Re:Why would you want an RFID blocking wallet??
on
Top Ten Geek Wallets
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· Score: 1
Out here in Singapore, (and I'm certain Hong Kong and London also have similar cards) we pay our fares on the local public transport network through a contact-less RFID card called EZ-Link card. In addition, my gym's ID card is also tap-as-you-go RFID.
I really don't have much personalized data here [1], but for most Singaporeans, RFID-proof wallets are counter-intuitive in a sense. Why would anyone want a wallet with which (s)he can't tap the MRT fare gates?
[1] - I mean, YES if you were smart about it, and would like to snoop, you can possibly know where I've been last night, for instance. Which, of course, gives me ideas, hmmmmmm.
While I haven't really discussed his product with him, nope, I don't think they do J2ME; it's something more internal than that. Symbian and Windows CE, basically.
I've seen a demo of theirs on a Nokia 8860, and on a cursory glance, the shut-down seems to work rather elegantly. Now, I rightfully don't know if it's hack-proof or anything, but certainly, it's got more to do with merely switching the phone off (or disabling J2ME).
Nope, it's not him that's not making the distinction, it is Microsoft itself. Here's the original quote that LanguageLog had a problem with:-
In the month of May, 38,000 customers purchased genuine Windows software after being notified that they had been sold non-genuine software. Customers recognize that the value of genuine is greater than ever.
The question here is if a copy of Windows, albeit gotten with an, shall we say, illegal licence, is less genuine than one with a legal licence. Bill Poser seems to think otherwise; because functionality is the same, the product is still the same, even if the licence isn't genuine, as you rightfully said.
So yeah, it is not him who's confusing between 'licences' and 'products', it is Microsoft. Microsoft isn't trying to sell genuine Windows software here through their "Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative" programme, it is merely trying to sell genuine licences. Microsoft doesn't seem to think this distinction is important, but the good linguist (who, despite your apparent disdain, is actually very highly respected in linguistic spheres) does.
In this project effort that shall go unnamed (one of the big five IT consulting companies), we're trying to leverage this new change request titled 'compatibility with Vista' to get additional time from the client (apparently, it's very easy to do so; just say, 'Windows Presentation Environment', '.net 3.0', 'goobledygook', and watch your clients sweat).
To the extent that we're trying to charge extra man-hours, you could say that Vista has already been creating new jobs in Asia-Pacific.:-)
I see this thread as evidence to the fact that/. group-think has grown out from merely a sub-culture with its own in-jokes, to being dangerously out-of-touch with reality. That 'listening rights' question is one prominent example.
AFAIK only the Chinese and the Mayans figured out details like precession of the equinox and such, and worked them into their calendars.
The Chinese operate under a lunisolar calendar, i.e., a (Chinese) 'month' is the time-period between two successive new moons. Now, the Chinese do use some solar calculations, but that's only for lunar correction, much like the Hebrew calendar does, and all of India's many lunisolar calendars do. As such, I'm struggling to understand how you deem the Mayan and the Chinese to be the only people to reckon the precession of the equinox, or indeed, how a Jovian year (Chinese years repeat every twelve years) would relate to this precession.
Not just that, I specifically strip all EXIF information from my photos at Flickr (there's a setting on Flickr to do just this), see no absolutely no reason as to why the rest of the world needs to know details about the equipment I use, specifically when I'm not discussing cameras with anyone out there. I know a couple of other people who also do just that.
Fact is, the leaks were a symptom of the larger problem: a lack of trust across the boardroom. Even if you ignore the moral and legal implications of spying on your own board-members (and you shouldn't), tackling the leaks alone without tackling the larger problem, a lack of trust, is lying applying band-aid for a hairline fracture.
As for why the tech press, CNET and Slashdot included, is going so strongly on Dunn, well, it isn't rocket-science is it: this time, it's personal. HP spied on everyone including that CNET's reporter's dad; obviously, there are a lot of pissed off individuals out (t)here.
Who the fuck are you to say that they don't have a perfect right to desire Sharia Law in Britain? And if they get a majority in power, can't implement it?
Dude. Seriously, you're just embarrassing yourself with responses like this. If you really think that democracy is just gaining a majority and thrusting your views down the rest of the populace, you really really REALLY need a quick study in civics, politics, constitutional values and, yes, even liberal values.
See, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Islamic culture / civilization, I grew up in a Muslim-majority city, and I really think what HSBC has done to this guy was wrong. But the point of a constitutional democracy, and indeed, the point of having so many laws, and so much discussion on values, as opposed to merely having a mechanism for free and fair elections, was to avoid situations like the one you've described.
Bottomline: nations are free and democratic, not just because a majority can get the government they want, but because of the values they believe in. Remove that, and they won't be those nations anymore; they might exist the same geographical space, but they won't be those nations.
Or is it only/your/ brand of democracy and freedom that's acceptable?
The British constitution is one of the oldest, unwritten constitutions in the world, with decrees and edicts going back into the Middle Ages. Many brilliant minds greater than yours or mine have spent countless hours discussing it, spending countless resources, and developing this huge collection of thought that went into the making of, not just, the constitutional democracy that Britain is, but also many many other fledging democracies worldwide.
I'm not British, so I don't have any loyalty as such towards the British constitution, but yes, I have a tremendous amount of respect towards it. I would suspect a British citizen would think that the British brand of democracy and freedom is the only brand that's acceptable to Britain.
And oh, about Sharia law... I really don't think you know what it is about.
The question is if a young traveller who isn't a CEO should be deemed suspicious just because he travels frequently. In my experience, that's a very very VERY wrong thing to presume; the fact is that international travel has become a lot more broad-based than before, everywhere in the world, more people are travelling more often to more places, and most of them on pleasure. Feel free to disagree with my assertion, but don't set international airline policy presuming that only the rich and famous travel frequently.
Actually, it isn't. Indic words can be broken down into conjunct-consonant groups that roughly correspond to a single syllable. The kid's name, therefore, is more correctly broken down as veM-ka-t'a-s'u-bra-ma-nyam; I really haven't anyone break such a name down to 'asub', which, if you know Sanskrit, would mean 'inauspicious' (and thus defeat the purpose of having two Gods names in yours)
Might add here that the kid's real name is probably Siddharth (and not whatever they typed in the article)and that, quite possibly, he's carrying the surnames of both his parents; 'Grover' is probably his mom's surname, while Venkatasubramaniam is probably his Dad's name (and hence, he's bound to carry it as his surname according to Tamilian tradition). 'Venkatasubramaniam', as I was hinting earlier, is a conjunct word mixing the names 'Venkata' and 'Subramanyam', thus denoting a certain acceptance, and fusion, of the once competing twin traditions in Hindu theology, Shaivism and Vaishnavism. If the kid's dad was Irish, it's almost as if he was born into both Protestant and Catholic families and was named to reflect that.
In short, the kid's name carries a lot more cultural meaning than you guys can ever imagine'; he apparently bridges not only quasi-religious divisions in south India, but also the ethnic divisions between India's North and its South.
Don't let any of this stop you folks from cracking tasteless jokes on words you hardly understand though; not once is it irritating, exasperating, and plainly unfunny.
irony, n.:
1. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
2. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect.
That's correct; Slashdot has deftly changed from being a discussion of those metaphorical front-benchers, to bar-room banter from the backbenchers. Nerds have become bullies at roughly about the same time when geekdom became mainstream.
As for me, I came into this discussion trusting that the Slashdot hive mind will use its Google-fu and find the only link I'm really interested in. The rest is all hubris.
Or because you travel a lot, including eastern europe, and you're young enough that it's unlikely you're a CEO who needs to travel a lot?
Seriously, what the FUCK is that supposed to mean? Just because you're in your mid-twenties, and aren't a CEO, you can't be expected to travel a lot?
Perhaps you have heard of this term called 'globalization' before, but trust me, a lot of us in our mid-twenties, and aren't CEO's, tend to travel a lot for pleasure. I, for one, make it a point to travel overseas at least thrice in a year, two of them for pleasure.
The irony, in that particular case, was that the market was already sorting it out: per capita consumption of soft-drinks in India have been among the lowest in the world.
Now, it's a fair question to ask how all that near-ubiquitous cricket advertising (which, as many will tell you, is the real growth industry in India) will change, now that Pepsi and Coke are being hounded out, but something tells me that BCCI officials aren't about to lose their sleep over this.
You can do the same comparison for just about everything,
The purpose of historical analyses such as the ones you mention is to demonstrate that, a) it isn't a recent phenomenon, and b) understand why we do certain things. That is, I think the real insight here is on analysing what home-videos "sell" (ie, become popular) and why, and not in merely saying that AFV was the first.
Re:Slate wrong.....it IS AFV
on
Bob Saget 2.0
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· Score: 1
I just saw today footage of a mother surrounded by her quadruplets and the babies wer eall laughing thier fool heads off.
..and the article links to, errr, exactly this video.
That was from AFV.
The point was that home-video voyeurism started off with America's Funniest Videos, and that YouTube is a "natural" successor to its crown.
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." -- Mohandas Gandhi
Wait, you're quoting Gandhi to support a violent action? Are you really this shameless, or was it to deliberately provoke angry responses?
Re:Why bring an iPod into the lavatory?!??!??
on
Do Not Flush Your iPod
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· Score: 4, Funny
He's not the brightest person in the world, is he?
I particularly like the way you've deduced the kid's intelligence levels based on where he takes his ipod with him. A very succicent, rational and thought-provoking analysis; Sherlock Holmes would be proud.
Slashdot Mirror
Out here in Singapore, (and I'm certain Hong Kong and London also have similar cards) we pay our fares on the local public transport network through a contact-less RFID card called EZ-Link card. In addition, my gym's ID card is also tap-as-you-go RFID.
I really don't have much personalized data here [1], but for most Singaporeans, RFID-proof wallets are counter-intuitive in a sense. Why would anyone want a wallet with which (s)he can't tap the MRT fare gates?
[1] - I mean, YES if you were smart about it, and would like to snoop, you can possibly know where I've been last night, for instance. Which, of course, gives me ideas, hmmmmmm.
While I haven't really discussed his product with him, nope, I don't think they do J2ME; it's something more internal than that. Symbian and Windows CE, basically.
I've seen a demo of theirs on a Nokia 8860, and on a cursory glance, the shut-down seems to work rather elegantly. Now, I rightfully don't know if it's hack-proof or anything, but certainly, it's got more to do with merely switching the phone off (or disabling J2ME).
a time to trot out my connections, and link to my friend's startup that provides a similar solution.
Here's the clincher, though: they even have a beta.
Phone purchases aren't tracked, but phone-line purchases (mostly pre-paid cards) are.
Good to see another Wait, wait, don't tell me listener in the house. :-)
Nope, it's not him that's not making the distinction, it is Microsoft itself. Here's the original quote that LanguageLog had a problem with:-
The question here is if a copy of Windows, albeit gotten with an, shall we say, illegal licence, is less genuine than one with a legal licence. Bill Poser seems to think otherwise; because functionality is the same, the product is still the same, even if the licence isn't genuine, as you rightfully said.
So yeah, it is not him who's confusing between 'licences' and 'products', it is Microsoft. Microsoft isn't trying to sell genuine Windows software here through their "Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative" programme, it is merely trying to sell genuine licences. Microsoft doesn't seem to think this distinction is important, but the good linguist (who, despite your apparent disdain, is actually very highly respected in linguistic spheres) does.
In this project effort that shall go unnamed (one of the big five IT consulting companies), we're trying to leverage this new change request titled 'compatibility with Vista' to get additional time from the client (apparently, it's very easy to do so; just say, 'Windows Presentation Environment', '.net 3.0', 'goobledygook', and watch your clients sweat).
To the extent that we're trying to charge extra man-hours, you could say that Vista has already been creating new jobs in Asia-Pacific. :-)
I see this thread as evidence to the fact that /. group-think has grown out from merely a sub-culture with its own in-jokes, to being dangerously out-of-touch with reality. That 'listening rights' question is one prominent example.
The Chinese operate under a lunisolar calendar, i.e., a (Chinese) 'month' is the time-period between two successive new moons. Now, the Chinese do use some solar calculations, but that's only for lunar correction, much like the Hebrew calendar does, and all of India's many lunisolar calendars do. As such, I'm struggling to understand how you deem the Mayan and the Chinese to be the only people to reckon the precession of the equinox, or indeed, how a Jovian year (Chinese years repeat every twelve years) would relate to this precession.
Not just that, I specifically strip all EXIF information from my photos at Flickr (there's a setting on Flickr to do just this), see no absolutely no reason as to why the rest of the world needs to know details about the equipment I use, specifically when I'm not discussing cameras with anyone out there. I know a couple of other people who also do just that.
Fact is, the leaks were a symptom of the larger problem: a lack of trust across the boardroom. Even if you ignore the moral and legal implications of spying on your own board-members (and you shouldn't), tackling the leaks alone without tackling the larger problem, a lack of trust, is lying applying band-aid for a hairline fracture.
As for why the tech press, CNET and Slashdot included, is going so strongly on Dunn, well, it isn't rocket-science is it: this time, it's personal. HP spied on everyone including that CNET's reporter's dad; obviously, there are a lot of pissed off individuals out (t)here.
Meanwhile, there's more breaking news.
Dude. Seriously, you're just embarrassing yourself with responses like this. If you really think that democracy is just gaining a majority and thrusting your views down the rest of the populace, you really really REALLY need a quick study in civics, politics, constitutional values and, yes, even liberal values.
See, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Islamic culture / civilization, I grew up in a Muslim-majority city, and I really think what HSBC has done to this guy was wrong. But the point of a constitutional democracy, and indeed, the point of having so many laws, and so much discussion on values, as opposed to merely having a mechanism for free and fair elections, was to avoid situations like the one you've described.
Bottomline: nations are free and democratic, not just because a majority can get the government they want, but because of the values they believe in. Remove that, and they won't be those nations anymore; they might exist the same geographical space, but they won't be those nations.
The British constitution is one of the oldest, unwritten constitutions in the world, with decrees and edicts going back into the Middle Ages. Many brilliant minds greater than yours or mine have spent countless hours discussing it, spending countless resources, and developing this huge collection of thought that went into the making of, not just, the constitutional democracy that Britain is, but also many many other fledging democracies worldwide.
I'm not British, so I don't have any loyalty as such towards the British constitution, but yes, I have a tremendous amount of respect towards it. I would suspect a British citizen would think that the British brand of democracy and freedom is the only brand that's acceptable to Britain.
And oh, about Sharia law... I really don't think you know what it is about.
Yes, but they still could have used a better background than red. :-D
Hmmm the second article's been withdrawn.
The question is if a young traveller who isn't a CEO should be deemed suspicious just because he travels frequently. In my experience, that's a very very VERY wrong thing to presume; the fact is that international travel has become a lot more broad-based than before, everywhere in the world, more people are travelling more often to more places, and most of them on pleasure. Feel free to disagree with my assertion, but don't set international airline policy presuming that only the rich and famous travel frequently.
Actually, it isn't. Indic words can be broken down into conjunct-consonant groups that roughly correspond to a single syllable. The kid's name, therefore, is more correctly broken down as veM-ka-t'a-s'u-bra-ma-nyam; I really haven't anyone break such a name down to 'asub', which, if you know Sanskrit, would mean 'inauspicious' (and thus defeat the purpose of having two Gods names in yours)
Might add here that the kid's real name is probably Siddharth (and not whatever they typed in the article)and that, quite possibly, he's carrying the surnames of both his parents; 'Grover' is probably his mom's surname, while Venkatasubramaniam is probably his Dad's name (and hence, he's bound to carry it as his surname according to Tamilian tradition). 'Venkatasubramaniam', as I was hinting earlier, is a conjunct word mixing the names 'Venkata' and 'Subramanyam', thus denoting a certain acceptance, and fusion, of the once competing twin traditions in Hindu theology, Shaivism and Vaishnavism. If the kid's dad was Irish, it's almost as if he was born into both Protestant and Catholic families and was named to reflect that.
In short, the kid's name carries a lot more cultural meaning than you guys can ever imagine'; he apparently bridges not only quasi-religious divisions in south India, but also the ethnic divisions between India's North and its South.
Don't let any of this stop you folks from cracking tasteless jokes on words you hardly understand though; not once is it irritating, exasperating, and plainly unfunny.
irony, n.:
1. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
2. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect.
That's correct; Slashdot has deftly changed from being a discussion of those metaphorical front-benchers, to bar-room banter from the backbenchers. Nerds have become bullies at roughly about the same time when geekdom became mainstream.
As for me, I came into this discussion trusting that the Slashdot hive mind will use its Google-fu and find the only link I'm really interested in. The rest is all hubris.
Seriously, what the FUCK is that supposed to mean? Just because you're in your mid-twenties, and aren't a CEO, you can't be expected to travel a lot?
Perhaps you have heard of this term called 'globalization' before, but trust me, a lot of us in our mid-twenties, and aren't CEO's, tend to travel a lot for pleasure. I, for one, make it a point to travel overseas at least thrice in a year, two of them for pleasure.
The irony, in that particular case, was that the market was already sorting it out: per capita consumption of soft-drinks in India have been among the lowest in the world.
Now, it's a fair question to ask how all that near-ubiquitous cricket advertising (which, as many will tell you, is the real growth industry in India) will change, now that Pepsi and Coke are being hounded out, but something tells me that BCCI officials aren't about to lose their sleep over this.
So this double copy-pasting is your way of saying that Bill and Dave would have been unanimous in their assessment? :-D
The purpose of historical analyses such as the ones you mention is to demonstrate that, a) it isn't a recent phenomenon, and b) understand why we do certain things. That is, I think the real insight here is on analysing what home-videos "sell" (ie, become popular) and why, and not in merely saying that AFV was the first.
..and the article links to, errr, exactly this video.
The point was that home-video voyeurism started off with America's Funniest Videos, and that YouTube is a "natural" successor to its crown.
Wait, you're quoting Gandhi to support a violent action? Are you really this shameless, or was it to deliberately provoke angry responses?
I particularly like the way you've deduced the kid's intelligence levels based on where he takes his ipod with him. A very succicent, rational and thought-provoking analysis; Sherlock Holmes would be proud.