Yes, just recently it occurred to me that spammers effectively have access to a bunch of supercomputers. Would be a great way to crack difficult encryption...
It's a fine theory, but unfortunately my new Nokia 6234 didn't come with such an adapter. Perhaps they just did it on the first phone or two that used the new plug...
Well I do like Seamonkey - I don't like Firefox becuase it simplifies a bit too much.
But there is a problem: by far the lions share of effort is going into FF and TB. Seamonkey only slowly tags along behind. I really appreciate the efforts of those working on it still, after Mozilla dropped it, but its not getting very far...
This and several other difficulties and restrictions (like being unable to edit mail) are because Mozilla is based on an ancient but well established format for email folders - basically all the emails live in one enormous text file, and there is a separate index for finding it fast and caching headers. But of course if it's just one undifferentiated text file, there IS no efficient way to edit or delete mails out of the middle. Realistically, Mozilla should probably update to a decent database format but that is a huge change.
Indeed, Amazon is one of the most cluttered sites still around. I redesigned it on a local copy and it seemed to me that about 75% of the items on the pages could be removed without any ordinary user noticing the loss - except of course that it would be much easier to read and navigate.
I've started to avoid going there sometimes because of the general mess, even though they still have good reviews.
The client at one end is effectively telling it's NAT to expect incoming packets from another host on a certain port, just without an actual connection being made. It's a way for the two hosts (who are already communicating by another method) to bootstrap their way through their respective NATs, without one end having to be permanently configured with a hole.
Because admitting we need to be careful is the first step to admitting there is a real problem, and if there's a real problem we all have to face some very uncomfortable changes. Much easier just to ignore it and carry on.
After heading for a democracy, Russia is falling back into old ways. When I was there one woman earnestly asked me what I thought of Putin, and: "He is a strong leader isn't he"? Perhaps there is something in the Russian pysche that wants a strong leader more than a moral leader.
Their treatment of Georgia and other nearby states is not good lately, and this suggests that there are powerful and nasty organisations still calling shots there.
Please, Russians, don't go down the same road again!
"getting feedback or sharing ideas" which is very much desirable
Whilst simultaneously distracting every other member of the team. In an open plan office, every discussion is a meeting for the whole team. Would you CHOOSE to call a meeting of the whole team every time you wanted to discuss a small point with one colleague?
In theory, people can block out distractions. But in reality, most people will be at least partly distracted and kept at a low level of focus by conversations going on around them - especially conversations they are likely to find interesting
The problem is that both "noisy" and "sociable" are DOWNSIDES. Work isn't about socialising and most jobs don't need constant contact with your team.
Put 3 programmers in a room together, and you will get 1/3 the total amount of code out of them, although the code will be slightly better because it will get discussed more. But not enough to make it really good, because without some more structured approach programmers will talk about the parts they enjoy or find frustrating, rather than the important parts.
But if the whole thing is imaginative, symbolic, and useless when treated literally, then why believe any of it?
The answer of course is: because we want to. It's nice to believe there's a man in the sky looking after us, and if we selectively pick up the nice messages in this book and adjust them to suit our modern sensibilities, gosh, out springs a warm fuzzy belief system that makes me feel good.
Although it's not a very comfortable conclusion, I have to agree. People promoting OSS are quick to say in response to a suggestion/complaint they don't like "get the source and fix it". I wrote an open source, free program that some people used, and this temptation was strong for me too.
But after thinking about it, I realized that this attitude is *totally useless*. Most of your users are not going to be programmers and if you want to provide something useful, you have to also provide useful support. There are plenty of casual/vanity OSS projects that are just programmers thinking "maybe someone else will like my quick hack", but they don't go anywhere usually.
Adding POP3 and SMTP wouldn't add much code. Most of thunderbird's bloat is the HTML/CSS/javascript engine due to being built on browser technology. Implement the same functionality natively and it would be a normal sized app.
Those days are over. There are people out there who will happily destroy the internet to make a few dollars. Some inconvenience is to be expected as we try to deal with it. Yes, this means some idealogical principles will have to be compromised.
I find that each time I've had to replace my phone, I'm progressively less satisfied with the interface
I just upgraded from a Nokia 6610 to a Nokia 6234. It's much better: faster, easier to read, much more flexible, has many additional features but in a way that doesn't get in the way, a better keypad, and they even restored a small but important feature that was removed from the 6610 (snooze on calendar alarms), all this while keeping very close to the same Nokia interface as before.
Still, I admit I had to look at a lot of phones to find one that had a) a decent keypad and b) wasn't sluggish. Nokia and their "inventive" keypads are quite irritating.
"Are you deliberately moving away from science fiction to make more money?" Bear's recent novels (Vitals, Dead Lines, Quantico) have been only marginally science fictional and much more thrillers. Sounds like is new novel about "City at the End of Time" might be returning more to science fiction though.
If it can be built from small relatively cheap laser modules, it seems like it will happen without any great effort once the economics are there.
I wonder though why they focus on a 100kg launch as the example. 100kg seems basically useless to me, all useful satellites are several tons for instance.
Re:what a hard-nosed skeptic you are
on
Oceans Empty By 2048?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The situation with the oceans seems fairly obvious and logical (and we know we've already depleted quite a lot), so I don't see how you can disparage as a "Malthusian doom". More like an inevitable direction that we will have to face up sooner or later...
To make more money. It's called market segmentation: you make different (possibly artificial) levels of your product, in order that you can sell cheap ones to poor people and expensive ones to the rich, thus making more total money than if you just sold at one price.
The "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mindset? Well that's usually in competition with the "must have new shiny things" mindset from marketing which often leads businesses to throw away working designs in order to sell something new.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, just recently it occurred to me that spammers effectively have access to a bunch of supercomputers. Would be a great way to crack difficult encryption...
It's a fine theory, but unfortunately my new Nokia 6234 didn't come with such an adapter. ...
Perhaps they just did it on the first phone or two that used the new plug
Well I do like Seamonkey - I don't like Firefox becuase it simplifies a bit too much.
...
But there is a problem: by far the lions share of effort is going into FF and TB. Seamonkey only slowly tags along behind. I really appreciate the efforts of those working on it still, after Mozilla dropped it, but its not getting very far
This and several other difficulties and restrictions (like being unable to edit mail) are because Mozilla is based on an ancient but well established format for email folders - basically all the emails live in one enormous text file, and there is a separate index for finding it fast and caching headers.
But of course if it's just one undifferentiated text file, there IS no efficient way to edit or delete mails out of the middle.
Realistically, Mozilla should probably update to a decent database format but that is a huge change.
2) Why is there SO MUCH CRAP all over the place?
Indeed, Amazon is one of the most cluttered sites still around.
I redesigned it on a local copy and it seemed to me that about 75% of the items on the pages could be removed without any ordinary user noticing the loss - except of course that it would be much easier to read and navigate.
I've started to avoid going there sometimes because of the general mess, even though they still have good reviews.
Regardless, this creates a bad impression and discourages potential clients from upgrading.
The client at one end is effectively telling it's NAT to expect incoming packets from another host on a certain port, just without an actual connection being made. It's a way for the two hosts (who are already communicating by another method) to bootstrap their way through their respective NATs, without one end having to be permanently configured with a hole.
Because admitting we need to be careful is the first step to admitting there is a real problem, and if there's a real problem we all have to face some very uncomfortable changes. Much easier just to ignore it and carry on.
That must be terrible. Forced to use those desperately restricted web browsers for banking applications. How can they manipulate their 3D bargraphs?
Lets be specific. Do you mean that electronic instruments like keyboards, sequencers, drum machines, and turntables are not real musical instruments?
Or do you mean that these bands have "real" musical instruments but are actually just miming to a recorded track?
Or do you mean that only purely accoustic instruments are real?
Or what? It really is NOT obvious to the rest of us.
Bad day, huh?
After heading for a democracy, Russia is falling back into old ways. When I was there one woman earnestly asked me what I thought of Putin, and: "He is a strong leader isn't he"? Perhaps there is something in the Russian pysche that wants a strong leader more than a moral leader.
Their treatment of Georgia and other nearby states is not good lately, and this suggests that there are powerful and nasty organisations still calling shots there.
Please, Russians, don't go down the same road again!
So what is the point of open plan then, if you can't have meetings in it? Cost saving?
"getting feedback or sharing ideas" which is very much desirable
Whilst simultaneously distracting every other member of the team. In an open plan office, every discussion is a meeting for the whole team. Would you CHOOSE to call a meeting of the whole team every time you wanted to discuss a small point with one colleague?
In theory, people can block out distractions. But in reality, most people will be at least partly distracted and kept at a low level of focus by conversations going on around them - especially conversations they are likely to find interesting
The problem is that both "noisy" and "sociable" are DOWNSIDES. Work isn't about socialising and most jobs don't need constant contact with your team.
Put 3 programmers in a room together, and you will get 1/3 the total amount of code out of them, although the code will be slightly better because it will get discussed more. But not enough to make it really good, because without some more structured approach programmers will talk about the parts they enjoy or find frustrating, rather than the important parts.
But if the whole thing is imaginative, symbolic, and useless when treated literally, then why believe any of it?
The answer of course is: because we want to. It's nice to believe there's a man in the sky looking after us, and if we selectively pick up the nice messages in this book and adjust them to suit our modern sensibilities, gosh, out springs a warm fuzzy belief system that makes me feel good.
Although it's not a very comfortable conclusion, I have to agree. People promoting OSS are quick to say in response to a suggestion/complaint they don't like "get the source and fix it". I wrote an open source, free program that some people used, and this temptation was strong for me too.
But after thinking about it, I realized that this attitude is *totally useless*. Most of your users are not going to be programmers and if you want to provide something useful, you have to also provide useful support. There are plenty of casual/vanity OSS projects that are just programmers thinking "maybe someone else will like my quick hack", but they don't go anywhere usually.
Adding POP3 and SMTP wouldn't add much code. Most of thunderbird's bloat is the HTML/CSS/javascript engine due to being built on browser technology. Implement the same functionality natively and it would be a normal sized app.
Those days are over. There are people out there who will happily destroy the internet to make a few dollars. Some inconvenience is to be expected as we try to deal with it. Yes, this means some idealogical principles will have to be compromised.
I find that each time I've had to replace my phone, I'm progressively less satisfied with the interface
I just upgraded from a Nokia 6610 to a Nokia 6234. It's much better: faster, easier to read, much more flexible, has many additional features but in a way that doesn't get in the way, a better keypad, and they even restored a small but important feature that was removed from the 6610 (snooze on calendar alarms), all this while keeping very close to the same Nokia interface as before.
Still, I admit I had to look at a lot of phones to find one that had a) a decent keypad and b) wasn't sluggish. Nokia and their "inventive" keypads are quite irritating.
"Are you deliberately moving away from science fiction to make more money?" Bear's recent novels (Vitals, Dead Lines, Quantico) have been only marginally science fictional and much more thrillers. Sounds like is new novel about "City at the End of Time" might be returning more to science fiction though.
Interesting link, thanks.
If it can be built from small relatively cheap laser modules, it seems like it will happen without any great effort once the economics are there.
I wonder though why they focus on a 100kg launch as the example. 100kg seems basically useless to me, all useful satellites are several tons for instance.
The situation with the oceans seems fairly obvious and logical (and we know we've already depleted quite a lot), so I don't see how you can disparage as a "Malthusian doom". More like an inevitable direction that we will have to face up sooner or later...
To make more money. It's called market segmentation: you make different (possibly artificial) levels of your product, in order that you can sell cheap ones to poor people and expensive ones to the rich, thus making more total money than if you just sold at one price.
The "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mindset? Well that's usually in competition with the "must have new shiny things" mindset from marketing which often leads businesses to throw away working designs in order to sell something new.