The idea is not just to have your mail client, calendar, browser etc. combined, the idea is that it has some built in intelligence to understand how things relate. If you have a meeting with someone it could understand the relationship between the people invited to the meeting, messaging logs and emails so you could easily brush up on the topic, see the slides attached in an email etc. without having to figure out where everything is. For us absentminded people this is a really neat thing though I see haystack more as a prototype than the bright shiny apps I'm sure we'll see attempting this some time soon.
In my opinion, something the user does should never cause a program or operating system crash. If this can occur, it is the developer who is at fault, not the user.
I'm not sure about this. I'd hate to run an OS where I could not delete any file on my computer. however, I understand that some files are system-critical. Having played with different ways to kill Windows, I know it tries to hide them (default install you can't even see system files) It tries to warn you and make it impossible for the average user to delete them but there are always workarounds. I think it would be sufficient for all fatal actions to have a warning dialog "Hello, you are about to kill your operating system, are you ~sure~ you want to continue?".
Not that we're at that stage of reliability yet but it'd be nice...
While I have misgivings of my own I think some of these can be addressed
* The hardware and software are proprietary and not open to public review. My paper has a full page copy of the ballots before every election so the public can review it. Do they have step by step examples of how to use punchcards or check in the boxes? I expect you will still know your voting options ahead of time -- it's the method of registering your vote with the system has never been printed up.
* Not accessible. How do people missing vision or limbs use them? I may be misinformed here (I've always voted absentee) but is there any good way of doing that now? I would think a limbless person could touch a screen as easily as write on a piece of paper or punch a card.
* Is the incredible expense and TCO of these machines justified? Paper ballots are practically free by comparison. Ok, I'm not one to say our government doesn't waste a lot of money on silly things. The idea is probably a one time expense that lasts long but I can't say that with a straight face. Maybe there are plans to use the machines for something else during the year?
* What about absentee voting? What wacky "voting method of the future" can we come for that? well with machine voting it would be a lot easier to just store all the 'ballots' for each region and know peoples SSNs. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to walk to the nearest place of voting and get the proper ballot? Again, as someone who has always done absentee voting it'd be nice to be able to vote locally.
Anyway, there's no way the system is foolproof but there's lots of ways it's not worse than the current system...
Has anyone here seen anything saying that google will definitely remove blogs from their main search when they add the blog only section? The article only says "It isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be"
The problem with this is that it plays directly to the big corporations. The idea of the copyright is to protect the person who created the content. Say you write a book or create a movie that you think will be an incredible hit. You just know that people will be buying fresh copies for the next century. If you want you and your heirs to get full benefit you have to sell it to a large company unless you have a million in cash lying around somewhere (well OK, you could take out a loan but it'd be a lot of work for your average guy). To large companies such as disney I doubt it would hurt at all to drop an extra million into what they think will be the more popular movies. So while I think it's a great idea to somehow discourage having long copyrights this method just screws over people who work on their own.
I'm very curious as to what we're buying here. I'd be quite willing to legalize my music collection at $1 a song. I tend to want single songs so paying $5 for a single or $20 for a CD which is 90% trash and then having to rip it to MP3 (I do not use a sterio) is ridiculous. I don't care so much for the AAC format. I wonder if if I bought the AAC would it be legal for me to log onto KaZaa or something and download the MP3? If I'm paying for quality then I'd be cheating them by downloading a high quality MP3 rather than burning and ripping a low quality one from my AAC. If I'm paying for the right to listen that should be Ok. This way I could have both my MP3 collection and reasonable prices without worrying about DRM and having to buy an AAC player.... Does anyone have information on the legality of this?
From the article: "Like most state and federal computer crime laws, New Hampshire's existing statute says it is a crime to knowingly access any computer network without authorization"
Basically before if you were driving past a starbucks and picked up their connection you could be doing something illegal. I expect it's still illegal to crack WEP (easy as it may be) but using random open wireless is Ok.
eg. Let's say someone from Ghana created some cool gadget which has no predecessors or anything even remotely similar already available in the market. How soon would someone from the US inventing a similar gadget would know that there is already such thing patented a few days ago?
But where do you draw the line there? If you allow a 2 day margain why not 3 or a week? or a month? Once summer I was doing an internship with cryptography and thought of something no one in my company had. They urged me to start the patent process and I did only to find out a year later it had been 'invented' two years before. Granted, I had invented it independantly of whoever had prior art so should the gap be 2 years? That's just asking for someone to go through a patent database and claim he invented things independantly when he did not.
Well yes but in going to yahoo.com I counted 14 pictures on the page that opened, all of which were around 8.5Kb. So while keeping the word count doesn't do much for page size google is still a lot more lightweight than yahoo.
When reading the suggested changes it was aimed at "whoever, with intent to defraud". If you're not attempting to cheat your ISP (running 6 machines for the price of one if the ISP you use charges per machine or something) you should have no problem. If you do want to run your 6 machines just pay the extra or switch ISPs.
Granted I don't want to do either but I don't see it as unreasonable...
So subscribers get to post early, they're more likely to be karma'd up and more likely to be read. Doesn't that make karma somewhat useless? I thought the point of the system was for interesting people would be modded up. If someone interesting can't get within the first 200 posts they're not going to be noticed as often.
maybe I'm misunderstanding how this works, I'm new to the system.
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The idea is not just to have your mail client, calendar, browser etc. combined, the idea is that it has some built in intelligence to understand how things relate. If you have a meeting with someone it could understand the relationship between the people invited to the meeting, messaging logs and emails so you could easily brush up on the topic, see the slides attached in an email etc. without having to figure out where everything is. For us absentminded people this is a really neat thing though I see haystack more as a prototype than the bright shiny apps I'm sure we'll see attempting this some time soon.
In my opinion, something the user does should never cause a program or operating system crash. If this can occur, it is the developer who is at fault, not the user.
I'm not sure about this. I'd hate to run an OS where I could not delete any file on my computer. however, I understand that some files are system-critical. Having played with different ways to kill Windows, I know it tries to hide them (default install you can't even see system files) It tries to warn you and make it impossible for the average user to delete them but there are always workarounds. I think it would be sufficient for all fatal actions to have a warning dialog "Hello, you are about to kill your operating system, are you ~sure~ you want to continue?".
Not that we're at that stage of reliability yet but it'd be nice...
While I have misgivings of my own I think some of these can be addressed
* The hardware and software are proprietary and not open to public review. My paper has a full page copy of the ballots before every election so the public can review it.
Do they have step by step examples of how to use punchcards or check in the boxes? I expect you will still know your voting options ahead of time -- it's the method of registering your vote with the system has never been printed up.
* Not accessible. How do people missing vision or limbs use them?
I may be misinformed here (I've always voted absentee) but is there any good way of doing that now? I would think a limbless person could touch a screen as easily as write on a piece of paper or punch a card.
* Is the incredible expense and TCO of these machines justified? Paper ballots are practically free by comparison.
Ok, I'm not one to say our government doesn't waste a lot of money on silly things. The idea is probably a one time expense that lasts long but I can't say that with a straight face. Maybe there are plans to use the machines for something else during the year?
* What about absentee voting? What wacky "voting method of the future" can we come for that? well with machine voting it would be a lot easier to just store all the 'ballots' for each region and know peoples SSNs.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to walk to the nearest place of voting and get the proper ballot? Again, as someone who has always done absentee voting it'd be nice to be able to vote locally.
Anyway, there's no way the system is foolproof but there's lots of ways it's not worse than the current system...
Has anyone here seen anything saying that google will definitely remove blogs from their main search when they add the blog only section? The article only says "It isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be"
The problem with this is that it plays directly to the big corporations. The idea of the copyright is to protect the person who created the content. Say you write a book or create a movie that you think will be an incredible hit. You just know that people will be buying fresh copies for the next century. If you want you and your heirs to get full benefit you have to sell it to a large company unless you have a million in cash lying around somewhere (well OK, you could take out a loan but it'd be a lot of work for your average guy). To large companies such as disney I doubt it would hurt at all to drop an extra million into what they think will be the more popular movies. So while I think it's a great idea to somehow discourage having long copyrights this method just screws over people who work on their own.
I'm very curious as to what we're buying here. I'd be quite willing to legalize my music collection at $1 a song. I tend to want single songs so paying $5 for a single or $20 for a CD which is 90% trash and then having to rip it to MP3 (I do not use a sterio) is ridiculous. I don't care so much for the AAC format. I wonder if if I bought the AAC would it be legal for me to log onto KaZaa or something and download the MP3? If I'm paying for quality then I'd be cheating them by downloading a high quality MP3 rather than burning and ripping a low quality one from my AAC. If I'm paying for the right to listen that should be Ok. This way I could have both my MP3 collection and reasonable prices without worrying about DRM and having to buy an AAC player.... Does anyone have information on the legality of this?
From the article: "Like most state and federal computer crime laws, New Hampshire's existing statute says it is a crime to knowingly access any computer network without authorization"
Basically before if you were driving past a starbucks and picked up their connection you could be doing something illegal. I expect it's still illegal to crack WEP (easy as it may be) but using random open wireless is Ok.
eg. Let's say someone from Ghana created some cool gadget which has no predecessors or anything even remotely similar already available in the market. How soon would someone from the US inventing a similar gadget would know that there is already such thing patented a few days ago?
But where do you draw the line there? If you allow a 2 day margain why not 3 or a week? or a month? Once summer I was doing an internship with cryptography and thought of something no one in my company had. They urged me to start the patent process and I did only to find out a year later it had been 'invented' two years before. Granted, I had invented it independantly of whoever had prior art so should the gap be 2 years? That's just asking for someone to go through a patent database and claim he invented things independantly when he did not.
Ah, but that will now count as circumvention and you can be sued under the DMCA =P
Well yes but in going to yahoo.com I counted 14 pictures on the page that opened, all of which were around 8.5Kb. So while keeping the word count doesn't do much for page size google is still a lot more lightweight than yahoo.
Wouldn't the torque on the wire be a measurable output?
When reading the suggested changes it was aimed at "whoever, with intent to defraud". If you're not attempting to cheat your ISP (running 6 machines for the price of one if the ISP you use charges per machine or something) you should have no problem. If you do want to run your 6 machines just pay the extra or switch ISPs.
Granted I don't want to do either but I don't see it as unreasonable...
So subscribers get to post early, they're more likely to be karma'd up and more likely to be read. Doesn't that make karma somewhat useless? I thought the point of the system was for interesting people would be modded up. If someone interesting can't get within the first 200 posts they're not going to be noticed as often. maybe I'm misunderstanding how this works, I'm new to the system.