As self-evident as it seems, note paper has stayed around way longer than I expected it to. It's a simple, cheap setup with the ultimate handwriting recognition system. If I want to write someting significant I'll open my word processor, but for quick little notes and calculations nothing will beat my pad of McGill notepaper.
And for planning things out and high-level organizational diagramming, I have yet to find a system that works better than a pad of Post-It notes and a roll of paper. We were promised papreless offices and homes years ago, and people were fortelling the end of Dead Tree books since the emergence of eBooks - but look around. I still see lots of paper on my desk.
We may have been told years ago that it was obsolete, but it's still the number one tool for many jobs.
As of a few minutes ago, the WordSpy definition is:
(GOO.gul) v. To use an Internet search engine such as google.com to look for information related to a new or potential girlfriend or boyfriend. (Note that Google(TM) is a trademark of Google Technologies Inc.)
So he did what Google asked: noted that it was a trademark. The site's still up. The definition's still valid. Presumably the Google lawyers are happy. I don't feel my civil or lexical rights have been trounced upon.
As has often been said...move along folks, nothin' to see here.
Google is a play on the word "googol", which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. A googol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in the universe. Not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite, amount of information available on the web.
Does this mean that we're going to see the rise of "Sponsored Listings" in AllTheWeb? Just when i was starting to like their service (when Google didn't give me the answers I want), Overture has to come along and shit it up. I don't mind pay-for-results when thet're clarly indicated a la Google, with a big spanking coloured box around them, but for if I'm going to use AllTheWeb/Overture now, I like it to be clear when I'm participating in their version of 'Payola'...funny thing - when I serach for 'Payola,' the only "Sponsored Listing" is from, of all places, Amazon - the kings of 'Payola.'
I agree that there is something wrong with how the system is set up - however I don't think this would solve much.
Selling the space shuttles to someone else (especially China) wouldn't accomplish much. The USA would be out its only way to get humans into space, and probably wouldn't get that much money out of the deal since they're so old. Hell, China's already building their own program - if they even bought the Shuttles, they almost certainly just use the navigation componets and the heat-sheild technology, if that.
One of the reasons that the FDA and FCC have so much power is that the USA is the primary consumer of the good they regulate. Over here, what the FDA says is law, but in the UK, we can buy non-FDA approved things, and we can't buy some things that the FDA does approve. Same goes with the FCC - in Europe, it's all about following EEC directives and getting the CE stamp on all electronics. The FCC apprival is nice (and most have it so they can be sold overseas without much modicifation), but it's not needed. Spcae dosen't work that way. The NASA regulatory agency would have the power to regulate US space travel, but why should the Chinese (or the ESA, or the Russians) listen to what the NASA regualtors say. And anyways, don't forget we sold the Shuttles to China in step one, so there's not a whole lot to regulate. Sure there's commercial launches, but they're mostly government-assisted anyways. So we have a reglatory body that regulates how Americans get into space, but no one else has to listen to them. In this way Space would be like the high seas - each country gets its litle area (3 mile EEZ/soverign airspace), but once you get high enough up it's fair game to anyone.
The third one's not even worth commenting one. In the cargo sector, it's happening already. In the human transport sector, once we develop a cheap way to send people into space it will be spun off from the government. The Fed will keeps its program for research and defense, but with enough cash you will be able to send anything you want into space.
If you want to regulate space, give it to the UN and have them update the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 or something - but I don't think China ever signed that, did they? But if you want NASA to regulate space, you need to give them the guns to shoot down anyone who dosen't listen - something which both won't and shouldn't happen. Look what hapend to Britain when they tried to be Imperialistic and rule the seas in the 1700s and 1800s - it just dosen't work.
I can think of a few right off hand. For example: the UK railways system (brilliant until it was contracted out - now it's unsafe and expensive), the energy market in just about any deregulated market (yay 18% jump in energy costs in Toronto), the Canadian aviation market (when the Fed let AC buy Canadian and didn't bail out C3000, all meaningful competition ended and fares skyrocketed), the payphones (payphones used to cost a quarter when Bell was a regulated monopoly - now they're open and cost up to 40 cents). I could easily go on, but I won't (because it's boring).
And then there's the theoretical reason why prices should go up when unregualted, especially in an industry that requires huge amounts of overhead and capital. Companies are naturally greedy. Their duty to their shareholders/owners is to create the most revenue at the least cost to them. therefore, they raise prices until the market won't hold it anymore, and then they lower them a bit. Sure, competition will try and keep things in check, but in industries where it'd difficult for a new company to break in without sizeable investment, where is the imperitus for the companies to meaningfully compete, and not to just cartel the prices up? Contrast this to a regulated system, who's goal is to ensure a "fair" price for the consumer.
In a privatized/unregulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost by any means, and the power lies with the corporations. In a regulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost, while maintaining a "fair" price, and the power lies with the government. While the government may not be "the people," for the most part (Bush excepted, see Chirac or Schroeder for a decent example) they're closer to the wills of "the people" than the mega-corporations are.
I think I can say with pretty good authority that he'd say no to this. Given any situation, when you have two people/things who beleive that they are very good at something trying to work together, neither is very interested in the other's advice. Each beleives they are superior, and as such, they follow their opinion.
Another reason I don't think this idea would work deals with the long-term nature of chess. When selecting a move, you plan out that move as a preface to a series of other moves. I'm not sure which would be more difficult: having man explain its long-term strategy to the machine, or the other way around. Chess also deals with the individual style of the player; their school of Chess will influence how they play. If you reformulate this question as "Would two grandmasters play in partnership with one another against another pair, bearing in mind that the grandmasters can only communicate on slips of paper," then the answer becomes clearer. And yes, given that Deep Blue did beat a grandmaster, I think we can call him ("it?") one, for sake of argument.
Although I do think it would be kinda cool to get Kasparov on here in the hot seat; not really to discuss his match with Deep Blue, but more see his take on the impact of powerful machines on society, from the point of view of someone has to compete for his livelyhood against them.
Every time this topic comes up someone mentions these guys - and I agree, they do look cool as all hell (I mean really, who dosne't want a desk that rotates?), but has anyone actually tried one? Most times that I buy a desk, or nay furniture, I field-test it either at the store, a friend's house, or in my bedroom. Has anyone actually tried one of these systems, or even seen one in the flesh?
Personally, I just use a standard executive office desk. Nice huge workspace, sliding keyboard tray, cable organizers at the back, and two small bookcases on wheels that roll around the room. Tower lives beside the desk, printer lives on one of the bookcases, and you can guess where the books live. Maybe it's just me, but I don't mind getting up if I need a book or grab a printout. Now if you took away my Aeron or my second monitor, that would be an entirely different story...
DX was one of the greatest games I've played in a long time. Like Aquitane said, you just had to finish the level - how yo did so was up to you. My only disapointment, for those of you who played and will understand the reference, was the scene where you were ordered to kill your brother (or was it the terrorist financier?), and if you didn't, then the NPC would. That moment should have forked the game in two: you kill tr brother and you finish the game working for UNITA, eliminating the rest of the rebels, or you waste teh NPC and become a full-on rebel. Then add a few oppertunities to cross back later, and you've got a wicked game. That's the kinda thing this AI should be used for.
I travel fairly frequently, and have come to learn that both are valuble tools, depending on what you want to accomplish. As many have said, if youw want a well-planned door-to-door holiday, go to your local travel agent. For the most part, they're good and honest people. They'll get you what you need and organize it all, although you (obviously) pay for that priviledge. Almost every family holiday me and the crew go on is done up by our not-so-local travel agent. That's another thing: get reccomendations from friends re a good one. Ours is a bitch to get to, but Chris has never failed us, and has found some amazing stuff for us.
On the other hand, if you just want to get from A to B, do it yourself. Anytime I fly accross the pond I just pull up all the online sites, route myself through a major US hub, and get home cheap. Granted, changing in DC is a pain, and the trip may take a bit longer, but that's why God invented Melatonin. And any small intra-European jaunt is straight to easyJet/Ryanair. If it's within Europe, you don't need a travel agent - flights are all online, and most of Europe speaks one of English/French/German, or has a working knowledge of one them.
My experience: if it's simple, DIY. If it's complicated and/or really expensive, use a travel agent. And make sure they're bonded (ATOL in the UK, I think IATA is international).
Having not watched the game (wo gives a shit about football?) I can't comment on how they all appreared, but I can say this: it's not that Shania did and Sting didn't lip synced, it's just that they were better at it than Shania was.
Almost every time you have a performance at a live event like that it's lip synched, just to be sure that nothing goes wrong. Now, they do have to make a special recording of it for the Super Bowl (ie. they can't use an old recording), but you didn't see one live music performance this evening. And some people are simply more practiced at lip synching than others.
What about mounting one of these babies on the side of the couch? Take a little hack to do it, but would provide the ultimate platform for the machine...
Is anyone else getting really pissed off by tose annoying MSDN subscription ads that have been running recently (as in right now on my screen)? You know what I mean, the red flash ones that stretch down and take up lke half the screen whenever your mouse passes remotely over them....whatever - they're pissing the shit out of me. I want to be able to move my mouse with freedom, without that thing coming and taking over my field of view. I don't particulary have a problem with the banner ads in general (sometimes they're useful), but I don't want one that decides it's all right to claim my screen. Dammit, I want a banner ad, not a big red monster.
There we go...move along folks, nothng to see here.
As many people have pointed out, it's the usage of the logo that's caused (this) C&D letter. And in this case, PCI-SIG is in the right. They have a trademarked logo with defined licensing procedures, which the site is using without permission or license. They complain that that usage may confuse people into thiking the site is affiliated with PCI-SIG: maybe it does, maybe it dosen't. The fact is that he's using their logo without permission. They seem to like his idea of providing a listing, they're just not exactly down with the (implied) association with their organization. And then there's the if-you-don't-defend-it-you-loose-it thing about trademarks and the like...
Then again, there are six letters in the word "PCI-SIG," and if you write that three times (the number of letters in the logo they're complaining about) you get 666 and a board headed by a guy from MS. So find all the conspiricies you want, or have the guy take down the logo from his webpage, do a s/"PCI"/"PCI-compatible"/, and see what the lawyers have to say.
I'm currently at McGill, a major (30 000+ students) Canadian University, and here it's quite obvious that girls don't dig the programming. In my Intro to Comp Eng class (that everyone in Comp or Software has to take) there were four girls out of 15 students. Of those four, two were brilliant (and one was attractive too), and the other two got Cs.
The CompEng male-female ratio definatley isn't true for the rest of Engineering here tho: Chemical is almost totally female-dominated (any ideas why? we don't know) and civil is about even. So yeah, even in Canada there arn't many girls in CompEng/Software/ECE...the faculty of arts however, is a toally different story.
I've got this great little thngy I use to play my CDs. The case outputs very clean analog audio, great headphone output and a SPDIF coax link which plugs directly into my receiver. It works great standalone, it has a complete front panel, ie backlit LCD display, stop, play, pause, next and previous track buttons. It has a cabeled remote, plays CD-RWs wonderfully, and dosen't heat up. It can run directly with only a power supply, and can even run without the power supply if needed!
I've spent the last year doing nothing in far-off places: in short, I took a Gap year. I met people who's dreams ranged from seeing a sunrise in every country in the world, to seeing one plant grow in their yard. Why did I take a year away from my future and spend a great deal of money on the process? To try and uncover the surface of this post - what do I want to do with my life. Did I find the answer? Not especially. I found a what a whole bunch of other people want to do with their lives, but couln't come to grips with what I wanted with mine. And then it hit me, while sitting in the Auckland airport.
I want to create something beautiful. I want to bring something that I see as beauty into the world.
I haven't found what that will be - will it be a memory of a scene in a foerign land, will it be a circuit so efficient and well made that the only fittign word is beautiful - but that's what I want to do. But to generalize, isn't that what we all want to do? Pick anyone famous, and within a few minutes you can find the beauty the sought to produce. Plato? The idea of the rule of the people. Einstein? A family (but look what he cam up with to get there). Hitler? A pure aryan race - he saw that as beauty, despite the fact that most of us don't.
So there you have it. What do I want to do with my life? Make something beautiful. Now, I just have to discover what that's gonna be...
These guys decided to assign a tone to each integer less than ten and some other chsracters and run the whole mess through a combination generator, generating a series of musicial pieces which are the tonal representations of pretty much any phone number out there. Hence, they own the copyright to your phone number.
Another great example of reducio ad absurdum - taking something to its absurd extreme. Or they could be simply making fun of the international copyright system.
I'd say why not brute force the thing, but here's something easier...Make a device that constantly scans for the signal of a token (there has to be some characteristic fingerprint to the signal). When it finds one, remember the signal and indicate to the user. User then goes and mugs target, takes laptop, uses stored signal. We've shown that man-in-the-middle attacks are do-able for a system like this, so why not keep with what works? If one knows how the system works, and can get a long enough string of interactions between the token and the server, then the key is vaunerable. Maybe this means that you have to tail the guy for a while, but let's be honest - if he's using one of these systems (I don't imagine they come cheap) then there's probably somehting worth stealing on that machine, if that's what you're up to. Make a scanner that tracks the signature of packets, walk around the financial centers of the world, and then the device goes off you know which laptops to take.
On another note, this reminds me of the plan to put RFIDs in the new high-denomination Euro-notes. Something like takes all the effort of guesing who to mug: emit the signal, and anytime you get a response, you know the guys's packing a high-value Eruo-note.
According to this Wired article, Ford has developed one of these systems (they're calling it the third age suit), designed to add thirty years to your age so that their designers can get a sense of how old people feel in their cars. The guys that designed the Focus all had to wear these things for a while and play with Ford's other cars when they were in the design stages of teh interior, to get a sens of what worked and what didn't for older people.
I also find it neat that the Toyota Echo was expressely designed for older people (or says the dealer). Personally, I thought older people liked to drive huge cars like Buicks and Caddies (even ones from the eighties), but my grandmother has an Echo and loves it. The seats are high up and the hood is short for more visability, and all the nobs and dials seem bigger than usual for cars that size. Makes me laugh seeing twenty-somethings driving them...
Has always fascinated me with how simple, addictive, and satifing it is, especially whne you consider it's essentially two lathed pieces of wood and some string. Make up your own rules and wham, bam, thank you ma'am - you've got a great game.
At first I though kids nowadays wouldn't get it, being used to fancy-ass electrical toys. I brought one to the Camp where I work - bunch of well-off kids - one found it on my bed, played with it, and within a week they were making them in arts and crafts. They were hooked for the rest of the summer...Funny how things that are popular always seem to swing back into usage.
Since almost no comments here are about the actual post, I've got a cultural question...
Where/How did the "In Soviet Russia..." posts come from? I remember where things like 1.2.3.Profit and the now-passe Mastercard and All Your Base jokes started, but what brought on this spur of neo-Marxist-Lenninist thought?
Slashdot Mirror
As self-evident as it seems, note paper has stayed around way longer than I expected it to. It's a simple, cheap setup with the ultimate handwriting recognition system. If I want to write someting significant I'll open my word processor, but for quick little notes and calculations nothing will beat my pad of McGill notepaper.
And for planning things out and high-level organizational diagramming, I have yet to find a system that works better than a pad of Post-It notes and a roll of paper. We were promised papreless offices and homes years ago, and people were fortelling the end of Dead Tree books since the emergence of eBooks - but look around. I still see lots of paper on my desk.
We may have been told years ago that it was obsolete, but it's still the number one tool for many jobs.
nothin to see here folks, just testing somthing out.
As of a few minutes ago, the WordSpy definition is:
(GOO.gul) v. To use an Internet search engine such as google.com to look for information related to a new or potential girlfriend or boyfriend. (Note that Google(TM) is a trademark of Google Technologies Inc.)
So he did what Google asked: noted that it was a trademark. The site's still up. The definition's still valid. Presumably the Google lawyers are happy. I don't feel my civil or lexical rights have been trounced upon.
As has often been said...move along folks, nothin' to see here.
Google is a play on the word "googol", which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. A googol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in the universe. Not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite, amount of information available on the web.
(from Google's Corporate History)
Does this mean that we're going to see the rise of "Sponsored Listings" in AllTheWeb? Just when i was starting to like their service (when Google didn't give me the answers I want), Overture has to come along and shit it up. I don't mind pay-for-results when thet're clarly indicated a la Google, with a big spanking coloured box around them, but for if I'm going to use AllTheWeb/Overture now, I like it to be clear when I'm participating in their version of 'Payola'...funny thing - when I serach for 'Payola,' the only "Sponsored Listing" is from, of all places, Amazon - the kings of 'Payola.'
All I want to do is shop and compare prices on those damn DNA computers they're explaining to me...and what do I get for my inquisitive click?
Information on Goldtouch (MPN-GTC-4700) Keyboards. Where's the DNA in that, Mr. DealTime?
I agree that there is something wrong with how the system is set up - however I don't think this would solve much.
Selling the space shuttles to someone else (especially China) wouldn't accomplish much. The USA would be out its only way to get humans into space, and probably wouldn't get that much money out of the deal since they're so old. Hell, China's already building their own program - if they even bought the Shuttles, they almost certainly just use the navigation componets and the heat-sheild technology, if that.
One of the reasons that the FDA and FCC have so much power is that the USA is the primary consumer of the good they regulate. Over here, what the FDA says is law, but in the UK, we can buy non-FDA approved things, and we can't buy some things that the FDA does approve. Same goes with the FCC - in Europe, it's all about following EEC directives and getting the CE stamp on all electronics. The FCC apprival is nice (and most have it so they can be sold overseas without much modicifation), but it's not needed. Spcae dosen't work that way. The NASA regulatory agency would have the power to regulate US space travel, but why should the Chinese (or the ESA, or the Russians) listen to what the NASA regualtors say. And anyways, don't forget we sold the Shuttles to China in step one, so there's not a whole lot to regulate. Sure there's commercial launches, but they're mostly government-assisted anyways. So we have a reglatory body that regulates how Americans get into space, but no one else has to listen to them. In this way Space would be like the high seas - each country gets its litle area (3 mile EEZ/soverign airspace), but once you get high enough up it's fair game to anyone.
The third one's not even worth commenting one. In the cargo sector, it's happening already. In the human transport sector, once we develop a cheap way to send people into space it will be spun off from the government. The Fed will keeps its program for research and defense, but with enough cash you will be able to send anything you want into space.
If you want to regulate space, give it to the UN and have them update the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 or something - but I don't think China ever signed that, did they? But if you want NASA to regulate space, you need to give them the guns to shoot down anyone who dosen't listen - something which both won't and shouldn't happen. Look what hapend to Britain when they tried to be Imperialistic and rule the seas in the 1700s and 1800s - it just dosen't work.
I can think of a few right off hand. For example: the UK railways system (brilliant until it was contracted out - now it's unsafe and expensive), the energy market in just about any deregulated market (yay 18% jump in energy costs in Toronto), the Canadian aviation market (when the Fed let AC buy Canadian and didn't bail out C3000, all meaningful competition ended and fares skyrocketed), the payphones (payphones used to cost a quarter when Bell was a regulated monopoly - now they're open and cost up to 40 cents). I could easily go on, but I won't (because it's boring).
And then there's the theoretical reason why prices should go up when unregualted, especially in an industry that requires huge amounts of overhead and capital. Companies are naturally greedy. Their duty to their shareholders/owners is to create the most revenue at the least cost to them. therefore, they raise prices until the market won't hold it anymore, and then they lower them a bit. Sure, competition will try and keep things in check, but in industries where it'd difficult for a new company to break in without sizeable investment, where is the imperitus for the companies to meaningfully compete, and not to just cartel the prices up? Contrast this to a regulated system, who's goal is to ensure a "fair" price for the consumer.
In a privatized/unregulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost by any means, and the power lies with the corporations. In a regulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost, while maintaining a "fair" price, and the power lies with the government. While the government may not be "the people," for the most part (Bush excepted, see Chirac or Schroeder for a decent example) they're closer to the wills of "the people" than the mega-corporations are.
I think I can say with pretty good authority that he'd say no to this. Given any situation, when you have two people/things who beleive that they are very good at something trying to work together, neither is very interested in the other's advice. Each beleives they are superior, and as such, they follow their opinion.
Another reason I don't think this idea would work deals with the long-term nature of chess. When selecting a move, you plan out that move as a preface to a series of other moves. I'm not sure which would be more difficult: having man explain its long-term strategy to the machine, or the other way around. Chess also deals with the individual style of the player; their school of Chess will influence how they play. If you reformulate this question as "Would two grandmasters play in partnership with one another against another pair, bearing in mind that the grandmasters can only communicate on slips of paper," then the answer becomes clearer. And yes, given that Deep Blue did beat a grandmaster, I think we can call him ("it?") one, for sake of argument.
Although I do think it would be kinda cool to get Kasparov on here in the hot seat; not really to discuss his match with Deep Blue, but more see his take on the impact of powerful machines on society, from the point of view of someone has to compete for his livelyhood against them.
My wife's a slag and my dinner's a salad. I'm in no rush to go home, gentlemen...
Every time this topic comes up someone mentions these guys - and I agree, they do look cool as all hell (I mean really, who dosne't want a desk that rotates?), but has anyone actually tried one? Most times that I buy a desk, or nay furniture, I field-test it either at the store, a friend's house, or in my bedroom. Has anyone actually tried one of these systems, or even seen one in the flesh?
Personally, I just use a standard executive office desk. Nice huge workspace, sliding keyboard tray, cable organizers at the back, and two small bookcases on wheels that roll around the room. Tower lives beside the desk, printer lives on one of the bookcases, and you can guess where the books live. Maybe it's just me, but I don't mind getting up if I need a book or grab a printout. Now if you took away my Aeron or my second monitor, that would be an entirely different story...
DX was one of the greatest games I've played in a long time. Like Aquitane said, you just had to finish the level - how yo did so was up to you. My only disapointment, for those of you who played and will understand the reference, was the scene where you were ordered to kill your brother (or was it the terrorist financier?), and if you didn't, then the NPC would. That moment should have forked the game in two: you kill tr brother and you finish the game working for UNITA, eliminating the rest of the rebels, or you waste teh NPC and become a full-on rebel. Then add a few oppertunities to cross back later, and you've got a wicked game. That's the kinda thing this AI should be used for.
I travel fairly frequently, and have come to learn that both are valuble tools, depending on what you want to accomplish. As many have said, if youw want a well-planned door-to-door holiday, go to your local travel agent. For the most part, they're good and honest people. They'll get you what you need and organize it all, although you (obviously) pay for that priviledge. Almost every family holiday me and the crew go on is done up by our not-so-local travel agent. That's another thing: get reccomendations from friends re a good one. Ours is a bitch to get to, but Chris has never failed us, and has found some amazing stuff for us.
On the other hand, if you just want to get from A to B, do it yourself. Anytime I fly accross the pond I just pull up all the online sites, route myself through a major US hub, and get home cheap. Granted, changing in DC is a pain, and the trip may take a bit longer, but that's why God invented Melatonin. And any small intra-European jaunt is straight to easyJet/Ryanair. If it's within Europe, you don't need a travel agent - flights are all online, and most of Europe speaks one of English/French/German, or has a working knowledge of one them.
My experience: if it's simple, DIY. If it's complicated and/or really expensive, use a travel agent. And make sure they're bonded (ATOL in the UK, I think IATA is international).
Having not watched the game (wo gives a shit about football?) I can't comment on how they all appreared, but I can say this: it's not that Shania did and Sting didn't lip synced, it's just that they were better at it than Shania was.
Almost every time you have a performance at a live event like that it's lip synched, just to be sure that nothing goes wrong. Now, they do have to make a special recording of it for the Super Bowl (ie. they can't use an old recording), but you didn't see one live music performance this evening. And some people are simply more practiced at lip synching than others.
What about mounting one of these babies on the side of the couch? Take a little hack to do it, but would provide the ultimate platform for the machine...
Is anyone else getting really pissed off by tose annoying MSDN subscription ads that have been running recently (as in right now on my screen)? You know what I mean, the red flash ones that stretch down and take up lke half the screen whenever your mouse passes remotely over them....whatever - they're pissing the shit out of me. I want to be able to move my mouse with freedom, without that thing coming and taking over my field of view. I don't particulary have a problem with the banner ads in general (sometimes they're useful), but I don't want one that decides it's all right to claim my screen. Dammit, I want a banner ad, not a big red monster.
There we go...move along folks, nothng to see here.
As many people have pointed out, it's the usage of the logo that's caused (this) C&D letter. And in this case, PCI-SIG is in the right. They have a trademarked logo with defined licensing procedures, which the site is using without permission or license. They complain that that usage may confuse people into thiking the site is affiliated with PCI-SIG: maybe it does, maybe it dosen't. The fact is that he's using their logo without permission. They seem to like his idea of providing a listing, they're just not exactly down with the (implied) association with their organization. And then there's the if-you-don't-defend-it-you-loose-it thing about trademarks and the like...
Then again, there are six letters in the word "PCI-SIG," and if you write that three times (the number of letters in the logo they're complaining about) you get 666 and a board headed by a guy from MS. So find all the conspiricies you want, or have the guy take down the logo from his webpage, do a s/"PCI"/"PCI-compatible"/, and see what the lawyers have to say.
I'm currently at McGill, a major (30 000+ students) Canadian University, and here it's quite obvious that girls don't dig the programming. In my Intro to Comp Eng class (that everyone in Comp or Software has to take) there were four girls out of 15 students. Of those four, two were brilliant (and one was attractive too), and the other two got Cs.
The CompEng male-female ratio definatley isn't true for the rest of Engineering here tho: Chemical is almost totally female-dominated (any ideas why? we don't know) and civil is about even. So yeah, even in Canada there arn't many girls in CompEng/Software/ECE...the faculty of arts however, is a toally different story.
I've got this great little thngy I use to play my CDs. The case outputs very clean analog audio, great headphone output and a SPDIF coax link which plugs directly into my receiver. It works great standalone, it has a complete front panel, ie backlit LCD display, stop, play, pause, next and previous track buttons. It has a cabeled remote, plays CD-RWs wonderfully, and dosen't heat up. It can run directly with only a power supply, and can even run without the power supply if needed!
Know what? It's a Sony D-EJ815 Discman.
I've spent the last year doing nothing in far-off places: in short, I took a Gap year. I met people who's dreams ranged from seeing a sunrise in every country in the world, to seeing one plant grow in their yard. Why did I take a year away from my future and spend a great deal of money on the process? To try and uncover the surface of this post - what do I want to do with my life. Did I find the answer? Not especially. I found a what a whole bunch of other people want to do with their lives, but couln't come to grips with what I wanted with mine. And then it hit me, while sitting in the Auckland airport.
I want to create something beautiful. I want to bring something that I see as beauty into the world.
I haven't found what that will be - will it be a memory of a scene in a foerign land, will it be a circuit so efficient and well made that the only fittign word is beautiful - but that's what I want to do. But to generalize, isn't that what we all want to do? Pick anyone famous, and within a few minutes you can find the beauty the sought to produce. Plato? The idea of the rule of the people. Einstein? A family (but look what he cam up with to get there). Hitler? A pure aryan race - he saw that as beauty, despite the fact that most of us don't.
So there you have it. What do I want to do with my life? Make something beautiful. Now, I just have to discover what that's gonna be...
Another great example of reducio ad absurdum - taking something to its absurd extreme. Or they could be simply making fun of the international copyright system.
I'd say why not brute force the thing, but here's something easier...Make a device that constantly scans for the signal of a token (there has to be some characteristic fingerprint to the signal). When it finds one, remember the signal and indicate to the user. User then goes and mugs target, takes laptop, uses stored signal. We've shown that man-in-the-middle attacks are do-able for a system like this, so why not keep with what works? If one knows how the system works, and can get a long enough string of interactions between the token and the server, then the key is vaunerable. Maybe this means that you have to tail the guy for a while, but let's be honest - if he's using one of these systems (I don't imagine they come cheap) then there's probably somehting worth stealing on that machine, if that's what you're up to. Make a scanner that tracks the signature of packets, walk around the financial centers of the world, and then the device goes off you know which laptops to take.
On another note, this reminds me of the plan to put RFIDs in the new high-denomination Euro-notes. Something like takes all the effort of guesing who to mug: emit the signal, and anytime you get a response, you know the guys's packing a high-value Eruo-note.
According to this Wired article, Ford has developed one of these systems (they're calling it the third age suit), designed to add thirty years to your age so that their designers can get a sense of how old people feel in their cars. The guys that designed the Focus all had to wear these things for a while and play with Ford's other cars when they were in the design stages of teh interior, to get a sens of what worked and what didn't for older people.
I also find it neat that the Toyota Echo was expressely designed for older people (or says the dealer). Personally, I thought older people liked to drive huge cars like Buicks and Caddies (even ones from the eighties), but my grandmother has an Echo and loves it. The seats are high up and the hood is short for more visability, and all the nobs and dials seem bigger than usual for cars that size. Makes me laugh seeing twenty-somethings driving them...
Has always fascinated me with how simple, addictive, and satifing it is, especially whne you consider it's essentially two lathed pieces of wood and some string. Make up your own rules and wham, bam, thank you ma'am - you've got a great game.
At first I though kids nowadays wouldn't get it, being used to fancy-ass electrical toys. I brought one to the Camp where I work - bunch of well-off kids - one found it on my bed, played with it, and within a week they were making them in arts and crafts. They were hooked for the rest of the summer...Funny how things that are popular always seem to swing back into usage.
Since almost no comments here are about the actual post, I've got a cultural question...
Where/How did the "In Soviet Russia..." posts come from? I remember where things like 1.2.3.Profit and the now-passe Mastercard and All Your Base jokes started, but what brought on this spur of neo-Marxist-Lenninist thought?