Hank showed me MATRIX just a few short weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Using law enforcement data and commercial data, all of the commercial data available in the public domain, Asher's query produced Atta's photo -- and about 80 others, many of them fellow 9/11 hijackers, many of them associates of the 9/11 hijackers.
Without additional information it's impossible to say if this is impressive, or just a stupid algorithm trick. With many mining algos, you can easily train them pull certain needles out of the haystack. The question is, will your training situation look anything like the future situations? Training the algo only with the 9/11 terrorists, would it pull out the trade center bombers, or Timothy McVeigh? Will future predictions be right or will it pull out groups of Arabic student pilots who had the misfortune of buying the same shampoo most preferred by 9 out of 10 terrorists. Especially with rare events, I think you mostly get into a hyper complicated version of correlation != causation.
Forget 3D, multi-touch, or any other UI change -- get me more screen space first. I'm just ready for our computer desktops to actually have physical desktop sized displays. Repeated studies and surveys say that multiple monitors or larger monitors increase productivity.
Oh and maybe bring back the "turbo" button and put it on the mouse to acutally cross all that screen space...
The stakes of online gambling is simply too high, and it's far easy to cheat. If I simply call a friend who lives in another location and exchange information, how will you catch that?
Because each of you two individually suck at poker, but observably improve when you're at the same table?
Hmm, lets see - small "sidearm" size, notification to and from carrier, can take and display messages... so they're going to arm Air Force guards with cellphones?
I've always wondered why the government can't own the fibre like they do the roads. Like road tolls, people must pay a certain fee to the government in order to use these pipes, which may be included into the price of their internet service. Providers can maintain and expand the network, and money spent doing so can be applied as a toll credit (i.e. if AT&T spends $2bn expanding the network, then they can get an equivalent break on gov't line tolls). This way companies are not penalized for building up the infrastructure, while maintaining competitiveness for smaller players.
It doesn't happen because politicians on both sides of the asile have been blinded by the proposition that private companies run more efficiently than the governement. (I certainly think that private efficiency is better than in government in some contexts - but is certainly not universally applicable).
Of all the stupid things the government classifies as secret, here they publicise an attack vector and a specific vulnerability? Maybe they should have kept the particulars of this excercise a secret and just pushed for better security measures on networks controlling our physical infrastructre. Hmm
Ya know what happens if an ISP blocks "Google and friends"? They get a phone call from every single one of their subscribers asking why they can't get to Google. If the ISP lies and claims that it isn't their fault? The customers say, yes, it is their fault, their friend with another ISP (or their connection at work) has no problem getting to Google. If the ISP still refuses to remove the block? The customers quit and go to another ISP.
The customers know to demand Google because they're already big. Google can fend for itself. Smaller entities won't have that pull, and if no one knows they exist already, no one will notice that many more are extinguished under a tiered internet.
At best many small to mid-size web sites will feel the need for paying higher priority rates, at worst it moves the bar up to the point that many new net concepts can no longer be explored because they're annoyingly slow. This will reduce the quantity and quality of new concept exploration on the internet. Basically, I think dropping net neutrality will take money out of the hands of smaller entrepreneurial startups and funnel it over to non-innovative ISPs. Besides the major ISPs there may be a very few companies for which a tiered internet will benefit their business model - if they can line up additional funding to actually buy priority. However, overall I think it would be a net loss for the productivity in our economy and freedom in our communication.
From a purely technical standpoint, I also think all the additional tier billing equipment and software to monitor and bill for priority access will tax the growth of additional bandwidth. That in addition to taking away from financial investments that might otherwise be put in to "regular" tier network service.
For example, our customers demand - and we willingly pay - for ESPN and ESPN HD. The cost per subscriber per month is about $14. We also carry ESPN2, at a discount. If we dropped ESPN 2 from our expanded basic tier, the SD and HD ESPN channels would cost us $9/mo per sub.
I pay my sat network ~$35/mo for my access so if they're playing about the same all the other channels cost about $21. I couldn't care less about sports and maybe 10% of all households are the same. There are definitely other channels for which I'd be willing to pay. It looks like the industry is talking themselves out of the possibly of selling me lower cost channels and pocketing a much higher margin of the $35 that I already spend with them monthly. I think they just fear change.
I came across these the other day http://www.wiretracks.com/. Basically, they're split channels that you can place beneath your wall and baseboards to route cabling. I haven't tried them, but the idea is certainly appealing. However, I do wonder how precisely you can attach the baseboard to the outer half of the shell though.
I'm missing something here. Why would anyone deposit a few hundred dollars worth of hardware into essentially a trash bin for the sake of an anonymous show of company loyalty?
When I looked at the same configuration for the laptop 1505N vs 1505 the price difference was about $100 but was explained more by the lack of the ATI graphics card in the linux model.
I like that move. It emphasizes to ATI that bad, closed linux drivers == fewer sales.
You could be driving on a private circuit, you could be using gas for private electricity generation... Same for property taxes, when did you require fire department service, how does the tax asses the precautions you take to avoid fire, etc.
Are you going to dump emissions from burning the gas into your own private atmosphere too?
The real question, has every president ahead of him enjoyed a similar power? In this respect, yes. That doesn't mean everything he does is gravy with me, the signing statement things isn't exactly kosher in my book. But this is the same power that every president has enjoyed and it appears to only be a problem today.
Actually, I don't believe that previous presidents had quite the same power. Before Bush, replacement Justice Dept attorneys required Senate approval for permanent replacements. Replacement without congressional approval was a provision of the Patriot act.
The point of the LA Times article, I think, was somewhat missed. The rules that the California PUC elected to pass force CA solar rebate applicants to use a different rate structure from regular residential customers. Apparently no one on the PUC closely reviewed the math for the change. As a result, solar installs that only partially replace daytime electricity use often (always?) result in higher electricity costs to the homeowner - even figuring in the rebate.
This pushes the economics of the proposal out of the realm of many forward-looking customers willing to accept a medium to large capital investment with a small, long-term rate of return. Instead, the rules require a huge capital investment (for a typical homeowner) for the same small, long-term return, or a small/medium investment resulting in long term loss. An interesting side observation out of this is that almost all people considering solar PV systems were capable of performing the math to make the assessment - something that is a don't know or don't care issue for the general public.
It's interesting to note that the CA PUC initially wanted to give most of the solar rebate allocation to big utilities before being stopped by the governor. No doubt allocating it to utilities would have resulted in technologically higher efficiency installations - but I suspect directing rebates to residential users puts both more wattage online overall, as well as in a shorter timeframe. This latest mistake makes me think the PUC is just continuing it's previous direction - if no one had noticed, there would have been a big pot of money left near the end of the program which probably would have been redirected toward utilities again..
One famous manager (I don't remember who exactly though) once said, that if the company's leader performs mere employee's duties then either he does not understand his role or there is something terribly wrong with the way the company operates
I am more impressed with FedEx. The story I heard is that it requires all of its management to spend at least one day helping on the package line helping with the xmas rush.
If you're in a pinch with the HP d135, you can actually pull the coin battery out of the innards of the machine to make it conveniently forget the date. It then also forgets phone numbers and other print settings, but like I said.. in a pinch. However, wherever possible, I choose not to work with companies who implement customer-hostile features. I gave up color printing, and HP gave up a customer.
For only $50 more than it costs to replace just the HP D135 heads, I bought a new networked Brother MFC-7820N laser printer which has the same features (save for color), takes up less space, and prints faster than the HP. The non-networked version would have had me paying about the same or less.
The mechanisms in ink cartridges are a lot more complicated nowadays than they used to be. HP, for example, has the print heads built into the ink cartridges.
Hah, that should read they're more complicated than the need to be. I bought my last HP Multi-function printer specifically because it separated the heads from the ink, thinking it would save me money. Unfortunately, HP added the "feature" of electronic date expiry to the cartridges. During a late evening print job, I found that my ink was outdated, the refills I had in reserve were outdated and that I hated HP.
So now I'm recommending against HP for any consumer-grade print products and printing from my new network Brother laser. (Which btw installed beautifully with mfr supplied debian packages enabling print, scan, and fax).
Every professor I've had has warned us vehemently not to use Wikipedia. It's useless for scholarly work as you have no idea if the material is plagerized or just down right incorrect.
For scholarly work you wouldn't use the Encyclopedia Brittanica either. Encyclopedias are indirect summaries of information sources. In academic papers, the more direct the evidence considered, the less likely your conclusions are biased by previous bad or misleading assumptions, and the more likely that the work of the paper leads to something novel about our understanding about the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Hank showed me MATRIX just a few short weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Using law enforcement data and commercial data, all of the commercial data available in the public domain, Asher's query produced Atta's photo -- and about 80 others, many of them fellow 9/11 hijackers, many of them associates of the 9/11 hijackers.
Without additional information it's impossible to say if this is impressive, or just a stupid algorithm trick. With many mining algos, you can easily train them pull certain needles out of the haystack. The question is, will your training situation look anything like the future situations? Training the algo only with the 9/11 terrorists, would it pull out the trade center bombers, or Timothy McVeigh? Will future predictions be right or will it pull out groups of Arabic student pilots who had the misfortune of buying the same shampoo most preferred by 9 out of 10 terrorists. Especially with rare events, I think you mostly get into a hyper complicated version of correlation != causation.
They make horrible CEOs because they are detailed oriented
... engineering! See link.
Actually engineers don't make bad CEOs. The most common CEO undergrad degrees in S&P 500 companies is
Forget 3D, multi-touch, or any other UI change -- get me more screen space first. I'm just ready for our computer desktops to actually have physical desktop sized displays. Repeated studies and surveys say that multiple monitors or larger monitors increase productivity.
Oh and maybe bring back the "turbo" button and put it on the mouse to acutally cross all that screen space...
The stakes of online gambling is simply too high, and it's far easy to cheat. If I simply call a friend who lives in another location and exchange information, how will you catch that?
Because each of you two individually suck at poker, but observably improve when you're at the same table?
Hmm, lets see - small "sidearm" size, notification to and from carrier, can take and display messages... so they're going to arm Air Force guards with cellphones?
I've always wondered why the government can't own the fibre like they do the roads. Like road tolls, people must pay a certain fee to the government in order to use these pipes, which may be included into the price of their internet service. Providers can maintain and expand the network, and money spent doing so can be applied as a toll credit (i.e. if AT&T spends $2bn expanding the network, then they can get an equivalent break on gov't line tolls). This way companies are not penalized for building up the infrastructure, while maintaining competitiveness for smaller players.
It doesn't happen because politicians on both sides of the asile have been blinded by the proposition that private companies run more efficiently than the governement. (I certainly think that private efficiency is better than in government in some contexts - but is certainly not universally applicable).
Of all the stupid things the government classifies as secret, here they publicise an attack vector and a specific vulnerability? Maybe they should have kept the particulars of this excercise a secret and just pushed for better security measures on networks controlling our physical infrastructre. Hmm
Duncan YY Heavy Industries, were unavailable for comment.
I heard that they barely beat out YoYoDyne unwinder contract.
Ya know what happens if an ISP blocks "Google and friends"? They get a phone call from every single one of their subscribers asking why they can't get to Google. If the ISP lies and claims that it isn't their fault? The customers say, yes, it is their fault, their friend with another ISP (or their connection at work) has no problem getting to Google. If the ISP still refuses to remove the block? The customers quit and go to another ISP.
The customers know to demand Google because they're already big. Google can fend for itself. Smaller entities won't have that pull, and if no one knows they exist already, no one will notice that many more are extinguished under a tiered internet.
At best many small to mid-size web sites will feel the need for paying higher priority rates, at worst it moves the bar up to the point that many new net concepts can no longer be explored because they're annoyingly slow. This will reduce the quantity and quality of new concept exploration on the internet. Basically, I think dropping net neutrality will take money out of the hands of smaller entrepreneurial startups and funnel it over to non-innovative ISPs. Besides the major ISPs there may be a very few companies for which a tiered internet will benefit their business model - if they can line up additional funding to actually buy priority. However, overall I think it would be a net loss for the productivity in our economy and freedom in our communication.
From a purely technical standpoint, I also think all the additional tier billing equipment and software to monitor and bill for priority access will tax the growth of additional bandwidth. That in addition to taking away from financial investments that might otherwise be put in to "regular" tier network service.
For example, our customers demand - and we willingly pay - for ESPN and ESPN HD. The cost per subscriber per month is about $14. We also carry ESPN2, at a discount. If we dropped ESPN 2 from our expanded basic tier, the SD and HD ESPN channels would cost us $9/mo per sub.
I pay my sat network ~$35/mo for my access so if they're playing about the same all the other channels cost about $21. I couldn't care less about sports and maybe 10% of all households are the same. There are definitely other channels for which I'd be willing to pay. It looks like the industry is talking themselves out of the possibly of selling me lower cost channels and pocketing a much higher margin of the $35 that I already spend with them monthly. I think they just fear change.
Read the LKML archive?
I came across these the other day http://www.wiretracks.com/. Basically, they're split channels that you can place beneath your wall and baseboards to route cabling. I haven't tried them, but the idea is certainly appealing. However, I do wonder how precisely you can attach the baseboard to the outer half of the shell though.
It sounds like this instance isn't very well-hidden, but watermarks can be pretty clever.
Suppose there's another watermark in the file. Maybe the thinking is that removal of the obvious tag in an uploaded file signals an intent to pirate.
I'm missing something here. Why would anyone deposit a few hundred dollars worth of hardware into essentially a trash bin for the sake of an anonymous show of company loyalty?
When I looked at the same configuration for the laptop 1505N vs 1505 the price difference was about $100 but was explained more by the lack of the ATI graphics card in the linux model.
I like that move. It emphasizes to ATI that bad, closed linux drivers == fewer sales.
You could be driving on a private circuit, you could be using gas for private electricity generation... Same for property taxes, when did you require fire department service, how does the tax asses the precautions you take to avoid fire, etc.
Are you going to dump emissions from burning the gas into your own private atmosphere too?
The real question, has every president ahead of him enjoyed a similar power? In this respect, yes. That doesn't mean everything he does is gravy with me, the signing statement things isn't exactly kosher in my book. But this is the same power that every president has enjoyed and it appears to only be a problem today.
Actually, I don't believe that previous presidents had quite the same power. Before Bush, replacement Justice Dept attorneys required Senate approval for permanent replacements. Replacement without congressional approval was a provision of the Patriot act.
Ironically, computing with well-implemented technology 17 years in the past is still better than being on Windows.
The point of the LA Times article, I think, was somewhat missed. The rules that the California PUC elected to pass force CA solar rebate applicants to use a different rate structure from regular residential customers. Apparently no one on the PUC closely reviewed the math for the change. As a result, solar installs that only partially replace daytime electricity use often (always?) result in higher electricity costs to the homeowner - even figuring in the rebate.
This pushes the economics of the proposal out of the realm of many forward-looking customers willing to accept a medium to large capital investment with a small, long-term rate of return. Instead, the rules require a huge capital investment (for a typical homeowner) for the same small, long-term return, or a small/medium investment resulting in long term loss. An interesting side observation out of this is that almost all people considering solar PV systems were capable of performing the math to make the assessment - something that is a don't know or don't care issue for the general public.
It's interesting to note that the CA PUC initially wanted to give most of the solar rebate allocation to big utilities before being stopped by the governor. No doubt allocating it to utilities would have resulted in technologically higher efficiency installations - but I suspect directing rebates to residential users puts both more wattage online overall, as well as in a shorter timeframe. This latest mistake makes me think the PUC is just continuing it's previous direction - if no one had noticed, there would have been a big pot of money left near the end of the program which probably would have been redirected toward utilities again..
One famous manager (I don't remember who exactly though) once said, that if the company's leader performs mere employee's duties then either he does not understand his role or there is something terribly wrong with the way the company operates
I am more impressed with FedEx. The story I heard is that it requires all of its management to spend at least one day helping on the package line helping with the xmas rush.
Researchers realize that everybody would be safest if we all just sat in the dark and shunned communication with anyone.
In this context, I hope what you mean by mulling is: slapping forehead exclaiming "that was dumb!"
If you're in a pinch with the HP d135, you can actually pull the coin battery out of the innards of the machine to make it conveniently forget the date. It then also forgets phone numbers and other print settings, but like I said.. in a pinch. However, wherever possible, I choose not to work with companies who implement customer-hostile features. I gave up color printing, and HP gave up a customer.
For only $50 more than it costs to replace just the HP D135 heads, I bought a new networked Brother MFC-7820N laser printer which has the same features (save for color), takes up less space, and prints faster than the HP. The non-networked version would have had me paying about the same or less.
The mechanisms in ink cartridges are a lot more complicated nowadays than they used to be. HP, for example, has the print heads built into the ink cartridges.
Hah, that should read they're more complicated than the need to be. I bought my last HP Multi-function printer specifically because it separated the heads from the ink, thinking it would save me money. Unfortunately, HP added the "feature" of electronic date expiry to the cartridges. During a late evening print job, I found that my ink was outdated, the refills I had in reserve were outdated and that I hated HP.
So now I'm recommending against HP for any consumer-grade print products and printing from my new network Brother laser. (Which btw installed beautifully with mfr supplied debian packages enabling print, scan, and fax).
Every professor I've had has warned us vehemently not to use Wikipedia. It's useless for scholarly work as you have no idea if the material is plagerized or just down right incorrect.
For scholarly work you wouldn't use the Encyclopedia Brittanica either. Encyclopedias are indirect summaries of information sources. In academic papers, the more direct the evidence considered, the less likely your conclusions are biased by previous bad or misleading assumptions, and the more likely that the work of the paper leads to something novel about our understanding about the world.