Re:Not quite the same as today's ATMs.
on
ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I remember my Dad having one of these from the National Westminster Bank circa 1972. ATMs didn't really take off until the magnetic stripe cards came out in the late '70s/ early '80s.
My uncle was the project manager at Barclays behind the modern magnetic-stripe ATM project (I don't know if he was involved with these early prototypes). He used to tell all kinds of fascinating stories about trying the herd the vast numbers of people involved into moving in at least approximately in the right direction.
One particular thing he talked about was the endless bickering between the connected-ATM faction (where the secret was stored centrally, and all ATMs communicated constantly with central servers via the phone line) and the disconnected-ATM faction (where the secret was stored on the card, and ATMs would only get updated at intervals). Needless to say, and thankfully, the connected-ATM faction won. It seems such an obvious decision these days...
The comment to which I responded said to never use email for anything important, and that you should contact via other methods. You obviously can't do that if a physical item needs to be delivered, you have no choice but to use email.
Yes, and then you have to check to make sure it arrived. And if it hasn't arrived, you need to resend it. Because email is not reliable, as I keep saying.
I guess you've never had to send a document to someone across the country Right Now. The only other method would be overnight... which is just overnight.
I have, actually. The correct procedure in this situation is (1) send by email, (2) confirm receipt by phone, (3) if not received within a suitable time send by a different email address, (4) repeat until confirmed receipt.
If you just send the document and don't check that it's arrived, you're doomed. Email is, quite simply, not reliable or timely, and it was never inteded that way.
But if you need a different example, what if you ran a large shop and ordered 10,000 chairs to sell, but then realised you made a mistake and only needed 8000... This would cost you a huge amount of money, and if the ISP had access to the email the blackmail could be huge, however it still needs to be paid to save thousands more dollars...
But in this situation, you should not be using email, because email is not reliable and was never intended to be. If you really, truly need reliable communications, you use the phone. That way you get confirmation that someone the other end has received the message, you know when it was received, and you can get a record that it has been received (by, for example, recording it).
That doesn't make goodmail any less of a bad idea, though.
For example, let's develop several pre-conception birth control methods which are highly effective. Then require their use in-order to have the privilege of having an abortion. --Like insurance for your car. Responsibility allows the privilege.
The problem with this approach is that you're punishing the children. You're rewarding being responsible by allowing responsible people to have children, and punishing the being irresponsible by forcing them to go through with their pregnancies --- in other words, you're selecting for children to be born to those people least suited for raising children.
System layouts feature small rocky planets towards the star and gas giants further out. The biggest difference seen is a preference for elliptical orbits, instead of generally circular orbit we enjoy.
Yeah, but that's because the state of the art can only detect rocky planets when they're really close to the star, but can detect gas giants when they're further out; and planets with elliptical orbits are much easier to find than circular orbits, so a disproportionate number of those appear.
Some of these solar systems could have a thousand earth-like habitable planets in the multiple A.U. range, and we wouldn't even know they were there.
Hey! I like watching a 5 minute diatribe accusing me of being a criminal. I love the way that they don't allow you to skip or FF through the little moral tale. I don't care that I have to wait to see the movie I paid $40 to "own"... every single time from now until doomsday.
I recently bought a copy of Corpse Bride. Four pounds from my local supermarket.
I inserted the disk into my cheap-and-nasty Asian DVD player, pressed play. Up came the unskippable antipiracy advert. I press STOP STOP PLAY. Movie starts.
This works on most disks --- not all, but enough that it's always worth trying. If this doesn't work for you, get a better DVD player --- by which I mean a cheap one! The commodity hardware shifters know where the money is, and you don't make money by pissing off your customers...
I remember this from amp3.com, a defunct and unlamented mp3.com clone.
I've still got a couple of tracks somewhere with the amp3.com ad header on them; however, it turned out that they had stuck the header on by directly fiddling with the mp3 stream, and simply by running the file through a mp3 sanitiser, the header would magically vanish.
I wish we7 lots of luck, but if I were to start using them I'd damn well write an ad removal program.
Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories
on
A Single-Photon Server
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Roland_Piquepaille, the submitter of this story, is apparently a publicist. Apparently he is paid to have stories placed in media like Slashdot.
Remind me why this is bad, again? Given that his stories do tend to be fairly interesting, does it really matter if he's making money by submitting them here?
Don't forget Hal Clement, who to a certain extent defined the 'hard science' SF genre. Mission of Gravity, Close to Critical, Still River... he's particularly well suited for assigned reading because his books tend to be structured as puzzles: here is a strange situation, what are the consequences of this?
Mission of Gravity is probably his most famous book; an exploration of the planet Mesklin, a superheavy Earth-like world that spins so fast that although the surface gravity at the poles is 665g, at the equator it's only 3g. It's a little dated by today's standards, such as being a bit light on characterisation and having no female characters whatsoever, but is still a good read. And the science is as accurate as he could make it.
I have no idea what a Republican is. (From my perspective, both American political parties are so far out on the right wing that you need sophisticated instrumentation to tell them apart. *shrug*)
However:
1. Historically, the peers of scientists have presented political agenda's by cloaking them in jargon and supporting studies.
The people-have-been-wrong-before-so-let's-assume-they 're-wrong-now argument.
2. [...] Usually, it consists of a list of demands that (coincidentally?) line up with socialists and communists.
The using-emotionally-laden-words-to-discredit-the-arg ument argument.
3.The alternatives are hardly tenable at this point:
The too-complicated-to-fix-so-let's-assume-it's-not-ha ppening argument.
You're really not doing yourself any favours here...
Frankly, I was amazed at how horrible it was. It seems like an early Beta release, at best - and not a very promising one, at that.
To be fair, that was a publically accessible demo machine, and they never work properly, regardless of what operating system they run. It was probably also loaded with some god-awful OEM version of Vista, too.
The point isn't, so far as I can see, to make any profit from the scheme other than to spread the word of Linux and increase the potential compatibilities/reduce the incompatibilities.
In fact, this is how it's always worked --- people have been asking companies for device information for years. (I did, once; I wanted the specs for a SIM reader device so I could do a Linux driver. Did I get a response? Did I hell.) The only difference is that this announcement rephrases things in a rather more marketspeak and official manner. Instead of the companies doing us a favour, by providing hardware specs, we are now doing them a favour, by writing their drivers for them.
The Chinese made spacecraft out of oak --- well, the heatshields at least. The SKW series of satellites had reentry shields made out of oak panels. Apparently it has just the right ablation characteristics, as well as being cheap...
Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia, as always, has some info on these, but it's a pain to find: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMOT
I'd like to build one one day. They sound cool.
My uncle was the project manager at Barclays behind the modern magnetic-stripe ATM project (I don't know if he was involved with these early prototypes). He used to tell all kinds of fascinating stories about trying the herd the vast numbers of people involved into moving in at least approximately in the right direction.
One particular thing he talked about was the endless bickering between the connected-ATM faction (where the secret was stored centrally, and all ATMs communicated constantly with central servers via the phone line) and the disconnected-ATM faction (where the secret was stored on the card, and ATMs would only get updated at intervals). Needless to say, and thankfully, the connected-ATM faction won. It seems such an obvious decision these days...
Yes, and then you have to check to make sure it arrived. And if it hasn't arrived, you need to resend it. Because email is not reliable, as I keep saying.
I have, actually. The correct procedure in this situation is (1) send by email, (2) confirm receipt by phone, (3) if not received within a suitable time send by a different email address, (4) repeat until confirmed receipt.
If you just send the document and don't check that it's arrived, you're doomed. Email is, quite simply, not reliable or timely, and it was never inteded that way.
But in this situation, you should not be using email, because email is not reliable and was never intended to be. If you really, truly need reliable communications, you use the phone. That way you get confirmation that someone the other end has received the message, you know when it was received, and you can get a record that it has been received (by, for example, recording it).
That doesn't make goodmail any less of a bad idea, though.
The problem with this approach is that you're punishing the children. You're rewarding being responsible by allowing responsible people to have children, and punishing the being irresponsible by forcing them to go through with their pregnancies --- in other words, you're selecting for children to be born to those people least suited for raising children.
This is not optimum.
Mind you, there must be a limit that even a time lord can regenerate.
There is. Twelve. He's currently on #10, so he's running out. (We've actually met #12, in the Trial of a Time Lord arc.)
The Master has run out of regenerations, and has to steal other people's bodies.
...depends very much on what you can see:
System layouts feature small rocky planets towards the star and gas giants further out. The biggest difference seen is a preference for elliptical orbits, instead of generally circular orbit we enjoy.Yeah, but that's because the state of the art can only detect rocky planets when they're really close to the star, but can detect gas giants when they're further out; and planets with elliptical orbits are much easier to find than circular orbits, so a disproportionate number of those appear.
Some of these solar systems could have a thousand earth-like habitable planets in the multiple A.U. range, and we wouldn't even know they were there.
Hey! I like watching a 5 minute diatribe accusing me of being a criminal. I love the way that they don't allow you to skip or FF through the little moral tale. I don't care that I have to wait to see the movie I paid $40 to "own"... every single time from now until doomsday.
I recently bought a copy of Corpse Bride. Four pounds from my local supermarket.
I inserted the disk into my cheap-and-nasty Asian DVD player, pressed play. Up came the unskippable antipiracy advert. I press STOP STOP PLAY. Movie starts.
This works on most disks --- not all, but enough that it's always worth trying. If this doesn't work for you, get a better DVD player --- by which I mean a cheap one! The commodity hardware shifters know where the money is, and you don't make money by pissing off your customers...
Yeah, it'd only contain 32768 words...
You must be one of the good sysadmins. The bad sysadmins have just been yanking the cables out of the back of the routers.
Was that incompetent-bad, or evil-bad?
I remember this from amp3.com, a defunct and unlamented mp3.com clone.
I've still got a couple of tracks somewhere with the amp3.com ad header on them; however, it turned out that they had stuck the header on by directly fiddling with the mp3 stream, and simply by running the file through a mp3 sanitiser, the header would magically vanish.
I wish we7 lots of luck, but if I were to start using them I'd damn well write an ad removal program.
And what makes it even more amusing is that it was actually a simile!
Why, no, I'm not a card carrying member of the pedant's society. (It's actually made out of plastic...)
Wow. I never realised there was real music --- I only ever played the DOS version, which produces... er... sounds via the PC speaker. Cool.
Don't forget the OCRemix remixes.
Roland_Piquepaille, the submitter of this story, is apparently a publicist. Apparently he is paid to have stories placed in media like Slashdot.
Remind me why this is bad, again? Given that his stories do tend to be fairly interesting, does it really matter if he's making money by submitting them here?
I recommend Australian writer Greg Egan.
Don't forget Hal Clement, who to a certain extent defined the 'hard science' SF genre. Mission of Gravity, Close to Critical, Still River... he's particularly well suited for assigned reading because his books tend to be structured as puzzles: here is a strange situation, what are the consequences of this?
Mission of Gravity is probably his most famous book; an exploration of the planet Mesklin, a superheavy Earth-like world that spins so fast that although the surface gravity at the poles is 665g, at the equator it's only 3g. It's a little dated by today's standards, such as being a bit light on characterisation and having no female characters whatsoever, but is still a good read. And the science is as accurate as he could make it.
Only 500 soldiers have lost limbs since the start of the war? Why does that sound so unlikely?
Would those be US casualties only, or would they also include Iraqi casualties too? I've noticed that US news reports tend to only report the former.
As a Republican, let me present a few points:
I have no idea what a Republican is. (From my perspective, both American political parties are so far out on the right wing that you need sophisticated instrumentation to tell them apart. *shrug*)
However:
1. Historically, the peers of scientists have presented political agenda's by cloaking them in jargon and supporting studies.
The people-have-been-wrong-before-so-let's-assume-they 're-wrong-now argument.
2. [...] Usually, it consists of a list of demands that (coincidentally?) line up with socialists and communists.
The using-emotionally-laden-words-to-discredit-the-arg ument argument.
3.The alternatives are hardly tenable at this point:
The too-complicated-to-fix-so-let's-assume-it's-not-ha ppening argument.
You're really not doing yourself any favours here...
Frankly, I was amazed at how horrible it was. It seems like an early Beta release, at best - and not a very promising one, at that.
To be fair, that was a publically accessible demo machine, and they never work properly, regardless of what operating system they run. It was probably also loaded with some god-awful OEM version of Vista, too.
Still don't want to touch it, though.
The point isn't, so far as I can see, to make any profit from the scheme other than to spread the word of Linux and increase the potential compatibilities/reduce the incompatibilities.
In fact, this is how it's always worked --- people have been asking companies for device information for years. (I did, once; I wanted the specs for a SIM reader device so I could do a Linux driver. Did I get a response? Did I hell.) The only difference is that this announcement rephrases things in a rather more marketspeak and official manner. Instead of the companies doing us a favour, by providing hardware specs, we are now doing them a favour, by writing their drivers for them.
It's a rather neat bit of lateral thinking.
Accordian Hero
You know, they used to make ships out of oak.
The Chinese made spacecraft out of oak --- well, the heatshields at least. The SKW series of satellites had reentry shields made out of oak panels. Apparently it has just the right ablation characteristics, as well as being cheap...
if the Gates foundation isn't making money off of the evil corporations, someone will.
Perhaps we should legalise the murder of people over 65. After all, they're about to die soon anyway, so what's the harm?
With GSM everyone gets timeslices to use the air whether they're actually using it or not. With CDMA, only those who are talking use the air.
So what happens on a CDMA system if everyone talks at once? Do half the connections drop out because it's overcommitted resources?
Also (having done some more research): http://sniptools.com/tipstricks/reinstall-windows- xp-without-product-activation