Note: it seemed very much 2d. Easily manipulated, probably from some future Apple, neat. And mostly monochrome (blue-scale)... but I haven't seen that movie in a while. My problem? It involved hardware on the hand, a sort of glove. Annoying.
I'm personally in favor of more things supporting a sort of fish-eye view. One-dimensional fish-eye can show quite a bit, and give you a good idea of where you want to be in a list, rather than scrolling, scrolling, scrolling back up, etc. 2d's not bad either... and 3d, well, have you played Homeworld? It wasn't a very "strong" effect, but it warped space just enough to improve the game usability.
3d is overrated for information interfaces. But there's room for improvement, certainly.
no, I'd say the problem is that people use spreadsheets where they should use a relational database + graphing software + math functions + report-writing software.
It's a convenient package, but it's really just layout. The use of ranges in math is a poor substitute for running an aggregate query against a table. "Fill down" is a poor substitute for a good query and well-designed tables.
What's weird is that people can figure out how to use the wrong tool for the job, but can't figure out how to use the right tool. They want to keep a list of things, like hours worked at certain pay rates? They can figure out how to use a spreadsheet, but they'll have trouble with just about any database front-end out there.
Graphing, statistics, those concepts are orthogonal to the source of the data. The fact that they're most easily used in the spreadsheet world is sad, but not necessary. Relational databases are -not- complicated... I just don't get it.
Honestly, I write database software, and do a lot of reports, for a living. I still use a spreadsheet to send in my hours, because it's an all-in-one: data, formatting, etc. I was sending it as an html file for a while (just as good,) just because they didn't have excel installed. I kinda wish they had never gotten around to that... but now that's what they want. Go figure.
Aside from walking away with stuff, there's also the scarcity part. If enough people trespass on your property, there's no more room for more people to trespass. If you were, say, letting people park in your yard during the local medieval fair (for a small fee) then although they've not taken anything, they've deprived you of the opportunity to sell that spot to someone else.
I would instead go back to music and suggest this: an open-air concert that is a non-free event, but with random people walking by, and into, the area. They listen for a while (or the whole time) and walk off without paying. There was plenty of room, the quality was approx. the same, and everyone (paying or not) walked away having had a similarly satisfying experience. Did the non-payers steal music? Not any more than walls, chairs, and trees did. But they did get something for nothing, something which wasn't expected to be had for nothing.
It's not theft. It's a free lunch. And there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, even when there is.
That page is also only for itemized amounts ($200 or more.) I'm fine with being wrong, and it's also entirely possible the previous graph showing mostly republican contributions was the effect of republicans receiving more money, but neither source shows amounts of less than $200 or their final impact.
From the second page:
The Federal Election Commission requires the recipient of any donation of more than $200 to itemize the contribution, identifying the contribution amount, as well as the donor's name, address, employer and occupation. The recipient combines all contributions of $200 or less and reports them as one total. [...] The total amount given in non-itemized contributions, as well as other statistics for the entire 2001-2002 election cycle (which ends Dec. 31), won't be known until next spring.
However, it goes on to mention that Republicans outpace Democrats in fund-raising in lower-middle-somewhat-high income level brackets, and that the Democrats benefit from "truly" deep-pocketed contributors to help them catch up. That generalization is hopefully based on previous years, as they don't have the data (at least not displayed) for the really-small contribution amounts.
My question was about less-than-$200 amounts, and sadly still isn't answered.
I would somewhat rather have a system where politicians themselves -could- not know who had contributed. They're welcome to have their own ideas, campaigns, agendas -- but it'd be nice if they stuck to that, rather than changing course based on who's willing to give money under given conditions. People/corps could contribute based on what the candidate already has in mind.
At least it would make slightly clearer any cases of "X did Y because (s)he received Z contributions from corporations benefitting from Y" -- you would at least know politicians hadn't gotten "great new ideas" in the mail with a check.
However, we can't do that. Although we could force money to be sent through an anonymizing agency, corporations could always send an email saying "I hope you enjoyed the recent deposit of $x in your account -- I'm glad you saw our point of view." If need-by, such corporations (or individuals, mind you) could provide receipts to show they were actually the ones being the money transfer. Bank records, etc. would work as well. (To prevent some individuals from taking credit for the donations of others, thus bribing for free.)
If we can't have one extreme, then perhaps we should want the other. At least we have something to work with. It doesn't prevent corruption at all, however. Can we turn this information to our advantage in fighting corruption? Other than the standard "oh no, he received money!" headlines?
Note: this tracks donations greater than $200 per person during a bit over a year. I'm not seeing much blue, but I wonder how often we would find that democrat-contributions come in smaller amounts from more people, and republican-contributions come in larger amounts from fewer people? (That's only my a-priori, not-apolitical hypothesis.) Anybody have this data without a minimum cap on it? Seems like it'd be interesting.
Trademarks are per-problem-domain, yes. But URL's? I haven't noticed them stating that "microsoft.operating_system.software.us" is the only valid URL for Microsoft as we know it. URL's were never intended to so closely follow trademarks, or even become 1:1 with them. It'd be funny, but... that's not how they were designed. So they're battling over a namespace, trying to stuff several namespaces (with uniqueness rules of their own) into just one, and it doesn't work neatly. So... then it's about size. From what I can tell, they'll give a URL to whoever seems "biggest" or "most respectable" or some such, rather than really on the basis of anything "scientific." Unsurprisingly, they're not at all fond of squatters who just think they should have a right to pick any unused name, whether it corresponds to a company name or not. Then it becomes an issue of "having claim" as if domain names were granted to companies before they even requested them, on the basis of character-strings matching. "Your domain is waiting at the door, if you'll please step this way Mr. N." Did I mention I get a certain icky, oily, nasty sense of corruption from the process?
So. Yes. Trademarks have separate namespaces. URL's don't (at least not precisely, as new TLD's are not created when two entities both have claim to the same name in different real-world namespaces, just to accomodate them.) Thus conflict, without predefined rules. It's a hack. And they problem didn't comment the code.
Not likely, thanks to WIPO rulings. As far as they're concerned, a URL can't have a chunk in it that is a trademark of a company you're not part of, or have permission from. Nor can you have anything too similar.
My problem with this? It's an address, not a business name (though some businesses have been merging the two.) Just because your shop is on "Sun St." and is accessible via "Sun St." doesn't mean you're trying to take over Sun's business by confusing people. At least that's the general idea. Sure, it's inconvenient if your company can't get the most obvious domain name (company_name.com) when it gets around to doing the "being online" thing -- but that's just too bad. But it's an inconvenience -- it doesn't prevent the company from having a website or continuing to do business.
No, the real problem is when a company tries to spoof being another one by duplicating site design, color schemes, logos, product lines, etc. That's outright lying, fraud, and dangerous. But that could happen anyway.
So, you'd like to tell companies involved that non-americans can't be used in any way? Sorry, multinational-corporation, you employ people in India, and -might- ask them to work on the project...
Or is this like our Iraq thing, saying only companies of countries that helped (note: governments != companies, so wtf?) could get work in Iraq... except they could immediately turn around and hire companies from other countries to "help out"...
Americans aren't the cheapest labor force on the planet (yet? ever?)... companies that care about their profits (thus getting to where they are, that is, noticed and asked to bid) are going to do whatever they can to increase their profit margin, including outsourcing across the border or across the pond.
To ask them not to just increases the cost of the project, and decreases the number of companies willing to take the job, which screws over whoever wants to get the thing done. Unlikely.
As per the article (Motley, at least)... the virus is executed by some malicious HTML in the message, which would be activated if the message is viewed in full or preview(pane) modes. Simply clicking on the message in the list (you -did- turn the preview pane off, didn't you?) won't infect the machine. However, this does mean that similar HTML, from a web browser, might also be dangerous. Anyone have info on that idea? (Malicious websites giving you the virus by visiting the site?)
I would think that it wouldn't be slander/libel if the person providing the "information" believed it to be true, or did not know it to be false. It's not illegal to be wrong, but you can sue someone for willfully presenting as true something they know to be false (lying,) for the purpose of injuring you in some way (defamation.)
As far as I know, you can't sue anyone for simply lying. (Holocaust denial, for example?) Truth-in-advertising is close to that, though it does contain a sense of profit/interest in the matter. (Defamation being assumed to provide advantages to the person lying.)
That doesn't quite make up for it though. I see plenty of things I'd like, but not enough to buy them. Taking them anyway, regardless of whether or not I would hypothetically have paid for them, were I required to do so (that is, were theft not so easy,) is still theft, as far as law is concerned. The difference here is that we -see- that they can make unlimited copies of an item, "at no cost." However, increasing the number of copies reduces the value of each copy; they have an interest in keeping the number of available copies down, and as copyright holders have the law-given right to refuse to make such copies, and control their distribution. The potential sales aren't directed at the people getting the music for free -- they're directed at other customers who, in the business model where music is artificially rare, would want to buy the music from the labels, and would need to so out of the limited available inventory. They're counting it as if they had N units in the warehouse, and each illegal download takes a copy from the warehouse, depriving some poor citizen of the opportunity to buy something. It's odd, but... yeah. Scarcity creates value, and they control the scarcity.
From the paper, based on their estimates of current systems, value of random searches, etc.:
If the probability a terrorist will be flagged by CAPS is less than 6%, then law enforcement should randomly select passengers for increased scrutiny. [...] Clearly, we claim in this paper that by using our algorithm, a terrorist cell can push Pr(C) under 6%.
They go on to show how easily a terrorist can use the system against itself, and therefore make it useless as such.
If you try to use the algorithm, terrorists will go to slightly more trouble, and you'll miss them. If you don't, they can't do anything in particular to increase their chances of success. You directly control your chances of catching them by changing what percentage of passengers you screen. With non-random searches, terrorists can iteratively become more sure that they won't be screened, until you're basically screening everyone but the terrorist.
Note that the system already includes some random searching, in part so you can't guess, from a single attempt, whether or not you've been screened because of a high index. It's also because, somewhere in the back of their mind, they probably realize how stupid this is. Most of this is likely just for PR -- I'm sure their own people have already pointed out to them how counter-productive the system is, but someone said something like "Well, the public expects us to do something about the problem, so, we're doing something about the problem, period."
Which is why we have a lot of what we have -- homeland security and otherwise. Some of us freaked, politicians wanted to stay in office, so... expensive smoke screen. Make it -look- like they have some clue what to do about the problem. Colored alerts? Terrorists can look at the chart and say "gee, looks like they might have gotten wind of stuff -- let's wait until next week"... but the public might feel safer. (Note that we don't give people enough information to act on the alert, just enough to be afraid when it's red and be stupid when it's not.)
... the difference being that C++ doesn't particularly allow for unnamed functions / classes, as would be necessary to do this.
[NIT-PICK:] i would say that calling it a "block" is confusing, as that term is already used to refer to things in {} in most languages, or of equal indentation in python, or between BEGIN and END statements, etc.
[DISCUSS:] although our project code includes plenty of callback/function object stuff, i can't say i miss having anonymous functions all that much. i've heard one of my programmers complaining he wouldn't mind having pascal-style embedded functions (declare the function inside another one to avoid polluting the namespace, make obvious the usage, etc.) but other than that... (we code in C++, btw.)
as to the other example given (other post) that includes opening a file and being sure it'll be closed again, well... that syntax is nice, but it can also be done via destructors (as it goes out of scope, automatically close the file handle) -- it just generally isn't, for various reasons (reference counting, etc.)
so... is this a question of language design or library design? any language allowing anonymous functions and function callbacks would be able to do this, but would the libraries and most-used functions be set up to allow this? as demostrated elsewhere, such container functions have to know to take such a "block" and execute it at (at least) one particular point in the code.
[QUERY:] what i was originally referring to earlier as special syntax was the |x,y,z| construct, but now i'm guessing that's the parameter list for the unnamed function? each_pair would call the function, assuming it should receive two parameters, which are bound to the names specified in the pipes? yes?
[OT:] i've not studied ruby. a friend's topic for "programming languages" in college wound up being ruby; at the time, the only documentation was in japanese, so he spoke to Max over the phone about its origins. after hearing -that- story, i wasn't terribly interested. (something about hacking a perl interpreter as a prank. i'm glad that turned out to be useful to someone.)
So, should we just let old people die? Refuse life-extending procedures? We're already trying to push back the age for retirement to get more "bang" out of a person, but that just doesn't seem like a great idea either.
Our average age is going to continue to be high unless we: - let/make people die at a younger age - have a significantly higher rate of birth than death, which means population growth
Wars could do some of that, but it seems like wars mostly kill the young, not the old. And after a war, well, we get a population boom. That'll keep the population young for only so long, before they all hit retirement age together.
I haven't noticed "terraforming Mars" being proposed because of over-population of species-survival.
We could take care of over-population-related problems on earth if people would just stop reproducing so much. I mean, really guys... you don't need that many kids (or any?) Our planet can easily sustain us for a long time to come, at least assuming we take care of it. The damage isn't irreversible -- if we're smart, she'll last us a while.
Species-survival? Our sun's not going anywhere. Based on the usually-suggested timelines for evolution of mankind, we're just getting started, and have plenty of time to figure things out (so long as we don't wipe ourselves out first.) It would be far more in the interest of self-preservation to dismantle our nukes than to find new planets. We're a bigger danger to ourselves than the sun, or likely aliens.
No, I'd say we're thinking of terraforming Mars for other reasons: - The hell of it. (No, really.) - Research. (How does life develop? Were we an accident? Necessary?)
There's no reason to feel we need to rush it, just so we can "get down to business" using Mars for ores or habitation. We're comfortable here. We're rushing because we've watched enough sci-fi to have an idea of what might be possible -- and we want to see it happen.
Besides... the moment we set stuff down on Mars, we've got people sending us rent bills for plots of land they "own"... maybe we should get that resolved first?
I seem to remember courts upholding our right to time-shift and space-shift the viewing of copyrighted material... thus VHS/Betamax not getting killed early on, and Tivo & Co. today.
If they purposefully keep us from making high-quality copies to be viewed later, aren't they basically disallowing time/space-shifting of the material, replacing it with something different from what we were going to get?
Somehow, that's like McD's saying that if you're not going to eat your meal in the restaurant, then they're going to get you fries from the -other- bucket of nastiness, and only fill your cup up half-way. That's... no.
If we're paying to see things at a certain quality level (or they're being paid to provide it, by sponsors/ads/whatever) then I'm going to have -that- quality available to me, whenever I get around to watching stuff. Dang it.
As I recall, phone books are only copyrighted for their arrangement -- that is, all the data in them can be copied and reproduced, you just have to not be ripping it directly. The problem here is that sometimes, there are very few logical arrangements available. Two phone books will likely have mostly the same data, and it's unlikely they'll use significantly different methods of sorting. There's a fairly standard, useful way to do it, and that's that. Sorting it by the fourth digit of the number first doesn't make much useful sense. Therefore, it's not like they're going to purposefully find a new arrangement -just- so it's obviously not infringing. That's a problem.
Databases typically, when well-designed, don't leave too much room for creative arrangement. You don't separate things into different tables just because you like the color 'blue'. And as pointed out elsewhere, the arrangement clause could be difficult to deal with for low counts, like 1 or 0 items. How many different ways can you arrange one item? Yeah.
But even so, the facts themselves can be freely moved around. The idea is to protect companies from having their entire database copied and resold.
As I recall, the bill also excluded researchers from caring. Some of the wording also seemed to me to indicate they only intended to go after places that were reselling such copied databases, not free versions thereof. I haven't read the bill since the last time/. mentioned it, so... I'm likely a little fuzzy on it now. (And yes, I did actually take the time to read the whole thing. Weird, hunh.)
the $250.00 non-refundable re-activation fee doesn't seem to come with anything along the lines of "to be paid only if you actually screwed up." godaddy seems to make this determination entirely on their own, with no notice before rendering their verdict. no appeal?
oh, wait, i use godaddy. damn. if you really hated my website(s) you could probably send an abuse letter to godaddy. if they're having a bad day, they might not bother investigating... that could be bad. don't get any ideas.
Have you guys simply not seen the movie "The Pentahon Wars"? It's primarily about the development of the Bradley. Amusing movie, VHS only (no DVD available) -- wonderful movie about scope creep for us engineers who can still laugh about it.
["How much has it cost so far?"] "14." "14? Million?" "...illion." "What did you say, general?" "Billion." "With a 'B'?" "With a 'B'."
The movie describes a troop carrier that went from carrying 11 men plus a driver (quickly) to the front line... to a troop-carrier for 6 men, plus a canon, optics, anti-tank-missile-launchers, and still practically no armor.
The movie is admittedly an exageration, based on the book written by an officer in charge of checking the Bradley for safety. Grains of salt are appropriate.
What I find interesting about ID is that knowing "who" the person is really isn't very relevant in many cases. If it's a driver's license, all you need is some way to show that a particular person has the authorization to drive a motor vehicle (didn't it pertain only to "commercial" vehicles at some point in the past?) -- a photo of you plus a seal plus something that says you can drive is enough. You don't need to know who they are, just that they can drive. If you want to check past history of accidents, warnings, tickets, etc. you can include a DL number, which is tied to other DL numbers in the database, giving you back-history on the person, still without knowing who they are.
Besides, names are such horrible primary keys. Even SSN isn't absolutely unique. Name + birthday isn't... we've been popping up methods of identifying people left and right, and we're not good at it. Fingerprints? Retinal scans? DNA sequences? There are exceptions to these (including, for example, missing the required organs.)
And if CAPPS II is any indication, our government is going to go in the direction of "your name sounds vaguely like the name of a suspect somewhere, so we're going to detain you" -- being good at identifying people is no longer important?
I don't feel any safer thanks to ID checks. Checking ID getting into a ball game? Checking ID to get into a store, or leave your house? Nah. Just make sure they don't have a bomb or a knife if you like: I really don't care if a terrorist flies on a plane with me, so long as he stays away from the cockpit and doesn't blow up the plane.
There are alternatives to the type of ID check we've been doing. We just haven't spent any time looking into them.
so, what if you're an out-of-state pedestrian with no need for a driver's license (which isn't exactly ID as such)? you're not required to have a passport, not required to have a driver's license, not required to have a state's alternative ID card, etc.... so, you can't enter the state of california unless you have ID to show if you're asked? that's lame.
Slashdot Mirror
Note: it seemed very much 2d. Easily manipulated, probably from some future Apple, neat. And mostly monochrome (blue-scale) ... but I haven't seen that movie in a while. My problem? It involved hardware on the hand, a sort of glove. Annoying.
... and 3d, well, have you played Homeworld? It wasn't a very "strong" effect, but it warped space just enough to improve the game usability.
I'm personally in favor of more things supporting a sort of fish-eye view. One-dimensional fish-eye can show quite a bit, and give you a good idea of where you want to be in a list, rather than scrolling, scrolling, scrolling back up, etc. 2d's not bad either
3d is overrated for information interfaces. But there's room for improvement, certainly.
no, I'd say the problem is that people use spreadsheets where they should use a relational database + graphing software + math functions + report-writing software.
... I just don't get it.
... but now that's what they want. Go figure.
It's a convenient package, but it's really just layout. The use of ranges in math is a poor substitute for running an aggregate query against a table. "Fill down" is a poor substitute for a good query and well-designed tables.
What's weird is that people can figure out how to use the wrong tool for the job, but can't figure out how to use the right tool. They want to keep a list of things, like hours worked at certain pay rates? They can figure out how to use a spreadsheet, but they'll have trouble with just about any database front-end out there.
Graphing, statistics, those concepts are orthogonal to the source of the data. The fact that they're most easily used in the spreadsheet world is sad, but not necessary. Relational databases are -not- complicated
Honestly, I write database software, and do a lot of reports, for a living. I still use a spreadsheet to send in my hours, because it's an all-in-one: data, formatting, etc. I was sending it as an html file for a while (just as good,) just because they didn't have excel installed. I kinda wish they had never gotten around to that
Aside from walking away with stuff, there's also the scarcity part. If enough people trespass on your property, there's no more room for more people to trespass. If you were, say, letting people park in your yard during the local medieval fair (for a small fee) then although they've not taken anything, they've deprived you of the opportunity to sell that spot to someone else.
I would instead go back to music and suggest this: an open-air concert that is a non-free event, but with random people walking by, and into, the area. They listen for a while (or the whole time) and walk off without paying. There was plenty of room, the quality was approx. the same, and everyone (paying or not) walked away having had a similarly satisfying experience. Did the non-payers steal music? Not any more than walls, chairs, and trees did. But they did get something for nothing, something which wasn't expected to be had for nothing.
It's not theft. It's a free lunch. And there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, even when there is.
That page is also only for itemized amounts ($200 or more.) I'm fine with being wrong, and it's also entirely possible the previous graph showing mostly republican contributions was the effect of republicans receiving more money, but neither source shows amounts of less than $200 or their final impact.
From the second page:
The Federal Election Commission requires the recipient of any donation of more than $200 to itemize the contribution, identifying the contribution amount, as well as the donor's name, address, employer and occupation. The recipient combines all contributions of $200 or less and reports them as one total.
[...]
The total amount given in non-itemized contributions, as well as other statistics for the entire 2001-2002 election cycle (which ends Dec. 31), won't be known until next spring.
However, it goes on to mention that Republicans outpace Democrats in fund-raising in lower-middle-somewhat-high income level brackets, and that the Democrats benefit from "truly" deep-pocketed contributors to help them catch up. That generalization is hopefully based on previous years, as they don't have the data (at least not displayed) for the really-small contribution amounts.
My question was about less-than-$200 amounts, and sadly still isn't answered.
I would somewhat rather have a system where politicians themselves -could- not know who had contributed. They're welcome to have their own ideas, campaigns, agendas -- but it'd be nice if they stuck to that, rather than changing course based on who's willing to give money under given conditions. People/corps could contribute based on what the candidate already has in mind.
At least it would make slightly clearer any cases of "X did Y because (s)he received Z contributions from corporations benefitting from Y" -- you would at least know politicians hadn't gotten "great new ideas" in the mail with a check.
However, we can't do that. Although we could force money to be sent through an anonymizing agency, corporations could always send an email saying "I hope you enjoyed the recent deposit of $x in your account -- I'm glad you saw our point of view." If need-by, such corporations (or individuals, mind you) could provide receipts to show they were actually the ones being the money transfer. Bank records, etc. would work as well. (To prevent some individuals from taking credit for the donations of others, thus bribing for free.)
If we can't have one extreme, then perhaps we should want the other. At least we have something to work with. It doesn't prevent corruption at all, however. Can we turn this information to our advantage in fighting corruption? Other than the standard "oh no, he received money!" headlines?
Note: this tracks donations greater than $200 per person during a bit over a year. I'm not seeing much blue, but I wonder how often we would find that democrat-contributions come in smaller amounts from more people, and republican-contributions come in larger amounts from fewer people? (That's only my a-priori, not-apolitical hypothesis.) Anybody have this data without a minimum cap on it? Seems like it'd be interesting.
Nono.
The changes you have entered will cause 911 calls to be routed to Citibank. No.
[OK]
Trademarks are per-problem-domain, yes. But URL's? I haven't noticed them stating that "microsoft.operating_system.software.us" is the only valid URL for Microsoft as we know it. URL's were never intended to so closely follow trademarks, or even become 1:1 with them. It'd be funny, but ... that's not how they were designed. So they're battling over a namespace, trying to stuff several namespaces (with uniqueness rules of their own) into just one, and it doesn't work neatly. So ... then it's about size. From what I can tell, they'll give a URL to whoever seems "biggest" or "most respectable" or some such, rather than really on the basis of anything "scientific." Unsurprisingly, they're not at all fond of squatters who just think they should have a right to pick any unused name, whether it corresponds to a company name or not. Then it becomes an issue of "having claim" as if domain names were granted to companies before they even requested them, on the basis of character-strings matching. "Your domain is waiting at the door, if you'll please step this way Mr. N." Did I mention I get a certain icky, oily, nasty sense of corruption from the process?
So. Yes. Trademarks have separate namespaces. URL's don't (at least not precisely, as new TLD's are not created when two entities both have claim to the same name in different real-world namespaces, just to accomodate them.) Thus conflict, without predefined rules. It's a hack. And they problem didn't comment the code.
Not likely, thanks to WIPO rulings. As far as they're concerned, a URL can't have a chunk in it that is a trademark of a company you're not part of, or have permission from. Nor can you have anything too similar.
My problem with this? It's an address, not a business name (though some businesses have been merging the two.) Just because your shop is on "Sun St." and is accessible via "Sun St." doesn't mean you're trying to take over Sun's business by confusing people. At least that's the general idea. Sure, it's inconvenient if your company can't get the most obvious domain name (company_name.com) when it gets around to doing the "being online" thing -- but that's just too bad. But it's an inconvenience -- it doesn't prevent the company from having a website or continuing to do business.
No, the real problem is when a company tries to spoof being another one by duplicating site design, color schemes, logos, product lines, etc. That's outright lying, fraud, and dangerous. But that could happen anyway.
So, you'd like to tell companies involved that non-americans can't be used in any way? Sorry, multinational-corporation, you employ people in India, and -might- ask them to work on the project...
... except they could immediately turn around and hire companies from other countries to "help out" ...
... companies that care about their profits (thus getting to where they are, that is, noticed and asked to bid) are going to do whatever they can to increase their profit margin, including outsourcing across the border or across the pond.
Or is this like our Iraq thing, saying only companies of countries that helped (note: governments != companies, so wtf?) could get work in Iraq
Americans aren't the cheapest labor force on the planet (yet? ever?)
To ask them not to just increases the cost of the project, and decreases the number of companies willing to take the job, which screws over whoever wants to get the thing done. Unlikely.
As per the article (Motley, at least) ... the virus is executed by some malicious HTML in the message, which would be activated if the message is viewed in full or preview(pane) modes. Simply clicking on the message in the list (you -did- turn the preview pane off, didn't you?) won't infect the machine. However, this does mean that similar HTML, from a web browser, might also be dangerous. Anyone have info on that idea? (Malicious websites giving you the virus by visiting the site?)
I would think that it wouldn't be slander/libel if the person providing the "information" believed it to be true, or did not know it to be false. It's not illegal to be wrong, but you can sue someone for willfully presenting as true something they know to be false (lying,) for the purpose of injuring you in some way (defamation.)
As far as I know, you can't sue anyone for simply lying. (Holocaust denial, for example?) Truth-in-advertising is close to that, though it does contain a sense of profit/interest in the matter. (Defamation being assumed to provide advantages to the person lying.)
That doesn't quite make up for it though. I see plenty of things I'd like, but not enough to buy them. Taking them anyway, regardless of whether or not I would hypothetically have paid for them, were I required to do so (that is, were theft not so easy,) is still theft, as far as law is concerned. The difference here is that we -see- that they can make unlimited copies of an item, "at no cost." However, increasing the number of copies reduces the value of each copy; they have an interest in keeping the number of available copies down, and as copyright holders have the law-given right to refuse to make such copies, and control their distribution. The potential sales aren't directed at the people getting the music for free -- they're directed at other customers who, in the business model where music is artificially rare, would want to buy the music from the labels, and would need to so out of the limited available inventory. They're counting it as if they had N units in the warehouse, and each illegal download takes a copy from the warehouse, depriving some poor citizen of the opportunity to buy something. It's odd, but ... yeah. Scarcity creates value, and they control the scarcity.
From the paper, based on their estimates of current systems, value of random searches, etc.:
... expensive smoke screen. Make it -look- like they have some clue what to do about the problem. Colored alerts? Terrorists can look at the chart and say "gee, looks like they might have gotten wind of stuff -- let's wait until next week" ... but the public might feel safer. (Note that we don't give people enough information to act on the alert, just enough to be afraid when it's red and be stupid when it's not.)
If the probability a terrorist will be flagged by CAPS is less than 6%, then law enforcement should randomly select passengers for increased scrutiny. [...] Clearly, we claim in this paper that by using our algorithm, a terrorist cell can push Pr(C) under 6%.
They go on to show how easily a terrorist can use the system against itself, and therefore make it useless as such.
If you try to use the algorithm, terrorists will go to slightly more trouble, and you'll miss them. If you don't, they can't do anything in particular to increase their chances of success. You directly control your chances of catching them by changing what percentage of passengers you screen. With non-random searches, terrorists can iteratively become more sure that they won't be screened, until you're basically screening everyone but the terrorist.
Note that the system already includes some random searching, in part so you can't guess, from a single attempt, whether or not you've been screened because of a high index. It's also because, somewhere in the back of their mind, they probably realize how stupid this is. Most of this is likely just for PR -- I'm sure their own people have already pointed out to them how counter-productive the system is, but someone said something like "Well, the public expects us to do something about the problem, so, we're doing something about the problem, period."
Which is why we have a lot of what we have -- homeland security and otherwise. Some of us freaked, politicians wanted to stay in office, so
And I thought marketing majors were pointless.
python lambda-functions (nameless functions, passed as callbacks)
it's the equivalent, then, of using STL algorithms like
[NIT-PICK:]
i would say that calling it a "block" is confusing, as that term is already used to refer to things in {} in most languages, or of equal indentation in python, or between BEGIN and END statements, etc.
[DISCUSS:]
although our project code includes plenty of callback/function object stuff, i can't say i miss having anonymous functions all that much. i've heard one of my programmers complaining he wouldn't mind having pascal-style embedded functions (declare the function inside another one to avoid polluting the namespace, make obvious the usage, etc.) but other than that
as to the other example given (other post) that includes opening a file and being sure it'll be closed again, well
so
[QUERY:]
what i was originally referring to earlier as special syntax was the |x,y,z| construct, but now i'm guessing that's the parameter list for the unnamed function? each_pair would call the function, assuming it should receive two parameters, which are bound to the names specified in the pipes? yes?
[OT:]
i've not studied ruby. a friend's topic for "programming languages" in college wound up being ruby; at the time, the only documentation was in japanese, so he spoke to Max over the phone about its origins. after hearing -that- story, i wasn't terribly interested. (something about hacking a perl interpreter as a prank. i'm glad that turned out to be useful to someone.)
would you mind explaining in what way
hash.each_pair do |key,value|
is not "special" syntax, but
foreach ($array_name as $key_name => $value_name)
is?
[excluded middle?]
So, should we just let old people die? Refuse life-extending procedures? We're already trying to push back the age for retirement to get more "bang" out of a person, but that just doesn't seem like a great idea either.
Our average age is going to continue to be high unless we:
- let/make people die at a younger age
- have a significantly higher rate of birth than death, which means population growth
Wars could do some of that, but it seems like wars mostly kill the young, not the old. And after a war, well, we get a population boom. That'll keep the population young for only so long, before they all hit retirement age together.
Ideas?
I haven't noticed "terraforming Mars" being proposed because of over-population of species-survival.
... you don't need that many kids (or any?) Our planet can easily sustain us for a long time to come, at least assuming we take care of it. The damage isn't irreversible -- if we're smart, she'll last us a while.
... the moment we set stuff down on Mars, we've got people sending us rent bills for plots of land they "own" ... maybe we should get that resolved first?
We could take care of over-population-related problems on earth if people would just stop reproducing so much. I mean, really guys
Species-survival? Our sun's not going anywhere. Based on the usually-suggested timelines for evolution of mankind, we're just getting started, and have plenty of time to figure things out (so long as we don't wipe ourselves out first.) It would be far more in the interest of self-preservation to dismantle our nukes than to find new planets. We're a bigger danger to ourselves than the sun, or likely aliens.
No, I'd say we're thinking of terraforming Mars for other reasons:
- The hell of it. (No, really.)
- Research. (How does life develop? Were we an accident? Necessary?)
There's no reason to feel we need to rush it, just so we can "get down to business" using Mars for ores or habitation. We're comfortable here. We're rushing because we've watched enough sci-fi to have an idea of what might be possible -- and we want to see it happen.
Besides
... and right here: Firebird.
Maybe we should just redirect people to Sourceforge instead?
I seem to remember courts upholding our right to time-shift and space-shift the viewing of copyrighted material ... thus VHS/Betamax not getting killed early on, and Tivo & Co. today.
... no.
If they purposefully keep us from making high-quality copies to be viewed later, aren't they basically disallowing time/space-shifting of the material, replacing it with something different from what we were going to get?
Somehow, that's like McD's saying that if you're not going to eat your meal in the restaurant, then they're going to get you fries from the -other- bucket of nastiness, and only fill your cup up half-way. That's
If we're paying to see things at a certain quality level (or they're being paid to provide it, by sponsors/ads/whatever) then I'm going to have -that- quality available to me, whenever I get around to watching stuff. Dang it.
As I recall, phone books are only copyrighted for their arrangement -- that is, all the data in them can be copied and reproduced, you just have to not be ripping it directly. The problem here is that sometimes, there are very few logical arrangements available. Two phone books will likely have mostly the same data, and it's unlikely they'll use significantly different methods of sorting. There's a fairly standard, useful way to do it, and that's that. Sorting it by the fourth digit of the number first doesn't make much useful sense. Therefore, it's not like they're going to purposefully find a new arrangement -just- so it's obviously not infringing. That's a problem.
/. mentioned it, so ... I'm likely a little fuzzy on it now. (And yes, I did actually take the time to read the whole thing. Weird, hunh.)
Databases typically, when well-designed, don't leave too much room for creative arrangement. You don't separate things into different tables just because you like the color 'blue'. And as pointed out elsewhere, the arrangement clause could be difficult to deal with for low counts, like 1 or 0 items. How many different ways can you arrange one item? Yeah.
But even so, the facts themselves can be freely moved around. The idea is to protect companies from having their entire database copied and resold.
As I recall, the bill also excluded researchers from caring. Some of the wording also seemed to me to indicate they only intended to go after places that were reselling such copied databases, not free versions thereof. I haven't read the bill since the last time
the $250.00 non-refundable re-activation fee doesn't seem to come with anything along the lines of "to be paid only if you actually screwed up." godaddy seems to make this determination entirely on their own, with no notice before rendering their verdict. no appeal?
... that could be bad. don't get any ideas.
oh, wait, i use godaddy. damn. if you really hated my website(s) you could probably send an abuse letter to godaddy. if they're having a bad day, they might not bother investigating
Have you guys simply not seen the movie "The Pentahon Wars"? It's primarily about the development of the Bradley. Amusing movie, VHS only (no DVD available) -- wonderful movie about scope creep for us engineers who can still laugh about it.
... to a troop-carrier for 6 men, plus a canon, optics, anti-tank-missile-launchers, and still practically no armor.
["How much has it cost so far?"]
"14."
"14? Million?"
"...illion."
"What did you say, general?"
"Billion."
"With a 'B'?"
"With a 'B'."
The movie describes a troop carrier that went from carrying 11 men plus a driver (quickly) to the front line
The movie is admittedly an exageration, based on the book written by an officer in charge of checking the Bradley for safety. Grains of salt are appropriate.
from the linux fortune: oppression and how to make the masses scream for it
... we've been popping up methods of identifying people left and right, and we're not good at it. Fingerprints? Retinal scans? DNA sequences? There are exceptions to these (including, for example, missing the required organs.)
What I find interesting about ID is that knowing "who" the person is really isn't very relevant in many cases. If it's a driver's license, all you need is some way to show that a particular person has the authorization to drive a motor vehicle (didn't it pertain only to "commercial" vehicles at some point in the past?) -- a photo of you plus a seal plus something that says you can drive is enough. You don't need to know who they are, just that they can drive. If you want to check past history of accidents, warnings, tickets, etc. you can include a DL number, which is tied to other DL numbers in the database, giving you back-history on the person, still without knowing who they are.
Besides, names are such horrible primary keys. Even SSN isn't absolutely unique. Name + birthday isn't
And if CAPPS II is any indication, our government is going to go in the direction of "your name sounds vaguely like the name of a suspect somewhere, so we're going to detain you" -- being good at identifying people is no longer important?
I don't feel any safer thanks to ID checks. Checking ID getting into a ball game? Checking ID to get into a store, or leave your house? Nah. Just make sure they don't have a bomb or a knife if you like: I really don't care if a terrorist flies on a plane with me, so long as he stays away from the cockpit and doesn't blow up the plane.
There are alternatives to the type of ID check we've been doing. We just haven't spent any time looking into them.
so, what if you're an out-of-state pedestrian with no need for a driver's license (which isn't exactly ID as such)? you're not required to have a passport, not required to have a driver's license, not required to have a state's alternative ID card, etc. ... so, you can't enter the state of california unless you have ID to show if you're asked? that's lame.