I have an old rotary phone and I quite like it. One of those big black plastic monstrosities.
It fits nicely between shoulder and head when I need both hands to do something (ah, the handset does).
It is essentially indestructable (I once dropped it about 30 feet onto some rocks just to see how it would survive) and I never,
ever lose it - since it doesn't move around much on its cord, it is easy to find. And, while I frequently transpose digits
on a touch tone phone, it seems to happen much more rarely on a rotary dial. Just so you don't accuse me of being a Luddite
(hmm, a luddite on slashdot) I do also have a cell phone (though it is an older one with a monochrome screen and no camera).
I have not read this book, but as a general rule, Morgan Kauffman is an exemplary publisher.
hey seem to choose excellent authors and editors. The books are most often
well produced and when I buy one it usually ends up being a long term keeper. Just as well, as they also tend to be pricey. Indeed, MK is one of the few publishers from whom I'll
purchase a book of interest without actually physically examining it.
Yeah, but would a greater diversity of OSes be to the benefit of the general population?
(Probably not.)
I can think of a number of possible advantages. Less opportunity for viruses, better standardization
on file formats and the like, competition driving down prices, the ability to better serve niche
markets...
But are these likely to be persuasive to people who buy "one size fits all" software precisely because
it always looks the same and they've invested lots of time and energy in learning one
system (and rightly so, should we all have to learn to drive again for every different vehicle?), because they've somehow bought into the "Microsoft does everything just right" mindset,
because they often pirate software so they don't see the prices? I doubt it.
As a CS professor, I agree with much of what you say.
There are certainly lots of CS professors out there who don't know much about CS and who teach (essentially) from ideology.
But the problems go deep. Part is the expectations of students who believe that they are purchasing an education and are therefore entitled to get good grades.
Part is the way many modern universities work where "retention" is king and therefore we must keep students in the program or the program dies. Even if that
means that students stay in programs that they should not be in. Part is the trend toward codifying "outcomes and assessments" in courses, which usually means
not just "objective tests", but objective tests that cannot vary much, even over the course of years. As an example, in one program I know of, the person
teaching the "CS 1" type courses has no real world experience and does not teach any kind of problem solving, but the professors who do have the background are
not allowed to teach the CS 1 courses, because they'd scare off the students - and we're back to retention.
Suppose I have a 1Gb (=2^20) memory and some smallish number of states (say 2^8). Then we would need to run
the program for 2^20 * 2^8 * (2^(2^20)) steps.
This might take a while - if I were to start it running tonight on a nice teraflops machine (2^30 operations
per second) it would be done in only about 2^(2^20) seconds. I'll start it running tonight and let you know
when its done.
If I remember correctly (from a long excursion some years back into the physics of bicycles) the gyroscopic effect is
minimal at most bicycle speeds. More important is the angles in the bike's geometry (especially fork angle).
As the bike moves faster though the gyroscopic effect increases, but so do other
factors.
I can't find it now in a quick google search, (though wikipedia
has some interesting informaion but there was a physics professor somewhere who investigated the physics
of bikes for a class - working out the differential equations and all that, and who proved that the ideas worked by
scavenging lost bikes on campus and constructing bikes to prove various points.
The university I work for has a mail server and we are all "encouraged" to use this for our mail.
OK, but the mailbox there has a 100Mb limit and if I keep any amount of the mail on the server (which I
assume is backed up - an added plus) I run into the limit quickly (it doesn't take many ".doc" files and that is the
format that everyone uses). Which then means I need to spend quite a bit of time
moving things around. I'd download them (actually, I do download them, but using IMAP so a copy
stays on the server), but I use several different computers from several
locations, so I really like the convenience of having it all accessible.
Add in the fact that mail spam processing takes several hours (from time of sending a message till it
gets into my mailbox). And if I turn on spam processing
half my students email gets tagged as spam. But if i turn off spam processing I get enough spam to
fill up my mailbox even faster.
And that they can't even keep the thing running.
So I use google mail and it just works. If only I could talk the university into using
the google mail hosted service.
Sigh. I can spell complicated stuff easily (and I'm usually pretty good at spotting typos) and I surely know how to spell "actor", but sometimes my fingers just do the wrong thing and I don't see it.
One thing that has occurred is a good example of the law of unintended consequences. The Columbian government has been spraying areas where there are high concentrations of coca plants with some kind of plant killer (I think its Round Up or a relative - can't find the article right now). After a number of years of this the plants have adapted and there are now varieties of coca growing wild that are resistant to the chemicals.
And just to toss in another favorite Slashdottery, you have to wonder if Monsanto will be doing something if those coca plants are violating the patent on Round Up resistant plants?
Reminds me of the time I got behind someone at a supermarket checkout who had a shopping cart filled with sugar. Nothing but sugar. It was the middle of winter, so it seemed unlikely that it was going to go for canning. If it had been for baking, I'd have expected flour or other ingredients. Just sugar.
If you videotape a crime then you are obligated to report it.
Except, of course, if the crime is committed by the police. Especially in your own
home.
More seriously, this is one of those sweeping statements that can so easily be picked
to pieces, so easily qualified by exceptions, that it almost carries no meaning.
Blackboard should be shunned and loathed (most educators I know who use it and who have any sense loathe it already - it seems to be beloved more
of administrators).
I only use blackboard as a way to collect and return assignments. It is awkward, painful and easy to goof with (for example, returning
notes on an assignment to the wrong person). The only reason I use it is that my homebrew version which used a web interface and Postgresql
and which was very hard indeed to goof with, was considered arcane by the students.
I can only hope that this does to Blackboard what the SCO suit did to them - but I am far from optimistic.
The astrology one is actually kind of fun reading :
Beyond the simple observable truth that Western astrology determines positions by factitious means, there are three critical self-contradictions within Western astrology. First, Ptolemy neglected to incorporate the precession of the equinoxes into his astrological catechism, though, through Hipparchus, he was aware of its effect. Although Ptolemy defined the vernal equinox to nearly accurate positions of his time, when he fixed this location of the equinox zodiac position, the zodiac constellations became, increasingly over time, factitious signs.
Though since it is little more than mathematical formulae :
calculating said longitude,.lamda., from said.alpha.,.delta. and.beta. data by:.lamda.=arc cos((cos.delta. cos.alpha.)/cos.beta
it would seem by any reasonable
definition unpatentable.
And the "interacting with your computer" one looks like a description of those labelled input pads people used to use, so the prior art looks strong on that as well.
My town has very limited DSL service at 1.5Mbbs - and even that seems to be subject to serious throttling - if I try to download something like a linux distro iso
the first couple megabytes go by quickly, then it slows to what seems like bits per second (I recently tried to download a vmware image at something like 400Mb.
it started by saying it would take something like 5 hours, then after about a half hour it was saying 500 hours, then a while later 5000 hours. When I reset
the DSL connection and tried again, it did exactly the same thing.)
The town was thinking about putting in fiber to everyone's home, but the local monopoly (centurytel) somehow talked the mayor into killing the idea. Then we had someone
who was going to put in some wireless to a good part of the town (supported by local businesses but opposed by the mayor), but his reserve unit got sent to Iraq.
Errrr, you say that like it's a good thing? Smalltalk is horrid.
This reminds me of the well known Longfellow poem which applies as much
to Squeak as to the little girl :
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
Perhaps not a thermal printer though. It can't be all that hard to blank out a vote with a thermally printed
output (and if votes are previewable on the paper and then backed off or approved, being able to do that would
have to be part of the process. I suspect that with a bit of incentive and some time someone could work out a way to set up the printed output to make
it possible to switch votes.
Of course, all printed (punched...) vote backups are have the problem that they need a way to be invalidated if there is a preview and
approve mechanism.
Especially if the "revenge attacks" include things like lawsuits or idictments for criminal conduct, publicity that shows them up to be fools or abusing their power.
The same reason that you see some police on TV wearing ski masks or the like to hide their faces.
Of course, the claim is that the revenge attacks are by criminals, but (while I don't have any hard statistics) I doubt that that actually occurs very often.
Are you are saying that if I connect to a web server running some sort of trusted computing, I will be able to trust it to not serve me malware?
I don't think I've ever seen any of the TCPA people claim anything like that (caveat: I've not read anywhere near all the stuff published on
the topic of trusted computing). They do claim that if the malware is served to the client machine that
you should be able to set things so it will not run.
Might you me so kind as to provide some nice pointers to papers or web pages that both make this claim and give some techincal info on how it
will be accomplished?
In the meantime, I think it is only proper to remain more than a bit dubious.
I can barely make it through five minutes of "American Idol" - is that because I have a short attention span? An entire season? That is just masochism.
But just the tip of the iceberg. Much of political thought and ideologies depends on the exact relationship between the individuals (or groups) and the various groups that
the individual is a part of, and the obligations and responsibilities owed (Another factor, of course, is who gets to make the claim that "individual x" is a part of "group x").
Most countries claim
that the bond between the individual and the country is the most important linkage - but few countries seem to agree on just what kinds of rights and
responsibilities the individual owes to the country and what the country owes to the individual. City (and region/state) loyalties are far less strong. What
about global responsibilities? Currently individuals can choose to adopt a kind of global outlook in their decisions and some of their actions, but there is
no real "global community" on the other side and hence no responsibilities flowing in the other direction.
For example, libertarianism in its purest form seems to claim that the individual and the country/state/city owe little responsibility for each other, and further
that individuals have few required responsibilities to other individuals. Communism (as implemented, less in theory) has very strong bonds in both directions.
In theory (less in practice) the US seems to require few bonds between individuals and any kind of state religion (in practice, as the recent Washington State
decision on Gay Marriage shows, these bonds, however unofficial are very strong). The kind of Islamic government that some radicals are pushing for conflates
religion and the government and thereby enforces another specific bond between the individual and both church and state. The individual has no choice in this
and therefore both religion and government are given very strong powers.
Republicans currently seem to be very much on the side of high government control of citizens (wiretaps, air travel restrictions, prayer in school) and thus
in favor of reducing individuals personal liberty in favor of government control - and this without the individual being allowed to grant consent. Similarly
the relationships between an individual and an employer are frequently contstrained in favor of the employer. That corporations are seen legally as "persons",
has been used to create an odd kind of discrimination in which "some persons are more equal than others" based primarily on their economic power.
Democrats often follow a more "Liberal" philosophy. In this, the government has many more responsibilities toward the individual and the philosophical intent is to
empower individuals. However this liberalism is often counteracted by a perceived need for the government to intervene in other areas. Laws such as "Hate Crimes"
while intended to empower those on the receiving end of the hate, often overly constrain all.
I am sometimes convinced that if we could arrive at a decent philosophy of obligations/responsibilities and implement it with reasonable guidelines, that many
of the legal nonsenses that plague us all. At other times I'm convinced that I am over-thinking it and arrive only at nonsensical conclusions.
I've seen published claims that exposing children to sex (and things related to sex - at least in some minds -- porn, nudity in the home, seeing their parents have sex, hearing people talk about sex, reading about sex...) is invariably harmful. I always wonder about such claims - is the research funded by people with an agenda? is the research specific to the US where it may not be the sexual exposure itself that is harmful, but rather the response of society to children who know things that the puritans don't want them to know.
Just how perverted and sex obsessed the US and thus how seriously sex information in the hands of children is taken, can be deduced from all the instances of families being harrassed for having pictures of their kids nude in the bath, or skinnydipping. Or the fact that going to a nude beach, or even appearing in public with an erection can (potentially) lead to a man (but rarely a woman) being stigmatized for life by being convicted as a "sex offender".
Personally, I think that making sex and the human body (all parts of it) more accepted and acceptable would help to alleviate many problems in American society.
To put this in terms of a monetary unit I just saw (in "Science" no less), this is only 50 IWDs - "Iraq War Days" - about $190 million.
(Yes, France doesn't really have IWDs and this speed broadband would cost the US much more. But I couldn't resist using the unit.)
Slashdot Mirror
I have an old rotary phone and I quite like it. One of those big black plastic monstrosities. It fits nicely between shoulder and head when I need both hands to do something (ah, the handset does). It is essentially indestructable (I once dropped it about 30 feet onto some rocks just to see how it would survive) and I never, ever lose it - since it doesn't move around much on its cord, it is easy to find. And, while I frequently transpose digits on a touch tone phone, it seems to happen much more rarely on a rotary dial. Just so you don't accuse me of being a Luddite (hmm, a luddite on slashdot) I do also have a cell phone (though it is an older one with a monochrome screen and no camera).
I have not read this book, but as a general rule, Morgan Kauffman is an exemplary publisher. hey seem to choose excellent authors and editors. The books are most often well produced and when I buy one it usually ends up being a long term keeper. Just as well, as they also tend to be pricey. Indeed, MK is one of the few publishers from whom I'll purchase a book of interest without actually physically examining it.
I can think of a number of possible advantages. Less opportunity for viruses, better standardization on file formats and the like, competition driving down prices, the ability to better serve niche markets...
But are these likely to be persuasive to people who buy "one size fits all" software precisely because it always looks the same and they've invested lots of time and energy in learning one system (and rightly so, should we all have to learn to drive again for every different vehicle?), because they've somehow bought into the "Microsoft does everything just right" mindset, because they often pirate software so they don't see the prices? I doubt it.
As a CS professor, I agree with much of what you say.
There are certainly lots of CS professors out there who don't know much about CS and who teach (essentially) from ideology.
But the problems go deep. Part is the expectations of students who believe that they are purchasing an education and are therefore entitled to get good grades. Part is the way many modern universities work where "retention" is king and therefore we must keep students in the program or the program dies. Even if that means that students stay in programs that they should not be in. Part is the trend toward codifying "outcomes and assessments" in courses, which usually means not just "objective tests", but objective tests that cannot vary much, even over the course of years. As an example, in one program I know of, the person teaching the "CS 1" type courses has no real world experience and does not teach any kind of problem solving, but the professors who do have the background are not allowed to teach the CS 1 courses, because they'd scare off the students - and we're back to retention.
Got any suggestions?
If I understand you correctly.
Suppose I have a 1Gb (=2^20) memory and some smallish number of states (say 2^8). Then we would need to run the program for 2^20 * 2^8 * (2^(2^20)) steps. This might take a while - if I were to start it running tonight on a nice teraflops machine (2^30 operations per second) it would be done in only about 2^(2^20) seconds. I'll start it running tonight and let you know when its done.
If I remember correctly (from a long excursion some years back into the physics of bicycles) the gyroscopic effect is minimal at most bicycle speeds. More important is the angles in the bike's geometry (especially fork angle). As the bike moves faster though the gyroscopic effect increases, but so do other factors.
I can't find it now in a quick google search, (though wikipedia has some interesting informaion but there was a physics professor somewhere who investigated the physics of bikes for a class - working out the differential equations and all that, and who proved that the ideas worked by scavenging lost bikes on campus and constructing bikes to prove various points.
The university I work for has a mail server and we are all "encouraged" to use this for our mail.
OK, but the mailbox there has a 100Mb limit and if I keep any amount of the mail on the server (which I assume is backed up - an added plus) I run into the limit quickly (it doesn't take many ".doc" files and that is the format that everyone uses). Which then means I need to spend quite a bit of time moving things around. I'd download them (actually, I do download them, but using IMAP so a copy stays on the server), but I use several different computers from several locations, so I really like the convenience of having it all accessible.
Add in the fact that mail spam processing takes several hours (from time of sending a message till it gets into my mailbox). And if I turn on spam processing half my students email gets tagged as spam. But if i turn off spam processing I get enough spam to fill up my mailbox even faster.
And that they can't even keep the thing running.
So I use google mail and it just works. If only I could talk the university into using the google mail hosted service.
Shouldn't that be "What a maroon!"
Sigh. I can spell complicated stuff easily (and I'm usually pretty good at spotting typos) and I surely know how to spell "actor", but sometimes my fingers just do the wrong thing and I don't see it.
And just to toss in another favorite Slashdottery, you have to wonder if Monsanto will be doing something if those coca plants are violating the patent on Round Up resistant plants?
Reminds me of the time I got behind someone at a supermarket checkout who had a shopping cart filled with sugar. Nothing but sugar. It was the middle of winter, so it seemed unlikely that it was going to go for canning. If it had been for baking, I'd have expected flour or other ingredients. Just sugar.
Except, of course, if the crime is committed by the police. Especially in your own home.
More seriously, this is one of those sweeping statements that can so easily be picked to pieces, so easily qualified by exceptions, that it almost carries no meaning.
Blackboard should be shunned and loathed (most educators I know who use it and who have any sense loathe it already - it seems to be beloved more of administrators).
I only use blackboard as a way to collect and return assignments. It is awkward, painful and easy to goof with (for example, returning notes on an assignment to the wrong person). The only reason I use it is that my homebrew version which used a web interface and Postgresql and which was very hard indeed to goof with, was considered arcane by the students.
I can only hope that this does to Blackboard what the SCO suit did to them - but I am far from optimistic.
The astrology one is actually kind of fun reading :
Though since it is little more than mathematical formulae :
it would seem by any reasonable definition unpatentable.And the "interacting with your computer" one looks like a description of those labelled input pads people used to use, so the prior art looks strong on that as well.
The town was thinking about putting in fiber to everyone's home, but the local monopoly (centurytel) somehow talked the mayor into killing the idea. Then we had someone who was going to put in some wireless to a good part of the town (supported by local businesses but opposed by the mayor), but his reserve unit got sent to Iraq.
This reminds me of the well known Longfellow poem which applies as much to Squeak as to the little girl :
Of course, all printed (punched...) vote backups are have the problem that they need a way to be invalidated if there is a preview and approve mechanism.
Especially if the "revenge attacks" include things like lawsuits or idictments for criminal conduct, publicity that shows them up to be fools or abusing their power.
The same reason that you see some police on TV wearing ski masks or the like to hide their faces.
Of course, the claim is that the revenge attacks are by criminals, but (while I don't have any hard statistics) I doubt that that actually occurs very often.
Are you are saying that if I connect to a web server running some sort of trusted computing, I will be able to trust it to not serve me malware?
I don't think I've ever seen any of the TCPA people claim anything like that (caveat: I've not read anywhere near all the stuff published on the topic of trusted computing). They do claim that if the malware is served to the client machine that you should be able to set things so it will not run.
Might you me so kind as to provide some nice pointers to papers or web pages that both make this claim and give some techincal info on how it will be accomplished?
In the meantime, I think it is only proper to remain more than a bit dubious.
There is a nice article on Wikipedia in the July 31 "New Yorker" magazine.
It covers fairly concisely and for a non-technical audience many of the things covered here on slashdot and elsewhere.
It does have a couple nice quotes :
And, in response, from Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) :From Jorge Cauz - the president of the Britannica corporation :
I can barely make it through five minutes of "American Idol" - is that because I have a short attention span? An entire season? That is just masochism.
Excellent points.
But just the tip of the iceberg. Much of political thought and ideologies depends on the exact relationship between the individuals (or groups) and the various groups that the individual is a part of, and the obligations and responsibilities owed (Another factor, of course, is who gets to make the claim that "individual x" is a part of "group x"). Most countries claim that the bond between the individual and the country is the most important linkage - but few countries seem to agree on just what kinds of rights and responsibilities the individual owes to the country and what the country owes to the individual. City (and region/state) loyalties are far less strong. What about global responsibilities? Currently individuals can choose to adopt a kind of global outlook in their decisions and some of their actions, but there is no real "global community" on the other side and hence no responsibilities flowing in the other direction.
For example, libertarianism in its purest form seems to claim that the individual and the country/state/city owe little responsibility for each other, and further that individuals have few required responsibilities to other individuals. Communism (as implemented, less in theory) has very strong bonds in both directions. In theory (less in practice) the US seems to require few bonds between individuals and any kind of state religion (in practice, as the recent Washington State decision on Gay Marriage shows, these bonds, however unofficial are very strong). The kind of Islamic government that some radicals are pushing for conflates religion and the government and thereby enforces another specific bond between the individual and both church and state. The individual has no choice in this and therefore both religion and government are given very strong powers.
Republicans currently seem to be very much on the side of high government control of citizens (wiretaps, air travel restrictions, prayer in school) and thus in favor of reducing individuals personal liberty in favor of government control - and this without the individual being allowed to grant consent. Similarly the relationships between an individual and an employer are frequently contstrained in favor of the employer. That corporations are seen legally as "persons", has been used to create an odd kind of discrimination in which "some persons are more equal than others" based primarily on their economic power.
Democrats often follow a more "Liberal" philosophy. In this, the government has many more responsibilities toward the individual and the philosophical intent is to empower individuals. However this liberalism is often counteracted by a perceived need for the government to intervene in other areas. Laws such as "Hate Crimes" while intended to empower those on the receiving end of the hate, often overly constrain all.
I am sometimes convinced that if we could arrive at a decent philosophy of obligations/responsibilities and implement it with reasonable guidelines, that many of the legal nonsenses that plague us all. At other times I'm convinced that I am over-thinking it and arrive only at nonsensical conclusions.
I've seen published claims that exposing children to sex (and things related to sex - at least in some minds -- porn, nudity in the home, seeing their parents have sex, hearing people talk about sex, reading about sex...) is invariably harmful. I always wonder about such claims - is the research funded by people with an agenda? is the research specific to the US where it may not be the sexual exposure itself that is harmful, but rather the response of society to children who know things that the puritans don't want them to know.
Just how perverted and sex obsessed the US and thus how seriously sex information in the hands of children is taken, can be deduced from all the instances of families being harrassed for having pictures of their kids nude in the bath, or skinnydipping. Or the fact that going to a nude beach, or even appearing in public with an erection can (potentially) lead to a man (but rarely a woman) being stigmatized for life by being convicted as a "sex offender".
Personally, I think that making sex and the human body (all parts of it) more accepted and acceptable would help to alleviate many problems in American society.
To put this in terms of a monetary unit I just saw (in "Science" no less), this is only 50 IWDs - "Iraq War Days" - about $190 million. (Yes, France doesn't really have IWDs and this speed broadband would cost the US much more. But I couldn't resist using the unit.)
The sad part is that those who do read Systemantics are also doomed to make every mistake in the book.
Worse yet, the US Government is one of the biggest examples of every mistake in the book.
I'm sure Microsoft and Diebold would be glad to provide the new operating system.