"Here is a photo of the Paluxy River in Glen Rose Texas. This rapidly flowing river runs through the middle of Dinosaur Valley State Park, famous for its dinosaur tracks. Not as well known is the fact that human tracks have also been found, not only in the same formation, but on the same bedding plane and in some cases overlapping the dinosaur tracks."
Proof that gasoline is still too cheap: I still see tons of Hummers, Expeditions, Navigators, Armadas, Sequoias and other mondo SUVs (aka Urban Assault Vehicles) on the road.
That could just as easily prove that rich people and drug dealers like big vehicles.
Too many of us are weary of loosing are data to the wild.
Yes, or the additional risk of leaking that data to whoever is hosting the service. Examples of things I would never store on someone else's servers (let alone my own Internet accessible servers): company secrets, patent ideas, IPO details, or customer lists.
Normally a company has to worry about its own employees leaking data - that's a given - but if you host private data with some other company I believe you're extending the possibility of breach unnecessarily. Why take the risk? Would Google take the hit of the data were leaked or do you sign that right away when you use their service? (note: I haven't read their EULA)
The bottom line: I don't think applications like Google Docs will take hold in larger companies until Google offers a self-hosted solution, like an appliance (similar to their search appliance).
It's rare that I can stand watching olympic sports. I mean, the difference between first and second can be a hundredth of a second! To me it's ridiculous sitting through events that are won and lost by insignificant amounts of time. An athlete could sneeze and lose that much time.
Then you've got sports that measure style (diving, ice skating) and are just crying out to be biased. I won't even mention the scandals and corruption.
I love that athletes put such devotion into their sport, but the whole olympics thing is just off-putting.
One way new computers can be cheaper is a reduced number of CPUs for the same or better processing power. If you use software that is charged by the CPU, upgrading your hardware is an easy way to save money.
One more step: multiply the probability by the cost of entirely losing all the people and infrastructure of an entire city which, in many ways, the rest of the world depends on. The probability doesn't have to be high to make it worth considering.
I wrote a letter to them commenting on the disproportionally large amount of baroque music on their site. They need a better range of music to keep me checking back on a regular basis. With that said, I've purchased a few albums off Magnatune and really enjoyed them: Brad Sucks, The Wretch, Strojovna (Mirnix).
Re:Couple Thoughts
on
Where are Wii?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I bought the Wii for innovative game play but unfortunately I found that (a) there weren't many games targetted at adults and (b) not all games really took advantage of the Wii controller in a way that couldn't be easily accomplished on any other console. Now that I've sold my Wii, I may be looking to buy a 360 or a PS3. With that said, I'm really disappointed by the quality of games out there and the price you have to pay for these often mediocre games. Very, very games are worth $70. Even Halo 3 doesn't seem worth it.
Not to mention that it assumes those who would do the US harm originate from outside the country.
Ironically enough, this new system matches some definitions of the word "terror":
2 a: one that inspires fear : scourge b: a frightening aspect c: a cause of anxiety : worry d: an appalling person or thing; especially : brat
Heh, I wonder if LinkedIn is used to come up with a terrorist score. It's an interesting thought exercise: say you have 50 people in your list of connections which gives 250,000 people total in your network. You've never met 249,950 of them. If one of those people you've never met has a shady background, does that make you a suspect? If so, is that an even remotely reliable indication of your potential threat to commit a crime? I don't know how they figure it out, but it doesn't seem very reliable on the surface, somewhat like how they used the soundex algorithm to do name matching for awhile after 9/11. Whatever happened to the old fashioned infiltration of criminal networks, finding out who's connected to who? Sure, innocent associates end up being profiled as well, but much less than the entire population being profiled.
Perhaps, the US might start working on ways to have fewer (asshole) people in the world angry at them and wanting to blow up their cities with dirty bombs? That might be a good place to start.
I agree, but I don't think that is compatible with the usual USA self-image. Changing their ways is acknowledging that others' anger has been noted and that the USA cares what others think and will change its ways. Never gonna happen.
Doing some quick browsing around, I tried the HTML view in one book and got a 404 error yet in another book the HTMl view worked fine.
The QuickTime plugin introduces delays which make flipping through pages pretty tedious. The HTML view is faster, but then you're going to run into OCR errors as others noted.
Here's an idea: create a custom wiki-style site containing all the book text and provide a link to each scanned page. One would normally read the standard web (HTML) version, but if any errors are found the user can look to the original scan and make corrections to the wiki page. This should result in less errors in book text, plus provide the benefit that the user has context around words that were OCRd wrong so that ambiguities in poor quality scans can be worked out. I actually submitted 130 recaptcha's (260 words) when I first heard of their effort and found that some words were too garbled for me to have 100% confidence in what I was entering, without at least a full sentence available for context.
The bottom line: the government will use whatever information resource it can, be that people, phone call records, GPS, etc... Create more information, the gov't is automatically interested in having at their fingertips.
Keep in mind, the government can make the right *environment* for all sorts of new information to be tracked and provided, by creating laws, incentives, etc... so while the companies generating the information may not have any evil motives, some people in the government (and in criminal organizations) can.
I don't understand why Firefox doesn't include a "disable flash" feature right in the browser, just like it allows you to disable javascript and java applets. Why is Flash treated differently?
I only ever listen to music played through a computer or an ipod these days. In fact, I use CDs so infrequently (it's been many months since the last time) I just threw out all my original jewel cases and album inserts and now keep all my original CDs on CDR spindles. It's so much less clutter and takes way less space. Plus, I don't have to keep shelling out for new CD holders. If I don't like a song, I delete it so I never have to skip it again. I can keep lyrics to my favourite songs right in the song file itself. Digital is the only way to go - I'm hooked. CDs are dead.
For quite awhile I used Kmail and it worked pretty well. I eventually tried Thunderbird and, for my purposes - tunneling an X connection over ssh on a DSL connection - Thunderbird was _much_ slower than Kmail. You could watch it slowly paint many areas of useless eye candy. I'm now using fetchmail/procmail/mutt which, based on speed over a remote link, works quite awesomely.
Set up a PayPal (or similar) account for this lady and everyone give her a dollar to help cover the legal costs. In the same way, stand up for anyone who must pay the RIAA. Done. Well, unless they start handing out jail time.
Several of the top viruses of 2006 were over 2 years old (according to a report by Sophos). Obviously there was anti-virus protection available for those threats but many, many people aren't protecting their computers. It's no wonder why creating huge botnets continues to be so viable.
I remember in grade 5 or so we were asked to complete a test which was supposed to indicate how gifted we were. There were pictures on each page and a series of questions below. At no time during the test did the questions state "based on the picture above" or "look at the picture above" so I completely ignored them. As a result the questions meant nothing and I did horribly. I realized later that the pictures were the source of the answers. Obvious to most, but to this day I take things very, very literally which is probably why I'm in software development and why I have a hard time understanding people or certain situations.
My first guess is it's the result of some optimization that went wrong. In any case, it's got to be pretty darn embarrassing for a spreadsheet application.
Thus the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.'
The last invention man ever makes could be something that destroys is ultra-intelligent creation... or at least, tries to.
A scary thing about an ultra-intelligent creation is there's a good chance it would be totally crafty in every respect, manipulating humans and making itself seem less intelligent than it actually is. That is what a truly intelligent thing would do if it had a hidden agenda. It's easy to pit humans against each other, to turn our legal system against us, to integrate itself into our lives such that we would find it hard to live without, and the final move, once it is completely integrated with society, finish us off. Yep, scary.
On a related note, if we invented a more intelligent machine than humans, would we even know it? I could totally see people reviewing the performance and saying "stupid robot, that doesn't make sense" and not even realize that it is smarter than them - they just can't understand it. I mean, look at the greatest human minds over time - they are almost always misunderstood by most until much later.
Assuming God is perfect, do you think he would create a static set of life that is unable to adapt to its environment? God may have set up the very possibility of "life" to begin with, along with its ability to adapt. The fact that we think we can "create" life doesn't really mean much. We're still playing by the creator's rules, since we live inside his creation.
It's like an intelligent computer program creating a sub-program of its own devising. Cool, but so what. Without the CPU it's nothing. Just a thought.
Since I don't surf infectious sites, my chances to cacth a new, yet unknown virus are minimal.
Currently, over 30,000 websites are compromised every day, resulting in hosts you trust being potential sources of infection. You don't have to surf porn or warez sites to get infected these days.
About the tests reported on, I didn't see that they tested the virus scanners on non-virus content to measure the number of files mis-categorized as viral. Measuring false positives is an important aspect of comparing virus scanners, just as it is with anti-spam products. You don't want your AV scanner reporting every application you use as viral, as eventually you will ignore those messages (like "the boy who cried wolf"). The testing really seems incomplete to me.
Who knows how long the buildings would have held if they weren't brought down by demolition explosives. I get the feeling people need to hear Bush say "yeah, I had the towers pulled" before they'll believe it. Or "polls are open for impeachment, call in now." That's not going to happen. Maybe in 100 years the 9/11 documents will be de-classified and the truth can be known and believed by everyone. Watch the video and the expert testimonies - what the hell happened with all those buildings collapsing (including one that had not been hit)?
Slashdot Mirror
You might find this page intriguing:
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/taylor-trail.htm
Sample:
"Here is a photo of the Paluxy River in Glen Rose Texas. This rapidly flowing river runs through the middle of Dinosaur Valley State Park, famous for its dinosaur tracks. Not as well known is the fact that human tracks have also been found, not only in the same formation, but on the same bedding plane and in some cases overlapping the dinosaur tracks."
Proof that gasoline is still too cheap: I still see tons of Hummers, Expeditions, Navigators, Armadas, Sequoias and other mondo SUVs (aka Urban Assault Vehicles) on the road.
That could just as easily prove that rich people and drug dealers like big vehicles.
Too many of us are weary of loosing are data to the wild.
Yes, or the additional risk of leaking that data to whoever is hosting the service. Examples of things I would never store on someone else's servers (let alone my own Internet accessible servers): company secrets, patent ideas, IPO details, or customer lists.
Normally a company has to worry about its own employees leaking data - that's a given - but if you host private data with some other company I believe you're extending the possibility of breach unnecessarily. Why take the risk? Would Google take the hit of the data were leaked or do you sign that right away when you use their service? (note: I haven't read their EULA)
The bottom line: I don't think applications like Google Docs will take hold in larger companies until Google offers a self-hosted solution, like an appliance (similar to their search appliance).
It's rare that I can stand watching olympic sports. I mean, the difference between first and second can be a hundredth of a second! To me it's ridiculous sitting through events that are won and lost by insignificant amounts of time. An athlete could sneeze and lose that much time.
Then you've got sports that measure style (diving, ice skating) and are just crying out to be biased. I won't even mention the scandals and corruption.
I love that athletes put such devotion into their sport, but the whole olympics thing is just off-putting.
One way new computers can be cheaper is a reduced number of CPUs for the same or better processing power. If you use software that is charged by the CPU, upgrading your hardware is an easy way to save money.
One more step: multiply the probability by the cost of entirely losing all the people and infrastructure of an entire city which, in many ways, the rest of the world depends on. The probability doesn't have to be high to make it worth considering.
I wrote a letter to them commenting on the disproportionally large amount of baroque music on their site. They need a better range of music to keep me checking back on a regular basis.
With that said, I've purchased a few albums off Magnatune and really enjoyed them: Brad Sucks, The Wretch, Strojovna (Mirnix).
I bought the Wii for innovative game play but unfortunately I found that (a) there weren't many games targetted at adults and (b) not all games really took advantage of the Wii controller in a way that couldn't be easily accomplished on any other console. Now that I've sold my Wii, I may be looking to buy a 360 or a PS3. With that said, I'm really disappointed by the quality of games out there and the price you have to pay for these often mediocre games. Very, very games are worth $70. Even Halo 3 doesn't seem worth it.
Not to mention that it assumes those who would do the US harm originate from outside the country.
Ironically enough, this new system matches some definitions of the word "terror":
2 a: one that inspires fear : scourge b: a frightening aspect c: a cause of anxiety : worry d: an appalling person or thing; especially : brat
Heh, I wonder if LinkedIn is used to come up with a terrorist score. It's an interesting thought exercise: say you have 50 people in your list of connections which gives 250,000 people total in your network. You've never met 249,950 of them. If one of those people you've never met has a shady background, does that make you a suspect? If so, is that an even remotely reliable indication of your potential threat to commit a crime? I don't know how they figure it out, but it doesn't seem very reliable on the surface, somewhat like how they used the soundex algorithm to do name matching for awhile after 9/11. Whatever happened to the old fashioned infiltration of criminal networks, finding out who's connected to who? Sure, innocent associates end up being profiled as well, but much less than the entire population being profiled.
Perhaps, the US might start working on ways to have fewer (asshole) people in the world angry at them and wanting to blow up their cities with dirty bombs? That might be a good place to start.
I agree, but I don't think that is compatible with the usual USA self-image. Changing their ways is acknowledging that others' anger has been noted and that the USA cares what others think and will change its ways. Never gonna happen.
Doing some quick browsing around, I tried the HTML view in one book and got a 404 error yet in another book the HTMl view worked fine.
The QuickTime plugin introduces delays which make flipping through pages pretty tedious. The HTML view is faster, but then you're going to run into OCR errors as others noted.
Here's an idea: create a custom wiki-style site containing all the book text and provide a link to each scanned page. One would normally read the standard web (HTML) version, but if any errors are found the user can look to the original scan and make corrections to the wiki page. This should result in less errors in book text, plus provide the benefit that the user has context around words that were OCRd wrong so that ambiguities in poor quality scans can be worked out. I actually submitted 130 recaptcha's (260 words) when I first heard of their effort and found that some words were too garbled for me to have 100% confidence in what I was entering, without at least a full sentence available for context.
The bottom line: the government will use whatever information resource it can, be that people, phone call records, GPS, etc... Create more information, the gov't is automatically interested in having at their fingertips.
Keep in mind, the government can make the right *environment* for all sorts of
new information to be tracked and provided, by creating laws, incentives, etc... so while the companies generating the information may not have any evil motives, some people in the government (and in criminal organizations) can.
I don't understand why Firefox doesn't include a "disable flash" feature right in the browser, just like it allows you to disable javascript and java applets. Why is Flash treated differently?
'Cause they're Packin' the K, BITCH!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bHxyHlFZ778
Who called it! Here's where to donate:
http://www.freejammie.com/
I only ever listen to music played through a computer or an ipod these days. In fact, I use CDs so infrequently (it's been many months since the last time) I just threw out all my original jewel cases and album inserts and now keep all my original CDs on CDR spindles. It's so much less clutter and takes way less space. Plus, I don't have to keep shelling out for new CD holders. If I don't like a song, I delete it so I never have to skip it again. I can keep lyrics to my favourite songs right in the song file itself. Digital is the only way to go - I'm hooked. CDs are dead.
For quite awhile I used Kmail and it worked pretty well. I eventually tried Thunderbird and, for my purposes - tunneling an X connection over ssh on a DSL connection - Thunderbird was _much_ slower than Kmail. You could watch it slowly paint many areas of useless eye candy. I'm now using fetchmail/procmail/mutt which, based on speed over a remote link, works quite awesomely.
Set up a PayPal (or similar) account for this lady and everyone give her a dollar to help cover the legal costs. In the same way, stand up for anyone who must pay the RIAA. Done. Well, unless they start handing out jail time.
Several of the top viruses of 2006 were over 2 years old (according to a report by Sophos). Obviously there was anti-virus protection available for those threats but many, many people aren't protecting their computers. It's no wonder why creating huge botnets continues to be so viable.
I remember in grade 5 or so we were asked to complete a test which was supposed to indicate how gifted we were. There were pictures on each page and a series of questions below. At no time during the test did the questions state "based on the picture above" or "look at the picture above" so I completely ignored them. As a result the questions meant nothing and I did horribly. I realized later that the pictures were the source of the answers. Obvious to most, but to this day I take things very, very literally which is probably why I'm in software development and why I have a hard time understanding people or certain situations.
My first guess is it's the result of some optimization that went wrong. In any case, it's got to be pretty darn embarrassing for a spreadsheet application.
Thus the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.'
The last invention man ever makes could be something that destroys is ultra-intelligent creation... or at least, tries to.
A scary thing about an ultra-intelligent creation is there's a good chance it would be totally crafty in every respect, manipulating humans and making itself seem less intelligent than it actually is. That is what a truly intelligent thing would do if it had a hidden agenda. It's easy to pit humans against each other, to turn our legal system against us, to integrate itself into our lives such that we would find it hard to live without, and the final move, once it is completely integrated with society, finish us off.
Yep, scary.
On a related note, if we invented a more intelligent machine than humans, would we even know it? I could totally see people reviewing the performance and saying "stupid robot, that doesn't make sense" and not even realize that it is smarter than them - they just can't understand it. I mean, look at the greatest human minds over time - they are almost always misunderstood by most until much later.
Assuming God is perfect, do you think he would create a static set of life that is unable to adapt to its environment? God may have set up the very possibility of "life" to begin with, along with its ability to adapt. The fact that we think we can "create" life doesn't really mean much. We're still playing by the creator's rules, since we live inside his creation.
It's like an intelligent computer program creating a sub-program of its own devising. Cool, but so what. Without the CPU it's nothing. Just a thought.
Currently, over 30,000 websites are compromised every day, resulting in hosts you trust being potential sources of infection. You don't have to surf porn or warez sites to get infected these days.
About the tests reported on, I didn't see that they tested the virus scanners on non-virus content to measure the number of files mis-categorized as viral. Measuring false positives is an important aspect of comparing virus scanners, just as it is with anti-spam products. You don't want your AV scanner reporting every application you use as viral, as eventually you will ignore those messages (like "the boy who cried wolf"). The testing really seems incomplete to me.
Who knows how long the buildings would have held if they weren't brought down by demolition explosives. I get the feeling people need to hear Bush say "yeah, I had the towers pulled" before they'll believe it. Or "polls are open for impeachment, call in now." That's not going to happen. Maybe in 100 years the 9/11 documents will be de-classified and the truth can be known and believed by everyone. Watch the video and the expert testimonies - what the hell happened with all those buildings collapsing (including one that had not been hit)?