As I'm playing around with the satellite maps, I found myself really wanting another feature, that I would think ought to be easy to implement. Rather than getting a map of a certain address, it might also be useful to get an address of a certain point on the map. In other words, as you're scrolling around the map and looking at stuff, it would be nice if you could just click somewhere and find out the nearest street address.
Having read Card's articles on the subject, I would argue that describing him as a "homophobe" is not only inaccurate, but it also waters down the term to the point of meaninglessness. I'm a conversative, so does that make me a "liberalphobe?" You can't go around branding everybody who disagrees with you as a whatever-phobe. Otherwise, you'll be at a loss for words when you need to describe an individual who really hates something. Everyone will assume that you're just overreacting to another differing opinion.
And just where does this policy of boycotting people of different beliefs end? Are you going to boycott anything produced by someone who voted for the other guy? That's about half the country.
Are you also boycotting products made in China? I'm sure that the Chinese government has a far worse human rights record than Orson Scott Card.
Eventually, Apple will probably be able to identify the accounts of everyone who uses this software. If you actually use the iTunes music store on a regular basis, is it really worth risking your account - and possible legal action - just to get a few DRM-free songs?
How do they know that the interference pattern is created by electrons being fired at different times rather than from different locations? If you're firing two laser pulses into a random cloud of argon atoms, wouldn't you expect the pulses to hit electrons in different locations?
Still no sign of anything resembling a set/multiset, or a tree structure, let alone something like a heap. The documentation is equally sad, making no mention of big-O complexity.
Maybe I was reading the wrong set of articles, but I could have sworn that he specificially mentioned multiple tree structures, sets, and graphs as new data structures that were being added in.NET 2.0. And there was plenty of mention of big-O in the discussion of the performance of various data structures.
Alas, not even Google can find my parents' house. Every map of their neighborhood I've ever seen is incorrect, and puts their street in the wrong place. It took years before the pizza delivery guy learned how to find it.
All these map programs must be pulling their incorrect data from the same place...
All of the Total Annihilation AIs (that I'm aware of) cheat by knowing where your units are without having to do any reconnaissance. The very first attack by the AI will always head straight for your base, even though the AI has sent no previous scouts. The AI does a similar thing when attacking your expansions.
The StarCraft AI also cheats in this fashion.
The trouble with most RTS AIs is that they're just not set up to deal with imperfect information. Exploration, one of the X's in classic 4X games, gets totally left out by the AI. Consequently, the human player loses the opportunity to try all sorts of "stealth" tactics.
As another poster already mentioned, a big step forward will be game AIs which can deal well with imperfect information. An AI which must use scouts, and can be sometimes be fooled by cleverly planted misinformation / diversions...
Politicians talk about social security "reform" as if the right legislation will just cause funds to materialize out of the ether, with no negative consequences. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that. The simple truth of the matter is that, in order for the system to work, the following equation must hold true:
Money In >= Money Out
Personal accounts can't solve the problem. What, we're supposed to believe that we'll magically get better returns by letting individuals manage the money instead of the government? Why doesn't the government just do a better job of managing the money in the first place?
Seems to me like there are basically five options:
Decrease the number of people drawing from social security. Not gonna happen any time soon.
Increase the number of people paying into social security. Bad idea, since those new taxpayers would eventually retire themselves. This option only works if you can sustain that exponential population growth indefinitely, which is obviously impossible.
Increase social security taxes. Yeah, that'll go over well...
Decrease social security benefits. See description of #3.
Reallocate funds from other federal programs. Probably the most workable of the options.
Any other "solution" to the problem just isn't going to cut it.
I'd be willing to bet that the Chinese authorities enjoy pirated videos as much as their citizens do, and probably have no real desire to crack down on piracy. This is probably their one token arrest for the year, proving that they're "tough" on piracy... tomorrow it'll be free reign again.
I heard a rumor that their police sometimes advertise that they're going to crack down on pirated DVDs on a particular day, just so that all the DVD stores know to close their doors (and reopen them once the police have finished their "search").
In this case, the police planted a tracking device on the suspect's private property. You can argue all you want about the legality of tampering with his property, but that doesn't answer the more fundamental question:
If the information were readily available, even without planting a special tracking device, who should be allowed to use it?
What happens when we have good enough technology to track hundreds or thousands of cars using just satellite images? Without ever planting a tracking device, the police could download the satellite history from last month and see everywhere your car went.
And even if the police aren't allowed to do it, could a private company do the same thing? It's just visual data - data freely available to anyone with the capital to develop the technology. Should this information be "free", or are there some types of information that should always be guarded?
As technology improves, the veil of privacy will grow thinner and thinner. All sorts of information will be readily available, and could be used to track anything about anyone. Who should have access to this information?
Why write something using Microsoft's.NET Framework and then say it's for Windows XP? I thought one of the advantages of.NET was that it works the same on all the supported operating systems.
('Course, having developed stuff in.NET myself, I can vouch for the fact that stuff doesn't always work the same on different OSes, but it's close enough to release a functional product)
The sad part is that there were a fair amount of non-infringing torrents available through these sites. Obviously not the bulk of the content, but still a significant number of files.
It would be nice if one these places could be resurrected as a source for all sorts of legal torrents, but somehow I doubt many of the admins (or users, for that matter) would consider it worth the effort.
I'd definitely prefer the current point-and-click interface over all that hand waving in Minority Report. Why do so many "futuristic" interfaces (as seen in movies) require the users to move more? That's a step backwards, not a step forwards. Nobody wants to break into a sweat just trying to use a computer.
One of my friends uses Dragon Naturally Speaking on a regular basis and loves it. He's a family practice physician, and says the software saves him a lot of time, since he can use it to dictate his "reports" (don't know the technical term) between patients. He's used it for several years now.
Galen was also the main character in the Technomage series of novels, which dealt primarily with the passing of the Technomages. The books also explain to us how Galen first met Gideon.
Not only were they modding the consoles, but they were selling them with pirated games already installed for $500 a pop.
If that's not blatant piracy deserving of jail time then I don't know what is. Whine all you want about your right to do what you want with your own hardware, but these guys were begging to get busted.
Don't get me wrong, the e-voting situation is crazy and needs substantial reform, examination, and a general fixin'. But this guy is just another conspiracy guy trying to sell a book.
Hey now, that book got great reviews. From both the people who reviewed it...on the same day.... having written no other reviews...
1) An event that happened 20 years ago isn't really news. How can you blame them for not covering it? Sure, the event was a tragedy, but is the US news media responsible for reminding us of every tragic anniversary, particularly events that occurred in other countries? Most likely the media outlets giving this story major coverage were just having a slow news day.
We have the same sort of tear-jerking "filler" stories here in the US, but nowdays they're primarily about US soldiers killed in Iraq. Those stories wouldn't be interesting to European listeners, for obvious reasons, so their news media covers something different... such as Bhopal.
2) There HAS been some US media coverage. Both today and yesterday NPR was covering Bhopal. Just because Bhopal wasn't mentioned in your 15 minute local news blurb doesn't mean it's not being covered in the US.
So let me get this straight...
One half of the government is trying to encourage hybrids by giving tax breaks......while the other half is going out of their way to make sure that owners of hybrids have to pay the same amount?
Tell that to the dozen or so users that I've had to rescue in the past six months because their machines had been rendered nearly inoperable by spyware and malware, just because they made the mistake of surfing the web with IE.
Tell that to the whole *industry* of spyware removal tools - AdAware, SpyBot, etc, etc... - that have sprung up precisely because so many users have problems with IE.
And tell that to all the happy users who have switched to Firefox and love it. I personally know dozens of people who have switched to Mozilla or Firefox, and not *one* of them has switched back to IE.
Lately, I haven't even had to *try* in order to spread alternative browsers. I don't go to them - they come to me!
I get calls on a regular basis from different friends and family members. The problem is almost always the same: their computer has become so bogged down with spyware and malware that it's nearly useless.
Their computers are so gummed up, they practically beg me to install a different browser! And I don't know of any of them that have gone back to IE since.
Honestly, I get so many requests for cleaning assorted computers that I now keep a CD loaded with Firefox in my car...
A recent study found that new "broadband" technologies, such as cable modems and DSL, are rapidly becoming the primary distribution tools of digital pirates. Nearly 99% of illegaly downloaded content is trasmitted over broadband.
John Malcolm, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the MPAA, said that his group is well aware of the vast amounts of copyrighted material being traded via broadband.
"It's a very efficient delivery system for large files, and it's being used and abused by a hell of a lot of people," he told Reuters. "We're studying our options, as we do with all new technologies which are abused by people to engage in theft."
Here's a novel idea: combine the best of both worlds. Tech is great at constraining input in appropriate ways (only pick ONE, etc), whereas paper is harder to counterfeit. Have the terminal as the input device that then prints out the completed ballot, which is then dropped in the box.
Even better: you could have the voting machines keep a complete GUI transactional log of every voting session, to help verify the final paper ballot count.
Polling places using electronic voting machines are already reporting oddities: 200 people come in to vote, but only 150 votes are recorded by the machines. Were those other 50 votes "lost" by the machines? Did those people just decide not to vote? Right now, we can't tell!
Similarly, even with a paper trail, what do you do if 200 people come in to vote, but the ballot box only has 150 paper receipts?
If the machines kept a complete GUI transactional log, you would be able to verify that 50 people pressed the "submit" button before voting for anybody, and that there's nothing fishy going on.
Slashdot Mirror
I open up Word 2003 and create a new text document. The Microsoft Word process is using 12,072k of memory.
I open up OpenOffice (1.1.4) and create a new text document. The OpenOffice process is using 27,836k of memory.
Who's the resource hog here?
Maybe the problem was given in Chinese?
As I'm playing around with the satellite maps, I found myself really wanting another feature, that I would think ought to be easy to implement. Rather than getting a map of a certain address, it might also be useful to get an address of a certain point on the map. In other words, as you're scrolling around the map and looking at stuff, it would be nice if you could just click somewhere and find out the nearest street address.
Having read Card's articles on the subject, I would argue that describing him as a "homophobe" is not only inaccurate, but it also waters down the term to the point of meaninglessness. I'm a conversative, so does that make me a "liberalphobe?" You can't go around branding everybody who disagrees with you as a whatever-phobe. Otherwise, you'll be at a loss for words when you need to describe an individual who really hates something. Everyone will assume that you're just overreacting to another differing opinion.
And just where does this policy of boycotting people of different beliefs end? Are you going to boycott anything produced by someone who voted for the other guy? That's about half the country.
Are you also boycotting products made in China? I'm sure that the Chinese government has a far worse human rights record than Orson Scott Card.
Eventually, Apple will probably be able to identify the accounts of everyone who uses this software. If you actually use the iTunes music store on a regular basis, is it really worth risking your account - and possible legal action - just to get a few DRM-free songs?
How do they know that the interference pattern is created by electrons being fired at different times rather than from different locations? If you're firing two laser pulses into a random cloud of argon atoms, wouldn't you expect the pulses to hit electrons in different locations?
Maybe I was reading the wrong set of articles, but I could have sworn that he specificially mentioned multiple tree structures, sets, and graphs as new data structures that were being added in .NET 2.0. And there was plenty of mention of big-O in the discussion of the performance of various data structures.
All these map programs must be pulling their incorrect data from the same place...
All of the Total Annihilation AIs (that I'm aware of) cheat by knowing where your units are without having to do any reconnaissance. The very first attack by the AI will always head straight for your base, even though the AI has sent no previous scouts. The AI does a similar thing when attacking your expansions.
The StarCraft AI also cheats in this fashion.
The trouble with most RTS AIs is that they're just not set up to deal with imperfect information. Exploration, one of the X's in classic 4X games, gets totally left out by the AI. Consequently, the human player loses the opportunity to try all sorts of "stealth" tactics.
As another poster already mentioned, a big step forward will be game AIs which can deal well with imperfect information. An AI which must use scouts, and can be sometimes be fooled by cleverly planted misinformation / diversions...
Money In >= Money Out
Personal accounts can't solve the problem. What, we're supposed to believe that we'll magically get better returns by letting individuals manage the money instead of the government? Why doesn't the government just do a better job of managing the money in the first place?
Seems to me like there are basically five options:
-
Decrease the number of people drawing from social security. Not gonna happen any time soon.
-
Increase the number of people paying into social security. Bad idea, since those new taxpayers would eventually retire themselves. This option only works if you can sustain that exponential population growth indefinitely, which is obviously impossible.
-
Increase social security taxes. Yeah, that'll go over well...
-
Decrease social security benefits. See description of #3.
-
Reallocate funds from other federal programs. Probably the most workable of the options.
Any other "solution" to the problem just isn't going to cut it.I heard a rumor that their police sometimes advertise that they're going to crack down on pirated DVDs on a particular day, just so that all the DVD stores know to close their doors (and reopen them once the police have finished their "search").
In this case, the police planted a tracking device on the suspect's private property. You can argue all you want about the legality of tampering with his property, but that doesn't answer the more fundamental question:
If the information were readily available, even without planting a special tracking device, who should be allowed to use it?
What happens when we have good enough technology to track hundreds or thousands of cars using just satellite images? Without ever planting a tracking device, the police could download the satellite history from last month and see everywhere your car went.
And even if the police aren't allowed to do it, could a private company do the same thing? It's just visual data - data freely available to anyone with the capital to develop the technology. Should this information be "free", or are there some types of information that should always be guarded?
As technology improves, the veil of privacy will grow thinner and thinner. All sorts of information will be readily available, and could be used to track anything about anyone. Who should have access to this information?
Why write something using Microsoft's .NET Framework and then say it's for Windows XP? I thought one of the advantages of .NET was that it works the same on all the supported operating systems.
('Course, having developed stuff in .NET myself, I can vouch for the fact that stuff doesn't always work the same on different OSes, but it's close enough to release a functional product)
The sad part is that there were a fair amount of non-infringing torrents available through these sites. Obviously not the bulk of the content, but still a significant number of files.
It would be nice if one these places could be resurrected as a source for all sorts of legal torrents, but somehow I doubt many of the admins (or users, for that matter) would consider it worth the effort.
I'd definitely prefer the current point-and-click interface over all that hand waving in Minority Report. Why do so many "futuristic" interfaces (as seen in movies) require the users to move more? That's a step backwards, not a step forwards. Nobody wants to break into a sweat just trying to use a computer.
One of my friends uses Dragon Naturally Speaking on a regular basis and loves it. He's a family practice physician, and says the software saves him a lot of time, since he can use it to dictate his "reports" (don't know the technical term) between patients. He's used it for several years now.
Galen was also the main character in the Technomage series of novels, which dealt primarily with the passing of the Technomages. The books also explain to us how Galen first met Gideon.
IMO, Galen is one of the coolest characters.
Not only were they modding the consoles, but they were selling them with pirated games already installed for $500 a pop.
If that's not blatant piracy deserving of jail time then I don't know what is. Whine all you want about your right to do what you want with your own hardware, but these guys were begging to get busted.
Hey now, that book got great reviews. From both the people who reviewed it...on the same day.... having written no other reviews...
1) An event that happened 20 years ago isn't really news. How can you blame them for not covering it? Sure, the event was a tragedy, but is the US news media responsible for reminding us of every tragic anniversary, particularly events that occurred in other countries? Most likely the media outlets giving this story major coverage were just having a slow news day.
We have the same sort of tear-jerking "filler" stories here in the US, but nowdays they're primarily about US soldiers killed in Iraq. Those stories wouldn't be interesting to European listeners, for obvious reasons, so their news media covers something different... such as Bhopal.
2) There HAS been some US media coverage. Both today and yesterday NPR was covering Bhopal. Just because Bhopal wasn't mentioned in your 15 minute local news blurb doesn't mean it's not being covered in the US.
So let me get this straight... One half of the government is trying to encourage hybrids by giving tax breaks... ...while the other half is going out of their way to make sure that owners of hybrids have to pay the same amount?
IE no less secure? Firefox has nothing to offer?
Tell that to the dozen or so users that I've had to rescue in the past six months because their machines had been rendered nearly inoperable by spyware and malware, just because they made the mistake of surfing the web with IE.
Tell that to the whole *industry* of spyware removal tools - AdAware, SpyBot, etc, etc... - that have sprung up precisely because so many users have problems with IE.
And tell that to all the happy users who have switched to Firefox and love it. I personally know dozens of people who have switched to Mozilla or Firefox, and not *one* of them has switched back to IE.
Lately, I haven't even had to *try* in order to spread alternative browsers. I don't go to them - they come to me!
I get calls on a regular basis from different friends and family members. The problem is almost always the same: their computer has become so bogged down with spyware and malware that it's nearly useless.
Their computers are so gummed up, they practically beg me to install a different browser! And I don't know of any of them that have gone back to IE since.
Honestly, I get so many requests for cleaning assorted computers that I now keep a CD loaded with Firefox in my car...
A recent study found that new "broadband" technologies, such as cable modems and DSL, are rapidly becoming the primary distribution tools of digital pirates. Nearly 99% of illegaly downloaded content is trasmitted over broadband. John Malcolm, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the MPAA, said that his group is well aware of the vast amounts of copyrighted material being traded via broadband. "It's a very efficient delivery system for large files, and it's being used and abused by a hell of a lot of people," he told Reuters. "We're studying our options, as we do with all new technologies which are abused by people to engage in theft."
Even better: you could have the voting machines keep a complete GUI transactional log of every voting session, to help verify the final paper ballot count.
Polling places using electronic voting machines are already reporting oddities: 200 people come in to vote, but only 150 votes are recorded by the machines. Were those other 50 votes "lost" by the machines? Did those people just decide not to vote? Right now, we can't tell!
Similarly, even with a paper trail, what do you do if 200 people come in to vote, but the ballot box only has 150 paper receipts?
If the machines kept a complete GUI transactional log, you would be able to verify that 50 people pressed the "submit" button before voting for anybody, and that there's nothing fishy going on.