Taking a picture of an event you happen to stumble into is hardly journalism. Yes, but a collection of pictures that eyewitnesses took of an event is probably far more telling than a "professional report" on, say, cnn.com. Images allow you to draw your own conclusions, and bring a sense of reality to a situation. Tell a person about Elian Gonzalez, get one reaction, show them a picture of a boy with an american gun against his head, get another. A collection of eyewitness images also has the added bonus of not being beholden to any censorship or bias.
We live in a time where we have the option to "drink from the firehose", so more attention needs to be paid to these new forms of reporting and perhaps our ability to reason within them outside of the safe arms of reporters.
People can buy domain names wherever they choose. That's the way the game operates now, it's for a reason. This practice is quite plainly anti-competitive since domain names are unique. It's nothing but a cheap attempt to lock in buyers in a way reminiscent of the "good old days".
Despite the fact that you "never kept any", you still stole the right to buy for a period of days. Can you imagine that happening with another commodity? Take lawnmowers for example:
"Can I buy a John Deere 324 here?"
"Yep. Now that you have asked, we're the ONLY place that you can buy it for the next 5 days. Oh, during that period we'll be willing to sell it to you for five times more than home depot." "Punch in the face"
I dunno. The entire viral storyline points to the beast woken from the deep explanation. The only place I've found that refutes that is slashfilm:
Where did the Cloverfield Monster come from? Japan? The ocean near an offshore drilling site (as hinted by the viral)? Not so according to director Matt Reeves, who supposedly told Film School Rejects that an easter egg within the film tells of the Monster's origins. Apparently in the background of the footage that HUD had taped over, when Rob and Beth were at Coney Island, "something suspicious" drops into the water.
So, I don't know what is up with this massive disconnect between origin stories. Maybe they haven't actually hashed it out yet. Abrams has stated that it's a young creature that has been sleeping for a long time in the ocean.
I've seen a lot of people complaining about the lack of exposition on the monster. You can piece together a pretty solid picture of what happened by browsing the info they leaked online. Google time.
Rob was going to Japan, right? The company he was going to work for makes Slusho, a new drink out of Japan. They hired him to help translate the brand to an American audience. The secret ingredient is something called "Seabed's Nectar". Apparently this part was mined from the sea floor by Tagruato Industries. While they were mining it, some kind of accident took place in the days leading up to the attack on New York. The drilling rig collapsed, presumably because the monster was woken. The "news footage" is here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9a8_1199705318
As a further tie in, the tanker that exploded in the harbor was a Tagruato ship. It seems that they woke the creature on the sea floor, ala gojira, it followed a tanker to the city, and voila.
From Abrams:
"He's a baby. He's brand-new. He's confused, disoriented and irritable. And he's been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years."
The 'leaving your back door open' analogy is not a good one.
I think it's the same. What is the difference in making a ton of legal backup copies, putting them on your desk and then leaving the back door open? It's then simple for some thief scanning for open back doors in your neighborhood to find the open one. Should you have thought about potential thieves and locked your door? What about the people that you want to let inside, like your friend who is borrowing some uncopyrighted material? Is it now your fault that the thief took your copies because it was too easy?
Sounds like the "she shouldn't have worn that dress" argument.
The team used a network simulator to test out different caching strategies. They created a simulation of a branch of internet network where data could be copied and stored at every major intersection. They used this simulation to test algorithms used to configure the caches.
The algorithms take known variables, such as the number of times a piece of data is requested, the number of points it has to pass through and its overall size, and work out whether it should be stored and for how long.
So they're evolving storage time and location. At least that's all it makes clear.
Stuff like this is what keeps computing interesting, I think. This technique can be used by almost every business in a situation in which optimization might be necessary. I assume that covers most tasks someone would want to accomplish. By utilizing these algorithms to explore search spaces previously thought to be too large I predict we'll experience some pretty explosive advances in the near future in areas from farming to software development. But that's kind of obvious.
Shoring up the walls
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Carr is right about the ubiquity of IT. Everyone has it, so by and large it's not really a selling point by itself. He's also right that it's really important to shift focus from buying into new ideas to making sure the old ones work.
However, a critical component of the advancement of IT is the "new idea"(surprise). Computer science is still expanding and changing from day to day. As we all know, most ideas are way ahead of their time as far as computing power goes. We always seem to be playing catch-up with our theories. Components get faster and cheaper, and we're continually discovering new and better ways to utilize them to do what we need to do. Take the current boom in wireless technologies as an example. It will change the way a lot of companies do business. To survive and moreover to compete these companies must be able to adapt to new technologies. Of course not all businesses will have to ride that bleeding edge but the effects will trickle down.
The bar is still being raised. I can see a leveling off happening in the future, but as the price of hardware continues to drop we can be sure that IT will still be relevant as newly affordable/feasible ideas come to light.
Since when was a massive omni-mega corp ever cool? They are currently the bully in the arena. Smaller companies that are more agile and willing to accept major risks will always come out on top as far as "cool factor" goes. That's the nature of the game. MS's reputation is all about ubiquity and uniformity - and image that they've crafted very carefully through the years.
Sadly, MS will always win out by ripping off a smaller company's ideas and making knock-offs. I don't know why they wouldn't be happy with that. Let the other guy take the risk, and if it works - steal the idea! Let the other guy be cool, then emulate him. It's been working quite well for them, so who cares?
The article made a good point: the people buying this stuff wanted to get good deals. It's not illegal to own one of these (presumably), so there's no problem buying it from some crazy site if the price is right. That doesn't make them stupid, just frugal.
Selling a product for a certain use does not dictate how it will be used. Nor does it limit how it will be used. We don't need DirectTV policing our potential for crime in this way.
3) The death of the "concept" album. If each song has to stand or fall on it's own, what incentive does a band have to release something with a larger scope? No more Darksides, Quadrophenias, Red Headed Strangers, Kind of Blues, etc.
You know, I bet this argument was used against instantly seekable cds. Even vinyl albums have a problem in as much as people can listen to any track they want to without seeking. All you have to do is move the swing arm to the right spot. The responsibility of listening to the entirety a concept album has been in the hands of the listener for some time now. If they don't want to experience the whole thing, fine. I'm sure artists will still make them. Music fans will still download the whole thing.
Hell, most concept albums are just showcases for whatever crazy sound effects the band can dig up. You might not want to listen to "Track 1: Battle of the Evil Blackboard Scratchers vs The WOLF" anyway.
According to m-w.com, spelt in the non-grain form is "chiefly British past and past participle of SPELL".
I would say the form spelled is common in America(from my experience), and it seems that m-w considers your form a British thing. America left the British linguistic boat some time ago, but its not surprising that there are people who still use the spelt form.
Only too often have I sat in on meetings with immature little dweebs who rant on and on about XML or the technolofy flavour of the month or hacking at code to achieve Olog(n) cahche hits instead of focusing on making proper underlying designs.
This comment has been pissing me off all day. I get the feeling that you lean more to the 'art' side of code than the 'technical' side. Hacking at code to achieve O(logn) time takes more than a superficial understanding of the code at hand. They have to understand the "underlying design" to be able to achieve that time bound. You should respect them for taking the time to do the analyzation rather than slapping down something that only "gets the job done". Heavily analyzed code should be good code, and if they got it down to O(logn) it's probably good code. It's code that "gets the job done well".
Don't bitch about stuff that you apparently don't understand (Olog(n)??). These guys are trying to make the code work in the best way possible. If you're so concerned about this, make sure everyone does design docs. Then you can have design meetings where they can help you get your code to run as quickly as possible, before you even start coding! At the same time you can make sure that they have good underlying design.
Jeez, this attitude is what they try to hammer out of you in college. Learn your craft, man.
Have you ever coded in Flash? Actionscript (or whatever thay call it now) is one of the most high level languages on the plane. Go check out praystation. The guy does some pretty amazing stuff in tens of lines of code.
Try programming something in Java that is easy to do in flash. You'll end up with roughly the number of lines in the flash program cubed. That's not to say that verbosity is an indicator of difficulty, it's just the way the languages are designed. Flash is made to do a lot with a little, using vector images and high level scripting.
Only too often have I sat in on meetings with immature little dweebs who rant on and on about XML or the technolofy flavour of the month or hacking at code to achieve Olog(n) cahche hits instead of focusing on making proper underlying designs.
The correct notation is O(logn).
Slashdot Mirror
We live in a time where we have the option to "drink from the firehose", so more attention needs to be paid to these new forms of reporting and perhaps our ability to reason within them outside of the safe arms of reporters.
People can buy domain names wherever they choose. That's the way the game operates now, it's for a reason. This practice is quite plainly anti-competitive since domain names are unique. It's nothing but a cheap attempt to lock in buyers in a way reminiscent of the "good old days".
Despite the fact that you "never kept any", you still stole the right to buy for a period of days. Can you imagine that happening with another commodity? Take lawnmowers for example:
"Can I buy a John Deere 324 here?"
"Yep. Now that you have asked, we're the ONLY place that you can buy it for the next 5 days. Oh, during that period we'll be willing to sell it to you for five times more than home depot."
"Punch in the face"
Check out this poster from which they made the graphic:
http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_cable/index.php
If it wasn't $250 I might pick one up.
The destroyed Chaui Station was "dangerously close to the coast of connecticut". The tanker was coming from the station, not japan.
Rob was going to Japan, right? The company he was going to work for makes Slusho, a new drink out of Japan. They hired him to help translate the brand to an American audience. The secret ingredient is something called "Seabed's Nectar". Apparently this part was mined from the sea floor by Tagruato Industries. While they were mining it, some kind of accident took place in the days leading up to the attack on New York. The drilling rig collapsed, presumably because the monster was woken. The "news footage" is here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9a8_1199705318
As a further tie in, the tanker that exploded in the harbor was a Tagruato ship. It seems that they woke the creature on the sea floor, ala gojira, it followed a tanker to the city, and voila.
From Abrams:
Sounds like the "she shouldn't have worn that dress" argument.
The team used a network simulator to test out different caching strategies. They created a simulation of a branch of internet network where data could be copied and stored at every major intersection. They used this simulation to test algorithms used to configure the caches.
The algorithms take known variables, such as the number of times a piece of data is requested, the number of points it has to pass through and its overall size, and work out whether it should be stored and for how long.
So they're evolving storage time and location. At least that's all it makes clear.
The algorithm is just a standard ga, with the alleles being numeric values, not algorithms.
Stuff like this is what keeps computing interesting, I think. This technique can be used by almost every business in a situation in which optimization might be necessary. I assume that covers most tasks someone would want to accomplish. By utilizing these algorithms to explore search spaces previously thought to be too large I predict we'll experience some pretty explosive advances in the near future in areas from farming to software development. But that's kind of obvious.
Carr is right about the ubiquity of IT. Everyone has it, so by and large it's not really a selling point by itself. He's also right that it's really important to shift focus from buying into new ideas to making sure the old ones work.
However, a critical component of the advancement of IT is the "new idea"(surprise). Computer science is still expanding and changing from day to day. As we all know, most ideas are way ahead of their time as far as computing power goes. We always seem to be playing catch-up with our theories. Components get faster and cheaper, and we're continually discovering new and better ways to utilize them to do what we need to do. Take the current boom in wireless technologies as an example. It will change the way a lot of companies do business. To survive and moreover to compete these companies must be able to adapt to new technologies. Of course not all businesses will have to ride that bleeding edge but the effects will trickle down.
The bar is still being raised. I can see a leveling off happening in the future, but as the price of hardware continues to drop we can be sure that IT will still be relevant as newly affordable/feasible ideas come to light.
Yes! Bravo. Excellent point.
"resemble more of a kaleidoscope, thousands of streams of content, some indistinguishable as actual channels."
So basically, all those years of watching scrambled porn channels are going to pay off big time.
Since when was a massive omni-mega corp ever cool? They are currently the bully in the arena. Smaller companies that are more agile and willing to accept major risks will always come out on top as far as "cool factor" goes. That's the nature of the game. MS's reputation is all about ubiquity and uniformity - and image that they've crafted very carefully through the years.
Sadly, MS will always win out by ripping off a smaller company's ideas and making knock-offs. I don't know why they wouldn't be happy with that. Let the other guy take the risk, and if it works - steal the idea! Let the other guy be cool, then emulate him. It's been working quite well for them, so who cares?
Oh god, if you are right I will have to burn all my Matrix crap.
The article made a good point: the people buying this stuff wanted to get good deals. It's not illegal to own one of these (presumably), so there's no problem buying it from some crazy site if the price is right. That doesn't make them stupid, just frugal.
Selling a product for a certain use does not dictate how it will be used. Nor does it limit how it will be used. We don't need DirectTV policing our potential for crime in this way.
3) The death of the "concept" album. If each song has to stand or fall on it's own, what incentive does a band have to release something with a larger scope? No more Darksides, Quadrophenias, Red Headed Strangers, Kind of Blues, etc.
You know, I bet this argument was used against instantly seekable cds. Even vinyl albums have a problem in as much as people can listen to any track they want to without seeking. All you have to do is move the swing arm to the right spot. The responsibility of listening to the entirety a concept album has been in the hands of the listener for some time now. If they don't want to experience the whole thing, fine. I'm sure artists will still make them. Music fans will still download the whole thing.
Hell, most concept albums are just showcases for whatever crazy sound effects the band can dig up. You might not want to listen to "Track 1: Battle of the Evil Blackboard Scratchers vs The WOLF" anyway.
I'm a rich-as-hell elite possessing the rarest bow in the game
Ah, windforce. v1.10 will be coming out soon, the channels are abuzz.
I would mod you up had I the points.
According to m-w.com, spelt in the non-grain form is "chiefly British past and past participle of SPELL". I would say the form spelled is common in America(from my experience), and it seems that m-w considers your form a British thing. America left the British linguistic boat some time ago, but its not surprising that there are people who still use the spelt form.
"Spelt" is " a wheat (Triticum aestivum spelta) with lax spikes and spikelets containing two light red kernels "
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic.
Only too often have I sat in on meetings with immature little dweebs who rant on and on about XML or the technolofy flavour of the month or hacking at code to achieve Olog(n) cahche hits instead of focusing on making proper underlying designs.
This comment has been pissing me off all day. I get the feeling that you lean more to the 'art' side of code than the 'technical' side. Hacking at code to achieve O(logn) time takes more than a superficial understanding of the code at hand. They have to understand the "underlying design" to be able to achieve that time bound. You should respect them for taking the time to do the analyzation rather than slapping down something that only "gets the job done". Heavily analyzed code should be good code, and if they got it down to O(logn) it's probably good code. It's code that "gets the job done well".
Don't bitch about stuff that you apparently don't understand (Olog(n)??). These guys are trying to make the code work in the best way possible. If you're so concerned about this, make sure everyone does design docs. Then you can have design meetings where they can help you get your code to run as quickly as possible, before you even start coding! At the same time you can make sure that they have good underlying design.
Jeez, this attitude is what they try to hammer out of you in college. Learn your craft, man.
Have you ever coded in Flash? Actionscript (or whatever thay call it now) is one of the most high level languages on the plane. Go check out praystation. The guy does some pretty amazing stuff in tens of lines of code.
Try programming something in Java that is easy to do in flash. You'll end up with roughly the number of lines in the flash program cubed. That's not to say that verbosity is an indicator of difficulty, it's just the way the languages are designed. Flash is made to do a lot with a little, using vector images and high level scripting.
Only too often have I sat in on meetings with immature little dweebs who rant on and on about XML or the technolofy flavour of the month or hacking at code to achieve Olog(n) cahche hits instead of focusing on making proper underlying designs. The correct notation is O(logn).
It's not that I don't want to play anymore, it's that I don't want to spend hours finding the items I need to make the game fun again.
Once the bot finds the items, I use them.