A couple of weeks ago, I did a post for Alexa Internet about this sort of thing. This Post is the New Black took a look at the frequency of "* is the new *" on the web and came up with this graph; the data says that Apple, Facebook, Google, and MySpace are all the new Microsoft, which is really just the new IBM.
Which is funny, because ia_archiver is actually the Alexa Internet crawler; it's a throwback to before Amazon.com bought Alexa. (To this day, Alexa donates crawl data to the Archive.)
Actually, the stock market is more about being lucky and spreading your risk. The people who make a lot of money keep their methods secret because in reality there isn't any real method: we see people do well and assume there is some secret; we see people do poorly and assume they did something wrong. But it all comes down to hedging your bet and hanging on, and the laurels to the serendipitous few and their superstition.
..it's scale. I remember a company that built an index in SQL; the concept they were using worked but thier back-end did not scale. There is also a huge start-up cost when building a modern cralwer, which is why there are so few new search companies that survive.
..a page that (in general) gets almost no traffic --- and got a lot less traffic right before they made their fuss the first time --- gets a huge traffic boost every time a stupid artcle like this comes out. Just look at the Alexatraffic listing for fun. Notice the traffic drop in Q4 2005 and then the sharp rise in Q2 2006.
..if they just dropped the math. Right? Isn't that what people said when "Brief History of Time" came out. I'd try to prove that you have to agree with me, but I lack the logical calculus to communicate my idea. So I'll just tell you how dumb everyone else is. (Hopefully Gene Ray doesn't have a process patent on that.)
1.) Tell people they might be stupid.
2.) Give them a test that you invented that proves it.
3.) No question here: you happen to sell the solution!
4.) Profit!
This game started out as an experiment in creating games for disabled people. The idea was, "Could you create a fun title that required only one button to play?" Sometimes, creativity thrives when it's constrained.
I played that game when it was called Diablo II. Not that I didn't like Diablo II, I just had to buy a new mouse afterwards.
I didn't start playing till college and you're right: it's not that hard to find other interested people. A number of the people with whom I play now had never played before when my group first met them. It's really a lot of fun, except the couple of time I've played with kids who are obsessed with being chaotic evil.
We had one kid, the younger brother of the DM's fiance, who was forced to be chaotic neutral. He kept saying that even though it wasn't his alignment, he was going to "pretend" he was chaotic evil. When our party got to the fort the local king was staying at, we were invited into the throne room. We had just been chased for three days by a fear inducing monster of great power, saved by a bagpipe playing hobbit who teleported us many miles, and there was a great military clash on the horizon, rushing towards us. The kid, Theo, got free of the leash we had put on him and rushed, weapon drawn, towards the king. The sword bearer brought out a sword, and handed it to the king as we rushed to destroy or misguided teammate. Someone coup-de-gras'ed him and the king, jabbing him with the sword, declared him dead. Theo was always upset about this incident; when asked why he did it, he said, "If you kill the king, you become the king." Of course, the king wanted to know why we attacked him! I had the high charisma, so I declared that the madness that was pursuing us had warped and destroyed the half-orcs fragile mind. The king didn't believe that was the truth, but he believed that I believed that was the truth. The DM made him create a new character, one of the king's (read: lawful good) men.
The key to role playing is story immersion. We all get together to create funny, heroic, deadly, glorious situations in which we were key players by proxy.
Most of these concerns come down to the structure of the Google File System. Basically, files are split into chunks and a single chunk is replicated to multiple nodes. Metadata for the file is also distributed. When a file is accessed, a request is sent out to nodes where given chunks may exist and an aggregator pastes the chunks back together. If a particular machine is slow or goes down, the metadata may change to reflect that a certain chunk does not exist there when, in actuality, it does. In order to fully delete a file, one would need to identify every chunk for that file on every node. Google has a lot of nodes. So, even if you think you deleted a file part or all of it may still exist in the file system. It seems like they're putting a 30 day expiration these particular chunks, so you can be sure that after 30 days every chunk that made up a particular file is now inaccessable.
Progress Quest is all about "find my fish" and "deliver this block of wood to the next town" and it's never gotten boring. Maybe that's because one of my quests was to "placte the fire giants" and the next was to "exterminate the fire giants."
That's actually not quite true. The fact is that women stick together when providing for children, especially if they're related, but even when they're not. The trick is provision. There is a group in Asia where there is no marriage but there is anonymous sex. Men and women live with their mothers their entire lives and brothers care for their sisters children, because they're not sure who their own are. The fact is that most humans are wired to protect children that aren't theirs if need be, which is why we have orphanages and social services. There is a meta-evolutionary process that works within society and it has decided that children should live, even if they're not yours. If a baby is a basket was left on your doorstep, would you take it in, or at least take it to the child protective services? or would you let it die, or kill it yourself, because it would give your children a minute advantage? There is a reason that sort of thing is illegal. Because we don't evolve personally, we evolve as groups.
..is that in a role-playing game, there are players and there are characters. The people at Blizard define the framework for making characters and the players work within that framework to create their character. Just because a player has a certain feature, doesn't mean the character does or should. I mean, if I play a barbarian in D&D, I don't magically get the ability to rage in real life. Playing an elf doesn't give me dark vision just like playing a priestess doesn't make someone a woman. In the same way, being gay doesn't imply that your character needs to be gay, especially since it is not a part of the framework Blizzard has set up. And whether that is morally right or wrong, it is pratical (from Blizzard's point of view) because it prevents harassment that need not be in the game and detracts from the game. I can't blame them for being worried; and even if I wasn't straight, I certainly wouldn't join a gay guild because I wouldn't want to be harassed. It's a game and people need to realize the difference between in-game and real life.
That (more and more) companies think they own employees, rather than that they pay for their time. If someone never shows up to work on one time or has bad performance reviews, that's one thing; and if it gets bad, let them go. But where that employee is and what that employee does (when not working) is normally not the company's business. Not that any of this is a new idea on their part --- think company towns or migrant worker camps --- but technology now is making the "dream" a possibility, though hopefully not a reality.
I guess the question becomes: is it OK to destroy potential beings in order to potentially create a potential extension for other lives. The second half has a double "maybe": there is hope that this kind of genetic research has benefit, but it's not certain and that's why it's research. On the other hand, there is no reason that other kinds of genetic research can't yield the same results. The last (and perhaps most important) point is that nature has (seemingly) designed us to die; so, is it right to deny a full life to someone in order to (maybe) marginally extend the life or quality of life of another person or another class of people? That, at any rate, is the moral basis (the question of the pc) for that part of this year's State of the Union address.
Aristotle talks about the four types of causes,namely: first, material, formal, and final. The final cause, he says, is superior to the first cause if the first cause anticipates the final. In a very real way, a conception is the first cause of a human. And though not all first causes are seen through to finality, the potential is there for the finality. I believe this is what makes GWB and his ilk feel ill at the idea of doing the kind of experiments he is asking for a ban on: because though they are not (necessarily) being done on sentient life, they are being done on potentially sentient life and the research is preventing the fruition of that sentience.
When I was a kid, I got an astronomy kit for Christmas; it included a "finder" and several dozen sheets of clear plastic with stars, constellations, and names written in glow-in-the-dark ink on it. The idea was that once you knew which stars were supposed to be in the sky, you'd insert the correct overlay for that season and hour, and go out, find the guide stars, and then you'd have a ball. Don't get me wrong, it was entertaining as well as educational, but it was also a pain in the ass. We used it the next several times we went out to the country, but once we had seen most of the visible sky, it was done. I guess the point is, this kind of idea has been around awhile, but I'm really glad someone finally used technology to make it more informative for less of a hassle.
People keep talking about common carrier status, but as far as I understand it ISPs are designated as "information services," not common carriers, and are therefore subject to Title I of the Communications Act, not Title II. In fact, ISPs fought against being classified as common carriers so that they could pull stunts like this.
An ISP is usually classified as an "information service" and doesn't have the same obligations as a "telecomunications service," which can be a common or private carrier. The first classification is governed by Title I of the FCC Communications act where as common carriers are governed by Title II. So they can't lose common carrier status on the internet services they provide because they never had it; in fact, they never wanted it, and traditionally telecom companies have fought against having data access being classified as "common carrier."
I understood the problem before DJB and I will understand the problem long after DJB. (As an aside, I do run djbdns and my mail server uses his.maildir format, though it isn't qmail.) The first thing to note is that, as I said, the systems are not directly interoperable. What DJB is talking about is exactly that. What we should note is that you said compatible, which is not the case. I used the correct terminology, the terminology that DJB also happens to use. One thing is left out in his discussion, however: the systems are indirectly interoperable via gateway software; this software (1) exists, (2) swings both ways, and (3) is running on my own IPv4 server, giving it IPv6 address space. The nice thing about the IPv6 address space is that with the same prefix I've been able to give the domains I serve http for different addresses, which means they can all run https without certificate problems... as long as you access them from IPv6 space. (I believe that this is actually going to be one of the driving forces behind IPv6 adoption.) Another thing to note is when that article was written. Since then, sites like Google and Slashdot, etc, have entered the IPv6 arena. Different IPv6 backbones can now communicate with each other, and it's growing. Many of the problems DJB is describing have since begun to attract solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
A couple of weeks ago, I did a post for Alexa Internet about this sort of thing. This Post is the New Black took a look at the frequency of "* is the new *" on the web and came up with this graph; the data says that Apple, Facebook, Google, and MySpace are all the new Microsoft, which is really just the new IBM.
According to the Internet Archive, the DTD was last changed in February 2003. Here's the latest copy of RSS 0.91. Perhaps someone should set up a redirect at PURL.
Which is funny, because ia_archiver is actually the Alexa Internet crawler; it's a throwback to before Amazon.com bought Alexa. (To this day, Alexa donates crawl data to the Archive.)
Actually, the stock market is more about being lucky and spreading your risk. The people who make a lot of money keep their methods secret because in reality there isn't any real method: we see people do well and assume there is some secret; we see people do poorly and assume they did something wrong. But it all comes down to hedging your bet and hanging on, and the laurels to the serendipitous few and their superstition.
..it's scale. I remember a company that built an index in SQL; the concept they were using worked but thier back-end did not scale. There is also a huge start-up cost when building a modern cralwer, which is why there are so few new search companies that survive.
..a page that (in general) gets almost no traffic --- and got a lot less traffic right before they made their fuss the first time --- gets a huge traffic boost every time a stupid artcle like this comes out. Just look at the Alexa traffic listing for fun. Notice the traffic drop in Q4 2005 and then the sharp rise in Q2 2006.
..if they just dropped the math. Right? Isn't that what people said when "Brief History of Time" came out. I'd try to prove that you have to agree with me, but I lack the logical calculus to communicate my idea. So I'll just tell you how dumb everyone else is. (Hopefully Gene Ray doesn't have a process patent on that.)
MySpace has been in the top ten since January.
1.) Tell people they might be stupid.
2.) Give them a test that you invented that proves it.
3.) No question here: you happen to sell the solution!
4.) Profit!
Just like all of the robots in the future. I'm sure it's not coincidence.
I played that game when it was called Diablo II. Not that I didn't like Diablo II, I just had to buy a new mouse afterwards.
We had one kid, the younger brother of the DM's fiance, who was forced to be chaotic neutral. He kept saying that even though it wasn't his alignment, he was going to "pretend" he was chaotic evil. When our party got to the fort the local king was staying at, we were invited into the throne room. We had just been chased for three days by a fear inducing monster of great power, saved by a bagpipe playing hobbit who teleported us many miles, and there was a great military clash on the horizon, rushing towards us. The kid, Theo, got free of the leash we had put on him and rushed, weapon drawn, towards the king. The sword bearer brought out a sword, and handed it to the king as we rushed to destroy or misguided teammate. Someone coup-de-gras'ed him and the king, jabbing him with the sword, declared him dead. Theo was always upset about this incident; when asked why he did it, he said, "If you kill the king, you become the king." Of course, the king wanted to know why we attacked him! I had the high charisma, so I declared that the madness that was pursuing us had warped and destroyed the half-orcs fragile mind. The king didn't believe that was the truth, but he believed that I believed that was the truth. The DM made him create a new character, one of the king's (read: lawful good) men.
The key to role playing is story immersion. We all get together to create funny, heroic, deadly, glorious situations in which we were key players by proxy.
Most of these concerns come down to the structure of the Google File System. Basically, files are split into chunks and a single chunk is replicated to multiple nodes. Metadata for the file is also distributed. When a file is accessed, a request is sent out to nodes where given chunks may exist and an aggregator pastes the chunks back together. If a particular machine is slow or goes down, the metadata may change to reflect that a certain chunk does not exist there when, in actuality, it does. In order to fully delete a file, one would need to identify every chunk for that file on every node. Google has a lot of nodes. So, even if you think you deleted a file part or all of it may still exist in the file system. It seems like they're putting a 30 day expiration these particular chunks, so you can be sure that after 30 days every chunk that made up a particular file is now inaccessable.
Progress Quest is all about "find my fish" and "deliver this block of wood to the next town" and it's never gotten boring. Maybe that's because one of my quests was to "placte the fire giants" and the next was to "exterminate the fire giants."
That's actually not quite true. The fact is that women stick together when providing for children, especially if they're related, but even when they're not. The trick is provision. There is a group in Asia where there is no marriage but there is anonymous sex. Men and women live with their mothers their entire lives and brothers care for their sisters children, because they're not sure who their own are. The fact is that most humans are wired to protect children that aren't theirs if need be, which is why we have orphanages and social services. There is a meta-evolutionary process that works within society and it has decided that children should live, even if they're not yours. If a baby is a basket was left on your doorstep, would you take it in, or at least take it to the child protective services? or would you let it die, or kill it yourself, because it would give your children a minute advantage? There is a reason that sort of thing is illegal. Because we don't evolve personally, we evolve as groups.
..is that in a role-playing game, there are players and there are characters. The people at Blizard define the framework for making characters and the players work within that framework to create their character. Just because a player has a certain feature, doesn't mean the character does or should. I mean, if I play a barbarian in D&D, I don't magically get the ability to rage in real life. Playing an elf doesn't give me dark vision just like playing a priestess doesn't make someone a woman. In the same way, being gay doesn't imply that your character needs to be gay, especially since it is not a part of the framework Blizzard has set up. And whether that is morally right or wrong, it is pratical (from Blizzard's point of view) because it prevents harassment that need not be in the game and detracts from the game. I can't blame them for being worried; and even if I wasn't straight, I certainly wouldn't join a gay guild because I wouldn't want to be harassed. It's a game and people need to realize the difference between in-game and real life.
That (more and more) companies think they own employees, rather than that they pay for their time. If someone never shows up to work on one time or has bad performance reviews, that's one thing; and if it gets bad, let them go. But where that employee is and what that employee does (when not working) is normally not the company's business. Not that any of this is a new idea on their part --- think company towns or migrant worker camps --- but technology now is making the "dream" a possibility, though hopefully not a reality.
I guess the question becomes: is it OK to destroy potential beings in order to potentially create a potential extension for other lives. The second half has a double "maybe": there is hope that this kind of genetic research has benefit, but it's not certain and that's why it's research. On the other hand, there is no reason that other kinds of genetic research can't yield the same results. The last (and perhaps most important) point is that nature has (seemingly) designed us to die; so, is it right to deny a full life to someone in order to (maybe) marginally extend the life or quality of life of another person or another class of people? That, at any rate, is the moral basis (the question of the pc) for that part of this year's State of the Union address.
Aristotle talks about the four types of causes,namely: first, material, formal, and final. The final cause, he says, is superior to the first cause if the first cause anticipates the final. In a very real way, a conception is the first cause of a human. And though not all first causes are seen through to finality, the potential is there for the finality. I believe this is what makes GWB and his ilk feel ill at the idea of doing the kind of experiments he is asking for a ban on: because though they are not (necessarily) being done on sentient life, they are being done on potentially sentient life and the research is preventing the fruition of that sentience.
When I was a kid, I got an astronomy kit for Christmas; it included a "finder" and several dozen sheets of clear plastic with stars, constellations, and names written in glow-in-the-dark ink on it. The idea was that once you knew which stars were supposed to be in the sky, you'd insert the correct overlay for that season and hour, and go out, find the guide stars, and then you'd have a ball. Don't get me wrong, it was entertaining as well as educational, but it was also a pain in the ass. We used it the next several times we went out to the country, but once we had seen most of the visible sky, it was done. I guess the point is, this kind of idea has been around awhile, but I'm really glad someone finally used technology to make it more informative for less of a hassle.
People keep talking about common carrier status, but as far as I understand it ISPs are designated as "information services," not common carriers, and are therefore subject to Title I of the Communications Act, not Title II. In fact, ISPs fought against being classified as common carriers so that they could pull stunts like this.
An ISP is usually classified as an "information service" and doesn't have the same obligations as a "telecomunications service," which can be a common or private carrier. The first classification is governed by Title I of the FCC Communications act where as common carriers are governed by Title II. So they can't lose common carrier status on the internet services they provide because they never had it; in fact, they never wanted it, and traditionally telecom companies have fought against having data access being classified as "common carrier."
Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box) is a Catholic, which is about as far from non-theist as you can get.
My level of drunkeness was a wave function until I collapsed.
I understood the problem before DJB and I will understand the problem long after DJB. (As an aside, I do run djbdns and my mail server uses his .maildir format, though it isn't qmail.) The first thing to note is that, as I said, the systems are not directly interoperable. What DJB is talking about is exactly that. What we should note is that you said compatible, which is not the case. I used the correct terminology, the terminology that DJB also happens to use. One thing is left out in his discussion, however: the systems are indirectly interoperable via gateway software; this software (1) exists, (2) swings both ways, and (3) is running on my own IPv4 server, giving it IPv6 address space. The nice thing about the IPv6 address space is that with the same prefix I've been able to give the domains I serve http for different addresses, which means they can all run https without certificate problems ... as long as you access them from IPv6 space. (I believe that this is actually going to be one of the driving forces behind IPv6 adoption.) Another thing to note is when that article was written. Since then, sites like Google and Slashdot, etc, have entered the IPv6 arena. Different IPv6 backbones can now communicate with each other, and it's growing. Many of the problems DJB is describing have since begun to attract solutions.