These 'jump through' ads have been around for ages, only they used to be called 'interstitial' ads. Now we're just sensitized to dislike any new form of advertising.
Considering how small an mp3 stream is, it wouldn't be hard to capture the stream to a 128meg DIMM chip so you can precache stations.
Without commercials and without commentary, there's no disincentive to timeshifting digital satellite radio. Why not make a system that will cache the last 100 songs, so you can just skip the ones you don't like?
So, anonymity and need for authorization access seem to be the two problems with electronic money. These can both be dealt with by way of anonymous cash cards that are purchased with, say, a credit cart or an EFT, and can, by use of public-key encryption, be independently verified as being authentic without the need for access to a central 'money server'.
To make things more convenient, we can even get around the need for an electronic reader to verify the PGP signature and deduct small amounts froma card, by issuing cards in smaller denominations that can be mix and matched in a pinch, to create 'exact change.'
Even better, instead of using cryptography, we can simply assign each money card a unique, human-readable serial number, and incorporate anti-counterfeiting, authentication technologies that can be verified by a human without need for an electronic reader or landline.
In fact, we could make the entire system even more convenient by changing the format from a credit-sized card to a paper medium, allowing many 'bills' to be stored in a 'wallet' at one time. These could be distributed from 'teller machines' that can be accessed using traditional archaic money technologies such as debit and credit cards.
So when will they release the revised PBG4? Will there be an Apple Event lauding the completing of OS X 10.1? Perhaps an internet 'be-in' broadcast presentation?
As for a January G5 release: Does this mean the much-anticipated flat-screen iMacs will be launched in January with G4 processors?
Anyone else notice that the whole thing sounds like a plot hatched from watching all three Die Hard movies in one night?
You've got your big tall building blowing up from DH1.
You've got your airplane hijacking and deliberate crashes in DH2.
You've got exploding everything (including the subway under the WTC) in DH3.
And of course, as has been reported (too lazy to find the link) there's still several tons of gold buried underneath the WTC rubble, just like in DH3...
I'm not trying to make light of anything. It's just interesting how Hollywood and terrorism follow similar paths, with Hollywood leading the curve.
I use a thingy that portions my web logfiles into daily files, each prepended with the current unix timestamp. I found that scripts I run to do stuff with the most recent day's logfile broke because 1000000000access_log.gz comes before 999999999access_log.gz.
The simple solution is to move the old 999 files to another directory. This problem wouldn't have cropped up since 1973 when it passed eight 9s, and won't happen again for another 300 years when it passes ten 9s.
Still, a bug's a bug, and that's one more than I had in the new millenium.
As astounding as this data is, it would be infinitely more useful (and accurate) if it were normalized againt actuall traffic usage on craigslist, so the growing/weaning popularity of the site wouldn't skew the demo data.
Actually, I love my TiVo too, but sadly they've discontinued the free 1-800 dialup access. If you already have a TiVo box so-configured, they'll let it continue, but new users have to pay toll charges if they don't have a local number.
There's a movement going on though to open it up to supporting people's own ISP accounts, so they just enter their local access number, username and password, and TiVo will tunnel through that instead.
Seems to me that that's one step away from putting in an ethernet jack (or, dare I say it, a wireless 802.11b card?) and letting you use your own LAN. I swear, I only have a landline to support my TiVo and sportbrain...
Of course, I'd need a new TiVo, which means a relative would get a hand-me-up to a better world of timeshifting and temporal freedom...
The irony is that ReplayTV originally shipped with a Firewire port that wasn't activated, but was included for 'future enhancements.' It was removed in subsequent releases (and never supported in the original hardware) because of threatened backlash from the studios.
Aside from having a les elegant interface (and, in my opinion, recording functionality) than TiVo, ReplayTV is basically selling you service all over again when you upgrade hardware. When you buy a TiVo you can get lifetime service or pay monthly, but there's not an inordinate amount of motivation for TiVo to drive their customers to buy new hardware. Replay gets another $200 (tacked onto the price) every time someone buys a box, and at no other time, so they aren't motivated to create hardware that won't immediately obsolesce. The LAN access is a good example of this. You want it? Fine, but you just ate the lifetime guide service you bought, because now you're going to pay for it again.
The other problem I have is that without the option of month-to-month or annual service, you're counting on ReplayTV staying in business, a proposition they've already shown is speculative at best. Since TiVo actually gets money from subscibers every month or year to keep the guide up and running, that guide will continue, run by some company, even if TiVo goes bellyup.
I'd disagree... Sure, one billion contacts might not be enough (false constraints are bad) but combining both would require computation at time of exchange... I suppose you could do it with a palmpilot, but it's not as convenient as just having a number...
As for the 'obvious problem', I still don't see it. Even if you had your ID tattooed to your forehead, it wouldn't do anyone any good, since it would be that ID plus a PIN or passphrase that would get you access to your account (and your repository of a billion contact #s) with the 'distribution institution'. Just having the number wouldn't do a spoofer any good...
If all my contacts are going to be tied to one number, I'd much rather it work like this: I get assigned a unique id. I can use that unique ID and a system (government, public institution, whatever) that could use that key to generate any number of unique 20 digit numbers (okay, one billion 20 digit numbers) that I could use as one-time or at least one-user contacts.
For example, if my # was 1111-111-1111 I could take the unique ID 000000002-1111-111-1111, run it through this institutions encryption to create a scrambled, but unique, id (this has problems. There would only be one key in this system, and if it was comprimised, though it's only ever used by the intitution, then that would be a problem. It wouldn't even have to be a key, it could just be a relational table, but data compromising issues would still exist). I could give this ID out (at a bar, to an employer, whatever) and when the person used it, by phone, email, fax, whatever, it would get processed by the institution, decrypted, and would reveal the ID and the 'serial number'.
the benefit of this system is the person you give the card to has no way of knowing what your ID is, as it never appears in plaintext, and if you're tired of hearing from that person (or that # ends up on a spam list) you can simply refuse the serial number 000000002. They don't know what 20-digit number would decrypt to 000000003-1111-111-1111, so you're safe.
I could see business cards (and personal cards) with two parts, you detach it when you give it to someone and write the name of who you gave it to on the part you keep. that part has the serial number (000000002) on it so you can trace how someone 'got your number'.
There's a lot to be said for consistancy in UI. While games introduce some daring new metaphors and interaction models, it doesn't do a whole lot of good when each iteration forces you to relearn several of the skills you already learned (this, by the way, is also my beef with Mac OS X. People learn how to use a finder and you make them use a totally new one!)
On the simplest level it's things like the 'inverted mouse' problem in FPS games, but whenever a hot game developer figures out a cool way to convey manipulation of another custom game feature, it detracts from the learning curve.
It's a shame that 'pushing the envelope' and 'consistancy of design' are orthogonal terms. It would be great of the game designers got together and admitted that they're each trying to make the better game, but that establishing consistant design patterns for interactivity can increase the playability of all games, and let the struggle be with the puzzles, and not the interface.
Sorry, there's a big difference between 'sending things into outer space' and 'achieving escape velocity.' The first simply means it could shoot something outside the atmosphere, or around 90 miles up. Having reached outer space, it can fall back down to Earth.
Reaching escape veolcity means that, ignoring aerodynamic drag while departing the atmosphere, the object has enough velocity to fully escape Earth's gravity well, so that it'll never come back. This is a couple orders of magnitude faster.
As for the replies to the post talking about sending things into orbit, that presents a different problem, because you couldn't stabilize an orbit without a burn at the apogee of the flight, to stabilize the flight path from a parabola, which would come back and slam into the earth, to a circular or elliptical orbit. So in addition to having to protect the electronics from the tremendous G-forces (or making it all out of a ferrous metal, so you can pile it through a railgun and not have to worry about it because every piece of the craft is being accellerated identically) you also have to put in enough fuel and an engine to make that stabilizing burn. Of course, ferrous fuel is hard to find...
If you come into my store and steal something and run away, and someone like you comes back in next week, I'll probably tell that person to leave. It's a mistake, but understandable. I would guess that, if not already, this system would soon be more accurate than I would be at remembering faces encountered once, so it could easily cut down on 'mistaken refusals.'
As for the WalMart example, I'm not sure I understand. They've taken over everything, so wouldn't refusing customers invigorate non WalMart businesses? Is every shoe store gone? Heck, this might create a market for them to come back! "WalMart tell you to take a hike? Come on over to Marty's Bikes!"
Slashdot Mirror
If they throw in a missile, the commute's only 40 minutes to anywhere on the planet.
This looks like just the kind of compound a cult or cell would love. Easily defensible, low visibility.
Anyone else thinking this is a gov't honeypot?
- Create script to toggle 'autoexec
.hqx downloads' to FALSE
- Insert the file into the X-10 popup banner
Problem solved.I can keep the bag in my glovebox next to my tin-foil hat.
Part of the gov't mandate is that the cellphones must be equipped to transmit requested GPS data even if they aren't turned on.
But they're only going to use it to find people making 911 calls. Right. Absolutely.
These 'jump through' ads have been around for ages, only they used to be called 'interstitial' ads. Now we're just sensitized to dislike any new form of advertising.
Considering how small an mp3 stream is, it wouldn't be hard to capture the stream to a 128meg DIMM chip so you can precache stations.
Without commercials and without commentary, there's no disincentive to timeshifting digital satellite radio. Why not make a system that will cache the last 100 songs, so you can just skip the ones you don't like?
So, anonymity and need for authorization access seem to be the two problems with electronic money. These can both be dealt with by way of anonymous cash cards that are purchased with, say, a credit cart or an EFT, and can, by use of public-key encryption, be independently verified as being authentic without the need for access to a central 'money server'.
To make things more convenient, we can even get around the need for an electronic reader to verify the PGP signature and deduct small amounts froma card, by issuing cards in smaller denominations that can be mix and matched in a pinch, to create 'exact change.'
Even better, instead of using cryptography, we can simply assign each money card a unique, human-readable serial number, and incorporate anti-counterfeiting, authentication technologies that can be verified by a human without need for an electronic reader or landline.
In fact, we could make the entire system even more convenient by changing the format from a credit-sized card to a paper medium, allowing many 'bills' to be stored in a 'wallet' at one time. These could be distributed from 'teller machines' that can be accessed using traditional archaic money technologies such as debit and credit cards.
Woah. I can't wait. It all sounds so cool.
"Its a shortened sentence which is ok in speaking english."
Or even:
"It's a shortened sentence, which is O.K. when speaking in English."
Can you spot the six corrections?
"At least we'll know we can always live on potatos"
Just to set it straight (for the poster and for Mr. Quayle):
It's potato, not potatoe.
It's potatoes, not potatos.
It's like hero, heroes...
But they're Red, White, and Blue! How appropriate!
(Actually, Red, Smoke, and Blue, perhaps even more appropriate...)
Apple has cancelled Paris Expo 2001 in light of last week's terrorism.
So when will they release the revised PBG4? Will there be an Apple Event lauding the completing of OS X 10.1? Perhaps an internet 'be-in' broadcast presentation?
As for a January G5 release: Does this mean the much-anticipated flat-screen iMacs will be launched in January with G4 processors?
Anyone else notice that the whole thing sounds like a plot hatched from watching all three Die Hard movies in one night?
You've got your big tall building blowing up from DH1.
You've got your airplane hijacking and deliberate crashes in DH2.
You've got exploding everything (including the subway under the WTC) in DH3.
And of course, as has been reported (too lazy to find the link) there's still several tons of gold buried underneath the WTC rubble, just like in DH3...
I'm not trying to make light of anything. It's just interesting how Hollywood and terrorism follow similar paths, with Hollywood leading the curve.
This is an urban legend. Even though it was just 'born' today, it's totally fabricated.
Here's the debunking.
Yeah, that.
I use a thingy that portions my web logfiles into daily files, each prepended with the current unix timestamp. I found that scripts I run to do stuff with the most recent day's logfile broke because 1000000000access_log.gz comes before 999999999access_log.gz.
The simple solution is to move the old 999 files to another directory. This problem wouldn't have cropped up since 1973 when it passed eight 9s, and won't happen again for another 300 years when it passes ten 9s.
Still, a bug's a bug, and that's one more than I had in the new millenium.
And not all of you get modded to 5 either. ;-)
'scuse me? That's offtopic how?
As astounding as this data is, it would be infinitely more useful (and accurate) if it were normalized againt actuall traffic usage on craigslist, so the growing/weaning popularity of the site wouldn't skew the demo data.
Anyone wanna get Craig's archived logfiles?
Actually, I love my TiVo too, but sadly they've discontinued the free 1-800 dialup access. If you already have a TiVo box so-configured, they'll let it continue, but new users have to pay toll charges if they don't have a local number.
There's a movement going on though to open it up to supporting people's own ISP accounts, so they just enter their local access number, username and password, and TiVo will tunnel through that instead.
Seems to me that that's one step away from putting in an ethernet jack (or, dare I say it, a wireless 802.11b card?) and letting you use your own LAN. I swear, I only have a landline to support my TiVo and sportbrain...
Of course, I'd need a new TiVo, which means a relative would get a hand-me-up to a better world of timeshifting and temporal freedom...
The irony is that ReplayTV originally shipped with a Firewire port that wasn't activated, but was included for 'future enhancements.' It was removed in subsequent releases (and never supported in the original hardware) because of threatened backlash from the studios.
Aside from having a les elegant interface (and, in my opinion, recording functionality) than TiVo, ReplayTV is basically selling you service all over again when you upgrade hardware. When you buy a TiVo you can get lifetime service or pay monthly, but there's not an inordinate amount of motivation for TiVo to drive their customers to buy new hardware. Replay gets another $200 (tacked onto the price) every time someone buys a box, and at no other time, so they aren't motivated to create hardware that won't immediately obsolesce. The LAN access is a good example of this. You want it? Fine, but you just ate the lifetime guide service you bought, because now you're going to pay for it again.
The other problem I have is that without the option of month-to-month or annual service, you're counting on ReplayTV staying in business, a proposition they've already shown is speculative at best. Since TiVo actually gets money from subscibers every month or year to keep the guide up and running, that guide will continue, run by some company, even if TiVo goes bellyup.
I'd disagree... Sure, one billion contacts might not be enough (false constraints are bad) but combining both would require computation at time of exchange... I suppose you could do it with a palmpilot, but it's not as convenient as just having a number...
As for the 'obvious problem', I still don't see it. Even if you had your ID tattooed to your forehead, it wouldn't do anyone any good, since it would be that ID plus a PIN or passphrase that would get you access to your account (and your repository of a billion contact #s) with the 'distribution institution'. Just having the number wouldn't do a spoofer any good...
If all my contacts are going to be tied to one number, I'd much rather it work like this: I get assigned a unique id. I can use that unique ID and a system (government, public institution, whatever) that could use that key to generate any number of unique 20 digit numbers (okay, one billion 20 digit numbers) that I could use as one-time or at least one-user contacts.
For example, if my # was 1111-111-1111 I could take the unique ID 000000002-1111-111-1111, run it through this institutions encryption to create a scrambled, but unique, id (this has problems. There would only be one key in this system, and if it was comprimised, though it's only ever used by the intitution, then that would be a problem. It wouldn't even have to be a key, it could just be a relational table, but data compromising issues would still exist). I could give this ID out (at a bar, to an employer, whatever) and when the person used it, by phone, email, fax, whatever, it would get processed by the institution, decrypted, and would reveal the ID and the 'serial number'.
the benefit of this system is the person you give the card to has no way of knowing what your ID is, as it never appears in plaintext, and if you're tired of hearing from that person (or that # ends up on a spam list) you can simply refuse the serial number 000000002. They don't know what 20-digit number would decrypt to 000000003-1111-111-1111, so you're safe.
I could see business cards (and personal cards) with two parts, you detach it when you give it to someone and write the name of who you gave it to on the part you keep. that part has the serial number (000000002) on it so you can trace how someone 'got your number'.
There's a lot to be said for consistancy in UI. While games introduce some daring new metaphors and interaction models, it doesn't do a whole lot of good when each iteration forces you to relearn several of the skills you already learned (this, by the way, is also my beef with Mac OS X. People learn how to use a finder and you make them use a totally new one!)
On the simplest level it's things like the 'inverted mouse' problem in FPS games, but whenever a hot game developer figures out a cool way to convey manipulation of another custom game feature, it detracts from the learning curve.
It's a shame that 'pushing the envelope' and 'consistancy of design' are orthogonal terms. It would be great of the game designers got together and admitted that they're each trying to make the better game, but that establishing consistant design patterns for interactivity can increase the playability of all games, and let the struggle be with the puzzles, and not the interface.
Sorry, there's a big difference between 'sending things into outer space' and 'achieving escape velocity.' The first simply means it could shoot something outside the atmosphere, or around 90 miles up. Having reached outer space, it can fall back down to Earth.
Reaching escape veolcity means that, ignoring aerodynamic drag while departing the atmosphere, the object has enough velocity to fully escape Earth's gravity well, so that it'll never come back. This is a couple orders of magnitude faster.
As for the replies to the post talking about sending things into orbit, that presents a different problem, because you couldn't stabilize an orbit without a burn at the apogee of the flight, to stabilize the flight path from a parabola, which would come back and slam into the earth, to a circular or elliptical orbit. So in addition to having to protect the electronics from the tremendous G-forces (or making it all out of a ferrous metal, so you can pile it through a railgun and not have to worry about it because every piece of the craft is being accellerated identically) you also have to put in enough fuel and an engine to make that stabilizing burn. Of course, ferrous fuel is hard to find...
Two bits:
If you come into my store and steal something and run away, and someone like you comes back in next week, I'll probably tell that person to leave. It's a mistake, but understandable. I would guess that, if not already, this system would soon be more accurate than I would be at remembering faces encountered once, so it could easily cut down on 'mistaken refusals.'
As for the WalMart example, I'm not sure I understand. They've taken over everything, so wouldn't refusing customers invigorate non WalMart businesses? Is every shoe store gone? Heck, this might create a market for them to come back! "WalMart tell you to take a hike? Come on over to Marty's Bikes!"