"Unfortunately, embarrassing a government employee almost always guarantees that you will get shafted somehow. There are just too many ways for them to "get even" with people who interfere in their little "kingdoms."
Or it could cause that government agency to become the whipping boy of the week. Congressmen score brownie points by overseeing that agency. It happened to the IRS a few years ago. IIRC- they do fewer audits now.
I would agree on principle, but I have reservations. I have seen too many patents worded in such a dodgy way that they could later come back and say "We own everything". They never really say HOW they would do whatever it is that they are patenting (or they say, "how, but not limited to"), just that it could be done. This kind of a "it could be done" patent should be turned down by default. They are the source of a lot of frivolous IP squatter lawsuits.
Lets see, I am in Germany and all the keyboards here look like this on the first (letter) row.
qwertzuiopü
Why would QWERTY be "wizened up"? Can you do this Ü, Ö, or Ä with a QWERTY keyboard? QWERTY is fine if (but no better) you are working ONLY in English. Keybuards tend to be language specific.
Don't forget the minivan. I recently bought one (Renault Espace). While car shopping it was my observation that station wagons such as the Audi A6, BMW 5 series and Saab 95 have about the same people/stuff carrying capacity as the Explorer sized SUVs. The smaller wagons such as the Passat are about the same as smallish SUVs. OK, the SUV makes you sit higher and feel a little more macho than the wagon. There is no other practical difference. I am talking poseur SUVs, which now dominate the market.
A minvan such as the Espace or Chrystler Voyager has MORE people/cargo capacity (both seat 7), but people do not buy them because of the macho factor. Minivans are family trucksters for soccer moms. SUVs are (or used to be, but the image remains)all about strength and capibility. Most people prefer that feeling, so they buy a poseur SUV that gives them the capable feeling. It is simply a penis extension.
If you need to tow stuff or go off road, get a pickup. If you need to haul a bunch of people, tow stuff and go off road, then you are stuck with a Suburban. The people that need this are the same ones that needed it 20 years ago and there were not ery many SUVs on the road then.
Probably not. They were built for different purposes. I once saw a documentary (PBS series from about ten years ago) and the Colossus machines were destroyed after the war and ended up as a footnote. IIRC- there was also a German telephone switch based computer that the Nazis decided was not worth pursuing.
You still can. It is called basic research. Like the Eniac, many things being done right now will seem to have minor signifigance for a long time, then they become VERY important. The guys playing around with quantum mechanics in the 1920's changed the world, but not right away. Kary Mullis' work in the early 80's made all modern DNA tools possible and enabled something whose effect on society is still unknown.
I am not a robot scientist (sorry - physicist), but I have a robot navigation question.
Why not use a constellation of transponders (RFID tags would actually be ideal - cheap and each is unique) and a two antenna setup to locate the robot's position relative to the transponders via interferometry? If you had a map (or could build one) and the transponders were in known positions in that map, then knowing where you are relative to the transponders would mean that the bot knows where it is. No need for unreliable image processing or bumpers that need to be manually trimmed.
Mountain bike. If the vibration and shock don't kill the thing, a decent crash will for sure. It is sure to put wieght weenies into hsyterics and if you have a hand free/spare attention, your are not really riding anyway.
Even better, wire the derauleurs into the computer so that you have to click a mouse to shift...
Does anyone know exactly what the "spyware" is? Is this something that is launched when opening the CD and NOT holding the shift, or does it do somtehing more insidious.
I am curious because I have this CD*. I was not to worried about the DRM on it becase my MP3 player is broken and I would just doenload a proper non DRM mp3 for the player anyway, but if installs gatorware style crap, then I am returning it.
* 10$ at Best Buy. I figured that it was cheap enough to justify actually buying the CD.
I am not saying that I think qc is BS. Not at all; in fact, when theorists gave (not at uni anymore) talks on the subject, I rarely missed them.
As a former experimentalist, I realize that qc is very hard to DO. I am not close enough to the field to say whether is "fundamentally not practical" hard to do, or just "takes a lot of hard work" hard to do. It is still worth researching in any case.
I am cynical enough about academic research and the way that researchers follow the grant money to be unsure about this particular researcher's motives. It may be that he decided that qc was exiting enough to do on its own. I saw a guy stick to his work even though he did not get any grants for many years because he was deeply interested. I was rather pleased to hear recently that he got a couple of nice grants and has a couple of RAs now. I saw a guy move to biophysics (another fashionable field) because there were problems that intrigued him.
I have also seen researchers whore for grants in a big way. Academia is about ego. Publish or perish! Without grant money, it is difficult for an experimentalist to do anything worthwhile. It is not so bad for theorists, but grant money still pays for graduate students (RAs that are on the project full time as opposed to TAs that also have teaching duties) and postdocs. Money simply makes it easier (in terms of manpower and equipment) to do the kinds of things that get you published. The number of publications, and even more so how often you are referenced determines you stature in academia. An unpublished professor is a nobody out in the wilderness. Science has its fads, just like the worlds of business, music and fashion. These fads tend to manifest themselves in the form of where the grant money is.
A slightly off topic anecdote; back when I was in grad school, one of the professors in my department jumped from stat mech to qc. I clearly remember his first talk when he started getting into qc. He said "Ooooo, this is bullshit"!.
Then when he discovered that he could score a bazillion dollars in grant money, he said "Ooooo, I think there is something to this"!.
Take a look at my java code sometime. I was recently reading an article on java performance and found that I do everything the way that I am NOT supposed to...
Well, at least people find my code easily readable/maintainable.
Well I guess Toothing might be THE killer app among some user types. I wonder how many people have actually gotten an introductory message and I wonder if the number of messages spiked in the days after the BBC article (which was linked on Wired IIRC).
How about a worm that set the phone to silent mode or whatever they are calling the "beep just once, shut up and vibrate" mode these days? There would actually a worm with a noble purpose.
Ummmm... Why do people bitch about the beer not being free?
What is the big deal? The washington post, nyt, etc are comercial operations and have to pay to keep the lights on. You can pay to read the newspaper in print or read it online for free provided you give them something in trade (i.e. account info).
They have to pay those journalists and pay for the Reuters/AP feeds. If you want to read their stuff, be prepared to trade for it. $/ or info.
If you want free beer, there are a million crappy blogs...
Aside from the joys of doughnuts in the snow, there is a good reason for rear drive. They can corner faster and under more control than fwd.
When you press the accelerator in a turn, there is additional normal force on the drive wheels resulting in an increased slip angle. Assuming a car with neutral steering tendancies under acceleration in a turn, this will cause a fwd vehicle will tend more toward understeer (push to the outside of a corner - nose out) and rwd will tend to oversteer (push to the inside - tail out).
With rwd and a powerful engine, you can enter the corner and accelerate through it using the oversteer to align the car going through the corner. With fwd, accelerating just pushes you to the outside of the corner. This is why most serious sports cars and race cars are rwd. They are set up for neutral or sligh understeer and you control the steering with the throttle as well as the steering wheel. Kinda like having an extra mouse button.
Just don't try it in the snow.;-) Doing it in the rain is not so smart either. I once owned a neutral/slight understeer rwd car with a 350 hp engine. Dry pavement corners were a blast, but I spun it a couple of times in the rain.
My emplorer is a large software firm based in Germany. There is an official policy from top management: 0 new hiring in the US or Germany as these are two of the more expensive (per developer) development centers (Tokyo is #1, but that is mostly localization). New hiring seems to be concentrated in Bangalore.
In the Adirondaks they have trail registers; just a covered eazel type thing with a log book. They tend to be at trailheads and major forks. Sign in if you want: name, # of people in the party, # of days you plan to be in the backcountry, intended route, address. Sign out when you leave.
No need for cameras/sensors/whatever. One nice thing about the backcountry is being away from it all. Among serious hikers, there is even controversy about taking a mobile phone into the woods. "If I break my leg, I can call for help". "Only unprepared morons ever need to be rescued and this lowers the threshold of asking of a heliocopter evac", etc.
Personally I do not want civilization to intrude when I am seeking solitude.
Most of the author's gripes were about storyline or AI. He was griping about PnP games on the computer when his points were really about a specific implementation.
I will retort by bringing up NWN. I DM a weekly group and many of these same people I have played PnP with over the decades.
AI- AI is a general computer game problem. What does the ogre do when you cast a certain spell? Generally this is always scripted and the AI is only as good as its code. The Meld into Stone exploit mentioned by the author is an AI exploit. An AI exploit is an AI exploit; it does not matter if it is on CivIII, a FPS or CRPG. The standard AI in nwn is not the smartest, but it IS replaceable. The individual scripts that fire on various events (when a NPC perceives another creature, when attacked, etc) can be tweaked or replaced. There are several user created AI systems available and some are quite good. If it bothers you that the ogre is still focused on the cleric, check at the end of a combat round to see if he is under the effect of Meld into Stone. If so, go after the fireballing mage instead. Oh and if a DM is possessing the ogre, he will probably flatten the mage first in any case.
Stroyline? Come on! Creating a quest is like writing dialog for a play, except that the story can branch because of whatever. If the creators of TOEE did not do this well, it is because they did not do this well. The BG series did this well. NWN's expansions did this well. There are numerous modules available for NWN that do this well. Then again, in any story without a GM, it is impossible to vary from the story in any meaningful way. I recall playing a neutral good ranger in BG2. On returning from the underdark with the Githyanki sword in my possession, I was confronted by the Githyanki seeking its return. The verbal exchange turned into a fight and fretty soon the area-of-effect spells were flying. Mind you this happened in the promenade district and several bystanders were killed by Githyanki AOE spells. This bothered my because my "good" character had chosen to fight to keep the nice sword despite the fact that innocents would die in the process. I was not penalized as the designers did not think of this situation beforehand. A good GM would have shifted me toward evil for putting personal gain before the lives of innocents. Any non-linear story will have such bugs because the designers will not be able to think of and script for every possible situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Just look for the exhibitionist type and she will be extra turned on. Oh, wait this is shashdot...
"Unfortunately, embarrassing a government employee almost always guarantees that you will get shafted somehow. There are just too many ways for them to "get even" with people who interfere in their little "kingdoms."
Or it could cause that government agency to become the whipping boy of the week. Congressmen score brownie points by overseeing that agency. It happened to the IRS a few years ago. IIRC- they do fewer audits now.
New business model:
1) Start a small company and cook up loosely worded patents.
2) Get bought out.
2) Profit!
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I would agree on principle, but I have reservations. I have seen too many patents worded in such a dodgy way that they could later come back and say "We own everything". They never really say HOW they would do whatever it is that they are patenting (or they say, "how, but not limited to"), just that it could be done. This kind of a "it could be done" patent should be turned down by default. They are the source of a lot of frivolous IP squatter lawsuits.
Ummmm.....
Lets see, I am in Germany and all the keyboards here look like this on the first (letter) row.
qwertzuiopü
Why would QWERTY be "wizened up"? Can you do this Ü, Ö, or Ä with a QWERTY keyboard? QWERTY is fine if (but no better) you are working ONLY in English. Keybuards tend to be language specific.
Don't forget the minivan. I recently bought one (Renault Espace). While car shopping it was my observation that station wagons such as the Audi A6, BMW 5 series and Saab 95 have about the same people/stuff carrying capacity as the Explorer sized SUVs. The smaller wagons such as the Passat are about the same as smallish SUVs. OK, the SUV makes you sit higher and feel a little more macho than the wagon. There is no other practical difference. I am talking poseur SUVs, which now dominate the market.
A minvan such as the Espace or Chrystler Voyager has MORE people/cargo capacity (both seat 7), but people do not buy them because of the macho factor. Minivans are family trucksters for soccer moms. SUVs are (or used to be, but the image remains)all about strength and capibility. Most people prefer that feeling, so they buy a poseur SUV that gives them the capable feeling. It is simply a penis extension.
If you need to tow stuff or go off road, get a pickup. If you need to haul a bunch of people, tow stuff and go off road, then you are stuck with a Suburban. The people that need this are the same ones that needed it 20 years ago and there were not ery many SUVs on the road then.
Probably not. They were built for different purposes. I once saw a documentary (PBS series from about ten years ago) and the Colossus machines were destroyed after the war and ended up as a footnote. IIRC- there was also a German telephone switch based computer that the Nazis decided was not worth pursuing.
You still can. It is called basic research. Like the Eniac, many things being done right now will seem to have minor signifigance for a long time, then they become VERY important. The guys playing around with quantum mechanics in the 1920's changed the world, but not right away. Kary Mullis' work in the early 80's made all modern DNA tools possible and enabled something whose effect on society is still unknown.
If you are on a plane and it depressurizes, the methanol in your laptop is the least of your concerns.
I am not a robot scientist (sorry - physicist), but I have a robot navigation question.
Why not use a constellation of transponders (RFID tags would actually be ideal - cheap and each is unique) and a two antenna setup to locate the robot's position relative to the transponders via interferometry? If you had a map (or could build one) and the transponders were in known positions in that map, then knowing where you are relative to the transponders would mean that the bot knows where it is. No need for unreliable image processing or bumpers that need to be manually trimmed.
Mountain bike. If the vibration and shock don't kill the thing, a decent crash will for sure. It is sure to put wieght weenies into hsyterics and if you have a hand free/spare attention, your are not really riding anyway.
Even better, wire the derauleurs into the computer so that you have to click a mouse to shift...
Does anyone know exactly what the "spyware" is? Is this something that is launched when opening the CD and NOT holding the shift, or does it do somtehing more insidious.
I am curious because I have this CD*. I was not to worried about the DRM on it becase my MP3 player is broken and I would just doenload a proper non DRM mp3 for the player anyway, but if installs gatorware style crap, then I am returning it.
* 10$ at Best Buy. I figured that it was cheap enough to justify actually buying the CD.
I am not saying that I think qc is BS. Not at all; in fact, when theorists gave (not at uni anymore) talks on the subject, I rarely missed them.
As a former experimentalist, I realize that qc is very hard to DO. I am not close enough to the field to say whether is "fundamentally not practical" hard to do, or just "takes a lot of hard work" hard to do. It is still worth researching in any case.
I am cynical enough about academic research and the way that researchers follow the grant money to be unsure about this particular researcher's motives. It may be that he decided that qc was exiting enough to do on its own. I saw a guy stick to his work even though he did not get any grants for many years because he was deeply interested. I was rather pleased to hear recently that he got a couple of nice grants and has a couple of RAs now. I saw a guy move to biophysics (another fashionable field) because there were problems that intrigued him.
I have also seen researchers whore for grants in a big way. Academia is about ego. Publish or perish! Without grant money, it is difficult for an experimentalist to do anything worthwhile. It is not so bad for theorists, but grant money still pays for graduate students (RAs that are on the project full time as opposed to TAs that also have teaching duties) and postdocs. Money simply makes it easier (in terms of manpower and equipment) to do the kinds of things that get you published. The number of publications, and even more so how often you are referenced determines you stature in academia. An unpublished professor is a nobody out in the wilderness. Science has its fads, just like the worlds of business, music and fashion. These fads tend to manifest themselves in the form of where the grant money is.
A slightly off topic anecdote; back when I was in grad school, one of the professors in my department jumped from stat mech to qc. I clearly remember his first talk when he started getting into qc. He said "Ooooo, this is bullshit"!.
Then when he discovered that he could score a bazillion dollars in grant money, he said "Ooooo, I think there is something to this"!.
Take a look at my java code sometime. I was recently reading an article on java performance and found that I do everything the way that I am NOT supposed to...
Well, at least people find my code easily readable/maintainable.
No, just one type.
Well I guess Toothing might be THE killer app among some user types. I wonder how many people have actually gotten an introductory message and I wonder if the number of messages spiked in the days after the BBC article (which was linked on Wired IIRC).
How about a worm that set the phone to silent mode or whatever they are calling the "beep just once, shut up and vibrate" mode these days? There would actually a worm with a noble purpose.
Ummmm... Why do people bitch about the beer not being free?
What is the big deal? The washington post, nyt, etc are comercial operations and have to pay to keep the lights on. You can pay to read the newspaper in print or read it online for free provided you give them something in trade (i.e. account info).
They have to pay those journalists and pay for the Reuters/AP feeds. If you want to read their stuff, be prepared to trade for it. $/ or info.
If you want free beer, there are a million crappy blogs...
Aside from the joys of doughnuts in the snow, there is a good reason for rear drive. They can corner faster and under more control than fwd.
;-) Doing it in the rain is not so smart either. I once owned a neutral/slight understeer rwd car with a 350 hp engine. Dry pavement corners were a blast, but I spun it a couple of times in the rain.
When you press the accelerator in a turn, there is additional normal force on the drive wheels resulting in an increased slip angle. Assuming a car with neutral steering tendancies under acceleration in a turn, this will cause a fwd vehicle will tend more toward understeer (push to the outside of a corner - nose out) and rwd will tend to oversteer (push to the inside - tail out).
With rwd and a powerful engine, you can enter the corner and accelerate through it using the oversteer to align the car going through the corner. With fwd, accelerating just pushes you to the outside of the corner. This is why most serious sports cars and race cars are rwd. They are set up for neutral or sligh understeer and you control the steering with the throttle as well as the steering wheel. Kinda like having an extra mouse button.
Just don't try it in the snow.
My emplorer is a large software firm based in Germany. There is an official policy from top management: 0 new hiring in the US or Germany as these are two of the more expensive (per developer) development centers (Tokyo is #1, but that is mostly localization). New hiring seems to be concentrated in Bangalore.
Or was that the A380? I can wait for 800 seats in coach. Can you say "Get to the aiport four hours early?"
In the Adirondaks they have trail registers; just a covered eazel type thing with a log book. They tend to be at trailheads and major forks. Sign in if you want: name, # of people in the party, # of days you plan to be in the backcountry, intended route, address. Sign out when you leave.
No need for cameras/sensors/whatever. One nice thing about the backcountry is being away from it all. Among serious hikers, there is even controversy about taking a mobile phone into the woods. "If I break my leg, I can call for help". "Only unprepared morons ever need to be rescued and this lowers the threshold of asking of a heliocopter evac", etc.
Personally I do not want civilization to intrude when I am seeking solitude.
Most of the author's gripes were about storyline or AI. He was griping about PnP games on the computer when his points were really about a specific implementation.
I will retort by bringing up NWN. I DM a weekly group and many of these same people I have played PnP with over the decades.
AI- AI is a general computer game problem. What does the ogre do when you cast a certain spell? Generally this is always scripted and the AI is only as good as its code. The Meld into Stone exploit mentioned by the author is an AI exploit. An AI exploit is an AI exploit; it does not matter if it is on CivIII, a FPS or CRPG. The standard AI in nwn is not the smartest, but it IS replaceable. The individual scripts that fire on various events (when a NPC perceives another creature, when attacked, etc) can be tweaked or replaced. There are several user created AI systems available and some are quite good. If it bothers you that the ogre is still focused on the cleric, check at the end of a combat round to see if he is under the effect of Meld into Stone. If so, go after the fireballing mage instead. Oh and if a DM is possessing the ogre, he will probably flatten the mage first in any case.
Stroyline? Come on! Creating a quest is like writing dialog for a play, except that the story can branch because of whatever. If the creators of TOEE did not do this well, it is because they did not do this well. The BG series did this well. NWN's expansions did this well. There are numerous modules available for NWN that do this well. Then again, in any story without a GM, it is impossible to vary from the story in any meaningful way. I recall playing a neutral good ranger in BG2. On returning from the underdark with the Githyanki sword in my possession, I was confronted by the Githyanki seeking its return. The verbal exchange turned into a fight and fretty soon the area-of-effect spells were flying. Mind you this happened in the promenade district and several bystanders were killed by Githyanki AOE spells. This bothered my because my "good" character had chosen to fight to keep the nice sword despite the fact that innocents would die in the process. I was not penalized as the designers did not think of this situation beforehand. A good GM would have shifted me toward evil for putting personal gain before the lives of innocents. Any non-linear story will have such bugs because the designers will not be able to think of and script for every possible situation.
That is what a good GM is for.
"missions"
I cringe when I hear this...
Dude, it is D&D, not Quake!