Even though it doesn't look like this generation of phones will have this ability, I think it is something that Apple should look into. I know that companies make devices that will tell you what song is on the radio, when given either a sample or what station you are listening to. I think this idea taken to the next level would be to have iTMS on your phone, maybe not to listen to all the time but for spontaneous purchases, like when you hear a good song on the radio or a friend tells you about something you should listen to. In either case, I usually never write it down and completely forget about it by the time I get home.
Here is the article I had in mind while I was writing this. It is an interesting read even if you do not agree with it.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0203/article s/heeren.html
I thought of this after writing my previous post, but I thought I should mention it anyway. If the Bible is just a giant fairy tale, why create such a story? It is pretty much historical fact that Jesus did exist, so it is probably safe to assume that the people in the Bible are who the claim to be. There was absolutely no personal gain for them in writing the passages that they wrote in the Bible. Almost all of Jesus's apostles met horrible deaths as well as many of the other early Christians. Also, the Bible shows how humans tend towards evil and it points out our mistakes as well as the fact that we cannot save ourselves. If you think about it, who would really want to believe in something like that? I believe it because I realize it to be true and I feel how God has worked and continues to work in my life. The Bible is much more than a fairy tale and it is the only thing in this world that is absolute Truth. Perhaps you should read it, then you can decide for yourself if you still think it is a fairy tale or not.
I don't know if you have ever read the Bible, but it is very profound. The ideas and tendencies inherit in all humans that it speaks of hold true even today. It is much more than a fairy tale. Like it or not, the Bible and Christian morals are the basis for our core laws and the laws of many other nations.
As far as what you said about not using my brain, I resent that. What does believing in God have to do with my level of intelligence? I have studied much science and I believe that it should be used as a guideline -- it is a means to an end -- a way to predict the outcome of certain situations. However, I do not believe that it should be considered absolute truth. If you cannot see the need for a savior in your own life, then I am sorry for you and you have my prayers.
I'm sorry but I find your post so ironic. You obviously put much faith in science and look down upon "human make-believe". In this light, I present to you: is science really anything more than human make-believe? Honestly, humans, like any other creature, often make mistakes and scientists are no different. Just the other day Stephen Hawking corrected one of his previous theories, something that he was so sure of earlier in his life. Reality and physics are things that are defined by the human mind. If you find it easy to put your faith in something that humans created, I find it even easier to put my faith into the idea that there is a God who created humans as well as life and the universe.
I know and that is why I think that even if life does exist (and even if it is mildly intelligent) we will probably never make contact with it or detect it, thus why the SETI project will never have any results.
Ah yes...good old quantum physics. If what you say does turn out to be true then we could just be the existence with only one planet with life on it as well. I don't know if I buy the whole multiverse idea. Personally, I believe there could be multiple dimensions, but I'm not sure about multiple universes (wow that has to be bad grammar).
Why would that make God stupid? If you could create something with so much beauty and mystery that it made people think of you, wouldn't you want to do that? I mean, outerspace has been called for a long time "The Heavens" and many cultures thoughout history have studied the stars and looked upon them as giving insight to a god. I don't see any logical reason why not to do it. It's not like God has a budget to work on or a manager to answer to:)
One of the points mentioned in the research I read stated that the universe might need to be so large in order for us to have relative stability on earth. If that is not the case, I don't really know what that means. I find it difficult to attempt to figure out what God was thinking when he created the universe. Since everything seems to work in a system and have a pretty decent reason, I think it might be entirely logical that the unverise was created simply for our existence.
""how unique our planet really is"... just like how unique the latest lotto winner is. And yet people do win lotto. When you have 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each and billions of years, well that's a lot of planets in the lottery."
I realize what you are saying here...but the research that I read made it seems as if we are unique to the point where having billions of galaxys would make little differnce. I know I'm not expressing myself as well as I should be, and I don't have the sources off-hand. Perhaps when I get home I will look them up and post them.
Well, not exactly sentience, but intelligent to the point of being able to construct some sort of communication device. Even if there was life on another planet, I find it very doubtful that they would have communications that we could detect on earth.
Ok, I think the comment about the ants came out wrong. I didn't mean to say that because ants have existed for a long time they should have evolved into intelligent creatures. What I meant was, they have survived for (possibly) millions of years without needing much intelligence. Obviously their survival isn't dependant upon their intelligence, so intelligence must not be the only thing that is needed for survival. Thats what makes me wonder. If evolution (on the large scale from one species to another) is true, then why would humans have so much intelligence? I don't really think I'm ignoring any evidence. I know how genetically similar we are to apes, but I still feel that we are fundamentally different (even if describing that difference in DNA doesnt' take much code).
I'm not convinced that there is life outside of earth to find. Even more so, I really doubt that if we find another planet that harbors life, it will contain intelligent life.
Scientists are just beginning to learn how unique our planet really is. Things such as our cosmic location to even our (relatively) overly large moon add into the stability of our planet.
Also, (and this is more of my own opinion) intelligence seems to be overrated as far as what we see on earth. For instance, apes are among the most intelligent creatures on earth, yet they do not have radio communications. Ants, on the other hand, have been around for millenia, yet are very simple creatures. If intelligence was such an important factor to survival, I think we would see more animals on earth nearing human intelligence. I also believe in divine creation of humans, the idea of which, I think, is helped out by the fact that we are so unique amoung all the species on earth.
Thats good to know...I'm thinking about buying an iBook and would like to find out from someone other than Apple exactly how rugged they are. Also, how about putting the iBook in a bookbag with other books or something of that sort? One of my other big concerns would be hard drive life. I know that the hard drive is supposedly in a ruberized chamber, but do you ever carry yours around w/ the drive spinning? Also, when the computer is hibernating, does the drive stop spinning?
thanks
The Xbox does pretty well in the west, and from what I've read it can currently be considered in "second place" being a small amount more successful than Gamecube.
I think the reason for that may be that this console is the only one with a decidedly wester approach to its hardware and software. Pretty much only Xbox has very western RPGs that are outstanding (KOTOR and Morrowind) and plenty more on the way. Also there are many good FPS games as well. Since these two genres are my favorite I enjoy the Xbox. Now I know that in Japan, Japanese style RPGs are probably the most popular for obvious reasons and I'm not really sure how popular western games are over there (although I heard that there is a healthy import market for American games, maybe you can tell me for sure). Also, I heard that the Xbox is much too large for most Japanese people to want in their homes. Is this true? I would imagine that hardcore gamers wouldn't care about the size.
You post has made me wonder: at what point does something stop becoming a vulnerability and just complete user stupidity? For instance, in IE you can have it ask if it should run an ActiveX on any given webpage, but with a user like the one you mentioned that doesn't seem to stop and make him think if a certain webpage really needs to use ActiveX scripting. Now whose fault should that be? Microsoft's? or the users?
I think in fairness here I should note that Mozilla/Firefox's XPI interface could be used in a similar way to have "viruses" or harmful code installed simply because the user clicked yes.
I think that if I was to create boxed sets of viruses or harmful applications that simply wipe out a users data, stick them on store shelves, and give them an appealing slogan on the box, eventually some user would install that package on their computer. Now, can that be considered a hole in the os? I should think not, afterall the user intentionally installed the software. I think a similar argument can be made about ActiveX or XPI, just that these systems make it overly easy to get someone else's code running on your system. After all, that was what they were designed to do in the first place.
Once a program has warning windows telling the user to make sure they really want to run the code that the website has presented the program has done all it can to make sure only legit code is run. Now, I don't like ActiveX and think it is a large vulnerability but I think that at some point you really have to blame the user.
One thing MS needs to do is provide a warning that ActiveX (and other technologies) is about to be used the default setting (I like the way the XPI warning box in Firefox works). However, even if MS used a warning like this: "Warning! Clicking yes may seriously jepordize your computer and all the information on it!" people would still probably click yes without thinking, especially if they visit trused sites that use a lot of ActiveX.
I think at this point we should blame the user. After all, they are the one who is supposed to be in controll, the one telling the computer what to do. They should also be held accountable of making decisions that are healthy for the computer. I mean the human is infinetly more intelligent than the computer, so why should the computer be the one trying to think for the human? However, the sad truth is that most users are just not educated enough to make good desicions for themselves and their computers.
Meh...I'm not really exited by either of these technologies. I've used similar widget programs for Win XP and they are kind of neat for a few days...then they just got annoying, at least to me. I can't really see myself using the Sidebar or the Dashboard. I rather have my desktop the way it is now.
While it might not really be a startling reaction from the players point of view, I can imagine being pleasantly surprised if I developed the game and knew that it was not scripted. I mean most people say that games have good AI if they manage to take cover when you try to destroy them, but actually destroying a bridge to hinder the player or doing other actions stop the player from reaching their goals really is unheard of in gaming today (at least any game that I can think of).
Now I didn't view the HL2 at all and haven't compared what they said was not scripted to what actually was, so I am just taking a guess here as to what they may mean. Perhaps when they say that things weren't scripted they mean that the NPC's reaction to the situation wasn't scripted. For instance, there might be a script to open a door, but it is the NPC's choice as to what action is better: opening the door or simply trying to shoot through a window or other opening. Also, for the scene when the strider blows up the bridge perhaps exploding the bridge is a scripted action, but the choice to do so might not be. For instance, the strider's AI might have noticed that the player was most likely heading for a goal on the other side of the bridge and the best way to slow the player down was to destroy the bridge, this contrasts to the typical AI response of just blasting away at the character (which may be the best course of action depending on the situation). While the animation of the bridge being destroyed might have been scripted it is possible that the characters reaction in the sitution was decided on the fly and not something like this: if character passes certain point, destroy bridge.
Yes...internships are a great way to go. My university has a co-op program as part of the curriculum meaning that after the freshman year, 6 months are spent on co-op and the other 6 months in class. I start my first co-op this fall and I have already found a job with a large company. Now, I am only a Sophomore so surely a graduate has to have more skills and experience than me. I would suggest that anyone who can get into an internship or co-op program should while they still can.
The problem with having a trusted site list is that sometimes even the trusted sites have problems. In articles talking about this exploit, a few mention how large companies have exploits in their severs that allow hackers to blindly redirect users to Russian websites where various trojans and viruses are installed. Who is to say that my favorite website has not been hijacked without me or the company knowing it?
Slashdot Mirror
Even though it doesn't look like this generation of phones will have this ability, I think it is something that Apple should look into. I know that companies make devices that will tell you what song is on the radio, when given either a sample or what station you are listening to. I think this idea taken to the next level would be to have iTMS on your phone, maybe not to listen to all the time but for spontaneous purchases, like when you hear a good song on the radio or a friend tells you about something you should listen to. In either case, I usually never write it down and completely forget about it by the time I get home.
Now Kevin will have load tests for his web server too!
Here is the article I had in mind while I was writing this. It is an interesting read even if you do not agree with it.e s/heeren.html
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0203/articl
I thought of this after writing my previous post, but I thought I should mention it anyway. If the Bible is just a giant fairy tale, why create such a story? It is pretty much historical fact that Jesus did exist, so it is probably safe to assume that the people in the Bible are who the claim to be. There was absolutely no personal gain for them in writing the passages that they wrote in the Bible. Almost all of Jesus's apostles met horrible deaths as well as many of the other early Christians. Also, the Bible shows how humans tend towards evil and it points out our mistakes as well as the fact that we cannot save ourselves. If you think about it, who would really want to believe in something like that? I believe it because I realize it to be true and I feel how God has worked and continues to work in my life. The Bible is much more than a fairy tale and it is the only thing in this world that is absolute Truth. Perhaps you should read it, then you can decide for yourself if you still think it is a fairy tale or not.
I don't know if you have ever read the Bible, but it is very profound. The ideas and tendencies inherit in all humans that it speaks of hold true even today. It is much more than a fairy tale. Like it or not, the Bible and Christian morals are the basis for our core laws and the laws of many other nations.
As far as what you said about not using my brain, I resent that. What does believing in God have to do with my level of intelligence? I have studied much science and I believe that it should be used as a guideline -- it is a means to an end -- a way to predict the outcome of certain situations. However, I do not believe that it should be considered absolute truth. If you cannot see the need for a savior in your own life, then I am sorry for you and you have my prayers.
I'm sorry but I find your post so ironic. You obviously put much faith in science and look down upon "human make-believe". In this light, I present to you: is science really anything more than human make-believe? Honestly, humans, like any other creature, often make mistakes and scientists are no different. Just the other day Stephen Hawking corrected one of his previous theories, something that he was so sure of earlier in his life. Reality and physics are things that are defined by the human mind. If you find it easy to put your faith in something that humans created, I find it even easier to put my faith into the idea that there is a God who created humans as well as life and the universe.
"Radio communication =! intelligence."
I know and that is why I think that even if life does exist (and even if it is mildly intelligent) we will probably never make contact with it or detect it, thus why the SETI project will never have any results.
Ah yes...good old quantum physics. If what you say does turn out to be true then we could just be the existence with only one planet with life on it as well. I don't know if I buy the whole multiverse idea. Personally, I believe there could be multiple dimensions, but I'm not sure about multiple universes (wow that has to be bad grammar).
Why would that make God stupid? If you could create something with so much beauty and mystery that it made people think of you, wouldn't you want to do that? I mean, outerspace has been called for a long time "The Heavens" and many cultures thoughout history have studied the stars and looked upon them as giving insight to a god. I don't see any logical reason why not to do it. It's not like God has a budget to work on or a manager to answer to :)
One of the points mentioned in the research I read stated that the universe might need to be so large in order for us to have relative stability on earth. If that is not the case, I don't really know what that means. I find it difficult to attempt to figure out what God was thinking when he created the universe. Since everything seems to work in a system and have a pretty decent reason, I think it might be entirely logical that the unverise was created simply for our existence.
""how unique our planet really is"... just like how unique the latest lotto winner is. And yet people do win lotto. When you have 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each and billions of years, well that's a lot of planets in the lottery."
I realize what you are saying here...but the research that I read made it seems as if we are unique to the point where having billions of galaxys would make little differnce. I know I'm not expressing myself as well as I should be, and I don't have the sources off-hand. Perhaps when I get home I will look them up and post them.
Well, not exactly sentience, but intelligent to the point of being able to construct some sort of communication device. Even if there was life on another planet, I find it very doubtful that they would have communications that we could detect on earth.
Ok, I think the comment about the ants came out wrong. I didn't mean to say that because ants have existed for a long time they should have evolved into intelligent creatures. What I meant was, they have survived for (possibly) millions of years without needing much intelligence. Obviously their survival isn't dependant upon their intelligence, so intelligence must not be the only thing that is needed for survival. Thats what makes me wonder. If evolution (on the large scale from one species to another) is true, then why would humans have so much intelligence? I don't really think I'm ignoring any evidence. I know how genetically similar we are to apes, but I still feel that we are fundamentally different (even if describing that difference in DNA doesnt' take much code).
I'm not convinced that there is life outside of earth to find. Even more so, I really doubt that if we find another planet that harbors life, it will contain intelligent life. Scientists are just beginning to learn how unique our planet really is. Things such as our cosmic location to even our (relatively) overly large moon add into the stability of our planet. Also, (and this is more of my own opinion) intelligence seems to be overrated as far as what we see on earth. For instance, apes are among the most intelligent creatures on earth, yet they do not have radio communications. Ants, on the other hand, have been around for millenia, yet are very simple creatures. If intelligence was such an important factor to survival, I think we would see more animals on earth nearing human intelligence. I also believe in divine creation of humans, the idea of which, I think, is helped out by the fact that we are so unique amoung all the species on earth.
Well at least they aren't calling it NewSpeak that wou ^^[$%@^h!# SIGNAL LOST
Thats good to know...I'm thinking about buying an iBook and would like to find out from someone other than Apple exactly how rugged they are. Also, how about putting the iBook in a bookbag with other books or something of that sort? One of my other big concerns would be hard drive life. I know that the hard drive is supposedly in a ruberized chamber, but do you ever carry yours around w/ the drive spinning? Also, when the computer is hibernating, does the drive stop spinning? thanks
The Xbox does pretty well in the west, and from what I've read it can currently be considered in "second place" being a small amount more successful than Gamecube.
I think the reason for that may be that this console is the only one with a decidedly wester approach to its hardware and software. Pretty much only Xbox has very western RPGs that are outstanding (KOTOR and Morrowind) and plenty more on the way. Also there are many good FPS games as well. Since these two genres are my favorite I enjoy the Xbox. Now I know that in Japan, Japanese style RPGs are probably the most popular for obvious reasons and I'm not really sure how popular western games are over there (although I heard that there is a healthy import market for American games, maybe you can tell me for sure). Also, I heard that the Xbox is much too large for most Japanese people to want in their homes. Is this true? I would imagine that hardcore gamers wouldn't care about the size.
AV Guy: Man you are really sloppy! Virus Writer: Sloppy like a fox!
In Soviet Russia, you don't play video games...video games play you!
You post has made me wonder: at what point does something stop becoming a vulnerability and just complete user stupidity? For instance, in IE you can have it ask if it should run an ActiveX on any given webpage, but with a user like the one you mentioned that doesn't seem to stop and make him think if a certain webpage really needs to use ActiveX scripting. Now whose fault should that be? Microsoft's? or the users? I think in fairness here I should note that Mozilla/Firefox's XPI interface could be used in a similar way to have "viruses" or harmful code installed simply because the user clicked yes.
I think that if I was to create boxed sets of viruses or harmful applications that simply wipe out a users data, stick them on store shelves, and give them an appealing slogan on the box, eventually some user would install that package on their computer. Now, can that be considered a hole in the os? I should think not, afterall the user intentionally installed the software. I think a similar argument can be made about ActiveX or XPI, just that these systems make it overly easy to get someone else's code running on your system. After all, that was what they were designed to do in the first place.
Once a program has warning windows telling the user to make sure they really want to run the code that the website has presented the program has done all it can to make sure only legit code is run. Now, I don't like ActiveX and think it is a large vulnerability but I think that at some point you really have to blame the user.
One thing MS needs to do is provide a warning that ActiveX (and other technologies) is about to be used the default setting (I like the way the XPI warning box in Firefox works). However, even if MS used a warning like this: "Warning! Clicking yes may seriously jepordize your computer and all the information on it!" people would still probably click yes without thinking, especially if they visit trused sites that use a lot of ActiveX.
I think at this point we should blame the user. After all, they are the one who is supposed to be in controll, the one telling the computer what to do. They should also be held accountable of making decisions that are healthy for the computer. I mean the human is infinetly more intelligent than the computer, so why should the computer be the one trying to think for the human? However, the sad truth is that most users are just not educated enough to make good desicions for themselves and their computers.
Meh...I'm not really exited by either of these technologies. I've used similar widget programs for Win XP and they are kind of neat for a few days...then they just got annoying, at least to me. I can't really see myself using the Sidebar or the Dashboard. I rather have my desktop the way it is now.
While it might not really be a startling reaction from the players point of view, I can imagine being pleasantly surprised if I developed the game and knew that it was not scripted. I mean most people say that games have good AI if they manage to take cover when you try to destroy them, but actually destroying a bridge to hinder the player or doing other actions stop the player from reaching their goals really is unheard of in gaming today (at least any game that I can think of).
Now I didn't view the HL2 at all and haven't compared what they said was not scripted to what actually was, so I am just taking a guess here as to what they may mean. Perhaps when they say that things weren't scripted they mean that the NPC's reaction to the situation wasn't scripted. For instance, there might be a script to open a door, but it is the NPC's choice as to what action is better: opening the door or simply trying to shoot through a window or other opening. Also, for the scene when the strider blows up the bridge perhaps exploding the bridge is a scripted action, but the choice to do so might not be. For instance, the strider's AI might have noticed that the player was most likely heading for a goal on the other side of the bridge and the best way to slow the player down was to destroy the bridge, this contrasts to the typical AI response of just blasting away at the character (which may be the best course of action depending on the situation). While the animation of the bridge being destroyed might have been scripted it is possible that the characters reaction in the sitution was decided on the fly and not something like this: if character passes certain point, destroy bridge.
Yes...internships are a great way to go. My university has a co-op program as part of the curriculum meaning that after the freshman year, 6 months are spent on co-op and the other 6 months in class. I start my first co-op this fall and I have already found a job with a large company. Now, I am only a Sophomore so surely a graduate has to have more skills and experience than me. I would suggest that anyone who can get into an internship or co-op program should while they still can.
The problem with having a trusted site list is that sometimes even the trusted sites have problems. In articles talking about this exploit, a few mention how large companies have exploits in their severs that allow hackers to blindly redirect users to Russian websites where various trojans and viruses are installed. Who is to say that my favorite website has not been hijacked without me or the company knowing it?