When I was in high school I spent two months as an exchange student in Belgium. That was the only time I felt my life was going anywhere until I reached college.
The reasons were fairly obvious. In Europe, the idea of teenagers meeting in public, having drinks and socializing is accepted. In suburban America, teens are expected to be either at school or school-sponsored events (like god-awful football games) or at home. No one under 21 is allowed in any bar or club (except specially ostracized under-21 clubs). In Europe, the drinking age is 14 (and, conversely, the driving age is 18, with *real* driver training required). That means two things. One, people can get together with their friends in their own neighborhoods without much trouble, and two, they can do so in the presence of adults, who are often much more reasonable and supportive than other teenagers.
The family I stayed with had some real geeks - perhaps they were even more geeky than the US, eg one guy would throw a tantrum every time he heard non-classical music. But I think the social matrix there allowed people to enjoy their own social groups without the winner-takes-all mentality of the US.
No matter what technology is used, the only way to control copying via watermarking or encryption is to take away the consumer's anonymity. This tactic will fail in a number of ways.
First, watermarking only works if the listener's ID is added every time a track is purchased. CD's don't offer this functionality. It will always be possible to walk into a CD store, pay cash, and get a recording with no traceability whatsoever.
Secondly, people just don't like being registered and tracked. The PIII controversy was just the beginning. Can you imagine giving the RIAA your name and address every time you buy an album? Do you want your kid harassed if his friends "borrow" some tracks and put them on the net?
Never heard the story, but it's surprising that Yourdon is quoted in the CNN story on the opposite side of the issue, saying that LOC == productivity. Maybe he should fess up and admit that all the American programmers are busy building bomb shelters and polishing their AK47's for Y2K.
Big Ed should look at some real measure of productivity, like $ revenue / programmer.
This is nice, how about something useful?
on
Flat Panel Speakers
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· Score: 1
I get Spanish radio on my leads, so I called the mfr. and they told me to get a ferrite core (i.e. a chunk of iron, aka an "RF choke") at Radio Shack, and wind the wires around it. The extra inductance sucks the wind out of the high frequency RF without affecting the 20 khz audio range.
If you have the stomach to click on the links next to the article, you'll find some info on the scandalous donations of corporations to subversive groups like the Humane Society.
Here's a quote:
"Unfortunately, while Microsoft's donations of technology are favorable to the industry, many of the nonprofits that receive Microsoft grants are liberal advocacy groups that are bad for business. These include the ACLU, Humane Society, League of Women Voters, NAACP, National Organization for Women, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, National PTA and Planned Parenthood. The Capital Research Center is the only known conservative organization receiving support at this time, although Microsoft has indicated interest in broadening its support for free-market advocates."
So it appears that MS is supporting a group that opposes women, the environment, minorities, and helpless puppies;-).
That seems like a reasonable way to communicate, but my first thought when reading all the references to positioning was that it used spatial position to discriminate transceivers. There was something about Bell labs doing this on slashdot a while back.
Spatial discrimination would use autocorrelation too, between two or more antennas. Each position would yield a different correlation value, so different sources could be picked apart fairly easily. I guess there could be some spoofing by reflections, collisions, etc., but these could probably be worked around. (In fact pseudorandom timing or frequency hopping would kill those false correlations pretty well).
It doesn't seem likely that MS will every plug its gaping holes (Bill Gates's mouth, and the security ones). It's easier to shift or hide the blame. AP had an article on the virus yesterday that didn't mention MS or Word even once.
I believe I read that Rudy Giulani wanted to collect DNA from every infant at birth. I guess if I knew someone like him had my DNA, cloning would seem like a Good Thing.
Bill sounds like he's got the data mining bug. I've worked with others with the same affliction, even in a startup doing this miraculous cross-tabulation of everyone's buying patterns.
The problem Bill doesn't realize is that data mining is fundamentally wrong. People buy goods in independent units they call products. Products are generally defined in ways which make them maximally flexible, so that they can be used with as wide a variety as possible of other products. This independence is a large part of what makes supply and demand work.
When, with heavy cross-marketing, it becomes impossible to buy a product without getting another product thrown in (or discounted, etc.), the result isn't "Business at the Speed of Thought", it's a blurring of the boundaries that keep markets efficient. The economy becomes less transparent, not better. If you can't buy a pound of sugar without getting flour mixed in, because "90% of people buy flour and sugar together", you're screwed.
Bill's mind is apparently immune to these contradictions, as anyone who has followed the MS antitrust trial knows. MS's approach has been to centralize the market as much as possible, decreasing the product choices that people have. Some consolidation is justified, for technical reasons, but it's a trap to think that linking everything to everything will somehow allow companies to outsmart the marketplace.
I think metadata is just not the best way to classify content. It's extra work to produce it, and people never agree on where something should go. The end result is like usenet - the honest people try to keep on-topic, while the spammers bombard them with off-topic crap.
What I would suggest is automated classification. There has been plenty of work over the years in AI and related technologies for parsing, digesting, and classifying raw, unmarked-up text. If babelfish can read a page and map it to another language, it's reasonable enough to expect that the relevant topics in a page can be extracted and mapped to some kind of categorization. There are a number of companies out there selling the technology to do this right now. It's not perfect, but with human editing it can put together a web directory very quickly.
Ultimately I envision being able to start from a page anywhere on the web, push a button, and get a list of other sites on the same topic. If it were done right it would beat keyword search by a large margin.
MS's position seems to be that Oracle cheated when they ran their second mark off of pre-cached results, so that made it OK to do it too. Great, I'm impressed.
I was much more impressed by Oracle's original 71 second mark. That was based on really jamming through 1 Tb of data. When MS publishes a result doing the query the way they claim it's supposed to be done, then we'll have some news.
Sales taxes mostly go to provide roads and parking for motorists to get to brick and mortar stores. For people who don't drive (or use Muni much, and bike to work), they're a ripoff, which is why UPS is delivering a dishwasher to my place in SF at this very moment.
One of the mags in my bathroom has an article about an artist who went about creating art based on public opinion surveys that he commissioned. People in various countries would be shown several pictures and asked to pick which one they liked. The results were kind of mundane, sort of like the pictures you see in hotel rooms, but kind of funny. The most preferred image was a figure in "historic" clothing standing next to a lake, with a bluish background. The least preferred one was a more modernistic image consisting of a few vertical color bands.
There's a URL for this project somewhere, but I'll be darned if I can remember what it is, and I'm at work so I can't get the mag.
Yes, this analogy doesn't work, or at least it has some bad connotations. Most "public" infrastructure is just a subsidy to one group or another, taken from taxpayers whether they use it or not. This kind of taking is more akin to the Microsoft tax than to OSS contributions, which are voluntary and decentralized.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in high school I spent two months as an exchange student in Belgium. That was the only time I felt my life was going anywhere until I reached college.
The reasons were fairly obvious. In Europe, the idea of teenagers meeting in public, having drinks and socializing is accepted. In suburban America, teens are expected to be either at school or school-sponsored events (like god-awful football games) or at home. No one under 21 is allowed in any bar or club (except specially ostracized under-21 clubs). In Europe, the drinking age is 14 (and, conversely, the driving age is 18, with *real* driver training required). That means two things. One, people can get together with their friends in their own neighborhoods without much trouble, and two, they can do so in the presence of adults, who are often much more reasonable and supportive than other teenagers.
The family I stayed with had some real geeks - perhaps they were even more geeky than the US, eg one guy would throw a tantrum every time he heard non-classical music. But I think the social matrix there allowed people to enjoy their own social groups without the winner-takes-all mentality of the US.
The motion detection should be fun.
Another idea: turn the mouse upside down and wave your hand across it. Voila, a mouseless mouse, at least until you need to push a button.
There are lots of fun optical inputs to use with this thing, although it probably requires really close contact to focus correctly.
No matter what technology is used, the only way to control copying via watermarking or encryption is to take away the consumer's anonymity. This tactic will fail in a number of ways.
First, watermarking only works if the listener's ID is added every time a track is purchased. CD's don't offer this functionality. It will always be possible to walk into a CD store, pay cash, and get a recording with no traceability whatsoever.
Secondly, people just don't like being registered and tracked. The PIII controversy was just the beginning. Can you imagine giving the RIAA your name and address every time you buy an album? Do you want your kid harassed if his friends "borrow" some tracks and put them on the net?
Never heard the story, but it's surprising that Yourdon is quoted in the CNN story on the opposite side of the issue, saying that LOC == productivity. Maybe he should fess up and admit that all the American programmers are busy building bomb shelters and polishing their AK47's for Y2K.
Big Ed should look at some real measure of productivity, like $ revenue / programmer.
I get Spanish radio on my leads, so I called the mfr. and they told me to get a ferrite core (i.e. a chunk of iron, aka an "RF choke") at Radio Shack, and wind the wires around it. The extra inductance sucks the wind out of the high frequency RF without affecting the 20 khz audio range.
Also try shielded leads.
Here's a quote:
"Unfortunately, while Microsoft's donations of technology are favorable to the industry, many of the nonprofits that receive Microsoft grants are liberal advocacy groups that are bad for business. These include the ACLU, Humane Society, League of Women Voters, NAACP, National Organization for Women, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, National PTA and Planned Parenthood. The Capital Research Center is the only known conservative organization receiving support at this time, although Microsoft has indicated interest in broadening its support for free-market advocates."
So it appears that MS is supporting a group that opposes women, the environment, minorities, and helpless puppies ;-).
That seems like a reasonable way to communicate, but my first thought when reading all the references to positioning was that it used spatial position to discriminate transceivers. There was something about Bell labs doing this on slashdot a while back.
Spatial discrimination would use autocorrelation too, between two or more antennas. Each position would yield a different correlation value, so different sources could be picked apart fairly easily. I guess there could be some spoofing by reflections, collisions, etc., but these could probably be worked around. (In fact pseudorandom timing or frequency hopping would kill those false correlations pretty well).
It doesn't seem likely that MS will every plug its gaping holes (Bill Gates's mouth, and the security ones). It's easier to shift or hide the blame. AP had an article on the virus yesterday that didn't mention MS or Word even once.
I believe I read that Rudy Giulani wanted to collect DNA from every infant at birth. I guess if I knew someone like him had my DNA, cloning would seem like a Good Thing.
Whose data is it? Mine!
Bill sounds like he's got the data mining bug. I've worked with others with the same affliction, even in a startup doing this miraculous cross-tabulation of everyone's buying patterns.
The problem Bill doesn't realize is that data mining is fundamentally wrong. People buy goods in independent units they call products. Products are generally defined in ways which make them maximally flexible, so that they can be used with as wide a variety as possible of other products. This independence is a large part of what makes supply and demand work.
When, with heavy cross-marketing, it becomes impossible to buy a product without getting another product thrown in (or discounted, etc.), the result isn't "Business at the Speed of Thought", it's a blurring of the boundaries that keep markets efficient. The economy becomes less transparent, not better. If you can't buy a pound of sugar without getting flour mixed in, because "90% of people buy flour and sugar together", you're screwed.
Bill's mind is apparently immune to these contradictions, as anyone who has followed the MS antitrust trial knows. MS's approach has been to centralize the market as much as possible, decreasing the product choices that people have. Some consolidation is justified, for technical reasons, but it's a trap to think that linking everything to everything will somehow allow companies to outsmart the marketplace.
I think metadata is just not the best way to classify content. It's extra work to produce it, and people never agree on where something should go. The end result is like usenet - the honest people try to keep on-topic, while the spammers bombard them with off-topic crap.
What I would suggest is automated classification. There has been plenty of work over the years in AI and related technologies for parsing, digesting, and classifying raw, unmarked-up text. If babelfish can read a page and map it to another language, it's reasonable enough to expect that the relevant topics in a page can be extracted and mapped to some kind of categorization. There are a number of companies out there selling the technology to do this right now. It's not perfect, but with human editing it can put together a web directory very quickly.
Ultimately I envision being able to start from a page anywhere on the web, push a button, and get a list of other sites on the same topic. If it were done right it would beat keyword search by a large margin.
I've even bought a few classics for $3-4. I need a new record player though.
Try running it through the dishwasher.
MS's position seems to be that Oracle cheated when they ran their second mark off of pre-cached results, so that made it OK to do it too. Great, I'm impressed.
I was much more impressed by Oracle's original 71 second mark. That was based on really jamming through 1 Tb of data. When MS publishes a result doing the query the way they claim it's supposed to be done, then we'll have some news.
Sales taxes mostly go to provide roads and parking for motorists to get to brick and mortar stores. For people who don't drive (or use Muni much, and bike to work), they're a ripoff, which is why UPS is delivering a dishwasher to my place in SF at this very moment.
SF Parking authority, kiss my a$$.
One of the mags in my bathroom has an article about an artist who went about creating art based on public opinion surveys that he commissioned. People in various countries would be shown several pictures and asked to pick which one they liked. The results were kind of mundane, sort of like the pictures you see in hotel rooms, but kind of funny. The most preferred image was a figure in "historic" clothing standing next to a lake, with a bluish background. The least preferred one was a more modernistic image consisting of a few vertical color bands.
There's a URL for this project somewhere, but I'll be darned if I can remember what it is, and I'm at work so I can't get the mag.
Yes, this analogy doesn't work, or at least it has some bad connotations. Most "public" infrastructure is just a subsidy to one group or another, taken from taxpayers whether they use it or not. This kind of taking is more akin to the Microsoft tax than to OSS contributions, which are voluntary and decentralized.
Here's a Zip-drive player that I found last Friday. I'm not sure how well Zip's play in portable use, except when they're stationary.
Isn't MS software only licensed for use in one time zone?
This could give rise to a new phenomenon: Windows re-entry day.
I was catching up on movie star gossip in the Economist last week, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but statistics on protectionism.
Guess which country has the highest percentage of people against free trade? Starts with U, ends with nited States.
This was a global survey. Even places like Korea, which used to execute foreigners, are way ahead of the US.