Your "ae" ligatures appear to have come out correctly (on IE 6 on XP - I'm at work and can't install Firefox). Were there other Old English characters that should have been in there that got filtered out? I doubt Slashdot would handle thorn, eth, yogh, or long S characters properly.
True - but I'm not talking about "I can't get to my buddy's website that he runs on his home PC using DynDNS!" type calls. I'm talking about "I can't get to my home page, you know, salon.com; why is the internet broken?" type calls. Usually (although not always) it would be that the site in question was, in fact, down; they would insist that AOL tech support fix no matter how many times we explained that we had AOL had no control over when the site would return as it was not part of AOL's network.
Any chance you could also invent a way to stab people in the face over the telephone while you're at it? And I would add to your list:
6) Complain the network admin/ISP help desk that they can't get to a website [when they can get to other websites, so obviously the network isn't the problem] 7) Don't know the difference between turning off the monitor and restarting the computer 8) Don't know the difference between a modem and a network card 9) Call for tech support from their cell phone when their landline is dead, to complain that their dialup service isn't working 10) Call from their cell phone - in the car, while driving - to get support for a program that runs on a desktop.
All of these are based on real calls that I received while working for AOL tech support.
Six months of each will make you realize that there is a God, and his sense of humor sucks. (I still have scars from doing about six months of AOL tech support.)
Wow. I had no idea that people were using DECT phones to process payment cards*, but a breif Google search turned one up. I guess I've always made the assumption that there is no way to validate the security of wireless connections, so they should always be considered insecure. Do I just have a paranoid mind, or do other geeks think like that to?
* "Payment cards" includes credit, debit, gift card, etc.
I didn't actually RTFA (yet), but they probably did just push atoms together under a microscope (although doing so would require specialized equipment which is more than simply a "microscope"). The damn thing will probably fly apart once it gets above more than few tens of degrees absolute. It's great if they can put a P4 chip on the head of a pin and not need a huge heatsink for it - but it's useless if you need to carry around a couple of thousand pounds worth of cooling equipment to use it.
(Having read TFA in between writing this - you're right, the article sucks. "Joachim and his team have used the technique to build tiny nano-machines, such as wheels, gears, motors and nano-vehicles each consisting of a single molecule." Nano-machines can't consisting of a single molecule - they wouldn't be able to do any work.)
What percentage of users actually buy games (ones that are more sophisticated than Mahjong/Solitaire/Texas Hold-em, ones that would actually be difficult to port to Linux/Mac OS/whatever)? I know a few guys who buy maybe one game a month, a few more who might buy one or two games a year, and a VERY large number of people who buy new computers about as often as they buy new games.
Yes, Windows will be around to play games, and yes, there are a lot of PC gamers out there. Don't confuse "lots of" with "most." (For example: A million bucks is a lot of money, right? But it's not most of Bill Gates' money.)
Did you click through to the descriptions of each? Two of them actually make some sort of sense. (The rest don't.) I can see MS going into a slow decline, or surviving without adapting much. Of course, that assumes that Windows 7 doesn't suck anywhere near as much Vista when it comes out - if it does suck, Microsoft might as well find themselves a black hole to go jump in, because Linux is becoming a viable alternative even for Joe Six-pack.
On another note, every time I see the phrase "cloud computing" I mentally replace it with "The network is the computer". I'm pretty sure that they'll both be equally forgotten in ten years. Like thin clients before them. They've all got their place, but it's not as the primary computing method for everyone.
Unfortunately for today's youth, it's difficult to make a voice call in the middle of class without attracting the attention of the teacher. With text messages you can avoid this. You can also avoid having to wait for the person to pick up the phone, or for the phone to kick over to voice mail.
Yes, there a lot of things for which making a voice call is the better solution. But that doesn't mean that there are no circumstances under which a text message would work out better than a voice call.
Exactly my point. And that's assuming that you could get Joe and Jane Sixpack to understand what was meant by "multiple favorite sets" in the first place - something that, having worked tech support for AOL for a few months back when it was the US's largest ISP, I have my doubts about.
#1 is not something I could see a large fraction of customers wanting, so don't hold your breath. It may not be hard to code, but it will make it more difficult for Joe Consumer to set up favorites and to change favorite sets; so actually doing it may end up driving customers away rather than bringing them. Therefore it is a very bad value proposition for the cable company, even if it takes 5 minutes to code.
As for #2...well, Comcast just uses shitty cable boxes. The Scientific Atlanta box that I have (on Bright House Networks, which is actually part of Time-Warner) can be set to either stick to one output mode and convert inputs, or change output modes as the input modes change. When I moved, the cable guy that set it up did it wrong (stretching standard-def images out across my 42-inch HDTV set, which was ugly), but it only took about five minutes to fix it so that the box would always output a 1080i signal, and leave SD signals in the proper 4:3 aspect ratio displayed on the middle of the screen.
I hear this argument a LOT. The same argument could be used regarding a school bus, however. Yes, a larger vehicle may be dangerous when driven as though it's a sports car. When driven properly, however, they are no less unsafe than any other vehicle. This is a specious argument; the issue here is drivers, not the vehicle.
A commercial driver license is required to become a bus driver, whereas any idiot that can pass the most basic driving test can legally operate a crew-cab, long-bed, dual-rear-wheel pickup truck. Note that I didn't say operate such a vehicle safely - just legally. And in some parts of the US, it is quite common for people who have had their licenses suspended or revoked to drive anyway...because public transportation options in most of the US range from limited to nonexistent.
About a year back, I noticed that almost ALL of the stories on the main page were (as far as I was concerned) non-news events that just cluttered the main page. I had actually been considering giving up reading slashdot. Instead, I changed my preferences to put EVERYTHING from the sections on the main page. I have a much more enjoyable slashdot experience now.
Both of ya are new here, otherwise one of you would have added a car analogy AND something about hot graphene transistors poured down your pants by Natalie Portman.
Or have we finally let that whole meme-complex die? I'm getting old, I can't remember anymore.
I've corrected the subject line of this post to the Heinlein reference you were looking for (instead of just modding you down, which would have been rude).
It's a refrigerator - shouldn't everything be at the same temperature, thus negating the usefulness of thermal imaging? And in my case, since it's just my wife and I at our house, keeping a lot of stuff in the fridge isn't a good idea, as lots of it will go bad before we get around to eating it, so one camera per shelf would be enough. I can see how for many people it would be, at best, insufficient, and for many, useless, since they have fridges so packed that the camera would only ever get a shot from a centimeter away from some package. And you're completely right about the pantry also needing a similar type of system - although I think that the x-ray side would be MORE necessary there, since even more things there are in cardboard boxes and very little is in jars or bottles.
And unfortunately, getting access to the supermarket inventory system is unlikely to happen - they make lots of money on impulse purchases, which they encourage by forcing you to wander around the store wondering where the hell the olives (or whatever you happen to be looking for) are.
Actually, an internet-connected fridge I can kind of see, now that we've got various forms of wireless internet in so many places. Connect to the fridge's HTTP server, it turns on the interior light, takes snapshots of what's on each shelf, and serves them back as a webpage. Now I *know* what's in my fridge, instead of trying to remember while I'm at the grocery store. (Granted, eight years ago it was kind of silly, since there wireless internet was much less common.)
However, an internet connected toaster...well, if you're far enough away to need to get a toast status update through the internet, the toast will be cold by the time you get to the toaster to take it out.
While I see your point, I kind of agree with the other poster who replied.
What I want is a system where when I press the # and * buttons on the phone simultaneously, the phone company sends 10 million volts (AC, at 120Hz, please) through the line to the device on the other end. This will not only get rid of robo-dialers, but also fax machines dialing the wrong number repeatedly and most telemarketers. (The ones that are selling a product people actually want might survive. Maybe. I'm not really sure - and I don't really care.)
Media publication of this information has nothing to do with whether or not the data was obtained illegally. News organizations publish information obtained from criminals about their criminal acts on a regular basis, and most of them are willing to shield their sources against investigation.
The fact that Palin was using non-state-sanctioned e-mail for purposes of administering the state is, if not outright illegal under either federal or Alaskan law, certainly underhanded and something that the people should know about.
That's it! I'm patenting the idea of granting exclusive-use rights of an idea or invention to an individual or group. I will then proceed to charge the US government $1 trillion/day for violation of my patent with their patent system....on second thought, I think I'll wait a few weeks after the patent is granted, then sue them for damages in addition to charging them fees for using my patent.
--Ender (I know, I know: It's probably already been tried. Maybe I'll patent the idea of a bank instead.)
It's been the zero key on all the LG phones I've use (VX3100, VX3200, and LX5450 if I remember correctly, plus one more I don't remember the model number of). The predictive text interface has been very consistent across all the phones, so I don't know why they'd change it; but I'm not familiar with the 300G.
I think you dropped a zero. COBOL will be here in 500 years. It's like the dinosaurs in Dilbert: Everyone will think it's extinct, but really, it'll just be hiding behind the furniture.
Here the US, the Fourth Amendment implies a right to privacy (IIRC, it's phrased as "to be secure in their papers and effects", as the founding fathers did not anticipate the invention of the telephone). Surveillance of US persons violates that right, therefore it is a denial of rights that are explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.
And if a police officer asks me where I'm going...I point in the direction I was walking and say "That way." That's all I would give any other stranger on the street. The police do have the power to stop me - if they have reasonable cause to believe that I've committed, or am planning to commit, a crime. If they don't - or even if their "reasonable cause" isn't strong enough - and they try to stop me, they'll end up with a lawsuit for detaining me illegally.
At least, that was the way the it worked in the United States of America before it became the United States That Are Persuing the Worldwide War on Wickedness. Now, I'd probably end up in Gitmo. But I'd still do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Your "ae" ligatures appear to have come out correctly (on IE 6 on XP - I'm at work and can't install Firefox). Were there other Old English characters that should have been in there that got filtered out? I doubt Slashdot would handle thorn, eth, yogh, or long S characters properly.
True - but I'm not talking about "I can't get to my buddy's website that he runs on his home PC using DynDNS!" type calls. I'm talking about "I can't get to my home page, you know, salon.com; why is the internet broken?" type calls. Usually (although not always) it would be that the site in question was, in fact, down; they would insist that AOL tech support fix no matter how many times we explained that we had AOL had no control over when the site would return as it was not part of AOL's network.
Any chance you could also invent a way to stab people in the face over the telephone while you're at it? And I would add to your list:
6) Complain the network admin/ISP help desk that they can't get to a website [when they can get to other websites, so obviously the network isn't the problem]
7) Don't know the difference between turning off the monitor and restarting the computer
8) Don't know the difference between a modem and a network card
9) Call for tech support from their cell phone when their landline is dead, to complain that their dialup service isn't working
10) Call from their cell phone - in the car, while driving - to get support for a program that runs on a desktop.
All of these are based on real calls that I received while working for AOL tech support.
Six months of each will make you realize that there is a God, and his sense of humor sucks. (I still have scars from doing about six months of AOL tech support.)
Wow. I had no idea that people were using DECT phones to process payment cards*, but a breif Google search turned one up. I guess I've always made the assumption that there is no way to validate the security of wireless connections, so they should always be considered insecure. Do I just have a paranoid mind, or do other geeks think like that to?
* "Payment cards" includes credit, debit, gift card, etc.
I didn't actually RTFA (yet), but they probably did just push atoms together under a microscope (although doing so would require specialized equipment which is more than simply a "microscope"). The damn thing will probably fly apart once it gets above more than few tens of degrees absolute. It's great if they can put a P4 chip on the head of a pin and not need a huge heatsink for it - but it's useless if you need to carry around a couple of thousand pounds worth of cooling equipment to use it.
(Having read TFA in between writing this - you're right, the article sucks. "Joachim and his team have used the technique to build tiny nano-machines, such as wheels, gears, motors and nano-vehicles each consisting of a single molecule." Nano-machines can't consisting of a single molecule - they wouldn't be able to do any work.)
What percentage of users actually buy games (ones that are more sophisticated than Mahjong/Solitaire/Texas Hold-em, ones that would actually be difficult to port to Linux/Mac OS/whatever)? I know a few guys who buy maybe one game a month, a few more who might buy one or two games a year, and a VERY large number of people who buy new computers about as often as they buy new games.
Yes, Windows will be around to play games, and yes, there are a lot of PC gamers out there. Don't confuse "lots of" with "most." (For example: A million bucks is a lot of money, right? But it's not most of Bill Gates' money.)
Did you click through to the descriptions of each? Two of them actually make some sort of sense. (The rest don't.) I can see MS going into a slow decline, or surviving without adapting much. Of course, that assumes that Windows 7 doesn't suck anywhere near as much Vista when it comes out - if it does suck, Microsoft might as well find themselves a black hole to go jump in, because Linux is becoming a viable alternative even for Joe Six-pack.
On another note, every time I see the phrase "cloud computing" I mentally replace it with "The network is the computer". I'm pretty sure that they'll both be equally forgotten in ten years. Like thin clients before them. They've all got their place, but it's not as the primary computing method for everyone.
Unfortunately for today's youth, it's difficult to make a voice call in the middle of class without attracting the attention of the teacher. With text messages you can avoid this. You can also avoid having to wait for the person to pick up the phone, or for the phone to kick over to voice mail.
Yes, there a lot of things for which making a voice call is the better solution. But that doesn't mean that there are no circumstances under which a text message would work out better than a voice call.
Exactly my point. And that's assuming that you could get Joe and Jane Sixpack to understand what was meant by "multiple favorite sets" in the first place - something that, having worked tech support for AOL for a few months back when it was the US's largest ISP, I have my doubts about.
#1 is not something I could see a large fraction of customers wanting, so don't hold your breath. It may not be hard to code, but it will make it more difficult for Joe Consumer to set up favorites and to change favorite sets; so actually doing it may end up driving customers away rather than bringing them. Therefore it is a very bad value proposition for the cable company, even if it takes 5 minutes to code.
As for #2...well, Comcast just uses shitty cable boxes. The Scientific Atlanta box that I have (on Bright House Networks, which is actually part of Time-Warner) can be set to either stick to one output mode and convert inputs, or change output modes as the input modes change. When I moved, the cable guy that set it up did it wrong (stretching standard-def images out across my 42-inch HDTV set, which was ugly), but it only took about five minutes to fix it so that the box would always output a 1080i signal, and leave SD signals in the proper 4:3 aspect ratio displayed on the middle of the screen.
A commercial driver license is required to become a bus driver, whereas any idiot that can pass the most basic driving test can legally operate a crew-cab, long-bed, dual-rear-wheel pickup truck. Note that I didn't say operate such a vehicle safely - just legally. And in some parts of the US, it is quite common for people who have had their licenses suspended or revoked to drive anyway...because public transportation options in most of the US range from limited to nonexistent.
About a year back, I noticed that almost ALL of the stories on the main page were (as far as I was concerned) non-news events that just cluttered the main page. I had actually been considering giving up reading slashdot. Instead, I changed my preferences to put EVERYTHING from the sections on the main page. I have a much more enjoyable slashdot experience now.
Both of ya are new here, otherwise one of you would have added a car analogy AND something about hot graphene transistors poured down your pants by Natalie Portman.
Or have we finally let that whole meme-complex die? I'm getting old, I can't remember anymore.
(Does slashdot have a +1, Nostalgia mod?)
I've corrected the subject line of this post to the Heinlein reference you were looking for (instead of just modding you down, which would have been rude).
It's a refrigerator - shouldn't everything be at the same temperature, thus negating the usefulness of thermal imaging? And in my case, since it's just my wife and I at our house, keeping a lot of stuff in the fridge isn't a good idea, as lots of it will go bad before we get around to eating it, so one camera per shelf would be enough. I can see how for many people it would be, at best, insufficient, and for many, useless, since they have fridges so packed that the camera would only ever get a shot from a centimeter away from some package. And you're completely right about the pantry also needing a similar type of system - although I think that the x-ray side would be MORE necessary there, since even more things there are in cardboard boxes and very little is in jars or bottles.
And unfortunately, getting access to the supermarket inventory system is unlikely to happen - they make lots of money on impulse purchases, which they encourage by forcing you to wander around the store wondering where the hell the olives (or whatever you happen to be looking for) are.
Actually, an internet-connected fridge I can kind of see, now that we've got various forms of wireless internet in so many places. Connect to the fridge's HTTP server, it turns on the interior light, takes snapshots of what's on each shelf, and serves them back as a webpage. Now I *know* what's in my fridge, instead of trying to remember while I'm at the grocery store. (Granted, eight years ago it was kind of silly, since there wireless internet was much less common.)
However, an internet connected toaster...well, if you're far enough away to need to get a toast status update through the internet, the toast will be cold by the time you get to the toaster to take it out.
I think the term that you are looking for is "corpsicle".
Why not, we've already got reports of organlegging...let's get a whole sci-fi vernacular introduced to the world at large!
While I see your point, I kind of agree with the other poster who replied.
What I want is a system where when I press the # and * buttons on the phone simultaneously, the phone company sends 10 million volts (AC, at 120Hz, please) through the line to the device on the other end. This will not only get rid of robo-dialers, but also fax machines dialing the wrong number repeatedly and most telemarketers. (The ones that are selling a product people actually want might survive. Maybe. I'm not really sure - and I don't really care.)
Media publication of this information has nothing to do with whether or not the data was obtained illegally. News organizations publish information obtained from criminals about their criminal acts on a regular basis, and most of them are willing to shield their sources against investigation.
The fact that Palin was using non-state-sanctioned e-mail for purposes of administering the state is, if not outright illegal under either federal or Alaskan law, certainly underhanded and something that the people should know about.
That's it! I'm patenting the idea of granting exclusive-use rights of an idea or invention to an individual or group. I will then proceed to charge the US government $1 trillion/day for violation of my patent with their patent system. ...on second thought, I think I'll wait a few weeks after the patent is granted, then sue them for damages in addition to charging them fees for using my patent.
--Ender
(I know, I know: It's probably already been tried. Maybe I'll patent the idea of a bank instead.)
It's been the zero key on all the LG phones I've use (VX3100, VX3200, and LX5450 if I remember correctly, plus one more I don't remember the model number of). The predictive text interface has been very consistent across all the phones, so I don't know why they'd change it; but I'm not familiar with the 300G.
I think you dropped a zero. COBOL will be here in 500 years. It's like the dinosaurs in Dilbert: Everyone will think it's extinct, but really, it'll just be hiding behind the furniture.
If you don't like the freedom fries, might I suggest the freedom toast? It's delicious - I had some for breakfast this morning.
Here the US, the Fourth Amendment implies a right to privacy (IIRC, it's phrased as "to be secure in their papers and effects", as the founding fathers did not anticipate the invention of the telephone). Surveillance of US persons violates that right, therefore it is a denial of rights that are explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.
And if a police officer asks me where I'm going...I point in the direction I was walking and say "That way." That's all I would give any other stranger on the street. The police do have the power to stop me - if they have reasonable cause to believe that I've committed, or am planning to commit, a crime. If they don't - or even if their "reasonable cause" isn't strong enough - and they try to stop me, they'll end up with a lawsuit for detaining me illegally.
At least, that was the way the it worked in the United States of America before it became the United States That Are Persuing the Worldwide War on Wickedness. Now, I'd probably end up in Gitmo. But I'd still do it.