Hmmm. Only 215 "qualified respondents" that provided "reliable information". Then they divide them into small, medium, large, and very large sites. Assuming small networks outnumber large ones by a long shot, just how many "very large" networks (10,000+ machines) could they be getting results from?
Between the questionable statistics and the bizarre correlation between security and sex mentioned in the first paragraph, this article is nothing but a large serving of Buzzword Soup topped with noise and a sprinkling of anecdotal evidence, with yummy USA-Today-style pie charts for dessert.
Don't "make a long story short" unless you're sure your Web server can handle the traffic of every Slashdot reader trying to make the short story long.
a tool for creating networks that don't have "centralized points of vulnerability". The chief purpose seems to be to stop DoS attacks, intentional or otherwise.
Wasn't that the goal of the ARPANET project that led to the Internet in the first place? I guess it didn't work.
Most futurists follow the same "30-year rule" that science fiction writers follow: If you want to predict a sweeping change that will revolutionize everything, place it about 30 years in the future. If you doubt this, just look at virtually every mainstream sci-fi flick that takes place in the future. This might have started with George Orwell's "1984", first published in 1954.
I think people tend to come up with 30 years because (a) it sounds far away enough for anything to happen, and (b) it's soon enough that they might be alive to see it.
[obPrediction: by 2032, Slashdot will have its own TV show]
500 MB? Really? Virtually every disc I burn has 100MB or less on it. They're so cheap you can waste the space, and what better way to waste a bit of space than with a cute picture.
More importantly, you would only lose 100-200MB to print a line of text around the border. A permanent label that identifies the contents of the CD at a glance and can't be changed. I can find uses for that.
Most importantly of all, you could buy a pack of 25-cent generic CDRs, print little pine trees and snowmen on them, and use them as Xmas ornaments. Now *that's* a useful technology.
The writers of Star Trek aren't held back by anything other than their own incompetence. There are a million potential plots out there. For that matter, well-written characters and dialog can make a trite plot into a fine film.
Granted, many plots were used by Wells or Bradbury or Burroughs long ago, but if you simplify things down to that level everything starts to look the same. If you wrote a 1-paragraph summary of all of the romantic comedy films ever made, for example, it would look like this:
"Two characters who at first seem to have insurmountable differences meet and, through a series of comic moments, fall in love. A complication threatens to dash their hopes, but at the last moment everything works out."
That doesn't mean all of these films are without value. Just most of them.
ARGH! My wife and I spent half an hour talking to 'Claire' yesterday. It's the most useless thing on earth. If you're going to have a voice saying "Tell me what you want" instead of a menu, it better understand English. If it doesn't, I'd be far better off with "Press 1 for sales, 2 for service."
The trouble is, Sprint undoubtedly looks at their statistics and says, "well, less people are talking to real humans, so Claire must be doing her job." When really, the people are hanging up in frustration, turning off their Sprint PCS phones, and using them as bookends or chew toys.
If it weren't for Sprint PCS's surprisingly useful Web site, I would have dumped them long ago.
I guess the issue is that a PDF file includes an actual embedded copy of the font and the text to render in that font, rather than (as in the case of a GIF or JPEG) merely a rendered image of text in that font. Considering that there isn't any way to copy the font from the PDF, though, they should be functionally similar.
All of the facts here come from a deliberately vague Adobe press release, so I suspect we're not seeing the whole story.
I almost believed your message until I got to the part about the goverment and their amazingly superior computers... anyone who has done consulting for the government knows they actually have an assortment of banged-up relics from the cold war days.
Maybe the superior computers are in the top secret hangar at Area 51.
"I was actually getting twice as much traffic from the International Atomic Energy Agency (part of the UN), when I had no information at all related to atomic energy."
What the author doesn't know is that the IAEA's URL (iaea.org) is used as a phony referrer string by a number of site-crawling robots that look for email addresses for spam. So he probably wasn't getting a single real link from the IAEA and should have given AltaVista more credit all along...
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm. Only 215 "qualified respondents" that provided "reliable information". Then they divide them into small, medium, large, and very large sites. Assuming small networks outnumber large ones by a long shot, just how many "very large" networks (10,000+ machines) could they be getting results from?
Between the questionable statistics and the bizarre correlation between security and sex mentioned in the first paragraph, this article is nothing but a large serving of Buzzword Soup topped with noise and a sprinkling of anecdotal evidence, with yummy USA-Today-style pie charts for dessert.
Don't "make a long story short" unless you're sure your Web server can handle the traffic of every Slashdot reader trying to make the short story long.
Wasn't that the goal of the ARPANET project that led to the Internet in the first place? I guess it didn't work.
Wake me up when this guy has 30 operating systems running on an XBox.
Most futurists follow the same "30-year rule" that science fiction writers follow: If you want to predict a sweeping change that will revolutionize everything, place it about 30 years in the future. If you doubt this, just look at virtually every mainstream sci-fi flick that takes place in the future. This might have started with George Orwell's "1984", first published in 1954.
I think people tend to come up with 30 years because (a) it sounds far away enough for anything to happen, and (b) it's soon enough that they might be alive to see it.
[obPrediction: by 2032, Slashdot will have its own TV show]
500 MB? Really? Virtually every disc I burn has 100MB or less on it. They're so cheap you can waste the space, and what better way to waste a bit of space than with a cute picture.
More importantly, you would only lose 100-200MB to print a line of text around the border. A permanent label that identifies the contents of the CD at a glance and can't be changed. I can find uses for that.
Most importantly of all, you could buy a pack of 25-cent generic CDRs, print little pine trees and snowmen on them, and use them as Xmas ornaments. Now *that's* a useful technology.
The writers of Star Trek aren't held back by anything other than their own incompetence. There are a million potential plots out there. For that matter, well-written characters and dialog can make a trite plot into a fine film.
Granted, many plots were used by Wells or Bradbury or Burroughs long ago, but if you simplify things down to that level everything starts to look the same. If you wrote a 1-paragraph summary of all of the romantic comedy films ever made, for example, it would look like this:
"Two characters who at first seem to have insurmountable differences meet and, through a series of comic moments, fall in love. A complication threatens to dash their hopes, but at the last moment everything works out."
That doesn't mean all of these films are without value. Just most of them.
Give them 20 more years to get these down to $100 each, and ebooks might actually start selling.
Here's a condensed version of the article for those who don't have time to slog through it:
1. Standards are good.
2. Bad code that happens to work in current browsers is bad.
3. Buy my book.
ARGH! My wife and I spent half an hour talking to 'Claire' yesterday. It's the most useless thing on earth. If you're going to have a voice saying "Tell me what you want" instead of a menu, it better understand English. If it doesn't, I'd be far better off with "Press 1 for sales, 2 for service."
The trouble is, Sprint undoubtedly looks at their statistics and says, "well, less people are talking to real humans, so Claire must be doing her job." When really, the people are hanging up in frustration, turning off their Sprint PCS phones, and using them as bookends or chew toys.
If it weren't for Sprint PCS's surprisingly useful Web site, I would have dumped them long ago.
I guess the issue is that a PDF file includes an actual embedded copy of the font and the text to render in that font, rather than (as in the case of a GIF or JPEG) merely a rendered image of text in that font. Considering that there isn't any way to copy the font from the PDF, though, they should be functionally similar.
All of the facts here come from a deliberately vague Adobe press release, so I suspect we're not seeing the whole story.
Maybe they should call it 'theft of service'.
Or the T-shirt could be more clear: "Wardriving is not a crime. Or a war."
My monitor appears to be blank when I stare at it with my eyes. Perhaps I've purchased one of these new units by mistake?
I almost believed your message until I got to the part about the goverment and their amazingly superior computers... anyone who has done consulting for the government knows they actually have an assortment of banged-up relics from the cold war days.
Maybe the superior computers are in the top secret hangar at Area 51.
"I was actually getting twice as much traffic from the International Atomic Energy Agency (part of the UN), when I had no information at all related to atomic energy."
What the author doesn't know is that the IAEA's URL (iaea.org) is used as a phony referrer string by a number of site-crawling robots that look for email addresses for spam. So he probably wasn't getting a single real link from the IAEA and should have given AltaVista more credit all along...