I've dealt with people and companies who insist on a fax rather than an email or a scanned image because of some bizarre perception that faxes are more "real". There's a perception on an emotional level that when you put a document in your side, the guy on the other end gets the same document, even though if you tried to pin them down they'd admit that this couldn't technically be the case.
And so, you might firm up a deal via email and phone conversations, but when it comes down to signing the document, they'll insist on faxing you a document, and have you sign it and fax it back. Even though we both know, were we pinned down, that it's not the same document.
When Star Trek transporters become available, we'll probably go back to "fax" machines that beam the real document from one spot to another, although McCoy will continue to insist it isn't really the same document.
The postal service has been threatening to go out of business since late last century. Time to put up or shut up. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. It can't be any worse than all the whining about it.
> That's certainly the situation in the UK: the postal service is obliged to charge a ridiculously low price for the basic first-class letter, and to deliver & collect them from right out in the sticks, but has long since lost ts monopoly on postal deliveries, so faces lots of competition for lucrative business deliveries around major cities. They mainly survive by delivering vast quantities of junk mail.
So.... the sooner the government sponsored postal service goes out of business, the sooner the private companies will have to shoulder their part of the burden, the sooner people will pay the real cost of a first class letter, and the sooner companies will have to pay the real (hopefully non-profitable) cost of junk mail?
So that's the more civil political discourse I've been hearing about. To address your point, it couldn't possibly be because I leave the radio on the news channel for traffic reports?
On the way to work this morning I heard on the radio someone say that he really liked Apollo 18 as a horror film, but the only thing wrong with it is that wayyyy too many people are going to believe the footage is authentic.
Except that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photos were obviously faked. The LRO doesn't exist. It couldn't because there's no way it could orbit the moon, which is obviously a flat disk facing a flat earth.
You're not thinking like a hoaxer. If they can ignore evidence in the past, they can even more easily ignore any evidence in the present and future, especially as technology makes evidence more and more easy to fake.
In a way I think the hoaxers are doing us a favor, reminding us that we shouldn't take everything we hear from the scientific community at face value. Of course, they're way at the far end of the curve.
C'mon, don't be disingenuous. This is not throwing a rock, it's turning on a very complicated machine that has to work in very difficult conditions. A Trebuchet is F=MA. A rocket is a lot of other things besides.
Not just battery life... My old Pilot Pro was much more responsive than my Droid X is, despite running on 15 year old hardware. Bloat has infused the PDA market.
It'd be different if everyone was building and flying 737s. But if only governments had been doing it until fairly recently, hugely expensive and sometimes they just blew up, and then private companies just started building them for the first time and some company's first demo model crashed, we'd all call it a failure? Seriously?
> If private corporations were developing new technology on the edge of the unknown then I would agree. Unfortunately this is not new tech, this science, technology, and research has been around and in use for decades. Delays and failures such as this are a serious blow to the idea that we are ready for space flight based on the for profit model.
Like many things, that's both true and untrue. You're right, the individual pieces are not new tech, and the purpose is also not new tech. If all it took is bolting the right parts together, then, well, anyone could do it, and we'd all have spaceships. The thing is, integrating a machine of that size and designed to work under those conditions is non-trivial even though it *has* been done before. If nothing else, it hasn't been done by this particular team, who has to learn all kinds of things like procurement, QA, integration and how to launch the thing. As we've learned from every space mission back to the 1960's, one error, one bad decision, anywhere in the process of component parts to launch, can result in a prang. Even when NASA does it. Most especially if a company does it who hasn't done it before. Creating and successfully launching a functional spaceship is a process. A really complicated process that's difficult to learn.
So I contend that if they got up to 45K feet and a mach-and-a-half on their first try, that's pretty damned good for a newcomer.
That was completely unnecessary. Did you go to a school where they did not teach how science worked? Here's a phrase: "Scientific Method". Ring any bells? No?
Really. Well, that sucks even more. I actually use the Tricorder app, and I have absolutely no interest in Star Trek fangeek content. I've seen all the photos of Nana Visitor I care to see this lifetime. They'd be better served hiring the guy and making it a paid (but inexpensive) app.
Indeed. And the altitude and speed it achieved before it pranged were pretty cool. I wouldn't even call it a disappointment. It's a learning opportunity.
> Yeah, but finger operated devices sucked before capacitive screens were perfected, so that wasn't really an option quite yet in '03.
Agreed! So we got interim solutions like the Palm Pilot and Graffiti input, and it actually worked fairly well. (I could write graffiti almost as fast as I could write English.) But handwriting recognition, even today is not ready for prime time. IT appears to have been a bad idea from the start. And once you used a finger operated device for five minutes, you never want to go back to styli.
Slashdot Mirror
I've dealt with people and companies who insist on a fax rather than an email or a scanned image because of some bizarre perception that faxes are more "real". There's a perception on an emotional level that when you put a document in your side, the guy on the other end gets the same document, even though if you tried to pin them down they'd admit that this couldn't technically be the case.
And so, you might firm up a deal via email and phone conversations, but when it comes down to signing the document, they'll insist on faxing you a document, and have you sign it and fax it back. Even though we both know, were we pinned down, that it's not the same document.
When Star Trek transporters become available, we'll probably go back to "fax" machines that beam the real document from one spot to another, although McCoy will continue to insist it isn't really the same document.
Agreed. So why not rent a really big botnet, use it to destroy other botnets, and then turn it on itself?
The postal service has been threatening to go out of business since late last century. Time to put up or shut up. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. It can't be any worse than all the whining about it.
> That's certainly the situation in the UK: the postal service is obliged to charge a ridiculously low price for the basic first-class letter, and to deliver & collect them from right out in the sticks, but has long since lost ts monopoly on postal deliveries, so faces lots of competition for lucrative business deliveries around major cities. They mainly survive by delivering vast quantities of junk mail.
So.... the sooner the government sponsored postal service goes out of business, the sooner the private companies will have to shoulder their part of the burden, the sooner people will pay the real cost of a first class letter, and the sooner companies will have to pay the real (hopefully non-profitable) cost of junk mail?
And this is a bad thing?
I wonder if you could rent a botnet to attack other botnets?
So that's the more civil political discourse I've been hearing about. To address your point, it couldn't possibly be because I leave the radio on the news channel for traffic reports?
Um, so now, PlayStation Network will be even easier to crack?
I would have hired that network admin from San Francisco.
On the way to work this morning I heard on the radio someone say that he really liked Apollo 18 as a horror film, but the only thing wrong with it is that wayyyy too many people are going to believe the footage is authentic.
Except that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photos were obviously faked. The LRO doesn't exist. It couldn't because there's no way it could orbit the moon, which is obviously a flat disk facing a flat earth.
You're not thinking like a hoaxer. If they can ignore evidence in the past, they can even more easily ignore any evidence in the present and future, especially as technology makes evidence more and more easy to fake.
In a way I think the hoaxers are doing us a favor, reminding us that we shouldn't take everything we hear from the scientific community at face value. Of course, they're way at the far end of the curve.
C'mon, don't be disingenuous. This is not throwing a rock, it's turning on a very complicated machine that has to work in very difficult conditions. A Trebuchet is F=MA. A rocket is a lot of other things besides.
Oooh good point. Best answer so far.
Ok, that was surreal enough. It's not that I was befuddled. It was that the reply didn't have any relation to what went before.
Sorry, that seems like a complete non sequitur. Are you replying to the right article?
Not just battery life... My old Pilot Pro was much more responsive than my Droid X is, despite running on 15 year old hardware. Bloat has infused the PDA market.
It'd be different if everyone was building and flying 737s. But if only governments had been doing it until fairly recently, hugely expensive and sometimes they just blew up, and then private companies just started building them for the first time and some company's first demo model crashed, we'd all call it a failure? Seriously?
> If private corporations were developing new technology on the edge of the unknown then I would agree. Unfortunately this is not new tech, this science, technology, and research has been around and in use for decades. Delays and failures such as this are a serious blow to the idea that we are ready for space flight based on the for profit model.
Like many things, that's both true and untrue. You're right, the individual pieces are not new tech, and the purpose is also not new tech. If all it took is bolting the right parts together, then, well, anyone could do it, and we'd all have spaceships. The thing is, integrating a machine of that size and designed to work under those conditions is non-trivial even though it *has* been done before. If nothing else, it hasn't been done by this particular team, who has to learn all kinds of things like procurement, QA, integration and how to launch the thing. As we've learned from every space mission back to the 1960's, one error, one bad decision, anywhere in the process of component parts to launch, can result in a prang. Even when NASA does it. Most especially if a company does it who hasn't done it before. Creating and successfully launching a functional spaceship is a process. A really complicated process that's difficult to learn.
So I contend that if they got up to 45K feet and a mach-and-a-half on their first try, that's pretty damned good for a newcomer.
I believe it's the same author. I don't believe there was IP licensed in the past, and I think you raise a valid point.
That was completely unnecessary. Did you go to a school where they did not teach how science worked? Here's a phrase: "Scientific Method". Ring any bells? No?
Can someone explain this to him? I'm discouraged.
Really. Well, that sucks even more. I actually use the Tricorder app, and I have absolutely no interest in Star Trek fangeek content. I've seen all the photos of Nana Visitor I care to see this lifetime. They'd be better served hiring the guy and making it a paid (but inexpensive) app.
Ummmm, the original Palm Pilot and its followons were deu rigeur geekwear throughout the dot com boom. I'm sorry you didn't get the memo.
You may be confusing PalmOS devices to whatever it turned into when HP bought them.
Indeed. And the altitude and speed it achieved before it pranged were pretty cool. I wouldn't even call it a disappointment. It's a learning opportunity.
The Tricorder was available in the nineties for the Palm platform. Why now?
> Yeah, but finger operated devices sucked before capacitive screens were perfected, so that wasn't really an option quite yet in '03.
Agreed! So we got interim solutions like the Palm Pilot and Graffiti input, and it actually worked fairly well. (I could write graffiti almost as fast as I could write English.) But handwriting recognition, even today is not ready for prime time. IT appears to have been a bad idea from the start. And once you used a finger operated device for five minutes, you never want to go back to styli.
Good point. Still, $160 is less than the cost of a new PC, I think, based on the last one I built two years ago.