Microsoft Word's grammar check has suggested to me in the past that "do it for the greater good" should probably be "do it for the greater well".
It's sometimes helpful in helping my catch my grammar mistakes. But more often than not, it's a PITA, and the act of wading through its incorrect suggestions is more work than I think it's worth. And that's when it's SO easy to figure out if the suggestion is right or wrong...the sentence is on the screen, standing alone, and I can instantly decide if it's right or not.
Now, imagine wading through a bunch of suggestions and warnings on your code. Imagine having to figure out the context for the flagged code segnments, and having to review the code and all code which references it to see if it's correct or not.
Sure, if you've got free time or resources to throw at it, using computer heuristics to attempt to help out humans is nice. But you have to realize that at this stage in the game, it often takes a lot of work to vet those results in order to glean any gain.
I am surprised that they did not apply the 802.11a standard that some other base station makers have recently announced for increased bandwidth over the wireless portion of the LAN.
As someone else noted, this requires new RF design in the product. However, further, there is no backward compatibility for 802.11b in 802.11a. Want your wireless network to go from 11Mbps to 54 Mbps? You gotta upgrade all your cards, not just the base station.
...I do have more then CE, two letters even, namely MCSE... A = A + B is supposed to make sense even if B isn't equal to zero
That doesn't apply. The important formula here is that A>=A+B if and only if B is non-negative. MCSE-CE = MS, and since you didn't understand the full article, this implies that the addition of MS to a title actually reduces knowledge, not increases it.
Sail fabric needs to have minimal "give" in order to effectively translate the force derived from the wind... into a thrust vector. I see no way to adjust how much sag/bag is in this sail
I'm just guessing based on the minimal pictures at the site, but the whole point of having a flexible, changeable frame system, as this does, is to adjust the give in the sail by changing the structure of the support geometry, not by attaching an enormous rubber sieve to a frame.
Do you see anything in the original article itself about using a flexible fabric? I sure don't...
Jolt.co.uk, BlackTower, WhiteTower. Anywhere with a lowish-ping, lots of players, and terra maps playing CTF. Look for Phrogz and Alias (who has red hair in the game but has been using that nick long before the show with the same name came out).
That's especially handy when the wife's naggin ya...
Dude, if you get her into the game too, there will be no nagging. My wife and I play Q3TA far too often...it's good for our relationship (as long as we're *always* on the same team:) and lets us both play a game for hours without the other buggin'.
Except to ocassionally scream "I've, got the flag, I'm in the valley! Help help help! HELP!!! Aaaahhhhh....damnit, where were you?!"
Seriously, I absolutely understand the desire/need for a quiet work machine. But gaming? What game is quiet? Unless you've got a turbo-jet fan in your machine, the sound of the game should easily drown and overpower any sound the machine is making, at even the lowest reasonable gaming volumes.
And can we really blame the architects of the WTC for not making the building plane-proof? No, I think they performed "reasonably" well.
Actually (my wife is an architect) the buildings WERE designed to be plane-proof...as long as the plane was a 707 or smaller and not loaded with as much fuel as the 9/11 planes were. Here's a story where the architect is quoted. You just have to set limits somewhere (as is your point) as to how far you can go. You obviously can't design the building to withstand the equivalent of a kiloton of TNT...I mean, sure you could, but it simply wouldn't be practical.
As others have noted, perhaps this helps shift the war in fighting viruses from MS to the Government (to some extent). But if a virus is an act of terrorism (and I'm not even going to get into debating that right now) then what do you call those who enable a terrorist act? What punishment is appropriate?
I'm looking for similar examples where the actions of a private company can determine the vulnerability of the country to a terrorist attack. Airlines and airports are close examples, but they already have government regulation going on. It's yet another case of the problem where the new digital electronic era runs into problems with those accustomed to the physical world. It is almost as though a private company were responsible for a section of the country's borders, and then let down their guard.
Some people say that , as much as we love to hate MS, you have to be careful not to blame the victim. (Just as you don't want to blame a woman dressed provocatively for getting raped.) But in this case MS isn't really the victim. They're a 3rd party, selling a product with flaws which enables the victimization of the consumer. In a fair market, their product would just be drop-kicked into the bin of Losers...but Windows is so prevalent now that the cons far outweigh the pros for most businesses.
It really is an interesting question...what do you do to a private company which unwittingly enables terrorism, and not just once, but again and again and again...?
Too bad we don't have these things today?
on
Desktop Biodetectors
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
OK, sure, they're cool gadgets, but saying that is like saying "Too bad we don't have gadgets on the desktop to detect incoming meteors."
What are there now, somthing like under 30 cases of Anthrax so far? Sent to a few high-profile companies? Sure, that's a MASSIVE INCREASE over previous levels, but statistically you're still in pretty good shape. Don't let the media hype get you worked up.
Too bad we don't have detectors on our faucets just in case the level of mercury rises rapidly...
The point about the material being magnetic even above 200C [...] the previous record being 255C which was held by a different form of buckyballs...
You do realize that the HTML for the article is broken, and that the previous record was -255C, right? Because simple math states that +255 is already greater than +200, right?
I can attest that this is not necessary, even when using Photoshop under classic along with 10 other native apps running.
OS X.1 does very little HD hitting for me on my laptop with 256MB, once I turned on the window buffer compression feature. (It makes the OS use far less memory, and speeds up window moving and resizing to boot. It will be turned on by default in the next release of OS X, Apple just had it off in this build because they thought it was the cause of a particular kernel panic.)
And with 384MB in my desktop, life is just dandy. Sure, more RAM is always better, and nowadays it's so cheap there's little reason not to get half a gig or so, but OS X does not require it.
I ordered my 10.1 update the day it was released. It *just* arrived today. (Good thing I have other connections which were able to get me an update image the day after it came out:)
Why on earth do so many people focus on the lack of a DVD video playback? I just don't understand it...do that many people use their computer DVD to watch movies on, instead of a dedicated DVD player attached to their TV and stereo?
I am personally a fan of having certain options (such as attaching the dock to the top of the screen) only accessible via power user edits (i.e. non-GUI in Apple's tools, or GUI via 3rd-party tools like TinkerTool). Keeping the experience with as few options as necessary and as clean as possible is more important for most users than a plethora of features.
"It fails to solve a problem which
never existed." --Debbie Barham, The Evening Standard
"Are these folks kidding?" --Sandra Brown
Kelly, Roanoke Times & World News
"There's not enough benefit to the reader,"
says Jack Powers, director of the International Informatics Institute.
"What's Forbes' proposition? 'Jerk around
with your computer wiring and learn how to scan like a supermarket
clerk so that we can send you more advertising.' No thanks."
--Russell Shaw, Broadcasting & Cable
"...There's no need for it." --Sunday
Times, London
"My first reaction upon receiving a complimentary
"cat" from Wired: Why do I need this?" --Dave
Plotnikoff, San Jose Mercury News
"You have to wonder about a business plan based on
the notion that people want to interact with a soda can."
--Jeff Salkowski, Chicago Tribune
"Just when you think the money truck has stopped making
its rounds--that just any bunch of idiots can't get funded
anymore--here comes Digital Convergence Corp., proving that
small-timers with small ideas can still convince fools to part
with their money." --David Coursey, ZDNet News
"Scanning bar codes in my apartment was a thrill for
maybe 15 minutes, after which I decided I had better things to
do with my time." --Edward Baig, USA Today
"Now I realized that CueCat did indeed have a use.
It's for those times when you are 1) sitting by your computer
2) reading Forbes and 3) feeling an overwhelming sorrow that Forbes
advertisers aren't getting enough attention. One swipe with
the CueCat and you get another ad! Is America a great country
or what?" --John Dorschner, Miami Herald
"The CueCat isn't worth installing and using,
even though it's free." --Walter S. Mossberg, Wall
Street Journal
"The CueCat is one of those clever gewgaws that would
be brilliant if only it performed some useful function. But it
doesn't."
--Richard Des Ruisseaux, Louisville Courier-Journal
"The CueCat is a cheapo bar-code scanner that looks
like a marital aid." --Leander Kahney, Wired
"As I installed my CueCat, I found myself marveling
at the weird assumptions that underpin the whole thing. Do we
really need another tool to help us go to web sites? How hard
is it to type in URLs, anyway? And for God's sake, who wants
to be tethered to a computer while they read a magazine? What
planet did these people come from?...The tool is almost impressively
useless."
--Clive Thompson, Newsday
Hence, a 100" tv (4800sq in) is going to take 1200 LEDs. The way bright LEDs are something like $3 each in huge quantity, thats $3600 before you add optics, mechnical oscillators, and electronics.
That's for a single-color TV, yes? You'd need RGB LEDs, to be able to cover the necessary brightness across the spectrum. Provided your other math is right, we're talking $10,800 at this point, no?
The Mark: Steve Forbes
Title: Publisher, Forbes
Invested: At least $2 million
Commitment: Sent more than 800,000 subscribers CueCat and software.
I had no idea so many had been distributed. I know there have been lots of geek applications developed for those who picked them up free at RadioShack (people who WANTED them) but nearly 800,000 people got them that perhaps didn't want them?
If I click on a link for a.sit.hqx file and IE decodes the HQX, I'd like it to pass the file off to Expander for further decoding.
If I click on a link for a.doc.hqx file or a.pdf.hqx file, I'd like IE to get Word or Acrobat to open the file after it removes the encoding.
Apparently this same mechanism accidentally results in executables being run as an attempt to pass them along for further processing to the OS. It's obviously a security whole in retrospect, but understandable how it occured.
Good trivia to know! I had thought that the classes were how many bytes were involved, i.e.
255.0.0.0 - Class A
255.255.0.0 - Class B
255.255.255.0 - Class C
But apparently I was wrong, and I appreciate your correction.
If you aren't certain that your WinNT box is safe, deny your entire subnet for the time being.
Start ISM/MMC. Expand your computer's view. Right click on your Default Web Site. Choose Properties.
Click on the "Directory Security" tab.
Click the "Edit" button for "IP Addresses and domain name restrictions".
With "By Default, Grant All Computers Access" checked, click the Add... button.
Set the Type to "Group of Computers".
For the Network ID enter the first byte of *your* IP address and the rest 0s (e.g. my IP is 216.27.140.214, so I put in 216.0.0.0).
For the subnet mask, enter 255.0.0.0
Click OK. Your Website will now deny access to anyone in your class A subnet, where this worm is attacking. (How is it spreading across subnets?)
For a particularly good book describing the problem and situation (fabulous for understanding the flaws in most businesses software design methodology, and more importantly for convincing managers that this is the case) then you should read The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper, the 'Father of Visual Basic' and also author of About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design .
It's light on concrete solutions (although the foreward addresses why that is the case) but still a useful primer to read even if you want to solve the problem, since the first step to solving a problem is properly understanding it. It's so fabulously refreshing to see in print a rather respected person describing the problem as I know it to be true, and especially providing big-business, big-name, concrete examples to point to and say, "SEE! IT REALLY DOESN'T WORK TO SET ARBITRARY DEADLINES AND TO START CODING WITHOUT PROPER SPECS!".
This issue is just a little bit important to me:)
Re:There is a downside, however, as the worker...
on
Extreme Telecommuting
·
· Score: 1
You forgot to mention one of the pros - the first time you attend a meeting (via telephone) wearing nothing but boxers and a smile:)
Boxers? Who needs boxers?:) Seriously, I often take advantage of this benefit and don't take a shower until 10am or so and don't get dressed until after noon. It's kind of sad, and yet at the same time postponing these activities until a short break in the work day means an extra 20-30 minutes of sleep:)
Slashdot Mirror
"The contents of this package are shipped by weight, not volume. Some settling may have occured."
:)
They're consistently defrauding India. Honeycomb's big (yeah yeah yeah) but it's not quite AS big in India? Sue sue sue!
Microsoft Word's grammar check has suggested to me in the past that "do it for the greater good" should probably be "do it for the greater well ".
It's sometimes helpful in helping my catch my grammar mistakes. But more often than not, it's a PITA, and the act of wading through its incorrect suggestions is more work than I think it's worth. And that's when it's SO easy to figure out if the suggestion is right or wrong...the sentence is on the screen, standing alone, and I can instantly decide if it's right or not.
Now, imagine wading through a bunch of suggestions and warnings on your code. Imagine having to figure out the context for the flagged code segnments, and having to review the code and all code which references it to see if it's correct or not.
Sure, if you've got free time or resources to throw at it, using computer heuristics to attempt to help out humans is nice. But you have to realize that at this stage in the game, it often takes a lot of work to vet those results in order to glean any gain.
As someone else noted, this requires new RF design in the product. However, further, there is no backward compatibility for 802.11b in 802.11a. Want your wireless network to go from 11Mbps to 54 Mbps? You gotta upgrade all your cards, not just the base station.
That doesn't apply. The important formula here is that A>=A+B if and only if B is non-negative. MCSE-CE = MS, and since you didn't understand the full article, this implies that the addition of MS to a title actually reduces knowledge, not increases it.
:)
I'm just guessing based on the minimal pictures at the site, but the whole point of having a flexible, changeable frame system, as this does, is to adjust the give in the sail by changing the structure of the support geometry, not by attaching an enormous rubber sieve to a frame.
Do you see anything in the original article itself about using a flexible fabric? I sure don't...
Jolt.co.uk, BlackTower, WhiteTower. Anywhere with a lowish-ping, lots of players, and terra maps playing CTF. Look for Phrogz and Alias (who has red hair in the game but has been using that nick long before the show with the same name came out).
Dude, if you get her into the game too, there will be no nagging. My wife and I play Q3TA far too often...it's good for our relationship (as long as we're *always* on the same team :) and lets us both play a game for hours without the other buggin'.
Except to ocassionally scream "I've, got the flag, I'm in the valley! Help help help! HELP!!! Aaaahhhhh....damnit, where were you?!"
Seriously, I absolutely understand the desire/need for a quiet work machine. But gaming? What game is quiet? Unless you've got a turbo-jet fan in your machine, the sound of the game should easily drown and overpower any sound the machine is making, at even the lowest reasonable gaming volumes.
Why is a quiet *gaming* machine even an issue?
MacMinute is at the event, covering it live. It's called the iPod, and it's an MP3 player.
Actually (my wife is an architect) the buildings WERE designed to be plane-proof...as long as the plane was a 707 or smaller and not loaded with as much fuel as the 9/11 planes were. Here's a story where the architect is quoted. You just have to set limits somewhere (as is your point) as to how far you can go. You obviously can't design the building to withstand the equivalent of a kiloton of TNT...I mean, sure you could, but it simply wouldn't be practical.
As others have noted, perhaps this helps shift the war in fighting viruses from MS to the Government (to some extent). But if a virus is an act of terrorism (and I'm not even going to get into debating that right now) then what do you call those who enable a terrorist act? What punishment is appropriate?
I'm looking for similar examples where the actions of a private company can determine the vulnerability of the country to a terrorist attack. Airlines and airports are close examples, but they already have government regulation going on. It's yet another case of the problem where the new digital electronic era runs into problems with those accustomed to the physical world. It is almost as though a private company were responsible for a section of the country's borders, and then let down their guard.
Some people say that , as much as we love to hate MS, you have to be careful not to blame the victim. (Just as you don't want to blame a woman dressed provocatively for getting raped.) But in this case MS isn't really the victim. They're a 3rd party, selling a product with flaws which enables the victimization of the consumer. In a fair market, their product would just be drop-kicked into the bin of Losers...but Windows is so prevalent now that the cons far outweigh the pros for most businesses.
It really is an interesting question...what do you do to a private company which unwittingly enables terrorism, and not just once, but again and again and again...?
OK, sure, they're cool gadgets, but saying that is like saying "Too bad we don't have gadgets on the desktop to detect incoming meteors."
What are there now, somthing like under 30 cases of Anthrax so far? Sent to a few high-profile companies? Sure, that's a MASSIVE INCREASE over previous levels, but statistically you're still in pretty good shape. Don't let the media hype get you worked up.
Too bad we don't have detectors on our faucets just in case the level of mercury rises rapidly...
I figure most geeks on slashdot already know what a buckyball looks like; just in case, for the U.S. readers, this means soccerball-shaped...
I can attest that this is not necessary, even when using Photoshop under classic along with 10 other native apps running. OS X.1 does very little HD hitting for me on my laptop with 256MB, once I turned on the window buffer compression feature. (It makes the OS use far less memory, and speeds up window moving and resizing to boot. It will be turned on by default in the next release of OS X, Apple just had it off in this build because they thought it was the cause of a particular kernel panic.)
And with 384MB in my desktop, life is just dandy. Sure, more RAM is always better, and nowadays it's so cheap there's little reason not to get half a gig or so, but OS X does not require it.
I ordered my 10.1 update the day it was released. It *just* arrived today. (Good thing I have other connections which were able to get me an update image the day after it came out :)
Why on earth do so many people focus on the lack of a DVD video playback? I just don't understand it...do that many people use their computer DVD to watch movies on, instead of a dedicated DVD player attached to their TV and stereo?
I am personally a fan of having certain options (such as attaching the dock to the top of the screen) only accessible via power user edits (i.e. non-GUI in Apple's tools, or GUI via 3rd-party tools like TinkerTool). Keeping the experience with as few options as necessary and as clean as possible is more important for most users than a plethora of features.
"It fails to solve a problem which never existed." --Debbie Barham, The Evening Standard
"Are these folks kidding?" --Sandra Brown Kelly, Roanoke Times & World News
"There's not enough benefit to the reader," says Jack Powers, director of the International Informatics Institute. "What's Forbes' proposition? 'Jerk around with your computer wiring and learn how to scan like a supermarket clerk so that we can send you more advertising.' No thanks." --Russell Shaw, Broadcasting & Cable
"...There's no need for it." --Sunday Times, London
"My first reaction upon receiving a complimentary "cat" from Wired: Why do I need this?" --Dave Plotnikoff, San Jose Mercury News
"You have to wonder about a business plan based on the notion that people want to interact with a soda can." --Jeff Salkowski, Chicago Tribune
"Just when you think the money truck has stopped making its rounds--that just any bunch of idiots can't get funded anymore--here comes Digital Convergence Corp., proving that small-timers with small ideas can still convince fools to part with their money." --David Coursey, ZDNet News
"Scanning bar codes in my apartment was a thrill for maybe 15 minutes, after which I decided I had better things to do with my time." --Edward Baig, USA Today
"Now I realized that CueCat did indeed have a use. It's for those times when you are 1) sitting by your computer 2) reading Forbes and 3) feeling an overwhelming sorrow that Forbes advertisers aren't getting enough attention. One swipe with the CueCat and you get another ad! Is America a great country or what?" --John Dorschner, Miami Herald
"The CueCat isn't worth installing and using, even though it's free." --Walter S. Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
"The CueCat is one of those clever gewgaws that would be brilliant if only it performed some useful function. But it doesn't."
--Richard Des Ruisseaux, Louisville Courier-Journal
"The CueCat is a cheapo bar-code scanner that looks like a marital aid." --Leander Kahney, Wired
"As I installed my CueCat, I found myself marveling at the weird assumptions that underpin the whole thing. Do we really need another tool to help us go to web sites? How hard is it to type in URLs, anyway? And for God's sake, who wants to be tethered to a computer while they read a magazine? What planet did these people come from?...The tool is almost impressively useless."
--Clive Thompson, Newsday
That's for a single-color TV, yes? You'd need RGB LEDs, to be able to cover the necessary brightness across the spectrum. Provided your other math is right, we're talking $10,800 at this point, no?
Describing "The Suckers", the article says:
The Mark: Steve Forbes
Title: Publisher, Forbes
Invested: At least $2 million
Commitment: Sent more than 800,000 subscribers CueCat and software.
I had no idea so many had been distributed. I know there have been lots of geek applications developed for those who picked them up free at RadioShack (people who WANTED them) but nearly 800,000 people got them that perhaps didn't want them?
I wonder what they all did with them...
Free (as in beer) means it doesn't cost you any money.
Free (as in speech) describes the state of licensing/legal/censorship issues.
If I click on a link for a .sit.hqx file and IE decodes the HQX, I'd like it to pass the file off to Expander for further decoding.
.doc.hqx file or a .pdf.hqx file, I'd like IE to get Word or Acrobat to open the file after it removes the encoding.
If I click on a link for a
Apparently this same mechanism accidentally results in executables being run as an attempt to pass them along for further processing to the OS. It's obviously a security whole in retrospect, but understandable how it occured.
Good trivia to know! I had thought that the classes were how many bytes were involved, i.e.
255.0.0.0 - Class A
255.255.0.0 - Class B
255.255.255.0 - Class C
But apparently I was wrong, and I appreciate your correction.
If you aren't certain that your WinNT box is safe, deny your entire subnet for the time being.
Start ISM/MMC. Expand your computer's view. Right click on your Default Web Site. Choose Properties.
Click on the "Directory Security" tab.
Click the "Edit" button for "IP Addresses and domain name restrictions".
With "By Default, Grant All Computers Access" checked, click the Add... button.
Set the Type to "Group of Computers".
For the Network ID enter the first byte of *your* IP address and the rest 0s (e.g. my IP is 216.27.140.214, so I put in 216.0.0.0).
For the subnet mask, enter 255.0.0.0
Click OK. Your Website will now deny access to anyone in your class A subnet, where this worm is attacking. (How is it spreading across subnets?)
For a particularly good book describing the problem and situation (fabulous for understanding the flaws in most businesses software design methodology, and more importantly for convincing managers that this is the case) then you should read The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper, the 'Father of Visual Basic' and also author of About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design .
It's light on concrete solutions (although the foreward addresses why that is the case) but still a useful primer to read even if you want to solve the problem, since the first step to solving a problem is properly understanding it. It's so fabulously refreshing to see in print a rather respected person describing the problem as I know it to be true, and especially providing big-business, big-name, concrete examples to point to and say, "SEE! IT REALLY DOESN'T WORK TO SET ARBITRARY DEADLINES AND TO START CODING WITHOUT PROPER SPECS!".
This issue is just a little bit important to me :)
Boxers? Who needs boxers? :) Seriously, I often take advantage of this benefit and don't take a shower until 10am or so and don't get dressed until after noon. It's kind of sad, and yet at the same time postponing these activities until a short break in the work day means an extra 20-30 minutes of sleep :)