Anne McCaffrey wrote a book called PartnerShip with a plot very similar to this situation. The villian provides chips to the Galaxy, including the military. When nearly everyone has upgraded, it turns out that he can remotely control every device, including military hardware, controlled by the chips. That's enough of a spoiler. How can such a grand and well planned scheme be defeated? You'll have to read to find out...
How about a disclaimer saying, "Some results may have been censored" at the top of every results page? That would give no clues as to which results were censored (it would be hard to talk the Chinese into it otherwise), but at least keeps the censorship out in the open.
IANAL, but "licensed" to me means I own the copy, but am subject to the license for distribution. That makes EULAs that restrict use to one machine highly suspect (and I won't "buy" the product). If users were required to return the CD and destroy all copies when canceling their subscription, the Blizzard case would be clearer. Maybe this case will help clarify the issues you mention.
I would agree with their theory in the case of rented software. Instead of selling the client, they should rent it to players. Then the players don't really own their copy, and Blizzard can rightly get mad when they screw around with it.
This is the same problem with MPAA and movies. If they don't want me to watch the movie on my choice of player - and maybe even cut out scenes I don't like - they should make it available for rental only.
would have the screen from the OLPC. I have an OLPC, and I love it. The keyboard, obviously, is too small (kid sized by design), and the processor could be faster for use where power is more plentiful - i.e. the Eee PC is nearly ideal, except the screen seems cramped after using the OLPC. Also, the reflective mode for use in daylight is very nice.
Here are some relevant paragraphs from Cox AUP (after the stuff about no illegal activities or harm to minors, etc):
User Content. You are solely responsible for any information that is transmitted from your IP address or your account on the web or other Internet services. You must ensure that the recipient of the content is appropriate and must take appropriate precautions to prevent minors from receiving inappropriate content. So if some predator uses my unsecured Wifi, I have problems.
Commercial Use. The Service is designed for personal, non-business related use of the Internet and may not be used for commercial purposes. You may not resell or otherwise charge others to use the residential Service. So they are fine with giving away your bandwidth allotment - provided you don't charge for it and are responsible for what goes over it.
Servers. You may not operate, or allow others to operate, servers of any type or any other device, equipment, and/or software providing server-like functionality in connection with the Service, unless expressly authorized by Cox. You can't run a web server, or an email server. I interpret that to mean a *public* email, web, or whatever server, because our family makes heavy use of our private web and email server. (Not to mention sshd servers, X servers, and more.)
Misuse of Service. You are responsible for any misuse of the Service that occurs through your account or IP address. Again, you are responsible.
Finally, the monthly bandwidth is limited, to 40G down and 10G up in my case. I only use half of that, and would be happy to give away the rest, if not for the threat of going to jail for some asshole using my Wifi. If there was a way to run as a free as in beer common carrier, I would do it. Maybe by making prospective users click on an agreement that says *they* are responsible for content, harm to minors, yada, yada? (Like the local Caribou Coffee does with their free as in beer Wifi.)
I'm not interested in a single purpose machine. I want to generate electricity and use that to power my blender, computer, DVD, whatever. However, the flywheel design is exactly what I'm looking for. Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to put a generator on the blender mount.
Having gotten rid of my car two years ago and commuting via bicycle, I have wanted to have a bicycle generator to power electronics. You can pedal 45 watts while loafing, and around 150 watts (1/4 hp) while breathing hard. Really athletic types can do up to 300 watts for short stints. There are web pages galore about people doing it, but only plans to build your own are available. I'll probably need to turn in my geek license, but our house is really small and crowded, and I don't have the equipment to build from a kit.
Also, turning the highly variable power from pedals into usable energy for electronics is quite involved. With a DC generator, the voltage varies wildly, and you need to regulate it to charge batteries. It is a big plus if your charging circuits make use of an ultra-capacitor (handles spikes well without wasting them). One site said to use a car alternator. This requires spinning rather fast to "get it started", but it does include a built-in regulator to charge a car battery.
The only company I've found to offer ready to use stuff offers a stand for your regular bike. This is far less efficient than a pedaled device with a flywheel. Exercise bikes are perfect - and typically come with generators these days - but only to power the display. No output. One company sells kids generator bikes - perfect except they are too small for me.
I can readily buy off the shelf stuff for car batteries with inverters. Otherwise known as a UPS. Where to get sinusoidal inverters? Is there a UPS with DC input and sine wave output? It is very inefficient to have to convert to AC then back again to charge the UPS batteries.
I live 6.8 miles from the office. It takes me 36 minutes on my bike - 45 if I'm feeling lazy. It took 10 minutes by car - 45 minutes in rush hour (I've beaten my wife home from downtown Fairfax with her in a car and me on my bike). There is also a bus which takes an hour (transfer) - but that is useful in snow and rain. I park my bike on the carpet in the reception area with a cardboard carpet protector. It helps that the boss is big on exercise.
I gave my car to my daughter 2 years ago. People eventually stopped asking me to drive them places:-) I get 2 1/2 hour aerobic sessions every day. I telecommute if I'm not feeling well. I pick up change from the street at the rate of $.01/3 miles - i.e. $.05 per day.
I use Google satellite maps to spot trails, and avoid the major highways. There is a whole new world of hidden trails to explore that you never see from a car.
The biggest obstacle is businesses unfriendly to bikes. Lack of bike racks - even the outdoor variety is the worst. One place has lots of green posters up, but won't let me park my bike on their premises "because their insurance won't cover it".
But there is a movie theater with a sheltered bike rack 2.5 miles from my house. They get my business (I hate coming out of a movie to find that it rained during the movie and my bike is wet).
I rode in a Beetle once in early 1980s. We edged over 60mph going downhill - and the thing took off and glided to the bottom! My mom says something similar happened to my grandfather. He was crossing a bridge in LA , and suddenly the wind picked up the beetle and set it down 4 lanes over. One more lane and he would have been in oncoming traffic. He got rid of the beetle the next week.
... whether or not "Intelligent Design" is part of our past doesn't matter because it IS our future. A very good point that I hadn't thought of before.
they didn't?
Because the trilobites couldn't find a way to get to the sweet Earth oceans before Mars dried up on them. Maybe they did - origin of life puzzle solved!
What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities. A civilization losing itself in virtual realities ala Matrix would be an instance of a "great filter" the author is talking about. But you make a good point about the speed of light being unbreakable after all. That would certainly dampen interest in inter-stellar exploration.
I suspect that any future FTL travel will be in the form of "stargates" constructed via sub-light automatic probes. That scenario makes the "they are there but not contacting us" option much more likely. A stargate could be sitting beyond the outer planets now. The civilization that constructed it could have died before our civilization arose. (I realize that while wormholes with sub-lightspeed endpoints do not strictly violate causality, they do make it... complex. Someone has suggested that there were wormholes after the big bang, and all the electrons in the universe are the same electron.)
on Hans' part. He feels really broken up, and is hoping the prosecutor and jury feel pangs of guilt after his execution when the ex-wife shows up at the funeral.
Did God invent mathematics, or simply make use of it (being omniscient, there is no need to discover)?
That would be a good question for Theists. The origin of the Universe poses few logical problems for a Theist (thousands of years ago thinkers realized the universe was a sub-reality like a story - or in modern computer terms, a virtual machine). But the origin of things like logic or justice are trickier. For instance, is everything God happens to do "good" because He is God and says so? That view is called Nominalism - "good" is just a label for what God does. Or is what God does "good" in some objective sense? (Realism.) But that would give "goodness" an existence independent of God.
The answer to that question actual *does* affect future decisions. Unfortunately, it is hard/impossible to *verify* the answer, which is what I though Logical Positivism was about. "Statements which cannot, in principle, be verified, are meaningless." Of course this self refuting formulation would not be popular with adherents.
So basically it's the same as the XML comments you can put in your.Net or Java code to create JavaDocs, or whatever they are called in.Net, based on the comments in the code? Not quite. In Javadoc (or the C/C++ equivalent) the C/Java code is the source, and documentation is generated from that. In literate programming, the documentation is the source, and it has code snippets, like you would see in a Knuth textbook.
The snippets have markup to indicate when some snippet needs to come textually before another to keep a compiler happy, but mostly this is figured out automatically. But in general, the resulting C code is in a different order than it appears in the source documentation. For instance, the core algorithm might come first, with all the declarations and other housekeeping at the end. (With documentation about why you're using this supporting library and not that, of course.)
Slashdot Mirror
Close. But the properties of hyperspace in the storie's universe are essential to the solution.
Anne McCaffrey wrote a book called PartnerShip with a plot very similar to this situation. The villian provides chips to the Galaxy, including the military. When nearly everyone has upgraded, it turns out that he can remotely control every device, including military hardware, controlled by the chips. That's enough of a spoiler. How can such a grand and well planned scheme be defeated? You'll have to read to find out...
How about a disclaimer saying, "Some results may have been censored" at the top of every results page? That would give no clues as to which results were censored (it would be hard to talk the Chinese into it otherwise), but at least keeps the censorship out in the open.
IANAL, but "licensed" to me means I own the copy, but am subject to the license for distribution. That makes EULAs that restrict use to one machine highly suspect (and I won't "buy" the product). If users were required to return the CD and destroy all copies when canceling their subscription, the Blizzard case would be clearer. Maybe this case will help clarify the issues you mention.
This is the same problem with MPAA and movies. If they don't want me to watch the movie on my choice of player - and maybe even cut out scenes I don't like - they should make it available for rental only.
would have the screen from the OLPC. I have an OLPC, and I love it. The keyboard, obviously, is too small (kid sized by design), and the processor could be faster for use where power is more plentiful - i.e. the Eee PC is nearly ideal, except the screen seems cramped after using the OLPC. Also, the reflective mode for use in daylight is very nice.
Finally, the monthly bandwidth is limited, to 40G down and 10G up in my case. I only use half of that, and would be happy to give away the rest, if not for the threat of going to jail for some asshole using my Wifi. If there was a way to run as a free as in beer common carrier, I would do it. Maybe by making prospective users click on an agreement that says *they* are responsible for content, harm to minors, yada, yada? (Like the local Caribou Coffee does with their free as in beer Wifi.)
I'm not interested in a single purpose machine. I want to generate electricity and use that to power my blender, computer, DVD, whatever. However, the flywheel design is exactly what I'm looking for. Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to put a generator on the blender mount.
Also, turning the highly variable power from pedals into usable energy for electronics is quite involved. With a DC generator, the voltage varies wildly, and you need to regulate it to charge batteries. It is a big plus if your charging circuits make use of an ultra-capacitor (handles spikes well without wasting them). One site said to use a car alternator. This requires spinning rather fast to "get it started", but it does include a built-in regulator to charge a car battery.
The only company I've found to offer ready to use stuff offers a stand for your regular bike. This is far less efficient than a pedaled device with a flywheel. Exercise bikes are perfect - and typically come with generators these days - but only to power the display. No output. One company sells kids generator bikes - perfect except they are too small for me.
I can readily buy off the shelf stuff for car batteries with inverters. Otherwise known as a UPS. Where to get sinusoidal inverters? Is there a UPS with DC input and sine wave output? It is very inefficient to have to convert to AC then back again to charge the UPS batteries.
Pavement was dry - no hydroplaning. And bumble bees can't fly either.
I gave my car to my daughter 2 years ago. People eventually stopped asking me to drive them places
I use Google satellite maps to spot trails, and avoid the major highways. There is a whole new world of hidden trails to explore that you never see from a car.
The biggest obstacle is businesses unfriendly to bikes. Lack of bike racks - even the outdoor variety is the worst. One place has lots of green posters up, but won't let me park my bike on their premises "because their insurance won't cover it".
But there is a movie theater with a sheltered bike rack 2.5 miles from my house. They get my business (I hate coming out of a movie to find that it rained during the movie and my bike is wet).
I rode in a Beetle once in early 1980s. We edged over 60mph going downhill - and the thing took off and glided to the bottom! My mom says something similar happened to my grandfather. He was crossing a bridge in LA , and suddenly the wind picked up the beetle and set it down 4 lanes over. One more lane and he would have been in oncoming traffic. He got rid of the beetle the next week.
We're doomed - regardless of what we find on Mars.
... whether or not "Intelligent Design" is part of our past doesn't matter because it IS our future. A very good point that I hadn't thought of before.Why do we always assume the aliens are friendly?
I suspect that any future FTL travel will be in the form of "stargates" constructed via sub-light automatic probes. That scenario makes the "they are there but not contacting us" option much more likely. A stargate could be sitting beyond the outer planets now. The civilization that constructed it could have died before our civilization arose. (I realize that while wormholes with sub-lightspeed endpoints do not strictly violate causality, they do make it
Wherever the people live who buy the spammer's products.
Now I can just add that entry to my IP blacklist...
If a woman needs lots of blood to frame someone, they just need to take out their tampon at the right time of month.
on Hans' part. He feels really broken up, and is hoping the prosecutor and jury feel pangs of guilt after his execution when the ex-wife shows up at the funeral.
what about "goodness" or "justice"?
That would be a good question for Theists. The origin of the Universe poses few logical problems for a Theist (thousands of years ago thinkers realized the universe was a sub-reality like a story - or in modern computer terms, a virtual machine). But the origin of things like logic or justice are trickier. For instance, is everything God happens to do "good" because He is God and says so? That view is called Nominalism - "good" is just a label for what God does. Or is what God does "good" in some objective sense? (Realism.) But that would give "goodness" an existence independent of God.
The answer to that question actual *does* affect future decisions. Unfortunately, it is hard/impossible to *verify* the answer, which is what I though Logical Positivism was about. "Statements which cannot, in principle, be verified, are meaningless." Of course this self refuting formulation would not be popular with adherents.
The snippets have markup to indicate when some snippet needs to come textually before another to keep a compiler happy, but mostly this is figured out automatically. But in general, the resulting C code is in a different order than it appears in the source documentation. For instance, the core algorithm might come first, with all the declarations and other housekeeping at the end. (With documentation about why you're using this supporting library and not that, of course.)
Complete idiots don't read Slashdot. Oh, wait ...