No one seems to have read the article. Bing isn't copying google's algorithm. It isn't searching google to get results. It's observing what its users end up visiting after searching for specific terms. I'm sure it also happens when a user uses most other large search engines.
Nope, didn't get me to roll my eyes. Those who support wikileaks have *not* exhausted the legal avenues available to them. At least try. Seriously, write your congressman. Comparing this to other events in history at this point is just dumb. I myself wouldn't mind a bit more transparency (not as much as wikileaks, though). You'd probably be surprised of the amount of support you'd get if you did this with democracy.
I had Qwest for a few years with constant intermittent connections. This was almost certainly due to bad wiring in my apartment, but it's relevant because I called Qwest customer service at least 10 times, and had technicians come once or twice (never got it fixed or even figured out what was wrong before I moved). The technicians were good, like you say. But the customer service people are almost all horrible. They go through certain steps with you regardless of your previous experience... "yes, I tried power cycling the modem. Yes, it's in the LINE port. Yes, I know it's working right now, but it stops working every few minutes for a few minutes. No, I already got a replacement modem; it didn't change anything." etc. They aren't very trained, and just go through their workflow after every question you answer. If their workflow doesn't have an option for your answer, they have no idea what to do next. I honestly think they are in some call center that services multiple companies (one couldn't pronounce Qwest properly).
Ok, yes, the more quickly part is common sense. But how do you know that they're doing this carelessly or with less scrutiny? Perhaps they have more employees now.
Don't. That's what my school did, and it's very representative of the kind of help they'll get online. Have you ever tried to get help in a linux IRC channel? You're more likely to win the lottery and never have to use linux anyway.
You do realize that things like this are attempted against the US *all the time,* right? And sponsored by various governments, no less. You have the whole thing backwards. If Iran is led to believe that it was the US (NYT is not a good source for this kind of information information), *they* will consider it an act of war.
Yep. There was a very old man with one of these (or something nearly identical) where I work, who had it since before I started (4 years ago). And it must be much older than that because old people generally don't like learning new things, especially right before they retire.
The summary and article make it seem like this is some revolutionary *3D* device. It isn't. What it does to create 3D imagery has been around for a long long time (done in software, perhaps on a dedicated chip). The only newsworthy thing about this is that it can do very large panoramas.
It's nothing new, though. We've been doing this for ages. The only thing remotely cool about this is the fact that it has a whole bunch of cameras that can put together large panoramas.
(and yes, I know that this thing is using software to compute the distance of objects, but that isn't anything new. We've been able to do the same thing with two images for a long time)
Where do you get the idea that having a bunch of camera looking outward from a single point will be any more effective at doing 3D than 2 cameras set up to do stereoscopy? (let's assume no other differences here)
This thing can't magically look around corners just because it's looking outward at different angles.
Did you watch that video? The guy is making it up to get some money (he'll have more luck with getting money from news stations for interviews, since the evidence is clearly against him). The phone still works, which means a blown capacitor is very unlikely (and especially a blown up battery). The only thing wrong with it is the glass is cracked. He probably sandwiched the phone between his head and the car door as he was closing it.
What the GP is getting at is that Diaspora is only popular because they got a connection to some media exposure. They got $200,000 from the public when they had *nothing.* There are (and were) already alternatives that are much better and further along than Diaspora. As I mentioned in my post just below this one, Appleseed is one of them (there are others as well, but that happens to be the one that I personally feel deserves more attention).
The comments in this thread are ridiculous. Of course they meant to. This isn't some random project by 4 college dropouts. This is one of the most successful companies to ever exist. If something is open, they meant for it to be open. It isn't like they used some weak type of encryption. It's entirely open.
The point is that it's entirely plausible that they are parsing "return;" as "return null;" Yes, it's stupid, but it shows that there are real possibilities other than "they are cheating at this test."
And on top of that, maybe the JS spec says that "return;" is interpreted as something other than ending a function without a return statement (like "return null;" for example).
It should first of all be noted that MS is one of the only companies with enough balls not to try to get 100/100 on acid 3 (many of the "requirements" are not part of any official and final specification). I see MS as being the *least* likely to cheat on pointless benchmarks.
Second, adding a return value *does* in fact make a huge difference in run time. There is a very large difference in the way the stack functions, and many optimizations can be made when there is no return value in a function. There are of course some other requirements for this to be possible, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that the JS engine is just being smart about running pointless code. This is not cheating. Perhaps they were encouraged to make this optimization in order to do better on the test, but it could still very well be a valid optimization.
I'm sure many phone makers are very happy with the fact that MS charges royalties for Windows Phone 7. This is because MS will be the one defending any IP/patent lawsuits, etc. Why do you think people are suing HTC and other Android phone makers instead of Google? Google probably isn't legally responsible. MS will be, so they are charging a small amount for it.
How much do you think this has to do with Apple's prediction that Flash will die soon? They can't afford to be wrong about that one. They're doing whatever they can to make Steve Jobs a prophet. In fact this was probably Steve's idea.
Windows doesn't have it either, but Windows as a standalone product is sold to people who are completely capable of easily installing Flash themselves. Most hardware companies (Apple is a hardware company) include Flash with Windows.
This has been my thought during all of these discussions, but there is a difference. Apple is a hardware company. They sell computers that are supposed to have everything that *most* users need out of the box (they even claim this). Most users need flash. Windows is not a piece of hardware. It is a single piece of software (with many included pieces of software, but you wouldn't exactly complain if they unbundled some of them). Hardware companies who sell computers with Windows on them almost always include Flash. Apple is getting away from their model of "it just works" to "ok, casual users, you are now required to install certain things after you buy your mac. We know that 99% of you will need/want flash at some point, but we are going to make Steve a prophet (and profit) by making sure that Flash is too difficult to install so it will eventually die."
Slashdot Mirror
"spy" ? This tracking is something people can enable and disable themselves.
No one seems to have read the article. Bing isn't copying google's algorithm. It isn't searching google to get results. It's observing what its users end up visiting after searching for specific terms. I'm sure it also happens when a user uses most other large search engines.
Nope, didn't get me to roll my eyes. Those who support wikileaks have *not* exhausted the legal avenues available to them. At least try. Seriously, write your congressman. Comparing this to other events in history at this point is just dumb. I myself wouldn't mind a bit more transparency (not as much as wikileaks, though). You'd probably be surprised of the amount of support you'd get if you did this with democracy.
Wikileaks is hosted in the US? When did that happen?
Carriers who don't want you using more bandwidth than you are paying for.
I had Qwest for a few years with constant intermittent connections. This was almost certainly due to bad wiring in my apartment, but it's relevant because I called Qwest customer service at least 10 times, and had technicians come once or twice (never got it fixed or even figured out what was wrong before I moved). The technicians were good, like you say. But the customer service people are almost all horrible. They go through certain steps with you regardless of your previous experience... "yes, I tried power cycling the modem. Yes, it's in the LINE port. Yes, I know it's working right now, but it stops working every few minutes for a few minutes. No, I already got a replacement modem; it didn't change anything." etc. They aren't very trained, and just go through their workflow after every question you answer. If their workflow doesn't have an option for your answer, they have no idea what to do next. I honestly think they are in some call center that services multiple companies (one couldn't pronounce Qwest properly).
more quickly with less scrutiny
Ok, yes, the more quickly part is common sense. But how do you know that they're doing this carelessly or with less scrutiny? Perhaps they have more employees now.
It isn't that way anymore. Or at least it wasn't 4 years ago when I really started learning Linux. I'm very good at it now, but not thanks to IRC.
Don't. That's what my school did, and it's very representative of the kind of help they'll get online. Have you ever tried to get help in a linux IRC channel? You're more likely to win the lottery and never have to use linux anyway.
You do realize that things like this are attempted against the US *all the time,* right? And sponsored by various governments, no less. You have the whole thing backwards. If Iran is led to believe that it was the US (NYT is not a good source for this kind of information information), *they* will consider it an act of war.
Yep. There was a very old man with one of these (or something nearly identical) where I work, who had it since before I started (4 years ago). And it must be much older than that because old people generally don't like learning new things, especially right before they retire.
No, but he does, as does a scary percentage of the population.
The summary and article make it seem like this is some revolutionary *3D* device. It isn't. What it does to create 3D imagery has been around for a long long time (done in software, perhaps on a dedicated chip). The only newsworthy thing about this is that it can do very large panoramas.
It's nothing new, though. We've been doing this for ages. The only thing remotely cool about this is the fact that it has a whole bunch of cameras that can put together large panoramas.
(and yes, I know that this thing is using software to compute the distance of objects, but that isn't anything new. We've been able to do the same thing with two images for a long time)
Where do you get the idea that having a bunch of camera looking outward from a single point will be any more effective at doing 3D than 2 cameras set up to do stereoscopy? (let's assume no other differences here)
This thing can't magically look around corners just because it's looking outward at different angles.
Did you watch that video? The guy is making it up to get some money (he'll have more luck with getting money from news stations for interviews, since the evidence is clearly against him). The phone still works, which means a blown capacitor is very unlikely (and especially a blown up battery). The only thing wrong with it is the glass is cracked. He probably sandwiched the phone between his head and the car door as he was closing it.
What the GP is getting at is that Diaspora is only popular because they got a connection to some media exposure. They got $200,000 from the public when they had *nothing.* There are (and were) already alternatives that are much better and further along than Diaspora. As I mentioned in my post just below this one, Appleseed is one of them (there are others as well, but that happens to be the one that I personally feel deserves more attention).
Appleseed is getting close to production ready (and it's quite usable already).
The comments in this thread are ridiculous. Of course they meant to. This isn't some random project by 4 college dropouts. This is one of the most successful companies to ever exist. If something is open, they meant for it to be open. It isn't like they used some weak type of encryption. It's entirely open.
The point is that it's entirely plausible that they are parsing "return;" as "return null;" Yes, it's stupid, but it shows that there are real possibilities other than "they are cheating at this test."
And on top of that, maybe the JS spec says that "return;" is interpreted as something other than ending a function without a return statement (like "return null;" for example).
It should first of all be noted that MS is one of the only companies with enough balls not to try to get 100/100 on acid 3 (many of the "requirements" are not part of any official and final specification). I see MS as being the *least* likely to cheat on pointless benchmarks.
Second, adding a return value *does* in fact make a huge difference in run time. There is a very large difference in the way the stack functions, and many optimizations can be made when there is no return value in a function. There are of course some other requirements for this to be possible, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that the JS engine is just being smart about running pointless code. This is not cheating. Perhaps they were encouraged to make this optimization in order to do better on the test, but it could still very well be a valid optimization.
I'm sure many phone makers are very happy with the fact that MS charges royalties for Windows Phone 7. This is because MS will be the one defending any IP/patent lawsuits, etc. Why do you think people are suing HTC and other Android phone makers instead of Google? Google probably isn't legally responsible. MS will be, so they are charging a small amount for it.
How much do you think this has to do with Apple's prediction that Flash will die soon? They can't afford to be wrong about that one. They're doing whatever they can to make Steve Jobs a prophet. In fact this was probably Steve's idea.
Windows doesn't have it either, but Windows as a standalone product is sold to people who are completely capable of easily installing Flash themselves. Most hardware companies (Apple is a hardware company) include Flash with Windows.
This has been my thought during all of these discussions, but there is a difference. Apple is a hardware company. They sell computers that are supposed to have everything that *most* users need out of the box (they even claim this). Most users need flash. Windows is not a piece of hardware. It is a single piece of software (with many included pieces of software, but you wouldn't exactly complain if they unbundled some of them). Hardware companies who sell computers with Windows on them almost always include Flash. Apple is getting away from their model of "it just works" to "ok, casual users, you are now required to install certain things after you buy your mac. We know that 99% of you will need/want flash at some point, but we are going to make Steve a prophet (and profit) by making sure that Flash is too difficult to install so it will eventually die."