I've proposed this many times. It's the ultimate security strategy: issue 9mm pistols to random passengers. Nobody would ever want to start shit on a plan where they know a certain percentage of the passengers are packing heat. A 9mm pistol, even at altitude, is not enough to cause an explosive decompression either.
Another idea is to just have air marshalls who are competent and armed on every flight.
But this is why we have laws against false advertisement. Of course people should accept personal responsibility, but that doesn't mean companies can go around claiming things that simply aren't true. If Microsoft was saying that a computer with 512MiB of RAM and shared video memory could run Vista just the same as a much more capable machine out of the box, then that was their mistake, not the consumer's for believing it.
Did you even RTFA? The experiment demonstrates that multiple fish exhibit more precisely-defined social behaviour than we'd seen before. This is not an electrochemical response; it's a reaction of the fish to the world around them. That's kinda neat.
Various cephalopods and mammals (dolphins, whales, et al) are the most intelligent species in the sea, and they've had about as much time to evolve as we have. I doubt there is much evolutionary pressure for them to evolve more intelligence or longer lifespan than what they have. Basically, a more intelligent version wouldn't necessarily be more capable or less capable of survival. For whatever reason, humans have evolved to the point of tool-making, intelligence, and even emotions. These are incredible features of humans but I doubt that they're useful to many other creatures. It seems more like a fluke.
Tool making and tool use under water is totally possible. I don't know how feasible it would be to forge metals in underwater volcanic vents, but it's certainly possible to make simpler tools like the ones that primates use in the wild (like sponges and sticks and things). You just have to wonder how useful a bronze sword would be to an octopus I guess. I think it's highly likely that we'll eventually see cephalopods in the wild using simple tools, though.
I kind of wonder why nobody's already thought of this and why nobody's already using it. We have SSL certificates for this sort of thing on the web. Why is there no equivalent signing authority for email?
Email, like HTTP and a lot of other protocols, was created in a time before all these security issues. When only eight people were on the Internet and all knew each other anyway (exaggerating here; bear with me) it was a hell of a lot easier. Now, though, for ecommerce and banking and such we have signing authorities to assure us that our personal data is only being transmitted to the intended recipient. Why can't there be a similar system for email? Bonus: email text would be encrypted while in transit.
You can give the "useless until everybody starts using it" argument all you want, but that's true of every communications technology from telephones to fax machines to SSL.
Most of my work where we had to worry about this was online annual reports, which MUST be accessible (by law) to anyone who asks for them. That being the "public" in "publicly-traded corporation", but yeah. I remember having to jump through so many hoops on [super large global corporation]'s annual report that I finally broke down and told them that when they find the one blind investor they have, call me, I'll go to his/her house and explain it to them if they want, 'cause that would've been easier.
Also, finally last year I got a chance to speak to a real live blind person about this, and they confirmed pretty much what you just said. Blind people, in general, can't really use the web without assistance. When I asked him about that super-neat braille terminal Whistler uses in Sneakers, he seemed dubious about it at best:(.
I'm one of them. I'm more of a master of computer science than I am graphic design, but I do both professionally. The designers I've worked with who had the most talent were evenly split male to female, with by far the best being male. Unlike IT, the design world has been pretty well co-ed for a really long time now.
As for the original poster's lament. Totally get someone professional to make mockups for you. It's incredibly risky to get the same person to do the HTML as did the design. Sometimes it can turn out okay (again, I do both), but I'd say 90% of the time you shouldn't even let the designer see the code.
Regarding accessibility, the most important thing is to ALT tag images that add meaning. That last phrase seriously cannot be overstated. Don't add an alt tag to an icon of a globe or something because the alt tags are there for blind people, and they use programs to read the web page to them. So, using a screen reader it'll come out something like "Lorem ipsum dolor sit globe amet" and sound really dumb. Also, if you want the page to be accessible, DON'T USE FLASH. Seriously. Flash is absurdly hard to make accessible. It can be done but not easily.
Sorry only a little bit of that related to the parent post but you know. Better to get it all out in one shot than write a bazillion comments when I'm pressed for time.
I was thinking it could be used like a flywheel to store energy almost like a battery, though flywheels are typically capable of storing more energy than batteries. You just have to be comfortable having a disk rotating at ungodly high speeds, which if it was made of a brittle material you might not be.
If it can store energy without really using up much energy to keep spinning (i.e., if the laws of thermodynamics are still okay and we don't need to rewrite them all), it could effectively be used in this manner. If it's as compact as it is when it's adapted for that purpose, it would take away the scary downsides of a flywheel (super high moment of inertia objects spinning REALLY fast and possibly flying apart).
...and don't say use GIMP cause it has a serious handicap of not supporting CMYK.
THANK YOU for bringing this up, because it's seriously the only thing that keeps me from switching completely over to Linux. I run dual-boot Mac OS X Leopard and Ubuntu Gutsy. Until there's an exact equivalent (not an "almost" equivalent) to Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fireworks on linux, I can't switch. At all. Not only do I need those to communicate with clients (a lot of slashdotters completely forget that some of us geeks studied design, too), but I'm used to using them, and that's more than just switching OSes. The key combinations in those programs are so deeply ingrained in my very soul that I'm just used to rocking out designs absurdly quickly. Because I'm so used to these programs (NOT because they're inherently better; Photoshop I'm looking at you!), it would be a severe blow to my productivity to have to switch to anything else at this point. Switching from Photoshop to Fireworks for web design mockups (not photo editing) was like a religious experience for me because it genuinely was more efficient and, most importantly, all those little key combinations were the same.
It pains me to say it, but open source software needs to focus on making software that feels the same as what people are used to. Then, people will be more likely to think the price is right to switch.
Four words, your mileage may vary, were never so true. I run a network at a tech company and we have a nice distribution of windows xp, mac, and vista computers. The XP machines are, on the whole, pretty happy little machines. Very consistent performance. The Vista machines, however, are all different. There's only one on the whole network that works just fine and rarely has problems. The rest of them all seem to have different troubles.
Really, can we stop the flamewars and the discussions and just all of us agree that Vista sucks differently on different systems? I've grown so tired of these posts on Slashdot where one person is having a horrible Vista experience and someone else claims theirs just works great and they have no complaints. Also, "it's probably something about the way you have it set up" isn't a particularly comforting answer when an operating system really should come set up properly. As in, the defaults it installs with should be the ones that will work pretty well for most people. It seems to me there's only about one in every four or so people who's completely content. The rest of us are struggling and frustrated.
If you read Bruce Schneier's interview, linked from the grandparent post, you'll see that Schneier's strongest suggestion was for the TSA to improve their transparency. Whether they read the comments or not a blog can achieve this goal by giving the TSA a place to explain their policies.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah but F-Secure didn't have a product to sell for that at the beginning of time.
I've proposed this many times. It's the ultimate security strategy: issue 9mm pistols to random passengers. Nobody would ever want to start shit on a plan where they know a certain percentage of the passengers are packing heat. A 9mm pistol, even at altitude, is not enough to cause an explosive decompression either.
Another idea is to just have air marshalls who are competent and armed on every flight.
Your comment suggests that no additional discovery is yet necessary.
If the water table was above ground you would be submerged right now.
But this is why we have laws against false advertisement. Of course people should accept personal responsibility, but that doesn't mean companies can go around claiming things that simply aren't true. If Microsoft was saying that a computer with 512MiB of RAM and shared video memory could run Vista just the same as a much more capable machine out of the box, then that was their mistake, not the consumer's for believing it.
Did you even RTFA? The experiment demonstrates that multiple fish exhibit more precisely-defined social behaviour than we'd seen before. This is not an electrochemical response; it's a reaction of the fish to the world around them. That's kinda neat.
I know! The same thing happened with my Roomba recently. I still shudder every time I hear a vacuum cleaner in the distance.
Unless you're REALLY backed up, I don't think you want your colon converted into a shotgun!
LOL
Contribute to the discussion in a meaningful manner and be constructive rather than flamebait and some day you'll have your own mod points.
I think there's some kind of rule in marketing not to speak or write numbers with a decimal point. So 1.234GIPS would instead be called 1,234MIPS.
I have a fantastic plan. Why don't these people just give me their money.
Various cephalopods and mammals (dolphins, whales, et al) are the most intelligent species in the sea, and they've had about as much time to evolve as we have. I doubt there is much evolutionary pressure for them to evolve more intelligence or longer lifespan than what they have. Basically, a more intelligent version wouldn't necessarily be more capable or less capable of survival. For whatever reason, humans have evolved to the point of tool-making, intelligence, and even emotions. These are incredible features of humans but I doubt that they're useful to many other creatures. It seems more like a fluke.
Tool making and tool use under water is totally possible. I don't know how feasible it would be to forge metals in underwater volcanic vents, but it's certainly possible to make simpler tools like the ones that primates use in the wild (like sponges and sticks and things). You just have to wonder how useful a bronze sword would be to an octopus I guess. I think it's highly likely that we'll eventually see cephalopods in the wild using simple tools, though.
Disclaimer: I am not a marine biologist.
You need to be logged in to vote, though.
It's only worth it if they fix it.
I kind of wonder why nobody's already thought of this and why nobody's already using it. We have SSL certificates for this sort of thing on the web. Why is there no equivalent signing authority for email?
Email, like HTTP and a lot of other protocols, was created in a time before all these security issues. When only eight people were on the Internet and all knew each other anyway (exaggerating here; bear with me) it was a hell of a lot easier. Now, though, for ecommerce and banking and such we have signing authorities to assure us that our personal data is only being transmitted to the intended recipient. Why can't there be a similar system for email? Bonus: email text would be encrypted while in transit.
You can give the "useless until everybody starts using it" argument all you want, but that's true of every communications technology from telephones to fax machines to SSL.
That's unprecedented! I'll take eight!
Most of my work where we had to worry about this was online annual reports, which MUST be accessible (by law) to anyone who asks for them. That being the "public" in "publicly-traded corporation", but yeah. I remember having to jump through so many hoops on [super large global corporation]'s annual report that I finally broke down and told them that when they find the one blind investor they have, call me, I'll go to his/her house and explain it to them if they want, 'cause that would've been easier.
Also, finally last year I got a chance to speak to a real live blind person about this, and they confirmed pretty much what you just said. Blind people, in general, can't really use the web without assistance. When I asked him about that super-neat braille terminal Whistler uses in Sneakers, he seemed dubious about it at best :(.
I'm one of them. I'm more of a master of computer science than I am graphic design, but I do both professionally. The designers I've worked with who had the most talent were evenly split male to female, with by far the best being male. Unlike IT, the design world has been pretty well co-ed for a really long time now.
As for the original poster's lament. Totally get someone professional to make mockups for you. It's incredibly risky to get the same person to do the HTML as did the design. Sometimes it can turn out okay (again, I do both), but I'd say 90% of the time you shouldn't even let the designer see the code.
Regarding accessibility, the most important thing is to ALT tag images that add meaning. That last phrase seriously cannot be overstated. Don't add an alt tag to an icon of a globe or something because the alt tags are there for blind people, and they use programs to read the web page to them. So, using a screen reader it'll come out something like "Lorem ipsum dolor sit globe amet" and sound really dumb. Also, if you want the page to be accessible, DON'T USE FLASH. Seriously. Flash is absurdly hard to make accessible. It can be done but not easily.
Sorry only a little bit of that related to the parent post but you know. Better to get it all out in one shot than write a bazillion comments when I'm pressed for time.
Screw Vista. I'm gonna make my OWN operating system. . . . with blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the operating system!
I was thinking it could be used like a flywheel to store energy almost like a battery, though flywheels are typically capable of storing more energy than batteries. You just have to be comfortable having a disk rotating at ungodly high speeds, which if it was made of a brittle material you might not be.
If it can store energy without really using up much energy to keep spinning (i.e., if the laws of thermodynamics are still okay and we don't need to rewrite them all), it could effectively be used in this manner. If it's as compact as it is when it's adapted for that purpose, it would take away the scary downsides of a flywheel (super high moment of inertia objects spinning REALLY fast and possibly flying apart).
...and don't say use GIMP cause it has a serious handicap of not supporting CMYK.THANK YOU for bringing this up, because it's seriously the only thing that keeps me from switching completely over to Linux. I run dual-boot Mac OS X Leopard and Ubuntu Gutsy. Until there's an exact equivalent (not an "almost" equivalent) to Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fireworks on linux, I can't switch. At all. Not only do I need those to communicate with clients (a lot of slashdotters completely forget that some of us geeks studied design, too), but I'm used to using them, and that's more than just switching OSes. The key combinations in those programs are so deeply ingrained in my very soul that I'm just used to rocking out designs absurdly quickly. Because I'm so used to these programs (NOT because they're inherently better; Photoshop I'm looking at you!), it would be a severe blow to my productivity to have to switch to anything else at this point. Switching from Photoshop to Fireworks for web design mockups (not photo editing) was like a religious experience for me because it genuinely was more efficient and, most importantly, all those little key combinations were the same.
It pains me to say it, but open source software needs to focus on making software that feels the same as what people are used to. Then, people will be more likely to think the price is right to switch.
Four words, your mileage may vary, were never so true. I run a network at a tech company and we have a nice distribution of windows xp, mac, and vista computers. The XP machines are, on the whole, pretty happy little machines. Very consistent performance. The Vista machines, however, are all different. There's only one on the whole network that works just fine and rarely has problems. The rest of them all seem to have different troubles.
Really, can we stop the flamewars and the discussions and just all of us agree that Vista sucks differently on different systems? I've grown so tired of these posts on Slashdot where one person is having a horrible Vista experience and someone else claims theirs just works great and they have no complaints. Also, "it's probably something about the way you have it set up" isn't a particularly comforting answer when an operating system really should come set up properly. As in, the defaults it installs with should be the ones that will work pretty well for most people. It seems to me there's only about one in every four or so people who's completely content. The rest of us are struggling and frustrated.
What'd you post that comment from, then? An iPhone or something? You need a computer to use an iPod, too. Is that really such a huge problem?
If you read Bruce Schneier's interview, linked from the grandparent post, you'll see that Schneier's strongest suggestion was for the TSA to improve their transparency. Whether they read the comments or not a blog can achieve this goal by giving the TSA a place to explain their policies.