"polarization division multiplex data transmission system" [using an] "automatic optical compensator of polarization mode dispersion"
If it's twice as fast but takes four times as long to say it, does that actually mean its effect is half the speed? The article didn't say if the "test-line of 212 km" was just so they could write the name on the side.
And to think people believe we IT staff make up impenetrable terminology in an attempt to justify our salaries!
"Isn't there a better way? A way that students can be taught to work as a team yet still be able to tell who is pulling their own weight and who is not?"
Unfortunately, in the 'real' world, all too little attention gets paid to who pulls their own weight and who doesn't. Even if you're lucky enough to get a manager who's good at doing it, you've still got the end user who doesn't care who pulled what weight, they just expect a finished product from the whole team.
Arguably, therefore, having even less consideration paid to who does what is the 'better way'. It's certainly the more realistic one.
I keep explaining to friends who are still finishing their degrees that the actual subjects you study at university are probably the least important part of what you are taught. It's the things you learn around the edges that have the real value.
University gives most people their first experience working with uncooperative, unmotivated or outright incompetent team members. It gives you experience of managers (lecturers) who really don't have a clue how to manage, set hugely open specifications and then complain when you don't achieve the one tiny bit they were interested in, yet never spoke about.
Along the way you get to make your first attempts at dealing with these issues and hopefully learn from the experience. At first you try the unproductive methods (yelling, trying to do all the work yourself, complaining to managers [lecturers] that don't care). Then you start to stumble on to the better solutions like understanding why the others are apparently so bad and looking at how you can encourage/help/cajole them. At first you get bad grades because the specifications are so wide, then you start learning to ask more questions, really probing to find out what they're after. You don't get to be great at dealing with these things during your time at university but at least you hopefully get to have made your first truly painful mistakes in a safer environment.
Why doesn't anyone tell you all of this when you're going in? Why do the lecturers pretend it's about learning C++ and converting database designs to BCNF? Partly it's because a lot of the lecturers really, genuinely, don't give a damn about you, they're there for the easy life (as, sadly, are some managers) and partly because you have to learn these things the hard way and you'd only skip the lecturers anyway.
So, to sum it all up: The less fair your team working exercises, the more realistic they'll be and the better preparation for the real world. It may suck but it's better you learn it in the safety of university - it'll be the best education you get there.
These are all hard lessons to learn. After all, we nerds are generally tech focused, taking degrees in comp sci so we can do something fun rather than be politicing HR folk or whatever. The reality is that you'll rely on the teamworking skills about as much as the tech ones (besides, you'll probably be sent on some course to learn entirely new tech skills six months in to your first job) right from the start and will find yourself doing a lot more managing than tech within suprisingly few years.
While it may well be the case in the US that they don't have to make their sites visible to people using different settings, it's starting to become a legal issue in the UK.
As disabled people do have every right to access content, things like making a site usable with alt tags is starting to become a genuine legal issue. Telling a visually impared person that they must turn on the features that make a site physically unusable to them would be breaching equal opportunity laws. Curiously, most of the UK laws wandered out of the EU and so I'd imagine that Germany, where this company is based, is much the same.
Of course there is one other option no one seems to be looking at: "Who cares whether it'll pan out? Creating this hype will generate a lot of interest in the company and maybe help raise enough money to see us through the current downturn." A lot of companies that planned to get to IPO this year seem to be doing this at the moment. Whether or not they have a tech and whether or not it's actually viable, if you create enough talk and hype, you might still be able to get a few investors that you wouldn't have got otherwise and just maybe you'll stay in business long enough to come up with a more viable product.
Duh?! Haven't you been listening to that nice Mr Gates... Open source projects ARE viral. So, obviously, there's no need to port them. The situation's completely different with Win* which isn't viral and so has to be reverse engineered with Outlook/IIS to be so.
If there are any plans to start up a nice OSS virus project, could I suggest either gnuK (pronounced grrnuke) or kO (pronounced K-Oh). It'd make life so much easier than trying to remember ridiculous names like Nimda (we're watching the Lion King now?!)
"In America, bail means life! We will not stand for prisoners being released on bail, after serving only a short term, when it was always intended that they should serve life."
I don't know what's scarier, the notion that it's the kind of slip dubwuh could make, or the notion that it appears to be becoming true.
Back in the good old pre-DMCA days, they tried to tackle tape and were refused under the grounds that a technology itself was only in breach of copyright issues if its primary use was for copyright infringement. "Nearly one out of two" does kind of imply that CD-R's primary use isn't to infringe.
Still, buy a few good lawyers, a couple of politicians and call it viral, I'm sure they forces of RIAA goodness will come through in the end.
How long before the first lawsuit from a dyslexic who regards themselves as discriminated against?
In UK examinations, dyslexics are allowed [I believe] an additional 25% more time to compensate for their disabilities as, it's not that they can't read, they just can't do it as fast. The existing music method works because you either can or can not listen to music, it is not speed/ability based. With varying reading speeds, especially with disabilities, surely they're asking for trouble?
Then again, one of the arguments for decrypting Adobe's e-book format was to make it comply with Russian law that would allow blind people to use text-to-speach and look where that got Dimitri.
Just like the one that CHEWBACCA wore in the movie. But this bandolier strap is made for kids...not WOOKIEES. It holds 10 Action Figures and includes two pouches for accessories and/or secret messages (and/or Palm Pilots). Fits over the shoulder for play, even hangs for display. Action Figures sold separately. Ages 4 and up.
But imagine how much bandwidth Code Red and Sircam have wasted in the last few weeks?
I kind of find myself wondering, which wastes more bandwidth: the virus itself of all of the discussion about the virus?
I'm assuming the virus wastes vastly more. That said, take a look at the way every news site is covering it, the large images they have accompanying the stories and the vast numbers of people reading them because MSN messenger tells them it's important. I don't know if there is any way of measuring the bandwidth wasted by each but it'd be an interesting ratio to see, if there was.
knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command
So, the old "Oops, clicking Delete does that!?" defense should continue to work just fine?
From experience with malicious computer users, there are always so many more idiots who accidently cause damage that you can nearly never prove someone did anything deliberately rather than was just plain stupid. Given the choice of ten years in jail or admitting to being stupid, I think I'd go with stupidity. Even setting everything up ready to go isn't knowingly transmitting it - not until the final command to send it - and we all know that we accidently fell on that enter key.
You only have to look at appendix one: "Star Trek Voyager" (3) is searched for more frequently than "sex" (4) on Gnutella. Let's face it: if proof were needed that P2P is for social deviants, this is it.
What you need are results that a good Texan president can sympathise with:
1. Guns
2. Cow tipping
3. Sex
4. Line dancing
5. haw do ah spel [....]?
6. Drunken Lolitas*
*Well, every concerned father should care about where his daughters are.
Imagine if this continued with other non medical product names being used for medical products? How would Ford react if someone started calling a penis prosthetic "the F-150"?
Apologies to the [majority of?] Ford F-150 buyers who DID buy an F-150 as a penis prostheic.
"the Canadian government is starting hearings into our own version of the US's DMCA."
Much as we may hate the idea, copyright is a part of the way the world currently works. Take a look at the bottom of this page, notice the "The Rest(c) 1997-2001"? The existing laws were written before they had any idea of what computers would one day be capable of. Updating them to include [to the same degree of fairness] digital forms only makes sense. Otherwise you are left with unequal protection, depending on the media.
The problem with the DMCA is that it was slipped in by the copyright holders and is way too heavily in their favour (including ignoring various other constitutional concepts). The DMCA isn't bad for simply being an extension of copyright law - it is bad for being a biased extension.
All Canada is doing at the moment is starting hearings about their own version. The idea of hearings is that they give everyone the chance to speak up and prevent the kind of abuses that are in the DMCA. So, instead of complaining that it's happening - it will almost certainly happen whether you like the idea or not - start making your opinions heard; block the copyright holders from simply writing their own law; ensure fair use remains a concept; and produce a sensible version Americans can point their simple minded government towards as a good example.
It turns out the network is designed with ground based interference in mind to stop your phone transmitting to too many recievers. Used from the air it hits hundreds of them and it takes relatively few airborne cell phone users to completely wipe out the system. Of course, existing pilots are ignoring these rules in fairly large numbers already.
So, fair enough these things may start crashing in to your roof at 400mph but at least arrogant jerks (is that redundant when we're already talking about cell phone users?) will completely wipe out the cell network doing far more good to humanity.
For those governments with money to invest but no desire to go to the trouble of inventing their own biological weapons, here's an easier way to bring down the US government...
Wait a moment, that is what Monsanto's doing. Silly me. Still, so long as we spend money worrying about external threats, who needs to worry about fixing the laws to protect from external ones.
"isn't a whacko and wouldn't freak out in an emergency and endanger the other astronauts... which come to think of it is rather hard to guarantee if you don't have the military/astronaut discipline."
Ah, yes. Nothing like those military backgrounds for guaranteeing someone isn't a wacko.
Oxymoron (ok'se-mor'on) adj: A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in Military Intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
Time to stop having amorous secret liasons with your mistress in the family car then.
It's juvenile, but I couldn't resist the image of a talking 'palm':
Dave?
What are you doing Dave?
I can't let you do that Dave.
Not again Dave!
It's only been fifteen minutes since the last time Dave.
You know it makes me feel dirty Dave.
You could at least wash me afterwards Dave.
Can't you just get a girlfriend instead Dave?
"polarization division multiplex data transmission system" [using an] "automatic optical compensator of polarization mode dispersion"
If it's twice as fast but takes four times as long to say it, does that actually mean its effect is half the speed? The article didn't say if the "test-line of 212 km" was just so they could write the name on the side.
And to think people believe we IT staff make up impenetrable terminology in an attempt to justify our salaries!
"Isn't there a better way? A way that students can be taught to work as a team yet still be able to tell who is pulling their own weight and who is not?"
Unfortunately, in the 'real' world, all too little attention gets paid to who pulls their own weight and who doesn't. Even if you're lucky enough to get a manager who's good at doing it, you've still got the end user who doesn't care who pulled what weight, they just expect a finished product from the whole team.
Arguably, therefore, having even less consideration paid to who does what is the 'better way'. It's certainly the more realistic one.
I keep explaining to friends who are still finishing their degrees that the actual subjects you study at university are probably the least important part of what you are taught. It's the things you learn around the edges that have the real value.
University gives most people their first experience working with uncooperative, unmotivated or outright incompetent team members. It gives you experience of managers (lecturers) who really don't have a clue how to manage, set hugely open specifications and then complain when you don't achieve the one tiny bit they were interested in, yet never spoke about.
Along the way you get to make your first attempts at dealing with these issues and hopefully learn from the experience. At first you try the unproductive methods (yelling, trying to do all the work yourself, complaining to managers [lecturers] that don't care). Then you start to stumble on to the better solutions like understanding why the others are apparently so bad and looking at how you can encourage/help/cajole them. At first you get bad grades because the specifications are so wide, then you start learning to ask more questions, really probing to find out what they're after. You don't get to be great at dealing with these things during your time at university but at least you hopefully get to have made your first truly painful mistakes in a safer environment.
Why doesn't anyone tell you all of this when you're going in? Why do the lecturers pretend it's about learning C++ and converting database designs to BCNF? Partly it's because a lot of the lecturers really, genuinely, don't give a damn about you, they're there for the easy life (as, sadly, are some managers) and partly because you have to learn these things the hard way and you'd only skip the lecturers anyway.
So, to sum it all up: The less fair your team working exercises, the more realistic they'll be and the better preparation for the real world. It may suck but it's better you learn it in the safety of university - it'll be the best education you get there.
These are all hard lessons to learn. After all, we nerds are generally tech focused, taking degrees in comp sci so we can do something fun rather than be politicing HR folk or whatever. The reality is that you'll rely on the teamworking skills about as much as the tech ones (besides, you'll probably be sent on some course to learn entirely new tech skills six months in to your first job) right from the start and will find yourself doing a lot more managing than tech within suprisingly few years.
While it may well be the case in the US that they don't have to make their sites visible to people using different settings, it's starting to become a legal issue in the UK.
As disabled people do have every right to access content, things like making a site usable with alt tags is starting to become a genuine legal issue. Telling a visually impared person that they must turn on the features that make a site physically unusable to them would be breaching equal opportunity laws. Curiously, most of the UK laws wandered out of the EU and so I'd imagine that Germany, where this company is based, is much the same.
Of course there is one other option no one seems to be looking at: "Who cares whether it'll pan out? Creating this hype will generate a lot of interest in the company and maybe help raise enough money to see us through the current downturn." A lot of companies that planned to get to IPO this year seem to be doing this at the moment. Whether or not they have a tech and whether or not it's actually viable, if you create enough talk and hype, you might still be able to get a few investors that you wouldn't have got otherwise and just maybe you'll stay in business long enough to come up with a more viable product.
On the other hand, the site fell victim to the /.effect and ended up unaccessable the first time around. It's nice to have the chance...
...oh damn, it's slashdotted again.
Guess I'll be adding it to my bookmarks and waiting.
Why won't someone port these to linux?
Duh?! Haven't you been listening to that nice Mr Gates... Open source projects ARE viral. So, obviously, there's no need to port them. The situation's completely different with Win* which isn't viral and so has to be reverse engineered with Outlook/IIS to be so.
If there are any plans to start up a nice OSS virus project, could I suggest either gnuK (pronounced grrnuke) or kO (pronounced K-Oh). It'd make life so much easier than trying to remember ridiculous names like Nimda (we're watching the Lion King now?!)
So, will we now have the two blue screens of death as they make room for dumping double the size variables?
What happens when the two blue screens of death toggling mechanism breaks? Will we get the magenta screen of tormented afterlife?
"In America, bail means life! We will not stand for prisoners being released on bail, after serving only a short term, when it was always intended that they should serve life."
I don't know what's scarier, the notion that it's the kind of slip dubwuh could make, or the notion that it appears to be becoming true.
100,000 times thinner than a human hair
There is hope for us blonds yet.
Still, buy a few good lawyers, a couple of politicians and call it viral, I'm sure they forces of RIAA goodness will come through in the end.
In UK examinations, dyslexics are allowed [I believe] an additional 25% more time to compensate for their disabilities as, it's not that they can't read, they just can't do it as fast. The existing music method works because you either can or can not listen to music, it is not speed/ability based. With varying reading speeds, especially with disabilities, surely they're asking for trouble?
Then again, one of the arguments for decrypting Adobe's e-book format was to make it comply with Russian law that would allow blind people to use text-to-speach and look where that got Dimitri.
Just like the one that CHEWBACCA wore in the movie. But this bandolier strap is made for kids...not WOOKIEES. It holds 10 Action Figures and includes two pouches for accessories and/or secret messages (and/or Palm Pilots). Fits over the shoulder for play, even hangs for display. Action Figures sold separately. Ages 4 and up.
The scary thought is, for most of the geeks out there, what do they consider their native language? How long before we get entire interviews in Perl?
Humourous example ommited because of lameness filter and general poor quality of my Perl.
I kind of find myself wondering, which wastes more bandwidth: the virus itself of all of the discussion about the virus?
I'm assuming the virus wastes vastly more. That said, take a look at the way every news site is covering it, the large images they have accompanying the stories and the vast numbers of people reading them because MSN messenger tells them it's important. I don't know if there is any way of measuring the bandwidth wasted by each but it'd be an interesting ratio to see, if there was.
So, the old "Oops, clicking Delete does that!?" defense should continue to work just fine?
From experience with malicious computer users, there are always so many more idiots who accidently cause damage that you can nearly never prove someone did anything deliberately rather than was just plain stupid. Given the choice of ten years in jail or admitting to being stupid, I think I'd go with stupidity. Even setting everything up ready to go isn't knowingly transmitting it - not until the final command to send it - and we all know that we accidently fell on that enter key.
But where's the "Up Space Suit" cam? And how do we vote them out of the Habitat?
What you need are results that a good Texan president can sympathise with:
1. Guns
2. Cow tipping
3. Sex
4. Line dancing
5. haw do ah spel [....]?
6. Drunken Lolitas*
*Well, every concerned father should care about where his daughters are.
Apologies to the [majority of?] Ford F-150 buyers who DID buy an F-150 as a penis prostheic.
Besides, the DMCA makes no distinction that: you made your security easier to crack so lawsuits would be easier to generate.
Much as we may hate the idea, copyright is a part of the way the world currently works. Take a look at the bottom of this page, notice the "The Rest(c) 1997-2001"? The existing laws were written before they had any idea of what computers would one day be capable of. Updating them to include [to the same degree of fairness] digital forms only makes sense. Otherwise you are left with unequal protection, depending on the media.
The problem with the DMCA is that it was slipped in by the copyright holders and is way too heavily in their favour (including ignoring various other constitutional concepts). The DMCA isn't bad for simply being an extension of copyright law - it is bad for being a biased extension.
All Canada is doing at the moment is starting hearings about their own version. The idea of hearings is that they give everyone the chance to speak up and prevent the kind of abuses that are in the DMCA. So, instead of complaining that it's happening - it will almost certainly happen whether you like the idea or not - start making your opinions heard; block the copyright holders from simply writing their own law; ensure fair use remains a concept; and produce a sensible version Americans can point their simple minded government towards as a good example.
It turns out the network is designed with ground based interference in mind to stop your phone transmitting to too many recievers. Used from the air it hits hundreds of them and it takes relatively few airborne cell phone users to completely wipe out the system. Of course, existing pilots are ignoring these rules in fairly large numbers already.
So, fair enough these things may start crashing in to your roof at 400mph but at least arrogant jerks (is that redundant when we're already talking about cell phone users?) will completely wipe out the cell network doing far more good to humanity.
Now as opposed to them just disturbing your listening to the movie, you'll be forced to look away from the screen too.
1. Buy Monsanto.
2. Do nothing. (See 3)
3. Monsanto's god awful care of limiting the spread of its genes mixed with stupid patent law should ensure that within a few years you 'own' the entire US harvest.
4. Charge through the nose for basic crops/refuse to supply them unless the government does as they're told.
Wait a moment, that is what Monsanto's doing. Silly me. Still, so long as we spend money worrying about external threats, who needs to worry about fixing the laws to protect from external ones.
Ah, yes. Nothing like those military backgrounds for guaranteeing someone isn't a wacko.
Oxymoron (ok'se-mor'on) adj: A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in Military Intelligence.