We are building on advanced work at Microsoft Research in fields such as machine learning â" the design of systems that learn from data and grow smarter over time.
In other news, Skynet went on-line on Monday, June 30th, 2003 and becomes self aware at 2:14 a.m. June 31st, 2003....
The same power that it has to sell every other product they make - the power of NON-GEEKS. Something slashdot always seems to forget is that Microsoft owns the home USER market - not the geek market. The user market is much, MUCH larger. They are easily guided. They may never have heard of google - they buy their computer from a store (or have it set up by the company tech) and their homepage is MSN - with a "search the net" box on it. They don't know any other way.
Until you turn the non-geek population into geeks, there will always be room for microsoft, because those people don't know how to compile a kernel or install apache.
Are you kidding? National Security totally requires this! The terrorists will definitely have won if they all have 13 inch penises and free lifetime supplies of viagra...
I wonder how proficient anyone could ever get on this thing. It clearly is not a solution for desktop, but it seems doubtful as a handheld replacement either. Typing speed is the major problem with handhelds these days anyway - Graffitti for Palm lets me do about 15 wpm and that's after 3 years of practice.
I would bet on voice recognition or blackberry-style data input for handhelds before I bet on thumb-only input.
[aside]It kind of reminds me of those old Colecovision controllers....[/aside]
Personal pride isn't important to you? That sort of reminds me of a conversation between the Bobs and Michael Bolton....
Good idea. We need more people like you to sacrifice everything to my company so that my company can make more money off of your suffering.
Just because everyone is doing it though, does that mean it's ok? I think you have to seperate "hyping unreleased stuff" and "hyping existing stuff".
Obviously if you lie about what your software can currently do to make a sale, then it's fraud. If you say "we're planning on feature x in the future", and that's made clear when you broker a deal, then it's fine - there's still room for innovation and development, without being "stifled" as some posts suggest.
I think that if it was legally binding to deliver what you promise, the software industry might seriously benefit. It would mean more testing for the features they promise you, to make sure they work, otherwise they might go to jail!
Yes, they have very precise equipment. It's beyond DGPS because the base stations are surveyed, levelled and emplaced very securely, enabling them to very accurately take out any errors in satellite positioning, plus they use DGPS which is much more accurate than the normal GPS signal used for consumer purposes.
The Pacific Geoscience Center in Sidney, B.C. has been working with Washington state for several years in running the Western Canada Deformation Array - the same idea as the one in the UK.
You can read about it here:
http://www.pgc.nrcan.gc.ca/geodyn/wcda/wcda_ov.htm
Obviously the numbers aren't an in depth scientific study, and they certainly don't represent the entire internet. You're missing the point. The point is that no one except for slashdot has even heard of Konqueror. Microsoft wins because they own the computer-uneducated market, which is the vast majority of workers. Until these other browsers break some real ground, the "war" is not heating up again. There was a "war" when netscape still had 17% browser share.
Also, "real" web designers develop what their clients ask for. If their clients ask for a web application that supports the "enabled" property for button objects, and you tell them "only IE supports that" - guess what? You do it anyway. You can throw all the standards documents you want into their faces, and they don't care and they won't pay for it, because all their customers use IE. I've been developing web pages since 1995, and clients have told me to REMOVE cross-browser scripting to save bandwidth.
So get on your high horses all you want, but IE IS the standard for right now.
I hate to break it to the people who are posting about how the "war" is heating up again, but when IE has 95 troops for every 1 troop that every other browser has, it's more like a military dictatorship. When I design websites, trust me - Opera and Mozilla compatible pages are at the BOTTOM of the development list. Here's the latest stats from one of my content sites:
The number before the % value is the number of hits. Check around on Google - it's pretty similar elsewhere. I'll believe it's a war when clients start asking me to take other browsers into consideration!
Wait, wait! You totally get an added bonus with your Real subscription! Apple doesn't offer free windows registry modifications, free software trojans and free browser/OS shell hijacking with their service....
I'm sure it is greatly interesting to those involved, but to me this is rapidly approaching tabloid material...
Yeah I can see the headlines of the national enquirer now:
HEATED WORDS EXCHANGED BETWEEN GEEKS! SOFTWARE NAMING RIFT CAUSES THE EARTH TO BE SPLIT APART!
The web site gives no description of the game. Without downloading it, how do I know what it is, and why would I bother?
It sounds like a lot of people here are hooked on it... maybe someone should post some good reasons to download it? Or update their web site? Otherwise this story is pretty much only interesting to those who already have it....
Science journalism is a wonderful thing for forwarding discussions, publishing findings and debating top minds in the field about your scientific ideas. Unfortunately, it is slow, expensive to buy if you're in the private sector, and (necessarily) written to a target audience, which is generally the other top brains in your sub-sub-sub-discipline.
How can it better communicate to the general public about science and the scientific method?
How can't it? I worked as a geological assistant for 4 years in a government funded marine geology and geophysics institution. Not only did I get to play with cool toys, but I had to proofread dozens of papers (not to mention all the ones for my courses) for all the bigwig scientists there. Just for fun, I would instant-message various paragraphs from these papers to my buddies (all university grads) and try to see if they could figure them out. They couldn't. It's impossible. Every discipline invents its own language of jargon. This makes it impossible for media to read it. Therefore, when being interviewed, scientists always "boil it down" for the public, and try to add some hook, often based in science fiction, to bring popularity to their research. And you wonder why the media can't report it properly? Because they can't read it! There should be more journals devoted to explaining new findings in everyday language that people can understand if they want to communicate it better!
Can science journalism do a better job of helping people distinguish science from pseudoscience?
Of course... you can always do things better. In this case, stop trying to add the "hooks". It only fuels rumor. Don't say "we teleported something!" when what really happened was they destroyed a photon, measured it and reconstructed it. The media can't even get Einstein's famous lines right...how can they distinguish the difference between that and teleporting matter?
Obvious pseudoscience needs to be publicly questioned in an entertaining way, so that frauds and mistakes are exposed and popularized. Whenever pseudoscience is ridiculed in the literature, it's done in jargon and subtlety.
We need some scientist reality show, where they test each other's theories and the winners get to go on a date or something. Hilarity ensues!
Yes, which is actually another argument for bias in the article. Check this:
... Database outfit Sybase (SY ) has built Rendezvous into its client software. This allows authorized Apple machines to log into Sybase databases without any additional configuration -- one less task for a database administrator.
So he would have us believe that this is "instant money" by getting rid of support staff and cutting admin tasks. But the keywords here are "authorized machines".... unless this thing is a giant security black hole, that authorization still needs to be set up! I would say that it's not quite the savings that the author seems to think it is.
many of whom viewed the RIAA -- and Rosen personally -- with antipathy over incessant pressure for crackdowns on sharing digital music over the Internet.
If by "antipathy" you mean "violent hatred", you win! It missed a reason why I view them this way though - the fact that they have turned the popular music scene into a mechanical whore for the guys upstairs.
Can they soften their image? Aren't they surpassing Microsoft and Kim Jong II on the list of evil things we hate?
Everyone who made this possible. While some people may complain it's "harassment" or "illegal", it's certainly more effective than writing letters to your senator, and makes more of a point by getting media coverage. It's movements like these that can propel change in the world.
Second of all, does anyone notice any similarities in Al's response and the movie "Bowling for Columbine"? He..just...doesn't...get it!
Not exactly. Seismic signals are filtered for blast signatures, as well as things like heavy trucks passing on the highway and "kicks from drunken teenagers", although this is usually difficult as very few seismographs are secured out in the open for anyone to walk up and kick (although there are some....).
In fact, many governments do seismic monitoring (read: spying) specifically for underground blasts so they know who's letting off bombs.
I have worked at the Pacific Geoscience Centre in Sidney, BC, Canada for 4 years and have a close friend who worked on doing signal interpretation for several months.
"Unassociated events" are the ones they can't put a finger on what caused it. That's why these scientists were looking at those specific records.
Actually that movie was being filmed on my campus for a couple of days last year. Between classes I ran over to check it out and see if they needed extras - when I found out what the movie premise was I walked away. Being a geoscientist, it would ruin any hopes of ever being published if someone saw me in such a ridiculous movie.
Drill to the center of the earth? Bwahahahah!! The deepest drill hole ever made is 40,000 feet! That's not even half the thickness of the crust, and that took the Russians an entire decade to drill it! The crust hardly registers on a diagram showing the thickness of the earth....it would take a very long time to develop the technology to reach the core of the earth.
Thought you guys might appreciate this little project I've been working on.
I also appreciate watching my server implode under the weight of a firm/.'ing!
Sadly, diamonds as gemstones is an entirely artificial market. Their industrial use is invaluable, but for stones that internally reflect light to produce a glow, are you really going to blow $10k?
There is an alternative to so called "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds" though. Diamonds have been discovered in canada in the last 10 years, and were initially produced by junior companies. de Beers has already bought out at least one of the diamond sites, scheduled for production in 2006, but diamond production in Canada since 1991 has been of the highest ethical quality. You can tell Canadian produced diamonds as they are laser inscribed with a microscopic polar bear outline (although I think some jewellers now use an inscribed maple leaf inside a diamond outline).
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, Skynet went on-line on Monday, June 30th, 2003 and becomes self aware at 2:14 a.m. June 31st, 2003....
Until you turn the non-geek population into geeks, there will always be room for microsoft, because those people don't know how to compile a kernel or install apache.
Are you kidding? National Security totally requires this! The terrorists will definitely have won if they all have 13 inch penises and free lifetime supplies of viagra...
I would bet on voice recognition or blackberry-style data input for handhelds before I bet on thumb-only input.
[aside]It kind of reminds me of those old Colecovision controllers....[/aside]
That is the worst idea anyone has ever had.
Personal pride isn't important to you? That sort of reminds me of a conversation between the Bobs and Michael Bolton.... Good idea. We need more people like you to sacrifice everything to my company so that my company can make more money off of your suffering.
Obviously if you lie about what your software can currently do to make a sale, then it's fraud. If you say "we're planning on feature x in the future", and that's made clear when you broker a deal, then it's fine - there's still room for innovation and development, without being "stifled" as some posts suggest.
I think that if it was legally binding to deliver what you promise, the software industry might seriously benefit. It would mean more testing for the features they promise you, to make sure they work, otherwise they might go to jail!
The Pacific Geoscience Center in Sidney, B.C. has been working with Washington state for several years in running the Western Canada Deformation Array - the same idea as the one in the UK. You can read about it here: http://www.pgc.nrcan.gc.ca/geodyn/wcda/wcda_ov.htm
Also, "real" web designers develop what their clients ask for. If their clients ask for a web application that supports the "enabled" property for button objects, and you tell them "only IE supports that" - guess what? You do it anyway. You can throw all the standards documents you want into their faces, and they don't care and they won't pay for it, because all their customers use IE. I've been developing web pages since 1995, and clients have told me to REMOVE cross-browser scripting to save bandwidth.
So get on your high horses all you want, but IE IS the standard for right now.
Wait, wait! You totally get an added bonus with your Real subscription! Apple doesn't offer free windows registry modifications, free software trojans and free browser/OS shell hijacking with their service....
Yeah I can see the headlines of the national enquirer now:
HEATED WORDS EXCHANGED BETWEEN GEEKS! SOFTWARE NAMING RIFT CAUSES THE EARTH TO BE SPLIT APART!
You're right. It doesn't matter...
And with XML, you create a text file and put in whatever tags you'll like that day....
It sounds like a lot of people here are hooked on it... maybe someone should post some good reasons to download it? Or update their web site? Otherwise this story is pretty much only interesting to those who already have it....
Science journalism is a wonderful thing for forwarding discussions, publishing findings and debating top minds in the field about your scientific ideas. Unfortunately, it is slow, expensive to buy if you're in the private sector, and (necessarily) written to a target audience, which is generally the other top brains in your sub-sub-sub-discipline.
How can it better communicate to the general public about science and the scientific method?
How can't it? I worked as a geological assistant for 4 years in a government funded marine geology and geophysics institution. Not only did I get to play with cool toys, but I had to proofread dozens of papers (not to mention all the ones for my courses) for all the bigwig scientists there. Just for fun, I would instant-message various paragraphs from these papers to my buddies (all university grads) and try to see if they could figure them out. They couldn't. It's impossible. Every discipline invents its own language of jargon. This makes it impossible for media to read it. Therefore, when being interviewed, scientists always "boil it down" for the public, and try to add some hook, often based in science fiction, to bring popularity to their research. And you wonder why the media can't report it properly? Because they can't read it! There should be more journals devoted to explaining new findings in everyday language that people can understand if they want to communicate it better!
Can science journalism do a better job of helping people distinguish science from pseudoscience?
Of course... you can always do things better. In this case, stop trying to add the "hooks". It only fuels rumor. Don't say "we teleported something!" when what really happened was they destroyed a photon, measured it and reconstructed it. The media can't even get Einstein's famous lines right...how can they distinguish the difference between that and teleporting matter?
Obvious pseudoscience needs to be publicly questioned in an entertaining way, so that frauds and mistakes are exposed and popularized. Whenever pseudoscience is ridiculed in the literature, it's done in jargon and subtlety. We need some scientist reality show, where they test each other's theories and the winners get to go on a date or something. Hilarity ensues!
So he would have us believe that this is "instant money" by getting rid of support staff and cutting admin tasks. But the keywords here are "authorized machines".... unless this thing is a giant security black hole, that authorization still needs to be set up! I would say that it's not quite the savings that the author seems to think it is.
If by "antipathy" you mean "violent hatred", you win! It missed a reason why I view them this way though - the fact that they have turned the popular music scene into a mechanical whore for the guys upstairs.
Can they soften their image? Aren't they surpassing Microsoft and Kim Jong II on the list of evil things we hate?
Second of all, does anyone notice any similarities in Al's response and the movie "Bowling for Columbine"? He..just...doesn't...get it!
In fact, many governments do seismic monitoring (read: spying) specifically for underground blasts so they know who's letting off bombs.
I have worked at the Pacific Geoscience Centre in Sidney, BC, Canada for 4 years and have a close friend who worked on doing signal interpretation for several months.
"Unassociated events" are the ones they can't put a finger on what caused it. That's why these scientists were looking at those specific records.
Drill to the center of the earth? Bwahahahah!! The deepest drill hole ever made is 40,000 feet! That's not even half the thickness of the crust, and that took the Russians an entire decade to drill it! The crust hardly registers on a diagram showing the thickness of the earth....it would take a very long time to develop the technology to reach the core of the earth.
Thought you guys might appreciate this little project I've been working on. I also appreciate watching my server implode under the weight of a firm /.'ing!
So are metres!
There is an alternative to so called "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds" though. Diamonds have been discovered in canada in the last 10 years, and were initially produced by junior companies. de Beers has already bought out at least one of the diamond sites, scheduled for production in 2006, but diamond production in Canada since 1991 has been of the highest ethical quality. You can tell Canadian produced diamonds as they are laser inscribed with a microscopic polar bear outline (although I think some jewellers now use an inscribed maple leaf inside a diamond outline).
Here are some good articles:
All you ever wanted to learn about how diamonds form
Police warning about Canadian diamonds
Information on the original diamond mine in Canada [pdf]
<BLINK 3D>
HI! This is my GEOCITIES WEB SIGHT!
..
..
</BLINK 3D>
you know it's going to happen...
don't worry, I'm sure microsoft is working on that one. And they will be an integral, unseperatable part of windows OS...