If you're going to work through 900+ pages of a novel, may I also suggest David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest?
Or, in a mood that's similar to Cryptonomicon, there's Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
The only work of fiction that took me over a week to complete -- it took me two months --, it's a dense, hilarious, and geek-appealling book about... well, it centers on the Nazi V-2 rocket, anyway, and a certain Slothrop, whose erections predict where the V-2s will land.
Re:So ... who's sister-in-law is it REALLY?
on
Microwave Fun
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I was typing away like a madman because I was sure someone else was going to beat me to it.:-)
>/--------\ > Cesium atom ---- Internet ---> quantum computing > \--------/
> Obviously you've never written a business proposal > before.
No, obviously YOU have not. The proper proposal looks like this:
/--------\ Collect underpants ---> Cesium atom ---- Internet ---> ??? ---> quantum computing \--------/
Re:So ... who's sister-in-law is it REALLY?
on
Microwave Fun
·
· Score: 1
We have read the parent post before.
Damn you, orangepeel, you beat me to posting the link to the previous post by seconds.:)
I suspect the current poster, Ophidian P. Jones (466787) must be the imposter, as the copied post really isn't on topic for this article; they both just happen to share the word "laser".
The original post, however, was on topic, and pretty interesting reading. Interesting enough that apparently several of us recalled it.
Hmm, where's -1 Plagiarism? (Or is it ok if you downloaded the orginal article via P2P;)? )
And do you have any friends?.... I don't see how being a corporate-whore "I won't even burn a CD for close friends, or rip their CDs -- despite the 32 GB of free space on my portable" deserves "Insightful
Fewer and fewer friends everyday. I prefer to think I'm distilling my friendships to the pure essence, but it's more likely I'm just obnoxious and disliked.
But it's not a matter of being a "corporate whore", it's a matter of self-respect: I entered into an agreement (explicitly so, with emusic.com, implicitly with US copyright law if you buy into a Social Contract theory) not to redistribute the musical works I've bought.
And I haven't yet reached the point that I feel the "train of abuses and usurpations" has continued long enough to impel me to "alter... former Systems" and unilaterally adopt new Systems (of course, I'm liberally paraphrasing another product of of Social Contract theorists).
At some point (soon) I may come to agree with you, and start "fighting the Man", but I think it's still necessary to make the point that I don't expect my music for free, but I do expect to be resected as a consumer, and I do expect the freedom to listen to what I purchase.
I will agree to storm the barricades with you if and when Digital Restriction Management is made mandatory. But so far, these rights have not been trodden on, so I can't agree with you.
Just out of curiosity, which copyright do you 'respect'? The length of copyright that was in the US 100 years ago, the one 60 years ago, the one 40 years ago, the one 6 years ago, or the one today?
It's a good point you implicitly make: why should we respect copyright if, as the trend suggests, it will be extended every time Disney needs it to keep Mickey Mouse in chains.
One the one hand, you could certainbly make a case that copyright should be perpetual: why should mere passges of years make my unique creation any less mine?
On the other hand, we see that (to rip off something that the author of Ecclesiastes and King James's translators failed to copyright) "there is no new thing under the sun", or at least vanishingly little in the creative arts. And even in the sciences, method builds on method, yesterday's astounding discovery becomes today's paradigm and tomorrow's common-place. Even many of Disney's most profitable copyrights were re-tellings of stories which had passed into the common domain.
Given that both these opposing viewpoints seem defensible, and add in the idea that copyright law should ultimately benefit the society that laws shape, and it's not at all clear that there is a "bright line" demarcation of the "right" or even the "optimal" length of copyright.
Perhaps the answer is that a fixed term of years isn't the answer, and that we need some other way of determining how best to both promote creativelty and prvide the fruits of the creativity to as much of mankind as possible.
I'm sorry if this is a weasal-worded and too verbose non-answer to a straight forward question; if I had more time, I'd have written with more brevity (and that's a paraphrase -- or a rip off -- also, from some scientist, I've forgetten whom).
New technology allows the consumer to use the downloaded content, but not distribute it outside of their home.
Because you should have to pay twice if you want to play the music on a portable mp3 player.
And of course, no open source mp3 software, because I could compile it with -DNO_DRM.
Well, Sony, guess what? Having my music conveniently on my PC and on my mp3 portableplayer is what motivates me to buy the music in the first place.
And guess what? I do respect copyright; I won't even burn a CD for close friends, or rip their CDs -- despite the 32 GB of free space on my portable.
And I'll continue to respect your copyright: I just won't buy your cripple-ware.
I can find plenty of great music on old LPs, on real (Phillips-Sony Red Book Standard), from emusic.com, and from independent labels.
Let me repeat: I don't want your cripple-ware. It does me no good since it won't play on the hardware I control (it only plays on hardware I buy and you control). So it will do you no good -- I won't exchange my money for it.
The more new releases you distribute exclusively as cripple-ware, the more alternatives will be produced. And that's what I'll be buying.
I'll tell you: just what we did to Intuit: kick Symantec where it hurts, in the pocketbook, until Symantec is ready to disavow Chris Schwarz and his attempts to limit free speech and free inquiry in the name of profit.
I've always had a soft spot for Symantec because of that awesome DOS product, Norton Utilities. And I still have a copy of Peter Norton's 8086 assembler tutorial. Just saw it yesterday, but now I can't recall which bookcase it's in.
But no more. I'm afraid this uses up my good will, and my willingness to see Symantec as the "good guys".
First, let's let Symantec know how we feel. The main switchboard number in the US is (541) 335-5000. The worldwide headquarters number is (408) 517-8000. Tell them you're a computer professional or enthusiast, that many non-specialists rely on you for advice, and that you won't be recommending their products again. And tell them why: because Chris Schwarz whats to criminalize people like you for warning other people about security vulnerabilities.
And then let's do what we said we'd do:
don't buy Symantec products;
don't recommend Symantec;
actively recommend against Symantec;
and tell your friends, your colleagues, your family, exactly why: Symantec wants to suppress free speech in order to maintain a monopoly;
explain that Symantec wants to throw into jail (that's what happens when you outlaw something) computer professionals like yourself just because they would warn people of real threats to their security.
It would make things like "Build your own virus" kits illegal. It's how the majority of virus writers formulate their viruses. They sure as hell couldn't write their own code.
Well, you're quite right. It would make virus building kits illegal.
But Schwarz also wants "to make it a criminal offense to share information". This means that indentifying a security vulnerability could also be prosecuted.
Now, Symantec won't be prosecuted, because they'll keep vulnerability information close to their corporate chest, as "proprietary trade secrets"; they don't benefit from revealing the information. And they'll make sure to make the right bi-partisan contributions, so everybody will know they are good upstanding citizens.
But if you, or I, or Willie White-Hat Hacker publicizes the information, we'll be facing one of Mr. Ashcroft's boys. One of his prosecuters with the unlimited budget, the Federal warrant, and the granite-faced gentlemen who are paid to carry guns.
That this just happens to scare off any upstart competitor to Symantec and MacAfee's control of their market, is, I'm sure, a purely unintended consequence of the fight against terrorism and the terrible threat to our nation of a haxored box adding a few hundred more spam emails to the torrent already flowing in from China.
With everyone and their uncle updating their Windows these days to be safe from the latest viruses and worms, this is definitely a very good moment to push a DRM patch...
And will it be included in the auto-update I and others have come to rely on?
And will it be sandwiched in with 7 other patches, so I don't even see it?
And will it be an un-doable patch (some are) or not (some are not)?
That isn't any sort of encrypted text. It is simply a (pathetic) attempt of evading filters...
You insensitive clod!
You've ruined the poor boy's dream!
Just think of the hours of fun he could have had "cracking" the "code".
Just think of the elaborate code -- and equally elaborate conspiracy behind it -- he might have created in a desperate obsession to make his data fit his theory!
I have an address I used for about three months on usenet, only in the comp.lang hierarchy.
I may have used it for a few web sites, but the only one I recall is a local political organization which I doubt would have sold, or had the expertise to sell, its list. Still, the data is tainted, and I can't say it all comes from usenet.
According to DejaGoogle, I last used it 18 April 2002, and it was last referenced in a follow-up message 5 May 2002. I first used it 15 February 2002.
For a while I had my ISP forward mail to that address to "nothing" until I worried it might be piling up on the server somewhere (I don't know what forwarding to "nothing" means in the ISP's web control panel). So there are no messages for most of the month of May 2003.
Disregarding the emails from the political organization, there are 1733 emails; the earliest is dated 16 July 2002, the lastest today 21 Sep 2003. (There are probably earlier emails to this address which have been archived.)
So that's a span of 432 days, not subtracting the period when I wasn't having the email forwarded. Again not subtracting the un-forwarded days, that's ~4 per day.
Note that this is only spam to this particular "sacrificial" address; it does not count the large amount of spam that, thanks to having some idiots as "friends", hits my "real" address.
I have not been subject to any dictionary attacks on my domain name, but I have gotten about 105 spams to admin@mydomain in the same time period. This pushes the daily average to ~4.25/day.
Since I started getting a lot of spam, I've made a practice of assigning each commerical contact or mailing list a different address (theirdomain.tld@mydomain.tld generally); surprisingly, these get very little spam, despite getting large volumes of legitimate mail each day.
I heard on the radio that there was a chance the plutonium in the probe was going to ignite Jupiter into a second star, and it would kill/sterilize most humans on Earth!
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - NASA probe Galileo was incinerated in Jupiter's atmosphere this afternoon. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it - even if you didn't enjoy its transmissions, there's no denying its contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Miss seeing Galileo crash into Jupiter
or Spend thirty minutes clicking half a dozen hidden, misleadingly named submenu checkboxes to retain my privacy. And then spend three days un-doing RealPlayer's attempt to take over my entire system and all file extensions.
Screw it. I won't download any insertions into bodies no matter how heavenly if it's in RealPlayer format. Definitely not gonna start with something's that not porn. I'll catch the 2 minute recap on the news.
I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery.
Have you tried adding the words "computer" or "fruit" to your query?;-)
But that's precisely my point: only the most pedantic writer is going to qualify which sort of apple he's talking about, because he'll expect his reader to pick it up from context.
Consider: the author won't write:
I compiled the program on my Apple McIntosh (a computer)
and he won't write a recipe specifying:
Recipe: 1/2 pound thinly sliced apples (the fruit)
The reader is expected, in anything other than a children's book, to figure out that "compile" and "program" make the Apple unambiguosly a computer; likewise the heading "Recipe" and "thinly sliced" clue in the reader that we expect him to slice fruits, not silicon.
But the universe of possible context clues is far too big to specify everytime I want to do a full-text search: "compile", and "program" indicate a computer, but so would "IRC", "firewall" and "slashdot", and the list goes on and on. Unless adding the word "computer" also implicity adds the thousands of context clues that tell the reader an Apple computer, not a red fruit, is being written about, a full-text search isn't as helpful as you might guess.
The ideal system would be a free-text search of all the books in the catalogue.
You make a very good point that a hierarchical system isn't suitable for cataloging. I have the same problem with my more than 6000 (all legally acquired) MP3s: Artists span Genres, Albums contain works by more than one Composer, Artists may appear in more than one Group/Band/Orchestra, etc.
But free-text search isn't a great solution; we've all seen that with Google: I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery.
In these cases, an abstract is more useful than a full-text search.
It also seriously undermines the whole point of the ISO. The idea is to create standards that everybody will use so that we can communicate with each other.
Mod parent up; this is perhaps even more central than the standard argument over IP.
The ISO ( International Organization for Standardization) exists to facilitate (make easier) the interchnage of ideas, products, software -- culture in general -- by creating commonly accepted -- standardized -- mechanisms of interchange.
By charging for these common mechanisms, they pervert their whole purpose: it's like saying we should all speak a common language, and "that'll be $9.95 for the first 50 words", or like advocating a common currency only to annnounce you'll skim off 5% as a special taz for anyone using it. What next? Royalties on the use of mettric units?
Attempts to charge for the use of these standards just means creating a alternative community that doesn't standardize because it's cheaper not to.
But I'm just echoing the parent comment, which deserves to be modded up.
You know what's surprising? I listed all these cameras on various web directories and they rank #1 on several google searches, but I still don't get all that many hits.
Somehow I'm not surprised.
Invite over some hot young chicks.
I can look at a hairy geek who'd wire his house for no good reason with a much more convenient low-tech device with a far higher frame rate. It's called a mirror.
1. The X-10.com video cameras (yes, the ubiquitous pop-up adds) apparently broadcast over the same spectrum as 802.11b, and 802.11b receivers can monitor them.
2. The above comes from a Slashdot article on "war watching": monitoring other people's wireless camera transmissions, but I can't seem to find it searching Slashdot. An important point comment made in that article (not by me) was that without encryption, a camera can reduce your security, by showing a potential intruder what the inside of your home looks like, when you're not in it, and how to avoid vbeing captured on camera.
3. It's still unresolved what wireless transmission in the 802.11b bandwdth can do to human brains. I'd hesitate to use on in a baby's room, even though it's probably safe, preferrring to err on the side of caution where the developing juvenile brain is concerned.
Addressing point 2, does anyone know of a feasable way to encrypt an X10 camera? I have one I bought on a whim just to see what it could do, but I've never used it except for testing, becuase of point 2.
Programming with a time limit is not a great indication of how likely someone is to writes= robust, durable, re-usable code.
My best code usually results from refactoring, and is made up of several small classes made up of small functions, where each function does one thing and does it well, and each class has a well-defined role, usually in collaboration with other classes.
This is the result of crafting and thinking, not a result of typing as fast as I can, trying for a quick and dirty solution to one specific problem.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to work through 900+ pages of a novel, may I also suggest David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest?
Or, in a mood that's similar to Cryptonomicon, there's Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
The only work of fiction that took me over a week to complete -- it took me two months --, it's a dense, hilarious, and geek-appealling book about... well, it centers on the Nazi V-2 rocket, anyway, and a certain Slothrop, whose erections predict where the V-2s will land.
I was typing away like a madman because I was sure someone else was going to beat me to it. :-)
Apparently, all my base are belong to you.
Take off every 'sister-in-law'
> /--------\
/--------\
> Cesium atom ---- Internet ---> quantum computing
> \--------/
> Obviously you've never written a business proposal
> before.
No, obviously YOU have not. The proper proposal looks like this:
Collect underpants ---> Cesium atom ---- Internet ---> ??? ---> quantum computing
\--------/
We have read the parent post before.
:)
;)? )
Damn you, orangepeel, you beat me to posting the link to the previous post by seconds.
I suspect the current poster, Ophidian P. Jones (466787) must be the imposter, as the copied post really isn't on topic for this article; they both just happen to share the word "laser".
The original post, however, was on topic, and pretty interesting reading. Interesting enough that apparently several of us recalled it.
Hmm, where's -1 Plagiarism? (Or is it ok if you downloaded the orginal article via P2P
And do you have any friends? .... I don't see how being a corporate-whore "I won't even burn a CD for close friends, or rip their CDs -- despite the 32 GB of free space on my portable" deserves "Insightful
Fewer and fewer friends everyday. I prefer to think I'm distilling my friendships to the pure essence, but it's more likely I'm just obnoxious and disliked.
But it's not a matter of being a "corporate whore", it's a matter of self-respect: I entered into an agreement (explicitly so, with emusic.com, implicitly with US copyright law if you buy into a Social Contract theory) not to redistribute the musical works I've bought.
And I haven't yet reached the point that I feel the "train of abuses and usurpations" has continued long enough to impel me to "alter... former Systems" and unilaterally adopt new Systems (of course, I'm liberally paraphrasing another product of of Social Contract theorists).
At some point (soon) I may come to agree with you, and start "fighting the Man", but I think it's still necessary to make the point that I don't expect my music for free, but I do expect to be resected as a consumer, and I do expect the freedom to listen to what I purchase.
I will agree to storm the barricades with you if and when Digital Restriction Management is made mandatory. But so far, these rights have not been trodden on, so I can't agree with you.
Just out of curiosity, which copyright do you 'respect'? The length of copyright that was in the US 100 years ago, the one 60 years ago, the one 40 years ago, the one 6 years ago, or the one today?
It's a good point you implicitly make: why should we respect copyright if, as the trend suggests, it will be extended every time Disney needs it to keep Mickey Mouse in chains.
One the one hand, you could certainbly make a case that copyright should be perpetual: why should mere passges of years make my unique creation any less mine?
On the other hand, we see that (to rip off something that the author of Ecclesiastes and King James's translators failed to copyright) "there is no new thing under the sun", or at least vanishingly little in the creative arts. And even in the sciences, method builds on method, yesterday's astounding discovery becomes today's paradigm and tomorrow's common-place. Even many of Disney's most profitable copyrights were re-tellings of stories which had passed into the common domain.
Given that both these opposing viewpoints seem defensible, and add in the idea that copyright law should ultimately benefit the society that laws shape, and it's not at all clear that there is a "bright line" demarcation of the "right" or even the "optimal" length of copyright.
Perhaps the answer is that a fixed term of years isn't the answer, and that we need some other way of determining how best to both promote creativelty and prvide the fruits of the creativity to as much of mankind as possible.
I'm sorry if this is a weasal-worded and too verbose non-answer to a straight forward question; if I had more time, I'd have written with more brevity (and that's a paraphrase -- or a rip off -- also, from some scientist, I've forgetten whom).
New technology allows the consumer to use the downloaded content, but not distribute it outside of their home.
Because you should have to pay twice if you want to play the music on a portable mp3 player.
And of course, no open source mp3 software, because I could compile it with -DNO_DRM.
Well, Sony, guess what? Having my music conveniently on my PC and on my mp3 portableplayer is what motivates me to buy the music in the first place.
And guess what? I do respect copyright; I won't even burn a CD for close friends, or rip their CDs -- despite the 32 GB of free space on my portable.
And I'll continue to respect your copyright: I just won't buy your cripple-ware.
I can find plenty of great music on old LPs, on real (Phillips-Sony Red Book Standard), from emusic.com, and from independent labels.
Let me repeat: I don't want your cripple-ware. It does me no good since it won't play on the hardware I control (it only plays on hardware I buy and you control). So it will do you no good -- I won't exchange my money for it.
The more new releases you distribute exclusively as cripple-ware, the more alternatives will be produced. And that's what I'll be buying.
I'll tell you: just what we did to Intuit: kick Symantec where it hurts, in the pocketbook, until Symantec is ready to disavow Chris Schwarz and his attempts to limit free speech and free inquiry in the name of profit.
I've always had a soft spot for Symantec because of that awesome DOS product, Norton Utilities. And I still have a copy of Peter Norton's 8086 assembler tutorial. Just saw it yesterday, but now I can't recall which bookcase it's in.
But no more. I'm afraid this uses up my good will, and my willingness to see Symantec as the "good guys".
First, let's let Symantec know how we feel. The main switchboard number in the US is (541) 335-5000. The worldwide headquarters number is (408) 517-8000. Tell them you're a computer professional or enthusiast, that many non-specialists rely on you for advice, and that you won't be recommending their products again. And tell them why: because Chris Schwarz whats to criminalize people like you for warning other people about security vulnerabilities.
And then let's do what we said we'd do:
It would make things like "Build your own virus" kits illegal. It's how the majority of virus writers formulate their viruses. They sure as hell couldn't write their own code.
Well, you're quite right. It would make virus building kits illegal.
But Schwarz also wants "to make it a criminal offense to share information". This means that indentifying a security vulnerability could also be prosecuted.
Now, Symantec won't be prosecuted, because they'll keep vulnerability information close to their corporate chest, as "proprietary trade secrets"; they don't benefit from revealing the information. And they'll make sure to make the right bi-partisan contributions, so everybody will know they are good upstanding citizens.
But if you, or I, or Willie White-Hat Hacker publicizes the information, we'll be facing one of Mr. Ashcroft's boys. One of his prosecuters with the unlimited budget, the Federal warrant, and the granite-faced gentlemen who are paid to carry guns.
That this just happens to scare off any upstart competitor to Symantec and MacAfee's control of their market, is, I'm sure, a purely unintended consequence of the fight against terrorism and the terrible threat to our nation of a haxored box adding a few hundred more spam emails to the torrent already flowing in from China.
Open Letter to
the Honourable Pat Cox, the President of the European Parliament
Hu-hey, Beavis, uh, uh, he said "Pat Cox", hu-huh.
Ya know like "Pat Cox", like he's patting them, and, uh, uh, hu-hey, they're, uh, uh, cocks.
Huh-huh, "Honourable Pat Cox", hu-huh.
With everyone and their uncle updating their Windows these days to be safe from the latest viruses and worms, this is definitely a very good moment to push a DRM patch...
And will it be included in the auto-update I and others have come to rely on?
And will it be sandwiched in with 7 other patches, so I don't even see it?
And will it be an un-doable patch (some are) or not (some are not)?
That isn't any sort of encrypted text. It is simply a (pathetic) attempt of evading filters...
You insensitive clod!
You've ruined the poor boy's dream!
Just think of the hours of fun he could have had "cracking" the "code".
Just think of the elaborate code -- and equally elaborate conspiracy behind it -- he might have created in a desperate obsession to make his data fit his theory!
It could have been a new formularization to rival the Illuminati, Ancient Astronauts, secret codes in the Bible, or some other tortuous, contrived theory! Why, he might even have constructed the ultimate conspirarcy theory, a religion!
But no! You had to cruelly disillusion him. And rob us of the fruit(iness) of his labors.
For shame!
I have an address I used for about three months on usenet, only in the comp.lang hierarchy.
I may have used it for a few web sites, but the only one I recall is a local political organization which I doubt would have sold, or had the expertise to sell, its list. Still, the data is tainted, and I can't say it all comes from usenet.
According to DejaGoogle, I last used it 18 April 2002, and it was last referenced in a follow-up message 5 May 2002. I first used it 15 February 2002.
For a while I had my ISP forward mail to that address to "nothing" until I worried it might be piling up on the server somewhere (I don't know what forwarding to "nothing" means in the ISP's web control panel). So there are no messages for most of the month of May 2003.
Disregarding the emails from the political organization, there are 1733 emails; the earliest is dated 16 July 2002, the lastest today 21 Sep 2003. (There are probably earlier emails to this address which have been archived.)
So that's a span of 432 days, not subtracting the period when I wasn't having the email forwarded. Again not subtracting the un-forwarded days, that's ~4 per day.
Note that this is only spam to this particular "sacrificial" address; it does not count the large amount of spam that, thanks to having some idiots as "friends", hits my "real" address.
I have not been subject to any dictionary attacks on my domain name, but I have gotten about 105 spams to admin@mydomain in the same time period. This pushes the daily average to ~4.25/day.
Since I started getting a lot of spam, I've made a practice of assigning each commerical contact or mailing list a different address (theirdomain.tld@mydomain.tld generally); surprisingly, these get very little spam, despite getting large volumes of legitimate mail each day.
I heard on the radio that there was a chance the plutonium in the probe was going to ignite Jupiter into a second star, and it would kill/sterilize most humans on Earth!
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - NASA probe Galileo was incinerated in Jupiter's atmosphere this afternoon. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it - even if you didn't enjoy its transmissions, there's no denying its contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Maybe it will turn jupiter into a mini-sun, and the ice on Europa will start to melt, and the moon (now a planet) would slowly become habitable
I'm sorry, haven't you heard that Europa is forever off-limits to us?
The JPL's webcast starts roughly now
Crap. All NASA offers is RealPlayer.
Miss seeing Galileo crash into Jupiter
or
Spend thirty minutes clicking half a dozen hidden, misleadingly named submenu checkboxes to retain my privacy. And then spend three days un-doing RealPlayer's attempt to take over my entire system and all file extensions.
Screw it. I won't download any insertions into bodies no matter how heavenly if it's in RealPlayer format. Definitely not gonna start with something's that not porn. I'll catch the 2 minute recap on the news.
Have you tried adding the words "computer" or "fruit" to your query?
But that's precisely my point: only the most pedantic writer is going to qualify which sort of apple he's talking about, because he'll expect his reader to pick it up from context.
Consider: the author won't write:and he won't write a recipe specifying:
The reader is expected, in anything other than a children's book, to figure out that "compile" and "program" make the Apple unambiguosly a computer; likewise the heading "Recipe" and "thinly sliced" clue in the reader that we expect him to slice fruits, not silicon.
But the universe of possible context clues is far too big to specify everytime I want to do a full-text search: "compile", and "program" indicate a computer, but so would "IRC", "firewall" and "slashdot", and the list goes on and on. Unless adding the word "computer" also implicity adds the thousands of context clues that tell the reader an Apple computer, not a red fruit, is being written about, a full-text search isn't as helpful as you might guess.
The ideal system would be a free-text search of all the books in the catalogue.
You make a very good point that a hierarchical system isn't suitable for cataloging. I have the same problem with my more than 6000 (all legally acquired) MP3s: Artists span Genres, Albums contain works by more than one Composer, Artists may appear in more than one Group/Band/Orchestra, etc.
But free-text search isn't a great solution; we've all seen that with Google: I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery.
In these cases, an abstract is more useful than a full-text search.
It also seriously undermines the whole point of the ISO. The idea is to create standards that everybody will use so that we can communicate with each other.
Mod parent up; this is perhaps even more central than the standard argument over IP.
The ISO ( International Organization for Standardization) exists to facilitate (make easier) the interchnage of ideas, products, software -- culture in general -- by creating commonly accepted -- standardized -- mechanisms of interchange.
By charging for these common mechanisms, they pervert their whole purpose: it's like saying we should all speak a common language, and "that'll be $9.95 for the first 50 words", or like advocating a common currency only to annnounce you'll skim off 5% as a special taz for anyone using it. What next? Royalties on the use of mettric units?
Attempts to charge for the use of these standards just means creating a alternative community that doesn't standardize because it's cheaper not to.
But I'm just echoing the parent comment, which deserves to be modded up.
Studies have shown that male animals (of various species) that are kept separated from females all their lifes can live up to 20% longer.
So Slashdotters live forever??
You know what's surprising? I listed all these cameras on various web directories and they rank #1 on several google searches, but I still don't get all that many hits.
Somehow I'm not surprised.
Invite over some hot young chicks.
I can look at a hairy geek who'd wire his house for no good reason with a much more convenient low-tech device with a far higher frame rate. It's called a mirror.
1. The X-10.com video cameras (yes, the ubiquitous pop-up adds) apparently broadcast over the same spectrum as 802.11b, and 802.11b receivers can monitor them.
2. The above comes from a Slashdot article on "war watching": monitoring other people's wireless camera transmissions, but I can't seem to find it searching Slashdot. An important point comment made in that article (not by me) was that without encryption, a camera can reduce your security, by showing a potential intruder what the inside of your home looks like, when you're not in it, and how to avoid vbeing captured on camera.
3. It's still unresolved what wireless transmission in the 802.11b bandwdth can do to human brains. I'd hesitate to use on in a baby's room, even though it's probably safe, preferrring to err on the side of caution where the developing juvenile brain is concerned.
Addressing point 2, does anyone know of a feasable way to encrypt an X10 camera? I have one I bought on a whim just to see what it could do, but I've never used it except for testing, becuase of point 2.
The Torino scale is trying to represent two completely orthogonal scalars
Whuzzat?? I was asleep.
Look, if you're gonna mention me, at least add yourself as a fan, ok?
We are timed down to 3 seconds. 3 seconds late well that rounds up to 1 min late...
This is just hard to believe. But, ok, I should never underestimate the stupidy of Corporate America.
Just what do you do, and what company do you do it for? Please, let me know so I can write off ever applying there.
Programming with a time limit is not a great indication of how likely someone is to writes= robust, durable, re-usable code.
My best code usually results from refactoring, and is made up of several small classes made up of small functions, where each function does one thing and does it well, and each class has a well-defined role, usually in collaboration with other classes.
This is the result of crafting and thinking, not a result of typing as fast as I can, trying for a quick and dirty solution to one specific problem.