news.google.com should hold up under even the heaviest loads, and while you might not get the actual site it links to, you should at least be able to get the idea of what's going on based on the headlines.
In a time of crisis, is it really necessary to know the details of a major world event immediately? If a nuke goes off somewhere, I'm not too concerned about who did it--I'm driving to some remote place, THEN I'll start asking the questions.
On Sept. 11th, what did we know for certain:
*4 planes were hijacked *Two towers fell *The Pentagon was hit *A plane went down in PA
everything else was mere specualtion at the time, and everything above could be read by headlines alone.
- After 1st year, unlimited becomes 15MB/month, $3.50/additional MB.
Coverage not available in all areas. Limited time offer and cannot be combined with any other promotions. Credit approval and 12 month service ageement required with $200 fee for early termination. Terms and condidtions include mandatory arbitration provision. Customer billing address must be within and offer valid only in the following T-Mobile (VS) markets: Denver, Colorado Springs, Las Cruces, Portland, Boise, Albequerque, Santa Fe, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and all VS markets in the following states: Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Incoming and outgoing calls are rounded up and billed in full minute increments from the time the network begins to process the call (before the call rings or is answered) through its termination of the call. All allocated airtime minutes must be used in the month provided and do not carry over.
In other words, after the first year, you are paying $3.50 a meg after 15 per month (that's 500K a day...)
Not to mention you can't even get this thing unless you live in a certain area.
I've been pining over this thing for months now, get the great news, happen to live in PA, and now I'm royally pissed off. Way to go...
~~ 3,000 dead 9/11/01 -- Acts of terrorism, acts of murder ~~ 13,000 dead 1/26/01 -- Act of nature
Nobody hijacked a plane to cause an earthquake where 13,000 people died. Acts of nature are an (unfortunate) part of life. There's no investigation when there's an earthquake. There's no retaliation when a volcano explodes. When floods occur we don't declare 'war'.
Both are horrible tragedies, but to compare the outrage and coverage is comparing apples and oranges.
It's called the LDS church. Besides being among the richest (probably the richest?) churches in the world, it is easily the most media savvy, and the most committed to its members
Couldn't agree with your post more, but just as an addendum, and for the life of me I can't find this chart online, the Church of LDS is second in overall monetary value of organized religious institutions(The Catholic Church w/ a value near 4 trillion, LDS just under 1 trillion in worth.)
But more than that, and this was my suspicion all along while reading the Katz piece and follow up comments, is that Alexis Patterson doesn't look, how shall we say...'media friendly?' (i.e., she's Black).
While a missing child is a missing child, White, Black, or Green, I have a strong suspicion that somewhere in the national media's line of thinking the following exchange took place:
"Elizabeth Smart--White girl with blonde hair...a lot of people will see this as an abhorent tragedy versus Alexis Patterson...yep, another Black girl is missing, so what else is new."
It's tragic that people think that way, but unfortunately, it is the way thigns are. I only hope both are found.
Not only that, but the company's web site that wrote the 10 reasons is a RECRUITER! Of course they don't want you to take a counteroffer--THEY WON'T GET PAID. It's just as biased as if Microsoft offered a 10 reasons not to use Linux page.
If you have Store A and Store B, both selling the same product, both selling for the same price, both with equally great customer service, but Store A promises never to disclose your information under any circumstances and Store B doesn't have such a policy...where will you shop? Eventually, a lot of other people will shop at Store A, and when they do shop there, it'll be because of guaranteed privacy, thus making it a selling point.
This might work out for the best--getting Joe Public caring about privacy issues, even if it is a small start. I can just see the news story now:
Reporter: Mister Manager of Wal-Mart, how do you explain losing some of your business to Target? Mister Wal-Mart: Well, they don't offer our customers the opportunity to receive special offers from our sister stores. Reporter: So you're losing sales because you sell information about your customers? Mister Wal-Mart: Uhhhhhh
>>highlight to the non-slashdot reading public why and how their "right" of fair use of something they have bought is being taken away...
Good luck. People sometimes forget that the 99% of the population who doesn't read/. doesn't quite care so much about fair use and their rights. As long as XYZ CD plays in their car or stereo, they don't care if it doesn't play in their computer. IF they try to play it in their computer and it doesn't work, download the songs from a napster-ish P2P. That's technology for them. Songs and porn. It'd take a miracle to get Joe Public to care about the ramifications of the DMCA. "Fair Use" isn't going to make a miracle.
Before you blast this, remember that YOU understand the technology and what's going on. Try to look at it from someone who doesn't know/doesn't really care. The DMCA isn't really 'out' there in the public mind and people who've heard of it probably have misconceptions about it.
The surprise isn't how many situations have cropped up because of software bugs, but rather how few. If you think of all the things that code is written for, and yet there hasn't been any major 'disaster'. Yes, the deaths and accidents are tragic, but on the grander scale of things, it's amazing that nothing truly catastrophic has happened.
Slim, plastic LCDs sewn into fabric could display e-mail or text messages on your sleeve.' Which leads to another problem: with an LCD-suit, where would you put which app?"
Lets see... Front of pants, PKUnZip Back of pants, DownloadAccelerator options are endless....
Playing devil's advocate, what's stopping XYZ news from giving each story a unique ID ## -- (2398472364.html or whatever)and rotating it to a new ID every 20 minutes in their links on the main page, and rotating the filename correspondingly. Solves that problem rather quickly.
Just as much as someone has the right to link to anywhere on the site the site has as much a right to obfuscate things as they see fit.
I know at my local stores, if you want to buy a 'M'ature game, you have to show ID if you appear under 17. There are games which, quite frankly, aren't appropriate for that crowd. It's just the same as buying adult magazines and stuff--they won't let you in/let you buy if you're not of age. What's the big deal here?
Put some names together, make it binding, and let the CowboyNeal lovers flood it to death!
Viva la CowboyNeal!
Re:Prune your betas!
on
Deep Algorithms?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The only problem with A/B (and I love it and have implemented it a number of times in games) is that it only works for abstract strategy games with a zero-sum score. (meaning, one player is winning by the exact same amount the other player is losing...thus, zero sum) So chess, backgammon, checkers, hex, and any other game with a zero-sum board evalution it'll do fine. Otherwise it won't work very well.
Plus, an A/B search is only as good as the method you are using to evaluate the game. I'll use minmax and a good heuristic rather than A/B with a bad one. Just some food for thought.
Group 1>>People who already devote cycles to folding proteins, looking for E.T., or factoring primes.
Group 2>>Those who don't.
Now, for the people in group 1, they are already using something similar to an ISOS, only they are dedicating their computer to something they deem worthy--and I don't think a woman watching a movie in Helsinki is worthy..
Group 2 chooses not do devote their spare cycles for some reason. There are many reasons, but for some people, it is paranoia (of other's data on their computer). To take it a step further, to the ISOS--it's one thing to be looking at nekkid pix of your girlfriend on YOUR hard drive...but what if it was actually being stored on someone's computer in Orem, Utah (which raises some interesting jurisdiction and local ordinance laws)...nekkid pix, mp3s, divx movies of Hilary Rosen, whatever....(of course, your mp3s of metallica's music might partly be stored on Lars' computer or something....wouldn't that be a hoot)
Domesday, not doomsday...BIG difference. Domesday compiled basically a census of 'who's who' in England. Doomsday means we all go boom or something. That's sort of an important thing to get right.
Pretend I am Joe-AOL, and I use my cow-computer for emailing friends and checking sports stuff online. I don't pirate movies, but I have a few mp3's of music a friend gave to me. I have the same technology knowledge as 95% of these Senators constituants--lets face it, as informed as the U.S. Slashdot community is, we're still a major minority when it comes to congressional pulling power. As Joe-AOL-Email, explain to me why I should get off my ass, stop watching Friends, and sending my congressman a letter telling them to not support the SSSCA or I will not vote for them.
If anyone is serious about doing more than blowing smoke about actually creating a stir about this bill, an explination Joe-AOL-Email-Sixpack will understand and buy into as something he needs to get behind is an absolute necessity.
For shame!!! Opening the robots to see what is inside? Yet another blatant violation of the DMCA. What could those kids be thinking?!!? Actually being CURIOUS as to how things work....especially things they paid for!?!?
I realize SF has a number of hills, but for relatively flat grades, there are roller blades with detachable blade parts--they snap off and leave you with a boot-like shoe for going up/down steps, onto railcars, etc.
They aren't overly expensive (~~150 - 200) and might get the job done.
Actually, when Sol DOES go red-giant, we'll be safe. In order to go red, the star must expand and lose mass. This loss of mass will push Earth back and back away from Sol, and we will be at a safe distance.
This calculation was arrived at a few years ago when someone realized that in all the thought of the Earth being engulfed by a red-giant, nobody remembered to subtract the mass Sol would have to lose to become so.
So we might see those rings after all! (Especially if the immortality chip in the timeline story comes to be)
I don't go to the movies that often, namely because I won't want to plunk down $7-$9 dollars to see one during the evening. Now, say a theater makes the investment to go digital. Price of movie goes up also. Now the prices are higher for movies you (the slashdot crowd) don't want to see in the first place, even though some movies (SW:AOTC) that you want to see can now be shown as they were meant to be. So will you keep going to the movies you don't want to see that much now that they are a few dollars more? I know I'm not going to go see a movie I didn't care for in the first place just because it is digital, and now not only is it digital, but it's $10 bucks a pop. (And don't give me this sh*t about a movie theater not raising prices--they'll raise them anytime they can claim a newer innovation, whether it's a digital theater, stadium seating, or a soda machine that works 13% faster...)
I've only used the GBA a handful of times, and must admit the lighting is awful. All I want to know is who Nintendo had test this before it went to market. A pack of rhesus monkeys? Unlike the Gamecube, PS2, or X-Box, it isn't like there is huge competition for the handheld game market, and they already had a near perfect brand name to build on. Why did they rush out an otherwise fine product out with that one major flaw?
With this internal lighting now available, I might finally plunk down the $$$ for my own GBA.
This will also save them a lot of time and hassle should subpoenas ever come around asking for specific users' habits. Plus, less overhead and cost in terms of keeping track of this stuff. Not the world's worst decision by any means.
Might need to save a king...(Simpsons ref)
on
TuVox Voice Interface
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
Bart: [watching Flanders] An ax. He's got an ax! I'll save you, Lisa!
[tries to walk on his leg, falls back] Uh, I'll save you by
calling the police. [dials 911]
Voice: Hello, and welcome to the Springfield Police Department Resc-u-
Fone[tm]. If you know the name of the felony being committed,
press one. To choose from a list of felonies, press two. If you
are being murdered or calling from a rotary phone, please stay on
the line.
Bart: [growls, punches some numbers]
Voice: You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or
queen being murdered, press one.
Slashdot Mirror
news.google.com should hold up under even the heaviest loads, and while you might not get the actual site it links to, you should at least be able to get the idea of what's going on based on the headlines.
In a time of crisis, is it really necessary to know the details of a major world event immediately? If a nuke goes off somewhere, I'm not too concerned about who did it--I'm driving to some remote place, THEN I'll start asking the questions.
On Sept. 11th, what did we know for certain:
*4 planes were hijacked
*Two towers fell
*The Pentagon was hit
*A plane went down in PA
everything else was mere specualtion at the time, and everything above could be read by headlines alone.
Just a thought,
As quoted from their rate plan site:
- After 1st year, unlimited becomes 15MB/month, $3.50/additional MB.
Coverage not available in all areas. Limited time offer and cannot be combined with any other promotions. Credit approval and 12 month service ageement required with $200 fee for early termination. Terms and condidtions include mandatory arbitration provision. Customer billing address must be within and offer valid only in the following T-Mobile (VS) markets: Denver, Colorado Springs, Las Cruces, Portland, Boise, Albequerque, Santa Fe, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and all VS markets in the following states: Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Incoming and outgoing calls are rounded up and billed in full minute increments from the time the network begins to process the call (before the call rings or is answered) through its termination of the call. All allocated airtime minutes must be used in the month provided and do not carry over.
In other words, after the first year, you are paying $3.50 a meg after 15 per month (that's 500K a day...)
Not to mention you can't even get this thing unless you live in a certain area.
I've been pining over this thing for months now, get the great news, happen to live in PA, and now I'm royally pissed off. Way to go...
~~ 3,000 dead 9/11/01 -- Acts of terrorism, acts of murder
~~ 13,000 dead 1/26/01 -- Act of nature
Nobody hijacked a plane to cause an earthquake where 13,000 people died. Acts of nature are an (unfortunate) part of life. There's no investigation when there's an earthquake. There's no retaliation when a volcano explodes. When floods occur we don't declare 'war'.
Both are horrible tragedies, but to compare the outrage and coverage is comparing apples and oranges.
It's called the LDS church. Besides being among the richest (probably the richest?) churches in the world, it is easily the most media savvy, and the most committed to its members
Couldn't agree with your post more, but just as an addendum, and for the life of me I can't find this chart online, the Church of LDS is second in overall monetary value of organized religious institutions(The Catholic Church w/ a value near 4 trillion, LDS just under 1 trillion in worth.)
But more than that, and this was my suspicion all along while reading the Katz piece and follow up comments, is that Alexis Patterson doesn't look, how shall we say...'media friendly?' (i.e., she's Black).
While a missing child is a missing child, White, Black, or Green, I have a strong suspicion that somewhere in the national media's line of thinking the following exchange took place:
"Elizabeth Smart--White girl with blonde hair...a lot of people will see this as an abhorent tragedy versus Alexis Patterson...yep, another Black girl is missing, so what else is new."
It's tragic that people think that way, but unfortunately, it is the way thigns are. I only hope both are found.
Not only that, but the company's web site that wrote the 10 reasons is a RECRUITER! Of course they don't want you to take a counteroffer--THEY WON'T GET PAID. It's just as biased as if Microsoft offered a 10 reasons not to use Linux page.
Damn, seems the page has been Slashdotted. No biggie, I'll just check out the Google cache...
Oh..wait...
>>A large part of this was due to Lucas' condition that if a theater shows AOTC, that it show for a minimum of four weeks.
Four weeks? IIRC, it's seven, which is a HUGE investment for a theater, and why fewer ones bit on it.
If you have Store A and Store B, both selling the same product, both selling for the same price, both with equally great customer service, but Store A promises never to disclose your information under any circumstances and Store B doesn't have such a policy...where will you shop? Eventually, a lot of other people will shop at Store A, and when they do shop there, it'll be because of guaranteed privacy, thus making it a selling point.
This might work out for the best--getting Joe Public caring about privacy issues, even if it is a small start. I can just see the news story now:
Reporter: Mister Manager of Wal-Mart, how do you explain losing some of your business to Target?
Mister Wal-Mart: Well, they don't offer our customers the opportunity to receive special offers from our sister stores.
Reporter: So you're losing sales because you sell information about your customers?
Mister Wal-Mart: Uhhhhhh
Good luck. People sometimes forget that the 99% of the population who doesn't read
Before you blast this, remember that YOU understand the technology and what's going on. Try to look at it from someone who doesn't know/doesn't really care. The DMCA isn't really 'out' there in the public mind and people who've heard of it probably have misconceptions about it.
The surprise isn't how many situations have cropped up because of software bugs, but rather how few. If you think of all the things that code is written for, and yet there hasn't been any major 'disaster'. Yes, the deaths and accidents are tragic, but on the grander scale of things, it's amazing that nothing truly catastrophic has happened.
Slim, plastic LCDs sewn into fabric could display e-mail or text messages on your sleeve.' Which leads to another problem: with an LCD-suit, where would you put which app?"
Lets see...
Front of pants, PKUnZip
Back of pants, DownloadAccelerator
options are endless....
Playing devil's advocate, what's stopping XYZ news from giving each story a unique ID ## -- (2398472364.html or whatever)and rotating it to a new ID every 20 minutes in their links on the main page, and rotating the filename correspondingly. Solves that problem rather quickly.
Just as much as someone has the right to link to anywhere on the site the site has as much a right to obfuscate things as they see fit.
I know at my local stores, if you want to buy a 'M'ature game, you have to show ID if you appear under 17. There are games which, quite frankly, aren't appropriate for that crowd. It's just the same as buying adult magazines and stuff--they won't let you in/let you buy if you're not of age. What's the big deal here?
Put some names together, make it binding, and let the CowboyNeal lovers flood it to death!
Viva la CowboyNeal!
The only problem with A/B (and I love it and have implemented it a number of times in games) is that it only works for abstract strategy games with a zero-sum score. (meaning, one player is winning by the exact same amount the other player is losing...thus, zero sum) So chess, backgammon, checkers, hex, and any other game with a zero-sum board evalution it'll do fine. Otherwise it won't work very well.
Plus, an A/B search is only as good as the method you are using to evaluate the game. I'll use minmax and a good heuristic rather than A/B with a bad one. Just some food for thought.
Group 1>>People who already devote cycles to folding proteins, looking for E.T., or factoring primes.
Group 2>>Those who don't.
Now, for the people in group 1, they are already using something similar to an ISOS, only they are dedicating their computer to something they deem worthy--and I don't think a woman watching a movie in Helsinki is worthy..
Group 2 chooses not do devote their spare cycles for some reason. There are many reasons, but for some people, it is paranoia (of other's data on their computer). To take it a step further, to the ISOS--it's one thing to be looking at nekkid pix of your girlfriend on YOUR hard drive...but what if it was actually being stored on someone's computer in Orem, Utah (which raises some interesting jurisdiction and local ordinance laws)...nekkid pix, mp3s, divx movies of Hilary Rosen, whatever....(of course, your mp3s of metallica's music might partly be stored on Lars' computer or something....wouldn't that be a hoot)
Domesday, not doomsday...BIG difference. Domesday compiled basically a census of 'who's who' in England. Doomsday means we all go boom or something. That's sort of an important thing to get right.
If anyone is serious about doing more than blowing smoke about actually creating a stir about this bill, an explination Joe-AOL-Email-Sixpack will understand and buy into as something he needs to get behind is an absolute necessity.
Explain away, ladies and gentlemen...
For shame!!! Opening the robots to see what is inside? Yet another blatant violation of the DMCA. What could those kids be thinking?!!? Actually being CURIOUS as to how things work....especially things they paid for!?!?
They aren't overly expensive (~~150 - 200) and might get the job done.
Actually, when Sol DOES go red-giant, we'll be safe. In order to go red, the star must expand and lose mass. This loss of mass will push Earth back and back away from Sol, and we will be at a safe distance.
This calculation was arrived at a few years ago when someone realized that in all the thought of the Earth being engulfed by a red-giant, nobody remembered to subtract the mass Sol would have to lose to become so.
So we might see those rings after all! (Especially if the immortality chip in the timeline story comes to be)
I don't go to the movies that often, namely because I won't want to plunk down $7-$9 dollars to see one during the evening. Now, say a theater makes the investment to go digital. Price of movie goes up also. Now the prices are higher for movies you (the slashdot crowd) don't want to see in the first place, even though some movies (SW:AOTC) that you want to see can now be shown as they were meant to be. So will you keep going to the movies you don't want to see that much now that they are a few dollars more? I know I'm not going to go see a movie I didn't care for in the first place just because it is digital, and now not only is it digital, but it's $10 bucks a pop. (And don't give me this sh*t about a movie theater not raising prices--they'll raise them anytime they can claim a newer innovation, whether it's a digital theater, stadium seating, or a soda machine that works 13% faster...)
With this internal lighting now available, I might finally plunk down the $$$ for my own GBA.
This will also save them a lot of time and hassle should subpoenas ever come around asking for specific users' habits. Plus, less overhead and cost in terms of keeping track of this stuff. Not the world's worst decision by any means.
[tries to walk on his leg, falls back] Uh, I'll save you by
calling the police. [dials 911]
Voice: Hello, and welcome to the Springfield Police Department Resc-u-
Fone[tm]. If you know the name of the felony being committed,
press one. To choose from a list of felonies, press two. If you
are being murdered or calling from a rotary phone, please stay on
the line.
Bart: [growls, punches some numbers]
Voice: You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or
queen being murdered, press one.
Thanks, SNPP