> With any luck, that'll be Slashdot's daily dose of SCO news...
No, with any luck there will be another story today about the SEC suspending trading of SCOX and the FBI carting Canopy Group's board and execs off to jail.
> At some future point, when human existence is long forgotten, some entity will find this plaque long since buried in the martian dust, and think to themselves "My god, what shitty artist they were".
Better we should have sent the Phaistos Disk, to unleash a plague of kooks saturating their internet with claims of having deciphered it.
This is very interesting. I've often wondered how Computers could ever top man, since they run on programs made by man, are they not? It just seems like humans couldn't make chess software that was better than a human itself. Anyone care to shed some more light on this subject?
All you need for a winning chess-playing program is a board-position evaluator that's "good enough" and a virtual player that can simulate game continuations "far enough" ahead of the current game state. Within reason, limits on one of those can be made up by improvements in the other. And though the amount of work required to play out continuations deeper grows exponentially (due to the "parallel universes" branching factor), computational power is growing exponentially too, so we can actually make progress at the depth of look-aheads.
Ergo, it's a foregone conclusion that computers will someday be able to stomp any human who cares to play. The interesting question is whether anyone will use any interesting AI to do it, or whether it will be almost completely a matter of game crunching.
> What's Astonishing is that some people might think Arnold even knows that agenda exists let alone that it is his and he's gonna do all that stuff.
This is probably another instance of setting forward a dim but electable puppet. You don't think all those big names joined his team because of his outstanding statesmanship and leadership potential, do you? Ignore Ahrnohld and watch the men behind the curtain.
(Same can be said about GW and his cabinet, for those of you who haven't figured that out yet.)
> Why shouldn't CS people stick to what the rest of the sciences have been using for decades, that "kilo" means 1000?
Since when did sticking to standards become a popular meme in CS, let along among computer parts-makers?
> This CS thing of making "kilo" stand for 1024 is an attempt at revisionist history.
Interestingly, the Greek word was khilo, probably spelt "chilo" in English, but somehow revised to "kilo" somewhere along the way. AFAICT, "kilo" isn't a Greek word at all.
Close, though: killo means either "ass" or "ass-colored", depending where you put the accent. (Presumably refers to the beast of burden rather than the body part.)
BTW, mega and giga just mean "big" and "giant". I could go on, but perhaps my anal-retentivity is starting to show... Use whatever word yo want; I'm even starting to like "virii".
> All you really want is to program your phone to ring silently the first N rings, and _then_ start ringing on the N+1th ring.
I'd like to have an answering machine with a menu like most businesses do these days, but have it be a "honeypot" machine that would create fake submenus to an unbounded depth on the fly. Then you just tell your friends the secret code to enter at the first level to skip the runaround.
> The best part of this whole thing is watching this poor guy's site counter shoot up. Was at 131 when I got there - now at 584 two minutes later. I'm watching the Slashdot effect in action in front of my own eyes!
Think how bad it would be if most of us actually read the articles before posting!
> 'future TV will may be unrecognisable from today, defined not just by linear TV channels, packaged and scheduled by television executives, but instead will resemble more of a kaleidoscope, thousands of streams of content, some indistinguishable as actual channels.'
Yep, I see the same informercials on all my favorite channels now.
The major stages of the opponents of an invention: a) it won't work b) its evil c) its not really new d) we invented it
Except for some inventions it's:
a) first they laugh at you b) then they forget you
It's not obvious yet that XP follows your map rather than mine, though a bit of familiarity with the history of sna^w overhyped methodologies might help guide a gambler's bet.
Slashdot Mirror
> I mean, a judge would have to be wacky to find for the SunnComm
I thought this was in the USA.
1. Market defective product
2. Watch the news
3. Sue the messenger
4. Profit!
This one seems to be a sure thing; no question marks required.
> With any luck, that'll be Slashdot's daily dose of SCO news...
No, with any luck there will be another story today about the SEC suspending trading of SCOX and the FBI carting Canopy Group's board and execs off to jail.
> Occam's (spelling?) razor, people. Go for the simplest solution.
If Occam really believed in simplicity, he wouldn't have cast his razor in Latin.
> And then it doesn't work. Or it blows up.
Hopefully they remembered to use metric time when the calibrated it!
> At some future point, when human existence is long forgotten, some entity will find this plaque long since buried in the martian dust, and think to themselves "My god, what shitty artist they were".
Better we should have sent the Phaistos Disk, to unleash a plague of kooks saturating their internet with claims of having deciphered it.
> The Cornell sundial inscription reads "Two Worlds, One Sun" in 17 languages [including ancient Sumerian and Mayan]
So when that Sumerian spaceship finally reaches Mars, they'll feel at home and know what time it is.
Ergo, it's a foregone conclusion that computers will someday be able to stomp any human who cares to play. The interesting question is whether anyone will use any interesting AI to do it, or whether it will be almost completely a matter of game crunching.
> What's Astonishing is that some people might think Arnold even knows that agenda exists let alone that it is his and he's gonna do all that stuff.
This is probably another instance of setting forward a dim but electable puppet. You don't think all those big names joined his team because of his outstanding statesmanship and leadership potential, do you? Ignore Ahrnohld and watch the men behind the curtain.
(Same can be said about GW and his cabinet, for those of you who haven't figured that out yet.)
> describe the size in terms of number of songs. (of course,
I forget... is it 1.7 threesomes per song, or is it the other way around?
> Our computers are binary, so the hard drives that we put in them should be measured using the binary (Base-2) representation.
Yes, please give us the case dimensions, power consumption, number of USB ports, and number of keys on the mouse in base 2 as well!
> Monitor sizes? I love my 19" (18" viewable) monitor!
That's not nearly so bad as the reduced expectations you suffer when buying your first flying car.
> No, because "kilo" is, in fact, a metric prefix. So a simple kilobyte
should have its standard meaning as the SI unit prefix implies.
Ah, so a kilometre is 1,000 * 1 meter, but 1024 * 39.37 inches... I think I'm starting to get this metric stuff.
> the simple rule is that 20 Quux is less than 40 Quux, whatever the unit may be...
Argh! You picked the one example that doesn't work, since the Quux is a unit of smallness. 40 Quux is only half as much as 20 Quux!
> Why shouldn't CS people stick to what the rest of the sciences have been using for decades, that "kilo" means 1000?
Since when did sticking to standards become a popular meme in CS, let along among computer parts-makers?
> This CS thing of making "kilo" stand for 1024 is an attempt at revisionist history.
Interestingly, the Greek word was khilo, probably spelt "chilo" in English, but somehow revised to "kilo" somewhere along the way. AFAICT, "kilo" isn't a Greek word at all.
Close, though: killo means either "ass" or "ass-colored", depending where you put the accent. (Presumably refers to the beast of burden rather than the body part.)
BTW, mega and giga just mean "big" and "giant". I could go on, but perhaps my anal-retentivity is starting to show... Use whatever word yo want; I'm even starting to like "virii".
> The problem is that some decades ago some geek thought that 1024 is close enough to 1000, so it would be k3wl to use "Kilo" (with a capital K)
Ah, we all agree that it's "K3wl" then.
> What is a CAVE Good For?
Ask OBL; he's lived in one for the past two years.
> I mean at least have a decent sideshow or something.
I think they've got Sideshow Bob robbing people's cars while they're inside...
> All you really want is to program your phone to ring silently the
first N rings, and _then_ start ringing on the N+1th ring.
I'd like to have an answering machine with a menu like most businesses do these days, but have it be a "honeypot" machine that would create fake submenus to an unbounded depth on the fly. Then you just tell your friends the secret code to enter at the first level to skip the runaround.
> Perhaps SCUD will work for you.
I considered that, but many telemarketers call from out of range.
> The best part of this whole thing is watching this poor guy's site counter shoot up. Was at 131 when I got there - now at 584 two minutes later. I'm watching the Slashdot effect in action in front of my own eyes!
Think how bad it would be if most of us actually read the articles before posting!
> If I do the same on my phone and say I only want people who I know or need to speak to contact me why shouldn't I be allowed?
In the USA it's popular to confuse the idea of "freedom of speech" with the idea of "guarantee of an audience".
Especially popular when there's money in it (and also among k00ks whose messages are being ignored).
> 'future TV will may be unrecognisable from today, defined not just by linear TV channels, packaged and scheduled by television executives, but instead will resemble more of a kaleidoscope, thousands of streams of content, some indistinguishable as actual channels.'
Yep, I see the same informercials on all my favorite channels now.
a) first they laugh at you
b) then they forget you
It's not obvious yet that XP follows your map rather than mine, though a bit of familiarity with the history of sna^w overhyped methodologies might help guide a gambler's bet.
> > Are the inconveniences worth it?
> If your partner is really hot, then yes.
The Thebans figured that one out many centuries ago...