Did anyone actually RTFA? The part about Anonymous and what I read from the rest was pretty much common sense. Didn't try to make terrorists out of kids, and the only obvious "scare tactic" I found was that they had red headers in the pdf. I actually feel better knowing somebody is keeping an eye on things, just in case.
That being said, I think I understand a bit more about why there is a need for active watchdogs to supervise the police. Given their job they cannot sympathize with the organizations they investigate - and if they do it's likely they won't do their job right. Everything they see or hear about say, an animal rights group is through the perspective of possible trouble. And it is as it should be, that's what they are being paid for. But you cannot let the same people also guard personal rights... and the fault for the consequences belongs to whatever politician thought it was possible.
What, no Lisp? Just kidding. But seriously, Java has an interesting advantage: it's starting to benefit a lot from being open. On the same platform you can already program in Javascript, Ruby, Python, plus Scala and (my favorite) Clojure. And more to come.
And btw, you want to move away from older languages. What this whole generation of script-like languages has in common is that all of them are better then c/c++/java/c#.
You are right in that it's a culture issue, but believe you are wrong in your approach.
I realize from your point of view what they do is illegal, and immoral. What you fail to understand is that in their environment it is neither. China as a country profits massively from lack of licenses, so any laws enforcing them are most likely only for show. As for the moral aspect: they view it exactly as you view listening to an unlicensed mp3. In theory is vaguely wrong, but in practice walking on the grass is more serious.
Now, think a bit about the message you're sending. First, you don't give a damn about their culture. It's your company, your rules, your values, period. Second, you'll be seen as a weak manager. I'm sure there are dozens of other problems more serious then this (for them) and if you insist on dealing with a (from their point of view) useless issue first, that's not smart prioritizing.
Still, you may know all this and still want to make a difference, because you consider using unlicensed software is wrong. Ok, go for it. But think twice about how you do it and the side-effects.
AFAIK, they're more expensive. I buy Philips, no complaint whatsoever: nice light, only one "death" in 5 years (I let it on when the main voltage was waay below 220, and after this it was caput). They take about 3-5 min to warm-up.
AFAIK, Hawking radiation has a very very small rate of loss, a lot less then, for example, light reflected off the moon. If it wasn't so we could see black holes.
My mother is a dentist in Eastern Europe. They have emergencies like everybody else, when they can't refuse a pacient and most rules about insurance don't work. Back when she worked for the state they had mandatory emergency service 24/24 (I remember she often complained it was very tiring, but better paid). They still have it at bigger hospitals.
There was an article a while back (unfortunately I can't seem to find it... maybe on edge.org?) about the role of environmental factors in gene activation, particulary in cases of autism. Depending on several factors a brain will be better at either practical sciences or social skills. Now, the interesting part is that if you're born on the practical side, the social part can be learned. It'll take years and some effort, but as many ex high-school geek kids can tell you, it works.
Also, there was a comment about "good old boys/rich kids club" that doesn't sound very good. I think it's not that, but a problem of perspective. The simple truth is technical matters, even if a lot more fun, are in 99% of cases secondary to real-world matters. It's not that the invention creates the product/company, but a lot of factors determine the need for that product, which the invention merely facilitates.
Also, from Jared Diamond, the factors which determine the success of an inovation: (1) economic advantage, (2) social value and prestige, (3) compatibility with vested interests, and (4) ease with which its advantages can be observed.
Se the "change of accident type" post above. Most accidents ABS facilitates (according to that study) are 1. you being rear-ended and 2. you going off the road. Both are bad for you but not so much for the insurance company.
Uh... actually it's not. Assuming you'll change your mind, if you start with with windows you have it installed from the start, and thus pay a small amount included in the price of the laptop. But if you start with linux, you'll have to buy a separate windows license which will most likely be more expensive.
This reminds me of the forum at ornery (http://ornery.org/), one of Orson Scott Card's sites. Pretty much everybody there thinks OSC is a nut and isn't shy of saying so, and still the guy keeps footing the bill and AFAIK has never interfered with the forum. We're not talking about a few people, the forum is pretty damn big and reasonably well known.
(As for _why_ they think that about him, that's a different discussion. Suffices to say he's always been openly pro-Bush.)
I was musing about this lately. I'm in an Eastern European country, and I just got an US hosting. I don't need very fast pings, just webapps and a couple of sites. It's starting to down on me that just because yahoo is also in US doesn't mean my sites will be as responsive. Apparently it costs a lot of money to make things work like they should.
That may have been tongue-in-cheek, but i'll bite anyways. In this case even if the first medium would have been paper, you'd still have heard of it through a video. Those particular demonstrations work much better this way then in print. Imagine what you would have thought reading an article about someone modding a wii remote. Boring, eh?
My mother (dentist) used to tell me how every med student "gets" at least half the diseases he's studying in his first year.
As for the subject at hand, it's definitely justified in some cases. The question is how often it happens, and if it's ever used as a solution for an uncertain/difficult diagnosis.
If law would be software, it would be in dire need of refactoring. It's a very bad idea to allow searches only to have a later bill limit their scope. The default should be (and technically is) that searches are illegal, and the exception has very well defined limits.
At the very least, the original act should be _replaced_ with a more restrictive version.
Re:Information wants 2 be free (and so does Iron M
on
Iron Man Released
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· Score: 1
I'm waiting for the end-of-credits sequence to come to youtube. Man those credits are long!...
Re:Not critical of the US military??
on
Iron Man Released
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· Score: 1
There was a fair share of weaseling there. Since Stark decided to close the business it was obvious it was (at least partly) an out-of-company problem - and that means the US military. But they did set up the "black guy" as a friendly character, and the businessman as the bad guy to fit the stereotypes.
(speaking of, is there a name for the black guy positive character in all the movies?)
Well it _did_ have a rather weak character development. But i'm used to anime and dead-tree books so i probably have way too high expectations. Other than that it rocked.
OR this could be a sign that the movie is good. I personally saw it two days ago and it rocked, but of course since i'm just a dummy account of some marketing company what do i know.
Basically it boils down to the fact that the universe is huge not only in space, but also in time. You have to multiply the probability that ET is close enough to come visit, with the probability that it happens in a 100 - 10.000 year window so we'd remember.
Plus you'd have to multiply this with the chances that they give a damn.
Conclusion: it's quite likely ET is around, but don't hold your breath waiting for him...
There's a great book by Marvin Minsky on the subject, "The Emotion Machine". It basicaly dispels the myth of the brain of a big black box which somehow thinks. When you play tennis (or do anything else) there's a lot of mechanisms at play, all of them equally "you". The part which we call counscious is... well, it doesn't really make sense to talk about such a "part".
Email is arguably the most reliable thing the internet has to offer. What I never understood is why companies keep using their own "last mile" solution for email, along with outlook or outlook clones. I've used yahoo mail for 10 years and gmail since is started, and I never had a lost email. Using my own web server on the other hand, (for technical reasons only, like backups or alerts) often led to problems, mostly due to full hard disks or something like that. Now there is free gmail for companies, but even before you could do the same with yahoo & comp for a small fee. Having your own mail server is a lot like wiring the house yourself: you may have some obscure advantage, but you're 10 times more likely to be electrocuted when the neighbor floods you.
I'd have expected a comment like this to be 5 Insightful from the beginning, but It's the truth anyways. However this is not the end.
I've been involved in the last year with a small courier company, and spent lots of my time dreaming of ways to deliver envelopes/small packages in a city. The mosr recurring dream was mortar style launchers:) However pneumatic tubes linking major business buildings are a very close second. I'd be really happy with just a few major lines connecting different parts of the city, leaving the last mile to be covered "by hand", especially if the system could also deliver merchandise. It could be worth it just for environmental reasons, replacing fleets of trucks with fleets of much smaller last mile vehicles. Anyways, the system's ultimate incarnation will be a B2B, infrastructure backbone, and definitely not a deliver-to-your-cellar thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Did anyone actually RTFA? The part about Anonymous and what I read from the rest was pretty much common sense. Didn't try to make terrorists out of kids, and the only obvious "scare tactic" I found was that they had red headers in the pdf. I actually feel better knowing somebody is keeping an eye on things, just in case.
That being said, I think I understand a bit more about why there is a need for active watchdogs to supervise the police. Given their job they cannot sympathize with the organizations they investigate - and if they do it's likely they won't do their job right. Everything they see or hear about say, an animal rights group is through the perspective of possible trouble. And it is as it should be, that's what they are being paid for. But you cannot let the same people also guard personal rights... and the fault for the consequences belongs to whatever politician thought it was possible.
What, no Lisp? Just kidding. But seriously, Java has an interesting advantage: it's starting to benefit a lot from being open. On the same platform you can already program in Javascript, Ruby, Python, plus Scala and (my favorite) Clojure. And more to come.
And btw, you want to move away from older languages. What this whole generation of script-like languages has in common is that all of them are better then c/c++/java/c#.
You are right in that it's a culture issue, but believe you are wrong in your approach.
I realize from your point of view what they do is illegal, and immoral. What you fail to understand is that in their environment it is neither. China as a country profits massively from lack of licenses, so any laws enforcing them are most likely only for show. As for the moral aspect: they view it exactly as you view listening to an unlicensed mp3. In theory is vaguely wrong, but in practice walking on the grass is more serious.
Now, think a bit about the message you're sending. First, you don't give a damn about their culture. It's your company, your rules, your values, period.
Second, you'll be seen as a weak manager. I'm sure there are dozens of other problems more serious then this (for them) and if you insist on dealing with a (from their point of view) useless issue first, that's not smart prioritizing.
Still, you may know all this and still want to make a difference, because you consider using unlicensed software is wrong. Ok, go for it. But think twice about how you do it and the side-effects.
AFAIK, they're more expensive. I buy Philips, no complaint whatsoever: nice light, only one "death" in 5 years (I let it on when the main voltage was waay below 220, and after this it was caput). They take about 3-5 min to warm-up.
AFAIK, Hawking radiation has a very very small rate of loss, a lot less then, for example, light reflected off the moon. If it wasn't so we could see black holes.
You really need a stint on 4chan. If I learned anything there, is the fact that people are naturally good.
My mother is a dentist in Eastern Europe. They have emergencies like everybody else, when they can't refuse a pacient and most rules about insurance don't work. Back when she worked for the state they had mandatory emergency service 24/24 (I remember she often complained it was very tiring, but better paid). They still have it at bigger hospitals.
I don't know how it is in US, of course.
There was an article a while back (unfortunately I can't seem to find it... maybe on edge.org?) about the role of environmental factors in gene activation, particulary in cases of autism. Depending on several factors a brain will be better at either practical sciences or social skills. Now, the interesting part is that if you're born on the practical side, the social part can be learned. It'll take years and some effort, but as many ex high-school geek kids can tell you, it works.
Also, there was a comment about "good old boys/rich kids club" that doesn't sound very good. I think it's not that, but a problem of perspective. The simple truth is technical matters, even if a lot more fun, are in 99% of cases secondary to real-world matters. It's not that the invention creates the product/company, but a lot of factors determine the need for that product, which the invention merely facilitates.
Also, from Jared Diamond, the factors which determine the success of an inovation: (1) economic advantage, (2) social value and prestige, (3) compatibility with vested interests, and (4) ease with which its advantages can be observed.
Se the "change of accident type" post above. Most accidents ABS facilitates (according to that study) are 1. you being rear-ended and 2. you going off the road. Both are bad for you but not so much for the insurance company.
Uh... actually it's not. Assuming you'll change your mind, if you start with with windows you have it installed from the start, and thus pay a small amount included in the price of the laptop. But if you start with linux, you'll have to buy a separate windows license which will most likely be more expensive.
So it's "cheaper _unless_ you change your mind".
This reminds me of the forum at ornery (http://ornery.org/), one of Orson Scott Card's sites. Pretty much everybody there thinks OSC is a nut and isn't shy of saying so, and still the guy keeps footing the bill and AFAIK has never interfered with the forum. We're not talking about a few people, the forum is pretty damn big and reasonably well known.
(As for _why_ they think that about him, that's a different discussion. Suffices to say he's always been openly pro-Bush.)
I was musing about this lately. I'm in an Eastern European country, and I just got an US hosting. I don't need very fast pings, just webapps and a couple of sites. It's starting to down on me that just because yahoo is also in US doesn't mean my sites will be as responsive. Apparently it costs a lot of money to make things work like they should.
That may have been tongue-in-cheek, but i'll bite anyways. In this case even if the first medium would have been paper, you'd still have heard of it through a video. Those particular demonstrations work much better this way then in print. Imagine what you would have thought reading an article about someone modding a wii remote. Boring, eh?
My mother (dentist) used to tell me how every med student "gets" at least half the diseases he's studying in his first year.
As for the subject at hand, it's definitely justified in some cases. The question is how often it happens, and if it's ever used as a solution for an uncertain/difficult diagnosis.
If law would be software, it would be in dire need of refactoring.
It's a very bad idea to allow searches only to have a later bill limit their scope. The default should be (and technically is) that searches are illegal, and the exception has very well defined limits.
At the very least, the original act should be _replaced_ with a more restrictive version.
I'm waiting for the end-of-credits sequence to come to youtube. Man those credits are long!...
There was a fair share of weaseling there. Since Stark decided to close the business it was obvious it was (at least partly) an out-of-company problem - and that means the US military. But they did set up the "black guy" as a friendly character, and the businessman as the bad guy to fit the stereotypes.
(speaking of, is there a name for the black guy positive character in all the movies?)
Well it _did_ have a rather weak character development. But i'm used to anime and dead-tree books so i probably have way too high expectations. Other than that it rocked.
OR this could be a sign that the movie is good. I personally saw it two days ago and it rocked, but of course since i'm just a dummy account of some marketing company what do i know.
Basically it boils down to the fact that the universe is huge not only in space, but also in time. You have to multiply the probability that ET is close enough to come visit, with the probability that it happens in a 100 - 10.000 year window so we'd remember.
Plus you'd have to multiply this with the chances that they give a damn.
Conclusion: it's quite likely ET is around, but don't hold your breath waiting for him...
There's a great book by Marvin Minsky on the subject, "The Emotion Machine". It basicaly dispels the myth of the brain of a big black box which somehow thinks. When you play tennis (or do anything else) there's a lot of mechanisms at play, all of them equally "you". The part which we call counscious is... well, it doesn't really make sense to talk about such a "part".
So it's really the government who's doing it and Anonymous retired years ago?
Email is arguably the most reliable thing the internet has to offer. What I never understood is why companies keep using their own "last mile" solution for email, along with outlook or outlook clones. I've used yahoo mail for 10 years and gmail since is started, and I never had a lost email.
Using my own web server on the other hand, (for technical reasons only, like backups or alerts) often led to problems, mostly due to full hard disks or something like that. Now there is free gmail for companies, but even before you could do the same with yahoo & comp for a small fee. Having your own mail server is a lot like wiring the house yourself: you may have some obscure advantage, but you're 10 times more likely to be electrocuted when the neighbor floods you.
The difference is, once on the other side they could get nacked and live happily ever after. We can't.
I'd have expected a comment like this to be 5 Insightful from the beginning, but It's the truth anyways. However this is not the end.
:) However pneumatic tubes linking major business buildings are a very close second. I'd be really happy with just a few major lines connecting different parts of the city, leaving the last mile to be covered "by hand", especially if the system could also deliver merchandise. It could be worth it just for environmental reasons, replacing fleets of trucks with fleets of much smaller last mile vehicles.
I've been involved in the last year with a small courier company, and spent lots of my time dreaming of ways to deliver envelopes/small packages in a city. The mosr recurring dream was mortar style launchers
Anyways, the system's ultimate incarnation will be a B2B, infrastructure backbone, and definitely not a deliver-to-your-cellar thing.