Who is the vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on back care?
Google came last in their test, with a time of 6 minutes and 27 seconds. I decided to recreate their test (before knowing what the answer was). I entered.. "vice chairman" "parliamentary group" "back care"
First response, scrolled down a few pages till I saw 'back care' highlighted.. found the name, Janet Dean. Less than a minute! These people are not very good at their Google;-)
Google is not some magic research machine. The person is the magic research machine, who uses Google as a tool. Just like "Do It Yourselfers" at home use the same hammers and saws that carpenters do.. but make a crappier job of it.
I'm a Google Researcher. Generally most Researchers use the Internet or their own knowledge as their primary resource when answering questions. This is because most questions have a low fee and can be given answers which are merely pointers to further resources. Researchers are also encouraged to give the methods they used in their answer, to help the person who asked the question.
However, there have been quite a number of extraordinary cases where people have been so interested in answering the question that they've made phone calls, chased people, and dug out answers to incredibly complex questions. In one case, a Researcher managed to track down someone's obscure pre-20th C. German heritage.
Do remember that Google Answers is primarily for people who don't have excellent research skills of their own. While easy to use, finding certain things with Google (and other engines) requires skill, time, intelligence, and abstract thinking faculties that many people lack. Also bear in mind that most Google Researchers don't do it for the money. You will inevitably get a far higher quality (and longer) answer than you could possibly expect for the money. This is why tips are given to Researchers so often on the system.
Okay, Poland has the people and the position, but I'd say Estonia is the most promising of the new ex-Soviet EU states.
Ten years ago, as I read on the BBC, only 15% of homes in the country had a regular phone! Now they have wireless internet, the majority of people have cellphones, and quite a few people speak English. The government has radically pushed away from Soviet norms in implementing low business taxes, and is fostering a great environment for new businesses. And from what I've learned through the CIA Factbook and the BBC, Estonia has a very low crime rate and chicks who look like this. Per capita income is also still low, so employees would be cheap. The country also looks pretty.
The downsides? It's darn cold in Winter, and it's not cheap to fly to (yet).
Still, it looks like Estonia is a promising little nation who understands the concepts of the free market and capitalism in generating better living conditions.. and if I had to choose one of the new EU states to live in.. well, Estonia looks the most promising for those in business.
You can pay your parking lot or buy flowers by SMS. Wow, that's really advanced and even if it so, I don't see how practical it can be. Come on, lose 2 minutes to type and SMS instead of paying by cash or credit card....
I would personally find that VERY useful.
For a start, carrying change is cumbersome, most parking machines don't accept notes, and you can never be 100% sure if you have the right amount of change on you (or in the right denominations). Once I went to my favourite parking lot and found the price had gone to 5 from 4. I had 4 of change on me. So I went back to my car (a few minutes' walk in this particular lot) and scrambled around and found a pile of change which got me to the 5. Then I went back to the machine and put in it.. but after 20 coins it wouldn't let me put in any more!! This forced me to find a shop, buy something I didn't even want, just so I could get some change (how else do you get change? change machines are not common in the UK)
And credit card? Gee, the only parking that takes credit cards is when you book it, or if you use some fancy expensive place downtown. For general parking, forget it. You need your change, or else.. and in a society where otherwise you never need to carry notes or change, it's ridiculous you still need it to park.
I totally agree with your coder vs programmer insight, but took objection to this:
I once interviewed a guy who was pretty good with Oracle. Commanded a six figure income. When he found out that the offered project used SQL server 2000, he mocked our company, to our face and to the niche community we work for.
That's nothing to do with the point you were making.. he was just a vendor/method snob. Most Linux/BSD/*NIX people would similarly mock a company who used 100% Microsoft solutions. Most C++ programmers mock Visual Basic programmers. Most Oracle geeks would mock a company who relied on mySQL, and so on.
Come on, if you're suggesting SQL Server 2000 is in the same league as Oracle, that's just plain wrong. He shouldn't have been bagging on your company, that's unprofessional, but the fact he thought SQL Server 2000 was stupid was hardly an indication he was a moron.
but the need for a link cable really limits the number of players who will play them.
It's not just the need for a cable, but the price of the cable when you go and look for one. It is not uncommon for these cables to be $30+.. and, for what, two proprietary plugs with some wires in between? Not encouraging!
I have to say, though, wireless handheld gaming units could be really popular, but I think cellphone based systems will ultimately prove more successful than the Gameboy. Almost everyone in the target market carries a cellphone nowadays, and the beauty of wireless gaming is that you can play whenever you feel like it. Most people won't carry their Gameboys around with them all of the time.. but they'll have their phone.
Most people who DO play Gameboy games together using the cable are usually meeting up at someone elses' house anyway.. and if you're going to do that, why not play just play multiplayer on an XBox or PS2? That's why cabled mobile gaming hasn't caught on so far.. people just don't all take their Gameboys and meet up in inconvenient locations just for the fun of it.. with wireless, they could.
They just want to eat, and see no reason nor need to do things another way when what they know is good enough.
You make some good points, but on this one.. clearly what they know isn't good enough.
I think your reason #3 is a valid and common reason, but not a good one.
Compare networking to programming.
Would you really want to employ a team of programmers who could ONLY code in Visual Basic, and nothing else? No way! You want programmers to at least have experience with many languages, so they can understand a whole range of design methods and paradigms. A pure VB programmer who'd never touched anything else would probably be hideous at algorithms, for example. Likewise, if I were employing network engineers, I'd want engineers who had at least a basic familiarity with a number of platforms and vendors (Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Linux, BSD, and so on) and their various methodologies. Many Microsoft codemonkeys have no familiarity with anything outside of their 'Programming with Microsoft Tools for Dummies' welcome pack.
We're actually planning to go over to this cute little wireless access point/DSL modem/firewall thingy and turf out the Linux laptop soon. But.. it turns out the wireless access point runs an embedded version of Linux! No escaping the march of open source;-)
Hehe, I'm not sure if you missed my own rapid reply to my own post above or if you're pulling my leg, but I posted an addendum to my post explaining just what you said. Thanks anyway;-)
How hard is it to have a BSD or Linux box acting as an el-cheapo firewall between the Internet and your internal network? I have a $200 laptop which has done just that task for several years now.
And before anyone calls me out saying 'Uh, a big company wouldn't just have a stupid laptop running UNIX as a firewall'.. I know that. I just wanted to exclude the argument that straying from Microsoft-only solutions is some cost problem.
A decent sized organization should just buy some proper firewalls (i.e. Cisco) and do it the 'right' way.. but in a small company, with a tiny budget, you can still have a proper firewall on the cheap thanks to BSD or Linux..
How hard is it to have a BSD or Linux box acting as an el-cheapo firewall between the Internet and your internal network? I have a $200 laptop which has done just that task for several years now. I can never be bothered to patch my (Windows) machines, but they never have trouble because they can only talk within each other and not get attacked from the outside. Jeez, even if you paid someone to install it, you could have the whole job done for $1000 with old hardware and a copy of FreeBSD.
I offer one reason why this doesn't happen too often, particularly in the UK. Way too many 'technical consultancies' for institutions like the coastguard are staffed by MCSEs with no proper computer science knowledge who just install Windows XP on every machine, set up 'Internet Connection Sharing', and leave. They wouldn't even dream of putting a non-Windows box on a network!
Thankfully these worms and virus attacks are showing up these idiotic 'we only touch Microsoft stuff' agencies for what they're worth. Any decent technical consultant should be able to advise companies on the right hardware and software to use, independent of vendors.. so it might be Microsoft on the client end, and UNIX on the back end.. but no, the UK (at least) is filled with MCSE ridden agencies who get totally lost when they don't have a 'Start' button to click.
Firebird across all machines. Also all on Outlook Express though.. but have had no problems as the zone is set to high security, and no-one is stupid enough to say 'OK' when it pops up a Run or Save box;-) Haven't stumbled across any viruses which can run arbitrary code without you having to say OK to that box as of yet..
Will probably check out Thunderbird once again now it's another revision down the road.
I'm no Windows hater, but these exploits reinforce my opinion that no Windows machine should have a publicly accessible IP address.
We run Windows on our network here, but we have a Linux box with IP masquerading enabled connected to the Net, so the only exploits that could possibly work would be 'stupid enough to open the attachment' types, as you can't target any of our Windows PCs from the outside world, only our Linux box.
Sure, some of the ports Windows leaves open are useful for things you might do on a corporate LAN (Active Directory, RPC, and such) but these things are next to useless for the larger Internet. If they don't want to fix the holes before someone has exploited them, or code their systems properly, then Microsoft could at least make it so that Windows leaves NO generic ports open on public/WAN interfaces.
Cripes, you must be in a weird part of the UK, or the school system has totally changed since I went through it there;-) Geeks with girlfriends? Never!
SOME OF US DO NOT HAVE THE FANCY MONEY TO SPEND ON 300 BAUD MODEMS AND EGA SCREENS AND HAVE TO MAKE DO WITH WHAT WE HAVE GOT. I RECENTLY SAVED UP TEN BUCKS TO BUY A 32K EXPANSION PACK FOR MY COMMODORE PET. IT IS NOT PRETTY BUT IT WORKS.
BEFORE YOU ASK HOW I AM ON THE ARPANET, I AM ACCESSING VIA PACKET RADIO SERVICE. MY NEAREST REPEATER IS 25 MILES AWAY AND THEN THE NEXT REPEATER ON HAS A FOURTEEN POINT FOUR KILOBIT MODEM CONNECTION TO THE ARPANET. I WAS SENT THIS MAIL BY A FRIEND OF A FRIEND WHO HAS WINDOWS AND HAVE READ IT AND AM WRITING THIS REPLY ON MY COMMODORE PET USING KA9Q AND PINE.
This is off-topic, but I was surprised to see that the guy who runs CD Baby would happen to be on SlashDot.
Congratulations for managing such a great store. I've bought from you guys before and it was a great experience. I managed to get a rare album at a bargain price, and got good service into the bargain.
Uh, THIS is Peter Cooper. If you're such a moron to think that an AC is me, then that's your problem, not mine. I don't hide behind AC. Clearly, you do. Know who you're talking to before acting like a dick. KTHX, bi.
Funny, because when I keep hearing this crap on the radio about 'Coup in Georgia's Government' and stuff, I keep thinking those hill-billies have ransacked Atlanta. Yes, I'm British and even I associate Georgia with the US. Heck, that Georgia place in the CIS probably didn't even exist before 1989?
Back when I was at school, no-one had ever played on a NeoGeo, but we'd all heard about it. It was the amazing 'latest thing' which was supposedly so amazing to play on that it'd beat your NES into a pulp, and was even better than the arcades. As young boys we drooled over this concept, but never came close to one as they were about $700 in this country. Several years later I tried NeoGeo on emulation, and while Street Fighter 2 was particularly well done, it was a bit of a let down compared to what we'd all been thinking as kids.
Funny how it goes.. you grow older, and you don't have that whole excitement because you can just buy any technology/console you want to check out instead of dreaming about owning it 'one day'. Sadly it seems almost more fun dreaming about how incredible something is than actually getting to use it.
I'd hesitate to say that 3DO was seen in a similar light to the NeoGeo, as they also had a mythical expensive console out in the early 90's (which was 32 bit ARM-RISC with a CD-ROM).
The FCC has received very few complaints about jammed cell phones and has never taken action against anyone for that violation.
How could they take action? The people with the jammers keep them in their pockets. And the only reason they're doing it is for the entertainment/proving a point aspect. It's not as if Wal*Mart is mass-installing jammers to stop shoppers talking while shopping, so how would the FCC catch anyone?
Besides, with the way people move around, service would only appear to be patchy, dropping out as you walk past someone with a jammer, then coming back again. Cellphones do this anyway, so how you would you know what to complain about?
This is pretty much a non story because it's hard to tell if you're being jammed or if you're just getting a crappy signal. Sure, you shouldn't be blocking cellphone signals, but I can't see how the FCC is going to catch you doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't have sex with a new partner without a condom
;-)
Well it's lucky you're a Slashdot reader and don't have to worry about such concerns anyway
Who is the vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on back care?
;-)
Google came last in their test, with a time of 6 minutes and 27 seconds. I decided to recreate their test (before knowing what the answer was). I entered.. "vice chairman" "parliamentary group" "back care"
First response, scrolled down a few pages till I saw 'back care' highlighted.. found the name, Janet Dean. Less than a minute! These people are not very good at their Google
Google is not some magic research machine. The person is the magic research machine, who uses Google as a tool. Just like "Do It Yourselfers" at home use the same hammers and saws that carpenters do.. but make a crappier job of it.
I'm a Google Researcher. Generally most Researchers use the Internet or their own knowledge as their primary resource when answering questions. This is because most questions have a low fee and can be given answers which are merely pointers to further resources. Researchers are also encouraged to give the methods they used in their answer, to help the person who asked the question.
However, there have been quite a number of extraordinary cases where people have been so interested in answering the question that they've made phone calls, chased people, and dug out answers to incredibly complex questions. In one case, a Researcher managed to track down someone's obscure pre-20th C. German heritage.
Do remember that Google Answers is primarily for people who don't have excellent research skills of their own. While easy to use, finding certain things with Google (and other engines) requires skill, time, intelligence, and abstract thinking faculties that many people lack. Also bear in mind that most Google Researchers don't do it for the money. You will inevitably get a far higher quality (and longer) answer than you could possibly expect for the money. This is why tips are given to Researchers so often on the system.
Okay, Poland has the people and the position, but I'd say Estonia is the most promising of the new ex-Soviet EU states.
Ten years ago, as I read on the BBC, only 15% of homes in the country had a regular phone! Now they have wireless internet, the majority of people have cellphones, and quite a few people speak English. The government has radically pushed away from Soviet norms in implementing low business taxes, and is fostering a great environment for new businesses. And from what I've learned through the CIA Factbook and the BBC, Estonia has a very low crime rate and chicks who look like this. Per capita income is also still low, so employees would be cheap. The country also looks pretty.
The downsides? It's darn cold in Winter, and it's not cheap to fly to (yet).
Still, it looks like Estonia is a promising little nation who understands the concepts of the free market and capitalism in generating better living conditions.. and if I had to choose one of the new EU states to live in.. well, Estonia looks the most promising for those in business.
You can pay your parking lot or buy flowers by SMS. Wow, that's really advanced and even if it so, I don't see how practical it can be. Come on, lose 2 minutes to type and SMS instead of paying by cash or credit card....
I would personally find that VERY useful.
For a start, carrying change is cumbersome, most parking machines don't accept notes, and you can never be 100% sure if you have the right amount of change on you (or in the right denominations). Once I went to my favourite parking lot and found the price had gone to 5 from 4. I had 4 of change on me. So I went back to my car (a few minutes' walk in this particular lot) and scrambled around and found a pile of change which got me to the 5. Then I went back to the machine and put in it.. but after 20 coins it wouldn't let me put in any more!! This forced me to find a shop, buy something I didn't even want, just so I could get some change (how else do you get change? change machines are not common in the UK)
And credit card? Gee, the only parking that takes credit cards is when you book it, or if you use some fancy expensive place downtown. For general parking, forget it. You need your change, or else.. and in a society where otherwise you never need to carry notes or change, it's ridiculous you still need it to park.
Estonia has got it right.
I totally agree with your coder vs programmer insight, but took objection to this:
I once interviewed a guy who was pretty good with Oracle. Commanded a six figure income. When he found out that the offered project used SQL server 2000, he mocked our company, to our face and to the niche community we work for.
That's nothing to do with the point you were making.. he was just a vendor/method snob. Most Linux/BSD/*NIX people would similarly mock a company who used 100% Microsoft solutions. Most C++ programmers mock Visual Basic programmers. Most Oracle geeks would mock a company who relied on mySQL, and so on.
Come on, if you're suggesting SQL Server 2000 is in the same league as Oracle, that's just plain wrong. He shouldn't have been bagging on your company, that's unprofessional, but the fact he thought SQL Server 2000 was stupid was hardly an indication he was a moron.
but the need for a link cable really limits the number of players who will play them.
It's not just the need for a cable, but the price of the cable when you go and look for one. It is not uncommon for these cables to be $30+.. and, for what, two proprietary plugs with some wires in between? Not encouraging!
I have to say, though, wireless handheld gaming units could be really popular, but I think cellphone based systems will ultimately prove more successful than the Gameboy. Almost everyone in the target market carries a cellphone nowadays, and the beauty of wireless gaming is that you can play whenever you feel like it. Most people won't carry their Gameboys around with them all of the time.. but they'll have their phone.
Most people who DO play Gameboy games together using the cable are usually meeting up at someone elses' house anyway.. and if you're going to do that, why not play just play multiplayer on an XBox or PS2? That's why cabled mobile gaming hasn't caught on so far.. people just don't all take their Gameboys and meet up in inconvenient locations just for the fun of it.. with wireless, they could.
They just want to eat, and see no reason nor need to do things another way when what they know is good enough.
You make some good points, but on this one.. clearly what they know isn't good enough.
I think your reason #3 is a valid and common reason, but not a good one.
Compare networking to programming.
Would you really want to employ a team of programmers who could ONLY code in Visual Basic, and nothing else? No way! You want programmers to at least have experience with many languages, so they can understand a whole range of design methods and paradigms. A pure VB programmer who'd never touched anything else would probably be hideous at algorithms, for example. Likewise, if I were employing network engineers, I'd want engineers who had at least a basic familiarity with a number of platforms and vendors (Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Linux, BSD, and so on) and their various methodologies. Many Microsoft codemonkeys have no familiarity with anything outside of their 'Programming with Microsoft Tools for Dummies' welcome pack.
We're actually planning to go over to this cute little wireless access point/DSL modem/firewall thingy and turf out the Linux laptop soon. But.. it turns out the wireless access point runs an embedded version of Linux! No escaping the march of open source ;-)
Hehe, I'm not sure if you missed my own rapid reply to my own post above or if you're pulling my leg, but I posted an addendum to my post explaining just what you said. Thanks anyway ;-)
How hard is it to have a BSD or Linux box acting as an el-cheapo firewall between the Internet and your internal network? I have a $200 laptop which has done just that task for several years now.
And before anyone calls me out saying 'Uh, a big company wouldn't just have a stupid laptop running UNIX as a firewall'.. I know that. I just wanted to exclude the argument that straying from Microsoft-only solutions is some cost problem.
A decent sized organization should just buy some proper firewalls (i.e. Cisco) and do it the 'right' way.. but in a small company, with a tiny budget, you can still have a proper firewall on the cheap thanks to BSD or Linux..
How hard is it to have a BSD or Linux box acting as an el-cheapo firewall between the Internet and your internal network? I have a $200 laptop which has done just that task for several years now. I can never be bothered to patch my (Windows) machines, but they never have trouble because they can only talk within each other and not get attacked from the outside. Jeez, even if you paid someone to install it, you could have the whole job done for $1000 with old hardware and a copy of FreeBSD.
I offer one reason why this doesn't happen too often, particularly in the UK. Way too many 'technical consultancies' for institutions like the coastguard are staffed by MCSEs with no proper computer science knowledge who just install Windows XP on every machine, set up 'Internet Connection Sharing', and leave. They wouldn't even dream of putting a non-Windows box on a network!
Thankfully these worms and virus attacks are showing up these idiotic 'we only touch Microsoft stuff' agencies for what they're worth. Any decent technical consultant should be able to advise companies on the right hardware and software to use, independent of vendors.. so it might be Microsoft on the client end, and UNIX on the back end.. but no, the UK (at least) is filled with MCSE ridden agencies who get totally lost when they don't have a 'Start' button to click.
And what is your web browser ?
;-) Haven't stumbled across any viruses which can run arbitrary code without you having to say OK to that box as of yet..
Firebird across all machines. Also all on Outlook Express though.. but have had no problems as the zone is set to high security, and no-one is stupid enough to say 'OK' when it pops up a Run or Save box
Will probably check out Thunderbird once again now it's another revision down the road.
I'm no Windows hater, but these exploits reinforce my opinion that no Windows machine should have a publicly accessible IP address.
We run Windows on our network here, but we have a Linux box with IP masquerading enabled connected to the Net, so the only exploits that could possibly work would be 'stupid enough to open the attachment' types, as you can't target any of our Windows PCs from the outside world, only our Linux box.
Sure, some of the ports Windows leaves open are useful for things you might do on a corporate LAN (Active Directory, RPC, and such) but these things are next to useless for the larger Internet. If they don't want to fix the holes before someone has exploited them, or code their systems properly, then Microsoft could at least make it so that Windows leaves NO generic ports open on public/WAN interfaces.
Cripes, you must be in a weird part of the UK, or the school system has totally changed since I went through it there ;-) Geeks with girlfriends? Never!
Should be plenty, this story isn't even on the front page, is it?
Famous last words!
Things have changed a bit since then!
SOME OF US DO NOT HAVE THE FANCY MONEY TO SPEND ON 300 BAUD MODEMS AND EGA SCREENS AND HAVE TO MAKE DO WITH WHAT WE HAVE GOT. I RECENTLY SAVED UP TEN BUCKS TO BUY A 32K EXPANSION PACK FOR MY COMMODORE PET. IT IS NOT PRETTY BUT IT WORKS.
BEFORE YOU ASK HOW I AM ON THE ARPANET, I AM ACCESSING VIA PACKET RADIO SERVICE. MY NEAREST REPEATER IS 25 MILES AWAY AND THEN THE NEXT REPEATER ON HAS A FOURTEEN POINT FOUR KILOBIT MODEM CONNECTION TO THE ARPANET. I WAS SENT THIS MAIL BY A FRIEND OF A FRIEND WHO HAS WINDOWS AND HAVE READ IT AND AM WRITING THIS REPLY ON MY COMMODORE PET USING KA9Q AND PINE.
BEST REGARDS AND 73S
PETER COOPER
STATION WS47X
This is off-topic, but I was surprised to see that the guy who runs CD Baby would happen to be on SlashDot.
Congratulations for managing such a great store. I've bought from you guys before and it was a great experience. I managed to get a rare album at a bargain price, and got good service into the bargain.
Keep up the good work!
Uh, THIS is Peter Cooper. If you're such a moron to think that an AC is me, then that's your problem, not mine. I don't hide behind AC. Clearly, you do. Know who you're talking to before acting like a dick. KTHX, bi.
The H in IMHO and IMNSHO stands for "humble," not "honest."
Linux and BSD aren't really UNIX
Oh yeah, that's not a troll.. By your criteria, Solaris isn't a 'real UNIX' either.
Funny, because when I keep hearing this crap on the radio about 'Coup in Georgia's Government' and stuff, I keep thinking those hill-billies have ransacked Atlanta. Yes, I'm British and even I associate Georgia with the US. Heck, that Georgia place in the CIS probably didn't even exist before 1989?
Back when I was at school, no-one had ever played on a NeoGeo, but we'd all heard about it. It was the amazing 'latest thing' which was supposedly so amazing to play on that it'd beat your NES into a pulp, and was even better than the arcades. As young boys we drooled over this concept, but never came close to one as they were about $700 in this country. Several years later I tried NeoGeo on emulation, and while Street Fighter 2 was particularly well done, it was a bit of a let down compared to what we'd all been thinking as kids.
Funny how it goes.. you grow older, and you don't have that whole excitement because you can just buy any technology/console you want to check out instead of dreaming about owning it 'one day'. Sadly it seems almost more fun dreaming about how incredible something is than actually getting to use it.
I'd hesitate to say that 3DO was seen in a similar light to the NeoGeo, as they also had a mythical expensive console out in the early 90's (which was 32 bit ARM-RISC with a CD-ROM).
The FCC has received very few complaints about jammed cell phones and has never taken action against anyone for that violation.
How could they take action? The people with the jammers keep them in their pockets. And the only reason they're doing it is for the entertainment/proving a point aspect. It's not as if Wal*Mart is mass-installing jammers to stop shoppers talking while shopping, so how would the FCC catch anyone?
Besides, with the way people move around, service would only appear to be patchy, dropping out as you walk past someone with a jammer, then coming back again. Cellphones do this anyway , so how you would you know what to complain about?
This is pretty much a non story because it's hard to tell if you're being jammed or if you're just getting a crappy signal. Sure, you shouldn't be blocking cellphone signals, but I can't see how the FCC is going to catch you doing it.
You could probably ask for, and get, 382-5908 if you didn't explain you were turned down for 382-5968 ;-)