Not to poo poo your post, but back in the day the percentage of morons writing ill-thought-out posts are pretty much on par with today. There were spammers (although it wasn't called spam back then), there were your dissenters and your trouble makers. Everything you have today. It wasn't any more difficult to learn back then. One of the major changes from then to now is the gui interface, which is not that much of an advancement (as far as learning how to navigate the internet/web). --
All too often, I've been called in to solve even the simplest problems with comptuers. A better question would be, are users getting better at learning what computers are capable of doing. It's been my experience that many users stop problem solving when sitting in front of a computer. Take the average user and put them in a situation in real life and many of them will think through the problem. Put that same person in front of a computer in a work setting, and they get dumb-founded.
Certainly, these users have learned how to do tasks as difficult (if not more so), than use a computer. Maybe it stems from a fear of "mucking up the works", or from fear of learning new skills, but there has to be a more psychological reason why people don't (or won't) master this very simple appliance. --
The spam bill needs to be totally revamped. There is no reason why I should have to endure spam. It's a completely avoidable thing.
What the Bill Proposes: This bill attempts to curtail unsolicited email by requiring senders to have a valid reply address and to stop sending email if a recipient requests it. Internet service providers would also be able to enforce their own spam policies under federal law.
What this is saying, is that I have to first be the target of spam, before I can request not to be the target of spam. And I have to make this request of each and every spammer. Why not have a law that says, in order for people to stop slashing your tires and busting your windshields, you have to ask them to stop?.
Obstacles to Passage: Few. Only one member of Congress, Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, voted against this bill in the House, and no vocal opponents have emerged in the Senate.
Is he opposed because he knows it's a lame bill and wants to see something stronger? If that's the case, then I say more power to him. What's his reasoning behind this?
Although the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) isn't crazy about this legislation, Senior Vice President for Governmental Affairs Jerry Cerasale says that, for the most part, the bill sets standards already adhered to by DMA members, such as clearly identifying the sender and letting recipients get off the mailing lists.
If they have a right to store their files on my computer, I should have the right to charge them for use of my equipment. They should put that into the bill and see how quickly the whole spam issue fades away when hundreds of thousands of people charge them for storage space. Don't forget the processing fee to remove the spam when they so request it. --
It's real hard (almost impossible) to predict what happen in the future. Mr. Metcalfe may be predicting that OSS will fail on one radio station, while another talk show guest is predicting that it will be the next stage of evololutionary development.
Is he basing his prediction on more than "people won't like the security risk it presents"? Regular US Mail poses a security risk as workers can easily steal your letters (especially around Christmas time, when letters can be easily lost). Even credit cards at the store are handled by someone who can very easily write your number down and use it to make phone purchases. But these methods continue to grow.
Certainly there has to be better reasons for predicting the downfall of a piece of technology or a methodology. Even using statistical analysis is risky at best, as statistics are almost always skewed one way or the other.
--
Why are they even bothering to deal with VCRs? I've never seen statistics, but I'll be willing to wager that VCR is going the way of 8-track cassettes. DVD and whatever other digital technology comes along, has and will continue to have, a clear advantage over what VCR offers.
Regardless of that fact, what is the point? Even if they claim it's to protect copyrights, I'll be willing to wager even more money, that 98% of the people who record shows, do it for the express purpose of watching it later, and not for nefarious purposes.
So they're going to spend millions of dollars developing this technology that someone is just going to crack a few weeks later anyway. Someone better keep those references handy of the discussions about DeCSS. We might need them again real soon.
The fight's not over until the winner is tired. --
I remember reading a article on string theory that stated that there are actually 12 dimensions to space and that the we exist in 3 of them. The other dimensions are 'folded back' upon themselvs and are not directly accessable.
Which would explain why time on Mondays seem to drag on forever.
In 1998, Norman Margolus and Lev Levitin of MIT calculated that the minimum time for a bit to flip is Planck's constant divided by four times the energy.
As an aside - is this:
(h / 4) * e or h / (4 * e) --
The problem is, after you get your result, how do you maintain reversibility while reading it.
This brings up an even more disturbing questions. To wit: if one builds a relational database system based on these ideas, and one runs across errors when committing one's transactions, how does one roll back the changes? And, in reference to a previous article, if one is computing using negative energy, would one roll back their changes when they wanted to commit and commit when they wanted to roll back?
Would Informix error message be positive?
How would Microsoft handle the fact that in certain compilers they define True as equal to -1 and False as not equal to true?
We may need a new brance of science to deal with these issues. Maybe MS can come up with certifications such as MCPI (Microsoft Certified Physics Instructor). This could very well be bigger than the Y2K fiasco. --
Because a computer can't contain negative energies, the spread in energy of a bit cannot be greater than its total energy. In 1998, Norman Margolus and Lev Levitin of MIT calculated that the minimum time for a bit to flip is Planck's constant divided by four times the energy.
But according to Einstein's real equation, e^2=m^2c^4 + pc^2, from which we take the square root and arrive at the equation e=mc^2 (p=0). I believe Dirac was the first to toy with the notion of negative energy (or at least question it), since the square root of a number has two answers (positive and negative).
This is good news, since it will enable Microsoft to continue to build operating systems that ccasionally crash. Granted, they will have to reprogram the error routines to include Dark Matter Underflow and Not enough matter to complete operation, but this should be trivial.
In fact, it could be that the reason that earth occasionally swaps poles, is that the planets are really bits used in computing some cosmic calculation. Maybe the cosmos is already prototype of one of these devices.
Why do something for free when you can make money off of it?
They can employ the Bic Shaver(R) method of making money, however. Bic makes no money off selling you the plastic handle. They make their money off of the razors themselves.
Nothing says Technology, like a turtle-graphic based repository of knowledge. --
We can use a Slashdot style moderation scheme to decide who goes in.stupid and in.smart. Of course by doing so, Slashdot runs the risk of being put in.stupid.
Of course, this will immediately put the internet into an infinite loop, trying to resolve this unexpected incarnation of Bertrand's Paradox. Chaos will ensue. It will be very messy.
Nothing says technology like a turtle-graphic based respository of knowledge.
--
Wasn't it Sun that was complaining about Microsoft forcing clients to sign all those agreements forbiddding them to talk about some of Microsoft's practices? Granted, these are two separate issues, but now that Sun is having the issues, it's suddenly a different matter. Shut everyone up, and hope that no one finds out, before we can rememdy the problem or ship a new product.
And why would you have to bribe people that you'll fix something quicker, if they sign an NDA? That's an automatic red flag. I find it hard to believe that CEO and other top brass fall for such nonsense. There must be more to the story that was has been disclosed.
I would have thought one of the "cool" things about a lego desk would be the ability to reconfigure it. Gluing them all together makes that kind of hard.
But one of the uncool thing is having some tyke disassemble it, on "Bring your child to work" day.
MP3 Files, Napster v2.0 and the like...
on
Focusing Audio
·
· Score: 1
Another interesting application might be to create a device that would allow one to focus music to a handheld or peripheral device where it is converted to MP3 format.
Perhaps the next version of Napster is on the horizon.
Subliminal Advertising for the New Millennium
on
Focusing Audio
·
· Score: 3
Marketing will have a field day with this. In grocery stores, each aisle will have secret messages aimed at areas to suggest you buy certain products (maybe even aimed lower, for the kiddies).
How long will it be before satellites can beam down messages to whole geographic areas?
Place your bets now. Will there be life found elsewhere in our solar system? Secondary bets may be placed on the following, for those who prefer to wager on human nature rather than nature itself. Will the presence of life on other planets create significant doubt amongst creationists? Will the absence of life on planets which have all the supposed necessary ingredients create significant doubt amongst evolutionists?
This gives a whole new meaning to OTB - Other Terrestial Betting.
Seriously how do you find out about them? I love becoming members of whacky groups like this. Tried to join the Flat Earther's but they could see I was not being serious so they refused:(
Slashdot Mirror
I'll take Carriage Returns and Line Feeds for $400, Alex.
--
Not to poo poo your post, but back in the day the percentage of morons writing ill-thought-out posts are pretty much on par with today. There were spammers (although it wasn't called spam back then), there were your dissenters and your trouble makers. Everything you have today. It wasn't any more difficult to learn back then. One of the major changes from then to now is the gui interface, which is not that much of an advancement (as far as learning how to navigate the internet/web).
--
All too often, I've been called in to solve even the simplest problems with comptuers. A better question would be, are users getting better at learning what computers are capable of doing. It's been my experience that many users stop problem solving when sitting in front of a computer. Take the average user and put them in a situation in real life and many of them will think through the problem. Put that same person in front of a computer in a work setting, and they get dumb-founded.
Certainly, these users have learned how to do tasks as difficult (if not more so), than use a computer. Maybe it stems from a fear of "mucking up the works", or from fear of learning new skills, but there has to be a more psychological reason why people don't (or won't) master this very simple appliance.
--
The spam bill needs to be totally revamped. There is no reason why I should have to endure spam. It's a completely avoidable thing.
What the Bill Proposes: This bill attempts to curtail unsolicited email by requiring senders to have a valid reply address and to stop sending email if a recipient requests it. Internet service providers would also be able to enforce their own spam policies under federal law.
What this is saying, is that I have to first be the target of spam, before I can request not to be the target of spam. And I have to make this request of each and every spammer. Why not have a law that says, in order for people to stop slashing your tires and busting your windshields, you have to ask them to stop?.
Obstacles to Passage: Few. Only one member of Congress, Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, voted against this bill in the House, and no vocal opponents have emerged in the Senate.
Is he opposed because he knows it's a lame bill and wants to see something stronger? If that's the case, then I say more power to him. What's his reasoning behind this?
Although the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) isn't crazy about this legislation, Senior Vice President for Governmental Affairs Jerry Cerasale says that, for the most part, the bill sets standards already adhered to by DMA members, such as clearly identifying the sender and letting recipients get off the mailing lists.
If they have a right to store their files on my computer, I should have the right to charge them for use of my equipment. They should put that into the bill and see how quickly the whole spam issue fades away when hundreds of thousands of people charge them for storage space. Don't forget the processing fee to remove the spam when they so request it.
--
But when I read the prize included a free Macintosh, I threw the code away.
--
It's real hard (almost impossible) to predict what happen in the future. Mr. Metcalfe may be predicting that OSS will fail on one radio station, while another talk show guest is predicting that it will be the next stage of evololutionary development.
Is he basing his prediction on more than "people won't like the security risk it presents"? Regular US Mail poses a security risk as workers can easily steal your letters (especially around Christmas time, when letters can be easily lost). Even credit cards at the store are handled by someone who can very easily write your number down and use it to make phone purchases. But these methods continue to grow.
Certainly there has to be better reasons for predicting the downfall of a piece of technology or a methodology. Even using statistical analysis is risky at best, as statistics are almost always skewed one way or the other.
--
Why are they even bothering to deal with VCRs? I've never seen statistics, but I'll be willing to wager that VCR is going the way of 8-track cassettes. DVD and whatever other digital technology comes along, has and will continue to have, a clear advantage over what VCR offers.
Regardless of that fact, what is the point? Even if they claim it's to protect copyrights, I'll be willing to wager even more money, that 98% of the people who record shows, do it for the express purpose of watching it later, and not for nefarious purposes.
So they're going to spend millions of dollars developing this technology that someone is just going to crack a few weeks later anyway. Someone better keep those references handy of the discussions about DeCSS. We might need them again real soon.
The fight's not over until the winner is tired.
--
I remember reading a article on string theory that stated that there are actually 12 dimensions to space and that the we exist in 3 of them. The other dimensions are 'folded back' upon themselvs and are not directly accessable.
Which would explain why time on Mondays seem to drag on forever.
You may be thinking of this article.
Here's an interesting article on Viewing Four-dimensional Objects In Three Dimensions.
--
In 1998, Norman Margolus and Lev Levitin of MIT calculated that the minimum time for a bit to flip is Planck's constant divided by four times the energy.
As an aside - is this:
(h / 4) * e or h / (4 * e)
--
The problem is, after you get your result, how do you maintain reversibility while reading it.
This brings up an even more disturbing questions. To wit: if one builds a relational database system based on these ideas, and one runs across errors when committing one's transactions, how does one roll back the changes? And, in reference to a previous article, if one is computing using negative energy, would one roll back their changes when they wanted to commit and commit when they wanted to roll back?
Would Informix error message be positive?
How would Microsoft handle the fact that in certain compilers they define True as equal to -1 and False as not equal to true?
We may need a new brance of science to deal with these issues. Maybe MS can come up with certifications such as MCPI (Microsoft Certified Physics Instructor). This could very well be bigger than the Y2K fiasco.
--
Momentum, if I remember correctly.
--
Because a computer can't contain negative energies, the spread in energy of a bit cannot be greater than its total energy. In 1998, Norman Margolus and Lev Levitin of MIT calculated that the minimum time for a bit to flip is Planck's constant divided by four times the energy.
But according to Einstein's real equation, e^2=m^2c^4 + pc^2, from which we take the square root and arrive at the equation e=mc^2 (p=0). I believe Dirac was the first to toy with the notion of negative energy (or at least question it), since the square root of a number has two answers (positive and negative).
This is good news, since it will enable Microsoft to continue to build operating systems that ccasionally crash. Granted, they will have to reprogram the error routines to include Dark Matter Underflow and Not enough matter to complete operation, but this should be trivial.
In fact, it could be that the reason that earth occasionally swaps poles, is that the planets are really bits used in computing some cosmic calculation. Maybe the cosmos is already prototype of one of these devices.
Welcome to the desert of the real.
--
Maybe we should start a Government forced "code commenting system", call it "Social Coding Security"
Nah. Someone will write a DeSCS program which will be the cause of an unending war on slashdot.
--
Now they'll be able to inject the genes into humans, so they'll be able to generate caffeine naturally.
--
Why do something for free when you can make money off of it?
They can employ the Bic Shaver(R) method of making money, however. Bic makes no money off selling you the plastic handle. They make their money off of the razors themselves.
Nothing says Technology, like a turtle-graphic based repository of knowledge.
--
We can use a Slashdot style moderation scheme to decide who goes in .stupid and in .smart. Of course by doing so, Slashdot runs the risk of being put in .stupid.
Of course, this will immediately put the internet into an infinite loop, trying to resolve this unexpected incarnation of Bertrand's Paradox. Chaos will ensue. It will be very messy.
Nothing says technology like a turtle-graphic based respository of knowledge.
--
It's not so much that you'll get in trouble, but under Article 47 Paragraph 23, they'll deny your request to have a lego submarine built.
--
I'd sign the NDA in a second - If they promised to build me a Lego Office.
Hey, boss. The bad news is we're still crashing. But just look at the pencil sharpner I built using #2371 and #1726.
--
Wasn't it Sun that was complaining about Microsoft forcing clients to sign all those agreements forbiddding them to talk about some of Microsoft's practices? Granted, these are two separate issues, but now that Sun is having the issues, it's suddenly a different matter. Shut everyone up, and hope that no one finds out, before we can rememdy the problem or ship a new product.
And why would you have to bribe people that you'll fix something quicker, if they sign an NDA? That's an automatic red flag. I find it hard to believe that CEO and other top brass fall for such nonsense. There must be more to the story that was has been disclosed.
--
I would have thought one of the "cool" things about a lego desk would be the ability to reconfigure it. Gluing them all together makes that kind of hard.
But one of the uncool thing is having some tyke disassemble it, on "Bring your child to work" day.
Another interesting application might be to create a device that would allow one to focus music to a handheld or peripheral device where it is converted to MP3 format.
Perhaps the next version of Napster is on the horizon.
Marketing will have a field day with this. In grocery stores, each aisle will have secret messages aimed at areas to suggest you buy certain products (maybe even aimed lower, for the kiddies).
How long will it be before satellites can beam down messages to whole geographic areas?
What's even funnier, err, scarier is it got modded up for being informative .
That itself should earn it a mod point or two.
Place your bets now. Will there be life found elsewhere in our solar system? Secondary bets may be placed on the following, for those who prefer to wager on human nature rather than nature itself. Will the presence of life on other planets create significant doubt amongst creationists? Will the absence of life on planets which have all the supposed necessary ingredients create significant doubt amongst evolutionists?
This gives a whole new meaning to OTB - Other Terrestial Betting.
Seriously how do you find out about them? I love becoming members of whacky groups like this. Tried to join the Flat Earther's but they could see I was not being serious so they refused :(
The link can be found here:
http://www.pervenio.com/paa