Telegraph didn't hurt anybody's grammar
on
It's OK to keep AIMing
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· Score: 4, Insightful
People used to write telegrams in short, incomplete sentences in order to save money on the transmission by reducing the length of the message, and as far as I know it didn't hurt anybody's grammar.
This report doesn't take into account each country's percentage of the total world internet user population. If you take that into account, China and S. Korea are far worse than the US on a per-capita internet-user basis:
USA: 23.2% of world spam, 20.1% of world internet users
China: 20.0% of world spam, 10.9% of world internet users
S. Korea: 7.9% of world spam, 3.3% of world internet users
So adjusted for internet user population, the US puts out 23.2/20.1 = 1.15, or 15% more spam than expected. China puts out 20.0/10.9 = 1.83, or 83% more spam than expected. South Korea puts out 7.9/3.3 = 2.39, or 139% more spam than expected.
I got the internet population stats from: http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm
All I would ask of the Semantic Web evangelists is that they go off together and build a network of Semantic Web systems that proves the following:
1. It works
2. It is more useful than currently existing practices
3. It is more cost-effective than currently existing practices
4. There is a killer application that is not possible using currently existing practices
If they can do #1 and any one of the other 3, then maybe people will see the value and start adopting it in the real world. Until then Semantic Web sounds like the Dvorak keyboard to me: a "solution" that everbody thinks is worse than the problem it is trying to solve, because it requires millions of people to change the way they do things without much proven benefit. What Semantic Web needs to do is prove is that it is actually worth implementing by showing some honest results.
I'm hoping they do a study of this next, so they will have scientific data to back up law against wives nagging their husbands while driving. On the other hand, I know I would make a lot more road trips if such a law existed, so it might not be good for traffic and the environment.:)
The cool think about something like Google Earth is how you can zoom way in to see tiny details. If the display is an actual sphere, wouldn't you be kind of limited in showing anything at a scale other than that which can be represented on a physical sphere the size of the projector-screen?
Sprint's "Vision" pack cost $10 extra a month and was so unintuitive it was unusable. I hated trying to read news stories on that tiny fricking screen, and trying to figure out how to use the camera was impossible. The only way I will ever care to have a camera or MP3 player in my phone in the future is if it functions completely independently of the carrier's cell phone service. I should be able to cancel my phone service completely, and still be able to use my phone as a camera or MP3 player by connecting it to my PC to transfer photos and MP3s to and from the phone.
Yeah I remember that. The hype was so bad, people were thinking "Ginger" must have been a perpetual-motion machine or a Star Trek transporter device. When it was revealed it was such a letdown. I actually thought it might become really popular in China, but they have gone from bicycles straight to highly-polluting automobiles just like us.
I guess this must be non-gaming tech gadgets. You could make another list of the top 25 worst gaming gadget, and they would all be worse than anything on this list.
So basically the point here is that making the transition from being an irresponsible young idiot to being a responsible adult is a jarring experience. What a revelation!
Honestly, I have watched a lot more G4 since they started running Star Trek TNG re-runs, and now TOS re-runs (I watch the Saturday uncut episodes, not the 11pm Star Trek 2.0 with the annoying chat bar and stupid "stock" ticker). However, that is going to get old as soon as I have seen all the re-runs once, and then they start repeating.
I saw the Serenity movie. I have seen several episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica. The geek/nerd in me just does not respond to either in the same way as I did to Star Trek TOS/TNG/DS9. The "sci-fi" shows that are popular of late seem too much like standard prime-time soap operas or television dramas, except for being set in space. BG is basically just a glorified "West Wing" in space. Remove the romance/drama and bring back the intellectual appeal of Star Trek.
TNG was the best Star Trek show of all, and none of those actors are too old to bring back the TNG TV show. There would have to be a few changes for consistency with later TV shows, but I think it could be done successfully.
The artists are free to charge whatever price the market will bear for tickets to their concerts. There is no way to copy the experience of a live performance. However, if they are going to charge $250, and use filesharing to justify it, then they should stop prosecuting filesharers altogether, and even make their music avialable for free dowload on their own websites.
In recent Frontline episode on the Tianamen Square "Tank Man" (really a report on China's political and economic evolution since the massacre), it made it seem that the Chinese government has stopped funding public education in rural areas. Peasants now have to pay to send their children to school, which most can't afford. It seems as though China is working very intently on keeping the rural peasants ignorant and illiterate, so that they can be more easily controlled and exploited by the government, Western corporations, and the "new Chinese capitalist elite" in the big cities. I find it hard to believe that the Chinese government would allow this incredibly valuable slavelike underclass to learn enough to read web pages. The only ones who will benefit are the new Chinese capitalist elite, who have a similar vested interest in keeping the underclass ignorant.
If the simulation results seem to say that Einstein was wrong, that still doesn't prove that he was wrong, because they have not actually merged two black holes together in the real world. Simulation != real world. If there are any flaws in the assumptions, parameters, or algorithms they use to perform the simulation, then it invalidates the whole exercise.
Because, of course, there are no expansion packs or sequels to the Sims or anything like that.
Same is true of any internet company
on
Google's DNA
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· Score: 1
You could say the same thing about Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, or EBay. The web is becoming a superstore for all information, entertainment, and communications. Google just happens to have the best search engine and the highest stock price right now. There is nothing preventing many other companies from competing with Google.
So does this mean that if I write a tutorial textbook on how to create awesome chart macros in Excel, I would be infringing on Microsofts copyright on MS Excel? Sounds like BS to me, and shortsighted BS at that.
Just because you can't think of any innovative new ideas, doesn't mean somebody else won't. Here are a few areas of technology that have hardly even begun to be exploited yet:
Not John W. Rogers Jr. The CEO of Ariel Capital Management LLC doesn't use the Internet at work or at home. The 47-year-old Princeton University grad thinks the Net is largely a waste of time. Assistants print out e-mails for him and researchers give him paper copies of Wall Street analysts reports from the Web. He prefers to spend his time reading, talking directly with his staff, working out at the gym, or spending time with his teenage daughter. "If you're spending all your time on e-mail, you're not listening and reading," says Rogers, who rarely took lecture notes while he was a student so he could listen more intently. "I listen and read; e-mail is a huge distraction."
So basically this guy is saying that he is a rich, lazy SOB, and he has all his "little people" do the dirty work of searching for things on the Web for him, screening his emails, and transcribing his responses, so he can work out at the gym and spend time with his daughter. Just goes to show that no technology can beat having a bunch of slaves to do your bidding!
I save all of my credit receipts in a paper bag that I will burn someday when it gets full. It will be a long time, since it is only about half full and I have been saving them for about 8 years. I will have to take it to an incinerator or something because I live in an apartment with no fireplace. However, I tear up credit card apps because I get to many of them to save up for a trip to an incinerator.
Slashdot Mirror
People used to write telegrams in short, incomplete sentences in order to save money on the transmission by reducing the length of the message, and as far as I know it didn't hurt anybody's grammar.
- USA: 23.2% of world spam, 20.1% of world internet users
- China: 20.0% of world spam, 10.9% of world internet users
- S. Korea: 7.9% of world spam, 3.3% of world internet users
So adjusted for internet user population, the US puts out 23.2/20.1 = 1.15, or 15% more spam than expected. China puts out 20.0/10.9 = 1.83, or 83% more spam than expected. South Korea puts out 7.9/3.3 = 2.39, or 139% more spam than expected. I got the internet population stats from: http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htmAll I would ask of the Semantic Web evangelists is that they go off together and build a network of Semantic Web systems that proves the following: 1. It works 2. It is more useful than currently existing practices 3. It is more cost-effective than currently existing practices 4. There is a killer application that is not possible using currently existing practices If they can do #1 and any one of the other 3, then maybe people will see the value and start adopting it in the real world. Until then Semantic Web sounds like the Dvorak keyboard to me: a "solution" that everbody thinks is worse than the problem it is trying to solve, because it requires millions of people to change the way they do things without much proven benefit. What Semantic Web needs to do is prove is that it is actually worth implementing by showing some honest results.
What the hell do you think those antennas are for?
I'm hoping they do a study of this next, so they will have scientific data to back up law against wives nagging their husbands while driving. On the other hand, I know I would make a lot more road trips if such a law existed, so it might not be good for traffic and the environment. :)
The cool think about something like Google Earth is how you can zoom way in to see tiny details. If the display is an actual sphere, wouldn't you be kind of limited in showing anything at a scale other than that which can be represented on a physical sphere the size of the projector-screen?
Sprint's "Vision" pack cost $10 extra a month and was so unintuitive it was unusable. I hated trying to read news stories on that tiny fricking screen, and trying to figure out how to use the camera was impossible. The only way I will ever care to have a camera or MP3 player in my phone in the future is if it functions completely independently of the carrier's cell phone service. I should be able to cancel my phone service completely, and still be able to use my phone as a camera or MP3 player by connecting it to my PC to transfer photos and MP3s to and from the phone.
Yeah I remember that. The hype was so bad, people were thinking "Ginger" must have been a perpetual-motion machine or a Star Trek transporter device. When it was revealed it was such a letdown. I actually thought it might become really popular in China, but they have gone from bicycles straight to highly-polluting automobiles just like us.
I guess this must be non-gaming tech gadgets. You could make another list of the top 25 worst gaming gadget, and they would all be worse than anything on this list.
So basically the point here is that making the transition from being an irresponsible young idiot to being a responsible adult is a jarring experience. What a revelation!
Maybe MS is just trying to drive YHOO down to make it a cheaper buyout.
Honestly, I have watched a lot more G4 since they started running Star Trek TNG re-runs, and now TOS re-runs (I watch the Saturday uncut episodes, not the 11pm Star Trek 2.0 with the annoying chat bar and stupid "stock" ticker). However, that is going to get old as soon as I have seen all the re-runs once, and then they start repeating.
I saw the Serenity movie. I have seen several episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica. The geek/nerd in me just does not respond to either in the same way as I did to Star Trek TOS/TNG/DS9. The "sci-fi" shows that are popular of late seem too much like standard prime-time soap operas or television dramas, except for being set in space. BG is basically just a glorified "West Wing" in space. Remove the romance/drama and bring back the intellectual appeal of Star Trek.
TNG was the best Star Trek show of all, and none of those actors are too old to bring back the TNG TV show. There would have to be a few changes for consistency with later TV shows, but I think it could be done successfully.
The artists are free to charge whatever price the market will bear for tickets to their concerts. There is no way to copy the experience of a live performance. However, if they are going to charge $250, and use filesharing to justify it, then they should stop prosecuting filesharers altogether, and even make their music avialable for free dowload on their own websites.
In recent Frontline episode on the Tianamen Square "Tank Man" (really a report on China's political and economic evolution since the massacre), it made it seem that the Chinese government has stopped funding public education in rural areas. Peasants now have to pay to send their children to school, which most can't afford. It seems as though China is working very intently on keeping the rural peasants ignorant and illiterate, so that they can be more easily controlled and exploited by the government, Western corporations, and the "new Chinese capitalist elite" in the big cities. I find it hard to believe that the Chinese government would allow this incredibly valuable slavelike underclass to learn enough to read web pages. The only ones who will benefit are the new Chinese capitalist elite, who have a similar vested interest in keeping the underclass ignorant.
Breaking your remote control is just a prelude...
If the simulation results seem to say that Einstein was wrong, that still doesn't prove that he was wrong, because they have not actually merged two black holes together in the real world. Simulation != real world. If there are any flaws in the assumptions, parameters, or algorithms they use to perform the simulation, then it invalidates the whole exercise.
Because, of course, there are no expansion packs or sequels to the Sims or anything like that.
You could say the same thing about Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, or EBay. The web is becoming a superstore for all information, entertainment, and communications. Google just happens to have the best search engine and the highest stock price right now. There is nothing preventing many other companies from competing with Google.
So does this mean that if I write a tutorial textbook on how to create awesome chart macros in Excel, I would be infringing on Microsofts copyright on MS Excel? Sounds like BS to me, and shortsighted BS at that.
- Robotics
- Nanotechnology
- Voice recognition technology
- Genetic engineering
- Quantum computing
- Artificial intelligence
- Fusion technology
And, no, I am not a shill for Ray Kurzweil.I save all of my credit receipts in a paper bag that I will burn someday when it gets full. It will be a long time, since it is only about half full and I have been saving them for about 8 years. I will have to take it to an incinerator or something because I live in an apartment with no fireplace. However, I tear up credit card apps because I get to many of them to save up for a trip to an incinerator.