Have you noticed how most parents act these days? Hell, we let the inanimate objects that pass as "parents" raise their own kids, why not let some other object do it? At least the kid won't feel like the inability of the device to tell them that something is wrong won't seem like tacit approval.
Are you really trying to say that Yahoo has been more innovative than Google in the past few years? Stop and think before you answer that...just look at their mail functions. Yahoo was a "me too" mail function that they acquired by buying another company, while Google developed their own system that revolutionized webmail. When did Yahoo and Hotmail decide to offer enormous mailbox capacity...before, or after Google did?
We've gained exclusive access to the future of Yahoo, and are proud to give you the first ever look into the brilliant things being developed even now, as we speak, by this cutting-edge portal search engine! All the details right here!
The best manager I ever worked for was extremely non-technical. He didn't need to be; he had us for that. What he was excellent at was watching politics, looking after the needs and condition of his own people, and smelling bullshit a mile away...so he could tell which geeks to rely upon for advice. He'd bring me in with meetings or on conference calls, and afterwords have me digest things down into my take where it came to technical matters. I've worked for him twice, and we did great things...I hope to work with him again at some point.
While I can't take direct credit for this suggestion, as it's taken from from an entry in the Going Postal section of Attrition, I still think the best answer to iDownload is...
This is akin to something that we've seen before in smaller bits here and there. For example, WebTV, which gives you limited PC functionality but works with your TV set. Or the Roku Soundbridge, which links your MP3 collection to your stereo. I built a system to do something like this, only going a step further so that I could have the visualizations play over the widescreen television. The effect was amazing, but I found that even an extremely nice HDTV-capable widescreen TV couldn't quite do justice to the signal coming from the PC. Once this mismatch has a decent solution, then I think this would be a fine idea for many people.
Actually, this isn't the whole picture. There's a derivative instrument called a "zero-cost collar" which enables someone to convert options into cash. The downside of the instrument is that you take a hit on the value of your options in return for the risk which is absorbed by the other party. I'm sure this hit is higher now than it was during the dot-com boom. Also, you had...had...to stay at the job until your options vested, as I understand it. Still, there are those who had taken advantage of this, and managed to cash out without being able to cash out in the normal sense.
A lot of posters have obviously come to the conclusion that the Internet does not have any bearing on pedophiliac tendencies, outside of providing alternate means to seek victims. In fact, the 'journalist' from the Times hints at it with his admission that the incidence of pedophilia hasn't gone up with the advent of the Internet. But I'd like to take this one step further. Since there's a two-page story in the NYT online about this...
1) There is no connection whatsoever between computers/the Internet/geeks and pedophilia.
2) The person who wrote this story is a flaming demagogue, cheaply preying upon the fears of the basest and most ignorant members of society.
3) As such, he deserves a solid ass-pounding by a gorilla, bareback. Every night for a week. And twice on Tuesday.
Exactly my thought. More specifically, I don't think the problem is in getting power to the battery and recharging it. I think the real challenges lay in not getting power to other parts of the device in ways that could be harmful. The only way I could possibly imagine that this concept works is via induction, where passing an electrical current through one conductor will also induce a current through another (nearby but unconnected) conductor. And since all personal electronic devices are just filled with conductors...and ones that tend to die very fast when given just a bit too much current...how do they recharge the battery without damaging chips or possibly corrupting non-volatile non-magnetic memory?
I've seen this company make this announcement before. And before that, there was the statement that major cellular manufacturers including Nokia and Motorola were interested in the technology. Yeah, no duh, they'd be interested, but the company played it up as though they'd signed contracts to have the tech included in their products, which was definitely not the case. And the graphic images that are being shown haven't changed in about 18 months, at the very least. Show us a working prototype at some conference and I'll kiss whoever built it, but for now I don't believe this company will ever produce a product. They have a great idea, but I don't believe they know how to make it a reality.
Just what the hell is this supposed to accomplish?
"Hey, you just got a laser aimed at the cockpit!" says the computer.
"Great, what are we supposed to do, try to evade it? Somehow, re-enacting the final flight scenes of the movie Top Gun doesn't seem like such a hot idea in a Boeing 757 full of people while we're on a landing approach...and by the way, thanks for the hot tip about that brief blinding flash I just encountered. Glad to know it wasn't just my imagination," says the pilot.
Our cars have license plates for a specific reason. At first, the police wanted every car to display the name of its registered owner in case the car was used in a crime as a getaway vehicle. But it was decided that this was a bit too intrusive, and instead license plates were developed. That way, it made it less convenient for authorities to get at the information, and thus the information would be less likely to undergo abuse for casual reasons. (Keep in mind that we're talking turn-of-the-century here. You couldn't just radio it in, call it in on a cell phone or look it up on a computer. It was a lot of work.)
The same problem comes up here. While no warrant would be needed for the police to follow someone around, the police WOULD have to account for their time to their supervisor, considering that every minute the suspect is under surveillance is a minute that the police are dedicated to the task of surveilling them. And right there, you've got one of the best checks against abuse; oversight by another person.
However, when you add a GPS tag to a vehicle, everything changes. These tags typically report in their whereabouts almost constantly via cell phone communications, and all you have to do to see where the tag has gone is look at a website. You can zoom in, zoom out, specify a past period of time, etc. And you don't spend a second of time except to look at the results. It's easy, requires no other people to be involved, and when you really think about it, you don't even need to tell the computer whose car it really went on. This is just begging for abuse, in my opinion, and meets the standard for something that requires supplementary oversight to curtail such abuse.
You're kidding, right? A guy on CS who blames lag for getting shot up as a legal precedent in a medical malpractice case? Jeez man, even Judge Judy wouldn't go that far!
Next thing you know, telecoms will be liable for medical malpractice if the network connections fail during remote robotic surgery.
Actually, no. Medical malpractice isn't even remotely like what a telecom would be liable for, no matter how badly they screwed up, unless they were actually practicing medicine. What they could be liable for in the above-stated situation is negligence, and frankly I don't have a problem with that. There's nothing exotic about high availablility networking these days.
This scenario also fails to take into account the fact that the link failing wouldn't be the end of the world. It's not like they just wheel the patient into the operating room and leave them there so the robot can go at it, and it's not like the robot will start wildly flailing about with scalpels and other sharp instruments just because it's no longer being told what to do. And lest we forget, the patient whose robot-surgeon has just stopped working is still all set up in an operating room, on an IV with people monitoring their vitals, in the midst of a well-equipped hospital. Not the end of the world at all.
Wait...I seem to remember no small amount of condemnation directed towards Microsoft for trying to keep their customer base captive by making their technology interdependent...You need Outlook to use Exchange, you need Windows to use Outlook, etc. So what the hell is this crap about not wanting to port KDE to Windows because then people wouldn't have to run Linux? It seems like the same idiotic mentality.
Look, if you want people to run your software, MAKE GOOD SOFTWARE. Period. Granted, other things have to follow that, but it's a hell of a lot easier to get people to try something that works and stick with it (Firefox anyone?) than it is to force garbage down their throat. Especially without gigabucks to spend on advertising, against a company that spends petabucks on advertising.
And by the way, why is it still considered a viable option to get people to dive headfirst into OSS...platform, OS, GUI, apps, the whole lot at once? What's wrong with just giving them one part at a time? I would think that getting them accustomed to it without having to leave everything familiar and known to them behind at once would be a good thing, not a bad one.
I've seen Galileo's midddle finger. What I want to do before I die is help the fellow have one last posthumous laugh, and orient the finger so it faces towards the Vatican.:)
-Nevertheless, I advise you in future to eplace the words "Crunchy Frog" with the legend, "Crunchy, Raw, Unboned Real Dead Frog" f you wish to avoid prosecution! -What about our sales? -FUCK your sales! We've got to protect the public! Now what about this one, number five, it was number five, wasn't it? Number five: Ram's Bladder Cup. (beat) Now, what sort of confectionery is that?!?
Perhaps someone will come out with a bit of adware someday with the name of "Lark's Vomit" or "Anthrax Ripple?"
I think that what happened is after hearing Ballmer and Gates say "f*** you, linux!" for years, Linus misunderstood what they'd been saying (accents and the distance from Redmond to Europe, etc.) and decided to take them up on it.
I went to the site listed in the original posting, and among the other workarounds were...
"Disable virus protection applications."
"Uninstall various third-party CODEC packs."
"If you are running the 5.1 or 4 speaker settings in Half-Life 2, change the setting to 2 speakers."...and other pearls of "screw you if you want to use your computer for anything else besides Half-Life 2." Disable virus protection applications? This is the same company that got royally hacked for their most prized source code, right? You'd think they'd know better.
They're just saying that the APs will be physically attached to the lights, not that the traffic lights will be controlled by them. It's just like what Richochet did years ago; it's a lot cheaper than finding where to put all-new towers, overcoming resistance to them and then building them.
Actually, no it isn't. Gasoline in liquid form isn't even remotely explosive, nor is it stored under great pressure, like hydrogen. Only a very specific ratio of air to gasoline vapor is explosive, and even then it's nothing like hydrogen.
That said, I live in Washington, DC, and I've got to say that the neighbors to that tank have far worse things to worry about than that tank. That area is like a war zone.
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Have you noticed how most parents act these days? Hell, we let the inanimate objects that pass as "parents" raise their own kids, why not let some other object do it? At least the kid won't feel like the inability of the device to tell them that something is wrong won't seem like tacit approval.
"Most Excellent Order of the British Empire?" What an adventure!
Are you really trying to say that Yahoo has been more innovative than Google in the past few years? Stop and think before you answer that...just look at their mail functions. Yahoo was a "me too" mail function that they acquired by buying another company, while Google developed their own system that revolutionized webmail. When did Yahoo and Hotmail decide to offer enormous mailbox capacity...before, or after Google did?
We've gained exclusive access to the future of Yahoo, and are proud to give you the first ever look into the brilliant things being developed even now, as we speak, by this cutting-edge portal search engine! All the details right here!
The best manager I ever worked for was extremely non-technical. He didn't need to be; he had us for that. What he was excellent at was watching politics, looking after the needs and condition of his own people, and smelling bullshit a mile away...so he could tell which geeks to rely upon for advice. He'd bring me in with meetings or on conference calls, and afterwords have me digest things down into my take where it came to technical matters. I've worked for him twice, and we did great things...I hope to work with him again at some point.
This is akin to something that we've seen before in smaller bits here and there. For example, WebTV, which gives you limited PC functionality but works with your TV set. Or the Roku Soundbridge, which links your MP3 collection to your stereo. I built a system to do something like this, only going a step further so that I could have the visualizations play over the widescreen television. The effect was amazing, but I found that even an extremely nice HDTV-capable widescreen TV couldn't quite do justice to the signal coming from the PC. Once this mismatch has a decent solution, then I think this would be a fine idea for many people.
Actually, this isn't the whole picture. There's a derivative instrument called a "zero-cost collar" which enables someone to convert options into cash. The downside of the instrument is that you take a hit on the value of your options in return for the risk which is absorbed by the other party. I'm sure this hit is higher now than it was during the dot-com boom. Also, you had...had...to stay at the job until your options vested, as I understand it. Still, there are those who had taken advantage of this, and managed to cash out without being able to cash out in the normal sense.
Thank you.
Exactly my thought. More specifically, I don't think the problem is in getting power to the battery and recharging it. I think the real challenges lay in not getting power to other parts of the device in ways that could be harmful. The only way I could possibly imagine that this concept works is via induction, where passing an electrical current through one conductor will also induce a current through another (nearby but unconnected) conductor. And since all personal electronic devices are just filled with conductors...and ones that tend to die very fast when given just a bit too much current...how do they recharge the battery without damaging chips or possibly corrupting non-volatile non-magnetic memory?
I've seen this company make this announcement before. And before that, there was the statement that major cellular manufacturers including Nokia and Motorola were interested in the technology. Yeah, no duh, they'd be interested, but the company played it up as though they'd signed contracts to have the tech included in their products, which was definitely not the case. And the graphic images that are being shown haven't changed in about 18 months, at the very least. Show us a working prototype at some conference and I'll kiss whoever built it, but for now I don't believe this company will ever produce a product. They have a great idea, but I don't believe they know how to make it a reality.
Just what the hell is this supposed to accomplish?
"Hey, you just got a laser aimed at the cockpit!" says the computer.
"Great, what are we supposed to do, try to evade it? Somehow, re-enacting the final flight scenes of the movie Top Gun doesn't seem like such a hot idea in a Boeing 757 full of people while we're on a landing approach...and by the way, thanks for the hot tip about that brief blinding flash I just encountered. Glad to know it wasn't just my imagination," says the pilot.
Our cars have license plates for a specific reason. At first, the police wanted every car to display the name of its registered owner in case the car was used in a crime as a getaway vehicle. But it was decided that this was a bit too intrusive, and instead license plates were developed. That way, it made it less convenient for authorities to get at the information, and thus the information would be less likely to undergo abuse for casual reasons. (Keep in mind that we're talking turn-of-the-century here. You couldn't just radio it in, call it in on a cell phone or look it up on a computer. It was a lot of work.)
The same problem comes up here. While no warrant would be needed for the police to follow someone around, the police WOULD have to account for their time to their supervisor, considering that every minute the suspect is under surveillance is a minute that the police are dedicated to the task of surveilling them. And right there, you've got one of the best checks against abuse; oversight by another person.
However, when you add a GPS tag to a vehicle, everything changes. These tags typically report in their whereabouts almost constantly via cell phone communications, and all you have to do to see where the tag has gone is look at a website. You can zoom in, zoom out, specify a past period of time, etc. And you don't spend a second of time except to look at the results. It's easy, requires no other people to be involved, and when you really think about it, you don't even need to tell the computer whose car it really went on. This is just begging for abuse, in my opinion, and meets the standard for something that requires supplementary oversight to curtail such abuse.
While I entirely agree with the above statement, I also believe there aren't any women for whom we should feel sorry.
You're kidding, right? A guy on CS who blames lag for getting shot up as a legal precedent in a medical malpractice case? Jeez man, even Judge Judy wouldn't go that far!
Actually, no. Medical malpractice isn't even remotely like what a telecom would be liable for, no matter how badly they screwed up, unless they were actually practicing medicine. What they could be liable for in the above-stated situation is negligence, and frankly I don't have a problem with that. There's nothing exotic about high availablility networking these days.
This scenario also fails to take into account the fact that the link failing wouldn't be the end of the world. It's not like they just wheel the patient into the operating room and leave them there so the robot can go at it, and it's not like the robot will start wildly flailing about with scalpels and other sharp instruments just because it's no longer being told what to do. And lest we forget, the patient whose robot-surgeon has just stopped working is still all set up in an operating room, on an IV with people monitoring their vitals, in the midst of a well-equipped hospital. Not the end of the world at all.
Why doesn't Ubisoft just send Sam Fisher to take care of EA for them? :)
Wait...I seem to remember no small amount of condemnation directed towards Microsoft for trying to keep their customer base captive by making their technology interdependent...You need Outlook to use Exchange, you need Windows to use Outlook, etc. So what the hell is this crap about not wanting to port KDE to Windows because then people wouldn't have to run Linux? It seems like the same idiotic mentality.
Look, if you want people to run your software, MAKE GOOD SOFTWARE. Period. Granted, other things have to follow that, but it's a hell of a lot easier to get people to try something that works and stick with it (Firefox anyone?) than it is to force garbage down their throat. Especially without gigabucks to spend on advertising, against a company that spends petabucks on advertising.
And by the way, why is it still considered a viable option to get people to dive headfirst into OSS...platform, OS, GUI, apps, the whole lot at once? What's wrong with just giving them one part at a time? I would think that getting them accustomed to it without having to leave everything familiar and known to them behind at once would be a good thing, not a bad one.
I've seen Galileo's midddle finger. What I want to do before I die is help the fellow have one last posthumous laugh, and orient the finger so it faces towards the Vatican. :)
-Nevertheless, I advise you in future to eplace the words "Crunchy Frog" with the legend, "Crunchy, Raw, Unboned Real Dead Frog" f you wish to avoid prosecution!
-What about our sales?
-FUCK your sales! We've got to protect the public! Now what about this one, number five, it was number five, wasn't it? Number five: Ram's Bladder Cup. (beat) Now, what sort of confectionery is that?!?
Perhaps someone will come out with a bit of adware someday with the name of "Lark's Vomit" or "Anthrax Ripple?"
I think that what happened is after hearing Ballmer and Gates say "f*** you, linux!" for years, Linus misunderstood what they'd been saying (accents and the distance from Redmond to Europe, etc.) and decided to take them up on it.
I went to the site listed in the original posting, and among the other workarounds were...
...and other pearls of "screw you if you want to use your computer for anything else besides Half-Life 2." Disable virus protection applications? This is the same company that got royally hacked for their most prized source code, right? You'd think they'd know better.
"Disable virus protection applications."
"Uninstall various third-party CODEC packs."
"If you are running the 5.1 or 4 speaker settings in Half-Life 2, change the setting to 2 speakers."
They're just saying that the APs will be physically attached to the lights, not that the traffic lights will be controlled by them. It's just like what Richochet did years ago; it's a lot cheaper than finding where to put all-new towers, overcoming resistance to them and then building them.
Actually, no it isn't. Gasoline in liquid form isn't even remotely explosive, nor is it stored under great pressure, like hydrogen. Only a very specific ratio of air to gasoline vapor is explosive, and even then it's nothing like hydrogen.
That said, I live in Washington, DC, and I've got to say that the neighbors to that tank have far worse things to worry about than that tank. That area is like a war zone.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, mein fuhrer!