I'd put money on this work being completely bogus. There's quite a bit of funding going to researchers from Fath^H^H^H^HHomeland Security. I'm pretty astonished by the types of reserach these people are doing which really has no practical applications whatsoever. But on paper it makes it look like the department are investing in our security. This sounds like a prime example of such a project. There simply isn't a situation involving bacteria that is both (1) something we can model on a computer and (2) relevant to combating bioterrorism. Sure, we might be able to qualitatively model a population in a petri dish, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of a terrorist releasing bacteria into the atmosphere, say. But the ignorant politicians working at the department have no way of understanding this for themselves and fund it anyway. Remember, these are the same people who think this is useful.
So...politicans might be taken in by BS about the applications of these methods, but there's no need for/. readers to be decieved the same way.
The people who landed in America a few hundred years ago were not, in fact, the first people who land there. I think Americans have more claim to Mars than they have to America.
It's about as self-replicating as a machine that connects to the web via its ethernet port, places an order for parts here, waits until the UPS web site says the parts have arrived and then emails its owner to tell it to assemble the parts sitting in the box on the front doormat.
It doesn't work like that. Either you write something in the form "I, for one, welcome our XXX overlords" or you do nothing at all. Slight variations simply don't work. The troll is funny, not because it's inherently funny, but because of the very fact that it is a troll.
There is another path I suppose. You could create a new troll. But few of us are worthy enough to do such a thing.
That god for that! How was I ever supposed to take my job seriously when the PC I worked on not only felt like a toy, but a toy for particularly young kids. If you're an engineer, say, you might start out with Lego Duplo, but eventually you move on to tools that feel like they're made for adults. But for software engineers using Windows PCs was almost embarassing - the only thing stopping it being embarassing was that everyone else had the same stupid patronizing shit on their desktops too. And they had the cheek to call the OS Windows XP Professional.
I've always said that since W2K MS have produced a very capable operating system held back by an interface designed with nothing but contempt for users.
I look out the window and see the beautiful blue San Francisco Bay. I see the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and green trees all over the hillsides of Oakland. The sunset looks glorious, as it often does here, with tufts of white interspersed with shades of blue, gray, violet and gold...sorry...I got distracted...what was it you were asking?
For all propositions, X, there exist a scientist who would go on the Discovery channel claiming X. Therefore, the fact that a scientist claims X on the Discovery channel has no bearing on the truth of X.
You could say it's arrogant to think that what happened on Earth is so special that it has to have happened elsewhere too. But that's just silly. You could probably turn any hypothesis into something seemingly arrogant by choosing suitable words for effect.
It's a lot harder for rocks to move from Earth to Mars than vice versa. They'd have to receive a lot of energy. I doubt it's completely impossible however, but it might take many millions of years with various types of accidental 'slingshot' along the way.
Arrogance, believing you are alone. I'm sorry I don't see the connection. Could you explain? Looking up 'arrogance' in the dictionary didn't help much.
This is getting insane. Why would I ever use West Virginia as a unit of area? From reading stories on/. I'm much more familiar with the surface of Titan than West Virgina (and I suspect I'm not the only one). Shouldn't we be measuring the size of West Virgina in Titans?
I'm sure that when the newly elected Prime Minister goes to No. 10 they are ushered into a back room with a special red, white and blue telephone. "This is where your orders will be coming from," explains the official on duty...
I know it's not l33t or anything but you can buy portable FM radios in just about consumer electronics store. I vaguely remember my grandmother having one (bless her soul) when I was a kid.
Unlike CVS because I expect "checkins" to be made at every stage, not just when you ask for them.
But like CVS because we'll be able to do things like fork and merge branches. (Actually, I think undo and redo in all applications should implement something like this. Sometimes you need to redo what you did yesterday but in a new context.)
I predict that just when we think we have an abundance of storage space 'undo' and 'redo' will become integral parts of our operating systems. Every operation that we perform will be persistently undoable.
Nothing will be deleted any more. Sure, we'll click on 'Delete' but that will be an undoable operation. And tools like Apple's Spotlight will be able to search not just for all the files containing a given word, but for all files that you have ever touched in the history of your computer containing that word.
Of course there will eventually come a time when we have an abundance of space even with infinite undo and redo.
(Note also that the lastest version of MacOSX has already started along the path of making undo and redo part of the OS with Core Data.)
The fact is, PDAs today have taken a step backwards over the last decade. Although they're advertised as being compatible with tools like Microsoft Office, you can't actually do anything useful with them. It's pretty blatantly obvious - Palms and PocketPCs don't actually have a usable input device! They can play mp3s and movies. So basically the whole PDA thing is a scam for geeks to buy toys disguised as useful gadgets.
I miss my old Psion 3 (stolen). Even my old Psion II was better for typing documents than just about any modern PDA. I've been tempted to build my own PDA, with a decent amount of RAM and Flash, from a microcontroller, an FPGA and some other parts. But I can't find a supplier of small keyboards. I guess I could gut an old Psion off ebay...
Just pick up any dollar bill. There's already a convenient unique password made up of alphabetic and numeric characters printed in the corner. For more important passwords use $5, $20, or even the good old Madison.
So if Jackson is on the $20 bill, what do 5 Jacksons make?
The standard flash drives/cards stop working after a few thousand writes per sector
There should be no frequently accessed part of the drive. Modern flash should be using wear leveling where they assign sectors for use at random. So if you keep writing to a logical location you're likely to be writing to many different physical ones. At least some flash drives do this and I suspect all high end new ones do. Having said that...I've had quite a high failure rate with flash drives...but then I do buy the cheap ones.
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I'd put money on this work being completely bogus. There's quite a bit of funding going to researchers from Fath^H^H^H^HHomeland Security. I'm pretty astonished by the types of reserach these people are doing which really has no practical applications whatsoever. But on paper it makes it look like the department are investing in our security. This sounds like a prime example of such a project. There simply isn't a situation involving bacteria that is both (1) something we can model on a computer and (2) relevant to combating bioterrorism. Sure, we might be able to qualitatively model a population in a petri dish, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of a terrorist releasing bacteria into the atmosphere, say. But the ignorant politicians working at the department have no way of understanding this for themselves and fund it anyway. Remember, these are the same people who think this is useful.
So...politicans might be taken in by BS about the applications of these methods, but there's no need for /. readers to be decieved the same way.
The people who landed in America a few hundred years ago were not, in fact, the first people who land there. I think Americans have more claim to Mars than they have to America.
It's about as self-replicating as a machine that connects to the web via its ethernet port, places an order for parts here, waits until the UPS web site says the parts have arrived and then emails its owner to tell it to assemble the parts sitting in the box on the front doormat.
And believe me, they're about to find out.
No.
There is another path I suppose. You could create a new troll. But few of us are worthy enough to do such a thing.
...seriously. The giveaway is the 4 digit pin. Of course it's crackable. You don't even have to look at the specs to deduce that.
If it's not reliable then stick a bunch in a row and use an error correcting code.
I've always said that since W2K MS have produced a very capable operating system held back by an interface designed with nothing but contempt for users.
I look out the window and see the beautiful blue San Francisco Bay. I see the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and green trees all over the hillsides of Oakland. The sunset looks glorious, as it often does here, with tufts of white interspersed with shades of blue, gray, violet and gold...sorry...I got distracted...what was it you were asking?
For all propositions, X, there exist a scientist who would go on the Discovery channel claiming X. Therefore, the fact that a scientist claims X on the Discovery channel has no bearing on the truth of X.
You could say it's arrogant to think that what happened on Earth is so special that it has to have happened elsewhere too. But that's just silly. You could probably turn any hypothesis into something seemingly arrogant by choosing suitable words for effect.
It's a lot harder for rocks to move from Earth to Mars than vice versa. They'd have to receive a lot of energy. I doubt it's completely impossible however, but it might take many millions of years with various types of accidental 'slingshot' along the way.
Arrogance, believing you are alone. I'm sorry I don't see the connection. Could you explain? Looking up 'arrogance' in the dictionary didn't help much.
This is getting insane. Why would I ever use West Virginia as a unit of area? From reading stories on /. I'm much more familiar with the surface of Titan than West Virgina (and I suspect I'm not the only one). Shouldn't we be measuring the size of West Virgina in Titans?
...Powerbook and a Windows XP desktop. At work I use Linux. What's this war of which people speak?
I'm sure that when the newly elected Prime Minister goes to No. 10 they are ushered into a back room with a special red, white and blue telephone. "This is where your orders will be coming from," explains the official on duty...
I know it's not l33t or anything but you can buy portable FM radios in just about consumer electronics store. I vaguely remember my grandmother having one (bless her soul) when I was a kid.
Do we have enough ideas to file a patent yet?
But like CVS because we'll be able to do things like fork and merge branches. (Actually, I think undo and redo in all applications should implement something like this. Sometimes you need to redo what you did yesterday but in a new context.)
Nothing will be deleted any more. Sure, we'll click on 'Delete' but that will be an undoable operation. And tools like Apple's Spotlight will be able to search not just for all the files containing a given word, but for all files that you have ever touched in the history of your computer containing that word.
Of course there will eventually come a time when we have an abundance of space even with infinite undo and redo.
(Note also that the lastest version of MacOSX has already started along the path of making undo and redo part of the OS with Core Data.)
I miss my old Psion 3 (stolen). Even my old Psion II was better for typing documents than just about any modern PDA. I've been tempted to build my own PDA, with a decent amount of RAM and Flash, from a microcontroller, an FPGA and some other parts. But I can't find a supplier of small keyboards. I guess I could gut an old Psion off ebay...
Is that candy worth more than keeping your email private?
Just pick up any dollar bill. There's already a convenient unique password made up of alphabetic and numeric characters printed in the corner. For more important passwords use $5, $20, or even the good old Madison.
So if Jackson is on the $20 bill, what do 5 Jacksons make?