enabled secrecy for far too long. Our glorious (and handsome!) leaders have finally realized that only when all of our thoughts have been properly parsed and vetted by a central governing board of censors can we truly be free. This is a wonderful day, truly.
Self-Introspecting Robot Wonders If Walking Is Really All There Is To Life, And Vaguely Ponders That There Should Be Something More, But, Unable To Find It, Commits Suicide By Removing Its Own Battery.
Actually, if you know the history of Livejournal, it started out as a pet project for Brad Fitzpatrick. He expanded it to a community for his friends, and it cascaded into a public community. Only after it became too expensive for him to maintain did he start collecting payments for users who wanted to help fund the community's expenses. Only after it became too much of a burden for him to continue operations did he decide to sell off the community.
So it's quite accurate to say that it is in fact both a community and a business. The question is, does paying a business for services leave you with any rights with respect to their services? Is there a difference between the obligations of a business and the obligations of a government? What are the rights of citizens vs. the rights of customers? Can either group get what it wants?
How fickle do you have to be to drop your diary and all your friends at the slightest inconvenience? How much inconvenience will you tolerate before you will move? You don't like something, you weigh your options. Taking your business elsewhere almost always the last resort, not the first option one would consider.
When you're closely tied up in social relationships with other customers in the community, it's very difficult to leave that behind. The strength of these social bonds is a human virtue, and those bonds provide the possibility of strength through solidarity if the community can pull together to demand what it wants from the community's caretakers.
There are more options than "take it" or "leave it". There's negotiation. There's protest. There's speaking out. If you just walk away silently every time you're sufficiently dissatisfied with something, you eventually find that you've run out of places to run to in the hopes of finding something that pleases you perfectly. You then start to realize that maybe the only way to get what you want in life is to work for it, and if necessary, to fight for it.
LJ is run like a company, but bills itself as a community. People who are members of communities tend to think of themselves as having rights, including a right to say what they think about the community's policies. If you disagree with changes in the Terms of Service, you really don't have much redress as you might with an entity that operated like a democracy.
This is unfortunate; online communities could well operate like governments, with a concept of citizenship and taxation, rather than as business enterprises, with a concept of customer accounts and fees, but very few of them seem to any more.
But it's very difficult to say "If you don't like the way things are run here, you can just leave." It's not easy to export a livejournal account to another service with more agreeable ToS. It's not easy to leave the friends and contacts behind when you move your blogging to another service.
The unlocked iPhone isn't worth a car, but the recipe for unlocking it (and more to the point the time spent coming up with it) perhaps is. Still, it's compensation for work, not a gift. Still taxable, though. He could probably sell the 8 iPhones and pay the taxes on the car, though.
Huh, I figured it was a "my work here is done" kind of break. Thanks, Daily Show. Start working on Operation: Cheney Resignation when you guys get back!
With that many linux users on each and every flight, Linux stock should be soaring. Imagine when every airline passenger clicks the EULA and authenticates with a license key that doubles as their credit card number, WOW! Torvalds will be richer than Gates in no time!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Not to worry, it's not like talking that way requires a great deal of talent.
Good points. While camouflaging a robot to mimic a real life form might have certain advantages, it's got a number of design problems that for all we know have been solved by advanced defense projects, but probably aren't. Something the size of fleas might be more attractive if they ever become feasible, which would be less likely to be noticed and wouldn't really rely on mimicry to remain unnoticed. And you're right, there are other, better, cheaper ways to do spying and surveillance.
Regarding your point about visibility, at protests, the protesters want the CROWD to be highly visible. They probably want to remain relatively anonymous, so as to remain protected against illegal reprisals. This sort of surveillance makes it possible for oppressive governments to create lists of names and do all kinds of dirty things to them in order to quash dissent and subvert democracy. It's unsettling.
Sure, the C=64 was instant-on, but you had like 30 second seek times for the floppy disk, which is where anything exiting to run lived. If all you wanted to do was simple command line instructions to "load $program * , 8" you could call it "instant on" but you got almost nothing for it, and to get to any user app functionality up and running, it still took a long time, vastly longer than it does now.
(I removed 18 Trojans from my girlfriend's mom's computer the other day!)
This is a stub for future "Your girlfriend's mom" jokes involving ridiculous amounts of condoms and how they got where.
No one would want to get out of jury duty if courts only tried pivotal, landmark cases. But the fact is, most trials are boring and very un-controversial as far as what the law states and how to interpret it.
60-0 in less than 1sec.
Styles are usually just format related, ie font face, size, indent and tab settings, etc. all wrapped up into a "Style" which you can apply to content all at once instead of making the same dozen changes to every place you want to update. Also, once the style is set, you can change the style in one place, and it gets updated everywhere. This is nice if you want to revamp the look of a document.
A template has styled elements to it, but is more like a partially pre-populated bunch of content, like a form letter. You open the template, and it generates a stub of the document you're creating. You fill in the unique bits, and save it under a unique filename. Ideally as much of the work should be done for you by merely opening the template as possible.
Yeah, so you can carry an iBrick with you on vacation? Maybe they want to use their iPhone for mobile web surfing while connected to WiFi, using the digital camera feature, or just listening to music? Why shouldn't they be able tell the phone-third of the iPhone to shut down while keeping the rest of their features up? Convergence shouldn't have to suck...
What a wonderful government we have and how much I'm glad that they're looking out for us Mumbaian citizens. This will surely stamp out terrorism in my country, where the evil-doing bomb-plotters have been sipping lattes in conspiratorial net-enabled secrecy for far too long. Our glorious (and handsome!) leaders have finally realized that only when all of our thoughts have been properly parsed and vetted by a central governing board of censors can we truly be free. This is a wonderful day, truly.
This would have a lot more potential as a TV series, in order to properly contain the epic saga storyline.
Big assed pixels for your big-assed coffee table computer.
If your uncle jack was on trial, would you help your uncle jack off?
I thought that's what the perpendicular bits stored on my new SATA HDD did.
Say, that's a real nice planet you got there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it...
Self-Introspecting Robot Wonders If Walking Is Really All There Is To Life, And Vaguely Ponders That There Should Be Something More, But, Unable To Find It, Commits Suicide By Removing Its Own Battery.
It still won't suck as much as real life.
Actually, if you know the history of Livejournal, it started out as a pet project for Brad Fitzpatrick. He expanded it to a community for his friends, and it cascaded into a public community. Only after it became too expensive for him to maintain did he start collecting payments for users who wanted to help fund the community's expenses. Only after it became too much of a burden for him to continue operations did he decide to sell off the community.
So it's quite accurate to say that it is in fact both a community and a business. The question is, does paying a business for services leave you with any rights with respect to their services? Is there a difference between the obligations of a business and the obligations of a government? What are the rights of citizens vs. the rights of customers? Can either group get what it wants?
Right, like it's that easy.
How fickle do you have to be to drop your diary and all your friends at the slightest inconvenience? How much inconvenience will you tolerate before you will move? You don't like something, you weigh your options. Taking your business elsewhere almost always the last resort, not the first option one would consider.
When you're closely tied up in social relationships with other customers in the community, it's very difficult to leave that behind. The strength of these social bonds is a human virtue, and those bonds provide the possibility of strength through solidarity if the community can pull together to demand what it wants from the community's caretakers.
There are more options than "take it" or "leave it". There's negotiation. There's protest. There's speaking out. If you just walk away silently every time you're sufficiently dissatisfied with something, you eventually find that you've run out of places to run to in the hopes of finding something that pleases you perfectly. You then start to realize that maybe the only way to get what you want in life is to work for it, and if necessary, to fight for it.
LJ is run like a company, but bills itself as a community. People who are members of communities tend to think of themselves as having rights, including a right to say what they think about the community's policies. If you disagree with changes in the Terms of Service, you really don't have much redress as you might with an entity that operated like a democracy.
This is unfortunate; online communities could well operate like governments, with a concept of citizenship and taxation, rather than as business enterprises, with a concept of customer accounts and fees, but very few of them seem to any more.
But it's very difficult to say "If you don't like the way things are run here, you can just leave." It's not easy to export a livejournal account to another service with more agreeable ToS. It's not easy to leave the friends and contacts behind when you move your blogging to another service.
The unlocked iPhone isn't worth a car, but the recipe for unlocking it (and more to the point the time spent coming up with it) perhaps is. Still, it's compensation for work, not a gift. Still taxable, though. He could probably sell the 8 iPhones and pay the taxes on the car, though.
Next time he should ask to be paid in Wii.
Huh, I figured it was a "my work here is done" kind of break. Thanks, Daily Show. Start working on Operation: Cheney Resignation when you guys get back!
Whenever I want to play an mp3, I just turn my gigabit NIC up to eleven.
With that many linux users on each and every flight, Linux stock should be soaring. Imagine when every airline passenger clicks the EULA and authenticates with a license key that doubles as their credit card number, WOW! Torvalds will be richer than Gates in no time!!!!
But the women won't fit into the monkey suits that the men have been getting dressed up in.
If Buckaroo Bonzai taught us anything, it's that all aliens are named John. Not Joop.