That's only until *that* person gets a similar filter: it should be easy to recognize that this is a response to an e-mail they didn't send, and just delete it. Whatever system should have it clearly marked, say with [CHALLENGE] in the subject line, and some unique identifier of the message, so that it can be deleted easily by the person's own spam filters.
Sure, it will increase some traffic for awhile; but the responses don't have to be that big; really only 50-100 bytes more than the headers, if you do it right. It shouldn't be anything like doubling your bandwidth. If everyone did it, soon there'd be less incoming spam, and there's your bandwidth savings back.
I haven't thought this stuff through completely, so I'd be interested in hearing more cons against such a system, but the ones you list aren't that big a deal, I don't think.
Well, I watched the ad three times, but wasn't able to access the site. I think they'll generate enough revenue from people who click-through and at least try it, to cover the few how read this now-modded-to-zero post.
This is OT, but my aunt was a corporate lawyer for a large company many years ago, and she still has business cards made by that company for her. If she's dealing with someone that she thinks is screwing with her (a mechanic, or a store owner or someone), she'll pull out one of those cards, write her # on the back and say, "Alright, I have to go; but here's my number, give me a call."
"Having your guard up" is not the same as having probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed.
While that's true, I must say that in general cops have a lot tougher job that people give them credit for. They don't know these people, their character, their history, or whether they have any weapons. They risk coming into a situation with a "domestic dispute" trying to help and being enemies of both sides.
When I was in the Marines, we had an indoor firing simulator that included training for MP's, which included some "shoot/no-shoot" scenarios, where you're covering your partner in some situation; and in half of the scenarios, someone pulls a gun and shoots you. Shoot too soon, or too late, and you fail the scenario.
The scary thing was, just about anyone in the scene could do it, and for any reason. You pull a woman over for speeding, and she starts digging around in her purse, and pulls out a gun. You're breaking up a fight and your partner is wrestling one of the guys in the fight on the ground; his girlfriend says, "Stop it, leave him alone" in a really girly, weak way; then pulls a gun out of her purse and shoots him.
I haven't seen the video, but I can understand why his daugher was tackled when she got out of the car, and why if he was acting upset (as is natural, if he was upset enough at his daughter to ask to get out of the car) the policeman would be afraid.
Behavior of the police officer(s) aside, the guy didn't have anything against him, and shouldn't have had to show his ID. The charge should be dropped.
Yeah, and reducing the frequency on your CPU will reduce energy consumption: unfortunately, it also reduces your performance. If you're in the middle of a five-day battle, sure you could save 10 calories here and 20 calories there if you could somehow step down your metabolism quickly for half an hour during a lull; but it doesn't change the fact that you're burining 300-500 kcal/hr when you're on "high". It takes a certain amount of energy to fight, and "lowering your metabolism" is just going to slow you down.
If users think computers do have mood swings just like the typical female human, we've got serious user education problems.
You know, I worked at the computing support desk in the lab of a major university for four years, and I have to disagree. I know that there always is a reason why the computer acts up (just like there always is a reason why females have mood swings), but it certainly seems sometimes like they just want someone who knows what they're doing to talk to them and calm them down.
I don't know how many times I've had someone come to me and say, "My computer isn't working." I walk over with them, and they show me: sure enough, they're doing the right thing, but it doesn't work. I poke around, start playing with some things, check this or that, and try it again. It works. I say, "Well, I don't know what was wrong, or what I did; but it seems to be working now. Come back if you have any more trouble." And I don't see them the rest of the shift.
Point being, they sure look moody and unpredictable, and they're as demanding or more than the most high-maintenance woman. Her assessment is valid.
See, I can understand the body's reaction, saving the vital organs by sacrificing the hands. But there are times -- for example, when I'm running, or doing some other physical activity [Yes, I just flagged myself as an atypical geek] that my torso is overheated -- I take off my hat, unzip my shirt, and am still sweating; but my hands and feet are still icy cold.
You'd think at least the temp-regulation system would be smart enough to shunt some of that extra heat off to your hands before busting out the sweat... But I guess the right hand doesn't know what the left lung is doing. =)
Well, an easy way to completely defeat the whole movement would be this: make any code released on an open-source-type license automatically BSD -- i.e., you release it to everyone, including corporations who can make derivative works from it as they please; or you keep it secret and sell it.
I suspect the number of developers willing to contirbute their work, and companies willing to pay developers to contribute their work, under a BSD license is quite a bit smaller than those willing to work under a GPL license.
If you think, "This is my code, I hold the copyright, I can do what I want", there are other precedents: (I believe) that if you hold the copyright to a song, and you license it to anyone (radios, CDs) you're required to be willing to give anyone a license for the same fee. Or something like that.
Erm, I just did, and I can't see that he mentions spelling at all. He did say that grammar was more important than "individual words", but if he means spelling, that doesn't make too much sense: if the translator can't figure out whether "algorythmic" is supposed to be a noun, an adjective, or what, or what kind of thing "grammer" is, how is it supposed to get the grammar to translate it?
Even so, he still has some grammatical errors himself: for instance, "is becoming increasing important" (should be increasingly), and a couple of other ones later on.
I'm not really a grammar/spelling nazi, but if you're going to pick nits on someone else, you should first make sure your posts are free of nits to pick. =)
You know, I'm by nature an honest person, and for a long time I wondered why we had the whole "politeness" bit: why are the hints so subtle, and why is it that those who can't / chose not to read them are just supposed to be endured, and not told straight out, "You know, I don't really want to hang out with you tonight" or "That's really boring. If you want me to listen you you, you'll have to talk about something else" or "You know, I really don't think you have a chance, and I don't want to waste my time or yours."
But in my life, there have been several instances where someone who initially bores me or totally annoys me eventually grows on me, so that we become friends -- something that wouldn't have happened if I'd been rude and just told them off; and I've been on the receiving end of that too. I had a good friend tell me that when he first met me, he thought I was just an arrogant American and had no interest in getting to know be better; eventually we became really good friends.
So with the "love glasses": even if they're 96% accurate as far as what's going on in the person's head right now, they're not necessarily that useful for what's going to happen in the future. The person who just thinks you're a nice guy, or even doesn't really care for you now, may get to know you better and begin to like you; and the person who is initially attracted to you and thinks your cute may realize you're not really her type.
So this may be useful if you're just looking for one-night-stands, but if you're looking for anything else, I'd say it's best to stick with the social cues. They developed for a reason.
I suspect that this is the "intended" consequence of the law, according to Forbes: to stop jerks from gratuitously wasting gallons of your toner and tying up your phone line, not to stop "legitimate companies" doing "marketing" in a "creative fashion". (The fact that they're also gratuitously wasting gallons of your toner & tying up your phone line doesn't seem to strike them as unscrupulous.)
Seriously -- they don't even seem to realize that sending junk faxes is illegal. Is it any surprise that it's hard to make money doing that? What next, FBI puts mobsters out of business, and the NYPD puts drug dealers out of business?
They call the lawsuits an "unintended consequence" of the 1991 law. But it seems to me that the problems fax.com is having are exactly the intended consequence. Exactly what other consequence were they talking about?
Grammer is becoming increasing important in large international web forums like Slashdot because Linux-based powerful language translators rely on accurate grammer more than individual words to make accurate translations. Due to their recursion-based algorythmic structure,
So, if grammar is so increasingly important due to the algorithmic structure of some programs, do you suppose that spelling might be useful too? =)
Penicillin is bread mold, don't give it to sick people. I realize why it works for infections but that's no reason to use it. I'm 27 and I've had every reason to believe that I've suffered from infections before, and I think I still do occasionally, but my immune system got through without drugs.
Come on -- they're not monitoring random people who "might commit a crime" or people for their political beliefs. They're monitoring a guy who had clearly committed a felony. If someone was trying to extort you for your life savings, I don't think you'd mind the police using a bit of technology to hunt the guy down.
The government has all kinds of tools at their disposal -- wiretaps, planted microphones / cameras, stakeouts, what have you -- that if they used against random people who "might do something wrong somtime", or political dissidents, would be like totalitarian governments. But when they use them only when a judge thinks there is reasonable evidence to believe that a crime is being committed, there's nothing at all to fear (unless you're the one committing the crime).
You find it "cheesy" because you're a book purist.
Well, no, I find it cheesy and cheap because it's cheesy and cheap.
I understand that he's trying to "build tension", but it's a cheap, cheesy way to do it. I'd evaluate it the same way in any movie, but it particularly annoys me in LotR.
At any rate, like I said, the things in the first list annoy me, but I can deal with them: the target audience obviously likes them a lot. What offends me is when he makes people act out of character, or totally changes the character, for some cheap reason. Aragorn, Faramir, Denethor, Frodo (who would never have sent Sam away), Sam (who would never have gone away), the Ents, the list goes on and on.
No, movies based on awesome books and with those kinds of budgets don't have to behave like cheap action flicks.
Well, in "A Hobbit", the trolls have names like "Bob" and "Tom", and don't seem to be acting very lady-like.
Also the trolls in Jackson's movies seem to be naked, but without genatalia. This might be possible if they were gelding Trolls, but I would think would be rather hard with females...
Well, I've seen movies that are a lot better on those scores than Peter Jackson's LoTR movies.
When I complain about the movies, people alwasy say, "Well, it's a movie, you can't do what you can in a book." Yes, I understand that movies and books are different mediums, and things have to be done differently. I've seen really good examples of that: I think the Harry Potter movies are turning out well, for instance; and I really love both the book and the movie for "Princess Bride" -- William Golding really knows how to turn a book into a screenplay.
So I agree with almost all the high-level decisions: the way that introduced things with Galadriel, the parts they cut out, adding more of Elrond's daughter, etc. That's not what I'm complaining about. I'm complaining about
Cheap thrills. For example, in Moria, when all the orcs surround them, and then run away. It's just stupid, it doesn't make any sense.
Cheap action-flick fight scenes. So, there's nine people standing on a narrow staircase out in the middle of nowhere, with thousands of orcs shooting at them, and they all miss. Legolas is shooting at orcs spread out, behind shadows and in cover, and hits every one. Now, orcs aren't as good as elves, but they're not *that* bad.
Cheesy dramatic scenes. Frodo gets hurt, and all the action stops. Gandalf "dies", and all the action stops. Boromir dies three or four times.
These are all things that annoy me -- they could have been different with a better director. But hey, whatever, I can tolerate that. What really pisses me off is when he messes with the character of the different people in the book, especially if it's for some cheap effect. Aragorn ("Show them no mercy -- they will show you none"), Faramir, the Ents (whose non-hastiness is a major source of their strength) -- Jackson doesn't understand a lot of the goodness in Tolkein's characters, and he makes good characters bad or stupid to get whatever cheesy drama or cheap effect he wants.
Yeah, I'll see the last one, but I'm expecting mroe of the same.
I've certainly found that to be true... that's why I document things. I don't have any anal ideas about "rightness", but I look at some section and say, "I know that in six months I'm not going to have a clue why I wrote this, I'd better leave a note..." Sure enough, six months later, I'm looking at some obscure if clause and going, "What the heck? Did I write that?" And behold, a note from myself explaining things...
Of course, that's targeted at a developer who already knows the overall structure and how things flow (i.e., me, or someone else already intimate with the code), not someone just coming at the code for the first time. That's always been my barrier-to-entry to help out with OSS projects: I don't feel like taking a week pulling at threads to try to find the big picture
Faith, by definition, is something that cannot be threatened by facts, because it exists regardless of the facts. Sure, church dogma can be proven wrong; even holy texts could be proven to be wrong; but this should not effect faith.
Well no, if faith isn't in facts then it's in nothing at all. Having "faith" that the sky is orange or that there's no such thing as gravity isn't really faith, it's just fantasy. And having "faith" in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, especially after seeing your parents put the "From Santa" presents under the tree and the coin under your pillow -- isn't faith either, it's just fantasy or daydream.
I think a better definition of faith is, "Sticking by a belief in the face of apparent evidence to the contrary." Scientists have to have some amount of faith in their own work, otherwise they couldn't get anything done. It's natural and healthy to keep exploring a hypothesis when (apparently) contradictory evidence turns up; and in the case of long-standing theory, it would be foolish to question it or throw it away everytime some unexpected numbers turned up. It's much more likely a glitch in the measurement somewhere.
The problem is, as someone pointed out, when people put unmerited faith (aka "zealotry" or "fanatacism") in their own hypothesis and refuse to look at the rest of the facts; or to deal with down in a constructive way. You see the same kind of zealotry here on Slashdot, or in a faculty meeteing, or in a religious discussion.
As for "facts" and "faith", what you frequently find is that the "facts" that you thought your faith implied are not, in fact, implied. I know that God exists: I am fully satisfied with that conclusion from my own experience and from things that I've seen in my life, other's lives, reason, history, science, and so on. And I used to think that that implied that evolution was false; and that evolution being true would make God false; i.e., the fact I really have faith in is God; the fact I thought I had faith in was evolution.
But if God is true, then He made science and reason: He has nothing to fear from them. If it were possible to prove philosophically or scientifically that there weren't a God, then I shouldn't believe in Him in the first place. To be closed-minded to scientific enquiry or not listen to philosophical arguments because you think they're "against" God is to lack the faith, not to have it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, it will increase some traffic for awhile; but the responses don't have to be that big; really only 50-100 bytes more than the headers, if you do it right. It shouldn't be anything like doubling your bandwidth. If everyone did it, soon there'd be less incoming spam, and there's your bandwidth savings back.
I haven't thought this stuff through completely, so I'd be interested in hearing more cons against such a system, but the ones you list aren't that big a deal, I don't think.
Well, I watched the ad three times, but wasn't able to access the site. I think they'll generate enough revenue from people who click-through and at least try it, to cover the few how read this now-modded-to-zero post.
That usually changes their tune pretty quick.
While that's true, I must say that in general cops have a lot tougher job that people give them credit for. They don't know these people, their character, their history, or whether they have any weapons. They risk coming into a situation with a "domestic dispute" trying to help and being enemies of both sides.
When I was in the Marines, we had an indoor firing simulator that included training for MP's, which included some "shoot/no-shoot" scenarios, where you're covering your partner in some situation; and in half of the scenarios, someone pulls a gun and shoots you. Shoot too soon, or too late, and you fail the scenario.
The scary thing was, just about anyone in the scene could do it, and for any reason. You pull a woman over for speeding, and she starts digging around in her purse, and pulls out a gun. You're breaking up a fight and your partner is wrestling one of the guys in the fight on the ground; his girlfriend says, "Stop it, leave him alone" in a really girly, weak way; then pulls a gun out of her purse and shoots him.
I haven't seen the video, but I can understand why his daugher was tackled when she got out of the car, and why if he was acting upset (as is natural, if he was upset enough at his daughter to ask to get out of the car) the policeman would be afraid.
Behavior of the police officer(s) aside, the guy didn't have anything against him, and shouldn't have had to show his ID. The charge should be dropped.
Yeah, and reducing the frequency on your CPU will reduce energy consumption: unfortunately, it also reduces your performance. If you're in the middle of a five-day battle, sure you could save 10 calories here and 20 calories there if you could somehow step down your metabolism quickly for half an hour during a lull; but it doesn't change the fact that you're burining 300-500 kcal/hr when you're on "high". It takes a certain amount of energy to fight, and "lowering your metabolism" is just going to slow you down.
You know, I worked at the computing support desk in the lab of a major university for four years, and I have to disagree. I know that there always is a reason why the computer acts up (just like there always is a reason why females have mood swings), but it certainly seems sometimes like they just want someone who knows what they're doing to talk to them and calm them down.
I don't know how many times I've had someone come to me and say, "My computer isn't working." I walk over with them, and they show me: sure enough, they're doing the right thing, but it doesn't work. I poke around, start playing with some things, check this or that, and try it again. It works. I say, "Well, I don't know what was wrong, or what I did; but it seems to be working now. Come back if you have any more trouble." And I don't see them the rest of the shift.
Point being, they sure look moody and unpredictable, and they're as demanding or more than the most high-maintenance woman. Her assessment is valid.
IOW, a billionth of a degree Kelvin. Celcius , by definition, has zero at the temperature water freezes.
You'd think at least the temp-regulation system would be smart enough to shunt some of that extra heat off to your hands before busting out the sweat... But I guess the right hand doesn't know what the left lung is doing. =)
I suspect the number of developers willing to contirbute their work, and companies willing to pay developers to contribute their work, under a BSD license is quite a bit smaller than those willing to work under a GPL license.
If you think, "This is my code, I hold the copyright, I can do what I want", there are other precedents: (I believe) that if you hold the copyright to a song, and you license it to anyone (radios, CDs) you're required to be willing to give anyone a license for the same fee. Or something like that.
Even so, he still has some grammatical errors himself: for instance, "is becoming increasing important" (should be increasingly), and a couple of other ones later on.
I'm not really a grammar/spelling nazi, but if you're going to pick nits on someone else, you should first make sure your posts are free of nits to pick. =)
But in my life, there have been several instances where someone who initially bores me or totally annoys me eventually grows on me, so that we become friends -- something that wouldn't have happened if I'd been rude and just told them off; and I've been on the receiving end of that too. I had a good friend tell me that when he first met me, he thought I was just an arrogant American and had no interest in getting to know be better; eventually we became really good friends.
So with the "love glasses": even if they're 96% accurate as far as what's going on in the person's head right now, they're not necessarily that useful for what's going to happen in the future. The person who just thinks you're a nice guy, or even doesn't really care for you now, may get to know you better and begin to like you; and the person who is initially attracted to you and thinks your cute may realize you're not really her type.
So this may be useful if you're just looking for one-night-stands, but if you're looking for anything else, I'd say it's best to stick with the social cues. They developed for a reason.
I suspect that this is the "intended" consequence of the law, according to Forbes: to stop jerks from gratuitously wasting gallons of your toner and tying up your phone line, not to stop "legitimate companies" doing "marketing" in a "creative fashion". (The fact that they're also gratuitously wasting gallons of your toner & tying up your phone line doesn't seem to strike them as unscrupulous.)
They call the lawsuits an "unintended consequence" of the 1991 law. But it seems to me that the problems fax.com is having are exactly the intended consequence. Exactly what other consequence were they talking about?
So, if grammar is so increasingly important due to the algorithmic structure of some programs, do you suppose that spelling might be useful too? =)
Penicillin is bread mold, don't give it to sick people. I realize why it works for infections but that's no reason to use it. I'm 27 and I've had every reason to believe that I've suffered from infections before, and I think I still do occasionally, but my immune system got through without drugs.
Didn't Agent Smith already try something like this in The Matrix?
The government has all kinds of tools at their disposal -- wiretaps, planted microphones / cameras, stakeouts, what have you -- that if they used against random people who "might do something wrong somtime", or political dissidents, would be like totalitarian governments. But when they use them only when a judge thinks there is reasonable evidence to believe that a crime is being committed, there's nothing at all to fear (unless you're the one committing the crime).
Well, no, I find it cheesy and cheap because it's cheesy and cheap. I understand that he's trying to "build tension", but it's a cheap, cheesy way to do it. I'd evaluate it the same way in any movie, but it particularly annoys me in LotR.
At any rate, like I said, the things in the first list annoy me, but I can deal with them: the target audience obviously likes them a lot. What offends me is when he makes people act out of character, or totally changes the character, for some cheap reason. Aragorn, Faramir, Denethor, Frodo (who would never have sent Sam away), Sam (who would never have gone away), the Ents, the list goes on and on.
No, movies based on awesome books and with those kinds of budgets don't have to behave like cheap action flicks.
Also the trolls in Jackson's movies seem to be naked, but without genatalia. This might be possible if they were gelding Trolls, but I would think would be rather hard with females...
When I complain about the movies, people alwasy say, "Well, it's a movie, you can't do what you can in a book." Yes, I understand that movies and books are different mediums, and things have to be done differently. I've seen really good examples of that: I think the Harry Potter movies are turning out well, for instance; and I really love both the book and the movie for "Princess Bride" -- William Golding really knows how to turn a book into a screenplay.
So I agree with almost all the high-level decisions: the way that introduced things with Galadriel, the parts they cut out, adding more of Elrond's daughter, etc. That's not what I'm complaining about. I'm complaining about
- Cheap thrills. For example, in Moria, when all the orcs surround them, and then run away. It's just stupid, it doesn't make any sense.
- Cheap action-flick fight scenes. So, there's nine people standing on a narrow staircase out in the middle of nowhere, with thousands of orcs shooting at them, and they all miss. Legolas is shooting at orcs spread out, behind shadows and in cover, and hits every one. Now, orcs aren't as good as elves, but they're not *that* bad.
- Cheesy dramatic scenes. Frodo gets hurt, and all the action stops. Gandalf "dies", and all the action stops. Boromir dies three or four times.
These are all things that annoy me -- they could have been different with a better director. But hey, whatever, I can tolerate that. What really pisses me off is when he messes with the character of the different people in the book, especially if it's for some cheap effect. Aragorn ("Show them no mercy -- they will show you none"), Faramir, the Ents (whose non-hastiness is a major source of their strength) -- Jackson doesn't understand a lot of the goodness in Tolkein's characters, and he makes good characters bad or stupid to get whatever cheesy drama or cheap effect he wants.Yeah, I'll see the last one, but I'm expecting mroe of the same.
My landlord this summer used to say, "I want a freedom kiss from a freedom girl!"
I've certainly found that to be true... that's why I document things. I don't have any anal ideas about "rightness", but I look at some section and say, "I know that in six months I'm not going to have a clue why I wrote this, I'd better leave a note..." Sure enough, six months later, I'm looking at some obscure if clause and going, "What the heck? Did I write that?" And behold, a note from myself explaining things...
Of course, that's targeted at a developer who already knows the overall structure and how things flow (i.e., me, or someone else already intimate with the code), not someone just coming at the code for the first time. That's always been my barrier-to-entry to help out with OSS projects: I don't feel like taking a week pulling at threads to try to find the big picture
That's pretty well put -- "conclusions you draw from your faith" -- very concise, I'll have to remember that. Thanks!
Well no, if faith isn't in facts then it's in nothing at all. Having "faith" that the sky is orange or that there's no such thing as gravity isn't really faith, it's just fantasy. And having "faith" in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, especially after seeing your parents put the "From Santa" presents under the tree and the coin under your pillow -- isn't faith either, it's just fantasy or daydream.
I think a better definition of faith is, "Sticking by a belief in the face of apparent evidence to the contrary." Scientists have to have some amount of faith in their own work, otherwise they couldn't get anything done. It's natural and healthy to keep exploring a hypothesis when (apparently) contradictory evidence turns up; and in the case of long-standing theory, it would be foolish to question it or throw it away everytime some unexpected numbers turned up. It's much more likely a glitch in the measurement somewhere.
The problem is, as someone pointed out, when people put unmerited faith (aka "zealotry" or "fanatacism") in their own hypothesis and refuse to look at the rest of the facts; or to deal with down in a constructive way. You see the same kind of zealotry here on Slashdot, or in a faculty meeteing, or in a religious discussion.
As for "facts" and "faith", what you frequently find is that the "facts" that you thought your faith implied are not, in fact, implied. I know that God exists: I am fully satisfied with that conclusion from my own experience and from things that I've seen in my life, other's lives, reason, history, science, and so on. And I used to think that that implied that evolution was false; and that evolution being true would make God false; i.e., the fact I really have faith in is God; the fact I thought I had faith in was evolution.
But if God is true, then He made science and reason: He has nothing to fear from them. If it were possible to prove philosophically or scientifically that there weren't a God, then I shouldn't believe in Him in the first place. To be closed-minded to scientific enquiry or not listen to philosophical arguments because you think they're "against" God is to lack the faith, not to have it.