Okay, start taking bets to see if Stanbury and Fishelman will sue Microsoft for their similarly sinister product activation systems.. bet they don't!
I think product registration is a great idea, as it can help you get a better service and allows the company to get info on its users.. but forcing you to activate a product is just a Big Brother attitude.
How would you like it if you had to 'activate' your car every time you moved or made an upgrade to it? Sure, it might help the insurance companies a whole lot, but it's just not right. Ditto for software.
It's entirely necessary if you're the sort of person who can't bear not to have contact with anyone human every 5 seconds.
Seriously, there are a lot of people like this, even in the nerd sector. They struggle to go for a few hours without calling someone, or having a conversation.. whereas lots of us are quite happy to sit hacking Perl or playing with servers until 4am.
So socially, no, I don't think phones are necessary, unless you're an extrovert who suffers from a loneliness complex.
Business-wise, however, cellphones are pretty damn useful. I can give an impression of being available 24/7 wherever I am, and that's worth a lot. A cellphone also allows me to easily call back into my work answerphone and catch up on calls. That's pretty useful stuff.
This post was so long I had it linked on my desktop for a few days. I finally got round to reading it.
I can't work out if you're trolling or if you were seriously thinking about this. There are absolutely massive flaws in the theory on this, but I gave it more thought myself and I think you're on to a great idea.
Binary is not the way to go with words though (after all, the letter A is always 01000001.. how does that connect it to any other letter which has 2 1's in the binary pattern? (say.. B, which is 01000010)
I think you need to use a multidimensional arrangement, and somehow use numbers which more represent the word.. perhaps common letter combinations or such.
Still, I'm so busy with work to think about this in any depth, but there sounds like there may be some mileage in your rough idea.
Nobody outside of a garage can loose 1 transaction,
You're right, but that still doesn't excuse the benefits of storing the data in RAM in the way described.
You can have object persistence, where objects are affected and manipulated by database queries, but any changes to these objects also result in the server sending these changes elsewhere (say, to a remote disk). This means if the RAM server dies, you can just refresh the whole lot from a disk backup, and since the committing is going on 'behind the scenes' you don't waste valuable processor time on the main DB server.
Yes, why should you be affected if millions to billions of dollars go to some sort of Nigerian Mafia that probably supports some terrorist group? Why should you care that those suckers cash doesn't stay in your country and make it a better place. Why not make Nigeria a better place for organized crime?
I'm a Libertarian. I think keeping out of the affairs of other countries is a good idea. Leave that to the UN.. oh, I forgot, the UN doesn't ever stick to its guns over unfulfilled resolutions! That's why the US and the UK have to get involved in Iraq's affairs when the UN doesn't bother.
You dipshit. The whole point is that you can't be scammed easily. You have to actually be dumb enough to fork over the money by your own will. This is not the same as a hacker getting your CC number and draining it. This is like a stranger coming up to you and saying 'Can I borrow $100,000? I'll pay it back later.'
If you could clear out someone's account just from their account number and sort code then anyone could it.. after all, you have to swap these details to send money to each other with Internet banking.
What the article fails to point out is that these scammers don't just drain your bank account, they actually request you pay certain 'transfer fees' so that they can get the money moved across. These 'transfer fees', inevitably, are thousands of dollars. Anyone paying them is an idiot.
And that's all this is. I think those scammers deserve every red cent. THIS IS A TAX ON THE STUPID and ignorant, something we should have the state taxing, but if the Nigerians have to do it, so be it.
This is another 'tax' that, like duty on cigarettes and alcohol, doesn't affect me at all.. so I'm all for it.
(Notice how the people scammed all actually had thousands in savings.. a sign that the greedy people aren't the poor, they're the already rich)
Nobody's life is at stake with a compromised ATM PIN. If a building falls down due to faulty geological information (no pun intended) it endangers not only the business that bought the information and its customers, but the general public as well. The state has an interest (some would say duty) to take reasonable measures to protect the lives of the general public.
Fair argument, but I wasn't trying to be overly specific on the ATM PIN thing.
What about software that models building damage, earthquake impact on buildings, bridge strength, etc? I get the feeling there's no one regulating the development of these applications, even though the lives of hundreds could be at risk.
One example is the military helicopter that crashed in Scotland a few years ago. The pilot got the blame for ages, but eventually it came out that the software malfunctioned.
But do you really want just anyone doing geological assays for construction projects? Is that an area in which you want to say "Fuck it, caveat emptor?"
But do you really want just anyone writing the code that keeps your ATM PIN numbers secure? You could apply the licencing argument to almost every profession.
Back when I was at school we had some really shitty spec PCs (this was over 10 years ago), and I used to help maintain them from time to time.
One day one of the machines didn't work, so I diagnosed and diagnosed and couldn't fix it.
My totally computer illiterate friend came on, and after hearing my story, he said, 'Well I might as well try'. He picked the computer about a foot into the air and just let go of it, which chipped off a bit of the desk and a major bang.
Turned the computer on, it worked. I had to humbly accept that my hard-headed friend had saved the day:)
I also remember when the first CD-ROM machines came in, and people at school would play tug of war with them. The bloody things still worked.
I can understand needing a licence to practice medicine or do brain surgery, because you could kill someone.. or even a licence to be an architect or a lawyer because you could seriously injure or screw people up if you go wrong.
But doing scientific research into the planet? What is there to screw up there? Measuring some vibrations is hardly life-threatening, even if the quake turns out to be.
Watch out, they'll make you get a licence to be able to program soon.
I was enjoying reading this e-mail until I reached this part:
Not surprisingly, the business community was in no mood to hear about a war in Iraq. Except for diehard American Republicans, a few Brit Tories and some Middle East folks the WEF was in a foul, angry anti-American mood.
I call bullshit. I can't speak for the Middle East and the Republicans by the British Tories (Conservatives) aren't pro-war and pro-American.. the Labour government is.
Tony Blair is not a Tory/Conservative, yet he's one of Bush's best chums and is pretty much pro-war at this stage.
I get the feeling this is nothing more than an elaborate piece of bullshit.
Besides, 'all the rich' aren't going to be against a war.. what about the oil rich? Or.. what about those who believe in the UN? If the UN doesn't strike Saddam, what is the UN's effectiveness? Diddly squat, that's what.. it might as well not exist.
Yeah, but I'm find 256Mb a bit of a drag now anyways. Besides, I imagine using PC133 with an Athlon XP 2200 would be like running a Ferrari on biodiesel:)
So, when you gonna make the big jump to the Pentium III 800Mhz?
I bought an Athlon Thunderbird 1Ghz (socket A) as soon as they came out, and the motherboard I got can't deal with the XP range at all. Infact, I think it can only cope with up to 1.33Ghz TBird, not even the 1.4.
What's worse is that I need to totally change all my RAM as well:) So.. I gotta buy a lot just to upgrade to XP.
In 'The Dish' (a comedy about the moon landing) they lost track of the signal from Apollo and had to bullshit to NASA about it. They eventually worked out how they could find the signal again.. if Apollo was headed for the moon, just point the telescope at the moon and track around!
Since Pioneed 10 is headed straight for Alderban something or other in the Taurus universe, just point your anteneass in that way.
The problem here is that a paper trail is too easy to for other people to read.
Elections in Western countries are meant to be by secret ballot, people. That means your vote is anonymous. Why? Because people don't want other people knowing who they voted for. If someone voted for the 'Kill All Geeks' party, that's their right, and you can't condemn them for their vote (although you can certainly condemn them for their actions).
The best alternative solution to a paper trail would be to use a secure database that has public access. That is, members of the public can run a set of limited commands on it.. like
SELECT COUNT() FROM votes WHERE party='republican';
Or
SELECT COUNT() FROM votes WHERE state='alabama' AND sexuality='gay';
That way, the populace can access the database over the net and query it by SQL, checking the validity of the votes.
Preferably you'd use a proprietary database system to store the votes, as then you can be sure security is not compromised. A paper trail just opens up a whole bag of communist ghouls.
Why? Because this tells us something about the temperature of Mars over the year, and allows us to compare the temperatures at different latitudes on Mars with those on our own planet.
[New findings] show that the souther polar ice cap is too warm at certain seasons to be dry ice.
Dry ice's temperature is -78.5C, or -173.3F. In 1960, Russians monitored a temperature of -127F at their station at Vostok.
The average temperature in Miami in Summer is +26C. The average temperature at the South Pole in its Summer is -3C. This is a factor of 8.666 recurring.
So.. let's say that the average temperature at the Martian South Pole in its Summer is around -60C, which is quite realistic, given that water is there.
Multiply by -8.666 and you get.. 15C. A bit colder than Miami, but perfectly livable, and the right temperature for humans.
Of course, there are some flaws in this theory but I'm quietly optimistic.
This is a noble goal, but one whose story has been posted several times here on Slashdot. So.. what do you do if your area has NO broadband in the first place? You can't hook up your wireless network point to a 56k modem and share that about.
If this town already has DSL or cable modem, then sharing this with the townfolk who rarely use the Internet is great.. but if THEY can get DSL, then surely anyone in the town can? That's not solving a problem of availability! Just one of cost..
People want to use wireless networking to use broadband that is located elsewhere, but since a telephone exchange in the UK can cover more than a 20 mile area, and few rural exchanges have DSL, having wireless broadband is almost an impossibility.
What's worse is that the ISPs and telcos are focusing on wireless broadband in places that ALREADY HAVE DSL AND CABLE!!! Talk about oversaturation.
North Greenwich is pretty central though. It's a mere stones throw from the Docklands, which is where a majority of big-car driving exec types are headed. Journey times into the West End from Greenwich are also good.
It's very convenient if you're from Kent, Essex, or coming down the M11 from Cambridge. Although it doesn't help the poor sods on the A3, M4, and M1:-)
Sorry, Newcastle-upon-Tyne gets my vote. The Metro is often claimed to be faster and more efficient than the Tube.
That said, Newcastle is the only British city I've been in where the traffic rivals London. So maybe something isn't quite so right up there after all;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, start taking bets to see if Stanbury and Fishelman will sue Microsoft for their similarly sinister product activation systems.. bet they don't!
I think product registration is a great idea, as it can help you get a better service and allows the company to get info on its users.. but forcing you to activate a product is just a Big Brother attitude.
How would you like it if you had to 'activate' your car every time you moved or made an upgrade to it? Sure, it might help the insurance companies a whole lot, but it's just not right. Ditto for software.
I'm going to assume either sarcasm or that you're referring to geek society here.
But this is Slashdot. We are not 'most people'.
It's entirely necessary if you're the sort of person who can't bear not to have contact with anyone human every 5 seconds.
Seriously, there are a lot of people like this, even in the nerd sector. They struggle to go for a few hours without calling someone, or having a conversation.. whereas lots of us are quite happy to sit hacking Perl or playing with servers until 4am.
So socially, no, I don't think phones are necessary, unless you're an extrovert who suffers from a loneliness complex.
Business-wise, however, cellphones are pretty damn useful. I can give an impression of being available 24/7 wherever I am, and that's worth a lot. A cellphone also allows me to easily call back into my work answerphone and catch up on calls. That's pretty useful stuff.
This post was so long I had it linked on my desktop for a few days. I finally got round to reading it.
I can't work out if you're trolling or if you were seriously thinking about this. There are absolutely massive flaws in the theory on this, but I gave it more thought myself and I think you're on to a great idea.
Binary is not the way to go with words though (after all, the letter A is always 01000001.. how does that connect it to any other letter which has 2 1's in the binary pattern? (say.. B, which is 01000010)
I think you need to use a multidimensional arrangement, and somehow use numbers which more represent the word.. perhaps common letter combinations or such.
Still, I'm so busy with work to think about this in any depth, but there sounds like there may be some mileage in your rough idea.
That, and it's a clear ripoff of 'Red Bull'.
Nobody outside of a garage can loose 1 transaction,
You're right, but that still doesn't excuse the benefits of storing the data in RAM in the way described.
You can have object persistence, where objects are affected and manipulated by database queries, but any changes to these objects also result in the server sending these changes elsewhere (say, to a remote disk). This means if the RAM server dies, you can just refresh the whole lot from a disk backup, and since the committing is going on 'behind the scenes' you don't waste valuable processor time on the main DB server.
Yes, why should you be affected if millions to billions of dollars go to some sort of Nigerian Mafia that probably supports some terrorist group? Why should you care that those suckers cash doesn't stay in your country and make it a better place. Why not make Nigeria a better place for organized crime?
I'm a Libertarian. I think keeping out of the affairs of other countries is a good idea. Leave that to the UN.. oh, I forgot, the UN doesn't ever stick to its guns over unfulfilled resolutions! That's why the US and the UK have to get involved in Iraq's affairs when the UN doesn't bother.
Okay, got ya now.
You dipshit. The whole point is that you can't be scammed easily. You have to actually be dumb enough to fork over the money by your own will. This is not the same as a hacker getting your CC number and draining it. This is like a stranger coming up to you and saying 'Can I borrow $100,000? I'll pay it back later.'
If you could clear out someone's account just from their account number and sort code then anyone could it.. after all, you have to swap these details to send money to each other with Internet banking.
What the article fails to point out is that these scammers don't just drain your bank account, they actually request you pay certain 'transfer fees' so that they can get the money moved across. These 'transfer fees', inevitably, are thousands of dollars. Anyone paying them is an idiot.
And that's all this is. I think those scammers deserve every red cent. THIS IS A TAX ON THE STUPID and ignorant, something we should have the state taxing, but if the Nigerians have to do it, so be it.
This is another 'tax' that, like duty on cigarettes and alcohol, doesn't affect me at all.. so I'm all for it.
(Notice how the people scammed all actually had thousands in savings.. a sign that the greedy people aren't the poor, they're the already rich)
Nobody's life is at stake with a compromised ATM PIN. If a building falls down due to faulty geological information (no pun intended) it endangers not only the business that bought the information and its customers, but the general public as well. The state has an interest (some would say duty) to take reasonable measures to protect the lives of the general public.
Fair argument, but I wasn't trying to be overly specific on the ATM PIN thing.
What about software that models building damage, earthquake impact on buildings, bridge strength, etc? I get the feeling there's no one regulating the development of these applications, even though the lives of hundreds could be at risk.
One example is the military helicopter that crashed in Scotland a few years ago. The pilot got the blame for ages, but eventually it came out that the software malfunctioned.
Every time they post a dupe their bandwidth to Slashdot gets cut by half.
After a few dupes they end up with 5 minutes between server requests, which gives them ample time to check whether it was actually a dupe or not.
Et voila, a Slashdot that only gets 2 posts a day, but at least they're not dupes.
But do you really want just anyone doing geological assays for construction projects? Is that an area in which you want to say "Fuck it, caveat emptor?"
But do you really want just anyone writing the code that keeps your ATM PIN numbers secure? You could apply the licencing argument to almost every profession.
I had a psycho ex-friend who took a piss in his SNES. It still worked, and he even sold it on.
Back when I was at school we had some really shitty spec PCs (this was over 10 years ago), and I used to help maintain them from time to time.
:)
One day one of the machines didn't work, so I diagnosed and diagnosed and couldn't fix it.
My totally computer illiterate friend came on, and after hearing my story, he said, 'Well I might as well try'. He picked the computer about a foot into the air and just let go of it, which chipped off a bit of the desk and a major bang.
Turned the computer on, it worked. I had to humbly accept that my hard-headed friend had saved the day
I also remember when the first CD-ROM machines came in, and people at school would play tug of war with them. The bloody things still worked.
I can understand needing a licence to practice medicine or do brain surgery, because you could kill someone.. or even a licence to be an architect or a lawyer because you could seriously injure or screw people up if you go wrong.
But doing scientific research into the planet? What is there to screw up there? Measuring some vibrations is hardly life-threatening, even if the quake turns out to be.
Watch out, they'll make you get a licence to be able to program soon.
I was enjoying reading this e-mail until I reached this part:
Not surprisingly, the business community was in no mood to hear about a war in Iraq. Except for diehard American Republicans, a few Brit Tories and some Middle East folks the WEF was in a foul, angry anti-American mood.
I call bullshit. I can't speak for the Middle East and the Republicans by the British Tories (Conservatives) aren't pro-war and pro-American.. the Labour government is.
Tony Blair is not a Tory/Conservative, yet he's one of Bush's best chums and is pretty much pro-war at this stage.
I get the feeling this is nothing more than an elaborate piece of bullshit.
Besides, 'all the rich' aren't going to be against a war.. what about the oil rich? Or.. what about those who believe in the UN? If the UN doesn't strike Saddam, what is the UN's effectiveness? Diddly squat, that's what.. it might as well not exist.
Yeah, but I'm find 256Mb a bit of a drag now anyways. Besides, I imagine using PC133 with an Athlon XP 2200 would be like running a Ferrari on biodiesel :)
So, when you gonna make the big jump to the Pentium III 800Mhz?
That's what's stopping me upgrading.
:) So.. I gotta buy a lot just to upgrade to XP.
I bought an Athlon Thunderbird 1Ghz (socket A) as soon as they came out, and the motherboard I got can't deal with the XP range at all. Infact, I think it can only cope with up to 1.33Ghz TBird, not even the 1.4.
What's worse is that I need to totally change all my RAM as well
Yeah, and it aims 'for you' which is pretty damn lame. GTA3 was way better on the PC, unless you had a shitty ass video card.
In 'The Dish' (a comedy about the moon landing) they lost track of the signal from Apollo and had to bullshit to NASA about it. They eventually worked out how they could find the signal again.. if Apollo was headed for the moon, just point the telescope at the moon and track around!
Since Pioneed 10 is headed straight for Alderban something or other in the Taurus universe, just point your anteneass in that way.
The problem here is that a paper trail is too easy to for other people to read.
Elections in Western countries are meant to be by secret ballot, people. That means your vote is anonymous. Why? Because people don't want other people knowing who they voted for. If someone voted for the 'Kill All Geeks' party, that's their right, and you can't condemn them for their vote (although you can certainly condemn them for their actions).
The best alternative solution to a paper trail would be to use a secure database that has public access. That is, members of the public can run a set of limited commands on it.. like
SELECT COUNT() FROM votes WHERE party='republican';
Or
SELECT COUNT() FROM votes WHERE state='alabama' AND sexuality='gay';
That way, the populace can access the database over the net and query it by SQL, checking the validity of the votes.
Preferably you'd use a proprietary database system to store the votes, as then you can be sure security is not compromised. A paper trail just opens up a whole bag of communist ghouls.
Even for terraformers!
Why? Because this tells us something about the temperature of Mars over the year, and allows us to compare the temperatures at different latitudes on Mars with those on our own planet.
[New findings] show that the souther polar ice cap is too warm at certain seasons to be dry ice.
Dry ice's temperature is -78.5C, or -173.3F. In 1960, Russians monitored a temperature of -127F at their station at Vostok.
The average temperature in Miami in Summer is +26C. The average temperature at the South Pole in its Summer is -3C. This is a factor of 8.666 recurring.
So.. let's say that the average temperature at the Martian South Pole in its Summer is around -60C, which is quite realistic, given that water is there.
Multiply by -8.666 and you get.. 15C. A bit colder than Miami, but perfectly livable, and the right temperature for humans.
Of course, there are some flaws in this theory but I'm quietly optimistic.
This is a noble goal, but one whose story has been posted several times here on Slashdot. So.. what do you do if your area has NO broadband in the first place? You can't hook up your wireless network point to a 56k modem and share that about.
If this town already has DSL or cable modem, then sharing this with the townfolk who rarely use the Internet is great.. but if THEY can get DSL, then surely anyone in the town can? That's not solving a problem of availability! Just one of cost..
People want to use wireless networking to use broadband that is located elsewhere, but since a telephone exchange in the UK can cover more than a 20 mile area, and few rural exchanges have DSL, having wireless broadband is almost an impossibility.
What's worse is that the ISPs and telcos are focusing on wireless broadband in places that ALREADY HAVE DSL AND CABLE!!! Talk about oversaturation.
North Greenwich is hardly central though.
:-)
North Greenwich is pretty central though. It's a mere stones throw from the Docklands, which is where a majority of big-car driving exec types are headed. Journey times into the West End from Greenwich are also good.
It's very convenient if you're from Kent, Essex, or coming down the M11 from Cambridge. Although it doesn't help the poor sods on the A3, M4, and M1
Sorry, Newcastle-upon-Tyne gets my vote. The Metro is often claimed to be faster and more efficient than the Tube.
;-)
That said, Newcastle is the only British city I've been in where the traffic rivals London. So maybe something isn't quite so right up there after all