True. The German moble telco market is fiercely competitive, with companies constantly one-upping each other. The current trend is going towards making rates as simple as possible while retaining competitive pricing. An example would be E-Plus' "Zehnsation" ("Tensation") where you pay 10 cents per minute for calls in every network at any time and have a minimum charge of ten Euros. Another would be the E-Plus spinoff brand Simyo, which is offering a prepaid/contract hybrid without minimum charges or monthly fees where you either pay 9.9 ct/min* to all networks at any time or 15 ct/min to all mobile networks and nothing talking to landlines and other Simyo customers.
Of course those kinds of contract charge a lot for unusual usage (Simyo wants 39 cents per MMS and up to 2.49 EUR/min for calls to foreign countries), but if you only use your mobile for calls to other mobiles they are quite pleasant.
Disclaimer: I don't work for E-Plus, but E-Plus is currently shoving "Zehnsation" ads down everyone's throats and I switched to Simyo a couple months ago because it fits my mobile phone habits best. Other provider have similar offerings, including particular ones like vybemobile, which include ten music downloads per month.
Drek, I just noticed that vybemobile is YET ANOTHER E-Plus offering (with the music provided by Universal). Apparently E-Plus is making its pricing structure simpler by creating a spinoff brand for every new rate they offer...
* That price is for a rate they're phasing in next year; the current rate is pretty much equivalent to the other one I mentioned.
it's bloody fucking ironic how Apple decided only ATT would be its bitch in the US and went for Tmobile on the other side of the ocean.
Who else? AT&T doesn't exist over here and T-Mobile owns the D1 network, which has the most subscribers. Competitors like Vodafone, O2 or E-Plus are big, but not quite as big as T-Mobile, which had a huge advantage as it evolved out of the earlier federal post's telephone service.
Also, Japanese humor. The Japanese are not above putting weird dialogs in otherwise solemn series, nor are they above taking a horrible pun and constructing an entire episode (or even series) around it. When you look at joke anime, it's hard to find similar rapid-fire insanity in western media. Shows like Freakazoid! or Animaniacs are close, but the Japanese take the concept quite a bit further, even adding massive amounts of gore as a funny element (as seen in Bokusatsu Tensho Dokuro-chan). The last episode of Excel Saga was delibarately made to go too far to be aired on Japanese television, keeping in tone with the experimental spirit of the rest of the series.
Also, only the Japanese could make a hilarious series about the topic of baking bread; of course that show (Yakitate!! Japan) lives from its absurdly ridiculous elements like bread being so good that it literally sends people to heaven. Or turns them into Gamera. Or Bruce Lee. That depends on the kind of bread, of course.
It all boils down to three words: Rabid Japanese humor. (Not that they can't produce serious stuff; it's just the humor that I happen to like the most.)
Now please for those of us who don't have access to a Windows box: What the hell does that site do? Synthesize photos? Is that something like algorithmic generation of pseudo-photos according to user-configurable settings?
1.) Alphaville-the-band took its name from Alphaville-the-movie, a terrible Franch art film that pretends to be a SciFi agent movie. It does have a cool computer voice, though.
2.) Alphaville-the-band released a hit song called "Big in Japan". "Huge in Japan" sounds similarly enough to warrant a couple jokes.
in 1976 I was in Cupertino, crystal bits of snowflakes all around my head and in the wind, and Steve Wozniak and me thought we could make a few Dollars selling homemade computers. Delivering breakthrough devices like the Apple II and the Macintosh, we were successful, until the Mac clones almost doomed our company*. But here's my comeback on the road again; things will happen while they can. Right now I'm writing this post on my MacBook Pro while I will wait here for my man tonight (it's easy when you're big in Japan).
Sincerely,
Steve Jobs
Oh, one more thing: We're still big in Japan. Alright!
* You did what you did to me, now it's history I see...
Sometimes I long for the easy days before I got that PhD in Nuclear Science/Tissue Engineering. Before I knew how the nuclear power/toilet paper industry really works.
Hey, this is Slashdot. It's usually impossible to tell whether a post is biting sarcasm, dead-honest or complete nonsense.
BTW, just to finish this thread: The battery won't melt itself down (because that would be a really stupid way to build a battery), it wil be insulated and cooled if neccessary and the electronics will be insulated heavily - and separately from the battery. Unless they construct the whole thing in a really weird way the battery shouldn't pose much of a heat problem.
Then again, every space device we build has a chance of someone using the wrong system of measures, thus completely screwing everything over. It's unlikely that the battery will produce 700 degrees of heat more than it should ("Celsius? I thought we worked with degrees Fahrenheit!"), thus baking the whole thing before it even reaches Venus, but it is possible.
They won't be able to get th rover there anyway - the rocket will never be able to reach Venus:
1. The rocket flies towards Venus a bit
2. In the same time, Venus moves a bit further
3. The rocket now has to fly further to reach Venus
4. GOTO 1
As Zeno of Elea has proven, it is impossible to catch up. Thus Venus is unreachable.
(And no, I won't allow nonsense arguments like "the rocket is faster than Venus" or "we launch the rocket in Venus' path" or "the cooling system will dissipate enough heat to compensate for the power source".)
I am. Well, until about a year ago, when Wal-Mart Germany closed shop and sold its assets to Metro. At least in Germany there aren't any Wal-Marts anymore (and they never really were much of a competitor to supermarkets run by more local corps like Edeka, Rewe or Metro, not to mention the omnipresent Aldi).
They work reasonably well for spam. You are, however, correct in assuming that a Bayes filter will probably have a hard time filtering out real bullshit about tub girls eating hot grits while looking at Natalie Portman's goat website, which only old perople do in Korea. Even worse, actually insightful posts that happen to use "bad style" for ome reason or other (such as in a discussion about online culture) can end up as false positives.
Bayes is reasonably successful at isolating communication from non-communication, but I doubt it works well if you try to determine reason.
It will let anything through that doesn't match its set of filter criteria. Trying to filter out stupidity with a naive Bayes classificator alone instead of one backed up by semantic analysis is, well, an interesting approach. Of course the latter doesn't really work, but the former would most probably have a hard time detecting not only eloquently worded defenses of mandatory rocket launchers for schoolchildren but also complete gibberish that happens to resemble English.
Besides, you can probably overwhelm the filter by appending a paragraph of good English to your inane l33tsp33k one-liner. Probably the same stock paragraph for everyone.
Well, a hijacking enemy could just as well launch a couple missiles at civilian homes and then do a tiny reenactment of 9/11 with the UAV and another civilian building. It's pretty much inclusive. It might even be blamed on the AI going haywire by either the owner ("our systems are unhackable") or their enemy ("their system is unreliable and dangerous").
But yeah, the UAV going rogue on its own would be disastrous as well.
Unless you happen to hook up with some kind of geek girl. In that case you learn about the PS2 precariously balanced over one end of the bed that is removed before bedtime for safety reasons or the special set of spoons that you're not supposed to use because she didn't yet wash them since eating her Ramen. Also, the pillows you aren't supposed to use for sleeping because they're her pillows and the cans of food that are restricted to the basement cleaning that will never come, due to being three years past the expiration date.
I don't even need to preted this all makes sense (well, except maybe for the cans).
Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?
I want a phone that is rugged. Nokia 6210 rugged. A drop from 1m height should ot faze the thing, being put into the washing machine shoud not faze the thing. Mobiles are expensive already; I don't want to buy more than necessary.
Also, the thing needs to be reliable. Do-it-all smartphones come with complex software - I mean, Windows? What the hell is Windows doing on a mobile? Java? I don't need any features besides taking/making phone call and receiving/sending SMS (except perhaps aupport of a Bluetooth headset). Those features can easily be supported with a small, testable, robust firmware instead of trying to get perfect stability out of the NT kernel. It's not entirely uncommon t hear people talk about having to reboot their mobile. I think there should be only three reasons to turn off a mobile: The battery is nearly empty, you want to replate the battery/SIM card or you're in a no-mobile location. Software failure is not accepatble, under no circumstances.
I see mobile phones as rather simple appliances. Simple appliances don't crash.
I'm still waiting for the phone that sounds and works like a phone.
Nokia 1110i? Seriously, if they put Bluetooth in there the 1110i would be the perfect device for people who want nothing but a mobile telephone with SMS functionality. Unfortunately, the Bluetooth option would probably cost more than the entire 1110i.
The problem is that a pilot can act autonomously, while the UAV can only do so in a very limited matter. Depending on when the enemy can shot down communications, UAVs trying to guess what their target is and then attacking it can become a liability (they might attack the wrong target, fail to recognize their target, fail to take into account that they're firing at a target just passing over a strategically important oil refinery...). While human pilots can screw up they still are capable of determining that shooting down a plane right above an important structure is a bad idea.
Of course, the wrst case scenario with UAVs would be a hijacking scenario - the enemy shuts down your comms (eg. by destroying your transmitter) and takes over communictions with the UAV, using it against your own troops. Doing so is most likely difficult, but large wars always attract the attention of geniuses.
Holding the president accountable for serious violations of national and international law (as compared to having his dick sucked) is a dangerous president to set from the point of view of the government, since things like controlling the world through coercion and force is sort of its job.
Running the country is its job. Controlling the world is an expensive hobby.
They're not alone, either; show me an impoverished country, and I'll show you people who have thrown their reason to the curb and are praying for grain to fall into their hands.
Except for those cases where there is food but whoever has all the guns sits on it.
Slashdot Mirror
True. The German moble telco market is fiercely competitive, with companies constantly one-upping each other. The current trend is going towards making rates as simple as possible while retaining competitive pricing. An example would be E-Plus' "Zehnsation" ("Tensation") where you pay 10 cents per minute for calls in every network at any time and have a minimum charge of ten Euros. Another would be the E-Plus spinoff brand Simyo, which is offering a prepaid/contract hybrid without minimum charges or monthly fees where you either pay 9.9 ct/min* to all networks at any time or 15 ct/min to all mobile networks and nothing talking to landlines and other Simyo customers.
Of course those kinds of contract charge a lot for unusual usage (Simyo wants 39 cents per MMS and up to 2.49 EUR/min for calls to foreign countries), but if you only use your mobile for calls to other mobiles they are quite pleasant.
Disclaimer: I don't work for E-Plus, but E-Plus is currently shoving "Zehnsation" ads down everyone's throats and I switched to Simyo a couple months ago because it fits my mobile phone habits best. Other provider have similar offerings, including particular ones like vybemobile, which include ten music downloads per month.
Drek, I just noticed that vybemobile is YET ANOTHER E-Plus offering (with the music provided by Universal). Apparently E-Plus is making its pricing structure simpler by creating a spinoff brand for every new rate they offer...
* That price is for a rate they're phasing in next year; the current rate is pretty much equivalent to the other one I mentioned.
it's bloody fucking ironic how Apple decided only ATT would be its bitch in the US and went for Tmobile on the other side of the ocean.
Who else? AT&T doesn't exist over here and T-Mobile owns the D1 network, which has the most subscribers. Competitors like Vodafone, O2 or E-Plus are big, but not quite as big as T-Mobile, which had a huge advantage as it evolved out of the earlier federal post's telephone service.
T-Mobile really was the obvious choice.
Also, Japanese humor. The Japanese are not above putting weird dialogs in otherwise solemn series, nor are they above taking a horrible pun and constructing an entire episode (or even series) around it. When you look at joke anime, it's hard to find similar rapid-fire insanity in western media. Shows like Freakazoid! or Animaniacs are close, but the Japanese take the concept quite a bit further, even adding massive amounts of gore as a funny element (as seen in Bokusatsu Tensho Dokuro-chan). The last episode of Excel Saga was delibarately made to go too far to be aired on Japanese television, keeping in tone with the experimental spirit of the rest of the series.
Also, only the Japanese could make a hilarious series about the topic of baking bread; of course that show (Yakitate!! Japan) lives from its absurdly ridiculous elements like bread being so good that it literally sends people to heaven. Or turns them into Gamera. Or Bruce Lee. That depends on the kind of bread, of course.
It all boils down to three words: Rabid Japanese humor. (Not that they can't produce serious stuff; it's just the humor that I happen to like the most.)
She's a billionaire who has profited from it. It's not like she is in the gutter eating scraps of food.
Well, technically she is, but British cuisine has always been rather peculiar.
Yeah, except that there are actually people who bought it.
Now please for those of us who don't have access to a Windows box: What the hell does that site do? Synthesize photos? Is that something like algorithmic generation of pseudo-photos according to user-configurable settings?
Mac OS is very language-friendly. Esperanto, Russian a and Japanese are just a clickity-click away for me.
Does it also have a feature to locate the other person who speaks Esperanto?
1.) Alphaville-the-band took its name from Alphaville-the-movie, a terrible Franch art film that pretends to be a SciFi agent movie. It does have a cool computer voice, though.
2.) Alphaville-the-band released a hit song called "Big in Japan". "Huge in Japan" sounds similarly enough to warrant a couple jokes.
Dear Apple users on Slashdot,
in 1976 I was in Cupertino, crystal bits of snowflakes all around my head and in the wind, and Steve Wozniak and me thought we could make a few Dollars selling homemade computers. Delivering breakthrough devices like the Apple II and the Macintosh, we were successful, until the Mac clones almost doomed our company*. But here's my comeback on the road again; things will happen while they can. Right now I'm writing this post on my MacBook Pro while I will wait here for my man tonight (it's easy when you're big in Japan).
Sincerely,
Steve Jobs
Oh, one more thing: We're still big in Japan. Alright!
* You did what you did to me, now it's history I see...
You have no idea how the real world works.
Sometimes I long for the easy days before I got that PhD in Nuclear Science/Tissue Engineering. Before I knew how the nuclear power/toilet paper industry really works.
Hey, this is Slashdot. It's usually impossible to tell whether a post is biting sarcasm, dead-honest or complete nonsense.
BTW, just to finish this thread: The battery won't melt itself down (because that would be a really stupid way to build a battery), it wil be insulated and cooled if neccessary and the electronics will be insulated heavily - and separately from the battery. Unless they construct the whole thing in a really weird way the battery shouldn't pose much of a heat problem.
Then again, every space device we build has a chance of someone using the wrong system of measures, thus completely screwing everything over. It's unlikely that the battery will produce 700 degrees of heat more than it should ("Celsius? I thought we worked with degrees Fahrenheit!"), thus baking the whole thing before it even reaches Venus, but it is possible.
They won't be able to get th rover there anyway - the rocket will never be able to reach Venus:
1. The rocket flies towards Venus a bit
2. In the same time, Venus moves a bit further
3. The rocket now has to fly further to reach Venus
4. GOTO 1
As Zeno of Elea has proven, it is impossible to catch up. Thus Venus is unreachable.
(And no, I won't allow nonsense arguments like "the rocket is faster than Venus" or "we launch the rocket in Venus' path" or "the cooling system will dissipate enough heat to compensate for the power source".)
I am. Well, until about a year ago, when Wal-Mart Germany closed shop and sold its assets to Metro. At least in Germany there aren't any Wal-Marts anymore (and they never really were much of a competitor to supermarkets run by more local corps like Edeka, Rewe or Metro, not to mention the omnipresent Aldi).
And no, I don't believe in Bayesian systems.
They work reasonably well for spam. You are, however, correct in assuming that a Bayes filter will probably have a hard time filtering out real bullshit about tub girls eating hot grits while looking at Natalie Portman's goat website, which only old perople do in Korea. Even worse, actually insightful posts that happen to use "bad style" for ome reason or other (such as in a discussion about online culture) can end up as false positives.
Bayes is reasonably successful at isolating communication from non-communication, but I doubt it works well if you try to determine reason.
It will let anything through that doesn't match its set of filter criteria. Trying to filter out stupidity with a naive Bayes classificator alone instead of one backed up by semantic analysis is, well, an interesting approach. Of course the latter doesn't really work, but the former would most probably have a hard time detecting not only eloquently worded defenses of mandatory rocket launchers for schoolchildren but also complete gibberish that happens to resemble English.
Besides, you can probably overwhelm the filter by appending a paragraph of good English to your inane l33tsp33k one-liner. Probably the same stock paragraph for everyone.
Well, a hijacking enemy could just as well launch a couple missiles at civilian homes and then do a tiny reenactment of 9/11 with the UAV and another civilian building. It's pretty much inclusive. It might even be blamed on the AI going haywire by either the owner ("our systems are unhackable") or their enemy ("their system is unreliable and dangerous").
But yeah, the UAV going rogue on its own would be disastrous as well.
Hey, the first page works. bout 50% of the time. All subsequent pages return empty documents. Apparently CNet is developing a new brand of "off".
Unless you happen to hook up with some kind of geek girl. In that case you learn about the PS2 precariously balanced over one end of the bed that is removed before bedtime for safety reasons or the special set of spoons that you're not supposed to use because she didn't yet wash them since eating her Ramen. Also, the pillows you aren't supposed to use for sleeping because they're her pillows and the cans of food that are restricted to the basement cleaning that will never come, due to being three years past the expiration date.
I don't even need to preted this all makes sense (well, except maybe for the cans).
It's ok to say "we messed up" and call a mulligan. Right guys?
Only if they have either no lands or nothing but lands on their starting hand, of course.
Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?
I want a phone that is rugged. Nokia 6210 rugged. A drop from 1m height should ot faze the thing, being put into the washing machine shoud not faze the thing. Mobiles are expensive already; I don't want to buy more than necessary.
Also, the thing needs to be reliable. Do-it-all smartphones come with complex software - I mean, Windows? What the hell is Windows doing on a mobile? Java? I don't need any features besides taking/making phone call and receiving/sending SMS (except perhaps aupport of a Bluetooth headset). Those features can easily be supported with a small, testable, robust firmware instead of trying to get perfect stability out of the NT kernel. It's not entirely uncommon t hear people talk about having to reboot their mobile. I think there should be only three reasons to turn off a mobile: The battery is nearly empty, you want to replate the battery/SIM card or you're in a no-mobile location. Software failure is not accepatble, under no circumstances.
I see mobile phones as rather simple appliances. Simple appliances don't crash.
I'm still waiting for the phone that sounds and works like a phone.
Nokia 1110i? Seriously, if they put Bluetooth in there the 1110i would be the perfect device for people who want nothing but a mobile telephone with SMS functionality. Unfortunately, the Bluetooth option would probably cost more than the entire 1110i.
The problem is that a pilot can act autonomously, while the UAV can only do so in a very limited matter. Depending on when the enemy can shot down communications, UAVs trying to guess what their target is and then attacking it can become a liability (they might attack the wrong target, fail to recognize their target, fail to take into account that they're firing at a target just passing over a strategically important oil refinery...). While human pilots can screw up they still are capable of determining that shooting down a plane right above an important structure is a bad idea.
Of course, the wrst case scenario with UAVs would be a hijacking scenario - the enemy shuts down your comms (eg. by destroying your transmitter) and takes over communictions with the UAV, using it against your own troops. Doing so is most likely difficult, but large wars always attract the attention of geniuses.
I'm really excited about this. Photoshop might finally become as usable as ImageMagick.
Holding the president accountable for serious violations of national and international law (as compared to having his dick sucked) is a dangerous president to set from the point of view of the government, since things like controlling the world through coercion and force is sort of its job.
Running the country is its job. Controlling the world is an expensive hobby.
They're not alone, either; show me an impoverished country, and I'll show you people who have thrown their reason to the curb and are praying for grain to fall into their hands.
Except for those cases where there is food but whoever has all the guns sits on it.