That isn't what jargon means. "Jargon" means terms that are either a) invented by that community for a specific purpose or b) heavily loaded terms with specific meaning within that community (basically, "vocabulary" that is literally meaningless outside that field or has a completely different meaning). The meaning can always be conveyed without recourse to "jargon", it just cannot be done so succinctly (and oftentimes, elegantly). For a book that is only intended to be read by other members of the field, using jargon without explanation is fine. The writer, however, cannot expect anyone else outside the field to read the work.
For an example of writing with (some) jargon, but explaining it, look at Einstein's Relativity: The Special and General Theory. He uses terms like Gaussian co-ordinate system, for example, and explains what they mean sufficiently that non-technical readers can understand the meaning of what he is trying to say, even if they don't actually understand what a Gaussian co-ordinate system is (while those who do have a good comprehension of math can understand what he is actually saying partially, and those who already know what a Gaussian co-ordinate system is can understand everything he is saying). This is an extremely difficult task, and if you are creating a highly technical work, not always practical or desirable, but it is possible.
This is a fantastic idea. Make a drawing where everyone who "likes" your page on Facebook has a chance to win a car (say, 10 standard cars and 1 supercar: the supercar especially would draw a lot of people). It wouldn't require much initial work on their part: after a few people see it, millions would flock to "like" the page spreading it everywhere on Facebook.
I also heard on the radio this morning that one survey said 50% of Americans think Facebook is a fad. That doesn't bode well for their future, even if most Facebook users aren't American.
So you are saying Facebook is so bad at advertising, they would put an ad for a US car company which is more or less completely unavailable in Turkey on a Turkish user's page in the first place?
I wouldn't call ~1/3 of the US population a small number of people, nor a problem for advertisers. It doesn't matter that the majority of Facebook users aren't in the US: it matters that Facebook is a poor place for ads in the first place (perhaps because Facebook isn't very good at targeting them, or because people just ignore them completely). Facebook has the US users to be a huge marketing base. More so than just about any other channel. The problem isn't in the demographics.
If DDR4 is really as power-saving as they say, AMD will be competitive simply by adapting it (more than they already are). At the low-power end, especially low-cost low-power, AMD is pretty competitive with Intel already. If they can push out server DDR4 compatible products first, they could stand to gain quite a lot (Intel isn't planning on offering DDR4 till 2014, so AMD has a year and a half).
I very much doubt the Murdoch's actually committed any of these crimes themselves. They may or may not have ordered people to do it, although I find that unlikely. Much more likely, they simply ordered people to find the information "any way they can" (or other euphemism). You don't generally get to be as rich and powerful as the Murdoch's by being able to be easily associated with criminal activity, after all.
They didn't have any pre-paid card numbers, they had actual debit cards. But, they only had limited data from them (Track 2 data) which isn't enough to clone the complete card. Instead, they bought en-masse cheap prepaid cards, which could then be re-encoded with the debit-card data (and then used to buy more expensive pre-paid cards, which were used for the actual purchases). Since Track 2 doesn't include personal information, such as addresses, names, or PINs, they couldn't just clone the card directly, hence the use of the prepaid cards.
I suspect they didn't buy off-the-shelf commercially available cards because that would look extremely suspicious, whereas pre-paid cards aren't suspicious (there is really no easy way to verify the number on the card is the same as on the stripe), and regular online purchases (customary for this kind of fraud) are impossible with no billing address/name/etc.
Just because PARTICULAR browsers aren't recompiled and available, doesn't mean that nothing is allowed. Any developer can write a browser (yes, webkit engine) and sell it - thus not a monopoly, your droid rage notwithstanding.
No, they can't. Not on the App Store. Apple will not allow it. The only way to get an alternate browser on the iPhone is by jailbreaking it.
I came into the comments to say this. Holy hell is the chromatic aberration on that image absolutely terribly. It looks a lot like they took the different color channels separately (that would explain why the clouds, which are moving, were especially bad), and TFA says the pictures take ~30 minutes each, so that's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Indeed. But if it doesn't work, no one has any obligation or reason to use it, so in other words, they very much do have an obligation to work and provide the expected service, or go the way of Myspace.
I'm going to say that I believe FTL communication may be possible (in fact, I hope it is). The problem is it violates a significant foundation of modern physics: to wit, relativity, and I'm not exactly prepared to throw out relativity. You can't just manipulate entangled particles in an arbitrary fashion and have them stay entangled. Making a change to one (a controlled change, mind: one that is actually random could still preserve entanglement) collapses the entanglement between the particles, precisely by you knowing what the change is. The wormhole question is interesting, because ultimately you aren't actually traveling faster than light, you just take a back-route, so to speak. However, it requires spacetime to have a certain arrangement and properties which is, at this point, only theoretical (i.e. we have no idea if wormholes are actually possible.
The thing about quantum entanglement is that while it is weird, and not expected by relativity, it still seems almost to strive (insofar as natural laws can do so) to behave according to the limits of relativity on FTL travel, which makes sense, since the laws of nature must be consistent. The question is ultimately if there is a higher law than relativity to appeal to that allows FTL travel. It really doesn't seem likely, but then again neither did quantum entanglement 200 years ago.
This, and all other quantum "teleportation" and related entanglement phenomenon, do not allow for faster-than-light communication. The important thing to note is that the qubit is "teleported", not the photon itself: the photons are transmitted conventionally via some means (in this case, it looks like they did it through open air). Since the photons are entangled with a photon you retain, measuring one collapses the wave-function of the other and allows both parties to know what the state is simultaneously. The security ramifications are that any eavesdropper will collapse the wave-function before the receiver gets the photon, so he will not receive the photon in the same state as the receiver sent it.
You cannot, according to what we know of physics, use quantum entanglement to send information faster than light.
Dear Slashdotters with mod points: first, check when the OP posted compared to when the story was posted (the exact same freaking time, quite an accomplishment for such a lengthy post), and second check his post history (all of, at this time, 2 posts). He is a shill, same as the poster right above him.
So... where, oh shill-who-just-made-an-account-to-post-this-the-second-the-story-came-up (hi bonch!), does Google say they are entitled to 1st amendment protections because they are a person? Hint: they don't, because the 1st amendment doesn't just apply to people, it applies to, well, everything, including corporations. It has nothing whatsoever to do with corporations being "people." Please, there is enough to bash Google on without having to drag in completely irrelevant stuff.
And if that person was "blocked" from publishing, clearly he made an agreement with Google that required their permission to publish: otherwise, they wouldn't be able to block it. Clearly, he shouldn't have, and I don't know why you would.
Indeed. I was fortunate enough to go to a private (highly regarded) high school. One of my teachers (who was also the principal) liked to say: "The purpose of high school is to train students' bullshit detectors." Unfortunately, most teachers don't think that way, they just think their job is to cram a bunch of information down students throats, which of course they promptly forget the first day on summer vacation.
Obviously, there are sets of basic information everyone should know, but the most important skill, which is how to think and analyze information, is often completely overlooked. And what with all the sensationalist media reporting (which has always been popular, but with the Internet has grown much more so), that skill is necessary if you are to end up actually having your own opinion, and not simply the opinion of a set of people (liberal, conservative, green, communist, w/e) which sounds cool or true to you. Since most people don't have the skill to actually consider the truth behind an opinion, you end up with a society that is extremely divided, but completely unable to really justify their own opinions. This is for both sides of any debate in the US: 99% of the people on both sides really cannot justify their own position.
You do realize the University of Minnesota is a public (i.e. government funded) institution, so in answer to your post: actually, we can expect implicit government sponsorship of open source textbooks right now, since that is, you know, exactly what is happening.
And it isn't a tiny university either: it's one of the biggest in the US (fourth largest, actually) and is moderately well respected, for a public university, so this isn't some fly-by-night desperate-to-save money kind of place (not any more so than your average university, although granted pretty much of them like to save money).
Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old male, committed suicide in July 2009 after reporting the loss of an iPhone 4 prototype in his possession
Source, and before he did so he claimed "claimed he was beaten and his residence searched by Foxconn employees." The mass suicide threats were at an XBox factory, but the others were spread around (can't seem to find the exact locations). In any case, Apple is clearly not directly responsible for the conditions that led to these suicides: Foxconn holds that responsibility. It is clear, though, that Apple, Microsoft, and others have not been as careful with their manufacturer choice as they should have been, and all of them should work to ensure their manufacturer doesn't act unethically. Again, kudos to Apple for doing something, at least.
Indeed, this is not a big surprise to me, but it is definitely welcome news.
I just wonder what the Apple haters are going to say to justify their mindless frothing that Apple would never do such a thing, because they're only interested in profit...
Dan Aris
Apple wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think the (relatively trivial) added costs were worth the significant PR boost that it produces. Apple's success is, after all, largely predicated on their excellent marketing and consumer image, and the idea that their product was assembled with the blood of the workers (almost literally) doesn't exactly help that.
Either way, it's a good thing and Apple and Foxconn should be congratulated for taking this step, provided they actually follow through, and don't stop as soon as media attention disappears. I very much doubt either Foxconn or Apple would be doing this if it wasn't for the massive media attention they've received recently. Proof, of course, is the fact that they didn't do anything before the suicides hit the news.
The irony here is that since the US and South Korean military have learned to expect jamming on an everyday basis, if NK ever wants to re-ignite open war, any military advantage they may have been able to gain from such tactics is neutralized almost completely.
Of course, NK (the sane part, anyways) doesn't want open war: they know they would get their ass kicked, and hard. They just was to rattle some sabers.
Seriously, why the hell are people even trying these things? No permanent record of any kind, little to no public oversight of the process, and of course glitches and the possibility for "glitches" on a massive scale that can completely overturn the entire election process. At least with paper voting, cheating is a) moderately easy to catch and b) moderately difficult on a large scale. Mistakes can be corrected afterwards, by examining the paper trail. An e-voting machine? No trail, and a single alteration the code can allow anyone to change the result in absolutely any way they want, with almost zero possibility of detection, and with a single commands.
They are a terrible idea, and honestly any politician/bureaucrat who pushes them should be regarded with strong suspicion, if not of attempting downright fraud, then of bowing to special interests (i.e. the machine manufacturers). Possibly both. And, even if they are really clean of both the preceeding, then they are technologically stupid and shouldn't be trusted to make decisions about these kinds of things anyways.
Looks like at least someone in Congress has two brain cells to rub together. Or did they just realize that the prevailing political wind was strongly turning against the TSA and that supporting it would look bad come election time? Actually, come to think of it, I don't care: either way, lets hope it goes past "slamming" and turns into "slamming their doors shut".
A lot of bars will let you in, even if you are 21, especially during the off-peak hours (i.e. before 8-9 on Fri/Saturday), although it does depend on the bar. They won't let you drink (ostensibly: in actual practice, they often won't bother IDing you, but again, that depends almost entirely on the bar/bartender), but it can be nice if you have an under-21 friend who won't drink and can therefore drive.
That's not what I've heard. I've read that Seven, like Vista, precaches everything into RAM that it believes you will need and makes it full. This of course means if you access something new (or unexpected), it has to first swap out something from RAM to the HDD in order to make room for the new item. Slooooow.
Nope, how 7 works is that it allocates unused RAM to precache stuff, yes, but if it needs that RAM it doesn't push it to swap (which would be stupid, since that basically is even slower than just reloading it in the first place), it just dumps the precached stuff from memory, which is (practically) instantaneous. You can even see in the Performance Manager how much it is pre-caching (usually fills as much as it can: again, because it gives no performance penalty with potentially large performance returns).
Slashdot Mirror
That isn't what jargon means. "Jargon" means terms that are either a) invented by that community for a specific purpose or b) heavily loaded terms with specific meaning within that community (basically, "vocabulary" that is literally meaningless outside that field or has a completely different meaning). The meaning can always be conveyed without recourse to "jargon", it just cannot be done so succinctly (and oftentimes, elegantly). For a book that is only intended to be read by other members of the field, using jargon without explanation is fine. The writer, however, cannot expect anyone else outside the field to read the work.
For an example of writing with (some) jargon, but explaining it, look at Einstein's Relativity: The Special and General Theory. He uses terms like Gaussian co-ordinate system, for example, and explains what they mean sufficiently that non-technical readers can understand the meaning of what he is trying to say, even if they don't actually understand what a Gaussian co-ordinate system is (while those who do have a good comprehension of math can understand what he is actually saying partially, and those who already know what a Gaussian co-ordinate system is can understand everything he is saying). This is an extremely difficult task, and if you are creating a highly technical work, not always practical or desirable, but it is possible.
This is a fantastic idea. Make a drawing where everyone who "likes" your page on Facebook has a chance to win a car (say, 10 standard cars and 1 supercar: the supercar especially would draw a lot of people). It wouldn't require much initial work on their part: after a few people see it, millions would flock to "like" the page spreading it everywhere on Facebook.
I also heard on the radio this morning that one survey said 50% of Americans think Facebook is a fad. That doesn't bode well for their future, even if most Facebook users aren't American.
So you are saying Facebook is so bad at advertising, they would put an ad for a US car company which is more or less completely unavailable in Turkey on a Turkish user's page in the first place?
I wouldn't call ~1/3 of the US population a small number of people, nor a problem for advertisers. It doesn't matter that the majority of Facebook users aren't in the US: it matters that Facebook is a poor place for ads in the first place (perhaps because Facebook isn't very good at targeting them, or because people just ignore them completely). Facebook has the US users to be a huge marketing base. More so than just about any other channel. The problem isn't in the demographics.
If DDR4 is really as power-saving as they say, AMD will be competitive simply by adapting it (more than they already are). At the low-power end, especially low-cost low-power, AMD is pretty competitive with Intel already. If they can push out server DDR4 compatible products first, they could stand to gain quite a lot (Intel isn't planning on offering DDR4 till 2014, so AMD has a year and a half).
I very much doubt the Murdoch's actually committed any of these crimes themselves. They may or may not have ordered people to do it, although I find that unlikely. Much more likely, they simply ordered people to find the information "any way they can" (or other euphemism). You don't generally get to be as rich and powerful as the Murdoch's by being able to be easily associated with criminal activity, after all.
They didn't have any pre-paid card numbers, they had actual debit cards. But, they only had limited data from them (Track 2 data) which isn't enough to clone the complete card. Instead, they bought en-masse cheap prepaid cards, which could then be re-encoded with the debit-card data (and then used to buy more expensive pre-paid cards, which were used for the actual purchases). Since Track 2 doesn't include personal information, such as addresses, names, or PINs, they couldn't just clone the card directly, hence the use of the prepaid cards.
I suspect they didn't buy off-the-shelf commercially available cards because that would look extremely suspicious, whereas pre-paid cards aren't suspicious (there is really no easy way to verify the number on the card is the same as on the stripe), and regular online purchases (customary for this kind of fraud) are impossible with no billing address/name/etc.
Just because PARTICULAR browsers aren't recompiled and available, doesn't mean that nothing is allowed. Any developer can write a browser (yes, webkit engine) and sell it - thus not a monopoly, your droid rage notwithstanding.
No, they can't. Not on the App Store. Apple will not allow it. The only way to get an alternate browser on the iPhone is by jailbreaking it.
Because unlike in Hollywood movies, bomb sniffing dogs aren't machines with 100% uptime, 100% detection, 100% target coverage, and 100% trigger rates.
And unlike in the movies, neither are the machines.
I came into the comments to say this. Holy hell is the chromatic aberration on that image absolutely terribly. It looks a lot like they took the different color channels separately (that would explain why the clouds, which are moving, were especially bad), and TFA says the pictures take ~30 minutes each, so that's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Indeed. But if it doesn't work, no one has any obligation or reason to use it, so in other words, they very much do have an obligation to work and provide the expected service, or go the way of Myspace.
I'm going to say that I believe FTL communication may be possible (in fact, I hope it is). The problem is it violates a significant foundation of modern physics: to wit, relativity, and I'm not exactly prepared to throw out relativity. You can't just manipulate entangled particles in an arbitrary fashion and have them stay entangled. Making a change to one (a controlled change, mind: one that is actually random could still preserve entanglement) collapses the entanglement between the particles, precisely by you knowing what the change is. The wormhole question is interesting, because ultimately you aren't actually traveling faster than light, you just take a back-route, so to speak. However, it requires spacetime to have a certain arrangement and properties which is, at this point, only theoretical (i.e. we have no idea if wormholes are actually possible.
The thing about quantum entanglement is that while it is weird, and not expected by relativity, it still seems almost to strive (insofar as natural laws can do so) to behave according to the limits of relativity on FTL travel, which makes sense, since the laws of nature must be consistent. The question is ultimately if there is a higher law than relativity to appeal to that allows FTL travel. It really doesn't seem likely, but then again neither did quantum entanglement 200 years ago.
This, and all other quantum "teleportation" and related entanglement phenomenon, do not allow for faster-than-light communication. The important thing to note is that the qubit is "teleported", not the photon itself: the photons are transmitted conventionally via some means (in this case, it looks like they did it through open air). Since the photons are entangled with a photon you retain, measuring one collapses the wave-function of the other and allows both parties to know what the state is simultaneously. The security ramifications are that any eavesdropper will collapse the wave-function before the receiver gets the photon, so he will not receive the photon in the same state as the receiver sent it.
You cannot, according to what we know of physics, use quantum entanglement to send information faster than light.
Dear Slashdotters with mod points: first, check when the OP posted compared to when the story was posted (the exact same freaking time, quite an accomplishment for such a lengthy post), and second check his post history (all of, at this time, 2 posts). He is a shill, same as the poster right above him.
So... where, oh shill-who-just-made-an-account-to-post-this-the-second-the-story-came-up (hi bonch!), does Google say they are entitled to 1st amendment protections because they are a person? Hint: they don't, because the 1st amendment doesn't just apply to people, it applies to, well, everything, including corporations. It has nothing whatsoever to do with corporations being "people." Please, there is enough to bash Google on without having to drag in completely irrelevant stuff.
And if that person was "blocked" from publishing, clearly he made an agreement with Google that required their permission to publish: otherwise, they wouldn't be able to block it. Clearly, he shouldn't have, and I don't know why you would.
Indeed. I was fortunate enough to go to a private (highly regarded) high school. One of my teachers (who was also the principal) liked to say: "The purpose of high school is to train students' bullshit detectors." Unfortunately, most teachers don't think that way, they just think their job is to cram a bunch of information down students throats, which of course they promptly forget the first day on summer vacation.
Obviously, there are sets of basic information everyone should know, but the most important skill, which is how to think and analyze information, is often completely overlooked. And what with all the sensationalist media reporting (which has always been popular, but with the Internet has grown much more so), that skill is necessary if you are to end up actually having your own opinion, and not simply the opinion of a set of people (liberal, conservative, green, communist, w/e) which sounds cool or true to you. Since most people don't have the skill to actually consider the truth behind an opinion, you end up with a society that is extremely divided, but completely unable to really justify their own opinions. This is for both sides of any debate in the US: 99% of the people on both sides really cannot justify their own position.
You do realize the University of Minnesota is a public (i.e. government funded) institution, so in answer to your post: actually, we can expect implicit government sponsorship of open source textbooks right now, since that is, you know, exactly what is happening.
And it isn't a tiny university either: it's one of the biggest in the US (fourth largest, actually) and is moderately well respected, for a public university, so this isn't some fly-by-night desperate-to-save money kind of place (not any more so than your average university, although granted pretty much of them like to save money).
Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old male, committed suicide in July 2009 after reporting the loss of an iPhone 4 prototype in his possession
Source, and before he did so he claimed "claimed he was beaten and his residence searched by Foxconn employees." The mass suicide threats were at an XBox factory, but the others were spread around (can't seem to find the exact locations). In any case, Apple is clearly not directly responsible for the conditions that led to these suicides: Foxconn holds that responsibility. It is clear, though, that Apple, Microsoft, and others have not been as careful with their manufacturer choice as they should have been, and all of them should work to ensure their manufacturer doesn't act unethically. Again, kudos to Apple for doing something, at least.
Indeed, this is not a big surprise to me, but it is definitely welcome news.
I just wonder what the Apple haters are going to say to justify their mindless frothing that Apple would never do such a thing, because they're only interested in profit...
Dan Aris
Apple wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think the (relatively trivial) added costs were worth the significant PR boost that it produces. Apple's success is, after all, largely predicated on their excellent marketing and consumer image, and the idea that their product was assembled with the blood of the workers (almost literally) doesn't exactly help that.
Either way, it's a good thing and Apple and Foxconn should be congratulated for taking this step, provided they actually follow through, and don't stop as soon as media attention disappears. I very much doubt either Foxconn or Apple would be doing this if it wasn't for the massive media attention they've received recently. Proof, of course, is the fact that they didn't do anything before the suicides hit the news.
The irony here is that since the US and South Korean military have learned to expect jamming on an everyday basis, if NK ever wants to re-ignite open war, any military advantage they may have been able to gain from such tactics is neutralized almost completely.
Of course, NK (the sane part, anyways) doesn't want open war: they know they would get their ass kicked, and hard. They just was to rattle some sabers.
Seriously, why the hell are people even trying these things? No permanent record of any kind, little to no public oversight of the process, and of course glitches and the possibility for "glitches" on a massive scale that can completely overturn the entire election process. At least with paper voting, cheating is a) moderately easy to catch and b) moderately difficult on a large scale. Mistakes can be corrected afterwards, by examining the paper trail. An e-voting machine? No trail, and a single alteration the code can allow anyone to change the result in absolutely any way they want, with almost zero possibility of detection, and with a single commands.
They are a terrible idea, and honestly any politician/bureaucrat who pushes them should be regarded with strong suspicion, if not of attempting downright fraud, then of bowing to special interests (i.e. the machine manufacturers). Possibly both. And, even if they are really clean of both the preceeding, then they are technologically stupid and shouldn't be trusted to make decisions about these kinds of things anyways.
Looks like at least someone in Congress has two brain cells to rub together. Or did they just realize that the prevailing political wind was strongly turning against the TSA and that supporting it would look bad come election time? Actually, come to think of it, I don't care: either way, lets hope it goes past "slamming" and turns into "slamming their doors shut".
A lot of bars will let you in, even if you are 21, especially during the off-peak hours (i.e. before 8-9 on Fri/Saturday), although it does depend on the bar. They won't let you drink (ostensibly: in actual practice, they often won't bother IDing you, but again, that depends almost entirely on the bar/bartender), but it can be nice if you have an under-21 friend who won't drink and can therefore drive.
Slashdot really needs a "+1 Ironic" mod, if only for this post.
That's not what I've heard. I've read that Seven, like Vista, precaches everything into RAM that it believes you will need and makes it full. This of course means if you access something new (or unexpected), it has to first swap out something from RAM to the HDD in order to make room for the new item. Slooooow.
Nope, how 7 works is that it allocates unused RAM to precache stuff, yes, but if it needs that RAM it doesn't push it to swap (which would be stupid, since that basically is even slower than just reloading it in the first place), it just dumps the precached stuff from memory, which is (practically) instantaneous. You can even see in the Performance Manager how much it is pre-caching (usually fills as much as it can: again, because it gives no performance penalty with potentially large performance returns).