An indifference vote is a technique I have invented for making decisions in which many persons have a legitimate interest. -- Paul Birch
Your "vote" would be invalid. Do you really think that the other people in the system would pay you $10 to not eat out of a dumpster? The entire system is really set up around the assumption that participants have a legitimate interest in the result of the vote. Your "gaming the system" is just you not really having an interest in the result, so the assumptions are broken.
In other words, you can go eat out of the dumpster, we're going to Chili's (or whatever).:)
The point is that a global registrar, aka the yellow pages, in real time, with no flashy larger adverts available, just the facts with the option to delve further into relevant op-ed pieces is all that would be needed to find goods and services, and that if we as a global society should create one and use it, we could outlaw invasive advertising entirely and not be forced to accept this assault on our senses and our [children's] senses.
Do you think that eBay, Amazon, or CraigsList fulfill this role?
Truth. The entire discussion really depends on what we mean by "good." I'm working under the assumption that to a marketing company, publicity is a resource that you trade for cash, and any publicity that isn't valuable like that is bad publicity. Sure, your name will be out there. Out there on the lists of marketing companies that one shouldn't use, or products that one shouldn't buy.
Perhaps Hitler was a poor example, because there are people out there who agree with what he represented. I guess that being in this [self-righteous] community has given me a different opinion of marketing if only because we have such vocal detractors of its dishonest forms. People all over these boards said that they're boycotting Sony post-DRM debacle, etc.
Now I'm jaded again. I concede -- there are probably people out there who think that fake grassroots support is a great idea, and it might even pull in a lot of customers. Shame, though.
[Is] [Slashdot] trying to [redeem] itself after being conned into an instance of viral marketing?
No. Let me remind you how our system works: 1. Person finds something they think is cool. 2. Person submits link and story to Slashdot. 3. Slashdot editors do a quick read to see if it's not blatantly inaccurate or uninteresting. 4. Editors put the story up. 5. Readers check the story out. 5. a. At least one reader looks into (or already knows) the background of the article. 5. b. At least one reader looks into (or already knows about) the subject of the article. 5. c. At least one reader looks into (or has already speculated about) the ramifications of the article. 6. We discuss.
That's the point: the community decision for the article you linked was that it was a guerilla campaign. When I read that article, I didn't realize it was such, I assumed the same as the editors. Fortunately, there's a large community here, several of which commented that not all was as it seemed, and I was enlightened.
Yay for community discussion. Articles aren't generally statements that the community makes, they're statements that the community responds to. That's why us old timers (and I'm a young'un, at that) are still here.
The publicity they're getting is bad for the PSP and the advertising company both. On the one hand, people know it's fake, and it's pathetic to have to pretend to have friends (which is what astroturfing is, at its roots). On the other hand, if they get bad press for their client, that's bad press for themselves. Who wants to hire an agency who gave someone bad press?
Now consider some of our sexiest light switches... I hate them... they have a touch sensitive surface that turns them off and on... nothing intuitive about them, just flat bronze colored metal surface in the middle of the wall plate. Hmmmm, the lights aren't bright. Yeah, turns out if you touch and maintain touch, the lights will brighten and or dim depending on which way they're currently "pointed". These switches people don't even bother trying to use (guests). Also, it's a real guessing game on the endpoint of full bright or full dim.
Crazy. Wouldn't you think they'd make these somewhat like touchpads, so that if you moved your finger up, the lights got brighter, and if you moved your finger down, they got darker?
I think you have an unrealistic expectation of the quality of service you can expect from email.
I wrote an SMTP server a while back (to check out Ruby's network libraries), and while going through the RFCs I found that there are expectations of quality that include delivery of something. It all comes down to the protocol: if a server accepts a message, it takes responsibility for the message's delivery. A server should reject the message if it cannot deliver (causing the delivery server to either try again later or tell the user there's a problem).
To be losing mail, Earthlink servers must be accepting mail and then throwing it away, or at the very least, not continuing to forward it to the destination, which is just as bad. This goes completely against how the system is supposed to work. If they can't handle the load, there's a specific set of return codes to give (RFC821, section 4.2):
450 Requested mail action not taken: mailbox unavailable [E.g., mailbox busy] 550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable [E.g., mailbox not found, no access] 451 Requested action aborted: error in processing 452 Requested action not taken: insufficient system storage 552 Requested mail action aborted: exceeded storage allocation 553 Requested action not taken: mailbox name not allowed [E.g., mailbox syntax incorrect] 554 Transaction failed
I understand your perspective -- email is a loosely connected system, with lots of points of failure. However, in the vast majority of cases, a failure at one point will cause either delays or errors, not dropped mail.
Thanks for your response! Like I said, this was off-the-cuff, so please forgive my minor errors (I know about imperative Lisp code, compiled Scheme, etc.).
Cool Idea for a first software engineering class: Second half of the semester: Students are given a specification for a piece of software and split into four groups that each complete the entire specification, producing a working, documented system. First half of the semester: Students are given a specification for a piece of software and specifications for a number of changes and extensions. Every change and extension must be added to each of the four implementations produced by last semester's students:-) Since they've just finished cursing the work produced by last semester's students, they'll be well-motivated to do good work themselves.
Forcing students to learn a few languages with different-looking syntax might help.
Computer Science is a gigantic field, yet most colleges seem to think they can teach it as one big, coherent major (that usually requires a load of credit hours to complete). My idea for Computer Science curriculum, with reasoning (sorry if this is off-topic):
CS101 (core): Scheme: Basic Algorithms and Data StructuresIntroduction to computer science. Scheme is a minimalistic language, and is a great one to slowly introduce concepts to a class. The general premise of the language is simple, and easy to teach in stages. It's also an interpreted, declarative language, which will provide a contrast to those learned later on.
CS102 (core): RISC Assembly: Advanced Algorithms and Data StructuresIntroduction to computer programming. Assembly (imperative, hardware-dependant) is as far as you can get from Scheme (declarative, hardware-independant). This exposes students to the far reaches of their discipline, giving them some basic knowledge of what computer science is about. It also allows students to figure out early if they want to stick it out, or go into an engineering major (or business, for that matter).
CS103 (elective): Overview of Declarative LanguagesProlog, Lisp, etc. Prerequisite: CS101.
CS104 (elective): Overview of Imperative LanguagesC, Java, etc. Prerequisite: CS102.
CS201 (core): Products of Software EngineeringOverview of the big systems. This class doesn't have a language attached to it because it won't have programming assignments. The idea is to take a look at the four wonders of the programming world: operating systems, database management and other large, integrated systems, compilers and interpreters, and artificial intelligence and expert systems. This is an introduction-type class, presenting the general ideas and concepts present in the major types of software. The field is a large one, and this major is not meant to produce experts at all parts of it.
CS202 (core): Practical Software EngineeringTeam-based programming. This is a project-based class. The purpose of it is to take the class through the process of designing, constructing, and releasing a (small) project. Introduce source control, unit testing, and automation. Language and project up to the professor or (at best) the class itself. Scope must be small enough to complete in one quarter/semester.
CS203 (core): Ethics in Computer ScienceWhat responsibilities do programmers have? To their clients? To themselves? To the general public? Less of a presentation or prescription than a discussion. Discuss open source/proprietary licenses, military/intelligence software, etc.
After sophomore year, all classes are electives (except for one, see below). A student must take so many 3xx level and so many 4xx level to graduate. Choosing an emphasis (on the research - development axis, perhaps) determines the electives, or the student might talk to their adviser and create a custom/general major. Electives at the 300 level include expanded treatment of the topics in CS201 (systems programming and OS development, DBMS and web server development, programming language concepts and development, artificial intelligence and expert system concepts and development), and branch to more specific areas by the 400 level.
The one other required class is a 400 level project class. It is taken independently, with few requirements: student(s) present a proposal to the CS faculty at the beginning of their junior/senior year, who accept or reject it based on its scope and perceived difficulty. Once a proposal is suggested
(That said, the general sentiment that a standard should strictly define everything that is important is a great one. The problem is determining what's important. When your language is one that is meant to sit directly on top of machine code (like C), the size of a numeric type is important. Grr.)
Perhaps it would be more likely abroad (vs in the USA). Look at the demographics of Congress right now -- by gender and race, especially. The first woman wasn't elected to congress until 1916 (and the constitution had to be changed).
You'd have to first get the country to allow such a thing. Then you'd have to get the population to care enough to vote for it (which involves a bit of trust on their part). There are other problems involved (who gets paid for the AI's gov't service?), but those are the big ones. Perhaps it'll happen.
At the point you're talking about, you might as well use a "nanotape" to stick two pieces of wood together, instead of a nail. If you're going to go future-tech, you might as well go all the way.
[Nail guns] might not be able to handle the oversize head on those nails.
FTA:
"With the first prototypes," Sutt says, "we proved that a bigger head has substantial advantages in terms of stopping the nail from pulling through the sheathing. But it couldn't be too big, because it needed to fit into popular nail guns."
Wasn't it fashionable to predict this kind of thing in the 1950's?
Actually, the 2012 prediction ('black boxes') was conceived in the 50s by Vannevar Bush. As to the other "predictions," robots are already physically superior to humans (that's why we use them as tools), AI won't get into government until it has a constituency (think "Matrix," as I'm sure they were), and the first images to get "beamed into [our] eyeballs" will most likely be from a replacement eye.
It has always been fashionable to predict things -- as human beings we have some strange need to know what's coming. Anyone that purports to be able to see such things (from psychics to people working the stock market) finds it easy to get the general public's interest.
While by definition the future is unknown, it's still interesting to talk about -- makes great Slashdot fodder.
If there had never been such files, the drives are in the same state as if they had existed and been deleted.
That's not technically true. While I agree with your general sentiment (this trial really needs to end), and while SCO's spin on this makes me dizzy, there are still ways to find evidence that has been deleted off a hard drive. (As long as the drive still exists, you can pull things off of it. The earlier after a deletion, the better chance you have to find things, but unless the developers were used to writing over the entire drive -- and had done so after the deletion of code -- there is most likely some of it left on the drive.)
Including Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, William Thomson Kelvin, and Max Planck?
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
I like the quote, but I think it applies more to agnosticism than atheism. The general idea is the positive belief.
Agnosticism is defined by a negative belief: I don't know if there is a God. Atheism is defined by a positive belief: I know that there is no God.
That said, calling atheism a "religion" doesn't mean anything unless the speaker defines what they mean. I wouldn't call atheism an "organized religion," but it might be a "system of beliefs" religion.
(Of course, you might just be taking offense at the word itself being used as a label for your beliefs, and I can understand that.)
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, you can go eat out of the dumpster, we're going to Chili's (or whatever).
Ever tried to install Windows XP with hardware RAID? You better have your RAID drivers on a floppy disk.
(Disclaimer: I run Windows XP for games, Ubuntu/OSX for everything else.)
Truth. The entire discussion really depends on what we mean by "good." I'm working under the assumption that to a marketing company, publicity is a resource that you trade for cash, and any publicity that isn't valuable like that is bad publicity. Sure, your name will be out there. Out there on the lists of marketing companies that one shouldn't use, or products that one shouldn't buy.
Perhaps Hitler was a poor example, because there are people out there who agree with what he represented. I guess that being in this [self-righteous] community has given me a different opinion of marketing if only because we have such vocal detractors of its dishonest forms. People all over these boards said that they're boycotting Sony post-DRM debacle, etc.
Now I'm jaded again. I concede -- there are probably people out there who think that fake grassroots support is a great idea, and it might even pull in a lot of customers. Shame, though.
That's what I hear, too. I think it's more a rule of thumb, though -- with exceptions.
Not to invoke Godwin's law, but Hitler has a bunch of name recognition, and I doubt anyone would consider it good publicity.
No. Let me remind you how our system works:
1. Person finds something they think is cool.
2. Person submits link and story to Slashdot.
3. Slashdot editors do a quick read to see if it's not blatantly inaccurate or uninteresting.
4. Editors put the story up.
5. Readers check the story out.
5. a. At least one reader looks into (or already knows) the background of the article.
5. b. At least one reader looks into (or already knows about) the subject of the article.
5. c. At least one reader looks into (or has already speculated about) the ramifications of the article.
6. We discuss.
That's the point: the community decision for the article you linked was that it was a guerilla campaign. When I read that article, I didn't realize it was such, I assumed the same as the editors. Fortunately, there's a large community here, several of which commented that not all was as it seemed, and I was enlightened.
Yay for community discussion. Articles aren't generally statements that the community makes, they're statements that the community responds to. That's why us old timers (and I'm a young'un, at that) are still here.
I'd get a light switch like that
Truth. Glad that Rob put that in.
After reading your critique, I'm not sure what's more annoying: the actual 14 y/o or the fake 14 y/o.
Good luck!
Thus, the reason for the dissent.
To be losing mail, Earthlink servers must be accepting mail and then throwing it away, or at the very least, not continuing to forward it to the destination, which is just as bad. This goes completely against how the system is supposed to work. If they can't handle the load, there's a specific set of return codes to give (RFC821, section 4.2): I understand your perspective -- email is a loosely connected system, with lots of points of failure. However, in the vast majority of cases, a failure at one point will cause either delays or errors, not dropped mail.
I think his logic was more along the lines of driver's ed. classes than seat belts or air bags.
I like it!
Computer Science is a gigantic field, yet most colleges seem to think they can teach it as one big, coherent major (that usually requires a load of credit hours to complete). My idea for Computer Science curriculum, with reasoning (sorry if this is off-topic):
CS101 (core): Scheme: Basic Algorithms and Data Structures Introduction to computer science. Scheme is a minimalistic language, and is a great one to slowly introduce concepts to a class. The general premise of the language is simple, and easy to teach in stages. It's also an interpreted, declarative language, which will provide a contrast to those learned later on. CS102 (core): RISC Assembly: Advanced Algorithms and Data Structures Introduction to computer programming. Assembly (imperative, hardware-dependant) is as far as you can get from Scheme (declarative, hardware-independant). This exposes students to the far reaches of their discipline, giving them some basic knowledge of what computer science is about. It also allows students to figure out early if they want to stick it out, or go into an engineering major (or business, for that matter). CS103 (elective): Overview of Declarative Languages Prolog, Lisp, etc. Prerequisite: CS101. CS104 (elective): Overview of Imperative Languages C, Java, etc. Prerequisite: CS102. CS201 (core): Products of Software Engineering Overview of the big systems. This class doesn't have a language attached to it because it won't have programming assignments. The idea is to take a look at the four wonders of the programming world: operating systems, database management and other large, integrated systems, compilers and interpreters, and artificial intelligence and expert systems. This is an introduction-type class, presenting the general ideas and concepts present in the major types of software. The field is a large one, and this major is not meant to produce experts at all parts of it. CS202 (core): Practical Software Engineering Team-based programming. This is a project-based class. The purpose of it is to take the class through the process of designing, constructing, and releasing a (small) project. Introduce source control, unit testing, and automation. Language and project up to the professor or (at best) the class itself. Scope must be small enough to complete in one quarter/semester. CS203 (core): Ethics in Computer Science What responsibilities do programmers have? To their clients? To themselves? To the general public? Less of a presentation or prescription than a discussion. Discuss open source/proprietary licenses, military/intelligence software, etc.After sophomore year, all classes are electives (except for one, see below). A student must take so many 3xx level and so many 4xx level to graduate. Choosing an emphasis (on the research - development axis, perhaps) determines the electives, or the student might talk to their adviser and create a custom/general major. Electives at the 300 level include expanded treatment of the topics in CS201 (systems programming and OS development, DBMS and web server development, programming language concepts and development, artificial intelligence and expert system concepts and development), and branch to more specific areas by the 400 level.
The one other required class is a 400 level project class. It is taken independently, with few requirements: student(s) present a proposal to the CS faculty at the beginning of their junior/senior year, who accept or reject it based on its scope and perceived difficulty. Once a proposal is suggested
Take two type-inferring languages and call me in the morning.
(That said, the general sentiment that a standard should strictly define everything that is important is a great one. The problem is determining what's important. When your language is one that is meant to sit directly on top of machine code (like C), the size of a numeric type is important. Grr.)
Ah, I missed the timeline -- can't believe the case has gone on this long...
+1 insightful.
Perhaps it would be more likely abroad (vs in the USA). Look at the demographics of Congress right now -- by gender and race, especially. The first woman wasn't elected to congress until 1916 (and the constitution had to be changed).
You'd have to first get the country to allow such a thing. Then you'd have to get the population to care enough to vote for it (which involves a bit of trust on their part). There are other problems involved (who gets paid for the AI's gov't service?), but those are the big ones. Perhaps it'll happen.
Exciting times, these are.
At the point you're talking about, you might as well use a "nanotape" to stick two pieces of wood together, instead of a nail. If you're going to go future-tech, you might as well go all the way.
Actually, the 2012 prediction ('black boxes') was conceived in the 50s by Vannevar Bush. As to the other "predictions," robots are already physically superior to humans (that's why we use them as tools), AI won't get into government until it has a constituency (think "Matrix," as I'm sure they were), and the first images to get "beamed into [our] eyeballs" will most likely be from a replacement eye.
It has always been fashionable to predict things -- as human beings we have some strange need to know what's coming. Anyone that purports to be able to see such things (from psychics to people working the stock market) finds it easy to get the general public's interest.
While by definition the future is unknown, it's still interesting to talk about -- makes great Slashdot fodder.
That's not technically true. While I agree with your general sentiment (this trial really needs to end), and while SCO's spin on this makes me dizzy, there are still ways to find evidence that has been deleted off a hard drive. (As long as the drive still exists, you can pull things off of it. The earlier after a deletion, the better chance you have to find things, but unless the developers were used to writing over the entire drive -- and had done so after the deletion of code -- there is most likely some of it left on the drive.)
Just so you know.
Including Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, William Thomson Kelvin, and Max Planck?
Take your ignorance somewhere else, friend.
I like the quote, but I think it applies more to agnosticism than atheism. The general idea is the positive belief.
Agnosticism is defined by a negative belief: I don't know if there is a God.
Atheism is defined by a positive belief: I know that there is no God.
That said, calling atheism a "religion" doesn't mean anything unless the speaker defines what they mean. I wouldn't call atheism an "organized religion," but it might be a "system of beliefs" religion.
(Of course, you might just be taking offense at the word itself being used as a label for your beliefs, and I can understand that.)