"What about a message rated 50% meta 50% insightful?"
Re-read what I wrote.
I never suggested using the "meta" tag for rating, only for classification. Given two such moderations, the message would be marked for the meta discussion. If you like, I'm sure I could hack this into Slash in a few hours. It's really not all that complicated.
The other way to go is to add a new moderation tag to Slash: "Meta-discussion", which does not affect article score (as Off-topic does), but after two ratings matching that criteria, the default filters would ignore it entirely (hold your horses and read on, censorship-paranoia types).
Add a link on the discussion page that toggles the behavior (hide non-meta and display meta) and this would essentially give everyone two discussion forums for each article: the discussion about the topic and the meta-discussion about the submitter, spalling, advertising kickback conspiracy theories, discussion of the best font to use when viewing this article, etc.
The only difference between the two "forums" would be which one the default user sees first (and I think the topic at hand should be that default, not the meta-discussion, but it should be configurable, of course). Now you get to put up stories that will be highly controversial without drowning users (at least users configured with default settings) in a sea of meta-discussion.
Actually, I'm not sure that there's anything in this observation that Hubble is needed for. AO is limited in the ultraviolet, but this observation could have been made in the visisble spectrum, I would expect. As such, any of the more recent large telescopes with AO should have been able to make this observation. It just so happens that it was done with Hubble instead.
For those not aware, AO is "Addaptive Optics". This is how you use ground-based scopes, but compensate for the atmosphere. It usually involves deforming a physical mirror, though I think there are some AO systems that work purely digitally. I'm not sure. IANAA.
AO was perfected after Hubble went up, and many ground-based scopes have gotten imaging that's just as detailed (more so in some cases) as Hubble is capable of. I have an astronomer friend who was fond of showing off some photos that he had from AO scopes off of relatively old, retrofitted systems that he claimed were better imaging that Hubble had been able to get from the same objects.
"Any serious data archive will have implemented a plan to move data to a new media format and, in most cases, migrate it to a new file formats."
Your definition of "serious" has some problems. There are many archives out there that use out-dated formats for very important data, but cannot affort the expertise or equipment to move to another format.
I would suspect a couple (especially the last) of the entries in this paper to be decent prior-art sources for much of what is listed in the patent's claims, but perhaps not all.
"That I can think of" would be the key phrase in your statement.
Audio:
Wax cylinder Wire recording Various sizes and speeds of vynil record that even scratch devices dissavow
Audio-related: Player piano scrolls
Video: Super 8 film (used by a very limited group of artists today) Beta (not the pro format that some TV stations still use, but the home format) VHS (it's not "dead", but it's certainly deader than DVD)
Still images: Almost any format you mention is "only mostly dead", as artists tend to be overly nostalgic. However, the Disc Camera format is pretty well gone, as are most of the non-35mm roll formats until you get up into poster format range.
Data: This one's very sticky. It's hard to ever say that data formats are dead, since some archive somewhere will need to keep buying it. However, it's very hard to actually get new TK cartridges, data-quality cassette tapes, 8-inch floppies, paper tape, optical tape, drum drives, core memory or any other non-PC, non-mainframe memory format of 25 or more years ago.
"Their argument is that everything fits together so perfectly and logically that there must have been a creator."
And that's a fine thing to think, but you cannot rely on ID's central theme -- unexpected complexity -- when you have no frame of reference. By expanding the complexity of locomotion to physics in general, we render any assertions about complexity moot. Is physics complex? Maybe, but perhaps we are just poor judges of complexity. That argument is pure philosophy.
No. Intelligent Design proponents would say that there's no particular reason that a creator would use a locomotion model that was not the most efficient.
On the other hand, the discovery does weaken the ID central hypothesis: that of a threshhold of complexity, beyond which a "designer" is required.
I'll point out that the primary concern that you cite in your journal is that this guy is driving traffic to his site instead of to the sites of the source information, and yet this article's primary link goes directly from Slashdot to Duke University.
It's sad when a canned reply that consists of a single link to an off-topic journal is modded up to a 5. Makes me think of the days when anti-Katz postings would be modded through the roof for no particular reason other than spite.
People focus so much on how the cost of the OS is a burden, but then come down on MS when they don't provide a security update immediately. Now, I'm certainly in the camp that says security updates should flow fast and furious, but I'm not unrealistic enough to think that that's cheap. Could it come in at a lower price point? Sure. But, I'm certain that any platform sold at Walmart or any other major retailer would have to be backed by an organization that offered security and bug-fix updates for free, which means that the "OS Tax" isn't going anywhere.
Hiding information is more important than sharing
on
Ambient Findability
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
One of the paradoxes of information and language sciences is that any means of communication is valued by humans as much for its ability to hide or withold infromation as to share and navigate it. This is how we form social cliques, and otherwise identify those who are "us" vs. those who are "them". Witness the use of 1337 speak, the near religious fervor with which certain file formats are espoused, debates over programming langauges, etc. If there were a truly comprehensive way to share information without any ambiguity in a searchable, locatable way, you can expect that within a year there would be a dozen variants of it aimed at introducing ambiguity and uncertainty. Moreover that ambiguity would be cherished by devoted sets of users who felt that it was more important than the rest of the medium.
"Are you volunteering to maintain a copy of Gaim for my shop? You won't be paid, because there isn't money for that, but you can maintain it. Now, repeat that for just about every other business out there, and you see why that is a ridiculous option."
If you don't value productivity and security equally, then it would not make any sense. Of course, if you let one of those two lead your decision without the other, you're probably in strong danger of being overwhelmed by your competition anyway.
It's, sadly, not the work of any single mastermind. The "hokey stick" clearly shows that all natural phenomenon are the result of SUVs... unless they're pretty flowers; those are made by God... or happy thought-waves.
Or you could simply hire a software security professional to maintain a set of local updates for an open source IM product like gaim (for Windows and Linux). There, now you have secure IM for the whole company, and can have it talk to an internal jabber server for internal communications and any old external server for external communications (just have your security dude tweak the interface so taht you have a little warning on any window that communicates with the outside).
It's not hard to do, it's just hard to get slow-witted dinosaurs to realize that they're actually competing against firms that WILL do it.
"If you only count hurricanes, you will see this is a milder season than any we've had in the last 25 years except for some late 1990s years."
That depends on how you measure "mild". For instance, we had the strongest hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic this year (by pressure).
We also had two category 5 hurricanes, making it one of the most intense seasons on record.
This was certainly an upswing in hurricane output. Of course, it's an upswing that had been predicted since the lull began, since hurricanes tend to come in waves. We should have an interesting next few years....
"Yep... this guy sounds exactly like a typical user [...] He mentions not being able to use his instant messanger. I guess he hasn't been paying attention to the rash of IM-based worms recently. [...] 'course, I'm preaching to the choir here on Slashdot."
Horse hockey! I've been a sysadmin and/or programmer for nearly 20 years and I can assure you that I agree with him fully on the damage that lack of access to new technology does. Cutting off access to IM is the lazy way out that will ultimately make the companies that do so crumble under their own weight. I can't count the number of times that I've run into a problem, fired up IM, and asked a friend what I'm doing wrong. Sometimes that friend works down the hall. Sometimes he or she is around the globe. I get an answer in a few seconds and go about my work, and my friends avail themselves of the same luxury. How long does this guy have to trudge through mailing list archive after mailing list archive trying to find his answers? Or are those resources cut off to him as well?
I work for a company that makes its reputation from solving problems in weeks that the industry around us would take years or decades to "study". I can't afford to have some punk kid with his hands on a firewall configuration tell me that I can't have access to the information that I need.
Have security concerns? Address them! You just have to take as a criteria that your users still need to get work done.
Ignorning the connotations from the Chinese side of the world (since most Intel consumer's won't recognize the connection), I'd like to point out that right now, when people think "leap ahead" and "CPU" they don't think of Intel. Interesting choice on their part, and makes me wonder if it will backfire.
It does make me think, though. Did Apple set as a condition of using Intel processors that they would not have that cheesy logo—long associated with the grey box phenomenon—to grace the outside of their systems once they converted to Intel processors?
That's totally unreasonable. Many patent lawyers are good people doing an honest (and hard) day's work. This is a different class of animal. These folks don't work for clients who invent things, they go into business for themselves in order to make money from the system without actually having contributed anything to the invention process.
First, you have the mail itself. RFC2822 is an international standard, so that seems like the right way to go to store the mail. For indexing, there are any number of mail archival systems, some better and some worse than others, but most handle 2822 just fine.
Now you get into attachments. Here, you presumably want to convert everything down into one of PDF (semi-open format where there are at least several competing readers), Open Document (open format with an open source reader as the primary implementation) or PNG (open specification with many implementations) depending on the nature of the attachment.
Simple: rewrite (or amend) their corporate charter.
Whose? Sony Corporation of America? Sony Electronics Inc.? Sony Entertainment Inc.? SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (50% ownership)? Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.?
Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo? I'd like to see the U.S. court that could re-write a Japanese company's charter!
Which head of the hydra would you like to cut off (and watch regrow) first?
Slashdot Mirror
"What about a message rated 50% meta 50% insightful?"
Re-read what I wrote.
I never suggested using the "meta" tag for rating, only for classification. Given two such moderations, the message would be marked for the meta discussion. If you like, I'm sure I could hack this into Slash in a few hours. It's really not all that complicated.
The other way to go is to add a new moderation tag to Slash: "Meta-discussion", which does not affect article score (as Off-topic does), but after two ratings matching that criteria, the default filters would ignore it entirely (hold your horses and read on, censorship-paranoia types).
Add a link on the discussion page that toggles the behavior (hide non-meta and display meta) and this would essentially give everyone two discussion forums for each article: the discussion about the topic and the meta-discussion about the submitter, spalling, advertising kickback conspiracy theories, discussion of the best font to use when viewing this article, etc.
The only difference between the two "forums" would be which one the default user sees first (and I think the topic at hand should be that default, not the meta-discussion, but it should be configurable, of course). Now you get to put up stories that will be highly controversial without drowning users (at least users configured with default settings) in a sea of meta-discussion.
Censorship: 0
Usability: 1
Win/win.
There is Polaris A (a large star), then Polaris Ab (a small dot to the bottom-right of Polaris A, that overlaps the glow of the main star).
Then, far to the bottom right, quite separate from Polaris A is Polaris B.
They are all visible in the picture.
Yes, I think you, your parent post and my grandparent post were all in violent agreement on this point.
Actually, I'm not sure that there's anything in this observation that Hubble is needed for. AO is limited in the ultraviolet, but this observation could have been made in the visisble spectrum, I would expect. As such, any of the more recent large telescopes with AO should have been able to make this observation. It just so happens that it was done with Hubble instead.
For those not aware, AO is "Addaptive Optics". This is how you use ground-based scopes, but compensate for the atmosphere. It usually involves deforming a physical mirror, though I think there are some AO systems that work purely digitally. I'm not sure. IANAA.
AO was perfected after Hubble went up, and many ground-based scopes have gotten imaging that's just as detailed (more so in some cases) as Hubble is capable of. I have an astronomer friend who was fond of showing off some photos that he had from AO scopes off of relatively old, retrofitted systems that he claimed were better imaging that Hubble had been able to get from the same objects.
"Any serious data archive will have implemented a plan to move data to a new media format and, in most cases, migrate it to a new file formats."
Your definition of "serious" has some problems. There are many archives out there that use out-dated formats for very important data, but cannot affort the expertise or equipment to move to another format.
I would suspect a couple (especially the last) of the entries in this paper to be decent prior-art sources for much of what is listed in the patent's claims, but perhaps not all.
"That I can think of" would be the key phrase in your statement.
Audio:
Wax cylinder
Wire recording
Various sizes and speeds of vynil record that even scratch devices dissavow
Audio-related:
Player piano scrolls
Video:
Super 8 film (used by a very limited group of artists today)
Beta (not the pro format that some TV stations still use, but the home format)
VHS (it's not "dead", but it's certainly deader than DVD)
Still images:
Almost any format you mention is "only mostly dead", as artists tend to be overly nostalgic. However, the Disc Camera format is pretty well gone, as are most of the non-35mm roll formats until you get up into poster format range.
Data:
This one's very sticky. It's hard to ever say that data formats are dead, since some archive somewhere will need to keep buying it. However, it's very hard to actually get new TK cartridges, data-quality cassette tapes, 8-inch floppies, paper tape, optical tape, drum drives, core memory or any other non-PC, non-mainframe memory format of 25 or more years ago.
Well, technically, most of those are initialisms, but that distinction has become rather cloudy over the years.
"Their argument is that everything fits together so perfectly and logically that there must have been a creator."
And that's a fine thing to think, but you cannot rely on ID's central theme -- unexpected complexity -- when you have no frame of reference. By expanding the complexity of locomotion to physics in general, we render any assertions about complexity moot. Is physics complex? Maybe, but perhaps we are just poor judges of complexity. That argument is pure philosophy.
No. Intelligent Design proponents would say that there's no particular reason that a creator would use a locomotion model that was not the most efficient.
On the other hand, the discovery does weaken the ID central hypothesis: that of a threshhold of complexity, beyond which a "designer" is required.
I'll point out that the primary concern that you cite in your journal is that this guy is driving traffic to his site instead of to the sites of the source information, and yet this article's primary link goes directly from Slashdot to Duke University.
It's sad when a canned reply that consists of a single link to an off-topic journal is modded up to a 5. Makes me think of the days when anti-Katz postings would be modded through the roof for no particular reason other than spite.
People focus so much on how the cost of the OS is a burden, but then come down on MS when they don't provide a security update immediately. Now, I'm certainly in the camp that says security updates should flow fast and furious, but I'm not unrealistic enough to think that that's cheap. Could it come in at a lower price point? Sure. But, I'm certain that any platform sold at Walmart or any other major retailer would have to be backed by an organization that offered security and bug-fix updates for free, which means that the "OS Tax" isn't going anywhere.
One of the paradoxes of information and language sciences is that any means of communication is valued by humans as much for its ability to hide or withold infromation as to share and navigate it. This is how we form social cliques, and otherwise identify those who are "us" vs. those who are "them". Witness the use of 1337 speak, the near religious fervor with which certain file formats are espoused, debates over programming langauges, etc. If there were a truly comprehensive way to share information without any ambiguity in a searchable, locatable way, you can expect that within a year there would be a dozen variants of it aimed at introducing ambiguity and uncertainty. Moreover that ambiguity would be cherished by devoted sets of users who felt that it was more important than the rest of the medium.
"Are you volunteering to maintain a copy of Gaim for my shop? You won't be paid, because there isn't money for that, but you can maintain it. Now, repeat that for just about every other business out there, and you see why that is a ridiculous option."
If you don't value productivity and security equally, then it would not make any sense. Of course, if you let one of those two lead your decision without the other, you're probably in strong danger of being overwhelmed by your competition anyway.
It's, sadly, not the work of any single mastermind. The "hokey stick" clearly shows that all natural phenomenon are the result of SUVs... unless they're pretty flowers; those are made by God... or happy thought-waves.
Or you could simply hire a software security professional to maintain a set of local updates for an open source IM product like gaim (for Windows and Linux). There, now you have secure IM for the whole company, and can have it talk to an internal jabber server for internal communications and any old external server for external communications (just have your security dude tweak the interface so taht you have a little warning on any window that communicates with the outside).
It's not hard to do, it's just hard to get slow-witted dinosaurs to realize that they're actually competing against firms that WILL do it.
"If you only count hurricanes, you will see this is a milder season than any we've had in the last 25 years except for some late 1990s years."
That depends on how you measure "mild". For instance, we had the strongest hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic this year (by pressure).
We also had two category 5 hurricanes, making it one of the most intense seasons on record.
This was certainly an upswing in hurricane output. Of course, it's an upswing that had been predicted since the lull began, since hurricanes tend to come in waves. We should have an interesting next few years....
"Yep... this guy sounds exactly like a typical user [...] He mentions not being able to use his instant messanger. I guess he hasn't been paying attention to the rash of IM-based worms recently. [...] 'course, I'm preaching to the choir here on Slashdot."
Horse hockey! I've been a sysadmin and/or programmer for nearly 20 years and I can assure you that I agree with him fully on the damage that lack of access to new technology does. Cutting off access to IM is the lazy way out that will ultimately make the companies that do so crumble under their own weight. I can't count the number of times that I've run into a problem, fired up IM, and asked a friend what I'm doing wrong. Sometimes that friend works down the hall. Sometimes he or she is around the globe. I get an answer in a few seconds and go about my work, and my friends avail themselves of the same luxury. How long does this guy have to trudge through mailing list archive after mailing list archive trying to find his answers? Or are those resources cut off to him as well?
I work for a company that makes its reputation from solving problems in weeks that the industry around us would take years or decades to "study". I can't afford to have some punk kid with his hands on a firewall configuration tell me that I can't have access to the information that I need.
Have security concerns? Address them! You just have to take as a criteria that your users still need to get work done.
Ignorning the connotations from the Chinese side of the world (since most Intel consumer's won't recognize the connection), I'd like to point out that right now, when people think "leap ahead" and "CPU" they don't think of Intel. Interesting choice on their part, and makes me wonder if it will backfire.
It does make me think, though. Did Apple set as a condition of using Intel processors that they would not have that cheesy logo—long associated with the grey box phenomenon—to grace the outside of their systems once they converted to Intel processors?
"Every single example tested could fail open circuit in five minutes"
But I think the GP's point was taht UL certification means that it's not likely going to overheat to the point of being dangerous.
That's totally unreasonable. Many patent lawyers are good people doing an honest (and hard) day's work. This is a different class of animal. These folks don't work for clients who invent things, they go into business for themselves in order to make money from the system without actually having contributed anything to the invention process.
This doesn't make sense to me.
First, you have the mail itself. RFC2822 is an international standard, so that seems like the right way to go to store the mail. For indexing, there are any number of mail archival systems, some better and some worse than others, but most handle 2822 just fine.
Now you get into attachments. Here, you presumably want to convert everything down into one of PDF (semi-open format where there are at least several competing readers), Open Document (open format with an open source reader as the primary implementation) or PNG (open specification with many implementations) depending on the nature of the attachment.
So where's the problem?
Simple: rewrite (or amend) their corporate charter.
Whose? Sony Corporation of America? Sony Electronics Inc.? Sony Entertainment Inc.? SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (50% ownership)? Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.?
Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo? I'd like to see the U.S. court that could re-write a Japanese company's charter!
Which head of the hydra would you like to cut off (and watch regrow) first?