"West Winger staff member is complaining about the ridiculous amounts of money spent in the military for routine items. The military guy smashes an ashtray on his desk... and it breaks into only three pieces.
He goes on to explain that the ashtray costs $400 to research and to make; however, whenever you are in a sub, the ashtray won't break into millions of bits during combat action."
Personally if someone pointed this out to me I'd then ask the question "Why the hell would you permit smoking in a submarine anyways, and why can't you make the ashtray out of tin?"
I mean I know several cities thinking of restricting smoking in public places.... which aren't underwater, cramped, and sharing the same air with a fair sized crew.... though I admit, it's probably much harder to make people pop outside for a smoke break when you are on the third week of a two month underwater ride.
Why does your comment give me the image of dirty harry with a GPS?:)
"Frankly in all this excitement I forgot to sync my GPS... I could be 10 meters to your right, 10 meters to your left, or right in front of you. You feeling lucky punk?"
Wben I tell the users in my office that their email vanished "somewhere into outer space" I might actually be telling the truth?
Seems like both a forward-looking and very practical idea - I personally hope to see manned stations/colonies/etc within various places in the solar system in my lifetime and it might be handy to have the ability to communicate with those places.
Mind you the scary bit would be tracking down interplanetary spammers! (The nigerian scam could become the martian scam!)
At 1700 this device would actually cost more than all the things I would use it to control!:) (Hey I'm a geek on a budget)
That being said - it does look like the ultimate in remote control bragging rights in one rather large (for a remote) package.
Interesting to see exploration of behaviour....
on
Feral Robot Dogs
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Under poop and scoop laws would you have to follow around one of these with an anti-static baggie?
On a more serious note - it's always interesting to see explorations of behaviour in robotics (since future robots used for autonomous exploration of planetary surfaces and such will likely need different programming than the traditional robot (many of which would actually be closer to teleoperated machines than robots as they rely on human instruction for just about everything.
It reminds me to some degree of some sci-fi stories exploring AI and von neumann type machines interacting in such a way to create robotic "evolution". Which makes you further wonder - one day could obsolete robots be considered endangered species? (Look over there... it's one of the last VIC-20's left in the wild!)
And exactly how do you expect them to get it ready without testing it? Magic Pixies?
(I think this is a good idea... get some real average users who can contribute real life experience in using the product... rather than shipping something out and finding out people hate it, it doesn't work, and it just sucks)
Now if only more countries would do this kind of thing - recognizing that spam has a financial impact on ISPs and on the end consumer, and that especially mass "dictionary" based attacks to randomly find accounts are the internet equivilent of dropping millions of leaflets from an airplane for advertising purposes. (In which case they'd be rightly charged with littering and other offences.)
Plus they got zapped for undelivered email - avoids the whole "opt in/opt out" argument (difficult to prove always that someone didn't accidentally "opt in" at SOME point and you KNOW the spammer is going to claim that they did) AND it also is likely far more costly than targetted spam attacks. (If you send to a 90 percent valid email list chances are you are sending to a few hundred thousand addresses. You do a dictionary attack you are sending to MILLIONS of addresses... which would you rather see them get charged cash for?)
It's a good start if you ask me (though of course part of me thinks that locking them in a small room with one angry ferret per 1000 emails would be a good way too... but that might be going too far. Probably. I mean, think of the poor ferrets?)
First of all - patenting doesn't mean it will be put into production. Second of all, it would be truly insane for intel to put this into consumer based CPU's - it would just annoy people without really having a great effect on the bottom line.
When you think about it overclockers are a small segment of the personal PC market (since it requires more than average PC knowledge and usually at least some special hardware to accomplish any meaningful amount of overclocking) Those who overclock regularly usually don't do it so much for the increase in CPU speed so much as for the bragging rights.
This being said, it MIGHT be a worry later on down the line if intel does do the dumb route of completely disallowing overclocking - after all any large corporation has to do their really dumb thing at least once every 5 years or so - but even then it will affect only a small segment of the PC market, and you just know someone will find a workaround for it for the hardcore overclockers within a few days anyways.
A good university course in how NOT to do things!:)
(If the universities are smart, they'll offer this as a two part program... first "Microsoft on Security" and then "Ignore everything they just taught you"
Well if the kids knew the parents would SEE what they were browsing - wouldn't that mean they were effectively blocked? It gives the ability to monitor what your kids are seeing (putting it in the hands of the parents, who SHOULD take responsibility) without blocking them from sites that might discuss things they SHOULD be seeing.
For example do you want a filter company deciding if your kids should know about gay/lesbian issues? Or see renaissance nudes? (Etc etc)
Maybe this could be a whole new type of internet perversion.... getting your kicks by having people watch you surf porn!
Actually I can see the point where it comes to religious groups, and it does allow for better accountability than simply blocking sites (so it might work better at work for example where nobody is going to mind you surfing work related things, but it won't block legitimate sites that just happen to run afoul of an overly-generous filtering mechanism)
All in all it provides a better option under certain circumstances than a blanket filter controller by a service who won't release what they actually filter in the first place.
For the sake of tradition, shouldn't we be blaming microsoft for the death of the dinosaur?:) (And for that matter pointing out that linux helps prevent system crashes of this magnitude;)
The part that scares me is....
on
The Space Elevator
·
· Score: 2, Funny
You just KNOW you're going to be spending 1000km listening to elevator music. How many sane astronauts will we have left after they're forced to spend a day riding into orbit while listening to the vienna boys choir version of a Kenny G song? And of course the other problem is no matter how well you secure the facility, no matter how carefully you screen the passengers... you just KNOW some annoying 9 year old kid will jump in, press all the buttons, and jump back out....
Ok... so violating an "implied and unspoken agreement" is stealing? Then going to the bathroom is stealing if you do it during commercials? How many commercials am I required to watch before I am no longer stealing? If I blink when the corporate logo comes on am I stealing? That's where your logic is heading - the nature of the media is changing and the advertising world isn't necessarily keeping up. I agree, we have to understand advertising is a part of receiving something free (though I do object to more and more advertising being placed in paid services such as movies, DVD's, etc where there IS no unspoken agreement... but that is another argument entirely.
My example of the PVR is how they are attempting to keep current advertising models despite changes in the media itself - which is a bad idea. So yes, things SHOULD change because of the internet - things SHOULD change because of PVR's, things SHOULD change as the way in which we consume media changes. That's the nature of things - TV advertising has changed since the early days (ironically in the early days shows were mostly sponsored and didn't necessarily have separate ads... something which might work better in these days of PVR's) Making a traditional model of advertising compulsory doesn't make it more effectively - it just restricts the consumer to what the media companies would like us to see. And that isn't going to do anyone any good.
But all of what you said really missed the point anyways - fundamentally, we have to change the way in which advertising works. Media isn't going to be the traditional TV model in the future, it likely won't be the internet model - give it time and we'll end up with a mixture of streaming, video-on-demand, downloadable and packaged entertainment that will be different in scope from the traditional outlets we have now. So finding new ways to advertise is good - because I don't want to end up being forced to watch some idiot saying "dude you got a dell!" 50 million times because of an "unspoken agreement" that we have to use a traditional method of advertising.
At least it is nice to see some advertisers not going the route of picking traditional media and then using legislation to force that media upon people despite changing technology (Can anyone here remember a certain quote about using PVR's to skip ads being "stealing"?)
Personally it's nice to see different models of advertising being explored... maybe with some luck we'll see a less invasive model that is more effective for advertisers and less annoying for everyday consumers.
(Mind you I realize the likelyhood of that is about the same as Microsoft going the non profit corporation route..) Still, at least product endorsement/placement in blogging is preferable to having them install an LCD on the inside of my eyeballs and forcing ads into my subconscious. After all my subconscious is scary enough as it currently stands.
Instead of worrying about Slammer...
on
Server In A Fly
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Great, does this mean microsoft will be tooling around in a flashy car, trying to buyout software half its' age, and generally making an ass of itself trying to be cool?
Plus it's only a matter of time before the hairplugs come into the picture.... oh wait.. maybe the software equivilent would be service packs....
All in all nothing terribly shocking in this article - they're trying to be seen in a more "parental" and less "evil overlord" type of role, they're changing tactics to adapt to a new environment (Things are quite different from how they were 10 years ago, and I don't think anyone out there can predict what the marketplace will be like in another 10 years in either the corporate OR the consumer aspect.
All I really picked up from reading it was a really horrible mental image of a corporation deciding gold chains and a shirt open to the waist should be the new "in thing" (All of a sudden IBM's former draconian dress code looks good!:)
Slashdot Mirror
"West Winger staff member is complaining about the ridiculous amounts of money spent in the military for routine items. The military guy smashes an ashtray on his desk... and it breaks into only three pieces.
He goes on to explain that the ashtray costs $400 to research and to make; however, whenever you are in a sub, the ashtray won't break into millions of bits during combat action."
Personally if someone pointed this out to me I'd then ask the question "Why the hell would you permit smoking in a submarine anyways, and why can't you make the ashtray out of tin?"
I mean I know several cities thinking of restricting smoking in public places.... which aren't underwater, cramped, and sharing the same air with a fair sized crew.... though I admit, it's probably much harder to make people pop outside for a smoke break when you are on the third week of a two month underwater ride.
Yes but are they going to scan in a staple in the middle? :)
"These damn kids today, with their gigabytes and their FireWire and their "rock 'n' roll" music and the hair and the clothes..."
:)
You'd rather see kids running around naked, bald, and listening to classical music coming from an apple II?
"But a human will never make the same mistake 50,000 times in a row in under 2.5 seconds wiping out an entire database"
;)
Obviously you've never had to support the users I have
I'm thinking they should go with ;)
"Over 1 billion Server'd"
Somebody is emblezzling... just really really slowly! "Hey buddy, turn out your pockets... hey... is that a platinum atom?"
Would your theory make the 1 cent coin a mobius strip?
(Heck I'd like to see them make THAT for only a penny!)
Why does your comment give me the image of dirty harry with a GPS? :)
"Frankly in all this excitement I forgot to sync my GPS... I could be 10 meters to your right, 10 meters to your left, or right in front of you. You feeling lucky punk?"
I think they ship the cardboard computer case in a big aluminum box with USB ports on the front ;)
Wben I tell the users in my office that their email vanished "somewhere into outer space" I might actually be telling the truth?
Seems like both a forward-looking and very practical idea - I personally hope to see manned stations/colonies/etc within various places in the solar system in my lifetime and it might be handy to have the ability to communicate with those places.
Mind you the scary bit would be tracking down interplanetary spammers! (The nigerian scam could become the martian scam!)
At 1700 this device would actually cost more than all the things I would use it to control! :)
(Hey I'm a geek on a budget)
That being said - it does look like the ultimate in remote control bragging rights in one rather large (for a remote) package.
Under poop and scoop laws would you have to follow around one of these with an anti-static baggie?
On a more serious note - it's always interesting to see explorations of behaviour in robotics (since future robots used for autonomous exploration of planetary surfaces and such will likely need different programming than the traditional robot (many of which would actually be closer to teleoperated machines than robots as they rely on human instruction for just about everything.
It reminds me to some degree of some sci-fi stories exploring AI and von neumann type machines interacting in such a way to create robotic "evolution". Which makes you further wonder - one day could obsolete robots be considered endangered species? (Look over there... it's one of the last VIC-20's left in the wild!)
And exactly how do you expect them to get it ready without testing it? Magic Pixies?
(I think this is a good idea... get some real average users who can contribute real life experience in using the product... rather than shipping something out and finding out people hate it, it doesn't work, and it just sucks)
So I guess if you squeeze hard enough you literally CAN get blood from a stone!
;)
(And I deserve "most obscure joke" points for that one
Now if only more countries would do this kind of thing - recognizing that spam has a financial impact on ISPs and on the end consumer, and that especially mass "dictionary" based attacks to randomly find accounts are the internet equivilent of dropping millions of leaflets from an airplane for advertising purposes. (In which case they'd be rightly charged with littering and other offences.)
Plus they got zapped for undelivered email - avoids the whole "opt in/opt out" argument (difficult to prove always that someone didn't accidentally "opt in" at SOME point and you KNOW the spammer is going to claim that they did) AND it also is likely far more costly than targetted spam attacks. (If you send to a 90 percent valid email list chances are you are sending to a few hundred thousand addresses. You do a dictionary attack you are sending to MILLIONS of addresses... which would you rather see them get charged cash for?)
It's a good start if you ask me (though of course part of me thinks that locking them in a small room with one angry ferret per 1000 emails would be a good way too... but that might be going too far. Probably. I mean, think of the poor ferrets?)
Bvardi
First of all - patenting doesn't mean it will be put into production. Second of all, it would be truly insane for intel to put this into consumer based CPU's - it would just annoy people without really having a great effect on the bottom line.
When you think about it overclockers are a small segment of the personal PC market (since it requires more than average PC knowledge and usually at least some special hardware to accomplish any meaningful amount of overclocking) Those who overclock regularly usually don't do it so much for the increase in CPU speed so much as for the bragging rights.
This being said, it MIGHT be a worry later on down the line if intel does do the dumb route of completely disallowing overclocking - after all any large corporation has to do their really dumb thing at least once every 5 years or so - but even then it will affect only a small segment of the PC market, and you just know someone will find a workaround for it for the hardcore overclockers within a few days anyways.
A good university course in how NOT to do things! :)
(If the universities are smart, they'll offer this as a two part program... first "Microsoft on Security" and then "Ignore everything they just taught you"
Well if the kids knew the parents would SEE what they were browsing - wouldn't that mean they were effectively blocked? It gives the ability to monitor what your kids are seeing (putting it in the hands of the parents, who SHOULD take responsibility) without blocking them from sites that might discuss things they SHOULD be seeing. For example do you want a filter company deciding if your kids should know about gay/lesbian issues? Or see renaissance nudes? (Etc etc)
Maybe this could be a whole new type of internet perversion.... getting your kicks by having people watch you surf porn! Actually I can see the point where it comes to religious groups, and it does allow for better accountability than simply blocking sites (so it might work better at work for example where nobody is going to mind you surfing work related things, but it won't block legitimate sites that just happen to run afoul of an overly-generous filtering mechanism) All in all it provides a better option under certain circumstances than a blanket filter controller by a service who won't release what they actually filter in the first place.
For the sake of tradition, shouldn't we be blaming microsoft for the death of the dinosaur? :) (And for that matter pointing out that linux helps prevent system crashes of this magnitude ;)
You just KNOW you're going to be spending 1000km listening to elevator music. How many sane astronauts will we have left after they're forced to spend a day riding into orbit while listening to the vienna boys choir version of a Kenny G song? And of course the other problem is no matter how well you secure the facility, no matter how carefully you screen the passengers... you just KNOW some annoying 9 year old kid will jump in, press all the buttons, and jump back out....
Ok... so violating an "implied and unspoken agreement" is stealing? Then going to the bathroom is stealing if you do it during commercials? How many commercials am I required to watch before I am no longer stealing? If I blink when the corporate logo comes on am I stealing? That's where your logic is heading - the nature of the media is changing and the advertising world isn't necessarily keeping up. I agree, we have to understand advertising is a part of receiving something free (though I do object to more and more advertising being placed in paid services such as movies, DVD's, etc where there IS no unspoken agreement... but that is another argument entirely. My example of the PVR is how they are attempting to keep current advertising models despite changes in the media itself - which is a bad idea. So yes, things SHOULD change because of the internet - things SHOULD change because of PVR's, things SHOULD change as the way in which we consume media changes. That's the nature of things - TV advertising has changed since the early days (ironically in the early days shows were mostly sponsored and didn't necessarily have separate ads... something which might work better in these days of PVR's) Making a traditional model of advertising compulsory doesn't make it more effectively - it just restricts the consumer to what the media companies would like us to see. And that isn't going to do anyone any good. But all of what you said really missed the point anyways - fundamentally, we have to change the way in which advertising works. Media isn't going to be the traditional TV model in the future, it likely won't be the internet model - give it time and we'll end up with a mixture of streaming, video-on-demand, downloadable and packaged entertainment that will be different in scope from the traditional outlets we have now. So finding new ways to advertise is good - because I don't want to end up being forced to watch some idiot saying "dude you got a dell!" 50 million times because of an "unspoken agreement" that we have to use a traditional method of advertising.
At least it is nice to see some advertisers not going the route of picking traditional media and then using legislation to force that media upon people despite changing technology (Can anyone here remember a certain quote about using PVR's to skip ads being "stealing"?) Personally it's nice to see different models of advertising being explored... maybe with some luck we'll see a less invasive model that is more effective for advertisers and less annoying for everyday consumers. (Mind you I realize the likelyhood of that is about the same as Microsoft going the non profit corporation route..) Still, at least product endorsement/placement in blogging is preferable to having them install an LCD on the inside of my eyeballs and forcing ads into my subconscious. After all my subconscious is scary enough as it currently stands.
They'll be worrying about Swatter!
Great, does this mean microsoft will be tooling around in a flashy car, trying to buyout software half its' age, and generally making an ass of itself trying to be cool? Plus it's only a matter of time before the hairplugs come into the picture.... oh wait.. maybe the software equivilent would be service packs.... All in all nothing terribly shocking in this article - they're trying to be seen in a more "parental" and less "evil overlord" type of role, they're changing tactics to adapt to a new environment (Things are quite different from how they were 10 years ago, and I don't think anyone out there can predict what the marketplace will be like in another 10 years in either the corporate OR the consumer aspect. All I really picked up from reading it was a really horrible mental image of a corporation deciding gold chains and a shirt open to the waist should be the new "in thing" (All of a sudden IBM's former draconian dress code looks good! :)