a sedentary lifestyle contributes to obesity. Video games are usually sedentary therefore they indirectly contribute to obesity like any other sedentary activity.
The high-fat oversized convenience foods and buying soft drinks by the truckload at Sam's Club don't exactly help, either.
They need to realize that games can put images on the screen every bit as detailed as many movies, and that they involve their children through interaction.
That is what a bunch of radio ads have been saying, at least locally. I was a little shocked to hear them, but I guess the older parent crowds are truely ignorant.
Part of this problem stems from the fact that so many kids have their games & tv & computer in their bedroom.
I had an interesting exchange about this over thanksgiving. The family that we all met at has an N64 in their main room, and the kids were playing StarFox64. Some of the parents were talking about how violent that was, and one of their kids made the mistake (or fortune?) of saying something like "That's nothing compared to what I have in my room." After taking a look at the x-box in their room, we (the parents in the family) had an interesting chat.
I was amazed at how my cousin who would struggle about letting their teens watch a PG-13 movie, had games like GTA on their christmas list for their kids. They were thinking it was something like 'pole position' from their youth. I am pretty sure their kids hate me now. But I don't care since I won't see them for another year.:-)
frob
Re:Handwriting recognition not possible
on
In Search of Stupidity
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Rather than throw around claims about one group not knowing the impossible and another group able to pull it off...
Handwriting recognition, or understanding strokes, is a difficult but nowhere near impossible problem. A 1991 Siggraph paper "Specifying Gestures by Exampe" by Rubine listed the 13 'features' used by most recognizers today. That is, 13 numbers derived from the actual pen stroke, although only a few of them are really needed. I've written my own using only 9 of those features, and using the Graffiti symbols (Palm's alphabet) have very good accuracy.
Other 'handwriting' such as marking menus or gesture-based commands (see/. headline earlier today about some) can be and are easily implemented using a few features from the Rubine feature set (angle, curvature, relative size based on the entire drawing, etc.)
So 'handwriting recognition' depends on your definition. Recognizing a set of specific, carefully crafted symbols as they are written can be done with very high accuracy. Recognizing the same symbols after drawing can be done, but its currently a little more difficult. Recognizing anybody's handwriting, including awful scribbles, at any point in the alphabet's history, is probably computationally impossible.
Two examples:
Example with 'bad handwriting' Draw an 'A', with three strokes, but don't connect the top peak: it could be an 'A' or it could be 'H'. Increasingly advanced recognizers are also looking at the context, since "T?E" and "H?T" are most likely to be 'H' and 'E' respectively. Palm (specifically the Graffiti alphabet) resolves this by making the symbols un-ambiguous. Sufficiently bad handwriting and poor grammar (ie: hasty lecture notes) will always cause problems.
Example with old script I've carefully examined documents ranging from the present day to copies of nearly 500-year-old script. Most old papers I've looked at, up until this century, had more curves and sharper corners. In the 1700's and 1800's, many people had fancy serifs, with especially practiced serifs on their names (like a spiral before starting an F or B, only one swirl on content, but 5 swirls on their signature). In the beginning of this centry, my own collection moves from spirals to sharp angles, then moves toward big curves+corners. I personally enjoy looking at the serifs on 'A' and 'F' from people who learned to write in the WWI time frame, especially the people who seemed to compose letters from connected sharp-cornered triangles and curves. Today's 'good' handwriting more closely mirrors what we expect to see in a sans-serif font, with exceptions on a few letters (F, D, B, q).
I am already seeing people draw 'E' as they would in Graffiti (two curls) rather than the traditional form of lines and angles. Personally, I don't see it taking too many more decades before our handwriting starts to evolve to a more recogniser-friendly style.
Perhaps you haven't used them lately, but they *DID* just send out yet another release, and they do currently have a default value of "SEND ME SPAM!" (er, contact me and affiliates can contact me), and that does return to the default value if you don't reset it every time you change a setting.
Yes, they did implement the system in 2002, but they are making changes to the system, and want to make sure that people know that the spam you are getting really was solicited.
Their letter actually says:
In March 2002, we began rolling out an updated marketing communications system. Instead of just a single "Yes" or "No" choice, we created a new Marketing Preferences page where you [choose which set of spam you want]
'When this updated system was first announced in March 2002, we told you we'd begin sending you messages about Yahoo! products and services across all categories, even though you had said "No" to messages under the old single choice system. We also told you that you could still say "No" to these messages by visiting your Marketing Preferences. But we did not completely implement this change until now.
What's Changing on January 1, 2004
Starting January 1, 2004, Yahoo! will begin to send you messages, via email or postal mail, about our own products and services. (We will not send you postal mail if you have given us a mailing address and have opted out of contact via postal delivery.)"
What this really means is that a bunch of people will be spammed about new yahoo services, since in the past they didn't spam their own customers about their own services. Now they will start doing that, so they're trying to give you some warning.
So I clicked on the link [that I didn't own the account] and [they] will never bother me again.
Great! You told tham that your account was created fraudulently.
They'll now send you spam immediately, rather than in January, since you aren't the one who told them not to. Also, you can expect to be served with legal papers regarding your fraud -- thereby funding Yahoo! through your expected settlement. Why not just write them a check now for $3500 to head the whole thing off?:-)
VAR Business: Other than the suit, how's business?
McBride: That's the great untold story no one even asks about. We have over two million servers actively running today.
So they're basically saying that their entire business is almost as big as Sun's active Internet servers in the latest Netcraft survey? Or their entire active servers is about 4% of the estimated linux server base? Or that in the late 90's, UnixWare (under Santa Cruz Operation) was selling 40% of all licenses by volume, but that under Caldera-turned-SCO, they dropped to the point that they didn't even show up as a blip on the Server OS Radar, and are just now going back to 2 million servers in use?
I guess to him it is a good thing: (mock quote)"We had a huge market share when we bought the thing, then it dropped to almost nothing, and we are still managing to sell a few hundred copies each month, rather than just writing it off entirely as a bad investment."
First: Jointly created rules. This means both the parents and the child discuss what is appropriate and what is not, including penalties. I was (plesantly) surprised when my older children suggested that penalties for breaking the rules were tougher than what I had in mind. We put it in writing, and now all of us know what to expect. Don't put in any rule that you as the parent cannot follow. We put in time restrictions to the Internet based on their GPA, and requirements that chores must be done prior to using the Internet. A- or above (3.75 - 4.0) means unlimited access, otherwise, a daily limit of time from first logged access to last access. On the bright side, GPAs have gone up.
Second: Filtering and Logging. You better have some serious filtering software on your compuer already, and most good tools allow you to log what is visited (on all ports) and when.
Third: Review logs regularly, with the child. We have a weekly family meeting each Sunday where we plan out our next week's activities, who gets the car, etc. Before each meeting, I pull down their computer logs, go through any possibly questionable activities, and discuss it with them. If they visited a bunch of web sites that don't have DNS values, we go into their computer and pull up each page. It's kind of fun to see how when they just got caught, they don't ask to be out late or for the car as much.:-)
Fourth: Enforce your penalties. (part 1 - terminate internet access) I have written up scripts that my wife and I can use to disable each computer through the router with three mouse clicks. If they get on another computer, EVERYBODY loses access until daddy gets home and reprograms the router. If dad is too busy to reprogram the router for a few days, they know that my wife can't, so they just have to wait.
Enforce your penalties. (part 2 - terminate computer access) When access to the computer, and not to the internet, is the problem, be prepared to shut down the computer. Putting a remote-control switch into the monitor isn't that hard to do. If you can survive the ads, X10 has great little remote-controls that you can put on your keychain. I also have no problems with simply turning off their computer. If they don't bother to listen to me when I tell them to get off the computer, they should expect to lose data when I shut it off for them.
Enforcing penalties. (part 3- let the siblings punish repeat offenders) It took a while when one of mine tried to push the limits on this -- thats the one who tried to steal the keychain. The answer was simple: no cooperation means no computer for ANY child, except for homework for the non-violators, for one month. All game disks were confiscated, and the worst game CDs were broken. (hint: stringing CDs up through a thin cable bike lock works well.) The other kids were fairly mad at him, and came up with some creative ways to ostricise him. One of the girls even managed to get some of his friends against him for that month.
Our boy still tries to push the limits occasionally, but the girls are quick to keep him in line. Finally, you can't get lax with the rules, or they WILL be taken advantage of. It's easier to do a little work each week and keep the kids in line than to let them get out of control for a while and try to force them back.
I suspect that this will be a bigger success than you realize.
First, there are a number of factors you missed. Current broadband subscribers are dying to get it: DSL is about $5 more, and cable broadband is about $25 more (that's why Qwest and Comcast are complaining). Companies will order more than one connection. Government will order hundreds or thousands of connections. The article touched briefly on what was planned for Provo, one of the smaller cities: Since each intersection has low-resolution cameras installed for controlling traffic lights, they intended to connect each camera up to the network so that crashes and congestion can be viewed remotely. At each sporting event or traffic jam, the entire city's traffic pattern could then be sent to a central location and be more carefully coordinated. That's a few hundred connections right there for a single city.
Second, Your numbers are off. In one instance, you concluded that 2.8M * 12 = 67M which obviously wrong.
Rather than using the approximate numbers given in the article, I went to the census results for the area For the 4 counties involved in the project (Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, Weber), there were 531,977 (not 248,000) households and 40,862 (not 34,500) businesses in 2000. Each of these counties is also experiencing rapid growth internally and due to in-migration.
Using the 2000 information, double your number of households, and increase your businesses by 1/3. That brings the elegible base up to 570,000, or 600,000 by the time it is implemented. You suggested that 33% of the population would be interested, but knowing the area, I'd suggest it is closer to 40-50%. The cost of $28/month is much less than what the Qwest/Comcast monopolies want to charge, even for DSL, so expect a huge price war (which is what the two companies were complaining about -- no more price gouging.) Qwest's current charges for 640k DSL is $32/month, + $5/month for modem, plus $100 install fee, plus ISP fees. Comcast is charging $53/month + modem + install for only slightly faster speeds. The Utopia system's $28/month + install is a great deal, considering you can run whatever you want on it, and you get substantially faster speeds.
Assuming your conservative base of 1/3 adoption and one line per business, that's 200,000 installations, $5,600,000 per month, $67,200,000 per year. Assuming a 2/5 adoption rate gives $80,640,000/year.
But there will be more users than just homes and businesses, and businesses are going to take more than one line each. My company will probably end up with 20 or more. Government facilities are planning on massive use of the system, including joining the system up to all the traffic lights and detection systems.
My current company works on traffic detection. Detection stations need to be connected online, and most are currently attached through CDPD modems or fairly expensive fiber cables anyway. Moving over to this service would give huge bandwidth benefits (converting from 9600-19200 baud CDPD to optical) and big savings (a few hundred each month per CDPD modem or wired connections, moving to $28 plus installation costs.) I've been in meetings where this project was discussed, including seeing the numbers run and seeing the savings to the company.
There are a lot more people interested in this than you might suspect, including a substantial cost savings to thousands of companies and geeks in the area.
Did Linus have anything to do with the IBM contract?
Not to the contract, but to the contract violation.
SCO is claiming that IBM's material made it into Linux. Linus has the final say as to what makes it into the kernel. While he might not be related to the IBM contract, he is related to the court case, since he has final responsibility for the management of the source code.
If it helps, think of it as questioning the people who designed a vault after somebody broke in to a bank. They probably have some useful information. Granted, they have no connection with the potential crime, but they are related to the items being investigated.
But I don't see the connection with his employer. Oh well.
In California, posession of a CA Driver's License is considered proof to work in the US. This is just fine and dandy as long as only people allowed to work in the US are given Driver's Licenses, which was the case until recently
Really? Then California is against federal law, or more likely, you didn't understand it. A drivers license is permission to drive, not permission to work. Other documents are required for working in this country. (Go talk to your HR department if you don't believe me.)
If the state is/was only issuing drivers licenses to US citizens or citizens with work visas (or similar 'right to work' through diplomatic or other means), then there would be many people who should be legally permitted to drive who are excluded (international students, foreign visitors coming over on business trips, etc.) Yes, there are international drivers licences, but the state should issue a license to anyone who technically qualifies.
Many people forget that a drivers license is NOT documentation of nationality, nor permission to work, nor proper for identification generally (although it is often improperly used as ID cards). For employment, every company is required to be presented a Social Security Card or other documents for tax reporting purposes, AND if they person is not a naturalized citizen, require proper documentation that they have permission to work.
and now want to give driver's licenses to illegals
This is an old issue. Drivers licenses have been given out to illegal aliens for decades in some states. I know of several states where it is already legal, and there are probably more (Tennessee, North Carolina, Utah, Kansas, New Mexico, and Virginia).
A quick google search pulled up this: [This year]"at least 39 states have considered more than 100 bills that affect immigrants' access to driver's licenses." Some of them moved in favor of granting licenses, while others were against it. The controversy lies in what a drivers license means. As codified in law, many states just use it as permission to use the road. It just happens that so many groups also use them as identification cards or proof of nationality, which is a bad thing.
From the article:
Engineers at Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard have invented a combination of materials that could lead to cheap and super-compact electronic memory devices... [they] achieved the result by discovering a previously unrecognized property of a commonly used conductive polymer plastic coating.
How does somebody invent a combination of commonly used materials?
Fact of the matter is, the whole of humainity expects to...
EVERYONE has been conditioned to go to...
And that is why Linux is not ready for the desktop.
Now permit me a 30-year-old quote,
Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock':
'The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.'
By your statements, the whole of humanity (or humainity, in your case) are incapable of growing beyond their current state, and are unable to learn anything other than what they have been conditioned to do.
Um, you better check your definitions. A statement may be true, but it can still be a troll. If it makes people immediately want to hit 'reply' without thinking, it's a troll, or flame-bait if people want to attack it. Just like your post.:)
troll
v.,n.
1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To
utter a posting... designed to attract predictable
responses or flames; or, the post itself.... The well-constructed troll is a post
that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look
even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to
the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate
troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See
also YHBT.
2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1;
regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a
newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to
annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by
the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic
at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly
creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming
characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of
life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll."
Site owners could make internet dark for Norton users. They could make it very hard for the blocked users to use a site by putting more of the content in off-site hosted images. This would make sites incompatible with Nortoned machines (a note or link would explain how to turn off the offending bit of Norton) Or, you could circumvent blocking by hosting all ad-images locally and avoiding telltale ad keywords.
Let me see if I understand you ---
You want to increase your customers and revenue by alianating an ever-increasing population of potential customers. Or in/. parlance:
Offend customers
Force customers into web-based chute so you can brand them and milk them until they run dry.
profit!!! (for a few weeks until customers leave)
Unless you are in a one-time-shot business, that's a very bad model.
Seems like if you have any legitimate business to run,
you would ENCOURAGE people to visit your site, and support ANY BROWSER OR SOFTWARE they wanted to use, because your goal is to ATTRACT customers. But of course you may be on to something that business-folk around the world would want to do...
SOMEBODY (schools, businesses, government, individuals) needs to pay for that stuff. This is one area where the argument for micropayments has been strong.
I haven't seen ads for a LONG time (yeah mozilla and firebird!) and I don't really care if that puts a company out of business.
As societies and as/., we have historically had an 'adapt or die' mentality, and this is no different. NOBODY likes banner ads. When a business demands something that people don't like, people will either adapt, or a competitor will arise that doesn't make the demands. It looks like people have adapted by exterminating banner ads.
So adapt or die. Ask people for money, even if it's a token amount. Maybe serve up content for 1000 views and then stop giving content until they pay. If your content really is that useful, limit the content to people willing to pay for access. If your content isn't that useful, why do you care? If you charge too much, be prepared for somebody else to offer it up on their own money, in which case you'll avoid the burden of hosting the content. For some obvious examples of this, just look at the sites that mirror/. and omit the ads.
Its not a major issue, just economics in it's most basic form. People don't want product A bundled with product B, so they will seek out places that don't bundle it, or ways to remove it. If your business model depends on that bundle, it's time to get a new business model.
It's as easy for the ballot printer to print two ballots as one, so there's your paper trail voting receipt.
That's not what is meant in the term 'paper trail'. That type of paper trail is against the law. The voter should NOT be given a copy of anything. You should leave the polling place with absolutly no record of the vote.
Why is it illegal, you ask? Here are some reasons:
Give me yer voting receipt. If you voted for Fred, we'll take care of you. If you didn't vote for Fred, them guys over there with the blood-stained baseball bats will take care of you.
FREE STUFF!! Just bring in your receipt saying you voted for Fred, and we'll give you your choice of...
Notice to company employees: In an effort to encourage voting, please submit a copy of their voting receipt, or you will be docked one day's pay. Anyone who votes for our CEO (running for city council member) will be given a day off.
Why not consider all the things that you can offer, and ask each person to pick what they want? Why do bosses always assume that cash is the best thing? Cash is nice, but there are times that I'd like something else.
You might offer them a choice of things: offer the cash, but also offer paid time off equal to the money, or mix-and-match -- I'd take a few days and $500. If you have big discounts on items with some appeal to your employees then offer to buy them something at your reduced cost with some of the money. My wife would freak out if I told her I spent 2/3 of my bonus on a computer, but if the company gave me a really nice computer AND software AND some cash, she wouldn't mind. Some people might even prefer it as a short-term raise (useful when loan-hunting or job-hunting) or as an improved health-care plan.
The point is, what's good for one employee may not be good for another. Letting them fit the bonus to their wants is a good thing.
I'd say that it isn't the "warm and fuzzy legislation" as you put it, but automation, general lazyness, and attitude of people.
Your grandmother probably stared down the butcher as they put meat into the grinder, making sure that every piece was just right. Now you just look at the meat that is dyed red and if it says "97% fat free" and has a USDA rating, you think it's good enough. Do you really KNOW that fits those values, or are you just hoping that the teenager in the back room didn't accidently drop the meat on the floor, pick it up and wipe it off, and feed it through the grinder?
Yes, people are letting their guard down, and have been for decades.
See, this is what ticks me off about most slashdotters; if they can find any potentially bad use for a tool, it's instantly evil. If you think about it long enough, I'm sure you can find an ill-intentioned use for any tool, but does that mean it's bad?... Anyway, with that out of the way... yes, it's an unfortunate effect of society (at least American) these days that typically if something can be exploited by an individual or corporation for their game, it often will. Which means, unfortunately, we need to legislate the construction and use of such devices, to allow the consumers to prosecute those whom we trust to obey the law and not make a buck at our expense using whatever information they can gather through these boxes
Good argument when it comes to cars, but it fails dramatically in the general case. If we legislate these data recorders, then why not legislate all forms of monitoring and recording, both passive and active? I can turn the argument on its head and tell you to apply it to "P2P", which includes any technology where peers communicate over the net. Shall we regulate the implementation and use of all such technologies, both meat-space and virtual, as well? And also, I'd suggest that it isn't so much taking the most ill-intentioned use, but the most paranoid or extreme use.
We need to ask: is it legally being abused now? Will it be in the future? Is this privacy loss and data logging good, or bad, or neutral in the long run?
We seem to forget that serious abuse (at present) isn't happening. We have RIAA's lawsuits, CAPPS II, and other problems, but those are generally being dealt with. Yes, I know there are bills being proposed that say all file sharing is inherently evil, and others that allow any information ever recorded about you should be stored in case you someday decide to be a terrorist. But these bills are not law, and most congress-critters see them for what they are. I know my congress-critters, have met with them personally, and have even been called on the phone and thanked for offering so much information and providing links to sources by my congressman after carefully summarizing the complaints I read on several/. articles and researching the facts for myself. Dispite what most slash-dotters think, congress-critters are generally good people trying to do their best at balancing the rights of the people vs. the rights of society.
While I am against the eroding of civil liberties, I can see how in our technology-driven world it is nearly impossible to avoid the loss of privacy for public information and externally observable facts. It is a bitter pill, but the gains for society really do outweigh the cost. Consider the benefits of a loss of privacy of public information [not private information] for everyone -- in meat space, we would have a huge reduction in court cases since facts could be easily proven and guilt or innocence asserted, and the court cases that are actually tried would have more and better facts available. Insurance rates would drop for most of us, as truely stupid people would be taken off the road or otherwise removed from dangerous activities, accused criminals would have more evidence available to defend their cases and reduce the number of incorrect criminal convictions. In virtual space, lack of privacy means we can track and identify everybody, so a huge drop in spam since the senders will be quickly identified and sued off the planet, huge drop in online child porn, usenet becoming halfway usable again [w00t!], reduction of illicit drug purchases online, identification when a online pedophile abducts or otherwise harms a child, reduced cost generally as Free and Open products compete on the open market as retailers see no problem with online distribution. The loss of privacy of public information hurts in only a few areas, but most of those can be achieved through other mediums [print, photos, CD-R, and encr
Even the herald of Big-Brother, the Total Information Awareness Project was shot down.
TIA was shut down, but others remain up and are multiplying. In fact, the government claims that TIA was never meant to track 'normal people', that's what NIMD and MATRIX are for.
These systems include CAPPS II, Bio-ALIRT, the Novel Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD) and the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (Matrix) [these are the two products that are what TIAs worst case was), Rapid Analytic Wargaming and Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment [ie: how do we both monitor and attack within our own populations], and Automated Speech and Text Exploitation in Multiple Languages (including Babylon and Symphony),
CPFDA (which is GOOD because it limits certain items, but the final drafts explicitly permits many 'Big Brother' activities), to name a few.
The US probabably has several more projects behind the guise of national security. Now multiply that by every government who does these things.
I don't believe it is a conspiracy, but I do think that in this area privacy has zero chance. There are too many smart people trying to do 'good things' like catch criminals at the expense of a little bit of privacy here and there, too many stupid people willing to give up all of their privacy so they can feel like they're doing something, and finally, too many 'bad people' who will abuse the data and make landgrabs at every opportunity. I am fighting it, and send checks to EFF (do you?), but in the end, I honestly think resistance is futile.
As a creator (co-creator at least) of all the data about me, I'd like to think that I own (or co-own) the copyright on it. If so, I would like to share in the profits made by those that sell and market this data.
You'd like to think that, but you would be wrong. Why do people so misunderstand copyright laws? In the US, and most other nations as well:
1. Companies are not directly copying your original works, therefore it itsn't a copy, therefore you have no copy rights.
2. Works consisting entirely of information and containing no original authorship CANNOT be copyrighted. Just like pulling data from the phone book, if they used a direct copy of the numbers, it would not violate copyright laws.
Facts about you like your weight, height, eye color, SSN, bank accounts, phone numbers, email address, URLs, and so forth CANNOT be copyrighted. A paragraph describing you would qualify for copyright, but the facts and figures cannot.
Before posting another comment on copyright law, please go read a book on the subject. Your library probably has one.
[mental note: Ignore obvious trolls/nazi attacks like this in the future.]
Um, yeah, that was exactly what I said, and it's exactly what I meant. That's why I said it was begging the question.
your link:An argument that improperly assumes as true the very point the speaker is trying to argue for is said in formal logic to "beg the question." Here is an example of a question-begging argument: "This painting is trash because it is obviously worthless." The speaker is simply asserting the worthlessness of the work, not presenting any evidence to demonstrate that this is in fact the case. Since we never use "begs" with this odd meaning ("to improperly take for granted") in any other phrase, many people mistakenly suppose the phrase implies something quite different: that the argument demands that a question about it be asked--raises the question.
My argument was structured as follows:
Software engineer introduceed a flaw
Societal values imply that individuals are responsible for the damages and costs due to flaws they introduce
Flaws demonstrably cost the company money
Therefore, software engineers need to be held responsible (financially or otherwise) for the flaws they introduce.
From the definition at the place you posted, I "improperly took for granted" that "Individuals [specifically engineers] are responsible for the flaws they introduce", since you cannot use the conclusion as part of the argument except in arguing through contradiction.
If you prefer, substitute it into the same form specified in your 'questiong-begging' argument you linked to: "The engineers are responsible for the flaws because they are obviously responsible for the flaws." Therefore, it begs the question (or more precisely, the assertion) that we are responsible for the flaws that we introduce.
As you must know (since you are asserting a logical fallacy), the way to remedy a flaw of this type is to either replace the invalid statement or to support it through other means showing that we are not taking the statement for granted, but that it is a valid piece of the argument. Which is why I asked the begged assertion as a question itself, "How responsible are any of us [ as software engineers, electrical engineers, etc. ] for the flaws they introduce?" If we are indeed responsible, then the argument holds because the element has been supported through other means. If not, then the argument fails (although the conclusion may still be proven valid through other means).
Finally, whether you accept my argument or not, and regarless of if you believe the word I should have used was 'begging' or 'demands' or 'brings up' or any other word selection:/. is an inforamal discussion board. Enforcing strict formal language or other strict language rules in this informal arena makes you what is commonly called either a "grammar nazi" or a "troll".
Slashdot Mirror
Part of this problem stems from the fact that so many kids have their games & tv & computer in their bedroom.
I had an interesting exchange about this over thanksgiving. The family that we all met at has an N64 in their main room, and the kids were playing StarFox64. Some of the parents were talking about how violent that was, and one of their kids made the mistake (or fortune?) of saying something like "That's nothing compared to what I have in my room." After taking a look at the x-box in their room, we (the parents in the family) had an interesting chat.
I was amazed at how my cousin who would struggle about letting their teens watch a PG-13 movie, had games like GTA on their christmas list for their kids. They were thinking it was something like 'pole position' from their youth. I am pretty sure their kids hate me now. But I don't care since I won't see them for another year. :-)
frob
Handwriting recognition, or understanding strokes, is a difficult but nowhere near impossible problem. A 1991 Siggraph paper "Specifying Gestures by Exampe" by Rubine listed the 13 'features' used by most recognizers today. That is, 13 numbers derived from the actual pen stroke, although only a few of them are really needed. I've written my own using only 9 of those features, and using the Graffiti symbols (Palm's alphabet) have very good accuracy.
Other 'handwriting' such as marking menus or gesture-based commands (see /. headline earlier today about some) can be and are easily implemented using a few features from the Rubine feature set (angle, curvature, relative size based on the entire drawing, etc.)
So 'handwriting recognition' depends on your definition. Recognizing a set of specific, carefully crafted symbols as they are written can be done with very high accuracy. Recognizing the same symbols after drawing can be done, but its currently a little more difficult. Recognizing anybody's handwriting, including awful scribbles, at any point in the alphabet's history, is probably computationally impossible.
Two examples:
Example with 'bad handwriting' Draw an 'A', with three strokes, but don't connect the top peak: it could be an 'A' or it could be 'H'. Increasingly advanced recognizers are also looking at the context, since "T?E" and "H?T" are most likely to be 'H' and 'E' respectively. Palm (specifically the Graffiti alphabet) resolves this by making the symbols un-ambiguous. Sufficiently bad handwriting and poor grammar (ie: hasty lecture notes) will always cause problems.
Example with old script I've carefully examined documents ranging from the present day to copies of nearly 500-year-old script. Most old papers I've looked at, up until this century, had more curves and sharper corners. In the 1700's and 1800's, many people had fancy serifs, with especially practiced serifs on their names (like a spiral before starting an F or B, only one swirl on content, but 5 swirls on their signature). In the beginning of this centry, my own collection moves from spirals to sharp angles, then moves toward big curves+corners. I personally enjoy looking at the serifs on 'A' and 'F' from people who learned to write in the WWI time frame, especially the people who seemed to compose letters from connected sharp-cornered triangles and curves. Today's 'good' handwriting more closely mirrors what we expect to see in a sans-serif font, with exceptions on a few letters (F, D, B, q).
I am already seeing people draw 'E' as they would in Graffiti (two curls) rather than the traditional form of lines and angles. Personally, I don't see it taking too many more decades before our handwriting starts to evolve to a more recogniser-friendly style.
frob
Yes, they did implement the system in 2002, but they are making changes to the system, and want to make sure that people know that the spam you are getting really was solicited.
Their letter actually says:
What this really means is that a bunch of people will be spammed about new yahoo services, since in the past they didn't spam their own customers about their own services. Now they will start doing that, so they're trying to give you some warning.At least, that's my take on it. YMMV.
frob
They'll now send you spam immediately, rather than in January, since you aren't the one who told them not to. Also, you can expect to be served with legal papers regarding your fraud -- thereby funding Yahoo! through your expected settlement. Why not just write them a check now for $3500 to head the whole thing off? :-)
frob
I guess to him it is a good thing: (mock quote)"We had a huge market share when we bought the thing, then it dropped to almost nothing, and we are still managing to sell a few hundred copies each month, rather than just writing it off entirely as a bad investment."
I have to wonder what kind of warped mind he has.
frob
Second: Filtering and Logging. You better have some serious filtering software on your compuer already, and most good tools allow you to log what is visited (on all ports) and when.
Third: Review logs regularly, with the child. We have a weekly family meeting each Sunday where we plan out our next week's activities, who gets the car, etc. Before each meeting, I pull down their computer logs, go through any possibly questionable activities, and discuss it with them. If they visited a bunch of web sites that don't have DNS values, we go into their computer and pull up each page. It's kind of fun to see how when they just got caught, they don't ask to be out late or for the car as much. :-)
Fourth: Enforce your penalties. (part 1 - terminate internet access) I have written up scripts that my wife and I can use to disable each computer through the router with three mouse clicks. If they get on another computer, EVERYBODY loses access until daddy gets home and reprograms the router. If dad is too busy to reprogram the router for a few days, they know that my wife can't, so they just have to wait.
Enforce your penalties. (part 2 - terminate computer access) When access to the computer, and not to the internet, is the problem, be prepared to shut down the computer. Putting a remote-control switch into the monitor isn't that hard to do. If you can survive the ads, X10 has great little remote-controls that you can put on your keychain. I also have no problems with simply turning off their computer. If they don't bother to listen to me when I tell them to get off the computer, they should expect to lose data when I shut it off for them.
Enforcing penalties. (part 3- let the siblings punish repeat offenders) It took a while when one of mine tried to push the limits on this -- thats the one who tried to steal the keychain. The answer was simple: no cooperation means no computer for ANY child, except for homework for the non-violators, for one month. All game disks were confiscated, and the worst game CDs were broken. (hint: stringing CDs up through a thin cable bike lock works well.) The other kids were fairly mad at him, and came up with some creative ways to ostricise him. One of the girls even managed to get some of his friends against him for that month.
Our boy still tries to push the limits occasionally, but the girls are quick to keep him in line. Finally, you can't get lax with the rules, or they WILL be taken advantage of. It's easier to do a little work each week and keep the kids in line than to let them get out of control for a while and try to force them back.
Good luck!
frob
I suspect that this will be a bigger success than you realize.
First, there are a number of factors you missed. Current broadband subscribers are dying to get it: DSL is about $5 more, and cable broadband is about $25 more (that's why Qwest and Comcast are complaining). Companies will order more than one connection. Government will order hundreds or thousands of connections. The article touched briefly on what was planned for Provo, one of the smaller cities: Since each intersection has low-resolution cameras installed for controlling traffic lights, they intended to connect each camera up to the network so that crashes and congestion can be viewed remotely. At each sporting event or traffic jam, the entire city's traffic pattern could then be sent to a central location and be more carefully coordinated. That's a few hundred connections right there for a single city.
Second, Your numbers are off. In one instance, you concluded that 2.8M * 12 = 67M which obviously wrong.
Rather than using the approximate numbers given in the article, I went to the census results for the area For the 4 counties involved in the project (Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, Weber), there were 531,977 (not 248,000) households and 40,862 (not 34,500) businesses in 2000. Each of these counties is also experiencing rapid growth internally and due to in-migration.
Using the 2000 information, double your number of households, and increase your businesses by 1/3. That brings the elegible base up to 570,000, or 600,000 by the time it is implemented. You suggested that 33% of the population would be interested, but knowing the area, I'd suggest it is closer to 40-50%. The cost of $28/month is much less than what the Qwest/Comcast monopolies want to charge, even for DSL, so expect a huge price war (which is what the two companies were complaining about -- no more price gouging.) Qwest's current charges for 640k DSL is $32/month, + $5/month for modem, plus $100 install fee, plus ISP fees. Comcast is charging $53/month + modem + install for only slightly faster speeds. The Utopia system's $28/month + install is a great deal, considering you can run whatever you want on it, and you get substantially faster speeds.
Assuming your conservative base of 1/3 adoption and one line per business, that's 200,000 installations, $5,600,000 per month, $67,200,000 per year. Assuming a 2/5 adoption rate gives $80,640,000/year.
But there will be more users than just homes and businesses, and businesses are going to take more than one line each. My company will probably end up with 20 or more. Government facilities are planning on massive use of the system, including joining the system up to all the traffic lights and detection systems.
My current company works on traffic detection. Detection stations need to be connected online, and most are currently attached through CDPD modems or fairly expensive fiber cables anyway. Moving over to this service would give huge bandwidth benefits (converting from 9600-19200 baud CDPD to optical) and big savings (a few hundred each month per CDPD modem or wired connections, moving to $28 plus installation costs.) I've been in meetings where this project was discussed, including seeing the numbers run and seeing the savings to the company.
There are a lot more people interested in this than you might suspect, including a substantial cost savings to thousands of companies and geeks in the area.
frob
SCO is claiming that IBM's material made it into Linux. Linus has the final say as to what makes it into the kernel. While he might not be related to the IBM contract, he is related to the court case, since he has final responsibility for the management of the source code.
If it helps, think of it as questioning the people who designed a vault after somebody broke in to a bank. They probably have some useful information. Granted, they have no connection with the potential crime, but they are related to the items being investigated.
But I don't see the connection with his employer. Oh well.
frob
If the state is/was only issuing drivers licenses to US citizens or citizens with work visas (or similar 'right to work' through diplomatic or other means), then there would be many people who should be legally permitted to drive who are excluded (international students, foreign visitors coming over on business trips, etc.) Yes, there are international drivers licences, but the state should issue a license to anyone who technically qualifies.
Many people forget that a drivers license is NOT documentation of nationality, nor permission to work, nor proper for identification generally (although it is often improperly used as ID cards). For employment, every company is required to be presented a Social Security Card or other documents for tax reporting purposes, AND if they person is not a naturalized citizen, require proper documentation that they have permission to work.
A quick google search pulled up this: [This year]"at least 39 states have considered more than 100 bills that affect immigrants' access to driver's licenses." Some of them moved in favor of granting licenses, while others were against it. The controversy lies in what a drivers license means. As codified in law, many states just use it as permission to use the road. It just happens that so many groups also use them as identification cards or proof of nationality, which is a bad thing.
It seems you are a little late in your discovery.
How does somebody invent a combination of commonly used materials?
Now permit me a 30-year-old quote, Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock': 'The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.'
By your statements, the whole of humanity (or humainity, in your case) are incapable of growing beyond their current state, and are unable to learn anything other than what they have been conditioned to do.
I hope for the world's sake that you are wrong.
frob
troll v.,n.
1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting ... designed to attract predictable
responses or flames; or, the post itself. ... The well-constructed troll is a post
that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look
even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to
the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate
troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See
also YHBT.
2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll."
Source: Jargon File 4.2.0
Unless you are in a one-time-shot business, that's a very bad model.
Seems like if you have any legitimate business to run, you would ENCOURAGE people to visit your site, and support ANY BROWSER OR SOFTWARE they wanted to use, because your goal is to ATTRACT customers. But of course you may be on to something that business-folk around the world would want to do...
One word: NOOOoooo!
I haven't seen ads for a LONG time (yeah mozilla and firebird!) and I don't really care if that puts a company out of business.
As societies and as /., we have historically had an 'adapt or die' mentality, and this is no different. NOBODY likes banner ads. When a business demands something that people don't like, people will either adapt, or a competitor will arise that doesn't make the demands. It looks like people have adapted by exterminating banner ads.
So adapt or die. Ask people for money, even if it's a token amount. Maybe serve up content for 1000 views and then stop giving content until they pay. If your content really is that useful, limit the content to people willing to pay for access. If your content isn't that useful, why do you care? If you charge too much, be prepared for somebody else to offer it up on their own money, in which case you'll avoid the burden of hosting the content. For some obvious examples of this, just look at the sites that mirror /. and omit the ads.
Its not a major issue, just economics in it's most basic form. People don't want product A bundled with product B, so they will seek out places that don't bundle it, or ways to remove it. If your business model depends on that bundle, it's time to get a new business model.
frob
Why is it illegal, you ask? Here are some reasons:
- Give me yer voting receipt. If you voted for Fred, we'll take care of you. If you didn't vote for Fred, them guys over there with the blood-stained baseball bats will take care of you.
- FREE STUFF!! Just bring in your receipt saying you voted for Fred, and we'll give you your choice of
...
- Notice to company employees: In an effort to encourage voting, please submit a copy of their voting receipt, or you will be docked one day's pay. Anyone who votes for our CEO (running for city council member) will be given a day off.
Is that enough reasons for you?frob
You might offer them a choice of things: offer the cash, but also offer paid time off equal to the money, or mix-and-match -- I'd take a few days and $500. If you have big discounts on items with some appeal to your employees then offer to buy them something at your reduced cost with some of the money. My wife would freak out if I told her I spent 2/3 of my bonus on a computer, but if the company gave me a really nice computer AND software AND some cash, she wouldn't mind. Some people might even prefer it as a short-term raise (useful when loan-hunting or job-hunting) or as an improved health-care plan.
The point is, what's good for one employee may not be good for another. Letting them fit the bonus to their wants is a good thing.
Your grandmother probably stared down the butcher as they put meat into the grinder, making sure that every piece was just right. Now you just look at the meat that is dyed red and if it says "97% fat free" and has a USDA rating, you think it's good enough. Do you really KNOW that fits those values, or are you just hoping that the teenager in the back room didn't accidently drop the meat on the floor, pick it up and wipe it off, and feed it through the grinder?
Yes, people are letting their guard down, and have been for decades.
frob
Good argument when it comes to cars, but it fails dramatically in the general case. If we legislate these data recorders, then why not legislate all forms of monitoring and recording, both passive and active? I can turn the argument on its head and tell you to apply it to "P2P", which includes any technology where peers communicate over the net. Shall we regulate the implementation and use of all such technologies, both meat-space and virtual, as well? And also, I'd suggest that it isn't so much taking the most ill-intentioned use, but the most paranoid or extreme use.
We need to ask: is it legally being abused now? Will it be in the future? Is this privacy loss and data logging good, or bad, or neutral in the long run?
We seem to forget that serious abuse (at present) isn't happening. We have RIAA's lawsuits, CAPPS II, and other problems, but those are generally being dealt with. Yes, I know there are bills being proposed that say all file sharing is inherently evil, and others that allow any information ever recorded about you should be stored in case you someday decide to be a terrorist. But these bills are not law, and most congress-critters see them for what they are. I know my congress-critters, have met with them personally, and have even been called on the phone and thanked for offering so much information and providing links to sources by my congressman after carefully summarizing the complaints I read on several /. articles and researching the facts for myself. Dispite what most slash-dotters think, congress-critters are generally good people trying to do their best at balancing the rights of the people vs. the rights of society.
While I am against the eroding of civil liberties, I can see how in our technology-driven world it is nearly impossible to avoid the loss of privacy for public information and externally observable facts. It is a bitter pill, but the gains for society really do outweigh the cost. Consider the benefits of a loss of privacy of public information [not private information] for everyone -- in meat space, we would have a huge reduction in court cases since facts could be easily proven and guilt or innocence asserted, and the court cases that are actually tried would have more and better facts available. Insurance rates would drop for most of us, as truely stupid people would be taken off the road or otherwise removed from dangerous activities, accused criminals would have more evidence available to defend their cases and reduce the number of incorrect criminal convictions. In virtual space, lack of privacy means we can track and identify everybody, so a huge drop in spam since the senders will be quickly identified and sued off the planet, huge drop in online child porn, usenet becoming halfway usable again [w00t!], reduction of illicit drug purchases online, identification when a online pedophile abducts or otherwise harms a child, reduced cost generally as Free and Open products compete on the open market as retailers see no problem with online distribution. The loss of privacy of public information hurts in only a few areas, but most of those can be achieved through other mediums [print, photos, CD-R, and encr
TIA was shut down, but others remain up and are multiplying. In fact, the government claims that TIA was never meant to track 'normal people', that's what NIMD and MATRIX are for.
These systems include CAPPS II, Bio-ALIRT, the Novel Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD) and the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (Matrix) [these are the two products that are what TIAs worst case was), Rapid Analytic Wargaming and Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment [ie: how do we both monitor and attack within our own populations], and Automated Speech and Text Exploitation in Multiple Languages (including Babylon and Symphony), CPFDA (which is GOOD because it limits certain items, but the final drafts explicitly permits many 'Big Brother' activities), to name a few.
The US probabably has several more projects behind the guise of national security. Now multiply that by every government who does these things.
I don't believe it is a conspiracy, but I do think that in this area privacy has zero chance. There are too many smart people trying to do 'good things' like catch criminals at the expense of a little bit of privacy here and there, too many stupid people willing to give up all of their privacy so they can feel like they're doing something, and finally, too many 'bad people' who will abuse the data and make landgrabs at every opportunity. I am fighting it, and send checks to EFF (do you?), but in the end, I honestly think resistance is futile.
frob
1. Companies are not directly copying your original works, therefore it itsn't a copy, therefore you have no copy rights.
2. Works consisting entirely of information and containing no original authorship CANNOT be copyrighted. Just like pulling data from the phone book, if they used a direct copy of the numbers, it would not violate copyright laws.
Facts about you like your weight, height, eye color, SSN, bank accounts, phone numbers, email address, URLs, and so forth CANNOT be copyrighted. A paragraph describing you would qualify for copyright, but the facts and figures cannot.
Before posting another comment on copyright law, please go read a book on the subject. Your library probably has one.
frob
- Software engineer introduceed a flaw
- Societal values imply that individuals are responsible for the damages and costs due to flaws they introduce
- Flaws demonstrably cost the company money
- Therefore, software engineers need to be held responsible (financially or otherwise) for the flaws they introduce.
From the definition at the place you posted, I "improperly took for granted" that "Individuals [specifically engineers] are responsible for the flaws they introduce", since you cannot use the conclusion as part of the argument except in arguing through contradiction. If you prefer, substitute it into the same form specified in your 'questiong-begging' argument you linked to: "The engineers are responsible for the flaws because they are obviously responsible for the flaws." Therefore, it begs the question (or more precisely, the assertion) that we are responsible for the flaws that we introduce.As you must know (since you are asserting a logical fallacy), the way to remedy a flaw of this type is to either replace the invalid statement or to support it through other means showing that we are not taking the statement for granted, but that it is a valid piece of the argument. Which is why I asked the begged assertion as a question itself, "How responsible are any of us [ as software engineers, electrical engineers, etc. ] for the flaws they introduce?" If we are indeed responsible, then the argument holds because the element has been supported through other means. If not, then the argument fails (although the conclusion may still be proven valid through other means).
Finally, whether you accept my argument or not, and regarless of if you believe the word I should have used was 'begging' or 'demands' or 'brings up' or any other word selection: /. is an inforamal discussion board. Enforcing strict formal language or other strict language rules in this informal arena makes you what is commonly called either a "grammar nazi" or a "troll".
Which would you prefer to be called?
frob