I grew up in Boulder, CO, which has a huge video store. You can drop by and rent almost any movie you can think of for $3 ($3.50 for a new release) a night.
I now live in anonymous Suburbia, a few blocks from a Blockbuster Video. I would love to walk up to a kiosk in Blockbuster (or perhaps do it online before I arrive), select almost any movie I can think of, wait for it to download and burn a DVD, pay $3, and take the DVD home for a night. I would then return the DVD the next day, and they would have one more obscure and interesting movie in stock.
Under this system, I don't have to have a fast and reliable connection, I can watch it on my TV without a DVD burner, content owners can be paid for their products, and Blockbuster would have something in stock aside from 300 copies of last month's hit romantic comedy.
Core AppleWorks 6 compresses to 2MB. Installed with options, it's around 10-15MB, if I recall. And the majority of that size is templates, clip art, etc, which could be downloaded as part of the optional install process.
Does AppleWorks have all of the features of Microsoft Office? No. But aside from some Excel functions, it has all of the features of Microsoft Office (sans email) that I've actually used.
With a plugin architecture, it shouldn't be hard to have a small but functional installer that downloads all the bells and whistles the user wants, but only after it knows what the user wants.
I talked my mother in law through downloading OpenOffice over her AOL connection earlier this year. 16 hours later, she called back to say it was done. When she decided she didn't like it, it took far less than 16 hours to drive to Mall*Wart, buy a copy of MS Office, and install it.
Ah, but if you have the choice of developing in Java with Eclipse or C++ in Visual Studio, all other things being equal, the former is the more attractive option. And that means your code can run anywhere. And that means your users don't have to own Windows to run your software.
So even if Eclipse isn't a direct competitor to Visual Studio, it can make a dent in the Empire.
Opening Windows source code wouldn't make the product more secure.
While a geek with enough time and effort could understand the code, patch a hole, and make a build, that just secures his computer. For the patch to be useful, someone must apply it to the authoritative source.
With thousands of people writing virii in Visual Basic, Microsoft would clearly need to extensively review any submitted patches to their proposed open source operating system (OSOS). In order for OSOS to be beneficial, the cost of such reviews must be less than fixing the holes in house.
Personnel is not Microsoft's problem. They have thousands of highly skilled software engineers with intimate knowledge of Windows's internals. If someone has the time, effort, and skills to fix security holes in Windows OSOS, Microsoft would be willing to pay that person as an employee.
If the biggest software company in the world can't fix problems in its own software, I doubt there's anything the open source community can do to help.
I've heard plenty of people rejoice at reaching level 50 of their favorite MMORPG, but my high school friends had MUDs to thank when they wrote their homework at 100 WPM.
Re:Babies are Hard, Despite their Skull Softness
on
The Baby Bootstrap?
·
· Score: 1
But they do have tangible experience. Helen Keller made almost no progress learning sign language until her teacher signed "water" and dunked her hand in a bucket.
Babies are Hard, Despite their Skull Softness
on
The Baby Bootstrap?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Learning like a baby" is actually a very hard problem, for several reasons.
1. Babies come built with millions of years of evolution. There's a lot of skill and a surprising amount of knowledge (depending on who you ask) in the large and bulbous head of a baby.
2. Babies generally come with parents who spend a lot of time teaching. The baby learns some things by induction, but learns a lot by conscious teaching.
3. A lot of a baby's first two years are spent learning things a (non-robot) computer can't. How to hold a mother. How to avoid falling flat on one's face. What things belong in the mouth. How to eat solid food without choking. How to pee in the toilet. How objects move when touched. What faces are likely to provide food and attention. What happens when you pull a cat's tail.
4. A lot of the things a baby learns later in life are aided greatly by the learning in #3. Imagine learning how humans are likely to behave without having watched humans behave.
5. A baby learns language with the help of rich sensory input. It's a lot easier to learn the meaning of "goat" when you can see a picture of a goat. The Internet offers precious little of this.
Now, DARPA thrives on funding hard problems. And a lot of progress has been made on learning within a domain (e.g. speech processing). But building a general-purpose learner is very hard.
Humans have immense evolution behind general-purpose learning, and we struggle with it. Getting a 3-year-old to know what a 3-year-old knows takes around 3 man-years, not counting the child's time. And what would DARPA want with a computer with the knowledge of a 3-year-old? They've got ready access to thousands of 18-year-olds. Add to that the time to code up tens of thousands of years of evolution that is still far from well understood, and you're looking at a problem far too large to tackle in one go.
DARPA hasn't put a lot of effort into general-purpose learning for the same reason few people work on single programs which can play chess, go, checkers, backgammon, Monopoly, and Magic: the Gathering well. It's a lot easier to do it a piece at a time.
Working from home takes a lot more discipline than working in an office.
My home is very distracting, containing such diversions as books, music, a girlfriend, a well-stocked fridge, and three cats.
Work, on the other hand, has several things in its favor. If someone finds a bug, I can quickly walk over and look at the screen. If someone mentions something I'm involved in, I can chime in over the cubicle walls. Not to mention, the internet connection is faster.
I'm glad that I'm able to work from home on occasion, like when my car breaks down or my girlfriend is sick. But I wouldn't want to make it a regular practice.
You've been a developer, so remember what it's like. You'll be working with a lot of people who probably don't understand software development and software developers. You're the developer's advocate, so don't forget how to think like one.
In the beginning, God created Kuwait City. The Earth was without form and void. And God said "Let there be energy," and and oil was moving across the face of the waters. -- Ge 1....
"You are to possess their land, and I Myself will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with oil and honey." -- Le 20:24.
I found out about gopher in 1993 when I was in 7th grade, shortly after I got a UNIX account. This was back when I was fascinated by cd..; ls, so my standards were not exactly mountainous. This was before everyone had heard of the Internet, so gopher impressed me by delivering The Adventures of Huck Finn, Kanji Character of the Day, and e to 50,000 digits (which I downloaded to floppy and took home!). I didn't know about bookmarks, so I'd try to remember the hop-by-hop path to my favorite servers.
In the fall of 1995, when I was a sophomore in high school, I wrote an essay about the Web in which I listed browser protocol compliance (http, ftp, gopher, and even wais!) as a major feature. I think the last time I used Gopher was in 1996 while searching the 'net for something school related. I think the site may have been down, but I at least felt like I was using my old friend the rodent again.
Back in that same day, I'd always try and fail to get something cool from archie. Almost without fail, the search would turn up nothing or it would turn up lots of results, none of which pointed to sites that would let me in.
I knew I had a monkey banging away on my keyboard, but now I'll have an opportunity to find out if one monkey on the back of a mouse will browse to www.hamlet.com
Whenever your character jumps, you should also jump. And here's a tip: if you want to make a really sharp left turn, jerk the controller to the left. It helps.
You may modify and redistribute this virus however often you like, so long as you include the source code. If you do not share the source code, you may not redistribute this virus.
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. No wonder Linux systems aren't hit very often; viruses violate the GPL.
When a business I'm suspicious of is collecting information, I tend to reveal information in ways which I think will maximally skew the data. I already know I'm a statistical outlier, so why not add a little noise to the data?
Slashdot Mirror
I grew up in Boulder, CO, which has a huge video store. You can drop by and rent almost any movie you can think of for $3 ($3.50 for a new release) a night.
I now live in anonymous Suburbia, a few blocks from a Blockbuster Video. I would love to walk up to a kiosk in Blockbuster (or perhaps do it online before I arrive), select almost any movie I can think of, wait for it to download and burn a DVD, pay $3, and take the DVD home for a night. I would then return the DVD the next day, and they would have one more obscure and interesting movie in stock.
Under this system, I don't have to have a fast and reliable connection, I can watch it on my TV without a DVD burner, content owners can be paid for their products, and Blockbuster would have something in stock aside from 300 copies of last month's hit romantic comedy.
select me from datingpool where ibask in ('your', 'gaze') group by seven, oclock order by eight, oclock
insert into womb (select * from man natural join woman)
delete me from thisworld where mylife is null
Core AppleWorks 6 compresses to 2MB. Installed with options, it's around 10-15MB, if I recall. And the majority of that size is templates, clip art, etc, which could be downloaded as part of the optional install process.
Does AppleWorks have all of the features of Microsoft Office? No. But aside from some Excel functions, it has all of the features of Microsoft Office (sans email) that I've actually used.
With a plugin architecture, it shouldn't be hard to have a small but functional installer that downloads all the bells and whistles the user wants, but only after it knows what the user wants.
I talked my mother in law through downloading OpenOffice over her AOL connection earlier this year. 16 hours later, she called back to say it was done. When she decided she didn't like it, it took far less than 16 hours to drive to Mall*Wart, buy a copy of MS Office, and install it.
If you aren't sure exactly what a spell should do in some situation, you can just make it up to fit the story.
API documentation, on the other hand...
Ah, but if you have the choice of developing in Java with Eclipse or C++ in Visual Studio, all other things being equal, the former is the more attractive option. And that means your code can run anywhere. And that means your users don't have to own Windows to run your software.
So even if Eclipse isn't a direct competitor to Visual Studio, it can make a dent in the Empire.
Opening Windows source code wouldn't make the product more secure.
While a geek with enough time and effort could understand the code, patch a hole, and make a build, that just secures his computer. For the patch to be useful, someone must apply it to the authoritative source.
With thousands of people writing virii in Visual Basic, Microsoft would clearly need to extensively review any submitted patches to their proposed open source operating system (OSOS). In order for OSOS to be beneficial, the cost of such reviews must be less than fixing the holes in house.
Personnel is not Microsoft's problem. They have thousands of highly skilled software engineers with intimate knowledge of Windows's internals. If someone has the time, effort, and skills to fix security holes in Windows OSOS, Microsoft would be willing to pay that person as an employee.
If the biggest software company in the world can't fix problems in its own software, I doubt there's anything the open source community can do to help.
I've heard plenty of people rejoice at reaching level 50 of their favorite MMORPG, but my high school friends had MUDs to thank when they wrote their homework at 100 WPM.
The scientist is my shepherd
He makes me lie down on the examining table...
Personally, I'm waiting for a sequel, video games, and action figues for American Graffiti.
I have to wait 10 years for University of California Bone? And I thought college kids were easy...
I'm still cleaning off dust from Burning Man.
But they do have tangible experience. Helen Keller made almost no progress learning sign language until her teacher signed "water" and dunked her hand in a bucket.
"Learning like a baby" is actually a very hard problem, for several reasons.
1. Babies come built with millions of years of evolution. There's a lot of skill and a surprising amount of knowledge (depending on who you ask) in the large and bulbous head of a baby.
2. Babies generally come with parents who spend a lot of time teaching. The baby learns some things by induction, but learns a lot by conscious teaching.
3. A lot of a baby's first two years are spent learning things a (non-robot) computer can't. How to hold a mother. How to avoid falling flat on one's face. What things belong in the mouth. How to eat solid food without choking. How to pee in the toilet. How objects move when touched. What faces are likely to provide food and attention. What happens when you pull a cat's tail.
4. A lot of the things a baby learns later in life are aided greatly by the learning in #3. Imagine learning how humans are likely to behave without having watched humans behave.
5. A baby learns language with the help of rich sensory input. It's a lot easier to learn the meaning of "goat" when you can see a picture of a goat. The Internet offers precious little of this.
Now, DARPA thrives on funding hard problems. And a lot of progress has been made on learning within a domain (e.g. speech processing). But building a general-purpose learner is very hard.
Humans have immense evolution behind general-purpose learning, and we struggle with it. Getting a 3-year-old to know what a 3-year-old knows takes around 3 man-years, not counting the child's time. And what would DARPA want with a computer with the knowledge of a 3-year-old? They've got ready access to thousands of 18-year-olds. Add to that the time to code up tens of thousands of years of evolution that is still far from well understood, and you're looking at a problem far too large to tackle in one go.
DARPA hasn't put a lot of effort into general-purpose learning for the same reason few people work on single programs which can play chess, go, checkers, backgammon, Monopoly, and Magic: the Gathering well. It's a lot easier to do it a piece at a time.
Working from home takes a lot more discipline than working in an office.
My home is very distracting, containing such diversions as books, music, a girlfriend, a well-stocked fridge, and three cats.
Work, on the other hand, has several things in its favor. If someone finds a bug, I can quickly walk over and look at the screen. If someone mentions something I'm involved in, I can chime in over the cubicle walls. Not to mention, the internet connection is faster.
I'm glad that I'm able to work from home on occasion, like when my car breaks down or my girlfriend is sick. But I wouldn't want to make it a regular practice.
You've been a developer, so remember what it's like. You'll be working with a lot of people who probably don't understand software development and software developers. You're the developer's advocate, so don't forget how to think like one.
Perhaps OEM manufacturers will put pressure on OS vendors to use resources more efficiently.
Wait. What planet did I just wake up on?
In the beginning, God created Kuwait City. The Earth was without form and void. And God said "Let there be energy," and and oil was moving across the face of the waters. -- Ge 1. ...
"You are to possess their land, and I Myself will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with oil and honey." -- Le 20:24.
I found out about gopher in 1993 when I was in 7th grade, shortly after I got a UNIX account. This was back when I was fascinated by cd ..; ls, so my standards were not exactly mountainous. This was before everyone had heard of the Internet, so gopher impressed me by delivering The Adventures of Huck Finn, Kanji Character of the Day, and e to 50,000 digits (which I downloaded to floppy and took home!). I didn't know about bookmarks, so I'd try to remember the hop-by-hop path to my favorite servers.
In the fall of 1995, when I was a sophomore in high school, I wrote an essay about the Web in which I listed browser protocol compliance (http, ftp, gopher, and even wais!) as a major feature. I think the last time I used Gopher was in 1996 while searching the 'net for something school related. I think the site may have been down, but I at least felt like I was using my old friend the rodent again.
Back in that same day, I'd always try and fail to get something cool from archie. Almost without fail, the search would turn up nothing or it would turn up lots of results, none of which pointed to sites that would let me in.
I knew I had a monkey banging away on my keyboard, but now I'll have an opportunity to find out if one monkey on the back of a mouse will browse to www.hamlet.com
For a $100 textbook, students sometimes pay $5 per page they read during the semester.
Whenever your character jumps, you should also jump. And here's a tip: if you want to make a really sharp left turn, jerk the controller to the left. It helps.
All problems in Computer Science can be solved by adding another layer of indirection.
You may modify and redistribute this virus however often you like, so long as you include the source code. If you do not share the source code, you may not redistribute this virus.
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. No wonder Linux systems aren't hit very often; viruses violate the GPL.
5 New Messages:
{Virus} Hello
{Virus} TEST
{Virus} hi
{Virus} Hello
Homeland Security Warning: New Virus Spreading
When a business I'm suspicious of is collecting information, I tend to reveal information in ways which I think will maximally skew the data. I already know I'm a statistical outlier, so why not add a little noise to the data?