James Randi's astrology experiment remains one of my favorites. Gather information from a room full of people, prepare a reading for each one, and have them read it (in the same room, but silently). Invariably they claim that it was 85-95% accurate, far beyond what they would believe is pure chance. Then he has them pass their readings to the next person in line. Very soon they realize that the entire room was given the same paper.
As Heinlein liked to say, man is not a rational animal, rather a rationalizing one.
At least we can know for certain the people trying to get creationism taught as science in our schools have equally wacky friends around the globe.
What happened to the/. that was fairly neutral, objective and unbiased? Perhaps it only existed in my mind. Ad hominem such as this is unnecessary, it only cheapens/. as a whole. Creationism is not being pushed anywhere as a science, to be taught, sure, but not as science. Somehow it has become the boogeyman to those that don't actually know what science is. In the marketplace of ideas their will always be struggle, and the victor will not be the one making childish remarks towards the other.
Actually, that's exactly the concern; nobody (well, very few people) object to Creationism being taught in a religions course, forces such as the Texas school board are indeed trying to mandate its inclusion right next to the observed evolution studies present in many science textbooks, and used for materials in science classes.
When you install Bing Bar there is a checkbox that says:
Help Microsoft improve your online experience with personalized content by allowing us to collect additional information about your system configuration, the searches you do, websites you visit, and how you use our software. We will use this information to help improve our products and services.
You can either A) not install the toolbar at all or B) Opt not to give Microsoft this information.
I think that a reasonable interpretation of this by a normal user (a level actually very important in a court of law) would be that the user of the toolbar expected information about the searches made through the toolbar to be tracked. Admittedly, "information about... websites you visit," technically covers referers (sic) and google searches, but by that logic it would cover your bank account passwords too, which would almost certainly fail the reasonableness test.
The next boom/bust cycle will happen with virtual currency. Hope that nobody's retirement savings will be invested in the virtual world.
Yeah. That would be really bad if suddenly your money isn't worth anything anymore. I'm so glad that never happened up to now...
Unless you've actually, physically lived in a country where you worked all day to earn a wheelbarrow full of money and hoped that you'd be able to trade it for a loaf of bread in the morning... it hasn't. Not to you. Buying an overpriced house that you can't sell for more than 70% of what you paid for it is not at all the same.
Its still a fact that, most of the time, what most people have on their wall is put there by themselves. That its not 100% is also true, but its really pretty close to that amount. This is why a judge and/or jury will be interpreting the evidence as a whole.
Even innocent news like going on vacation gets spread inadvertently - "Can't wait for spring break - Hawaii here I come!" turns into "OMG, I can't believe Xxxxx is going to Hawaii for spring break! He's so lucky!" by one of your friend's wall posts (which may not be private).
And photos too - all it takes is a friend of a friend asking to see some photos you posted...
Of course, the same thing happens if you mention to your friend, "Hey, I'm going to Hawaii for spring break." They can then post that information on their Facebook wall, or put it on their blog, or use it in their Christmas newsletter, or just tell people about it.
As you mentioned, this is similar to your private diary (which is also subpoenable). I certainly hope you're not suggesting that more protections exist on your semi-public Facebook account than on your private journal, just because its "on a computer."
You realize that telling the truth is a defense here? If you're being sued/charged, and your defense is that you don't drink, and there are pictures of you drinking on someone's Facebook account, that what you did is probably illegal?
So you see, for the sake of speed, something has to give. Firefox chose the route of RAM, probably following the philosophy that Linux users have that unused RAM is wasted RAM (hence Linux OS having the RAM cache full of files and regular users freak out. Since you are on a Mac, try running free in the command line and see your cache usage). Webkit I'm not sure why they do what they do, but considering the disk is currently much faster than any non-LAN network, it opts to use the disk.
What we really need here is a way for the OS to handle some of the network retrieval protocols (or expose direct access in another way) so that webpages can be stored in the OS file cache space. That way all "excess" memory is used, but data is immediately kicked out (instead of being pushed out to disk or, worse yet, causing other apps to swap to disk) when memory usage becomes an issue.
Ironically, I'd guess that it would be a lot easier for the tighter integration in Windows to manage this:/
This is a checkbox which adds a single static header to each request, it's too simple to delay FF4 in any way.
O rly?
And you've never had a checkbox not save properly? Or cause the screen on which its placed to overflow when shown on a particular resolution netbook, causing a previously unimportant scrolling issue to surface that was being masked because the screen wasn't overflowing? And all of those situations would need to be tested, which takes time, and documented (for testing) which also takes resources... Don't forget internationalizing the checkbox label - I hope that German doesn't cause the label to overflow...
There's no such thing as a "free" feature in software.
You could accuse Mozilla of wasting time with Firefox 4 beta-testing, but this feature certainly has surfaced fast.
Actually, I'd rather accuse the Mozilla team of not understanding the purpose of a beta release. Adding support for shiny new features (and introducing, and then fixing, the inevitable bugs that follow) is great activity for a point release. The idea behind the beta is to make sure that all existing features work well, and that any true functionality gaps (often seen as bugs - for example, not supporting.png by design, while not a bug, would fall into this area) are addressed.
Once 4 is released, this type of minor change would be a great candidate for 4.0.1... As it is, it just makes it harder to get 4.x out the door.
Word isn't obfuscated. They published the entire standard publicly. It was just originally designed before XML and when the ability to run on very low powered hardware was at a premium. It was also made a decade before the internet and cross compatibility became a consideration.
Actually that's not correct. Large portions of.doc are publicly documented, but there are still quite a lot of cases where the documentation is inconsistent or references items that do not exist - or where no version of Word correctly generates and consumes the documented standard. Its similar to the trials that the SAMBA folk had when writing connections to Windows filesharing, where the hard part was in being "bug for bug" compatible with the actual software rather than the public standard.
So I'll clarify - when I said ".doc" I was referring to the files with that extension that are created and consumable by Word - which is what matters, when it comes to interoperability. Those differences may be accidental, or they may be intentional, and there's no way for us to tell which is correct.
This is why I keep postponing purchase of a new phone. I know that the $200 iPhone-clone with internet capability will probably drop to $30 1.5 years from now. I'm a patient person.
Like the $99 iPhone 3 you can get today? Of course, if you're waiting for the iPhone 4 equiv you're right, but by then the iPhone 5 will be out and you'll be back in "waiting mode."
The DVD was essentially invented by a co-op between DiscoVision and Philips in the form of the LaserDisc (wow, remember those!).
Not sure how you can compare the LD (of which I had many) - a 12" analog format stored as laser-readable media - with the DVD, whose main innovation was that it contained compressed digital content.
Why? Seriously - why go to all that both to "hide" something that nobody really cares about? Why not just not post of Facebook if you're that "concerned" about it? I mean, we've most of us moved a bit beyond Junior High haven't we?
The difference being that the group behind the de facto standard sees high value in being consistent, predictable, and having that pseudo-standard very well documented, because without those facts nobody can create content for them to consume.
With the.doc format, there's high value to Microsoft in obfuscating the "standard" documentation as much as possible since they both create and consume the documents.
Many large services disable that, FWIW - the cost of having thousands of open connections lying around far exceeds (to them) the cost of more frequent HTTPS handshaking.
Compute cycles are cheap when you're running a script on someone else's computer. Why not just try it anyway? If they're not logged in, it won't work. If they are, it will. Checking to see whether or not you think it will work is only useful if you care about the user you're about to rob.
The big difference here is that its very common to have multiple "identical" ethernet ports (all of our servers have had at least two GigEs on the motherboard for many years now), and real stuff is plugged into the otherwise identical ports based on physical location. More to the point, what's plugged in is generally unusable without further configuration (esp. in the server world) and one configuration will not work when swapped with the other. That's actually fairly uncommon with other devices - typically you don't have two identical items plugged into USB ports in such a way that the server would break if they were reversed.
Now, many server boxes just use these ports to create wider, redundant pathways to the same destination - but many do not. On those that don't, this type of consistent naming would be very helpful indeed.
The average user shouldn't notice any difference, but then the average user's machine shouldn't be using static configuration anyway:)
Webkit actually. And the fact that it only ever (ever!) appeared on/. - and that/.'s redesign fixed it - leads me to believe quite strongly that it was a/. bug instead.
Is it just a new name? Or is it a new direction with new ideas?
Just because something is re-evaluated it doesn't follow that it will therefore be rejected. Usually when a project has a new name with a new sponsor/lead, its a pretty damn good sign that things are changing.
More to the point, if that series of events didn't cause you to take another look at it, what on Earth would?
Slashdot Mirror
James Randi's astrology experiment remains one of my favorites. Gather information from a room full of people, prepare a reading for each one, and have them read it (in the same room, but silently). Invariably they claim that it was 85-95% accurate, far beyond what they would believe is pure chance. Then he has them pass their readings to the next person in line. Very soon they realize that the entire room was given the same paper.
As Heinlein liked to say, man is not a rational animal, rather a rationalizing one.
At least we can know for certain the people trying to get creationism taught as science in our schools have equally wacky friends around the globe.
What happened to the /. that was fairly neutral, objective and unbiased? Perhaps it only existed in my mind. Ad hominem such as this is unnecessary, it only cheapens /. as a whole. Creationism is not being pushed anywhere as a science, to be taught, sure, but not as science. Somehow it has become the boogeyman to those that don't actually know what science is. In the marketplace of ideas their will always be struggle, and the victor will not be the one making childish remarks towards the other.
Actually, that's exactly the concern; nobody (well, very few people) object to Creationism being taught in a religions course, forces such as the Texas school board are indeed trying to mandate its inclusion right next to the observed evolution studies present in many science textbooks, and used for materials in science classes.
When you install Bing Bar there is a checkbox that says:
Help Microsoft improve your online experience with personalized content by allowing us to collect additional information about your system configuration, the searches you do, websites you visit, and how you use our software. We will use this information to help improve our products and services.
You can either A) not install the toolbar at all or B) Opt not to give Microsoft this information.
I think that a reasonable interpretation of this by a normal user (a level actually very important in a court of law) would be that the user of the toolbar expected information about the searches made through the toolbar to be tracked. Admittedly, "information about ... websites you visit," technically covers referers (sic) and google searches, but by that logic it would cover your bank account passwords too, which would almost certainly fail the reasonableness test.
The next boom/bust cycle will happen with virtual currency. Hope that nobody's retirement savings will be invested in the virtual world.
Yeah. That would be really bad if suddenly your money isn't worth anything anymore. I'm so glad that never happened up to now...
Unless you've actually, physically lived in a country where you worked all day to earn a wheelbarrow full of money and hoped that you'd be able to trade it for a loaf of bread in the morning... it hasn't. Not to you. Buying an overpriced house that you can't sell for more than 70% of what you paid for it is not at all the same.
Its still a fact that, most of the time, what most people have on their wall is put there by themselves. That its not 100% is also true, but its really pretty close to that amount. This is why a judge and/or jury will be interpreting the evidence as a whole.
Even innocent news like going on vacation gets spread inadvertently - "Can't wait for spring break - Hawaii here I come!" turns into "OMG, I can't believe Xxxxx is going to Hawaii for spring break! He's so lucky!" by one of your friend's wall posts (which may not be private).
And photos too - all it takes is a friend of a friend asking to see some photos you posted...
Of course, the same thing happens if you mention to your friend, "Hey, I'm going to Hawaii for spring break." They can then post that information on their Facebook wall, or put it on their blog, or use it in their Christmas newsletter, or just tell people about it.
"On a computer" does not make life novel.
As you mentioned, this is similar to your private diary (which is also subpoenable). I certainly hope you're not suggesting that more protections exist on your semi-public Facebook account than on your private journal, just because its "on a computer."
You realize that telling the truth is a defense here? If you're being sued/charged, and your defense is that you don't drink, and there are pictures of you drinking on someone's Facebook account, that what you did is probably illegal?
This is not Facebook's fault.
It's intuitive, and in no way confusing when you're used to it.
If it was actually intuitive, it would be no way confusing even when you weren't used to it.
You made an interesting babble:
So you see, for the sake of speed, something has to give. Firefox chose the route of RAM, probably following the philosophy that Linux users have that unused RAM is wasted RAM (hence Linux OS having the RAM cache full of files and regular users freak out. Since you are on a Mac, try running free in the command line and see your cache usage). Webkit I'm not sure why they do what they do, but considering the disk is currently much faster than any non-LAN network, it opts to use the disk.
What we really need here is a way for the OS to handle some of the network retrieval protocols (or expose direct access in another way) so that webpages can be stored in the OS file cache space. That way all "excess" memory is used, but data is immediately kicked out (instead of being pushed out to disk or, worse yet, causing other apps to swap to disk) when memory usage becomes an issue.
Ironically, I'd guess that it would be a lot easier for the tighter integration in Windows to manage this :/
This is a checkbox which adds a single static header to each request, it's too simple to delay FF4 in any way.
O rly?
And you've never had a checkbox not save properly? Or cause the screen on which its placed to overflow when shown on a particular resolution netbook, causing a previously unimportant scrolling issue to surface that was being masked because the screen wasn't overflowing? And all of those situations would need to be tested, which takes time, and documented (for testing) which also takes resources... Don't forget internationalizing the checkbox label - I hope that German doesn't cause the label to overflow...
There's no such thing as a "free" feature in software.
Wonderful, delicious people. I mean it can't be THAT bad. It gives us the nutrients we need to survive.
Soylent Green is Brawndo?
You could accuse Mozilla of wasting time with Firefox 4 beta-testing, but this feature certainly has surfaced fast.
Actually, I'd rather accuse the Mozilla team of not understanding the purpose of a beta release. Adding support for shiny new features (and introducing, and then fixing, the inevitable bugs that follow) is great activity for a point release. The idea behind the beta is to make sure that all existing features work well, and that any true functionality gaps (often seen as bugs - for example, not supporting .png by design, while not a bug, would fall into this area) are addressed.
Once 4 is released, this type of minor change would be a great candidate for 4.0.1... As it is, it just makes it harder to get 4.x out the door.
Word isn't obfuscated. They published the entire standard publicly. It was just originally designed before XML and when the ability to run on very low powered hardware was at a premium. It was also made a decade before the internet and cross compatibility became a consideration.
Actually that's not correct. Large portions of .doc are publicly documented, but there are still quite a lot of cases where the documentation is inconsistent or references items that do not exist - or where no version of Word correctly generates and consumes the documented standard. Its similar to the trials that the SAMBA folk had when writing connections to Windows filesharing, where the hard part was in being "bug for bug" compatible with the actual software rather than the public standard.
So I'll clarify - when I said ".doc" I was referring to the files with that extension that are created and consumable by Word - which is what matters, when it comes to interoperability. Those differences may be accidental, or they may be intentional, and there's no way for us to tell which is correct.
r
This is why I keep postponing purchase of a new phone. I know that the $200 iPhone-clone with internet capability will probably drop to $30 1.5 years from now. I'm a patient person.
Like the $99 iPhone 3 you can get today? Of course, if you're waiting for the iPhone 4 equiv you're right, but by then the iPhone 5 will be out and you'll be back in "waiting mode."
The DVD was essentially invented by a co-op between DiscoVision and Philips in the form of the LaserDisc (wow, remember those!).
Not sure how you can compare the LD (of which I had many) - a 12" analog format stored as laser-readable media - with the DVD, whose main innovation was that it contained compressed digital content.
Why? Seriously - why go to all that both to "hide" something that nobody really cares about? Why not just not post of Facebook if you're that "concerned" about it? I mean, we've most of us moved a bit beyond Junior High haven't we?
Yes, yes it is.
The difference being that the group behind the de facto standard sees high value in being consistent, predictable, and having that pseudo-standard very well documented, because without those facts nobody can create content for them to consume.
With the .doc format, there's high value to Microsoft in obfuscating the "standard" documentation as much as possible since they both create and consume the documents.
Big difference.
Many large services disable that, FWIW - the cost of having thousands of open connections lying around far exceeds (to them) the cost of more frequent HTTPS handshaking.
Compute cycles are cheap when you're running a script on someone else's computer. Why not just try it anyway? If they're not logged in, it won't work. If they are, it will. Checking to see whether or not you think it will work is only useful if you care about the user you're about to rob.
The big difference here is that its very common to have multiple "identical" ethernet ports (all of our servers have had at least two GigEs on the motherboard for many years now), and real stuff is plugged into the otherwise identical ports based on physical location. More to the point, what's plugged in is generally unusable without further configuration (esp. in the server world) and one configuration will not work when swapped with the other. That's actually fairly uncommon with other devices - typically you don't have two identical items plugged into USB ports in such a way that the server would break if they were reversed.
Now, many server boxes just use these ports to create wider, redundant pathways to the same destination - but many do not. On those that don't, this type of consistent naming would be very helpful indeed.
The average user shouldn't notice any difference, but then the average user's machine shouldn't be using static configuration anyway :)
Webkit actually. And the fact that it only ever (ever!) appeared on /. - and that /.'s redesign fixed it - leads me to believe quite strongly that it was a /. bug instead.
Is it just a new name? Or is it a new direction with new ideas?
Just because something is re-evaluated it doesn't follow that it will therefore be rejected. Usually when a project has a new name with a new sponsor/lead, its a pretty damn good sign that things are changing.
More to the point, if that series of events didn't cause you to take another look at it, what on Earth would?
You've got to admit though, calling it Oo.org or whatever the product name was supposed to be for a while was just plain silly.
Yup. Most will never need them, of those who do many will never remember them. Throwing them in the face of every single user is unnecessary.
Not everyone is a power user. Most people don't even want to become one.