I guess my real question was, do the customs inspectors necessarily know the difference between a "nuclear drink" and an equally radioactive liquid whose radiation source is Pu or enriched U?
I definitely hit letters with my thumbs. Looking at how I typed this post, it was mostly "c"s. (There was a previous version of this post that had unquoted "c"s in it.) This is not how I was taught to "touch type" in school, but I type faster than people who type that way and don't get much RSI pain unless I set myself up to type in an odd position. I learned to type this way by BBSing at all hours of the night when I was a young lad.
"Ergonomic" keyboards mostly cramp my style. (I haven't tried "real" ones like Maltron's, though.) The only keyboard I'm really happy on these days is a Mac laptop keyboard.
I often dial phones fast enough to confuse overly complicated ones.
These are all just data points that suggest that yes, if you grow up with keypads and use them constantly, you will adapt in ways that people who haven't don't. (Surprise!)
An interesting question is whether a genuine smuggler of nuclear material could have done exactly what your uncle did to get something genuinely dangerous through the border.
Why do our rulers take away our rights? Here are some possibilities:
"Because they can." Anyone who has a lot of political power got it because he wanted it so much he dedicated his life, his honor, and his sacred fortune to getting it. Do you think that kind of motivation comes out of a desire to help one's fellow man, rather than being simply for its own sake? If not, then it is clear that any politician will try to maximize his power, taking whatever he thinks he can get away with. It merely happens that now he can get away with more.
They're genuinely interested in protecting truth, justice, and the American Way, and now it is necessary to override the Constitution at any and all points so that the terrorists will not be able to kill people fast enough to destroy America and what it stands for (i.e., the Constitution). Under no circumstances will persons or organizations be designated terrorists who are not actually terrorists.
I can't imagine what conclusion a rational person would draw, being myself a stark raving paranoid loon.
It's worth mentioning what "reliability" means: it's more like 1/downtime than like uptime, which is why you'll pay maybe ten times more for another minute or two of uptime.
It's very likely that the company has a profoundly silly idea of how much uptime they really need.
I think you're missing the point of TCPA: you wouldn't be able to run any code, including Linux, that wasn't signed by whoever the hardware manufacturer decides is allowed to sign it. Compiling your own kernel is right out, as (probably) is running any kernel that isn't written by a megacorp with a deal by Intel.
I didn't see any mention of the OS. If it's networked and keyboardless, I have difficulty imagining he's running MacOS. (Then again, it looks like that PowerBook is not known to work with NetBSD or Linux.)
I'm not aware of any games that support both OpenGL and Direct3D, but then I'm not much of a gamer; I just play a little Quake 3 now and then, and my own software uses only OpenGL because I don't want to bother with a Windows-only API. My employer's software generally looks about the same under OpenGL and Direct3D, since we use almost all the same code (just with different API calls, texture formats, and so on) in both versions.
The company I work for writes 3D human simulation software. The PCs we write and test software on are basically high-end gaming machines, centered around the nVidia GeForce card of the week (rarely anything else, though we may get around to trying out the latest Radeons soon). In general, the OpenGL versions of our programs get about the same frame rates on Windows and Linux+XFree86.
OK, I stand corrected, the Scientology place is most of a block away from Microsoft territory. I did hedge the first post; it's been a couple of years.
What's with the talk of conspiracy theories? I didn't say Scientology secretly controls Microsoft (or vice versa), I asserted that the attitudes of the two are unpleasantly similar, and that they are physically close together, so it is easy to imagine a substantial overlap in membership.
I'm perfectly willing to believe many Microsoft people go to the nearby pizza places too; the difference is that the people at the pizza place do not have boundless enthusiasm and a desire to convert others, nor do their organizations pursue their goals with as much large-scale aggression and Microsoft and Scientology.
On bel-red yes, "half a mile down" no. The Scientology place might be half a mile from the hotel where MS put me up, but all the land between the hotel and the clams is MS campus if I recall correctly.
It's not a conspiracy theory; for that, you'll have to ask the German government. I do, however, assert that perky cultish enthusiasm is a trait in common among Hare Krishnas, clams, evangelical Christians, PIRG members, and young Microsofties. (The hardcore free software advocates I know are sarcastic, not perky.)
It's a cult. Everyone there loves it soooooooo much and wants to share it with you. They're smart, articulate, and scary.
When I interviewed there a couple of years ago, I noticed fairly that there is a largish Scientology outpost right on the campus. That and the "contagious enthusiasm" vibe that was coming off everybody weirded me out sufficiently that I didn't want to work there.
That said, there have definitely been concrete reasons to work there these past 20 years or so. As long as Microsoft keeps its thumb firmly on software users, its employees will have plenty of cash and benefits, nice buildings, and fascinating co-workers.
OK, so why is it not generally considered sufficient to reinstall IIS when you get 0wned by one of the ubiquitous worms?
And then, of course, there's this issue.
Re:Beware Covad.Net business practices
on
Covad On The Mend
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· Score: 1
Covad's main business is being a DSL provider, not an ISP. If that part of their business sucks, it's not really a reflection on the important stuff. Speakeasy.net is generally the right ISP to use with Covad DSL in my experience and that of my friends.
For what it's worth, Speakeasy doesn't guarantee any particular rate, but they'll be happy to lower the charge for their plan if you're not reliably getting the rate you're paying for. They'll give you one or more real static IPs and not restrict what you use it for. (I run a publicly accessible wireless gateway, for example.) As far as support for stuff that isn't part of their service, I dunno, but there's a newsgroup for unofficial support that's frequented by their clueful techs.
If you decide to join the cult, tell them I sent you and I'll get some free service. Mmm... cult.
Have you studied the theory of computation at all? There's this idea of a non-deterministic Turing machine, which is a Turing machine that explores all possible choices from a given set in parallel, and it's possible to prove that a deterministic Turing machine can simulate a non-deterministic one; it's just exponentially slower. Given that a neural network without a random number generator can be simulated by a Turing machine, what do you gain by adding a random number generator? At most, it seems to me that you might do a better job of choosing which branch of a problem to explore, which makes you no better off than a non-deterministic Turing machine.
People saying things like this usually start from the opinion that humans are Different & Special (tm). I don't think that's a reasonable a priori assumption.
Unless quantum mechanics really hides infinite complexity in finite space, the human mind is a discrete finite automaton, not even a Turing machine. If it makes you feel any better, computers are in the same boat.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they have lawyers?
I guess my real question was, do the customs inspectors necessarily know the difference between a "nuclear drink" and an equally radioactive liquid whose radiation source is Pu or enriched U?
I definitely hit letters with my thumbs. Looking at how I typed this post, it was mostly "c"s. (There was a previous version of this post that had unquoted "c"s in it.) This is not how I was taught to "touch type" in school, but I type faster than people who type that way and don't get much RSI pain unless I set myself up to type in an odd position. I learned to type this way by BBSing at all hours of the night when I was a young lad.
"Ergonomic" keyboards mostly cramp my style. (I haven't tried "real" ones like Maltron's, though.) The only keyboard I'm really happy on these days is a Mac laptop keyboard.
I often dial phones fast enough to confuse overly complicated ones.
These are all just data points that suggest that yes, if you grow up with keypads and use them constantly, you will adapt in ways that people who haven't don't. (Surprise!)
No, yesterday was Boomtime. Today is Prickle-Prickle, 34th day of the season of Bureaucracy (of course).
An interesting question is whether a genuine smuggler of nuclear material could have done exactly what your uncle did to get something genuinely dangerous through the border.
Why do our rulers take away our rights? Here are some possibilities:
I can't imagine what conclusion a rational person would draw, being myself a stark raving paranoid loon.
I'm shocked, shocked that a CEO would pursue short-term gains that will profit her personally at the expense of the company's long-term well-being.
Mmm... pump and dump.
It's worth mentioning what "reliability" means: it's more like 1/downtime than like uptime, which is why you'll pay maybe ten times more for another minute or two of uptime.
It's very likely that the company has a profoundly silly idea of how much uptime they really need.
I think you're missing the point of TCPA: you wouldn't be able to run any code, including Linux, that wasn't signed by whoever the hardware manufacturer decides is allowed to sign it. Compiling your own kernel is right out, as (probably) is running any kernel that isn't written by a megacorp with a deal by Intel.
I didn't see any mention of the OS. If it's networked and keyboardless, I have difficulty imagining he's running MacOS. (Then again, it looks like that PowerBook is not known to work with NetBSD or Linux.)
I'm not aware of any games that support both OpenGL and Direct3D, but then I'm not much of a gamer; I just play a little Quake 3 now and then, and my own software uses only OpenGL because I don't want to bother with a Windows-only API. My employer's software generally looks about the same under OpenGL and Direct3D, since we use almost all the same code (just with different API calls, texture formats, and so on) in both versions.
The company I work for writes 3D human simulation software. The PCs we write and test software on are basically high-end gaming machines, centered around the nVidia GeForce card of the week (rarely anything else, though we may get around to trying out the latest Radeons soon). In general, the OpenGL versions of our programs get about the same frame rates on Windows and Linux+XFree86.
OK, I stand corrected, the Scientology place is most of a block away from Microsoft territory. I did hedge the first post; it's been a couple of years.
What's with the talk of conspiracy theories? I didn't say Scientology secretly controls Microsoft (or vice versa), I asserted that the attitudes of the two are unpleasantly similar, and that they are physically close together, so it is easy to imagine a substantial overlap in membership.
I'm perfectly willing to believe many Microsoft people go to the nearby pizza places too; the difference is that the people at the pizza place do not have boundless enthusiasm and a desire to convert others, nor do their organizations pursue their goals with as much large-scale aggression and Microsoft and Scientology.
Raise it? I think they're pretty.
It's a cult. Everyone there loves it soooooooo much and wants to share it with you. They're smart, articulate, and scary.
When I interviewed there a couple of years ago, I noticed fairly that there is a largish Scientology outpost right on the campus. That and the "contagious enthusiasm" vibe that was coming off everybody weirded me out sufficiently that I didn't want to work there.
That said, there have definitely been concrete reasons to work there these past 20 years or so. As long as Microsoft keeps its thumb firmly on software users, its employees will have plenty of cash and benefits, nice buildings, and fascinating co-workers.
OK, so why is it not generally considered sufficient to reinstall IIS when you get 0wned by one of the ubiquitous worms? And then, of course, there's this issue.
And each service runs as a different user?
Covad's main business is being a DSL provider, not an ISP. If that part of their business sucks, it's not really a reflection on the important stuff. Speakeasy.net is generally the right ISP to use with Covad DSL in my experience and that of my friends.
For what it's worth, Speakeasy doesn't guarantee any particular rate, but they'll be happy to lower the charge for their plan if you're not reliably getting the rate you're paying for. They'll give you one or more real static IPs and not restrict what you use it for. (I run a publicly accessible wireless gateway, for example.) As far as support for stuff that isn't part of their service, I dunno, but there's a newsgroup for unofficial support that's frequented by their clueful techs.
If you decide to join the cult, tell them I sent you and I'll get some free service. Mmm... cult.
In what way is limiting the scope of a government-granted monopoly "legislating altruism"?
Ah. So it's not "it can do more stuff", but "it will get to the interesting stuff faster". I can buy that.
Have you studied the theory of computation at all? There's this idea of a non-deterministic Turing machine, which is a Turing machine that explores all possible choices from a given set in parallel, and it's possible to prove that a deterministic Turing machine can simulate a non-deterministic one; it's just exponentially slower. Given that a neural network without a random number generator can be simulated by a Turing machine, what do you gain by adding a random number generator? At most, it seems to me that you might do a better job of choosing which branch of a problem to explore, which makes you no better off than a non-deterministic Turing machine.
People saying things like this usually start from the opinion that humans are Different & Special (tm). I don't think that's a reasonable a priori assumption.
Unless quantum mechanics really hides infinite complexity in finite space, the human mind is a discrete finite automaton, not even a Turing machine. If it makes you feel any better, computers are in the same boat.