> Do you have any publications you can point me towards?
Hmm... well, I write here under a pseudonym so it's hard to look up my work. But you can look up 'TreeSPH' in google for some good references to lots of astrophysical implementation. The 'Tree' part is obviously the voxel octtrees, while the 'SPH' means they added hydrodynamics to it by making 'blobs' that have a variable kernel size for smoothing over neighbors.
Which basically means, for hydrodynamics, if it's uniform density you can use a single large 'blob' to represent it, while in an area where the density is rapidly changing you go to smaller 'blobs' because you need more computation. You then use a kernel function, which basically means how much you smooth over neighbors to get a good distribution. With this, you spend all your hydrodynamic computation time on the rapidly changing, shocky, or active stuff. So it's another example of how to decompose a problem they way Carmack seems to be suggesting.
Funny thing is, in astrophysics, this stuff came out in the late 80s/early 90s, and astrophysics usually lags behind physics by a half a decade, which lags behind pure math by a decade. I think the challenge for getting into gaming is converting codes intended for cluster/supercomputer massive calculations into the realm of fast PC gaming.
Tree codes are already heavily used in computer gaming (browsing through 'Computer Developer' magazine shows they are used for dynamic line-of-sight work a lot), so none of what Carmack suggests is cutting edge comp sci in theory. In fact, he used binary space partitioning with Doom, which is in the same field. Much as with Doom etc, the key is can he come up with a fast implementation (or even approximation). I think that's his real talent-- taking existing methods and concepts and figuring out a 'real world' implementation that's fast enough for gaming. He's a programming engineer of no small talent.
Having developed octtree voxel methods for astrophysics sims (crashing galaxies into one another), I suggest they are ideal for physics. The idea of a tree is you group things to maintain a certain amount of accuracy. For example, if you have 3 items interacting just with gravity:
A (longdistancetypedheretoavoidlamenessfilter) B.. C
A non-tree method would just calculate all the interactions: A-B, A-C, B-C. But you can group B+C together when calculating their interaction with A because, at that distance, the result for (B+C)-A is the same as the result for B-A + C-A. Then the interaction between B & C must be calculated separately. So you've (even in this tiny example) reduced your calculation from 3 to 2.
And, of course, all the 'voxels' between A & B/C that are empty need not be considered at all. If you'd set it up as an NxNxN voxel cube, you'd be wasting time on calculating empty voxels between the occupied items.
So if you want realistic interactive environments, sparse voxel octtrees are the way to go-- you pump all the calculation time into the parts where it matters, and let the other stuff be 'smoothed' when such smoothing is indistinguishable from rounding error.
Typically, you can traverse the tree for a given error percentage, e.g. 'walk the tree and do interactions preserving 99% energy conservation' or similar. So your have predictable error, as well, despite being able to use arbitrary geometries and spacing for your elements.
I'd add 'Mario 64' to the list... it's 'reading light' so it was motivating for my 6-year old. He wanted to read the little 2-4 word "what to solve on this level" titles, and the flavor text before the boss battles. So it required minimal reading to play, but had enough reading from time to time to motivate him that, yes, reading is useful.
Others he likes (as a pre-reader) are Yoshi Island, Yoshi Touch-N-Go, Scooby Doo Unmasked, and Mario Kart.
Yep, Voyager has approached the theoretical location of the termination shock often-- and each time, we get to revise our theories and have a better understanding of just how interesting our sun is. The joke among solar physicists is: "Where is the termination shock?" 'Just past Voyager.'
> why can't we just ban these frigging ads where "real" people are supposedly testifying at just how great a product is?
My fav is a Car Trade-in one... the guy talks about how he didn't have time to sell it himself or shop around, so he just went to [Company] and they gave him the best deal and less hassle than anyone else. But... if he went to them rather than shopping around, how did he know it was the best deal?
So I don't think they should ban those ads. As long as companies want to throw away money making bad ads, I'm all for it. What I don't want to see is cunningly made, effective ads that really work on me. That would suck.
Frequently we've predicted where the heliopause is, then been surprised it's further. The unofficial solar physics definition of where the heliopause is: 'just past where Voyager is'. Kind of neat our furthest probe is the only detector mapping the extrema of our nearest star. Still lots of fun unknowns there.
A question-- is it likely her lawyers will just take the $68K and call it even, or will they bill her the ($114-68)=$46K and expect her to pay? How much is gamesmanship by the lawyers, and how much is genuine out-of-pocket costs to the defendent?
Hmm... IANAL, but the Crimson article is replent with indication that Zuckerberg was not part of their business-- "he never asked for compensation", "we would have been happy to pay for his services.", "his was not a paid position".
A contract is an offer plus an acceptance plus renumeration. Without renumeration, there's not as many teeth as one might think.
Key is "neither camp went so far as to label the partnership contractually binding." This could be in the same category as non-competes, i.e. can you limit what someone does in the future just because they worked with you in the past. And without compensation, the 'work' part is kinda iffy, more like 'talked with' or 'stopped by'.
This is where ethics (did Zuckerberg screw them over) divides with business (did Zuckerberg do something illegal). Law is murky there. Answer hazy, check again later.
> If he really stole their idea in 2003, why wait four years?"
Because suing isn't about moral properness, suing is a business decision. You sue to profit. That's why you sue for money instead of, say, a sincere apology. Everyone's had business ideas and get-rich schemes stolen, you only sue if someone actually manages to succeed with your half-baked never-completed plan.
(Put me in the school of "it's not the idea or the code, it's the execution plus luck that creates success" school of thought.)
'Apology only lawsuits' are limited to kindergarten playgrounds, I guess.
Then there's the whole 'lawsuit as vengeance' school of thought, but in some ways that's even worse than suing just for money.
The more I write this, the more I increase my cynicism about the US legal system.
> I spearheaded a "digital backup" of around 90 filing cabinets of papers... > It took 2 years and way WAY WAY less than $5,000,000 to do it
500,000 plates. Over 2 years, assuming 50 wks/yr means just 5000 plates need be scanned per week. 1000 plates per day. 125 plates per hour. And this is large, fragile glass with really high data density, so you have to be a) careful in handling and b) use slow high-res scanning.
Let's take a guess that it takes only 10 minutes per plate (to fetch, tag, load, scan, and return). So we need only 20 people to scan 125 plates/hour.
Well, assume 20 scanning people and 1 IT guy handling the sysadmin work for the petabyte storage. Also one scientist/manager. Take a low intern/grad student $35k, 1 sysadmin at $65k, 1 PM/sci at $85K. All x2.5 for overhead, for 2 years. That's $4.25 mil in salaries.
There's also buying a redundant petabyte and all the necessary gear. I'm amazed they figure $5mil can do it.
Problem I see is, as soon as you close-caption something and release it, you'll get sued for redistribution and violation of intellectual property. This happened a bit with fan-subtitled anime. They couldn't legally do it, even though no company was doing it either. The stance of the production companies was "we may someday wish to release a subtitled version ourselves for profit, therefore, any free fan-sub is ruining our potential market and causing market confusion."
How "you are ruining potential future dollars that I probably won't bother to reach anyway" translates to 'stop doing free subtitling' is debatable, but I suspect doing free closed captioning would result in the same corporate response.
I like that the/. ad on this page was "It only takes a spark" (smokey the bear).
But yeah, if one child catches fire but it saves ten thousand from cancer, that's unfortunately a better decision over all. Note it's not like children are spontaneously combusting without PBDEs, it's just that the companies will happily use the cheapest fire-proofing despite the consequences.
More to the point, a parent can stop a child from playing with a fire a lot easier than they can stop a corporation from leaking toxins into the water supply. This is, oddly enough, how legislation is supposed to work.
If one is under a gag order, does one have to lie? From the article, "When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie."
I would hope you can use the neutral "I cannot comment." The order does not say "lie about us" but "you can not discuss it." Yes, evasive answers can confirm suspicions in people (why else would they not answer?), but that should still be legit.
Similarly, meeting with an attorney on a case you can't discuss, just say "I'm meeting with an attorney, can't discuss, sorry."
It all comes down to whether you want more false positives or more false negatives.
As a parent, it's tough. I don't like overzealous blocking software, but I'd rather my kid not see 'tubgirl' while researching plants for schools. It'd be nice to have more sites tagged, not just 'nudity' but more akin to the G, PG, R, soft X, XXX ratings, split seperately for 'violence', 'sex', 'mature concepts', 'political beliefs'. Then (as a parent) I can ignore the stuff that isn't a concern but still have minimal filtering of things that apply to me.
In short, it'd be nice to have software do what I already do as a parent, only in a pre-emptive way. That, in a nutshell, is what blocking software is selling.
Then again, I see no reason to filter text. If you run into a racy passage of text or a concept that is objectionable, you can easily stop reading. Words are powerful, but words can be ignored. A kid browsing ASSM via google groups may get twisted ideas, but they are consciously browsing it, by choice. That's different from instant exposure to horrific images. So just being able to filter images would work for me.
Images can be potent. One really bad image (like, again, tubgirl) can really ruin your day. As they say, there's some fucked up stuff out there. I find google 'safe search' pretty reliable in terms of filtering out 'objectionable' images. Anyone that doesn't agree that images are more potent than text, hasn't studied how the media has used single images to guide public opinion (especially regarding wars).
I think google has it right, with a light touch, but I fear the proponents of school and library filtering have to be more extreme because of the hyper-sensitive 'janet jackson' reactions to the slightest hint of wayward content that might potentially offend an easily offended person.
With ideas of the semantic web or Web2.0 tagging, it'd be nice to see an open blocking software project designed to compete with the commercial ones, that allows levels of tagging and filtering and an open process for getting removed from it.
Bear in mind that many doctors prescribe from the free samples they have laying about. 'Hmm... got condition X? Try this', hands sample pack. This is especially prevalent for antidepressants-- admitably, the choice of which anti-d to take is pretty much a russian roulette until you find one that works for your particular neurochemistry.
Doctors are often overwhelmed by the huge number of potential drugs. Most tend to settle into the 1 or 2 they typically prescribe for a given condition, rather than knowing every drug for every condition.
So the real conflict is not advertising, it's whether advertising to patients is better than sending samples and literature to doctors. Neither is necessarily good for the patient.
A PharmD once told me that doctors believe PharmDs should not prescribe because they don't know the full patient case history, and PharmDs believe doctors should not prescribe because they don't know fully about the drugs.
While doctors hate patients who make recommendations on treatment, these days it makes sense for patients to research their own condition in depth. Unless you're seeing a specialist who keeps up to date on that field, self-research can be necessary because doctors don't have the time nor, all too often, the inclination.
That said, seeing an ad on TV is so far from 'research in depth' that it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence:)
In some ways, this shift from 2 fingerprintes taken, to all 10, is a relief. Previously, terrorists were forced to only use 4 fingers on each hand, in a sort of 'pinky out' high tea fashion (although with their pointing finger, not pinky). This resulted in hazardous RSI conditions which crippled the more active terrorists. For those skeptics reading this, try just hacking into an NSA account, picking a lock, or even spinning a safe combination dial without using your pointing fingers.
Feel the pain? There you have it, RSI. Now, under this new scheme, at least the terrorists can relax and use all 10 fingers, knowing there is no more false security in those missing 8 records to enjoy. And the US will benefit-- I anticipate that there will be no more class action suits against the US to deal with the former health crisis due to 2-finger exception techniques.
That said, as a taxpayer I assume the gathering of all 10, instead of just 2, will only incur a moderate 5x cost in upgrading airports and training personel. A bargain!
For those curious about McMurdo itself, Big Dead Place is a great resource. After reading it, you can see why they do astronaut simulation work there. As a bonus, the website has movie reviews, all of 'The Thing', with usual real-world commentary like 'In the actual USAP, employees are forbidden flamethrowers.'
I agree it'll be gamed, sadly the restaurant choice loophole is what struck me as obvious, too.
'Gaming' food ordering example: The group used to order a bunch of pizzas, then there was a typical college 'food frenzy' of consuming slices 'til all the pizza was gone. If you didn't eat quick, you didn't get as much pizza. Unless...
A friend of mine and I would make sure there was an anchovy pizza in the order. We didn't like anchovies per se, but unlike the rest of the group, we didn't hate 'em.
So the pizzas would arrive, we'd eat the non-anchovy pizzas like the rest, but didn't have to gorge ourselves. Once the 'desirable' pizzas were gone, we still had a full anchovy pizza to share (that no one else wanted).
Never underestimate techies trying to score free food.
>Your child is kidnapped by two individuals. One is captured. He will not talk. You are placed in a soundproof room with the kidnapper and one #2 pencil. Sharpened.
Err, try: "Your child is kidnapped. A person is captured who may or may not have a connection to the crime. He denies it. You are placed in a soundproof room with the kidnapper and one #2 pencil. Sharpened."
Life would be much easier if only bad guys got caught, if the police always knew who did a crime, and if captured criminals who did a crime were incredibly stoic.
Heck, rewrite it this way: "A father's child is kidnapped. You are captured, they think you did it. You are unable to give them clues to where the child is. They leave you in a soundproof room with the father and one #2 pencil in his hand. Sharpened."
The article only mentions 3 of the '13 commandments of ROWE'. Anyone have a pointer to the full list? Or do we have to wait for the 2 Best Buy managers to hawk their book? (Wikipedia, you failed me on this!)
I think the 'lack of irony' is that the supposed anti-spyware company was itself corrupt. "The company allegedly spammed", did fake scans then informed customers they needed to buy the product ("Our investigation found that this so-called free scan always detected spyware, even on a clean computer,"), broke their own consent agreement, used shaddy sales tactics, etc.
So, oddly enough, it seems the law worked. Just calling yourself an 'anti-spyware vendor' is no protection from being a spyware company.
It's simple economics. You have to throw away the 'per minute' calculation and look at your total bill. Assume the amount of cell phone use you do each month is relatively constant. So you need a plan that gives you 'X' minutes per month. Now just compare monthly versus pre-paid for 'X' minutes as a monthly cost.
For example, I only use my phone perhaps once every 2 days, for 1-3 minutes per. So that's 45 minutes a month, tops. A monthly plan at a penny a minute but costing $40 is really almost a dollar a minute for me. A prepaid even at a high quarter/minute (min monthly charge $10) is a bargain, because my total outlay is under $11.
If I used the phone a lot, yes, pre-paid wouldn't make sense, but one needs to run the numbers to figure out which to use (prepaid, monthly, etc). You just have to look at total cost in the end, not per-minute... per-minute rates are often emphasized too much when it's really a TCO:)
Okay, I'm puzzled. The EFF defending someone sued by, say, the RIAA, is to support the individual who is being overwhelmed by a large corporation due to a questionable law. And one could argue Cuban is just doing something similar-- supporting a lawsuit of an individual who feels a corporation has infringed on their rights in an area where the law is murky.
However, supporting an individual's lawsuit, not because of the principal involved, but because you don't like them and think they're stupid, that's... well, childish. That's putting ego as more important than justice, and in theory, that's what the whole court system is supposed to prevent.
Isn't this just a form of vigilante justice by Cuban? "I don't like 'em, so they're going down."
Slashdot Mirror
> Do you have any publications you can point me towards?
Hmm... well, I write here under a pseudonym so it's hard to look up my work. But you can look up 'TreeSPH' in google for some good references to lots of astrophysical implementation. The 'Tree' part is obviously the voxel octtrees, while the 'SPH' means they added hydrodynamics to it by making 'blobs' that have a variable kernel size for smoothing over neighbors.
Which basically means, for hydrodynamics, if it's uniform density you can use a single large 'blob' to represent it, while in an area where the density is rapidly changing you go to smaller 'blobs' because you need more computation. You then use a kernel function, which basically means how much you smooth over neighbors to get a good distribution. With this, you spend all your hydrodynamic computation time on the rapidly changing, shocky, or active stuff. So it's another example of how to decompose a problem they way Carmack seems to be suggesting.
Funny thing is, in astrophysics, this stuff came out in the late 80s/early 90s, and astrophysics usually lags behind physics by a half a decade, which lags behind pure math by a decade. I think the challenge for getting into gaming is converting codes intended for cluster/supercomputer massive calculations into the realm of fast PC gaming.
Tree codes are already heavily used in computer gaming (browsing through 'Computer Developer' magazine shows they are used for dynamic line-of-sight work a lot), so none of what Carmack suggests is cutting edge comp sci in theory. In fact, he used binary space partitioning with Doom, which is in the same field. Much as with Doom etc, the key is can he come up with a fast implementation (or even approximation). I think that's his real talent-- taking existing methods and concepts and figuring out a 'real world' implementation that's fast enough for gaming. He's a programming engineer of no small talent.
Having developed octtree voxel methods for astrophysics sims (crashing galaxies into one another), I suggest they are ideal for physics. The idea of a tree is you group things to maintain a certain amount of accuracy. For example, if you have 3 items interacting just with gravity:
.. C
A (longdistancetypedheretoavoidlamenessfilter) B
A non-tree method would just calculate all the interactions: A-B, A-C, B-C. But you can group B+C together when calculating their interaction with A because, at that distance, the result for (B+C)-A is the same as the result for B-A + C-A. Then the interaction between B & C must be calculated separately. So you've (even in this tiny example) reduced your calculation from 3 to 2.
And, of course, all the 'voxels' between A & B/C that are empty need not be considered at all. If you'd set it up as an NxNxN voxel cube, you'd be wasting time on calculating empty voxels between the occupied items.
So if you want realistic interactive environments, sparse voxel octtrees are the way to go-- you pump all the calculation time into the parts where it matters, and let the other stuff be 'smoothed' when such smoothing is indistinguishable from rounding error.
Typically, you can traverse the tree for a given error percentage, e.g. 'walk the tree and do interactions preserving 99% energy conservation' or similar. So your have predictable error, as well, despite being able to use arbitrary geometries and spacing for your elements.
Hi,
I'd add 'Mario 64' to the list... it's 'reading light' so it was motivating for my 6-year old. He wanted to read the little 2-4 word "what to solve on this level" titles, and the flavor text before the boss battles. So it required minimal reading to play, but had enough reading from time to time to motivate him that, yes, reading is useful.
Others he likes (as a pre-reader) are Yoshi Island, Yoshi Touch-N-Go, Scooby Doo Unmasked, and Mario Kart.
But be careful with that last one, child predators may use Mario Kart to prey on your child, as per an ABC report... well, okay, read a slightly more sane take on it at
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2006/02/nintendo_ds_hurting_children.php for details.
Yep, Voyager has approached the theoretical location of the termination shock often-- and each time, we get to revise our theories and have a better understanding of just how interesting our sun is. The joke among solar physicists is: "Where is the termination shock?" 'Just past Voyager.'
> why can't we just ban these frigging ads where "real" people are supposedly testifying at just how great a product is?
My fav is a Car Trade-in one... the guy talks about how he didn't have time to sell it himself or shop around, so he just went to [Company] and they gave him the best deal and less hassle than anyone else. But... if he went to them rather than shopping around, how did he know it was the best deal?
So I don't think they should ban those ads. As long as companies want to throw away money making bad ads, I'm all for it. What I don't want to see is cunningly made, effective ads that really work on me. That would suck.
Frequently we've predicted where the heliopause is, then been surprised it's further. The unofficial solar physics definition of where the heliopause is: 'just past where Voyager is'. Kind of neat our furthest probe is the only detector mapping the extrema of our nearest star. Still lots of fun unknowns there.
> They spent decades building a successful and recognizable brand and they're just going to toss it in the trash.
They should have just kept the name as 'Atari DS'. Change is bad.
A question-- is it likely her lawyers will just take the $68K and call it even, or will they bill her the ($114-68)=$46K and expect her to pay? How much is gamesmanship by the lawyers, and how much is genuine out-of-pocket costs to the defendent?
> This case has teeth.
Hmm... IANAL, but the Crimson article is replent with indication that Zuckerberg was not part of their business-- "he never asked for compensation", "we would have been happy to pay for his services.", "his was not a paid position".
A contract is an offer plus an acceptance plus renumeration. Without renumeration, there's not as many teeth as one might think.
Key is "neither camp went so far as to label the partnership contractually binding." This could be in the same category as non-competes, i.e. can you limit what someone does in the future just because they worked with you in the past. And without compensation, the 'work' part is kinda iffy, more like 'talked with' or 'stopped by'.
This is where ethics (did Zuckerberg screw them over) divides with business (did Zuckerberg do something illegal). Law is murky there. Answer hazy, check again later.
> If he really stole their idea in 2003, why wait four years?"
Because suing isn't about moral properness, suing is a business decision. You sue to profit. That's why you sue for money instead of, say, a sincere apology. Everyone's had business ideas and get-rich schemes stolen, you only sue if someone actually manages to succeed with your half-baked never-completed plan.
(Put me in the school of "it's not the idea or the code, it's the execution plus luck that creates success" school of thought.)
'Apology only lawsuits' are limited to kindergarten playgrounds, I guess.
Then there's the whole 'lawsuit as vengeance' school of thought, but in some ways that's even worse than suing just for money.
The more I write this, the more I increase my cynicism about the US legal system.
> I spearheaded a "digital backup" of around 90 filing cabinets of papers ...
> It took 2 years and way WAY WAY less than $5,000,000 to do it
500,000 plates. Over 2 years, assuming 50 wks/yr means just 5000 plates need be scanned per week. 1000 plates per day. 125 plates per hour. And this is large, fragile glass with really high data density, so you have to be a) careful in handling and b) use slow high-res scanning.
Let's take a guess that it takes only 10 minutes per plate (to fetch, tag, load, scan, and return). So we need only 20 people to scan 125 plates/hour.
Well, assume 20 scanning people and 1 IT guy handling the sysadmin work for the petabyte storage. Also one scientist/manager. Take a low intern/grad student $35k, 1 sysadmin at $65k, 1 PM/sci at $85K. All x2.5 for overhead, for 2 years. That's $4.25 mil in salaries.
There's also buying a redundant petabyte and all the necessary gear. I'm amazed they figure $5mil can do it.
Problem I see is, as soon as you close-caption something and release it, you'll get sued for redistribution and violation of intellectual property. This happened a bit with fan-subtitled anime. They couldn't legally do it, even though no company was doing it either. The stance of the production companies was "we may someday wish to release a subtitled version ourselves for profit, therefore, any free fan-sub is ruining our potential market and causing market confusion."
How "you are ruining potential future dollars that I probably won't bother to reach anyway" translates to 'stop doing free subtitling' is debatable, but I suspect doing free closed captioning would result in the same corporate response.
I like that the /. ad on this page was "It only takes a spark" (smokey the bear).
But yeah, if one child catches fire but it saves ten thousand from cancer, that's unfortunately a better decision over all. Note it's not like children are spontaneously combusting without PBDEs, it's just that the companies will happily use the cheapest fire-proofing despite the consequences.
More to the point, a parent can stop a child from playing with a fire a lot easier than they can stop a corporation from leaking toxins into the water supply. This is, oddly enough, how legislation is supposed to work.
If one is under a gag order, does one have to lie? From the article, "When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie."
I would hope you can use the neutral "I cannot comment." The order does not say "lie about us" but "you can not discuss it." Yes, evasive answers can confirm suspicions in people (why else would they not answer?), but that should still be legit.
Similarly, meeting with an attorney on a case you can't discuss, just say "I'm meeting with an attorney, can't discuss, sorry."
Anyone else run into being forced to lie?
It all comes down to whether you want more false positives or more false negatives.
As a parent, it's tough. I don't like overzealous blocking software, but I'd rather my kid not see 'tubgirl' while researching plants for schools. It'd be nice to have more sites tagged, not just 'nudity' but more akin to the G, PG, R, soft X, XXX ratings, split seperately for 'violence', 'sex', 'mature concepts', 'political beliefs'. Then (as a parent) I can ignore the stuff that isn't a concern but still have minimal filtering of things that apply to me.
In short, it'd be nice to have software do what I already do as a parent, only in a pre-emptive way. That, in a nutshell, is what blocking software is selling.
Then again, I see no reason to filter text. If you run into a racy passage of text or a concept that is objectionable, you can easily stop reading. Words are powerful, but words can be ignored. A kid browsing ASSM via google groups may get twisted ideas, but they are consciously browsing it, by choice. That's different from instant exposure to horrific images. So just being able to filter images would work for me.
Images can be potent. One really bad image (like, again, tubgirl) can really ruin your day. As they say, there's some fucked up stuff out there. I find google 'safe search' pretty reliable in terms of filtering out 'objectionable' images. Anyone that doesn't agree that images are more potent than text, hasn't studied how the media has used single images to guide public opinion (especially regarding wars).
I think google has it right, with a light touch, but I fear the proponents of school and library filtering have to be more extreme because of the hyper-sensitive 'janet jackson' reactions to the slightest hint of wayward content that might potentially offend an easily offended person.
With ideas of the semantic web or Web2.0 tagging, it'd be nice to see an open blocking software project designed to compete with the commercial ones, that allows levels of tagging and filtering and an open process for getting removed from it.
Bear in mind that many doctors prescribe from the free samples they have laying about. 'Hmm... got condition X? Try this', hands sample pack. This is especially prevalent for antidepressants-- admitably, the choice of which anti-d to take is pretty much a russian roulette until you find one that works for your particular neurochemistry.
:)
Doctors are often overwhelmed by the huge number of potential drugs. Most tend to settle into the 1 or 2 they typically prescribe for a given condition, rather than knowing every drug for every condition.
So the real conflict is not advertising, it's whether advertising to patients is better than sending samples and literature to doctors. Neither is necessarily good for the patient.
A PharmD once told me that doctors believe PharmDs should not prescribe because they don't know the full patient case history, and PharmDs believe doctors should not prescribe because they don't know fully about the drugs.
While doctors hate patients who make recommendations on treatment, these days it makes sense for patients to research their own condition in depth. Unless you're seeing a specialist who keeps up to date on that field, self-research can be necessary because doctors don't have the time nor, all too often, the inclination.
That said, seeing an ad on TV is so far from 'research in depth' that it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence
In some ways, this shift from 2 fingerprintes taken, to all 10, is a relief. Previously, terrorists were forced to only use 4 fingers on each hand, in a sort of 'pinky out' high tea fashion (although with their pointing finger, not pinky). This resulted in hazardous RSI conditions which crippled the more active terrorists. For those skeptics reading this, try just hacking into an NSA account, picking a lock, or even spinning a safe combination dial without using your pointing fingers.
Feel the pain? There you have it, RSI. Now, under this new scheme, at least the terrorists can relax and use all 10 fingers, knowing there is no more false security in those missing 8 records to enjoy. And the US will benefit-- I anticipate that there will be no more class action suits against the US to deal with the former health crisis due to 2-finger exception techniques.
That said, as a taxpayer I assume the gathering of all 10, instead of just 2, will only incur a moderate 5x cost in upgrading airports and training personel. A bargain!
For those curious about McMurdo itself, Big Dead Place is a great resource. After reading it, you can see why they do astronaut simulation work there. As a bonus, the website has movie reviews, all of 'The Thing', with usual real-world commentary like 'In the actual USAP, employees are forbidden flamethrowers.'
I agree it'll be gamed, sadly the restaurant choice loophole is what struck me as obvious, too.
'Gaming' food ordering example: The group used to order a bunch of pizzas, then there was a typical college 'food frenzy' of consuming slices 'til all the pizza was gone. If you didn't eat quick, you didn't get as much pizza. Unless...
A friend of mine and I would make sure there was an anchovy pizza in the order. We didn't like anchovies per se, but unlike the rest of the group, we didn't hate 'em.
So the pizzas would arrive, we'd eat the non-anchovy pizzas like the rest, but didn't have to gorge ourselves. Once the 'desirable' pizzas were gone, we still had a full anchovy pizza to share (that no one else wanted).
Never underestimate techies trying to score free food.
>Your child is kidnapped by two individuals. One is captured. He will not talk. You are placed in a soundproof room with the kidnapper and one #2 pencil. Sharpened.
Err, try: "Your child is kidnapped. A person is captured who may or may not have a connection to the crime. He denies it. You are placed in a soundproof room with the kidnapper and one #2 pencil. Sharpened."
Life would be much easier if only bad guys got caught, if the police always knew who did a crime, and if captured criminals who did a crime were incredibly stoic.
Heck, rewrite it this way: "A father's child is kidnapped. You are captured, they think you did it. You are unable to give them clues to where the child is. They leave you in a soundproof room with the father and one #2 pencil in his hand. Sharpened."
The article only mentions 3 of the '13 commandments of ROWE'. Anyone have a pointer to the full list? Or do we have to wait for the 2 Best Buy managers to hawk their book? (Wikipedia, you failed me on this!)
I think the 'lack of irony' is that the supposed anti-spyware company was itself corrupt. "The company allegedly spammed", did fake scans then informed customers they needed to buy the product ("Our investigation found that this so-called free scan always detected spyware, even on a clean computer,"), broke their own consent agreement, used shaddy sales tactics, etc.
So, oddly enough, it seems the law worked. Just calling yourself an 'anti-spyware vendor' is no protection from being a spyware company.
It's simple economics. You have to throw away the 'per minute' calculation and look at your total bill. Assume the amount of cell phone use you do each month is relatively constant. So you need a plan that gives you 'X' minutes per month. Now just compare monthly versus pre-paid for 'X' minutes as a monthly cost.
:)
For example, I only use my phone perhaps once every 2 days, for 1-3 minutes per. So that's 45 minutes a month, tops. A monthly plan at a penny a minute but costing $40 is really almost a dollar a minute for me. A prepaid even at a high quarter/minute (min monthly charge $10) is a bargain, because my total outlay is under $11.
If I used the phone a lot, yes, pre-paid wouldn't make sense, but one needs to run the numbers to figure out which to use (prepaid, monthly, etc). You just have to look at total cost in the end, not per-minute... per-minute rates are often emphasized too much when it's really a TCO
Okay, I'm puzzled. The EFF defending someone sued by, say, the RIAA, is to support the individual who is being overwhelmed by a large corporation due to a questionable law. And one could argue Cuban is just doing something similar-- supporting a lawsuit of an individual who feels a corporation has infringed on their rights in an area where the law is murky.
However, supporting an individual's lawsuit, not because of the principal involved, but because you don't like them and think they're stupid, that's... well, childish. That's putting ego as more important than justice, and in theory, that's what the whole court system is supposed to prevent.
Isn't this just a form of vigilante justice by Cuban? "I don't like 'em, so they're going down."
Also covered by CNet