Mobile Phone: a device that can make telephone calls and can be easily transported in a pocket or purse.
Actually, that last part is a fairly modern result.
Initially, "mobile" phones were huge. I remember some that were basically a brief-case sized battery with a corded phone attached. No way you could put 'em in a pocket or a purse.
Just like some of the early "portable" computers (luggables) were still heavy boxes with a CRT in it -- sure, you could move them from one place to another more easily than a desktop with wires. But they were heavy beasts and you didn't move them about on a whim.
The supercomputer designation has also changed a lot over the years. Used to mean the biggest and fastest machines available, and usually still does. Heck, at one point, any machine over 1GHz was considered munitions and not legal for export since that was the threshold for a "supercomputer" at that time.
One is a quantitative definition, and one is a qualitative definition.
Actually, they're both qualitative definitions "mobile" and "super" do not represent quantities. And, over the lifetime of those words, no specific threshold for "mobile" or "super" has been established that lasted for more than a relatively short period of time.
Email? Yahoo doesn't Email nobody about new features like this.
Actually, you may be right. I just re-read TFA, and all it says it that Yahoo is "informing" people.
It's not saying where or how, and my Yahoo page doesn't mention anything about it. I wonder if they're going to gradually add it to various users, or if some just won't get a proper notification.
Does that mean I can blog about a sports game and claim copyright over the score??
Actually, I think the major sports leagues have tried to assert ownership over the factual bits of the game like the score.
Not sure how that holds up, but I think they start with the position that because there is a game, and they own it, all of the information about that game is copyrighted by them. You blogging about it is too late to be the one to get copyright.
Companies actually do want their customers to be happy enough to stick around
Ah, but who is the customer? The advertisers pay them, most people with a Yahoo account don't.
So, the user is not the customer. This is the same with Google.
All they're doing is managing the PR of this so they can say they told their users. I've gone into my Yahoo account and disabled this, but I'll be curious to see when I actually get the email.
Re:Obsessional fools, not scientists
on
Mars500 Mission Begins
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Hate to spoil your rant there, but it's a Russian-European mission. Would you like to come in and try again?
The specifics of the article have nothing to do with his rant.
I'm sure he's been just itching to trot that one out. In fact, he already posted this rant last week verbatim.:-P
there would be no legal grounds to continue the levy, since publishers will either be giving permission for private copying, making the levy redundant with the purchase price of the copyrighted work, or they will not allowed to privately copy at all, making the levy an unrepresented tax - something which is wholeheartedly illegal.
Yeah, because neither government nor the media companies will want to have their cake and eat it too.
I'm less optimistic they'll actually repeal the tax if they pass the bill.
But are we going to all give up our cell phones if it turns out that they cause problems with bees?
No, but here's some food for thought:
If commercial agriculture relies on bees to pollinate commercial crops... and if the cell phones are killing the bees... what happens when there's no bees left?
We stand to lose a lot if we lose bees. Research into their health is important to our ability to grow food.
You are under the mistaken assumption that because I dislike other countries customs laws, I must not intensely dislike my own as well.
On the contrary. Your post made it obvious that you disagree with your own laws. It doesn't make it any less hilarious to me that you are complaining about the immigration law in another country.
I'm not accusing you of being a hypocrite. I'm just saying that the rest of the world has more or less been told "too bad, shut up, and if you don't like it, don't fly to the US." We don't have any recourse either.
But when I see people (not you) saying stuff like "but what about an American business man with an encrypted laptop", it's just damned amusing that some people actually believe that it's unfair to search an American when they travel.
It's good that you disagree with your country's law -- but it doesn't change the fact that everyone else is still stuck with more or less the same situation when they fly to the US.
I want to delete a shortcut on MY desktop, which prompts a UAC dialog, which I must address, despite the fact that I'm not changing the desktop for other users. After I confirm that, Windows prompts me yet again, asking if this is something I really want to do.
Ummm... I just created a shortcut on my desktop, and deleted it, and UAC doesn't factor into the process since it's a file that belongs to me.
How can you defend that design?
False dilemma. I'm not defending the example you provide, because as far as I can tell, it's completely fabricated and wrong. So I have no idea of what you're talking about.
Like I said, in my experience, it's truly only prompting me if I'm doing something which affects the system, as opposed to just my stuff. If I'm not installing software, changing settings, or mucking about in system stuff -- it simply doesn't prompt me.
For normal operations restricted to entirely your own files, I stand by my assertion that UAC doesn't really come up. The only times I ever see the UAC is in times I would expect to.
That's just all the more reason to call it out as idiotic!
No, it doesn't make it OK, or any less idiotic.
But listening to Americans whining about receiving effectively the same treatment when they travel abroad as everyone flying into the US is friggin' hilarious. Because, quite frankly, the rest of the world has been pointing out the same thing for several years now.
A non-US citizen gets fingerprinted, can have their laptops searched, and (depending on your current AG and administration) can be held indefinitely without charge or recourse upon arrival in a US airport. Do you really expect people to be concerned that some poor American with encrypted data should be special when he travels abroad?
Get over it -- you can't cross someone's border without being subject to their laws. Being an American doesn't make you special.
What if it is against the law in my country for me to compromise confidential information, but now Australia demands to see it? Does this mean American businessmen can't travel ao Australia with company laptops?
What, as opposed to all of the people traveling to the USA who have their own encrypted laptops? Because, surely you're aware of the fact that someone can't come into the US without having their laptop searched, encrypted or not. Why should an American businessman have more rights abroad than anyone visiting the US does?
I can't fly to the US without being fingerprinted, scanned, likely having my biometrics recorded, and fuck knows what else. I simply won't fly to the US any more. Any US businessmen who can't deal with this can equally refrain from flying to Australia. These are your options. An encrypted laptop from another country isn't some magical free pass, nor is being an American.
Now, as to if I agree with them searching your laptop for something which is legal, no. That makes no frigging sense.
UAC is still annoying to the point that I disable it completely.
You know, I don't know what you do on a daily basis that UAC is an issue.
I like UAC for the simple reason that 99% of the time I'm not doing anything admin related, and like knowing that I'm not executing in a privileged mode. Occasionally, the UAC thing will pop up because Java or something has decided it wants to update itself and I get to choose when it updates and not it. Without it, I suspect that some bits of software would just update themselves whenever they chose.
Day in and day out, using my machine as a normal desktop, I'm not doing anything that I even bump up against UAC. When I do, I tend to think of it as more like a UNIX su -- I can get the permission if I want it, but I'm not running with that perm at all times, so I'm not potentially dangerous. If I see the prompt, either I just explicitly tried to do something, or something else is trying to do an end-run around me and can't do it without me knowing about it.
Different strokes for different folks, but I've never actually gotten why so many people hate the UAC thing so much -- I only see the prompt about once or twice per week.
But seriously, the issue is too much of MGMT sees "design" as a cost variable that can be slashed and money saved. Why waste time "designing" when you can save money doing!
And here, I'll point you to Dilbert on the topic.:-P
I will never understand the "there can't be life there because most of the life from our planet couldn't survive there" argument. I think it's perfectly reasonable that life could evolve elsewhere without water. In fact, quite likely.
Nobody is saying there can't be life without water.
They're saying that since we have no idea of what it would look like, or how to look for it, there is simply no point in trying to look for it.
Tell me, how would you undertake to look for the conditions of life that we don't even have any clue as to how it works chemically? At which point, you could look at any environment and say "well, we can't rule out life there" -- which basically serves no purpose. That doesn't narrow your search in any meaningful way.
We have no ability to posit a theory, test it, or look for it when water isn't involved. At least by sticking with water within a range similar to that of Earth, we can intelligently say "well, we have life that lives in 150C, that place could as well".
There really isn't any way we can look in places that are outside what we can understand. From a science perspective, that's just simply a dead-end at present.
Somebody please explain the ultraviolet catastrophe to me. What is the underlying reason for the old model providing incorrect predictions? I am very science-minded but cannot understand this. The wikipedia page could not help much.
I won't try to explain the specifics, but...
Some calculation indicated that 'black bodies' (which I think means "radiates heat" or something) would emit infinite energy. However, this didn't correspond to the reality that those things don't, in fact, radiate infinite energy.
The solution these guys got for this equation showed that the equation (which describes particle collisions in a gas I think) doesn't spiral out of control and emit infinite energy. It's still an exceedingly complex equation that we can't solve, but this tells them they're on the right track.
Which is good, because that very complex equation has been shown to at least usable. Which I think lets us do better CGI of water for Avatar 2, plus the real science that comes from being able to model fluids accurately and look at the wacky physics there.;-)
Any actual physicists can now pillory me and my lame attempt to explain this.:-P
And not being from the US I actually trust my government more than a company which has a "strained" relationship with privacy.
I leave it for you to judge your own government, sir. I don't trust my, or most anyone else's government, to play by the rules. I just presume they're all turds.
Actually it is, as the person asking for it has exactly the job of making sure, that companies respect the privacy laws. Their power is very limited (just look at the puny fee he can hand out).
So, it's a law with no real teeth then? At which point, companies probably have more incentive to break it and pay the "puny fee" than actually worry about it.
Actually the four hard discs containing the data seem to be in or near San Francisco (I guess, that they are actually in Mountain View).
In which case, if the US wanted to, they could force Google to make copies before the HDs are destroyed or given to Germany -- at which point, they've exported the data into US jurisdiction, and you have literally no recourse as I understand it. Now, it's possible they'll refrain from this, but you'd never know if they did.
No, it boils down to "you have told us you take photos from public places of houses, then you have to admit, that you also collect MAC-addresses and SSIDs (which you 'forgot' to mention when we talked about it) and then just two weeks later you tell us, 'whoops, we also collected some mails and some web sessions, sorry' and now we want to see, what you have collected, as we don't see any more reason to trust you".
Oh, I'm not disputing that Google keeps admitting to having harvested way more than they ought to have. I just don't see how giving the information to the government makes things better.
And in case you wonder, it is possible that Google broke the privacy laws
Again, I suspect they did break the privacy laws, and there should be some form of penalty. But, if they hand it over to the government, what's to stop them from doing a little surreptitious investigating of the data as well?? Two wrongs don't make a right.
I don't actually know what the remedy should be here, but showing that data to even more people isn't in keeping with the privacy laws either.
And, if any of that data should end up on US soil, the US laws on their access to data collected by US companies would mean the US government could subpoena this and force Google to not tell anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Good God ... an AOL link???? Really??
I haven't seen an AOL link in so long I'd assumed they don't exist anymore.
*rofl* OK, maybe I spoke too soon. Netscape 4? IE 5???
Thanks for the trip through the way back.
Actually, that last part is a fairly modern result.
Initially, "mobile" phones were huge. I remember some that were basically a brief-case sized battery with a corded phone attached. No way you could put 'em in a pocket or a purse.
Just like some of the early "portable" computers (luggables) were still heavy boxes with a CRT in it -- sure, you could move them from one place to another more easily than a desktop with wires. But they were heavy beasts and you didn't move them about on a whim.
The supercomputer designation has also changed a lot over the years. Used to mean the biggest and fastest machines available, and usually still does. Heck, at one point, any machine over 1GHz was considered munitions and not legal for export since that was the threshold for a "supercomputer" at that time.
Actually, they're both qualitative definitions "mobile" and "super" do not represent quantities. And, over the lifetime of those words, no specific threshold for "mobile" or "super" has been established that lasted for more than a relatively short period of time.
Actually, you may be right. I just re-read TFA, and all it says it that Yahoo is "informing" people.
It's not saying where or how, and my Yahoo page doesn't mention anything about it. I wonder if they're going to gradually add it to various users, or if some just won't get a proper notification.
Actually, I think the major sports leagues have tried to assert ownership over the factual bits of the game like the score.
Not sure how that holds up, but I think they start with the position that because there is a game, and they own it, all of the information about that game is copyrighted by them. You blogging about it is too late to be the one to get copyright.
Ah, but who is the customer? The advertisers pay them, most people with a Yahoo account don't.
So, the user is not the customer. This is the same with Google.
All they're doing is managing the PR of this so they can say they told their users. I've gone into my Yahoo account and disabled this, but I'll be curious to see when I actually get the email.
The specifics of the article have nothing to do with his rant.
I'm sure he's been just itching to trot that one out. In fact, he already posted this rant last week verbatim. :-P
Yeah, because neither government nor the media companies will want to have their cake and eat it too.
I'm less optimistic they'll actually repeal the tax if they pass the bill.
No, but here's some food for thought:
If commercial agriculture relies on bees to pollinate commercial crops ... and if the cell phones are killing the bees ... what happens when there's no bees left?
We stand to lose a lot if we lose bees. Research into their health is important to our ability to grow food.
People give their SSN to eBay? Really??
That just sounds stupid -- that's not the kind of information web sites should have about you. That's not what it's for.
It goes all the way to 11?
Well, you also need to teach him that you don't need to throw every exception you catch. ;-)
I found the social alienation and awkwardness of adolescence was a huge factor for me, but that might be a bit old-skool. :-P
I was wondering the same thing -- it's like it's more illegal to use publicly available information in the commission of a crime.
Neither link seems to indicate why this is. It just strike me as a rather arbitrary law.
On the contrary. Your post made it obvious that you disagree with your own laws. It doesn't make it any less hilarious to me that you are complaining about the immigration law in another country.
I'm not accusing you of being a hypocrite. I'm just saying that the rest of the world has more or less been told "too bad, shut up, and if you don't like it, don't fly to the US." We don't have any recourse either.
But when I see people (not you) saying stuff like "but what about an American business man with an encrypted laptop", it's just damned amusing that some people actually believe that it's unfair to search an American when they travel.
It's good that you disagree with your country's law -- but it doesn't change the fact that everyone else is still stuck with more or less the same situation when they fly to the US.
Ummm ... I just created a shortcut on my desktop, and deleted it, and UAC doesn't factor into the process since it's a file that belongs to me.
False dilemma. I'm not defending the example you provide, because as far as I can tell, it's completely fabricated and wrong. So I have no idea of what you're talking about.
Like I said, in my experience, it's truly only prompting me if I'm doing something which affects the system, as opposed to just my stuff. If I'm not installing software, changing settings, or mucking about in system stuff -- it simply doesn't prompt me.
For normal operations restricted to entirely your own files, I stand by my assertion that UAC doesn't really come up. The only times I ever see the UAC is in times I would expect to.
No, it doesn't make it OK, or any less idiotic.
But listening to Americans whining about receiving effectively the same treatment when they travel abroad as everyone flying into the US is friggin' hilarious. Because, quite frankly, the rest of the world has been pointing out the same thing for several years now.
A non-US citizen gets fingerprinted, can have their laptops searched, and (depending on your current AG and administration) can be held indefinitely without charge or recourse upon arrival in a US airport. Do you really expect people to be concerned that some poor American with encrypted data should be special when he travels abroad?
Get over it -- you can't cross someone's border without being subject to their laws. Being an American doesn't make you special.
What, as opposed to all of the people traveling to the USA who have their own encrypted laptops? Because, surely you're aware of the fact that someone can't come into the US without having their laptop searched, encrypted or not. Why should an American businessman have more rights abroad than anyone visiting the US does?
I can't fly to the US without being fingerprinted, scanned, likely having my biometrics recorded, and fuck knows what else. I simply won't fly to the US any more. Any US businessmen who can't deal with this can equally refrain from flying to Australia. These are your options. An encrypted laptop from another country isn't some magical free pass, nor is being an American.
Now, as to if I agree with them searching your laptop for something which is legal, no. That makes no frigging sense.
You know, I don't know what you do on a daily basis that UAC is an issue.
I like UAC for the simple reason that 99% of the time I'm not doing anything admin related, and like knowing that I'm not executing in a privileged mode. Occasionally, the UAC thing will pop up because Java or something has decided it wants to update itself and I get to choose when it updates and not it. Without it, I suspect that some bits of software would just update themselves whenever they chose.
Day in and day out, using my machine as a normal desktop, I'm not doing anything that I even bump up against UAC. When I do, I tend to think of it as more like a UNIX su -- I can get the permission if I want it, but I'm not running with that perm at all times, so I'm not potentially dangerous. If I see the prompt, either I just explicitly tried to do something, or something else is trying to do an end-run around me and can't do it without me knowing about it.
Different strokes for different folks, but I've never actually gotten why so many people hate the UAC thing so much -- I only see the prompt about once or twice per week.
And here, I'll point you to Dilbert on the topic. :-P
*laugh* I'm sorry, but you can't use "Slashdot" and "street-cred" in the same sentence like that.
Geek-cred? Maybe. Street-cred? I don't think so.
Well, it wasn't long ago that we were finding the first exoplanets. Now, we've found a whole lot of them.
However, damned near everything is anomalous since some of these planets are pretty extreme in terms of temperature, proximity to sun, what have you.
I think we're going to need to catalog lots more planets before we start seeing patterns that might point us to lifeforms we can't fathom yet.
Nobody is saying there can't be life without water.
They're saying that since we have no idea of what it would look like, or how to look for it, there is simply no point in trying to look for it.
Tell me, how would you undertake to look for the conditions of life that we don't even have any clue as to how it works chemically? At which point, you could look at any environment and say "well, we can't rule out life there" -- which basically serves no purpose. That doesn't narrow your search in any meaningful way.
We have no ability to posit a theory, test it, or look for it when water isn't involved. At least by sticking with water within a range similar to that of Earth, we can intelligently say "well, we have life that lives in 150C, that place could as well".
There really isn't any way we can look in places that are outside what we can understand. From a science perspective, that's just simply a dead-end at present.
I won't try to explain the specifics, but ...
Some calculation indicated that 'black bodies' (which I think means "radiates heat" or something) would emit infinite energy. However, this didn't correspond to the reality that those things don't, in fact, radiate infinite energy.
The solution these guys got for this equation showed that the equation (which describes particle collisions in a gas I think) doesn't spiral out of control and emit infinite energy. It's still an exceedingly complex equation that we can't solve, but this tells them they're on the right track.
Which is good, because that very complex equation has been shown to at least usable. Which I think lets us do better CGI of water for Avatar 2, plus the real science that comes from being able to model fluids accurately and look at the wacky physics there. ;-)
Any actual physicists can now pillory me and my lame attempt to explain this. :-P
I leave it for you to judge your own government, sir. I don't trust my, or most anyone else's government, to play by the rules. I just presume they're all turds.
So, it's a law with no real teeth then? At which point, companies probably have more incentive to break it and pay the "puny fee" than actually worry about it.
In which case, if the US wanted to, they could force Google to make copies before the HDs are destroyed or given to Germany -- at which point, they've exported the data into US jurisdiction, and you have literally no recourse as I understand it. Now, it's possible they'll refrain from this, but you'd never know if they did.
Cheers
Oh, I'm not disputing that Google keeps admitting to having harvested way more than they ought to have. I just don't see how giving the information to the government makes things better.
Again, I suspect they did break the privacy laws, and there should be some form of penalty. But, if they hand it over to the government, what's to stop them from doing a little surreptitious investigating of the data as well?? Two wrongs don't make a right.
I don't actually know what the remedy should be here, but showing that data to even more people isn't in keeping with the privacy laws either.
And, if any of that data should end up on US soil, the US laws on their access to data collected by US companies would mean the US government could subpoena this and force Google to not tell anyone.