I wouldn't want my data sold to anyone...ever...period!
However as real-time monitoring devices become more prevalent, more precise, and more capable; I can see a strong argument made for the data being captured and analyzed in aggregate by "trusted sources". The CDC could get an early warning of an outbreak, or it could be found that a disproportionally large number of people in a small town are getting cancer due to poor working conditions in a factory or pollution.
As with any data collection tool, it has as much potential to harm as it does to help...but so does a hammer.
If you could go back in time and speak to the founding fathers of our country, what advice or admonishments would you offer with regard to intellectual property, copyright, patents, and making information freely available, in order to best head off the problems we've faced in these areas since? Do you feel it is the responsibility of government to legislate our way out of these problems, or are there more natural ways to combat them leveraging basic human nature (survival, greed, etc.)?
I guess I would throw it back to the slashdot team and ask, what is it you hope to achieve with rebranding? Why a new logo? Is it merely to commemorate the history of slashdot? If so, I'd say you've already done that with the month-long logo fun.
Rebranding is done for a number of reasons. Historical milestone isn't typically one of them. It's sometimes used as an excuse for "We haven't grown our user base for a while and need something fresh to entice more visitors", but the event alone isn't usually enough. This is generally true because if you are happy with your growth and retention, don't mess with it.
If you aren't happy with growth or retention, that could be due to any number of factors and a new logo isn't likely to fix it. Knowing who the target demographic is would be the key to rebranding. But I advise extraordinary caution. Slashdot is old-guard when it comes to the internet, an institution really. An unchanging logo conveys stability and reliability. It also helps smooth transitions to other changes you may make in the future with respect to appearance, functionality, or content.
I do have to agree though. Dayton would have been a much better place to store the shuttle than on the deck of an aircraft carrier in an inflatable hangar. It just makes so much more sense to put one in the National Museum of the USAF. It may not be the reality, but it definitely smacks of political favoritism.
Yeah, I think http://www.betterplace.com/ has the better idea. Swapping out a battery in just a few minutes is far superior to waiting 30 minutes for a charge.
Yeah same thing for me. I had a 4-digit WAY back in the day, but it was probably a one-off thing when I first signed up. I couldn't remember the login when I became a regular reader later and had to register another. I'm sure the account is still there, but I have no idea what the username even was back then. The email address I used is long gone too; probably a dial-up Earthlink account or something like that.
This is why science is awesome. The very same guy that advocated the "Out of Africa" theory, circled back in the face of more evidence and is re-evaluating. He's not so prideful to say he was possibly wrong, or partially wrong, or mostly right but needing a few tweaks. He has no reason to feel shame, as generally no scientist should as long as they are doing good work. I applaud Mr. Stringer.
There was a line in the movie "Chain Reaction" where the lead scientist says, "We learned something very important today. We learned another way this doesn't work." or something to that effect. That is also what makes science awesome. Learning what doesn't work is almost as important as learning what does.
Every time I see something like this, I get that "What am I doing with my life?" feeling and start thinking I need to get out of my particular field of IT and start contributing to the body of human knowledge. Computational Materials Science, here I come!
That's a false dichotomy. I'm happy that you enjoy and are passionate about your chosen profession. I would be happier if the root of that passion came from helping people from getting screwed over by a broken, ludicrously complicated system that's often devoid of common sense. I know you weren't saying this, but it came off like "Isn't it amazing? Due to a technicality and an out-of-date precedent set 60 years ago, you'll be spending the next five years in prison despite your innocence. What a knee-slapper! I love this job!"
Most people, other than attorney's apparently, aren't having fun when they are in court. It's often gravely serious. I don't want to be jerk to you or anyone. I just think it was a little insensitive to call it fun.
I've always felt the argument to curb greenhouse gases has been ill-stated. While there are some who still deny global warming is happening, the primary debate between the left and right seems to distill down to whether it is man-made (left) or cyclical (right).
It seems to me the better argument from the left would be: is polluting the air good for you or not? The answer is obviously, no, it's not good for you. So regardless of whether it causes global warming, we should always be striving for less pollutants and cleaner air in much the same way we strive for safer cars. I suppose the global warming aspect helps push the immediacy of the need for change vs. the cost of that change, but so much time, effort, and money has been wasted on both sides arguing the merits of man-made global warming, I wonder if this was the most effective road to go down.
No one is ever going to say how much it would suck if the air near factories or major metropolitan areas smelled as clean and fresh as the air in rural Vermont.
Festo's Smartbird is hardly indistinguishable from a real bird, but it is much more so than say da Vinci's ornithopter. A slow and steady progress can be charted from the former to the latter. At some point in the future, the technology will be nearly indistinguishable from a real bird, thus passing the "Norvig Test".
That's the whole point of the Turing Test; it's supposed to be hard and maybe even impossible. It doesn't test whether current AI is useful, it tests if AI is indistinguishable from a human. That's a pinnacle moment, and one that bestows great benefits as well as serious implications.
Personally, I think it will happen; maybe not for 50, 100, 500 years...but it will happen.
A former prison inmate once confided in me that he participated in gay sex while in prison because, as he put it "Hey, that's your life." It's my sincerest hope that Mr. Ravi will get to experience "that life" and all that it encompasses for those 30 days.
Well, there's always the possibility that some enterprising manager finds that if he provides performance enhancing narcotics to the miners, his quarterly numbers and thus compensation will go up. Then a marshal of Scottish descent will catch on after a miner wigs out on the drugs and opens an airlock without an environment suit on. He'll try to stop the operation leading the manager to send up some thugs to take the marshal out. This will cause a bloody gunfight and some EVA shenanigans; maybe an explosion or two.
Props to everyone who's old enough to get the reference!
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't want my data sold to anyone...ever...period!
However as real-time monitoring devices become more prevalent, more precise, and more capable; I can see a strong argument made for the data being captured and analyzed in aggregate by "trusted sources". The CDC could get an early warning of an outbreak, or it could be found that a disproportionally large number of people in a small town are getting cancer due to poor working conditions in a factory or pollution.
As with any data collection tool, it has as much potential to harm as it does to help...but so does a hammer.
If you could go back in time and speak to the founding fathers of our country, what advice or admonishments would you offer with regard to intellectual property, copyright, patents, and making information freely available, in order to best head off the problems we've faced in these areas since? Do you feel it is the responsibility of government to legislate our way out of these problems, or are there more natural ways to combat them leveraging basic human nature (survival, greed, etc.)?
"If there going to..."
If you were Asian, you wouldn't have made that grammatical error.
Didn't these guys do this last year with the Global Village Construction Set on Kickstarter?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/622508883/global-village-construction-set
I guess I would throw it back to the slashdot team and ask, what is it you hope to achieve with rebranding? Why a new logo? Is it merely to commemorate the history of slashdot? If so, I'd say you've already done that with the month-long logo fun.
Rebranding is done for a number of reasons. Historical milestone isn't typically one of them. It's sometimes used as an excuse for "We haven't grown our user base for a while and need something fresh to entice more visitors", but the event alone isn't usually enough. This is generally true because if you are happy with your growth and retention, don't mess with it.
If you aren't happy with growth or retention, that could be due to any number of factors and a new logo isn't likely to fix it. Knowing who the target demographic is would be the key to rebranding. But I advise extraordinary caution. Slashdot is old-guard when it comes to the internet, an institution really. An unchanging logo conveys stability and reliability. It also helps smooth transitions to other changes you may make in the future with respect to appearance, functionality, or content.
You mean like these?
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=National+Museum+of+the+United+States+Air+Force,+Spaatz+Street,+Dayton,+OH&hl=en&ll=39.783951,-84.108362&spn=0.005684,0.008256&sll=40.365277,-82.669252&sspn=8.15936,16.907959&oq=dayton+air+force+muse&t=h&hq=National+Museum+of+the+United+States+Air+Force,+Spaatz+Street,+Dayton,+OH&radius=15000&z=18
I do have to agree though. Dayton would have been a much better place to store the shuttle than on the deck of an aircraft carrier in an inflatable hangar. It just makes so much more sense to put one in the National Museum of the USAF. It may not be the reality, but it definitely smacks of political favoritism.
1. Lift
2. Weight
3. Thrust
4. Drag
"Screws are falling out all the time; the world's an imperfect place" -- John Bender
Yeah, I think http://www.betterplace.com/ has the better idea. Swapping out a battery in just a few minutes is far superior to waiting 30 minutes for a charge.
Yeah same thing for me. I had a 4-digit WAY back in the day, but it was probably a one-off thing when I first signed up. I couldn't remember the login when I became a regular reader later and had to register another. I'm sure the account is still there, but I have no idea what the username even was back then. The email address I used is long gone too; probably a dial-up Earthlink account or something like that.
This is why science is awesome. The very same guy that advocated the "Out of Africa" theory, circled back in the face of more evidence and is re-evaluating. He's not so prideful to say he was possibly wrong, or partially wrong, or mostly right but needing a few tweaks. He has no reason to feel shame, as generally no scientist should as long as they are doing good work. I applaud Mr. Stringer.
There was a line in the movie "Chain Reaction" where the lead scientist says, "We learned something very important today. We learned another way this doesn't work." or something to that effect. That is also what makes science awesome. Learning what doesn't work is almost as important as learning what does.
Every time I see something like this, I get that "What am I doing with my life?" feeling and start thinking I need to get out of my particular field of IT and start contributing to the body of human knowledge. Computational Materials Science, here I come!
To hear the PINs of our other customers, please press 1, or say "yes" now.
That's a false dichotomy. I'm happy that you enjoy and are passionate about your chosen profession. I would be happier if the root of that passion came from helping people from getting screwed over by a broken, ludicrously complicated system that's often devoid of common sense. I know you weren't saying this, but it came off like "Isn't it amazing? Due to a technicality and an out-of-date precedent set 60 years ago, you'll be spending the next five years in prison despite your innocence. What a knee-slapper! I love this job!"
Most people, other than attorney's apparently, aren't having fun when they are in court. It's often gravely serious. I don't want to be jerk to you or anyone. I just think it was a little insensitive to call it fun.
It's good to see that an actual attorney is weighing in on this. It provides, at least for me, a better perspective on where the profession stands.
If ever my life, my family, or my livelihood is on the line in a courtroom; I will try to remember that my attorney is "having fun".
All suspects are guilty, PERIOD. If they weren't, they wouldn't be suspect would they?
You are correct. I misquoted Brian O'Driscoll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_O'Driscoll. I was so quick to respond, I didn't give what I was typing a moment to sink in.
I apologize, internet.
Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put it in fruit salad.
That will fall to people like you and me. Do you have what it takes? Remember, service guarantees citizenship.
He could have at least dressed up as The Joker.
I've always felt the argument to curb greenhouse gases has been ill-stated. While there are some who still deny global warming is happening, the primary debate between the left and right seems to distill down to whether it is man-made (left) or cyclical (right).
It seems to me the better argument from the left would be: is polluting the air good for you or not? The answer is obviously, no, it's not good for you. So regardless of whether it causes global warming, we should always be striving for less pollutants and cleaner air in much the same way we strive for safer cars. I suppose the global warming aspect helps push the immediacy of the need for change vs. the cost of that change, but so much time, effort, and money has been wasted on both sides arguing the merits of man-made global warming, I wonder if this was the most effective road to go down.
No one is ever going to say how much it would suck if the air near factories or major metropolitan areas smelled as clean and fresh as the air in rural Vermont.
Festo's Smartbird is hardly indistinguishable from a real bird, but it is much more so than say da Vinci's ornithopter. A slow and steady progress can be charted from the former to the latter. At some point in the future, the technology will be nearly indistinguishable from a real bird, thus passing the "Norvig Test".
That's the whole point of the Turing Test; it's supposed to be hard and maybe even impossible. It doesn't test whether current AI is useful, it tests if AI is indistinguishable from a human. That's a pinnacle moment, and one that bestows great benefits as well as serious implications.
Personally, I think it will happen; maybe not for 50, 100, 500 years...but it will happen.
Speaking of more suffering...
A former prison inmate once confided in me that he participated in gay sex while in prison because, as he put it "Hey, that's your life." It's my sincerest hope that Mr. Ravi will get to experience "that life" and all that it encompasses for those 30 days.
Someone may even video tape it.
Well, there's always the possibility that some enterprising manager finds that if he provides performance enhancing narcotics to the miners, his quarterly numbers and thus compensation will go up. Then a marshal of Scottish descent will catch on after a miner wigs out on the drugs and opens an airlock without an environment suit on. He'll try to stop the operation leading the manager to send up some thugs to take the marshal out. This will cause a bloody gunfight and some EVA shenanigans; maybe an explosion or two.
Props to everyone who's old enough to get the reference!
Amen, brother. I wish I had mod points.
At Lawrence Livermore Labs in California.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/101277-inside-californias-star-power-fusion-facility
It would be on my list.