I know that MY (admittedly rather large) company will never be able to switch to non-IE browser because of all the extra "applications" which are on the intranet and require IE (and even if they have no real reason to, they refuse to talk to non-IE browser). "Little things" like filling a timecard, purchase order, travel request and such, all that is necessary for day-to-day office life. And of course even our IT people use FireFox for Internet browsing (though the ones I know are on UNIX/CAD side of the business).
Maybe a sensible way would be to block IE on ourgoing connections in the web proxy (heh, maybe I should fire an e-mail to the VP of IT with this suggestion and a link to that Homeland Security advisory;-) ).
Diamonds actually do have practical uses; you can cut other diamonds with them.;) No, you can not, but you can cut glass;-), which brings us to the next point.
We cannot simply wave our hands and magically fabricate diamonds Sure we can! Especially those which can cut glass and other substances, but also ones which decorate a nice girl, see, e.g., here http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0 4/02/1 4/2040207&mode=thread&tid=134 and here http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/1 2/2112237&mode=thread&tid=126
And one can argue that someone who plays the game for the living hoping to sell his hard-earned "goods" for real cash can be working hard as well!;-)
Anyone with administrative power could theoretically go into the system and change whatever he or she likes. Federal Reserve and The Mint, maybe?
Fancy clothing might help protect us from the elements or save us from acting on baser instincts, but the "fancy" stuff serves less of a purpose. Here, "clothing" protects, but the "fancy" part serves more to actually provoke us to acting on our instincts!
And speaking of your "children", the situation might be a bit different in the virtual good's exchange situation: the real money (which could be used to buy food/clothing/shelter, etc.) have changed hands. If the agreement between the kids was that "You give me $1.50 for the magic stuff (so that I can go get myself an icecream)" and another kid take the "stuff" and does not give $1.50 back, one might argue that morally it is the same as robbing the first one and deserves some intervention by the parents.
Anyway, somehow I feel that I am feeding a (admittedly, nice and long) troll, but anyway!;-)
The significance that virtual objects hold are purely social...
One can make the same argument about art, fancy clothing and diamonds, to name a few. Taken to the limit, everything which can not be bartered for the consumable necessities is "purely social".
Paul B.
P.S. No, I've never played MMORPGs (maybe I should start?;-) ) but I've never traded for cash anything but the ones and zeroes drawn by my mouse/clicked by my fingers either. Just felt like participating in a good innocent argument here, after a couple of Gunesses!;-)
... and grow some veggies on that. I pay the landlord either a percentage of my crop or a fixed sum and the resulting crop is all mine, my property, for sale or consumption.
Work for hire is one thing (Joe Schmoe was hired by the pizza place to make pizzas), renting some other's property for your production is entirely different.
I believe the real question is if the game server space/cycles is "rented" or not, most probably the EULA contains some language to say that "We are free to dissolve this relationship at any time".
This time the contest ASSUMES use of computers! And many people will be manually waiting for the number to reach certain level to press "Submit"... Why would not one to program his computer to give an audible buzz when it is time?;-)
I'm wondering where did you get the 100-200 songs/min number from (see my other post, I came up with 180 songs/minute, not too bad!) -- but there are early morning minutes and afternoon minutes, I bet the majority of the purchases happen in the late afternoon.
But it depends on if 30 min is "live" enough on the timescale. 95M songs over, how long have they been around, a year? 1y = 17520 half-hours, or about 5,400 songs/half hour... Yeah, not enough resolution, but maybe 1) they were around longer than a year and 2) one can play day vs. night hours game. When would you expect purchases to peak? Maybe 4 pm Western time to 2 AM Eastern time, or something... The rest of the day kids are in school or sleeping, orders flow in much more slowly and can probably be timed.
After the count reaches the required # of mils, observe the counter value vs. Time (maybe requires some OCR software to get the number from the GIF or whatever Apple used to prevent this type of thing), then try to make a best prediction when 10,000 mark is getting close and dump some cash in.
Might work, huh?
Paul B.
P.S. Even if one does not want to actually risk their $$ on this game, a software to plot the chart would be still interesting to hack together -- by taking a derivative we will see if other people are trying to do this -- if yes, dN/dT should peak around 10,000*x
... If you have a big flashlight, gone out on a camping trip and have no idea where your flashlight is (say, need to go out and pee at night)... You press a button on your, say, car or garage door clicker and flashlight switches on! You walk to it, pick it up and go do your thing...
No, not bad an idea at all!
Paul B.
P.S. Any VC funding available to develop it further?;-)
With everything out in the open we don't have to worry about blackmail and dirty tricks and you better know people's character and motivations. Kinda like looking inside a program's source and seeing the flaws.
The major difference is that what happens in your life really should matter only to you, your wife (if any, and she really cares) and maybe family and friends, and you can as well expect people to leave you alone. If you write a program which matters only to a handful of people it does not really maatter if you GPL it or not.
OTOH if you write a useful tool which is interesting to many and people can learn from how it works and make it work better for them OR improve it and make it work better for others (the subtle difference between Free and OSS movements, BTW;-) ) you do have to make a decision if you open it up or not.
But then, again, people might want to start an "Open Spouse" movement --- wait, some have already started!;-)
Sorry to break your happy "interesting" ramble, but DMCA was passed in 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA), under Clinton, and do you really think that "outsourcing" began just 4 years ago and not on the peak of the.com boom?
I would have to conclude that you are just a TROLL, really.
From http://www.packbot.com/trackRecord/history.asp
(.asp, hmm...;-) )
iRobot's Aware(TM) operating system, running on Linux, allows our developers to add new functionality, add behaviors that reduce the load on the operators, and add new payloads.
And those are definitely not toys, actually they've been used (according to the same page) in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, they were patched on the fly:
We were able to gather user feedback and change the robot and controller software to reflect input from the preceding missions, before the mission the next day. This gave the soldier direct input into the design.
If you have a matched cable or a waveguide and send an EM wave down, it will propagat with the speed of light in the medium, which is slower than the speed of light in the vacuum by the factor of epsilon of the insulator used in that line.
You must be thinking about RC constant (which limits the speed of most _normal_ semiconductor chips today), but not of the ethernet (which is really relativistic, as in, dependent on the actual value of 'c').
Check out Ethernet IEEE standards sometime... WE are limited by the lightspeed (at least, the reach of the ethernet cables;-) ).
The minimum packet size over the ethernet is limited by the fact that you have to be able to detect that someone else is trying to send on a channel DURING the duration of the packet, and the latter one is limited by 'c' and maximum distance.
wireline equivalent protection, or something?;-) I did not say "secure WiFi", I said "properly secured", which would just mean "as secure as the phone line out of the house", i.e., not at all against someone who cares about YOU in particular, but good enough against a random wardriver.
Why does a single house need that many cables in the closet anyway? I know that I have a mess of power, 10baseT and USB cables next to my workstation (many of them belonging to the broken/obsolete appliances and totally unused), but how many places in your house do you need to run a real cable connection to?
No, in no way I condone beating the poor guy to death (especially since the attorney for the contractor claims that it was a heart attack), but really I did not know that he surrendered on his own. What I suspect is that both parties are of average guilt, but one got beaten up and died, the other got selected for an exemplary trial...
You know, when you drive to your office and back you are risking your life for money... Same if you walk...;-/ And do not even think of any kind of construction jobs or anything related to heavy equipment!
I guess that what you wanted to say was that you would not accept an average pot of money for an above-average risk to your life. But that is reasonable, this is why averages and medians often coincide in social sciences!;-)
the other guy was an Afghan POW, not Iraqi civilian.
To contribute to the grandparent's discussion, as far as I know you are kind of supposed to know how to deal with a gun if you are a civilian contractor down there, or at least carry it. (Got the story from a lady working for one of the aerospace companies who was visiting Iraq briefly, and she told that you are given a gun to hold and at least pretend that you know how to use it).
As to the actual 'Ask/." question -- I think that the editors are either in very-long-latency mode or entirely detached from the rest of the world. The poor guy was killed today!
To answer the question, I guess that my wife would not let me go there...
Slashdot Mirror
I know that MY (admittedly rather large) company will never be able to switch to non-IE browser because of all the extra "applications" which are on the intranet and require IE (and even if they have no real reason to, they refuse to talk to non-IE browser). "Little things" like filling a timecard, purchase order, travel request and such, all that is necessary for day-to-day office life. And of course even our IT people use FireFox for Internet browsing (though the ones I know are on UNIX/CAD side of the business).
;-) ).
Maybe a sensible way would be to block IE on ourgoing connections in the web proxy (heh, maybe I should fire an e-mail to the VP of IT with this suggestion and a link to that Homeland Security advisory
Paul B.
Well, you sure do like long postings! ;-)
;) No, you can not, but you can cut glass ;-), which brings us to the next point.
0 4/02/1 4/2040207&mode=thread&tid=1341 2/2112237&mode=thread&tid=126
;-)
;-)
let me answer just some points though...
Diamonds actually do have practical uses; you can cut other diamonds with them.
We cannot simply wave our hands and magically fabricate diamonds Sure we can! Especially those which can cut glass and other substances, but also ones which decorate a nice girl, see, e.g., here
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=
and here http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/
And one can argue that someone who plays the game for the living hoping to sell his hard-earned "goods" for real cash can be working hard as well!
Anyone with administrative power could theoretically go into the system and change whatever he or she likes. Federal Reserve and The Mint, maybe?
Fancy clothing might help protect us from the elements or save us from acting on baser instincts, but the "fancy" stuff serves less of a purpose. Here, "clothing" protects, but the "fancy" part serves more to actually provoke us to acting on our instincts!
And speaking of your "children", the situation might be a bit different in the virtual good's exchange situation: the real money (which could be used to buy food/clothing/shelter, etc.) have changed hands. If the agreement between the kids was that "You give me $1.50 for the magic stuff (so that I can go get myself an icecream)" and another kid take the "stuff" and does not give $1.50 back, one might argue that morally it is the same as robbing the first one and deserves some intervention by the parents.
Anyway, somehow I feel that I am feeding a (admittedly, nice and long) troll, but anyway!
Paul B.
The significance that virtual objects hold are purely social...
;-) ) but I've never traded for cash anything but the ones and zeroes drawn by my mouse/clicked by my fingers either. Just felt like participating in a good innocent argument here, after a couple of Gunesses! ;-)
One can make the same argument about art, fancy clothing and diamonds, to name a few. Taken to the limit, everything which can not be bartered for the consumable necessities is "purely social".
Paul B.
P.S. No, I've never played MMORPGs (maybe I should start?
... and grow some veggies on that. I pay the landlord either a percentage of my crop or a fixed sum and the resulting crop is all mine, my property, for sale or consumption.
;-)
Work for hire is one thing (Joe Schmoe was hired by the pizza place to make pizzas), renting some other's property for your production is entirely different.
I believe the real question is if the game server space/cycles is "rented" or not, most probably the EULA contains some language to say that "We are free to dissolve this relationship at any time".
But, again, IANAL.
Paul B.
This time the contest ASSUMES use of computers! And many people will be manually waiting for the number to reach certain level to press "Submit"... Why would not one to program his computer to give an audible buzz when it is time? ;-)
Paul B.
Yes, my numbers, see above in this thread, give me about 7.8 songs/sec right now!
;-) )
(And you did beat me to plotting that graph!
Did you put it together after they announced the sweepstakes or was it always there, btw?
Paul B.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=113152&cid=958 7496
;-)
it is 470 songs/minute RIGHT NOW. Wow, not bad at all they are doing!
(See the actual values and posting time)
Paul B.
(I thought it was going to be harder than that to get the number out...)
Or maybe I'm just too bored at work today...
Paul B.
I'm wondering where did you get the 100-200 songs/min number from (see my other post, I came up with 180 songs/minute, not too bad!) -- but there are early morning minutes and afternoon minutes, I bet the majority of the purchases happen in the late afternoon.
Paul B.
But it depends on if 30 min is "live" enough on the timescale. 95M songs over, how long have they been around, a year? 1y = 17520 half-hours, or about 5,400 songs/half hour... Yeah, not enough resolution, but maybe 1) they were around longer than a year and 2) one can play day vs. night hours game. When would you expect purchases to peak? Maybe 4 pm Western time to 2 AM Eastern time, or something... The rest of the day kids are in school or sleeping, orders flow in much more slowly and can probably be timed.
Paul B.
From http://phobos.apple.com/external_counter.js:
function count(){ var num = 94778717;return num; }
does not look like too dynamic a function to me...
Paul B.
After the count reaches the required # of mils, observe the counter value vs. Time (maybe requires some OCR software to get the number from the GIF or whatever Apple used to prevent this type of thing), then try to make a best prediction when 10,000 mark is getting close and dump some cash in.
Might work, huh?
Paul B.
P.S. Even if one does not want to actually risk their $$ on this game, a software to plot the chart would be still interesting to hack together -- by taking a derivative we will see if other people are trying to do this -- if yes, dN/dT should peak around 10,000*x
... If you have a big flashlight, gone out on a camping trip and have no idea where your flashlight is (say, need to go out and pee at night)... You press a button on your, say, car or garage door clicker and flashlight switches on! You walk to it, pick it up and go do your thing...
;-)
No, not bad an idea at all!
Paul B.
P.S. Any VC funding available to develop it further?
With everything out in the open we don't have to worry about blackmail and dirty tricks and you better know people's character and motivations. Kinda like looking inside a program's source and seeing the flaws.
;-) ) you do have to make a decision if you open it up or not.
;-)
The major difference is that what happens in your life really should matter only to you, your wife (if any, and she really cares) and maybe family and friends, and you can as well expect people to leave you alone. If you write a program which matters only to a handful of people it does not really maatter if you GPL it or not.
OTOH if you write a useful tool which is interesting to many and people can learn from how it works and make it work better for them OR improve it and make it work better for others (the subtle difference between Free and OSS movements, BTW
But then, again, people might want to start an "Open Spouse" movement --- wait, some have already started!
Paul B.
Sorry to break your happy "interesting" ramble, but DMCA was passed in 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA), under Clinton, and do you really think that "outsourcing" began just 4 years ago and not on the peak of the .com boom?
I would have to conclude that you are just a TROLL, really.
Paul B.
From http://www.packbot.com/trackRecord/history.asp
;-) )
(.asp, hmm...
iRobot's Aware(TM) operating system, running on Linux, allows our developers to add new functionality, add behaviors that reduce the load on the operators, and add new payloads.
And those are definitely not toys, actually they've been used (according to the same page) in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, they were patched on the fly:
We were able to gather user feedback and change the robot and controller software to reflect input from the preceding missions, before the mission the next day. This gave the soldier direct input into the design.
Paul B.
If you have a matched cable or a waveguide and send an EM wave down, it will propagat with the speed of light in the medium, which is slower than the speed of light in the vacuum by the factor of epsilon of the insulator used in that line.
You must be thinking about RC constant (which limits the speed of most _normal_ semiconductor chips today), but not of the ethernet (which is really relativistic, as in, dependent on the actual value of 'c').
Paul B.
Check out Ethernet IEEE standards sometime... WE are limited by the lightspeed (at least, the reach of the ethernet cables ;-) ).
The minimum packet size over the ethernet is limited by the fact that you have to be able to detect that someone else is trying to send on a channel DURING the duration of the packet, and the latter one is limited by 'c' and maximum distance.
Paul B.
seriously.... When I came to this country from abroad it took me some time to realize what does THAT thing mean... ;-)
Paul B.
wireline equivalent protection, or something? ;-) I did not say "secure WiFi", I said "properly secured", which would just mean "as secure as the phone line out of the house", i.e., not at all against someone who cares about YOU in particular, but good enough against a random wardriver.
Paul B.
Yeah, a properly secured WiFi network...
Why does a single house need that many cables in the closet anyway? I know that I have a mess of power, 10baseT and USB cables next to my workstation (many of them belonging to the broken/obsolete appliances and totally unused), but how many places in your house do you need to run a real cable connection to?
Paul B.
No, in no way I condone beating the poor guy to death (especially since the attorney for the contractor claims that it was a heart attack), but really I did not know that he surrendered on his own. What I suspect is that both parties are of average guilt, but one got beaten up and died, the other got selected for an exemplary trial...
Paul B.
i would not risk my life for money...
;-/ And do not even think of any kind of construction jobs or anything related to heavy equipment!
;-)
You know, when you drive to your office and back you are risking your life for money... Same if you walk...
I guess that what you wanted to say was that you would not accept an average pot of money for an above-average risk to your life. But that is reasonable, this is why averages and medians often coincide in social sciences!
Paul B.
the other guy was an Afghan POW, not Iraqi civilian.
/." question -- I think that the editors are either in very-long-latency mode or entirely detached from the rest of the world. The poor guy was killed today!
To contribute to the grandparent's discussion, as far as I know you are kind of supposed to know how to deal with a gun if you are a civilian contractor down there, or at least carry it. (Got the story from a lady working for one of the aerospace companies who was visiting Iraq briefly, and she told that you are given a gun to hold and at least pretend that you know how to use it).
As to the actual 'Ask
To answer the question, I guess that my wife would not let me go there...
Paul B.
Well, if THAT surface was there I bet there was someone to put it there, and (s)he thought that it had some useful function...
;-)
How would you like to fly a plane designed without those thin "thingies" called "wings"?
Paul B.