But just like you aren't really going to be able to explain the origins and nature of your expertise in computers to your Aunt Tillie
Can you actually quantify it? I could actually tell Aunt Tillie in objective terms the origins and nature of my expertise in computers. She might not understand, but if we wrote it down, she could go out and start looking things up until she did.
I'm an audio tech, and I have to say that there's a lot of similar snobbery in sound. Other than loud and soft (which refer to amplitude), bright/cool (lots of overtones - which are frequencies above the primary ones), and dark/warm (lots of undertones - frequencies below the primary ones), there are lots of entirely undefined words that people use to describe their sound for essentially no good reason.
People use colors (like, for instance, blue), or other temperature indicators (hot has nothing to do with warm, cold nothing to do with cool) in ways that mean almost nothing and are only described using other nonsense phrases (i.e., it sounds like the way that a badger is).
This is very bad! If you can't put into objective words why a piece is the way that it is, then you may be just projecting your own emotions onto it rather than figuring out what the piece is communicating (or failing to do so), and why it is good or bad!
Visual art is pretty much the same. When I look analyze visual art, at first, I may only be able tell you my impressions. When I analyze it more, I can always tell you how I arrived at them. And that isn't usually going to be a long list because for some reason most pieces aren't that complicated.
Case in point - one of the deepest portraits - and famous for it - is the Mona Lisa because of that smile. But what can you talk about there? You can talk about the smile, the eyes, the position of the hands, the background, skin tone, hair, and the colors chosen, and that's about it. If you can stretch that into more than a two page explanation (and you're not just giving background on the painting), then you're moving from objective analysis of a painting into an autobiography of your own soul.
expertise in aesthetics
So explain using objective criteria what's bad about it. Talk about the places you can't find beauty that you expected it; talk about color theory; etc., but don't just claim you're an expert and leave it at that.
Well, I can't speak of everywhere, but I can speak of all the schools in Florida, MIT, Berkley, and Georgia Tech, and Purdue because I know people from all of them.
None of those schools have programs like that. You can always opt out of the meal plan.
You're right. Why so many posters here seem to think that this has something to do with privacy, I have no idea.
While you don't have a right to privacy, you do have a right to a certain amount of quiet. Mostly this is ignored. Have you ever heard a car blaring music so loud that it's painful to you? That's actually illegal most places. It's noise pollution. You could actually get a ticket for that.
Most noise pollution laws are targeted at unidirectional sound, and therefore cover a specific dB of sound that is illegal. They'd probably have to be upgraded to cover this instance. The point is that it is illegal to put unavoidable amounts of noise into the publicly shared air, and this certainly qualifies.
Of course, in a purely capitalist system, every business would be able to erect any kind of radio network they like. We'd at first end up with a bunch different protocols that are all conflicting with each other and fantastically expensive and clever devices that can use whatever is available to actually get the calls through.
Then slowly those 12 standards would merge as the devices relied more heavily on a specific set of features over another. We'd end up with something fairly flexible, but more limited than the original ideas in most of the original protocols...like DOM, for example.
I wonder if it would have worked? Is there enough airways to go around if everybody can do whatever they want with them? With the advent of collision detection and frequency hopping, I'm not entirely sure that there isn't. It might have worked. Instead, what goes through the air is heavily controlled by the government.:(
I absolutely know that I don't want to hear the story of how those four words got used in the same sentence until happy hour is nearly over.
Yeah? Well, I wouldn't mind. Not the sentence they added.
Perhaps this one:
"After I checked the backup tapes to ensure that 512-bit AES encryption was working, and that the tapes were still readable, I closed and deadbolted the tape room, and then went out to my car to go to lunch with the new (darn good looking) intern from the art department."
but for 95% of what you need in a site (and if your site is fairly simple, 100%)
My experience is more like "25% of what you need in a site (and if your site is fairly simple, 5%)"
Fairly simple means that you need to spend more time to make the look & feel work right, because people will notice it more, and you can't use a WYSIWYG for that kind of thing unless you don't care at all about page flow. By default Dreamweaver treats pages like they're not going to have to work at multiple resolutions/fonts - fixing the size of every single element in the pages. It's telling that you mention two programs that do exactly the same thing. HTML flows. You aren't supposed to treat it like print.
It also doesn't work too well with non-html markup (such as PHP, ASP.net, jsps, etc). This is fundamental to the nature of HTML. It can't be done properly with a WYSIWYG. It needs a WYSIWYM to work.
Withdrawing parts of that energy changes the energy balance of the system.
Good thing energy can't be created or destroyed then.
Energy balance of which system? The desert? Not a lot going on there. Sand gets heated up, and it then dissipates to the surrounding regions.
The desert+the surrounding regions? Where do you think the energy is going to be used? It's pretty much a closed system. We use it, and *then* it dissipates - ultimately almost entirely in the same form it does after it's hit the sand - heat. This is unlikely to be much of an issue.
Sally Tech can replace the bios chip using her awesome soldering skills. Does that mean that it isn't really a brick?
What if Sally Tech could fix the BIOS by replacing it with one that routes around the stuck bits (I have actually done this)?
Sounds like we should never say that a part is bricked, because we can't really be sure that somebody can get it to work.
I know what you're thinking. Not fair! It's still bricked if I have to do (arbitrarily chosen set of conditions) to fix it! That's like building a whole new one!
That leaves a pretty silly definition.
Would you rather it be: bricked tech: tech that is unfixable to the person using it.
or bricked tech: tech that is unfixable by anyone unless they do one of the following operations:.....
The third possible explanation: bricked tech: tech that is unfixAble by anyone using any method.
Covers absolutely nothing. At worst case, you can convert (at least a majority of) the parts back into raw materials and remake the thing using the same manufacturing process that was used to make it the first time. So that one's out.
it does show a greater ability toward pattern recognition. That's not intelligence.
Well, I guess that rules out language, and path planning as intelligence. Possibly also intuitive connections between things, since a lot of that is based on making connections between things.
What's left? I suppose synthesis of unrelated things (i.e. imagination), but that is arguably based upon recognizing *how* things can be connected by having seen similar thing (i.e., coming up with Minotaurs, for example)...
I think you're probably in the minority with this claim. You might want to do some research into cognitive studies and/or artificial intelligence. You may change your mind.
I think the real flaw isn't the metric (pattern recognition), but the benchmark (number memory). Chimps have faster nervous systems. Obviously any task that's trivial for both of us happens faster for them. Evaluate a task that we struggle with and see how well they can do it.
For pattern recognition, try getting them to play a game of Tetris, and see how that goes.
Number of genes scanned: the awesomeness measure for the new millenium.
I can see it now. First generation will scan 100K. Nine months later will be the 200K exam, then the 400K...eventually the machines will be able to do the entire genome in a single go (or come close), and there won't be able to begin on that.
Then they'll add the dual core variety that can scan two people at once...
(and while I'm dreaming of writing up an invoice big enough to make a DoD contract agent drop his jaw in fear... well, I'd like a pony while I'm at it.)
that figure comes from estimates of "economic losses" so are probably inflated or meaningless depending on where the sources come from.
What would be realistic? Lets say that he stole the use of 100,000 computers in his botnet. At 2Mil, each computer would have $20 in economic losses.
That doesn't seem at all unrealistic. If it costs $20 of your time (i.e., if it takes an hour to clean and you make $20 an hour, or something to that effect), then it's $20 in economic loss. If the resulting slowdown costs $20 of your productive time, same thing.
Sure, some people don't lose that much by not being productive, but some lose a lot more. $20 average sounds entirely reasonable - probably a little low, actually. They probably didn't infect that many machines.
Keep in mind that I'm not even bringing up what is done with those computers - I'm just talking about losses caused by putting the spyware on machines, and haven't begun to talk about what is done with it. If bad things were done with things, it would certainly drive the average cost per infection up a lot, which would make it easy to cause that much damage while infecting far fewer machines.
Point is that this isn't like assuming that every download=a sale lost. It isn't outside the realm of possibility at all.
...unless this was a very, very small man. His job in the quarry was to hunt rats. He has a tiny spear, and special shirt with a gigantic (for him) pocket sown into the back to carry his cellphone, which is essentially the largest thing he carries.
Did I mention that he's a minature dwarf spider monkey? Hmm...probably not important.
Cons: you have to make it possible for people you distribute your program to to re-link your code with the LGPL library (e.g. newer version or one with bug fixes you can't be bothered shipping)..
You have this to obey this line:
Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the
Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time
a copy of the Library already present on the user's computer
system, and (b) will operate properly with a modified version
of the Library that is interface-compatible with the Linked
Version.
So...you have to not restrict modification. You don't have to do anything special to make it easier. So you can't, for example, require a checksum based upon the combination of the LGPL'ed library and yours, because that would make it impossible to make modifications. You can require it to adhere to an ABI that's only in the specific version that you used, and doesn't work in future versions of the library. And nowhere does it say that you have to document how the thing is linked in or how to relink (that I saw).
So this is essentially a nonissue if you are writing the program for a modern computer. You kind of have to go out of your way to make it not link.
To summarize, it was just a Zork/Myth-genre game for PS2, with the added continual challenge of having to drag around a retarded mute girl (seriously...she might as well have been a sack of flour).
First, it had a striking visual and aural style. Unlike many early PS2 games, it turned away from bright colours and fancy coloured lighting effects, adopting a colour scheme that verged on monochrome at times, with a heavy emphasis on contrasting light and dark areas. The music was distinctly minimalist, but fitted the game well enough that the soundtrack went on to sell well in its own right.
Nevertheless, it's an important part of gaming history. It was the first game to really use the power of its console generation to deliver something other than fancy special effects. It set new standards for story-telling, that remain influential even today.
Of course, it wasn't actually the first game of such a type even for Playstation. Legacy of Kain, which did have fighting, had a general focus on puzzles of the same variety, as well as a muted, artful style. And as mentioned, the artful style was a repeat of Myth, which was the result of the gradual progression from text adventures to graphical versions of the same kind of game. It might have been the first for PS2...
which was simultanously substantially flawed and deeply engaging.
This is essentially how I felt about ICO. Despite neat puzzles and a lack of focus on action, there was far too much focus on the controls. Once I solve the puzzle, it should be easy to put my solution into action. I shouldn't have to practice for a bit to get the controls to a point where I can implement my solution. That's what fighting games are for. So from the perspective of someone who has loved puzzle games like this, ICO seemed a sad remake of past glory.
It strikes me as a game that doesn't appeal to action gamers because of a lack of action (and puzzles that are too hard), and doesn't appeal to puzzle gamers because of too much action. It hits a "sweet spot" that appeals to virtually no one.
To use a Pratchettism, Google promises not to provide anyone with user's private data based upon the general understanding that no one will actually ask them.
It is a promise in software circles, and everyone who's really in the know regarding search understands this.
Obviously things have to be different if someone actually asks them. How can google be expected to keep data private if they're asked for it? Aren't they in the business of providing people with information?
energy and back again incredibly, astronomically, and absurdly expensive
According to trek it's just tractor beams & holograms (as we know them...not something magical). Tractor beams are gravity fields, or something like that - an attractive or repulsive field that affects all matter.
Making holograms is not expensive in terms of power output. Tractor beams...don't exist. I tend to think that getting that effect without actually have matter to generate it is probably fantastically expensive, but that's mostly intuition based on the amount of energy you could *generate* if you could affect the local gravity.
At any rate, it's not outside the realm of the possible. Not like teleportation and FTL travel, anyway.
You're kind of missing the point in this example. Citywide 802.11x is not going to work. The protocol can't handle it. It doesn't scale up to even 100 users at once.
The obvious solution is to use some other protocol.
Look at it that way, would this site be worth anything without the original work. No, I don't think so.
That makes one of us. Rebrand it as Tobin's Spirit Guide, chuck a few references to Gozer and Vigo in there, and it's good to go.
It's a lexicon of magic about a specific magic universe. It doesn't really matter very much who wrote the universe...even if less people would go/contribute if it wasn't about Harry Potter.
Personally, I'd much rather see one that comes from the Eragon series. The books are fantastically predictable, but the magic system is very consistent. Even the "will and word" idea from the Belgariad by David Eddings might do.
To elaborate, the format was actually put forth by OASIS (which, the entire British parliament should agree is the best band ever), but that's just a little piece of what they do.
The open document fellowship are the community supporters (i.e., the ODF volunteer organization), while the ODF Alliance are the industry supporters. What did the Open Document Foundation do? Muddy the waters.
They're the Ross Perot of open document foundations - making people think that if they listen to them, that they'll get the real skinny because of their seeming-official status. Good to see 'em go.
till we have vehicles that use anti-gravity technology
The traditional thought about that - i.e., you apply electricity and you end up in the air - would necessarily require a huge, constant energy investment that would make it just as impractical (or close) as current methods are. You'd need giant tanks of fuel to power the things - just like traditional airplanes. Otherwise, you'd be able to use them to violate the law of conservation of energy (i.e., you could generate a perpetual motion machine using them). There's actual a piece of fiction called "Antigrav Unlimited" on Baen's free library that discusses the possiblity.
What we could actually have is something like blimps - it takes a lot of energy to get it up, a lot to get it to change altitude, but you can cruise in the same altitude for cheap. Even then, though, it'll be a lot less efficient since propulsion is more expensive than pushing against the ground. We'd probably have to use wind force to get around most of the time.
So we wouldn't so much have skycars as airboats. Final fantasy, here we come!
I will be more explicit. It is much cheaper to put per-user routing restrictions into the DSL or cable modem than it is to put it in the neighborhood level or higher level routers.
Whether that saves enough bandwidth to be cheaper TCO, I'm not sure, but that's not really what we were discussing. I get the feeling you were talking about implementing versus not rather than the type of implementation, since the support calls would be about the same whether you went to a website that's actually running on your router to do the admin or one that's actually on the local network router.
Anything doable by the user is doable by the bot boss.
Not reading a sheet of paper. You know...the one that will come with the installation that has the randomly generated key for the password to access the router?
There isn't one now, but if you're going to be doing this to stop hackers, then you'd (obviously, as you point out) want to do this.
Of course, they couldn't actually do this on a *per user* basis because the main hub routers aren't even close to powerful enough, and adding that would be astronomically expensive (it would never, ever pay for itself. It'd be better to just lay down fiber to get more bandwidth).
They could up the bandwidth and do it that way.
The *much, much* cheaper way would be to just configure the routers that come with the DSL and cable modems to be more restrictive by default and tell the users to change the settings themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
But just like you aren't really going to be able to explain the origins and nature of your expertise in computers to your Aunt Tillie
Can you actually quantify it? I could actually tell Aunt Tillie in objective terms the origins and nature of my expertise in computers. She might not understand, but if we wrote it down, she could go out and start looking things up until she did.
I'm an audio tech, and I have to say that there's a lot of similar snobbery in sound. Other than loud and soft (which refer to amplitude), bright/cool (lots of overtones - which are frequencies above the primary ones), and dark/warm (lots of undertones - frequencies below the primary ones), there are lots of entirely undefined words that people use to describe their sound for essentially no good reason.
People use colors (like, for instance, blue), or other temperature indicators (hot has nothing to do with warm, cold nothing to do with cool) in ways that mean almost nothing and are only described using other nonsense phrases (i.e., it sounds like the way that a badger is).
This is very bad! If you can't put into objective words why a piece is the way that it is, then you may be just projecting your own emotions onto it rather than figuring out what the piece is communicating (or failing to do so), and why it is good or bad!
Visual art is pretty much the same. When I look analyze visual art, at first, I may only be able tell you my impressions. When I analyze it more, I can always tell you how I arrived at them. And that isn't usually going to be a long list because for some reason most pieces aren't that complicated.
Case in point - one of the deepest portraits - and famous for it - is the Mona Lisa because of that smile. But what can you talk about there? You can talk about the smile, the eyes, the position of the hands, the background, skin tone, hair, and the colors chosen, and that's about it. If you can stretch that into more than a two page explanation (and you're not just giving background on the painting), then you're moving from objective analysis of a painting into an autobiography of your own soul.
expertise in aesthetics
So explain using objective criteria what's bad about it. Talk about the places you can't find beauty that you expected it; talk about color theory; etc., but don't just claim you're an expert and leave it at that.
That's the true sign of a hack.
Well, I can't speak of everywhere, but I can speak of all the schools in Florida, MIT, Berkley, and Georgia Tech, and Purdue because I know people from all of them.
None of those schools have programs like that. You can always opt out of the meal plan.
You're right. Why so many posters here seem to think that this has something to do with privacy, I have no idea.
While you don't have a right to privacy, you do have a right to a certain amount of quiet. Mostly this is ignored. Have you ever heard a car blaring music so loud that it's painful to you? That's actually illegal most places. It's noise pollution. You could actually get a ticket for that.
Most noise pollution laws are targeted at unidirectional sound, and therefore cover a specific dB of sound that is illegal. They'd probably have to be upgraded to cover this instance. The point is that it is illegal to put unavoidable amounts of noise into the publicly shared air, and this certainly qualifies.
Of course, in a purely capitalist system, every business would be able to erect any kind of radio network they like. We'd at first end up with a bunch different protocols that are all conflicting with each other and fantastically expensive and clever devices that can use whatever is available to actually get the calls through.
:(
Then slowly those 12 standards would merge as the devices relied more heavily on a specific set of features over another. We'd end up with something fairly flexible, but more limited than the original ideas in most of the original protocols...like DOM, for example.
I wonder if it would have worked? Is there enough airways to go around if everybody can do whatever they want with them? With the advent of collision detection and frequency hopping, I'm not entirely sure that there isn't. It might have worked. Instead, what goes through the air is heavily controlled by the government.
I absolutely know that I don't want to hear the story of how those four words got used in the same sentence until happy hour is nearly over.
Yeah? Well, I wouldn't mind. Not the sentence they added.
Perhaps this one:
"After I checked the backup tapes to ensure that 512-bit AES encryption was working, and that the tapes were still readable, I closed and deadbolted the tape room, and then went out to my car to go to lunch with the new (darn good looking) intern from the art department."
but for 95% of what you need in a site (and if your site is fairly simple, 100%)
My experience is more like "25% of what you need in a site (and if your site is fairly simple, 5%)"
Fairly simple means that you need to spend more time to make the look & feel work right, because people will notice it more, and you can't use a WYSIWYG for that kind of thing unless you don't care at all about page flow.
By default Dreamweaver treats pages like they're not going to have to work at multiple resolutions/fonts - fixing the size of every single element in the pages. It's telling that you mention two programs that do exactly the same thing. HTML flows. You aren't supposed to treat it like print.
It also doesn't work too well with non-html markup (such as PHP, ASP.net, jsps, etc). This is fundamental to the nature of HTML. It can't be done properly with a WYSIWYG. It needs a WYSIWYM to work.
Withdrawing parts of that energy changes the energy balance of the system.
Good thing energy can't be created or destroyed then.
Energy balance of which system? The desert? Not a lot going on there. Sand gets heated up, and it then dissipates to the surrounding regions.
The desert+the surrounding regions? Where do you think the energy is going to be used? It's pretty much a closed system. We use it, and *then* it dissipates - ultimately almost entirely in the same form it does after it's hit the sand - heat. This is unlikely to be much of an issue.
Sally Tech's hands
Sally Tech can replace the bios chip using her awesome soldering skills. Does that mean that it isn't really a brick?
What if Sally Tech could fix the BIOS by replacing it with one that routes around the stuck bits (I have actually done this)?
Sounds like we should never say that a part is bricked, because we can't really be sure that somebody can get it to work.
I know what you're thinking. Not fair! It's still bricked if I have to do (arbitrarily chosen set of conditions) to fix it! That's like building a whole new one!
That leaves a pretty silly definition.
Would you rather it be:
bricked tech: tech that is unfixable to the person using it.
or
bricked tech: tech that is unfixable by anyone unless they do one of the following operations:.....
The third possible explanation:
bricked tech: tech that is unfixAble by anyone using any method.
Covers absolutely nothing. At worst case, you can convert (at least a majority of) the parts back into raw materials and remake the thing using the same manufacturing process that was used to make it the first time. So that one's out.
it does show a greater ability toward pattern recognition. That's not intelligence.
Well, I guess that rules out language, and path planning as intelligence. Possibly also intuitive connections between things, since a lot of that is based on making connections between things.
What's left? I suppose synthesis of unrelated things (i.e. imagination), but that is arguably based upon recognizing *how* things can be connected by having seen similar thing (i.e., coming up with Minotaurs, for example)...
I think you're probably in the minority with this claim. You might want to do some research into cognitive studies and/or artificial intelligence. You may change your mind.
I think the real flaw isn't the metric (pattern recognition), but the benchmark (number memory). Chimps have faster nervous systems. Obviously any task that's trivial for both of us happens faster for them. Evaluate a task that we struggle with and see how well they can do it.
For pattern recognition, try getting them to play a game of Tetris, and see how that goes.
Number of genes scanned: the awesomeness measure for the new millenium.
I can see it now. First generation will scan 100K. Nine months later will be the 200K exam, then the 400K...eventually the machines will be able to do the entire genome in a single go (or come close), and there won't be able to begin on that.
Then they'll add the dual core variety that can scan two people at once...
(and while I'm dreaming of writing up an invoice big enough to make a DoD contract agent drop his jaw in fear... well, I'd like a pony while I'm at it.)
Keep dreaming.
that figure comes from estimates of "economic losses" so are probably inflated or meaningless depending on where the sources come from.
What would be realistic? Lets say that he stole the use of 100,000 computers in his botnet. At 2Mil, each computer would have $20 in economic losses.
That doesn't seem at all unrealistic. If it costs $20 of your time (i.e., if it takes an hour to clean and you make $20 an hour, or something to that effect), then it's $20 in economic loss. If the resulting slowdown costs $20 of your productive time, same thing.
Sure, some people don't lose that much by not being productive, but some lose a lot more. $20 average sounds entirely reasonable - probably a little low, actually. They probably didn't infect that many machines.
Keep in mind that I'm not even bringing up what is done with those computers - I'm just talking about losses caused by putting the spyware on machines, and haven't begun to talk about what is done with it.
If bad things were done with things, it would certainly drive the average cost per infection up a lot, which would make it easy to cause that much damage while infecting far fewer machines.
Point is that this isn't like assuming that every download=a sale lost. It isn't outside the realm of possibility at all.
...unless this was a very, very small man.
His job in the quarry was to hunt rats. He has a tiny spear, and special shirt with a gigantic (for him) pocket sown into the back to carry his cellphone, which is essentially the largest thing he carries.
Did I mention that he's a minature dwarf spider monkey? Hmm...probably not important.
You have this to obey this line:
So...you have to not restrict modification. You don't have to do anything special to make it easier. So you can't, for example, require a checksum based upon the combination of the LGPL'ed library and yours, because that would make it impossible to make modifications. You can require it to adhere to an ABI that's only in the specific version that you used, and doesn't work in future versions of the library. And nowhere does it say that you have to document how the thing is linked in or how to relink (that I saw).
So this is essentially a nonissue if you are writing the program for a modern computer. You kind of have to go out of your way to make it not link.
To summarize, it was just a Zork/Myth-genre game for PS2, with the added continual challenge of having to drag around a retarded mute girl (seriously...she might as well have been a sack of flour).
First, it had a striking visual and aural style. Unlike many early PS2 games, it turned away from bright colours and fancy coloured lighting effects, adopting a colour scheme that verged on monochrome at times, with a heavy emphasis on contrasting light and dark areas. The music was distinctly minimalist, but fitted the game well enough that the soundtrack went on to sell well in its own right.
Nevertheless, it's an important part of gaming history. It was the first game to really use the power of its console generation to deliver something other than fancy special effects. It set new standards for story-telling, that remain influential even today.
Of course, it wasn't actually the first game of such a type even for Playstation. Legacy of Kain, which did have fighting, had a general focus on puzzles of the same variety, as well as a muted, artful style. And as mentioned, the artful style was a repeat of Myth, which was the result of the gradual progression from text adventures to graphical versions of the same kind of game. It might have been the first for PS2...
which was simultanously substantially flawed and deeply engaging.
This is essentially how I felt about ICO. Despite neat puzzles and a lack of focus on action, there was far too much focus on the controls. Once I solve the puzzle, it should be easy to put my solution into action. I shouldn't have to practice for a bit to get the controls to a point where I can implement my solution. That's what fighting games are for. So from the perspective of someone who has loved puzzle games like this, ICO seemed a sad remake of past glory.
It strikes me as a game that doesn't appeal to action gamers because of a lack of action (and puzzles that are too hard), and doesn't appeal to puzzle gamers because of too much action. It hits a "sweet spot" that appeals to virtually no one.
To use a Pratchettism, Google promises not to provide anyone with user's private data based upon the general understanding that no one will actually ask them.
It is a promise in software circles, and everyone who's really in the know regarding search understands this.
Obviously things have to be different if someone actually asks them. How can google be expected to keep data private if they're asked for it? Aren't they in the business of providing people with information?
Hours* of endless fun.
*Approximately ten of them. Then the pain starts to set in, and the systemic organ failure...
energy and back again incredibly, astronomically, and absurdly expensive
According to trek it's just tractor beams & holograms (as we know them...not something magical). Tractor beams are gravity fields, or something like that - an attractive or repulsive field that affects all matter.
Making holograms is not expensive in terms of power output. Tractor beams...don't exist. I tend to think that getting that effect without actually have matter to generate it is probably fantastically expensive, but that's mostly intuition based on the amount of energy you could *generate* if you could affect the local gravity.
At any rate, it's not outside the realm of the possible. Not like teleportation and FTL travel, anyway.
using a routing protocol known as
You're kind of missing the point in this example. Citywide 802.11x is not going to work. The protocol can't handle it. It doesn't scale up to even 100 users at once.
The obvious solution is to use some other protocol.
Look at it that way, would this site be worth anything without the original work. No, I don't think so.
That makes one of us. Rebrand it as Tobin's Spirit Guide, chuck a few references to Gozer and Vigo in there, and it's good to go.
It's a lexicon of magic about a specific magic universe. It doesn't really matter very much who wrote the universe...even if less people would go/contribute if it wasn't about Harry Potter.
Personally, I'd much rather see one that comes from the Eragon series. The books are fantastically predictable, but the magic system is very consistent. Even the "will and word" idea from the Belgariad by David Eddings might do.
To elaborate, the format was actually put forth by OASIS (which, the entire British parliament should agree is the best band ever), but that's just a little piece of what they do.
The open document fellowship are the community supporters (i.e., the ODF volunteer organization), while the ODF Alliance are the industry supporters. What did the Open Document Foundation do? Muddy the waters.
They're the Ross Perot of open document foundations - making people think that if they listen to them, that they'll get the real skinny because of their seeming-official status. Good to see 'em go.
till we have vehicles that use anti-gravity technology
The traditional thought about that - i.e., you apply electricity and you end up in the air - would necessarily require a huge, constant energy investment that would make it just as impractical (or close) as current methods are. You'd need giant tanks of fuel to power the things - just like traditional airplanes. Otherwise, you'd be able to use them to violate the law of conservation of energy (i.e., you could generate a perpetual motion machine using them). There's actual a piece of fiction called "Antigrav Unlimited" on Baen's free library that discusses the possiblity.
What we could actually have is something like blimps - it takes a lot of energy to get it up, a lot to get it to change altitude, but you can cruise in the same altitude for cheap. Even then, though, it'll be a lot less efficient since propulsion is more expensive than pushing against the ground. We'd probably have to use wind force to get around most of the time.
So we wouldn't so much have skycars as airboats. Final fantasy, here we come!
I will be more explicit. It is much cheaper to put per-user routing restrictions into the DSL or cable modem than it is to put it in the neighborhood level or higher level routers.
Whether that saves enough bandwidth to be cheaper TCO, I'm not sure, but that's not really what we were discussing. I get the feeling you were talking about implementing versus not rather than the type of implementation, since the support calls would be about the same whether you went to a website that's actually running on your router to do the admin or one that's actually on the local network router.
Anything doable by the user is doable by the bot boss.
Not reading a sheet of paper. You know...the one that will come with the installation that has the randomly generated key for the password to access the router?
There isn't one now, but if you're going to be doing this to stop hackers, then you'd (obviously, as you point out) want to do this.
Of course, they couldn't actually do this on a *per user* basis because the main hub routers aren't even close to powerful enough, and adding that would be astronomically expensive (it would never, ever pay for itself. It'd be better to just lay down fiber to get more bandwidth).
They could up the bandwidth and do it that way.
The *much, much* cheaper way would be to just configure the routers that come with the DSL and cable modems to be more restrictive by default and tell the users to change the settings themselves.
I wonder why they don't do that?