Flight controls on F-16s, F/A-18s, Airbuses and no doubt others are already computerised. Along with ILS/autopilot on most airliners. Reliable computers can be built, it's just that the cost of that reliability is too great for non-critical applications.
Military training tends to start off with the simplest methods and work up to the more modern: navigation, AFAIK, starts with dead reckoning, maps and compasses and only later introduces GPS.
I'm not defending MS's record on security, but if an attacker can get the user to run an executable, he can own any operating system.
Even if he can't immediately get root (as is the case in many Windows XP installs, where people tend to log in as Administrator), all he has to do is install a keylogger and wait for you to su. Even a non-root trojan can cause havoc, anyway.
It's the same in many industries: much demand for experienced staff, but nobody is willing to train inexperienced staff to create experienced ones.
You could always do what I did - work remotely from the UK for an American software company*. They're not just outsourcing to India these days.
(* note to Inland Revenue: yes, I am self-employed, the above is a simplification, I just provide services to a German company whose major client happens to be a large American software company).
Please please please could the Slashdot editors stop giving these blatant troll writers so much advertising revenue by linking to them. Tech news sites will keep writing all this crap about Linux etc because they know it generates page impressions from outraged geeks.
I often read Americans saying they had to turn on subtitles to understand parts of The Office. As an English person I've always wanted to know which parts/characters Americans find hard to understand. Or is it just the slang terms used?
From an English person's point of view, the accents are fairly standard mid-England/London accents. But then, having driven round rural Georgia, I know we are two countries divided by a common language.
Actually, there was a story about the Netherlands on Slashdot recently, with lots of Dutch people posting comments. The quality of English was far better than normal Slashdot, IIRC.
I was assuming that the market share of music players would be unaffected by the entrance of Yahoo to the market, of course.
My point was that somebody buying a new computer starts with the entire selection of computers on the market and then gradually excludes them until selecting the computer to buy. There may be other reasons for not buying an Apple (price, available software etc.), but basically everyone *could* buy one.
Somebody buying music online who owns an iPod will either immediately dismiss any WMA stores or go and buy a WMA player. Given the cost of an iPod and apparent loyalty of iPod owners (myself included), switching doesn't seem too likely to me. So, before any other factors are taken into account, 80% of the market is pretty much excluded.
Don't know if that makes much sense to anyone else...
You're comparing two different figures: Apple's actual market share, and Yahoo's potential market share: i.e. the percentage of people who *could* be customers.
The *potential* market for Apple computers is anyone looking for a computer (100%), and they get 5% of them. The potential market for Yahoo is 20%, and they will then get some fraction of that.
Of course, discussing market share figures like this assumes that only people with portable music players buy music online.
I'd put Demon Internet up there with BT in bad UK ADSL customer service terms. BT may be incompetent - they may have thought that "Please install ADSL on my phone line" meant "Please disconnect my phone line for a week" - but at least they never lied to me.
Demon's customer services people lied to me directly on several occasions. Their lazy customer support people try to save time by not actually looking details up, they just tell you what you want to hear to get you off the phone.
As my salary depends on sales of symbian software, I probably shouldn't say this, but it seems most smartphone hardware makers don't have a clue about UI design. For example, on my Sony-ericsson p910i:
- The keyboard is flimsy, hard to type on while holding the phone, and because it's on the reverse of the number keypad, when you type on it you often press buttons on the reverse side, causing the whole phone to wobble.
- The camera button and the "connect to the internet" button are right next to each other, on the side of the phone and exactly the same size and shape, making it very easy to get press the wrong one.
- Handwriting recognition is pretty poor. As it uses the whole screen to recognise handwriting, if you try to tap on a button while recognition is enabled and slip slightly (like, if you're walking around with your *mobile* phone) you end up typing a full stop instead of activating the button.
- Most of the on-screen UI is far too fiddly to use "in the field". Sitting at a desk it's fine: on a crowded, bumpy train I keep activating the wrong functions.
Personally, I can see a huge market for somebody like Apple to do to the smartphone market what iPods have done to the MP3 market: produce an elegant, easy-to-use smartphone with all the functionality, but actually designed with usability in mind.
Not that I want to condone this use of a car analogy in a computing thread, but cars used to require far more work and knowledge to use than they do currently: starter crank, manual choke, spark timing adjustment etc. On modern cars these things are done automatically.
The trend in most devices is to gradually reduce the knowledge and work required of the user: Records -> CDs -> Solid state players, for example.
The fact that you think "users/drivers ought to know about these things" doesn't change the fact that they don't want to, and therefore the market will provide ways to automate the things they don't want to do.
No way - best mac game has to be the game you got free with a Mac Perfoma (I think) where you had to enclose areas of the screen with lines without the bouncing thingies hitting them. I spent *hours* playing that game. Can't remember what it was called though.
It's unthinkable because it is impossible to answer the question "what created life" by postulating an intelligent designer designed by something else: that requires an infinite number of designers. All it does is push the problem back another level.
Unless you suppose some sort of "Back to the Future" style happening, where a future designer goes back in time and creates his own great-great-great-grandfather designer.
Slashdot discussion has taken a dive in quality these days, I agree.
My idea for improving the discussion would be to have new users take a quick quiz on Slashdot account creation: you select your area of geek expertise (hardware, development, web etc), and then answer five multiple choice questions on the area. Readers can then opt to add comment karma bonuses based on the poster's score.
At least that way you could filter the people who don't know what "!=" means from a discussion about C compilers.
Slashdot Mirror
Flight controls on F-16s, F/A-18s, Airbuses and no doubt others are already computerised. Along with ILS/autopilot on most airliners. Reliable computers can be built, it's just that the cost of that reliability is too great for non-critical applications.
Military training tends to start off with the simplest methods and work up to the more modern: navigation, AFAIK, starts with dead reckoning, maps and compasses and only later introduces GPS.
I'm not defending MS's record on security, but if an attacker can get the user to run an executable, he can own any operating system.
Even if he can't immediately get root (as is the case in many Windows XP installs, where people tend to log in as Administrator), all he has to do is install a keylogger and wait for you to su. Even a non-root trojan can cause havoc, anyway.
But if they weren't so stupid and actually stopped to think for five seconds they might think "Hang on, how does Microsoft know my email address?"
It's the same in many industries: much demand for experienced staff, but nobody is willing to train inexperienced staff to create experienced ones.
You could always do what I did - work remotely from the UK for an American software company*. They're not just outsourcing to India these days.
(* note to Inland Revenue: yes, I am self-employed, the above is a simplification, I just provide services to a German company whose major client happens to be a large American software company).
Can you think of another four syllable place name that rhymes with pillow? I know I can't.
Please please please could the Slashdot editors stop giving these blatant troll writers so much advertising revenue by linking to them. Tech news sites will keep writing all this crap about Linux etc because they know it generates page impressions from outraged geeks.
I often read Americans saying they had to turn on subtitles to understand parts of The Office. As an English person I've always wanted to know which parts/characters Americans find hard to understand. Or is it just the slang terms used?
From an English person's point of view, the accents are fairly standard mid-England/London accents. But then, having driven round rural Georgia, I know we are two countries divided by a common language.
It's OK, we've finally given up on that one. The last of the major British car companies (Rover) just went into liquidation, thank god.
Actually, there was a story about the Netherlands on Slashdot recently, with lots of Dutch people posting comments. The quality of English was far better than normal Slashdot, IIRC.
Maybe. That's the problem with economics, it always assumes a rational consumer ;-)
I was assuming that the market share of music players would be unaffected by the entrance of Yahoo to the market, of course.
My point was that somebody buying a new computer starts with the entire selection of computers on the market and then gradually excludes them until selecting the computer to buy. There may be other reasons for not buying an Apple (price, available software etc.), but basically everyone *could* buy one.
Somebody buying music online who owns an iPod will either immediately dismiss any WMA stores or go and buy a WMA player. Given the cost of an iPod and apparent loyalty of iPod owners (myself included), switching doesn't seem too likely to me. So, before any other factors are taken into account, 80% of the market is pretty much excluded.
Don't know if that makes much sense to anyone else...
You're comparing two different figures: Apple's actual market share, and Yahoo's potential market share: i.e. the percentage of people who *could* be customers.
The *potential* market for Apple computers is anyone looking for a computer (100%), and they get 5% of them. The potential market for Yahoo is 20%, and they will then get some fraction of that.
Of course, discussing market share figures like this assumes that only people with portable music players buy music online.
The iPod Shuffle
I'd put Demon Internet up there with BT in bad UK ADSL customer service terms. BT may be incompetent - they may have thought that "Please install ADSL on my phone line" meant "Please disconnect my phone line for a week" - but at least they never lied to me.
Demon's customer services people lied to me directly on several occasions. Their lazy customer support people try to save time by not actually looking details up, they just tell you what you want to hear to get you off the phone.
As my salary depends on sales of symbian software, I probably shouldn't say this, but it seems most smartphone hardware makers don't have a clue about UI design. For example, on my Sony-ericsson p910i:
- The keyboard is flimsy, hard to type on while holding the phone, and because it's on the reverse of the number keypad, when you type on it you often press buttons on the reverse side, causing the whole phone to wobble.
- The camera button and the "connect to the internet" button are right next to each other, on the side of the phone and exactly the same size and shape, making it very easy to get press the wrong one.
- Handwriting recognition is pretty poor. As it uses the whole screen to recognise handwriting, if you try to tap on a button while recognition is enabled and slip slightly (like, if you're walking around with your *mobile* phone) you end up typing a full stop instead of activating the button.
- Most of the on-screen UI is far too fiddly to use "in the field". Sitting at a desk it's fine: on a crowded, bumpy train I keep activating the wrong functions.
Personally, I can see a huge market for somebody like Apple to do to the smartphone market what iPods have done to the MP3 market: produce an elegant, easy-to-use smartphone with all the functionality, but actually designed with usability in mind.
Not that I want to condone this use of a car analogy in a computing thread, but cars used to require far more work and knowledge to use than they do currently: starter crank, manual choke, spark timing adjustment etc. On modern cars these things are done automatically.
The trend in most devices is to gradually reduce the knowledge and work required of the user: Records -> CDs -> Solid state players, for example.
The fact that you think "users/drivers ought to know about these things" doesn't change the fact that they don't want to, and therefore the market will provide ways to automate the things they don't want to do.
Yes, that's the one. Fiendishly addictive. Searching for "lines and bouncing thingies" didn't bring up much on Google ;)
No way - best mac game has to be the game you got free with a Mac Perfoma (I think) where you had to enclose areas of the screen with lines without the bouncing thingies hitting them. I spent *hours* playing that game. Can't remember what it was called though.
It's unthinkable because it is impossible to answer the question "what created life" by postulating an intelligent designer designed by something else: that requires an infinite number of designers. All it does is push the problem back another level.
Unless you suppose some sort of "Back to the Future" style happening, where a future designer goes back in time and creates his own great-great-great-grandfather designer.
But ID isn't a logically consistent theory: if something designed life, what designed the designer? And so on.
Beforehand? It is a time travellers' convention...
I'm guessing "Life of Brian" wasn't too popular over there, then ;)
If the "God disappearing in a puff of logic" part weren't deleted, the movie might not have its G rating
What possible bearing on the rating could that line have on the rating? Is "puff" a swear word or something?
Slashdot discussion has taken a dive in quality these days, I agree.
My idea for improving the discussion would be to have new users take a quick quiz on Slashdot account creation: you select your area of geek expertise (hardware, development, web etc), and then answer five multiple choice questions on the area. Readers can then opt to add comment karma bonuses based on the poster's score.
At least that way you could filter the people who don't know what "!=" means from a discussion about C compilers.
Spot the poster who failed Reading Comprehension.
Try moving your mouse down from the PDF link about 40 pixels and clicking on that link instead.