It's a great description, but I think the heart of the matter still needs clarity:
I could see that, over billions of years, any collision that could happen would happen, and it would eliminate intersecting orbits (as well as average out the objects' momentum). That wasn't why I posted.
But those two balls only hit each other (assuming the ropes magically don't cross) if the ropes are the same length. If we could tip Jupiter's orbit, no matter what angle of inclination we used, it would not collide with other planets. It does not need to be in a plane for that purpose.
The hand-waving -- and the reason for my question -- is why a sphere (or some 3D system) resolves so often into a plane, I get the sense that it's the result of the momentum averaging out, but it's not quite clear. Heck, why not two non-intersecting discs on different planes, or ten? Maybe it's one of those issues for which there is no substitute for the math -- not even a/. post.
You get used to seeing them and maybe don't question it, but why do so many structures in 'outer space' -- low gravity, three-dimensional space -- take on essentially two-dimensional forms? Consider rings around planets, planetary systems around stars, and galaxies, at least. They are all flat discs.
I asked an astrophysicist I know and she said, 'that's the way the math works out'. Ah, thanks. Maybe someone here can be more enlightening.
Disclaimer: For all you nitpickers, I know there are more than three dimensions, and that the structures are not truly two-dimensional. Unless string theory applies here, I think we can leave those facts out of the discussion.
I ate there earlier this year. One of the best meals I've had, but the menu -- while more creative than almost any other I've seen -- had none of the flashy mad scientist concoctions that are so well publicized. If you are in NY and are a bit of a foodie, it's definitely a worthwhile experience. Better than many well publicized restaurants like Babbo (IMHO).
The NY Times reported that the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. Mike McConnell, *claimed* that the law helped. It's a claim by an official with a vested interest.
That doesn't make it false (or true), but it's much different than a statement of fact.
The "facts" are not as clear cut as you would like them to be. Of course it's easy if you only listen to what you WANT to hear.
These arguments are rhetorical nonsense. You're saying you won't believe it unless someone can lay out the complete argument in a way you can understand, in a/. post? You can negate other's arguments forever, alleging conspiracy theories and a lack of 'proof'. I also can't 'prove' gravity, evolution, that the earth isn't flat, or that the moon landing wasn't faked on a soundstage in a/. post. In fact, few people in the world can do that in any medium, without writing a book. So what does your argument mean?
But meanwhile, no matter what argument you make, GW is happening and you will suffer the consequences. It's not a political issue that can be changed with arguments, like 'should we have universal health care', it's a physical fact, like gravity, drought, and floods. You can argue all you want against gravity, you can wait for 'proof', but it won't help you much.
I say the earth is warming; you say it's staying the same. The overwhelming evidence is on my side. Where is your 'proof' for your side, that the temperature is staying the same?
trafficked women in Dubai are mostly from Eastern Europe
What is that based on? The rest of the post is similarly unsupported nonsense. 'They're after our women!' -- that's such a cliche, it's almost a parody of itself. If that's true, then I for one welcome our new overlords...
The only "Interesting" thing about the post is its methods: Use rumors of old evils to stereotype all of country/civilization/ethnicity X and promote hatred against them. As usual, the speaker provides no basis for the rumors -- which they sound like they could be true, but they wouldn't use rumors that sound implausible -- and the stereotype describes a group that doesn't really exist (all 'Arabs'? Every Iraqi Shiite, Lebanese Druze, and Egyptian Sunni (who is really a secular pan-arab nationalist) throughout history are all the same?). It's even more of a cliche -- the unknown, dark-skinned foreigner.
I'm not religious, but the Bible offers this useful piece of wisdom: (Matthew 7:15)
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Here is a list of people who use these tactics: Osama Bin Laden (against Christians, Jews and the 'West'), Vladimir Putin (against the U.S. and E.U.), Milosovic (against Croats/Muslims), Rwandan Hutu extremists (against Tutsis), the KKK (against blacks, Jews, whoever else is on their list), Iraqi Shiite extremists (against Sunnis), Iraqi Sunni extremists (against Shiites), and many, many more (surely an oft-cited political party in WWII belongs in this list).
Most began not by announcing a hateful, violent agenda -- that would be unpalatable to their audience. First they had to make it palatable, with words like those in the parent post. Their intent was later born out by the 'fruits' of their labor. In fact, can you think of one positive achievement that resulted from such ideas? One admirable person who used them? Did Jefferson use them against Great Britain (think of the Declaration of Independence)? Lincoln against the South? FDR against Germany or Japan? Do modern day Europeans say these things about Germans, despite the horrors many living Europeans witnessed?
In fairness to Hal Porter, maybe he's just repeating what he has heard, using the words without the agenda, but the fruits of the seeds he's helping to plant are universally bad.
I'm considering disabling BITS not because of this attack -- as I said, I considered it before. BITS is an obvious vector for attacks. The benefits of disabling it are probably not large, but it's cheap and easy to implement -- the question is, what other costs are there, in terms of compatibility, etc.
No matter how you secure your computer, there are ways around it. All you can do is make it more difficult for the attacker.
I've considered disabling the BITS service before (i.e, via services.msc), especially since I usually run Windows Update manually. But I read hints that it may break other applications, including from Microsoft's documenation:
You should not set the Startup Type to Disabled. Disabling BITS may break applications, such as Windows Update, that rely on BITS to transfer files.
However, I've never found anything more specific -- does anyone know the consequences of disabling BITS?
In fairness, I have used and supported Thunderbird and Seamonkey at many businesses for years, and I've never seen the actual data get corrupted. It uses good old mbox format for the mail store, which is just a simple text file.
I have seen the indexes, stored in separate files, become corrupted far too often, though they can easily be rebuilt.
As they say in the article, there's also a question of how long the ink lasts before it fades (emphasis is mine):
We've established that third-party inks can produce prints which are equally well liked to those produced using manufacturers' own inks, but this is only half of the story. All the main printer manufacturers claim that third-party inks fade far more quickly than their own.
To test this out we are going to take the samples we obtained from this research and stick parts of them in an outside window, parts on a board on an inside wall and parts in an album in a drawer. We'll look at them again after three and six month intervals and see which samples have faded. Third-party inks and papers are not in the clear yet, but they've come through the first part of our examination with flying colours; literally.
On one hand, saying 3rd party inks don't last a long is perfect FUD -- it's something the consumer can't judge for themselves (without extensive testing). OTOH, I know the durability if the ink is (or at least was) an issue for artists, and Epson sold a special ink that lasted 100 yrs. Also, that may be a corner that some 3rd party ink manufacturers cut to reduce their costs.
Battery technology will experience a sort of Moore's Law with the demand for hybrid and all-electric vehicles.
Demand helps, but physics (and return on investment) has limits. If technological progress (like we experienced with semiconductors) depended only on demand, then the energy market would have experienced a revolution long ago. Instead, we're still using fossil fuels and copper wire -- technologies that are at least a century old. We also still have cancer, AIDS, people dying of the flu, I can still hear my neighbor hammering, and my mail client interface still sucks.
I read an historian of science (can't remember which one) who pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, we can't create technological revolutions on demand, simply by applying resources like money and talent. His example was wireless energy distribution, to rid ourselves of the ridiculous distribution infrastructure of wires connecting every room in every building and batteries -- if it could be done, it would have been long ago. Think of it this way (and maybe this would make a good 'ask Slashdot') -- If we could choose the next technological revolution, what would it be? Free energy? Teleportation? Photosynthesis for humans (for nutrition)? Brain-wave interfaces? Reliable lie detectors?... etc.
Again, do you have any evidence to support these claims? Ideas like this are the creationism of politics -- just saying so doesn't make it true.
During much of the middle ages in Europe, for example, "Freedom" regularily meant "freedom from oppression, freedom from hunger, freedom from misery". According to whom? "Freedom" in which language?
Many medieval europeans were quite happy to forego the freedom of speech if it meant surviving the winter They were "quite happy"? How do you know? Or were they just extorted and had no choice but to sacrifice their freedom to survive? By that standard, people in Darfur today are "quite happy" to live in refugee camps to survive, and people in Columbia are "quite happy" living with narco-terrorists to survive, and slaves in 19th century America were also "quite happy" to survive. But it kind of changes the meaning of "happy". Is our standard of government now medieval Europe? People in Thailand aren't "quite happy" -- most of them support the deposed, democratically elected leader, Thaksin.
And yes, oppressive regimes are often the most stable. As I pointed out in my last post, it's a useful rationalization but the evidence doesn't support it -- almost all the most prosperous and stable countries in the world (e.g., U.S., Europe), including in Asia (Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, etc.), have freedom and democracy.
Defacing a picture of the king is illegal in Thailand just like shooting the president is illegal in the US I'll leave this statement to stand for itself. But I'm not so concerned with this particular law. My point was that the idea that freedom is just one value among many is an interesting theory, long promulgated by people who make excuses for dictators, but all the evidence points the other way.
To me, it's intolerable that some people will carelessly theorize away other people's freedom. It's like money -- some people who have it will say it's not important, but very few who are poor will agree. Martin Luther King wrote (and this does not apply 100% to the issue we're discussing, but it gets the point across),
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Do you have anything to back these ideas up? It's an old canard that freedom is a 'western' value, but it's not, it's universal. It's always easy to write off someone else's freedom with unfounded theories, but very few chose to forgo these rights when the have a choice. They only forgo them when someone else takes them away. If the people in Thailand really agree with you, then no doubt the military dictatorship can hold free, open elections, and they will win. What are they waiting for?
But even then, mob rule is not the way to make the law. Should everyone who 'offends' the majority be subject to arrest? That does not sound like a recipe for "moderation". Your point of view disagrees the majority in my country; should you be subject to arrest? A democracy that does not protect minority rights is just mob rule.
Despite your claim about the history of "Asian cultures" (what is that anyway? Thailand, China, Turkey, India, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Indonesia, etc., all rolled into one big generalization?), it doesn't strike me that quality of life has been so great in most non-democratic Asian countries, and it seems that democracies are much more moderate than military dictatorships. Fewer massacres, unlawful imprisonment, wars, mass starvation, economic disasters, etc. Democracy is also much more 'non-binary' -- you have to respect many different points of view.
You can't make the argument, based on fact, that military dictatorships, or any non-democracies, have been more stable, prosperous, or 'moderate' than free democracies anywhere in the world. It holds just as true in Asia: Compare the democracies (Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan, etc.) with the rest.
Back in the day, when people's interactions were mostly local, time zones might have been harmless. But now, a large part of our population interacts across time zones every day. They're just a PITA -- time is an arbitrary number anyway, so who cares if the clock says 6pm or 6am when you wake up?
It would take a little getting used to, but I bet everyone would adjust quickly and never go back. Imagine having every computer (and every log, timestamp, calendar, etc.) in the world on GMT. Imagine scheduling conference calls and not having someone confuse which time zone it was scheduled for.
"It is difficult to guarantee complete anonymization, but we believe these changes will make it very unlikely users could be identified."
"Changing the bits of an IP address makes it less likely that the IP address can be associated with a specific computer or user. Cookie anonymization makes it less likely that a cookie can be used to identify a user."
"[I]t's possible that data retention laws will obligate us to retain logs for longer periods."
"How many subpoenas for server log data does Google receive each year? As a matter of policy, we don't provide specifics on law enforcement requests to Google."
I don't think it will mean much unless they publish their anonymization technique. Even Google seems to have doubts about it, and considering the resources of some attackers (e.g., national governments), if the anonymization can be broken it will be.
But Google's anonymization does not have to be perfect: Google isn't the only place your google.com activity is recorded: There's your personal computer, possibly your ISP, other sites (referrer links show Google search terms), etc. As long as Google makes their anonymity difficult enough to break that it's significantly easier to go elsewhere for the information, they've done their job. If you need to be anonymous, I hope you are taking other steps.
I, for one, welcome the merciful intentions of our benign new overlords.
>> First, if it was really OSX, why would they need Google's help to implement Google Maps? >> It would just run.
> But it wouldn't be integrated into the phone functionality, which was what Jobs demonstrated at > the keynote.
I know I'm not supposed to say this on Slashdot, but good point. Also, it might be that the lack of bandwidth hurts the AJAX interactivity.
>> Third, it's hard to believe a handheld would have the resources to run OSX.
> The handheld is more powerful than the desktops that ran NeXTStep with no problem in its > time.
This argument I don't understand: So what? It's more powerful than computers that ran Minix in its time, but I don't think the PDA could run Ubuntu (or substitute any OS from 15 years ago and its modern day descendant).
> I suspect it is OS X with all the (for the demo) unnecessary components stripped out. Probably > with Cocoa as the sole API.
I suspect it has many pieces of OS X, with a few substitutes (UI not being the least), a few pieces that emulate OS X functions in a low-resource environment, and many other pieces missing.
Whether or not we call that "OS X" is irrelevant. The only question is, what apps can I run on it? If it's truly compatible with OS X apps (perhaps requiring 'Apple signed code' to run), that would be incredible, but I doubt it comes even close.
Another way to look at it: If 'desk/laptop' OS X was really written in a way that it can run on PDA resources, Apple missed many opportunities to take advantage of full desktop/laptop resources.
Google Maps is a website. It will just run on any operating system with a capable enough browser
That's what I meant... the fact they the needed to do something special suggests that the OS and/or browser might not be capable enough.
However, maybe there is another explanation: The data connection is not very fast. I've never tried to run Google maps on less than broadband, but I imagine the user experience might not be so great.
the first release of NEXSTEP ran on 68030 workstations with just 8MB total RAM, I don't see the problem in running OSX on ARM pda with >32 MB system RAM.
Windows 3.1 ran in 4MB back then, so I guess I can run Vista in 16MB.
First, if it was really OSX, why would they need Google's help to implement Google Maps? It would just run. Second, the interface is obviously significantly different. Third, it's hard to believe a handheld would have the resources to run OSX. Finally, if it was really OSX, then any OSX app would run on it (in theory).
Slashdot Mirror
In all seriousness, I finally grocked the answer to my question over a bowl of spaghetti. I will leave irrefutable proofs to others ...
It's a great description, but I think the heart of the matter still needs clarity:
/. post.
I could see that, over billions of years, any collision that could happen would happen, and it would eliminate intersecting orbits (as well as average out the objects' momentum). That wasn't why I posted.
But those two balls only hit each other (assuming the ropes magically don't cross) if the ropes are the same length. If we could tip Jupiter's orbit, no matter what angle of inclination we used, it would not collide with other planets. It does not need to be in a plane for that purpose.
The hand-waving -- and the reason for my question -- is why a sphere (or some 3D system) resolves so often into a plane, I get the sense that it's the result of the momentum averaging out, but it's not quite clear. Heck, why not two non-intersecting discs on different planes, or ten? Maybe it's one of those issues for which there is no substitute for the math -- not even a
Thanks.
Doh! I should have read the FAQ! It's been a long time since I checked out Usenet FAQs; what a great resource (and explanation).
You get used to seeing them and maybe don't question it, but why do so many structures in 'outer space' -- low gravity, three-dimensional space -- take on essentially two-dimensional forms? Consider rings around planets, planetary systems around stars, and galaxies, at least. They are all flat discs.
I asked an astrophysicist I know and she said, 'that's the way the math works out'. Ah, thanks. Maybe someone here can be more enlightening.
Disclaimer: For all you nitpickers, I know there are more than three dimensions, and that the structures are not truly two-dimensional. Unless string theory applies here, I think we can leave those facts out of the discussion.
I ate there earlier this year. One of the best meals I've had, but the menu -- while more creative than almost any other I've seen -- had none of the flashy mad scientist concoctions that are so well publicized. If you are in NY and are a bit of a foodie, it's definitely a worthwhile experience. Better than many well publicized restaurants like Babbo (IMHO).
The NY Times reported that the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. Mike McConnell, *claimed* that the law helped. It's a claim by an official with a vested interest.
That doesn't make it false (or true), but it's much different than a statement of fact.
The "facts" are not as clear cut as you would like them to be. Of course it's easy if you only listen to what you WANT to hear.
/. post? You can negate other's arguments forever, alleging conspiracy theories and a lack of 'proof'. I also can't 'prove' gravity, evolution, that the earth isn't flat, or that the moon landing wasn't faked on a soundstage in a /. post. In fact, few people in the world can do that in any medium, without writing a book. So what does your argument mean?
These arguments are rhetorical nonsense. You're saying you won't believe it unless someone can lay out the complete argument in a way you can understand, in a
But meanwhile, no matter what argument you make, GW is happening and you will suffer the consequences. It's not a political issue that can be changed with arguments, like 'should we have universal health care', it's a physical fact, like gravity, drought, and floods. You can argue all you want against gravity, you can wait for 'proof', but it won't help you much.
I say the earth is warming; you say it's staying the same. The overwhelming evidence is on my side. Where is your 'proof' for your side, that the temperature is staying the same?
What is that based on? The rest of the post is similarly unsupported nonsense. 'They're after our women!' -- that's such a cliche, it's almost a parody of itself. If that's true, then I for one welcome our new overlords
The only "Interesting" thing about the post is its methods: Use rumors of old evils to stereotype all of country/civilization/ethnicity X and promote hatred against them. As usual, the speaker provides no basis for the rumors -- which they sound like they could be true, but they wouldn't use rumors that sound implausible -- and the stereotype describes a group that doesn't really exist (all 'Arabs'? Every Iraqi Shiite, Lebanese Druze, and Egyptian Sunni (who is really a secular pan-arab nationalist) throughout history are all the same?). It's even more of a cliche -- the unknown, dark-skinned foreigner.
I'm not religious, but the Bible offers this useful piece of wisdom: (Matthew 7:15)
Here is a list of people who use these tactics: Osama Bin Laden (against Christians, Jews and the 'West'), Vladimir Putin (against the U.S. and E.U.), Milosovic (against Croats/Muslims), Rwandan Hutu extremists (against Tutsis), the KKK (against blacks, Jews, whoever else is on their list), Iraqi Shiite extremists (against Sunnis), Iraqi Sunni extremists (against Shiites), and many, many more (surely an oft-cited political party in WWII belongs in this list).
Most began not by announcing a hateful, violent agenda -- that would be unpalatable to their audience. First they had to make it palatable, with words like those in the parent post. Their intent was later born out by the 'fruits' of their labor. In fact, can you think of one positive achievement that resulted from such ideas? One admirable person who used them? Did Jefferson use them against Great Britain (think of the Declaration of Independence)? Lincoln against the South? FDR against Germany or Japan? Do modern day Europeans say these things about Germans, despite the horrors many living Europeans witnessed?
In fairness to Hal Porter, maybe he's just repeating what he has heard, using the words without the agenda, but the fruits of the seeds he's helping to plant are universally bad.
I'm considering disabling BITS not because of this attack -- as I said, I considered it before. BITS is an obvious vector for attacks. The benefits of disabling it are probably not large, but it's cheap and easy to implement -- the question is, what other costs are there, in terms of compatibility, etc.
No matter how you secure your computer, there are ways around it. All you can do is make it more difficult for the attacker.
To partly answer my own question, here's a pretty good analysis of BITS:
http://www.firewallleaktester.com/news.htm#57
However, I've never found anything more specific -- does anyone know the consequences of disabling BITS?
it quite regularly corrupts my local mail store
In fairness, I have used and supported Thunderbird and Seamonkey at many businesses for years, and I've never seen the actual data get corrupted. It uses good old mbox format for the mail store, which is just a simple text file.
I have seen the indexes, stored in separate files, become corrupted far too often, though they can easily be rebuilt.
On one hand, saying 3rd party inks don't last a long is perfect FUD -- it's something the consumer can't judge for themselves (without extensive testing). OTOH, I know the durability if the ink is (or at least was) an issue for artists, and Epson sold a special ink that lasted 100 yrs. Also, that may be a corner that some 3rd party ink manufacturers cut to reduce their costs.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/03/021246
I'm sure we'll hear it again a few times, too.
Battery technology will experience a sort of Moore's Law with the demand for hybrid and all-electric vehicles.
... etc.
Demand helps, but physics (and return on investment) has limits. If technological progress (like we experienced with semiconductors) depended only on demand, then the energy market would have experienced a revolution long ago. Instead, we're still using fossil fuels and copper wire -- technologies that are at least a century old. We also still have cancer, AIDS, people dying of the flu, I can still hear my neighbor hammering, and my mail client interface still sucks.
I read an historian of science (can't remember which one) who pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, we can't create technological revolutions on demand, simply by applying resources like money and talent. His example was wireless energy distribution, to rid ourselves of the ridiculous distribution infrastructure of wires connecting every room in every building and batteries -- if it could be done, it would have been long ago. Think of it this way (and maybe this would make a good 'ask Slashdot') -- If we could choose the next technological revolution, what would it be? Free energy? Teleportation? Photosynthesis for humans (for nutrition)? Brain-wave interfaces? Reliable lie detectors?
During much of the middle ages in Europe, for example, "Freedom" regularily meant "freedom from oppression, freedom from hunger, freedom from misery".
According to whom? "Freedom" in which language?
Many medieval europeans were quite happy to forego the freedom of speech if it meant surviving the winter
They were "quite happy"? How do you know? Or were they just extorted and had no choice but to sacrifice their freedom to survive? By that standard, people in Darfur today are "quite happy" to live in refugee camps to survive, and people in Columbia are "quite happy" living with narco-terrorists to survive, and slaves in 19th century America were also "quite happy" to survive. But it kind of changes the meaning of "happy". Is our standard of government now medieval Europe? People in Thailand aren't "quite happy" -- most of them support the deposed, democratically elected leader, Thaksin.
And yes, oppressive regimes are often the most stable.
As I pointed out in my last post, it's a useful rationalization but the evidence doesn't support it -- almost all the most prosperous and stable countries in the world (e.g., U.S., Europe), including in Asia (Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, etc.), have freedom and democracy.
Defacing a picture of the king is illegal in Thailand just like shooting the president is illegal in the US
I'll leave this statement to stand for itself. But I'm not so concerned with this particular law. My point was that the idea that freedom is just one value among many is an interesting theory, long promulgated by people who make excuses for dictators, but all the evidence points the other way.
To me, it's intolerable that some people will carelessly theorize away other people's freedom. It's like money -- some people who have it will say it's not important, but very few who are poor will agree. Martin Luther King wrote (and this does not apply 100% to the issue we're discussing, but it gets the point across),
Do you have anything to back these ideas up? It's an old canard that freedom is a 'western' value, but it's not, it's universal. It's always easy to write off someone else's freedom with unfounded theories, but very few chose to forgo these rights when the have a choice. They only forgo them when someone else takes them away. If the people in Thailand really agree with you, then no doubt the military dictatorship can hold free, open elections, and they will win. What are they waiting for?
But even then, mob rule is not the way to make the law. Should everyone who 'offends' the majority be subject to arrest? That does not sound like a recipe for "moderation". Your point of view disagrees the majority in my country; should you be subject to arrest? A democracy that does not protect minority rights is just mob rule.
Despite your claim about the history of "Asian cultures" (what is that anyway? Thailand, China, Turkey, India, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Indonesia, etc., all rolled into one big generalization?), it doesn't strike me that quality of life has been so great in most non-democratic Asian countries, and it seems that democracies are much more moderate than military dictatorships. Fewer massacres, unlawful imprisonment, wars, mass starvation, economic disasters, etc. Democracy is also much more 'non-binary' -- you have to respect many different points of view.
You can't make the argument, based on fact, that military dictatorships, or any non-democracies, have been more stable, prosperous, or 'moderate' than free democracies anywhere in the world. It holds just as true in Asia: Compare the democracies (Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan, etc.) with the rest.
Back in the day, when people's interactions were mostly local, time zones might have been harmless. But now, a large part of our population interacts across time zones every day. They're just a PITA -- time is an arbitrary number anyway, so who cares if the clock says 6pm or 6am when you wake up?
It would take a little getting used to, but I bet everyone would adjust quickly and never go back. Imagine having every computer (and every log, timestamp, calendar, etc.) in the world on GMT. Imagine scheduling conference calls and not having someone confuse which time zone it was scheduled for.
Hmmm ... I'm in Society Hill (for out-of-towners: On a border of South Philly) and my 6.0/768 service has been pretty unreliable.
Also, I think Speakeasy encourages you to share Wifi by billing your neighbors and taking a cut for yourself: http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/terms/
Mindspring was purchased by Earthlink. We had hosting with Mindspring, and Earthlink supported the old Mindspring servers for five years IIRC.
I don't think it will mean much unless they publish their anonymization technique. Even Google seems to have doubts about it, and considering the resources of some attackers (e.g., national governments), if the anonymization can be broken it will be.
But Google's anonymization does not have to be perfect: Google isn't the only place your google.com activity is recorded: There's your personal computer, possibly your ISP, other sites (referrer links show Google search terms), etc. As long as Google makes their anonymity difficult enough to break that it's significantly easier to go elsewhere for the information, they've done their job. If you need to be anonymous, I hope you are taking other steps.
I, for one, welcome the merciful intentions of our benign new overlords.
>> First, if it was really OSX, why would they need Google's help to implement Google Maps?
>> It would just run.
> But it wouldn't be integrated into the phone functionality, which was what Jobs demonstrated at
> the keynote.
I know I'm not supposed to say this on Slashdot, but good point. Also, it might be that the lack of bandwidth hurts the AJAX interactivity.
>> Third, it's hard to believe a handheld would have the resources to run OSX.
> The handheld is more powerful than the desktops that ran NeXTStep with no problem in its
> time.
This argument I don't understand: So what? It's more powerful than computers that ran Minix in its time, but I don't think the PDA could run Ubuntu (or substitute any OS from 15 years ago and its modern day descendant).
> I suspect it is OS X with all the (for the demo) unnecessary components stripped out. Probably
> with Cocoa as the sole API.
I suspect it has many pieces of OS X, with a few substitutes (UI not being the least), a few pieces that emulate OS X functions in a low-resource environment, and many other pieces missing.
Whether or not we call that "OS X" is irrelevant. The only question is, what apps can I run on it? If it's truly compatible with OS X apps (perhaps requiring 'Apple signed code' to run), that would be incredible, but I doubt it comes even close.
Another way to look at it: If 'desk/laptop' OS X was really written in a way that it can run on PDA resources, Apple missed many opportunities to take advantage of full desktop/laptop resources.
Google Maps is a website. It will just run on any operating system with a capable enough browser
... the fact they the needed to do something special suggests that the OS and/or browser might not be capable enough.
That's what I meant
However, maybe there is another explanation: The data connection is not very fast. I've never tried to run Google maps on less than broadband, but I imagine the user experience might not be so great.
the first release of NEXSTEP ran on 68030 workstations with just 8MB total RAM, I don't see the problem in running OSX on ARM pda with >32 MB system RAM.
Windows 3.1 ran in 4MB back then, so I guess I can run Vista in 16MB.
First, if it was really OSX, why would they need Google's help to implement Google Maps? It would just run.
Second, the interface is obviously significantly different.
Third, it's hard to believe a handheld would have the resources to run OSX.
Finally, if it was really OSX, then any OSX app would run on it (in theory).
I suspect it's "OS X" like my PDA runs "Windows".