Actually, I've been doing this for years. Whenever someone says something really dumb, I repeat it back to them, verbatim, and watch their stunned silence as they try to figure out what they hell it was they were thinking when they opened their mouth.
Boss: Can you get next week's work done by 2:00 today? Me: Can you get next week's work done by 2:00 today? Blank stare... followed by: Boss: No. Me:No. Blank stare... followed by: Boss: Really? Me: Really. Boss leaves room, frustrated with himself.
Back in the day there was a Far Side cartoon of a cave man forming cylinder-like shapes with his hands, holding them to his eyes like binoculars and staring intently at the table in front of him. The caption read: Prehistoric Microbiologists. I always thought: "Stupid caveman! He can't see anything." Now I realize he was staring at a Y chromosome... Because it would have been that much larger in his day.
The probe focusing upon money laundering has also include financial dealings alleged to direct money to Nigerian sources to buy plutonium. Sound like a movie plot, yet? $6 Trillion, that's a lot of lettuce."
OK, it's the Libyans who want plutonium and used pinball machine parts, and you only need a couple heads of lettuce to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity with Mr. Fusion, not 6 exa-heads of lettuce. Get your Back To The Future quotes straight!
Playing classical music that is no longer protected by copyright and performed for the purpose of free redistribution/public performance keeps the IP lawyers away. They can't stand to hear anything that cannot be used as the basis of a lawsuit. Interestingly enough, keeping the lawyers off the streets may reduce crime more than keeping rowdy teens away.
We may be on to something here... what can we play in public places to keep bank execs away? Anyone have audio transcripts of Congressional inquiries into the subprime mortgage crisis? I'd like to play that loudly on my phone the next time I'm standing in line at the bank... if everyone did that, it would be better than a sea of Guy Fawkes masks.
Passionate discussion with your peers? Im sorry, I think I hear Woody Allen and Marshall McLuhan weighing in on this:
(pulls Woody Allen video clip out of his back pocket and plays it)
Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!
Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me...
[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]
Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!
Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!
Pretentious Frauds and idiots with loud opinions existed before the Web. When Allen filmed this scene over 30 years ago, I think he was really dreaming about having a phone with a YouTube app in his pocket so he could refute them all.
There are some things you just know better than to do. Don't yell "bomb" on a plane, don't point toy guns at people, don't joke about threatening a head of state, and don't send your buddies a text message about blowing people away as they are on their way to the airport.
Here's the part of TFA that gets me:
Allami says he hasn't been able to get a certificate of good conduct, which he would need in order to get a job working in finance.
His allegations have not been proven in court and the application is to be presented at the Montreal courthouse on March 5.
Provincial police spokesman Guy Lapointe says the force is aware of the case but will not comment as it is before the courts. A Justice Department spokesperson also declined to comment.
Police had in Laval, Que., where he applied for the certificate, found terrorism accusations and public mischief on his file, even though his public file shows no signs of the allegations.
"Without the certificate of good conduct, the plaintiff can no longer work in his profession," the document states.
First of all, you need a "certificate of good conduct" from the police to work in the financial industry in Canada? On Wall Street, you almost need a certificate of unscupulous conduct to work in the financial industry.
Second, Canadians have a "public file?" This sounds like something that was dreamed up to make people feel like they could access the government's information about them. But it implies that there's a private file as well that you will never see, which defeats the purpose of having a public file. In the U.S., you can request your FBI file for a fee, but they can tell you they don't have anything on you when they do. And the best part is that one of the requirements for obtaining the file is that you have local law enforcement fingerprint all ten fingers and send that along with your $18 payment. "Mr. Smith, you didn't have a criminal record before we received your request. However, thanks to your voluntary submission of your fingerprints, we discovered you match some prints found at a crime scene that had us stumped 10 years ago. We're going to have to take you in for questioning."
I always thought it was amusing that the German court system would ban the sale of iPads after much of the Bundestag (the German parliament) bought them for themselves and claimed them as a work expense. They're ubiquitous now in the Bundestag... you see them in photos, one member had to pause during the speech he was reading from his iPad when it crashed, they have officially approved the device for use in reading speeches, and they made the Polish parliament (Sejm) so jealous they followed suit! They're Apple's best advertising agency in Europe.
I know, I know... classic case of left hand doing one thing and the right hand doing another... that's part of what makes it so funny.
The Slashdot summary and the article it links to both got the name of the original story's author wrong. It's "Rajiv Chandrasekaran." He's a somewhat noteworthy reporter because for slashdotters because he was The Washington Post's lead reporter covering the Microsoft Antitrust Trial in DC. He practically lived in that courtroom during the trial.
Reading Slashdot every day is starting to make me wonder if I'm allowed to do anything besides spend all my money and work (for less) without getting sued or arrested for copyright, patent, counterfeiting, or violating some all encompassing do-what-I-say law.
This is why I only read Slashdot every other day. On my off days, I peruse the MPAA and RIAA news pages because I like reading about how everyone and their mother is stealing billions of dollars from them every day. It's not true, but it makes me feel like the 99% is winning, and it helps balance out all the pessimistic negative news you see here. And sometimes it's just plain funny:
There is a near universal consensus that cracking down on foreign rogue websites is an important priority for the U.S. government. The Senate had an opportunity to have a national conversation about an important and urgent issue: protecting American workers and consumers from foreign criminals. It is a shame that the Senate will not have that debate next week.
This issue is too important, too vital to our economy, to let misleading demagoguery have a veto over meaningful reforms. Everyone, every intermediary in the Internet ecosystem, has a role to play and a responsibility to help. We have been told repeatedly that the tech community agrees that something needs to be done. We take them at their word, and continue to hope that we can sit down with responsible leaders from that community to devise a solution that will address counterfeiting and theft and, yes, bring the rule of law to the Internet.
They didn't even put a date on their news release. Know why? Because it's a timeless classic. They're going to use this for 10 years, and then they'll start charging you money for the next 120 years to go back and read it for the entertainment value. You gotta love these guys! If they pulled their PR people out of their cubicles and put them on stage doing stand-up, I might just pay to watch!
July 13, 2008 Smart Parking Spaces in San Francisco
This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation's most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment. Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.
September 28, 2011 IBM Launches Parking Meter Analytics System
"It's not just a parking spot, think of it as a 'revenue-producing asset,' says Vinodh Swaminathan, IBM's director of intelligent transportation systems. Working with San Francisco-based startup Streetline, IBM has launched a system designed to help cities ease parking congestion and collect more parking fees. Streetline's remote sensors can determine if a parking space is taken by a car, whether a customer has paid, and how much time is left on the meter. And IBM's business intelligence software parses the data and generates reports and statistics for government managers. Drivers can benefit too: A free mobile phone app can help locate available parking spaces."
Anyway, there's a difference between observing patterns in the way a person's neurons react to hearing a word and actually reading their thoughts. And I'm sure everyone fires different neurons when they hear the same thing... probably just as unique as a fingerprint.
When someone says Farrel is going to play Hauser in the 2012 remake of Total Recall, my mind is thinking "Will Ferrell is totally wrong for that part!"
Another person is thinking Colin Farrell might make a good Hauser (just kidding, no one is thinking that... Have you seen The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus?).
Another person is thinking "is Hollywood just going to remake everything to death?"
And yet another person is thinking, "I wonder what they're serving for lunch today."
The article also mentions that Paget's company is working on a jamming device called GuardBunny that slips into your wallet, complete with a rabbit head logo and eyes that glow (there's a picture on page two) when it's activated. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a humorous Monty Python reference? "Run away, High-Tech Pickpocket! Run away!" Or a creepy Donnie Darko reference? "Why do you wear that stupid bunny suit?" "Why do you wear that stupid smart credit card that broadcasts its credentials?"
My 1996 Performa 6360 (160 Mhz processor, 16Mb RAM) had "voice recognition" capabilities, but it was a limited set of commands the system had to listen for, and if you didn't enunciate the way the system expected, it wouldn't understand. The two big selling points for Siri are:
Natural Speech Processing. You can speak naturally, and you can say just about anything, and Siri gets it. That is accomplished because there is a giant server farm processing the recorded sound file and interpreting it. Presumably, it learns and gets better because collectively it's hearing millions of different voices, speech patterns and requests every day. You couldn't do that on your phone. Your old Windows mobile required you to stick to a script, expected you to speak pre-defined commands and chose the command it thought you said. Steve Jobs was big on technology being intuitive. He believed that if people have to receive training to operate your device, you designed it wrong. This was the holy grail for him, because you talk to the machine the way you would talk to a person and it just works. And that's what the majority of non-technical people want.
Intelligent Responses. Siri makes semi-intelligent guesses as to what you want, whether you're saying "Text mom this..." or "Where's a good place to hide a body?" In the former case, it takes dictation. In the latter, it suggests secluded places. It's far more complex than your old phone.
So the service is collapsing under the weight of the attention? At the end of the day, a serious Siri competitor can only come from a huge, very well-financed company because Apple sunk a ridiculous amount of money into a data center to support Siri. And they still have tens of billions of dollars in cash lying around. True Knowledge, the company that introduced Evi, has had about $5.2 million in announced financing over the last four years. This is like calling that guy selling strawberries on the street corner "Safeway's competition." He may have good strawberries, but he's not going to make a dent in Safeway's business. He simply couldn't handle that kind of volume. I know we've seen plenty of David and Goliath technology matchups that have been upended, but this technology is only made possible and sustainable by a huge investment. By the time that ceases to be true (when you can run Siri on your phone without reliance on the cloud) Apple will be even further ahead of the field.
The MPAA should hire these guys to lobby Congress on their behalf, because they make a much more convincing argument for blatant bullshit than Chris Dodd ever did.
Also, IT books from 6 years ago are still entirely relevant.
This is absolutely true. Pick ten recent books on Learning C, open Terminal.app on a Mac and see if a beginner can compile an example. Eight out of ten books won't cut it. I know because a friend tried this recently in his quest to learn C. I gave him K&R and it JUST WORKED. And that was published 24 years ago!
On the other hand, picking up the Black Book on Mac OS 8.5 from the dollar bin at Fry's probably isn't going to do much for you, unless you're an interface designer at Microsoft.
Leonid Ksanfomaliti,...claims to have found signs of life...objects resembling... a scorpion
I haven't heard the Scorpions since the 80s. They were pretty good in their niche. Is this a reunion tour?
Nope. The summary specifies that the scientist's claims are based on 30-year-old photos, which means they may have been on Venus then (which isn't so far-fetched... they opened for a group called UFO in 1972 and their guitarist then joined UFO, so it's quite possible that the scientist saw a UFO who looked like a Scorpion because he used to be one), but according to Wikipedia they've been back for some time now. In fact, their tour at the time of these photos was called the Blackout Tour. Curiouser and curiouser.
Slashdot Mirror
Not completely analog. They have an "analog hole" in the center of disc, surrounded by digital data.
Actually, I've been doing this for years. Whenever someone says something really dumb, I repeat it back to them, verbatim, and watch their stunned silence as they try to figure out what they hell it was they were thinking when they opened their mouth.
Boss: Can you get next week's work done by 2:00 today?
Me: Can you get next week's work done by 2:00 today?
Blank stare... followed by:
Boss: No.
Me:No.
Blank stare... followed by:
Boss: Really?
Me: Really.
Boss leaves room, frustrated with himself.
Just because there's buzz, doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Now that "Don't Be Evil" is dead, I think your statement above should be Google's new mantra! Only with a capital B.
Back in the day there was a Far Side cartoon of a cave man forming cylinder-like shapes with his hands, holding them to his eyes like binoculars and staring intently at the table in front of him. The caption read: Prehistoric Microbiologists. I always thought: "Stupid caveman! He can't see anything." Now I realize he was staring at a Y chromosome... Because it would have been that much larger in his day.
The probe focusing upon money laundering has also include financial dealings alleged to direct money to Nigerian sources to buy plutonium. Sound like a movie plot, yet? $6 Trillion, that's a lot of lettuce."
OK, it's the Libyans who want plutonium and used pinball machine parts, and you only need a couple heads of lettuce to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity with Mr. Fusion, not 6 exa-heads of lettuce. Get your Back To The Future quotes straight!
Playing classical music that is no longer protected by copyright and performed for the purpose of free redistribution/public performance keeps the IP lawyers away. They can't stand to hear anything that cannot be used as the basis of a lawsuit. Interestingly enough, keeping the lawyers off the streets may reduce crime more than keeping rowdy teens away.
We may be on to something here... what can we play in public places to keep bank execs away? Anyone have audio transcripts of Congressional inquiries into the subprime mortgage crisis? I'd like to play that loudly on my phone the next time I'm standing in line at the bank... if everyone did that, it would be better than a sea of Guy Fawkes masks.
You don't even get 25.00 up front, you get 5 dollars, and then every 3 months, they give you 5 more dollars. Anyone who signs up for this is my enemy.
No, anyone who signs up for this is their own worst enemy.
2. Create the following AppleScript and use a cron job to run it once a month or so:
tell application "Google Chrome"
set URL of active tab of window 1 to "http://www.google.com"
activate
quit
end tell
3. Make Firefox your default browser
4. Profit!
5. Repeat steps one through four on another computer
Why does this seem oddly like mining bitcoins...
(pulls Woody Allen video clip out of his back pocket and plays it)
Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!
Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me...
[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]
Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!
Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!
Pretentious Frauds and idiots with loud opinions existed before the Web. When Allen filmed this scene over 30 years ago, I think he was really dreaming about having a phone with a YouTube app in his pocket so he could refute them all.
Were they found on megaupload's seized servers?
Here's the part of TFA that gets me:
Allami says he hasn't been able to get a certificate of good conduct, which he would need in order to get a job working in finance.
His allegations have not been proven in court and the application is to be presented at the Montreal courthouse on March 5.
Provincial police spokesman Guy Lapointe says the force is aware of the case but will not comment as it is before the courts. A Justice Department spokesperson also declined to comment.
Police had in Laval, Que., where he applied for the certificate, found terrorism accusations and public mischief on his file, even though his public file shows no signs of the allegations.
"Without the certificate of good conduct, the plaintiff can no longer work in his profession," the document states.
First of all, you need a "certificate of good conduct" from the police to work in the financial industry in Canada? On Wall Street, you almost need a certificate of unscupulous conduct to work in the financial industry.
Second, Canadians have a "public file?" This sounds like something that was dreamed up to make people feel like they could access the government's information about them. But it implies that there's a private file as well that you will never see, which defeats the purpose of having a public file. In the U.S., you can request your FBI file for a fee, but they can tell you they don't have anything on you when they do. And the best part is that one of the requirements for obtaining the file is that you have local law enforcement fingerprint all ten fingers and send that along with your $18 payment. "Mr. Smith, you didn't have a criminal record before we received your request. However, thanks to your voluntary submission of your fingerprints, we discovered you match some prints found at a crime scene that had us stumped 10 years ago. We're going to have to take you in for questioning."
I always thought it was amusing that the German court system would ban the sale of iPads after much of the Bundestag (the German parliament) bought them for themselves and claimed them as a work expense. They're ubiquitous now in the Bundestag... you see them in photos, one member had to pause during the speech he was reading from his iPad when it crashed, they have officially approved the device for use in reading speeches, and they made the Polish parliament (Sejm) so jealous they followed suit! They're Apple's best advertising agency in Europe.
I know, I know... classic case of left hand doing one thing and the right hand doing another... that's part of what makes it so funny.
The Slashdot summary and the article it links to both got the name of the original story's author wrong. It's "Rajiv Chandrasekaran." He's a somewhat noteworthy reporter because for slashdotters because he was The Washington Post's lead reporter covering the Microsoft Antitrust Trial in DC. He practically lived in that courtroom during the trial.
Reading Slashdot every day is starting to make me wonder if I'm allowed to do anything besides spend all my money and work (for less) without getting sued or arrested for copyright, patent, counterfeiting, or violating some all encompassing do-what-I-say law.
This is why I only read Slashdot every other day. On my off days, I peruse the MPAA and RIAA news pages because I like reading about how everyone and their mother is stealing billions of dollars from them every day. It's not true, but it makes me feel like the 99% is winning, and it helps balance out all the pessimistic negative news you see here. And sometimes it's just plain funny:
There is a near universal consensus that cracking down on foreign rogue websites is an important priority for the U.S. government. The Senate had an opportunity to have a national conversation about an important and urgent issue: protecting American workers and consumers from foreign criminals. It is a shame that the Senate will not have that debate next week.
This issue is too important, too vital to our economy, to let misleading demagoguery have a veto over meaningful reforms. Everyone, every intermediary in the Internet ecosystem, has a role to play and a responsibility to help. We have been told repeatedly that the tech community agrees that something needs to be done. We take them at their word, and continue to hope that we can sit down with responsible leaders from that community to devise a solution that will address counterfeiting and theft and, yes, bring the rule of law to the Internet.
They didn't even put a date on their news release. Know why? Because it's a timeless classic. They're going to use this for 10 years, and then they'll start charging you money for the next 120 years to go back and read it for the entertainment value. You gotta love these guys! If they pulled their PR people out of their cubicles and put them on stage doing stand-up, I might just pay to watch!
July 13, 2008
Smart Parking Spaces in San Francisco
This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation's most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment. Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.
September 28, 2011
IBM Launches Parking Meter Analytics System
"It's not just a parking spot, think of it as a 'revenue-producing asset,' says Vinodh Swaminathan, IBM's director of intelligent transportation systems. Working with San Francisco-based startup Streetline, IBM has launched a system designed to help cities ease parking congestion and collect more parking fees. Streetline's remote sensors can determine if a parking space is taken by a car, whether a customer has paid, and how much time is left on the meter. And IBM's business intelligence software parses the data and generates reports and statistics for government managers. Drivers can benefit too: A free mobile phone app can help locate available parking spaces."
Anyway, there's a difference between observing patterns in the way a person's neurons react to hearing a word and actually reading their thoughts. And I'm sure everyone fires different neurons when they hear the same thing... probably just as unique as a fingerprint.
Bonus points if you thought all four.
itwbennett, the author of this story, is now on the DHS no fly list.
I think you misspelled "internet." The Internet is now on the DHS no fly list.
I have no problem with Nokia making Windows phones. It's nice OS, even if it's lacking apps (in particular, no Skype ...
Good point. Someone should set up a meeting between MS and the company that owns Skype and see if they can't work something out.
The article also mentions that Paget's company is working on a jamming device called GuardBunny that slips into your wallet, complete with a rabbit head logo and eyes that glow (there's a picture on page two) when it's activated. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a humorous Monty Python reference? "Run away, High-Tech Pickpocket! Run away!" Or a creepy Donnie Darko reference? "Why do you wear that stupid bunny suit?" "Why do you wear that stupid smart credit card that broadcasts its credentials?"
So the service is collapsing under the weight of the attention? At the end of the day, a serious Siri competitor can only come from a huge, very well-financed company because Apple sunk a ridiculous amount of money into a data center to support Siri. And they still have tens of billions of dollars in cash lying around. True Knowledge, the company that introduced Evi, has had about $5.2 million in announced financing over the last four years. This is like calling that guy selling strawberries on the street corner "Safeway's competition." He may have good strawberries, but he's not going to make a dent in Safeway's business. He simply couldn't handle that kind of volume. I know we've seen plenty of David and Goliath technology matchups that have been upended, but this technology is only made possible and sustainable by a huge investment. By the time that ceases to be true (when you can run Siri on your phone without reliance on the cloud) Apple will be even further ahead of the field.
I'm sure there are many more, but I didn't want to spend my entire Sunday listing them. The point is: they've been doing this for many, many years.
The MPAA should hire these guys to lobby Congress on their behalf, because they make a much more convincing argument for blatant bullshit than Chris Dodd ever did.
Also, IT books from 6 years ago are still entirely relevant.
This is absolutely true. Pick ten recent books on Learning C, open Terminal.app on a Mac and see if a beginner can compile an example. Eight out of ten books won't cut it. I know because a friend tried this recently in his quest to learn C. I gave him K&R and it JUST WORKED. And that was published 24 years ago!
On the other hand, picking up the Black Book on Mac OS 8.5 from the dollar bin at Fry's probably isn't going to do much for you, unless you're an interface designer at Microsoft.
Leonid Ksanfomaliti, ...claims to have found signs of life...objects resembling ... a scorpion
I haven't heard the Scorpions since the 80s. They were pretty good in their niche. Is this a reunion tour?
Nope. The summary specifies that the scientist's claims are based on 30-year-old photos, which means they may have been on Venus then (which isn't so far-fetched... they opened for a group called UFO in 1972 and their guitarist then joined UFO, so it's quite possible that the scientist saw a UFO who looked like a Scorpion because he used to be one), but according to Wikipedia they've been back for some time now. In fact, their tour at the time of these photos was called the Blackout Tour. Curiouser and curiouser.