I couldn't find the pictures to go with it, but the text I've been able to glean from several Google hits goes something like this:
Calvin: "I like to verb words."
Hobbes: "What?"
Calvin: "I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when 'access' was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed."
Calvin: "Verbing weirds language."
Hobbes: "Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding."
But the original quote, "Any noun can be verbed," is variously credited to either Edsger Dijkstra and Alan Perlis.
... its fuel of innovation and market share spent, and its core collapsing under its own weight, explodes as a SUPERNOVA. Expelling enormous gas clouds of lawsuits and IP claims with the brilliance of a trillion suns, Supernova EK2004 is dazzling observers the world over. Dr. Roland Smythe of the National Observatory commented, "This star was much larger than SCSO2003, which went supernova last year. But both are following the same progression and will soon be naught but a memory. Nonetheless, the data we've obtained from these two events will be studied for years to come." Indeed.
What makes this law significant from a mathematical point of view is that sets would be copyrightable, not just permutations. For example, if I extraced all the words from Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, put them in a bag and shook them up, then published them in whatever order they came out of the bag, I wouldn't be violating any current copyright. A novel is more than just a collection of words, in the same way that a song is more than just a collection of notes. What present-day copyright law protects is the order in which those words or notes appear. Now our brilliant congresspeople want to stir the bag and say, "No, it's not just the order that's important, but the collection itself that matters, regardless of the order in which the individual items appear."
Under the proposed law, who's to say what consititues a "datum" in a database? Wouldn't a word be sufficient? Why couldn't the author of a novel (who expended a considerable effort to assemble that particular collection of words), claim the novel is a database and sue someone, who uses the same words in a different novel, for infringement? This is the logical conclusion of such a faulty bill and is, of course, absurd.
While I agree that imposing a Harvard-like architecture on an inherently Von Neuman machine isn't a bad idea, it's not a real solution to the stated problem.
Problems like buffer overflows and memory leaks are due to choosing one's programming language poorly. Any programmer writing high-level functions who needs to call malloc, for example, needs his head examined. C and its ilk should be relegated to only the lowest of low-level programming needs. Then, with a good low-level API, mundane issues like memory management, bounds-checking, and garbage collection can be solved once and for all and free the programmer to do his work without generating these kinds of security issues.
Better computer languages that manage such things transparently abound. Why do so many people still use C?
I understand that. I'm not suggesting trying to cram more addresses into 32 bits. What I am suggesting is using the IPv4 protocol as is to get packets to and from various sub-networks on the internet and then, using a higher-level protocol at the sub-network portals, extract further refinements to the address from the data contained in the packets. This creates a hierarchical or branching topology, whereas IPv6 is more strongly connected. But I would contend that the far fringes of the internet don't need to be strongly connected to each other. Why, for example, would my networked refrigerator in Washington State need a direct connection to a toaster in Minsk?
Properly implemented, such a meta protocol could allow recursive branching, allowing the edges of the internet to build out indefinitely without affecting the current backbone one bit.
...just to build a hierarchical protocol on top of IPv4? Perhaps my understanding of this issue is insufficient, but bear with me. Suppose my local network has an external address of 12.34.56.78 and that I have a server with an internal address of 192.168.0.4. How difficult would it be build a protocol atop IPv4 that accesses my server as 12.34.56.78.0.4? All the internet backbone has to be concerned with is getting low-level IP packets to and from my LAN, and the hardware is already there to do that. The only additional requirement is for my router to recognize the higher-order protocol embedded in those packets and direct requests to the proper server. Am I missing something here?
Parallax (the BASIC Stamp folks) have numerous robotics kits, including their very successful Boe-Bot. Plus, their selection of sensors and other accessories is truly awesome -- all at reasonable prices.
I've worked with a number of their products and have found them to be well-designed and accompanied by clear, easy-to-comprehend instructions. And if you do get into a bind, their tech support is both informed and responsive. All-in-all, they're a top-notch company!
Some truth is harmful; some taboos, useful.
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That essay is as timid as it is long-winded. The author lacked the courage to state what cannot be said today and which social "fictions" those taboos support. But more importantly he failed to connect such taboos with their usefulness to, and positive effects upon, social structure.
For example, take the statement, "All men are created equal." This creed underpins the foundations of American democracy. Is it true? Well, no, of course not. Some people are born smarter than others, with better athletic genes, or with other advantages or disadvantages too numerous to mention. But for our country to function as an egalitarian society, we must at least pretend to believe, and behave as if, the statement were true. Otherwise our society falls apart. That's why books like Charles Murray's The Bell Curve are so widely loathed. Even if the assertions in a such a book were scientifically accurate, to accept them as fact does more harm than good if it erodes the underpinnings of a society that tries to be fair and just.
In a sense, therefore, truth is not some unbiased, ideal thing that exists outside of our experience, but it is something that we define by our objectives and behavior. "Truth", in this sense, is a social construct. So can we truly be an egalitarian society? Well, we certainly can't if we don't accept that all persons are created equal. But we do believe steadfastly that equality is a worthwhile objective. And to achieve this objective, we have to brand as heresy any suggestion that some of us are born "more equal" than others.
What we need to take a hard look at from time to time is whether the objectives that such "truths" support continue to be worthwhile. And that takes courage.
...but that's how all purchase orders arrive at my business -- along with hot (read: pump-and-dump) over-the-counter stock tips and vacation bargains too good to be true. And all this on paper that needs constant replenishing, over a phone line that costs me good money every month and serves no other purpose. Do I tell my customers to use email instead? I wish I could, but I'm not sure they'd know how.
I even bought an external FAX modem for my Linux box, thinking I could at least save the rolls of paper wasted by the penny-stock and vacation scammers. But so far, getting it to answer a single FAX call and process the incoming data has been the impossible dream.
FAXing is a technology that deserves to die. Will someone please pull the trigger?
As much as many of us would like to see open source prevail in the electronic voting system market (as the Aussies have decreed it must), it is not, by itself, a cure-all for the kinds of abuses it tries to address. Who's to say, for example, the the code that's published matches the firmware in the machine. I know my county auditor wouldn't know the difference. No, what's needed beyond open-source is a verifiable chain of trust from the published code to each individual machine. I don't know how to make that happen, but I'll bet there are some crypto gurus out there who can figure it out.
Prepaid internet cards, like prepaid phone cards, can be used while travelling or in an emergency. A search on Google garnered a large number of hits. Many have nationwide local dialup numbers. Be sure to pick one that can't expire before the first time you use it and which has a long expiration time afterward.
So shine an LED through the finger to see if there's a pulse. Those portable heart rate monitors are cheap, so the technology can't add that much to the final cost.
The screen is almost unreadable. And the price? $200!! Come on! This isn't 1999! Nowadays, you can get a better-equipped Palm Zire for less than half that. And the size difference? Irrelevant, IMO.
"There are significant air gaps between the HD and the metal plates on both sides of the HD. I did not consider using thermal compound - the gaps are too big."
That's why Bergquist makes their Gap Pad product. I've used it in other applications, and it works. Plus, its cushy resiliency should knock another dB or two off the sound level.
UCSD students are pretty bright. Surely they could come up with some clever and plausibly deniable name like, itsucsdontit.com.
"What!" says you. "How dare you suggest the University is a drain on the public coffers! 'It's UCSD on tit' is an illegal and dememaning use of a noble trademark."
"But, no", says I. "That's not what it says at all! It simply states, 'It sucs, don't it?' The trademark isn't even in there."
Those La Jollans oughta be able to come up with something much better than this!
I'm using a 386 running DOS to drive a Light Machines milling machine. It works great -- no upgrades necessary! I have a customer who still uses a Toshiba T1200F laptop (8086, two floppy drives, no hard drive) to collect GPS data and drive a video overlay controller for his underwater surveys. My Windows machine is a rather dated Gateway P-II 450MHz box, whose motherboard I plan to upgrade without changing the nameplate on the front. (It's less attractive to burglars that way!)
I still have -- but don't use -- an Otrona Attache CP/M machine, a TRS-80, and my very first computer, a Poly-88.
... it was a lousy question. It's prefaced by the very provocative assertion:
"Microsoft users are getting fed up. They're battered by worms, viruses, security patches and increasing enterprise licensing costs. Aggravation has users talking about switching from Microsoft software to something else..."
Good survey questions are supposed to be completely neutral. What kind of response do you expect from one that begins like this? Before they even get to the actual question, the respondents have grabbed their pitchforks and lit their torches!
While I generally take a libertarian stance regarding freedom of information, I think the law needs to evolve a little bit beyond treating all publicly-available information alike. Granted, the data on the site in question were all obtained from publicly-accessible sources. But gathering it into one convenient repository, it seems to me, makes it more than just quantitatively distinct. There's a qualitative aspect to it as well that makes the repository different, in substance, from the sum of its disparate parts.
To cite a parallel example in meatspace, obtaining the individual components to make an explosive might be legal -- with some effort. But that doesn't give someone the right to open a Bombs R Us franchise, where the same components are available under one roof with convenient onsite parking and a loading dock. At some point, the same principles will have to be applied to "free" information.
Perhaps one way to deal with this conundrum is to consider not only what the information is, but what you have to know to get to it -- i.e. how it's indexed. If I know the name of a police officer, for example, I can look up his/her phone number in the phone directory. But I can't find that same number by looking under "Police Officers" in the Yellow Pages. A directory that allows me to do that would be qualitatively different from the phone book, even though it yields the exact same content.
We haven't heard the last of this issue by a long shot. The next couple decades will truly be interesting!
I have a Redhat box to which I'm consistently logged in as root, a la Lindows. I know it's stupid and dangerous, but -- dang! -- it's convenient. Recently I installed Mandrake on a laptop. Now, Mandrake doesn't suffer root logins gladly, to say the least. So I've given into the su routine -- over and over and OVER. Every time I turn around, I'm typing in the bloody root password just to get something done. Clearly neither approach to administrative tasks is ideal.
I think what's needed, instead of the toll booth that's su, is a speed bump. Allow root privileges, but instead of asking for the root password to do certain things, just pop up a modal dialog box to remind one that a misstep could have consequences: "This is an administrative operation. Shall I continue? [OK] [Cancel]"
Perhaps this could be the mode of operation after logging in as the super-but-fallible user, softroot.
Sure it looks neat -- like a mini laptop with teeny tiny keys. It's so cute! But even ignoring the tiny keys for a moment, just how do you use this thing? Do you balance it in one hand while typing with the other? I don't think so! That's about as awkward an arrangement as I can imagine. But what's the point of having one if you have to set it on a desk to use it? And when you're typing, your hands will be right it front of the screen, blocking it from view. This isn't radical, it isn't innovative, and I submit that it's not even useful.
The blind people of Venice are human beings just like the rest of us. I find the notion of controlling them remotely not only morally repugnant, but a blatant misuse of technology. That Microsoft might have come up with this one is disappointing but -- sigh -- not such a great surprise.
...is a way to access the system to find out where my driver is when he's got stuff for me. That way I could go meet him early and get it, instead of waiting for an afternoon delivery.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh blast! I misquoted Dr. Smythe. He had referred to SCOX2003, not SCSO2003. My apologies to the good doctor.
... its fuel of innovation and market share spent, and its core collapsing under its own weight, explodes as a SUPERNOVA. Expelling enormous gas clouds of lawsuits and IP claims with the brilliance of a trillion suns, Supernova EK2004 is dazzling observers the world over. Dr. Roland Smythe of the National Observatory commented, "This star was much larger than SCSO2003, which went supernova last year. But both are following the same progression and will soon be naught but a memory. Nonetheless, the data we've obtained from these two events will be studied for years to come." Indeed.
Under the proposed law, who's to say what consititues a "datum" in a database? Wouldn't a word be sufficient? Why couldn't the author of a novel (who expended a considerable effort to assemble that particular collection of words), claim the novel is a database and sue someone, who uses the same words in a different novel, for infringement? This is the logical conclusion of such a faulty bill and is, of course, absurd.
Problems like buffer overflows and memory leaks are due to choosing one's programming language poorly. Any programmer writing high-level functions who needs to call malloc, for example, needs his head examined. C and its ilk should be relegated to only the lowest of low-level programming needs. Then, with a good low-level API, mundane issues like memory management, bounds-checking, and garbage collection can be solved once and for all and free the programmer to do his work without generating these kinds of security issues.
Better computer languages that manage such things transparently abound. Why do so many people still use C?
Properly implemented, such a meta protocol could allow recursive branching, allowing the edges of the internet to build out indefinitely without affecting the current backbone one bit.
...just to build a hierarchical protocol on top of IPv4? Perhaps my understanding of this issue is insufficient, but bear with me. Suppose my local network has an external address of 12.34.56.78 and that I have a server with an internal address of 192.168.0.4. How difficult would it be build a protocol atop IPv4 that accesses my server as 12.34.56.78.0.4? All the internet backbone has to be concerned with is getting low-level IP packets to and from my LAN, and the hardware is already there to do that. The only additional requirement is for my router to recognize the higher-order protocol embedded in those packets and direct requests to the proper server. Am I missing something here?
I've worked with a number of their products and have found them to be well-designed and accompanied by clear, easy-to-comprehend instructions. And if you do get into a bind, their tech support is both informed and responsive. All-in-all, they're a top-notch company!
For example, take the statement, "All men are created equal." This creed underpins the foundations of American democracy. Is it true? Well, no, of course not. Some people are born smarter than others, with better athletic genes, or with other advantages or disadvantages too numerous to mention. But for our country to function as an egalitarian society, we must at least pretend to believe, and behave as if, the statement were true. Otherwise our society falls apart. That's why books like Charles Murray's The Bell Curve are so widely loathed. Even if the assertions in a such a book were scientifically accurate, to accept them as fact does more harm than good if it erodes the underpinnings of a society that tries to be fair and just.
In a sense, therefore, truth is not some unbiased, ideal thing that exists outside of our experience, but it is something that we define by our objectives and behavior. "Truth", in this sense, is a social construct. So can we truly be an egalitarian society? Well, we certainly can't if we don't accept that all persons are created equal. But we do believe steadfastly that equality is a worthwhile objective. And to achieve this objective, we have to brand as heresy any suggestion that some of us are born "more equal" than others.
What we need to take a hard look at from time to time is whether the objectives that such "truths" support continue to be worthwhile. And that takes courage.
I even bought an external FAX modem for my Linux box, thinking I could at least save the rolls of paper wasted by the penny-stock and vacation scammers. But so far, getting it to answer a single FAX call and process the incoming data has been the impossible dream.
FAXing is a technology that deserves to die. Will someone please pull the trigger?
- Post some incendiary drivel about the GPL on the corporate website, hoping to lure the Slashdot crowd.
- Leave if up overnight, and check the logs next morning, quivering with anticipation.
- Pick through the catch for stuff like:
- Ooh! A Linux user agent! Transfer it to the hit list.
- Send out the DMCA subpoenas
...
Well, you know the rest. The RIAA wrote the refrain to that song.As much as many of us would like to see open source prevail in the electronic voting system market (as the Aussies have decreed it must), it is not, by itself, a cure-all for the kinds of abuses it tries to address. Who's to say, for example, the the code that's published matches the firmware in the machine. I know my county auditor wouldn't know the difference. No, what's needed beyond open-source is a verifiable chain of trust from the published code to each individual machine. I don't know how to make that happen, but I'll bet there are some crypto gurus out there who can figure it out.
Prepaid internet cards, like prepaid phone cards, can be used while travelling or in an emergency. A search on Google garnered a large number of hits. Many have nationwide local dialup numbers. Be sure to pick one that can't expire before the first time you use it and which has a long expiration time afterward.
So shine an LED through the finger to see if there's a pulse. Those portable heart rate monitors are cheap, so the technology can't add that much to the final cost.
The screen is almost unreadable. And the price? $200!! Come on! This isn't 1999! Nowadays, you can get a better-equipped Palm Zire for less than half that. And the size difference? Irrelevant, IMO.
"What!" says you. "How dare you suggest the University is a drain on the public coffers! 'It's UCSD on tit' is an illegal and dememaning use of a noble trademark."
"But, no", says I. "That's not what it says at all! It simply states, 'It sucs, don't it?' The trademark isn't even in there."
Those La Jollans oughta be able to come up with something much better than this!
I still have -- but don't use -- an Otrona Attache CP/M machine, a TRS-80, and my very first computer, a Poly-88.
Okay, so I'm a packrat. 'Got a problem with that?
To cite a parallel example in meatspace, obtaining the individual components to make an explosive might be legal -- with some effort. But that doesn't give someone the right to open a Bombs R Us franchise, where the same components are available under one roof with convenient onsite parking and a loading dock. At some point, the same principles will have to be applied to "free" information.
Perhaps one way to deal with this conundrum is to consider not only what the information is, but what you have to know to get to it -- i.e. how it's indexed. If I know the name of a police officer, for example, I can look up his/her phone number in the phone directory. But I can't find that same number by looking under "Police Officers" in the Yellow Pages. A directory that allows me to do that would be qualitatively different from the phone book, even though it yields the exact same content.
We haven't heard the last of this issue by a long shot. The next couple decades will truly be interesting!
...in Office Depot, back in the office furniture section. Isn't this the same computer that Dilbert's pointy-haired boss uses?
I think what's needed, instead of the toll booth that's su, is a speed bump. Allow root privileges, but instead of asking for the root password to do certain things, just pop up a modal dialog box to remind one that a misstep could have consequences: "This is an administrative operation. Shall I continue? [OK] [Cancel]" Perhaps this could be the mode of operation after logging in as the super-but-fallible user, softroot.
Sure it looks neat -- like a mini laptop with teeny tiny keys. It's so cute! But even ignoring the tiny keys for a moment, just how do you use this thing? Do you balance it in one hand while typing with the other? I don't think so! That's about as awkward an arrangement as I can imagine. But what's the point of having one if you have to set it on a desk to use it? And when you're typing, your hands will be right it front of the screen, blocking it from view. This isn't radical, it isn't innovative, and I submit that it's not even useful.
The blind people of Venice are human beings just like the rest of us. I find the notion of controlling them remotely not only morally repugnant, but a blatant misuse of technology. That Microsoft might have come up with this one is disappointing but -- sigh -- not such a great surprise.
...is a way to access the system to find out where my driver is when he's got stuff for me. That way I could go meet him early and get it, instead of waiting for an afternoon delivery.