When fluorescent bulbs intended to screw into a regular light socket were invented, they didn't sell worth a damn. This, despite the fact they were cheaper over the long run to both buy and to use. The manufacturers wanted to know why. They ran focus groups and other marketoid gimmicks to try to figure it out.
It turned out that despite all the qualifications of "better", what they were competing against was a "good enough" that was already so good enough (with a corrallary that the comparative drawbacks were so few and minor) that all the better made no difference to the people.
The single most telling point in the article was from one of the focus group participants who said "This solves a problem I do not have."
Unless and until ebooks can identify a problem among the billions of satisfied book users and solve it to their satisfaction so that they will choose to switch, ebooks will remain gimmickry. Continuing to push them despite repeated public non-acceptance indicates mostly that the marketoids really don't know what they're doing with respect to satisfying needs (ie. are for the most part ignoring them), and remain convinced that if you put a price tag on it, people will buy it.
Those fluorescent lights are now down from $20 to $5. They still don't sell worth a damn.
The present administration's repeated bitch slaps of all things scientific indicate their committment to such activities. At best they intend to have the BoLockMart take in billions to develop Way Cool Gizomics for no reason other than to feed their investors, and will cancel the program before it can do any damage to the retarded level of progress they obviously prefer.
Little Bush's committment to science is at least as a rational, though self-serving, opponent, as opposed to Daddy Bush who appointed Dan "There Is Oxygen On Mars" Quayle as head of the space program. That was such a slap that nobody knew how to react to it effectively.
I have a "GMail" email module in some old (~1990) 16 bit Apple II BBS software. I ran it for years. I've got prior art on both of them. I think I'll sue. They can avoid being sued if they both require their users to wear those sproingy spring head thingies with bobbles that bounce around above their heads like Martian antennae, because that requirement would be a significant difference from mine. If they'll just add this requirement to theirs, we can settle out of court. I'm sure they'll see the reasonable nature of my settlement offer.
"I wouldn't trust anything Wolfram says about his creations. He has a tendency to toot his own horn."
Precisely how does someone's egotism invalidate their science? So fucking what if he's a blow hard and even pretty much lies about his own importance (I never heard his name once during two stays at Santa Fe Institute which he claims to have pretty much invented). The point of ANKoS is that all these results are generated as a result of these simple rule sets which have absolutely nothing to do with what Wolfram thinks of himself.
Also, he's placed himself in the position of relying on his own horn, and nobody else's, by focusing on his work rather than wasting time engaging in the mutual masturbation of social glad-handing that most scientists engage in as part of the social aspect of doing science. Doing that only serves and perpetuates itself. He cut out the bullshit so he could do what he's best at. So what if he's a dick.
Who tooted Newton's horn over Principia Mathematica? Newton did. Is ANKoS to be ranked with Principia? You'll never know because you won't believe anything it says because Wolfram blows Wolfram colored smoke along with some of the most clearly objectified information ever created.
By constricting his rule sets to create a reciprocal-of-frequency power output rule and integer divisble timing rules, he's produced a musically based Turing test. Take some of these are feed them through XM, Sirius and Clear Channel's jazz programs and I'll bet not one person calls in to say "Hey, that was computer generated". It's an empirical question, just like the claims Wolfram makes about the results rather than his own importance. It'd also make a damn fine statement about musicians, their music and what they think music and creativity is, particularly since they're the ones to pull this test on to get to the real matter at hand.
But then, you'd be relying on the word of people who depend on tooting their own horns (pun unintended) to make themselves not only known but to be experts in their field. We certainly can't be taking the word of people who've worked hard to become the best at what they do that they're the best at what they do. Far better we rely on the word of people who can objectively judge the worth of a creation based on their far less experienced opinion but also on the all-important factor of whether they're pissed off because the creater has an ego.
So we should ignore what someone puts forth as testably objective, because other things they say are subjective and self-serving? We should instead take the word of other peoples' emotional reactions to the latter? Who the fuck are they and their opinions that we should forgo what may be good and useful science because they don't like the way Wolfram acts? That requires every bit as much egotism as is being accused. The difference being is Wolfram is famous and they're not because Wolfram has created something spectacular and they haven't, and they're pissed because he's rubbing their nose in it.
Yeah, blame Wolfram for doing what you're doing with far less cause than he has to do it. You might consider testing the validity of this by comparing how many copies of ANKoS, egotism included, have been sold, as compared to all the books covering the topic "Wolfram is a dick". If value can be measured by what someone will pay for something, Wolfram's ideas, including those about himself, are worth fifty bucks a copy, whereas peoples' opinions on Wolfram's dickness are worth every penny they paid to post and/or read it on Slashdot.
Public domain is a "copy" "right". As creator of a work, you have the right to say others may copy it freely and that you are transfering ownership over to them as a whole without restriction. Copyright law allows the owner of a right to dictate how it may be used.
No amount of "anti-piracy" crap can change that basic fact without copyright law violating copyright law, by restricting the rights of the owners as to what they are allowed to do with their own property. Figure the odds on the RIAA/MPAA/etc. crowds to allow changes to the law the restrict their rights of ownership.
Mr. Lessig has managed to set fire to a straw man.
""Allegations in an article over at CNET propose that alternate browsers such as Firefox and Opera impede law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different structures, files and naming conventions for the data that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for examiners.""
Allegations in an article over at Police Magazine propose that alternate vehicles such as motorcycles and buses impede bank robbery law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different shapes, different numbers of seats, and different logos for the manufacturers that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for get-away car examiners".
Obviously, only Dodge Chargers, like the "General Lee" should be allowed to criminals, to make them easier to catch.
"The RIAA's favoured solution appears to be copy-protected CDs"
But playing those are illegal according to the DMCA. Playing them converts the signals into audio line level, which does not contain the copy protection scheme information. Any device which removes the copy protection feature is a violation of the DMCA. Every CD player does this as a matter of course. No CD player transmits the protection scheme along with the audio signal.
It's right there in the law. Putting a copy protected CD to its intended use is against the law.
The reason they're going to web at all is to save labor costs. If you want to pre-register and don't want to use IE, use paper. Suck their budget down to zero. And tell them it's because your browser won't work. They'll fix it.
We were fighting people doing this 10 years ago. Some of the second-gen (meaning they used at least some technology rather than outright and direct use as is) usenet spammers and flooders and email spammers were doing it. The new uses to which this is being put are news, but DNS poisoning is not. IIRC, the icq.net servers were so compromised after having been bought out by AOL and put to new use.
I'm betting there's still a problem with admins that don't want it fixed, because they have given permission, or worse, for their servers to be used thus with some plausible deniability. Arranging this was the origin of the second-gen spammers.
"Dennis McClain-Furmanski, Arlington, Texas: "Bush isn't wrong: Both sides ought to be properly taught. I'm only a scientist. I'm not qualified to teach religion, only science. Science is the name for a body of knowledge, as well as the name for the process by which it is accumulated. This process is what I do. If someone can give me a replicable, independently verifiable and, most importantly, falsifiable hypothesis based on intelligent design, I can do this process called science, and add the results to the body of knowledge called science. Until it can be brought down to my level, it doesn't belong in my classroom, it belongs where its experts can teach it properly -- in church...."
The second part, which he chose not to print was:
"Now, if they'd like to work out a time sharng agreement, I'd be all for it. They can have one of my classes per semester if I can have one of their church services per semester, including choir and organ. I've always wanted to work with musical background. "In the beginning was the Higgs field, and then symmetry was broken." [Cue Handel's 'Hallelujah']. Somehow I think this is as likely to come about as that falsifiable hypothesis.
Re:Whatever happened to single-stage-to-orbit?
on
NASA's Shuttle Plans
·
· Score: 1
The debris problem is a materials and design problem, not a flight profile problem. SSTO doesn't necessarily solve it. DC-X and Roton happened to not have stupid design flaws, thus no debris problem.
"Does anyone know of a set of C-based hacks or puzzles with which I can enthuse these budding programmers and testers?"
If you want to enthuse them, have them come up with the problems they want to solve, then solve them. This has the added benefit of exercising their imaginations as well as learning/developing programming skills.
The first time Apple did this, the OS looked at a few certain bytes of ROM, and if they didn't say "APPLE ][", it wouldn't run. If it did, it'd run. If it ran and it wasn't Apple hardware, the manufacturer was infringing the copyright (ironically, owned by Microsoft) and Apple went after them. If they were outside the US, the importers were sued, and sometimes Apple sued the makers on their home ground. Apple successfully fought off the Apple II clones this way.
What they are doing now is much the same on one hand, but on the other very different.
However, they're not just limiting this to the OS and hardware. They're making it possible to run or not run DRM based material. There is only one reason for this. They intend to produce machines which, just like Microsoft based machines, allow complete pay-per control. This is the intended end point. Without the DRM in the software, the machine won't run it. With the DRM in the software, only machines with the proper hardware will run it. The only way around it will be to have both hardware and software without it, and soon neither will be produced.
Sure, there'll be work arounds. There'll also need to be work arounds to prevent any such machine connected to the net from phoning home and tattling that it's being abused.
Of course I'm paranoid. I've been watching them do this stuff for 25 years.
We didn't need a leap second during the 7 year span from 1998 through 2005. Apparently we hit a slick patch in space or something and it sped up, or at least failed to slow down. We just need to speed up the rotation of the earth. The way to speed up the rotation of the earth is to sink a great deal of weight from the crust to the core. It will spin up like an ice skater pulling in their appendages.
I propose we drill holes to the core and dump in all copies of National Geographic. It has been known for a long time (http://www.jir.com/geographic.html) that the accumulation of National Geographic magazines will end up weighing so much that it will cause coastlines to sink.
Bury them in the core, save the coastal cites, and solve the leap second problem all at once. I'll bet you wish you'd saved all those old issues of Byte now.
Save up the one hour for every 500 years until there's a whole year's worth. Then we can have a leap year. Once every 4,383,000 years.
A law passed now to cause this to happen then is only marginally less likely to be followed than a law passed now to be followed 500 or 600 years from now.
and I pay SBC a lot less than the cable company wants or will want.
Better, SBC is going head to head with cable, trying to get cable channels unbundled.
Let's see: 1. charging more 2. trying to sell what's already available 3. pulling a poor sales job to make it look like it's their idea 4. doing their damnedest to make sure I have to buy tons of crap with the few things I want.
I hadn't read enough garbage lately. I needed that.
ANYONE that tries to seriously draw a parallel between a computer and a brain in any way other than the gross concepts that happen to share the words (memory, etc.) are blowing smoke out their ass. They don't know enough to know if things like bits or synapses tranlate. I do, and they don't. It was a weak metaphor when cognitive psychologists borrowed the basic terms 50 years ago, and it still is.
If people really took things like this article seriously, they'd STILL be trying to glue feathers on airplanes. Some people are so stupid they can't understand that evolution, including technological evolution, is smarter than they are their preconceived notions are.
Having that IP isn't good enough. It doesn't prove it was valid, or if valid, originated at that other company.
You need the logs from the other company. those will prove if it came from through there, or from there.
Trying to handle that yourself with your counterpart in the other company could leave you open to several charges if you tried to go it along or with their admin's help. You'll need positive containment of evidence and chain of security.
If too much time has passed, alert the authorities and keep them on alerat in case it happens again.
A vigilante is someone who usurps ot assumes power or authority from where it rightfully exists.
Now, show me an elected or appointed spam cop that this is taking authority away from. There is none. Don't even bother to pretend ISPs fulfill this role. Their role is to keep customers. Some do better than othres at cleaning the trash, but none can act beyond their boundries.
And speaking of boundries, that's where your anti-spam laws stop. And that's as it should be.
This is the emergence of a regulatory force in the absence of any. That is not vigilantism. The net should police itself, including the dirty work. If it doesn't, someone will.
The systems is good. Not great, but not the usual VA shitjob either. I particularly enjoy being about to pull up hi res radiology done at other sites.
Half doctors complain about it. Doctors complain about most things. They think it's their appointed place to judge everything poorly rather than admit they're not perfect in ever way.
The half that doesn't, don't know any better. They're 'in-sourced'. You know they fits you have when you have to call someone in a cubicle farm on another continent? How'd you like to have your chronic illness evaluated by one of these? Don't tell me they're just as good -- I know better.
What the VA system doesn't do, and what the pressure of the VA does prevent, is the doctor you've almost certainly never seen before from reviewing your chart to find out not only what they problem is and has been, but what else might impinge on the treatment. I've caught several medication mistakes. Luckily I know enough to. Another major problem is that lots of the vets are old, and many have mental problems. Yet the doctors tend to rely on self-report to find out what the problem needing treated is. It shouldn't take 10 minutes for a doctor to figure out the guy sitting there isn't here to be treated for a bullet wound -- that was 40 years ago. Seen it. And I saw right there on the screen, alzheimers. But they typical VA primary care provider has 500 to 1000 patients. They don't have time to read even when they have the inclination.
HP is closing its R&D and outsourcing it. All "advances" to come from HP from now on will be the incrementally released and incrementally obsolescent plastic crap comong from the sweat shop next to the cubucle farm.
Alan Kay is losing nothing. HP is losing their soul.
All the SF reference compared with this are wrong.
All the comparisons about deep brain stim, anti-ictal stim, TENS, etc., are wrong. They're similar in that electricity is used. It's different according to the voltage, freqency and placement.
As for the invasiveness of them (except TENS), that's not good, but we're working on it. If we can get TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) to focus down small enough, get a more portable power supply, and get a probe that's significantly smaller than the present ping pong paddle sized device, we'll have a definite improvement over the best available now.
""The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,'' said U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)"
The amount of sunlight depends on the rotation and tilt of the earth, not an arbitrary setting on a time marking device. Nothing, including this law, can change that. You can't legislate nature.
Institute flex time nationwide and you solve most of this problem, and others. More people take the early bias on flex time rather than the late. It also helps solve traffic congestion. Less congestion means less petrol burned less efficiently, reducing emissions.
There's only 10 more of the most recent NIAC phase 1 awards to trickle through the delay lines between the nodes of the blogohypersphere and find their way to/. as "news".
You can also check the "call for proposals" link and wait until they open it up again, and send your Great Big Idea for consideration. Also, students can do the same, for scholarship money at http://www.niac.usra.edu/students/index.html
Slashdot Mirror
Something I recall from an old SciAm article:
When fluorescent bulbs intended to screw into a regular light socket were invented, they didn't sell worth a damn. This, despite the fact they were cheaper over the long run to both buy and to use. The manufacturers wanted to know why. They ran focus groups and other marketoid gimmicks to try to figure it out.
It turned out that despite all the qualifications of "better", what they were competing against was a "good enough" that was already so good enough (with a corrallary that the comparative drawbacks were so few and minor) that all the better made no difference to the people.
The single most telling point in the article was from one of the focus group participants who said "This solves a problem I do not have."
Unless and until ebooks can identify a problem among the billions of satisfied book users and solve it to their satisfaction so that they will choose to switch, ebooks will remain gimmickry. Continuing to push them despite repeated public non-acceptance indicates mostly that the marketoids really don't know what they're doing with respect to satisfying needs (ie. are for the most part ignoring them), and remain convinced that if you put a price tag on it, people will buy it.
Those fluorescent lights are now down from $20 to $5. They still don't sell worth a damn.
then perhaps American can ride them to the moon.
The present administration's repeated bitch slaps of all things scientific indicate their committment to such activities. At best they intend to have the BoLockMart take in billions to develop Way Cool Gizomics for no reason other than to feed their investors, and will cancel the program before it can do any damage to the retarded level of progress they obviously prefer.
Little Bush's committment to science is at least as a rational, though self-serving, opponent, as opposed to Daddy Bush who appointed Dan "There Is Oxygen On Mars" Quayle as head of the space program. That was such a slap that nobody knew how to react to it effectively.
I have a "GMail" email module in some old (~1990) 16 bit Apple II BBS software. I ran it for years. I've got prior art on both of them. I think I'll sue. They can avoid being sued if they both require their users to wear those sproingy spring head thingies with bobbles that bounce around above their heads like Martian antennae, because that requirement would be a significant difference from mine. If they'll just add this requirement to theirs, we can settle out of court. I'm sure they'll see the reasonable nature of my settlement offer.
"I wouldn't trust anything Wolfram says about his creations. He has a tendency to toot his own horn."
Precisely how does someone's egotism invalidate their science? So fucking what if he's a blow hard and even pretty much lies about his own importance (I never heard his name once during two stays at Santa Fe Institute which he claims to have pretty much invented). The point of ANKoS is that all these results are generated as a result of these simple rule sets which have absolutely nothing to do with what Wolfram thinks of himself.
Also, he's placed himself in the position of relying on his own horn, and nobody else's, by focusing on his work rather than wasting time engaging in the mutual masturbation of social glad-handing that most scientists engage in as part of the social aspect of doing science. Doing that only serves and perpetuates itself. He cut out the bullshit so he could do what he's best at. So what if he's a dick.
Who tooted Newton's horn over Principia Mathematica? Newton did. Is ANKoS to be ranked with Principia? You'll never know because you won't believe anything it says because Wolfram blows Wolfram colored smoke along with some of the most clearly objectified information ever created.
By constricting his rule sets to create a reciprocal-of-frequency power output rule and integer divisble timing rules, he's produced a musically based Turing test. Take some of these are feed them through XM, Sirius and Clear Channel's jazz programs and I'll bet not one person calls in to say "Hey, that was computer generated". It's an empirical question, just like the claims Wolfram makes about the results rather than his own importance. It'd also make a damn fine statement about musicians, their music and what they think music and creativity is, particularly since they're the ones to pull this test on to get to the real matter at hand.
But then, you'd be relying on the word of people who depend on tooting their own horns (pun unintended) to make themselves not only known but to be experts in their field. We certainly can't be taking the word of people who've worked hard to become the best at what they do that they're the best at what they do. Far better we rely on the word of people who can objectively judge the worth of a creation based on their far less experienced opinion but also on the all-important factor of whether they're pissed off because the creater has an ego.
So we should ignore what someone puts forth as testably objective, because other things they say are subjective and self-serving? We should instead take the word of other peoples' emotional reactions to the latter? Who the fuck are they and their opinions that we should forgo what may be good and useful science because they don't like the way Wolfram acts? That requires every bit as much egotism as is being accused. The difference being is Wolfram is famous and they're not because Wolfram has created something spectacular and they haven't, and they're pissed because he's rubbing their nose in it.
Yeah, blame Wolfram for doing what you're doing with far less cause than he has to do it. You might consider testing the validity of this by comparing how many copies of ANKoS, egotism included, have been sold, as compared to all the books covering the topic "Wolfram is a dick". If value can be measured by what someone will pay for something, Wolfram's ideas, including those about himself, are worth fifty bucks a copy, whereas peoples' opinions on Wolfram's dickness are worth every penny they paid to post and/or read it on Slashdot.
Public domain is a "copy" "right". As creator of a work, you have the right to say others may copy it freely and that you are transfering ownership over to them as a whole without restriction. Copyright law allows the owner of a right to dictate how it may be used.
No amount of "anti-piracy" crap can change that basic fact without copyright law violating copyright law, by restricting the rights of the owners as to what they are allowed to do with their own property. Figure the odds on the RIAA/MPAA/etc. crowds to allow changes to the law the restrict their rights of ownership.
Mr. Lessig has managed to set fire to a straw man.
""Allegations in an article over at CNET propose that alternate browsers such as Firefox and Opera impede law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different structures, files and naming conventions for the data that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for examiners.""
Allegations in an article over at Police Magazine propose that alternate vehicles such as motorcycles and buses impede bank robbery law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different shapes, different numbers of seats, and different logos for the manufacturers that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for get-away car examiners".
Obviously, only Dodge Chargers, like the "General Lee" should be allowed to criminals, to make them easier to catch.
"The RIAA's favoured solution appears to be copy-protected CDs"
But playing those are illegal according to the DMCA. Playing them converts the signals into audio line level, which does not contain the copy protection scheme information. Any device which removes the copy protection feature is a violation of the DMCA. Every CD player does this as a matter of course. No CD player transmits the protection scheme along with the audio signal.
It's right there in the law. Putting a copy protected CD to its intended use is against the law.
The RIAA is suggesting people break the law.
The reason they're going to web at all is to save labor costs. If you want to pre-register and don't want to use IE, use paper. Suck their budget down to zero. And tell them it's because your browser won't work. They'll fix it.
We were fighting people doing this 10 years ago. Some of the second-gen (meaning they used at least some technology rather than outright and direct use as is) usenet spammers and flooders and email spammers were doing it. The new uses to which this is being put are news, but DNS poisoning is not. IIRC, the icq.net servers were so compromised after having been bought out by AOL and put to new use.
I'm betting there's still a problem with admins that don't want it fixed, because they have given permission, or worse, for their servers to be used thus with some plausible deniability. Arranging this was the origin of the second-gen spammers.
I sent a two part answer on this to Alan Boyle at MSNBC. The first part appears here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3217961/
..."
"Dennis McClain-Furmanski, Arlington, Texas: "Bush isn't wrong: Both sides ought to be properly taught. I'm only a scientist. I'm not qualified to teach religion, only science. Science is the name for a body of knowledge, as well as the name for the process by which it is accumulated. This process is what I do. If someone can give me a replicable, independently verifiable and, most importantly, falsifiable hypothesis based on intelligent design, I can do this process called science, and add the results to the body of knowledge called science. Until it can be brought down to my level, it doesn't belong in my classroom, it belongs where its experts can teach it properly -- in church.
The second part, which he chose not to print was:
"Now, if they'd like to work out a time sharng agreement, I'd be all for it. They can have one of my classes per semester if I can have one of their church services per semester, including choir and organ. I've always wanted to work with musical background. "In the beginning was the Higgs field, and then symmetry was broken." [Cue Handel's 'Hallelujah']. Somehow I think this is as likely to come about as that falsifiable hypothesis.
The debris problem is a materials and design problem, not a flight profile problem. SSTO doesn't necessarily solve it. DC-X and Roton happened to not have stupid design flaws, thus no debris problem.
As noted by others SSTO isn't feasible.
If anying deserves revisiting, it's the simple, big muscle designs NASA has traditionally neglected, such as Sea Dragon http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm
"Does anyone know of a set of C-based hacks or puzzles with which I can enthuse these budding programmers and testers?"
If you want to enthuse them, have them come up with the problems they want to solve, then solve them. This has the added benefit of exercising their imaginations as well as learning/developing programming skills.
The first time Apple did this, the OS looked at a few certain bytes of ROM, and if they didn't say "APPLE ][", it wouldn't run. If it did, it'd run. If it ran and it wasn't Apple hardware, the manufacturer was infringing the copyright (ironically, owned by Microsoft) and Apple went after them. If they were outside the US, the importers were sued, and sometimes Apple sued the makers on their home ground. Apple successfully fought off the Apple II clones this way.
What they are doing now is much the same on one hand, but on the other very different.
However, they're not just limiting this to the OS and hardware. They're making it possible to run or not run DRM based material. There is only one reason for this. They intend to produce machines which, just like Microsoft based machines, allow complete pay-per control. This is the intended end point. Without the DRM in the software, the machine won't run it. With the DRM in the software, only machines with the proper hardware will run it. The only way around it will be to have both hardware and software without it, and soon neither will be produced.
Sure, there'll be work arounds. There'll also need to be work arounds to prevent any such machine connected to the net from phoning home and tattling that it's being abused.
Of course I'm paranoid. I've been watching them do this stuff for 25 years.
We didn't need a leap second during the 7 year span from 1998 through 2005. Apparently we hit a slick patch in space or something and it sped up, or at least failed to slow down. We just need to speed up the rotation of the earth. The way to speed up the rotation of the earth is to sink a great deal of weight from the crust to the core. It will spin up like an ice skater pulling in their appendages.
I propose we drill holes to the core and dump in all copies of National Geographic. It has been known for a long time (http://www.jir.com/geographic.html) that the accumulation of National Geographic magazines will end up weighing so much that it will cause coastlines to sink.
Bury them in the core, save the coastal cites, and solve the leap second problem all at once. I'll bet you wish you'd saved all those old issues of Byte now.
Save up the one hour for every 500 years until there's a whole year's worth. Then we can have a leap year. Once every 4,383,000 years.
A law passed now to cause this to happen then is only marginally less likely to be followed than a law passed now to be followed 500 or 600 years from now.
and I pay SBC a lot less than the cable company wants or will want.
Better, SBC is going head to head with cable, trying to get cable channels unbundled.
Let's see:
1. charging more
2. trying to sell what's already available
3. pulling a poor sales job to make it look like it's their idea
4. doing their damnedest to make sure I have to buy tons of crap with the few things I want.
There's your cable quadruple play.
I hadn't read enough garbage lately. I needed that.
ANYONE that tries to seriously draw a parallel between a computer and a brain in any way other than the gross concepts that happen to share the words (memory, etc.) are blowing smoke out their ass. They don't know enough to know if things like bits or synapses tranlate. I do, and they don't. It was a weak metaphor when cognitive psychologists borrowed the basic terms 50 years ago, and it still is.
If people really took things like this article seriously, they'd STILL be trying to glue feathers on airplanes. Some people are so stupid they can't understand that evolution, including technological evolution, is smarter than they are their preconceived notions are.
Having that IP isn't good enough. It doesn't prove it was valid, or if valid, originated at that other company.
You need the logs from the other company. those will prove if it came from through there, or from there.
Trying to handle that yourself with your counterpart in the other company could leave you open to several charges if you tried to go it along or with their admin's help. You'll need positive containment of evidence and chain of security.
If too much time has passed, alert the authorities and keep them on alerat in case it happens again.
A honeypot might be helpful.
A vigilante is someone who usurps ot assumes power or authority from where it rightfully
exists.
Now, show me an elected or appointed spam cop that this is taking authority away from. There is none. Don't even bother to pretend ISPs fulfill this role. Their role is to keep customers. Some do better than othres at cleaning the trash, but none can act beyond their boundries.
And speaking of boundries, that's where your anti-spam laws stop. And that's as it should be.
This is the emergence of a regulatory force in the absence of any. That is not vigilantism. The net should police itself, including the dirty work. If it doesn't, someone will.
I use the VA system from both sides of the desk.
The systems is good. Not great, but not the usual VA shitjob either. I particularly enjoy being about to pull up hi res radiology done at other sites.
Half doctors complain about it. Doctors complain about most things. They think it's their appointed place to judge everything poorly rather than admit they're not perfect in ever way.
The half that doesn't, don't know any better. They're 'in-sourced'. You know they fits you have when you have to call someone in a cubicle farm on another continent? How'd you like to have your chronic illness evaluated by one of these? Don't tell me they're just as good -- I know better.
What the VA system doesn't do, and what the pressure of the VA does prevent, is the doctor you've almost certainly never seen before from reviewing your chart to find out not only what they problem is and has been, but what else might impinge on the treatment. I've caught several medication mistakes. Luckily I know enough to. Another major problem is that lots of the vets are old, and many have mental problems. Yet the doctors tend to rely on self-report to find out what the problem needing treated is. It shouldn't take 10 minutes for a doctor to figure out the guy sitting there isn't here to be treated for a bullet wound -- that was 40 years ago. Seen it. And I saw right there on the screen, alzheimers. But they typical VA primary care provider has 500 to 1000 patients. They don't have time to read even when they have the inclination.
HP is closing its R&D and outsourcing it. All "advances" to come from HP from now on will be the incrementally released and incrementally obsolescent plastic crap comong from the sweat shop next to the cubucle farm.
Alan Kay is losing nothing. HP is losing their soul.
All the SF reference compared with this are wrong.
All the comparisons about deep brain stim, anti-ictal stim, TENS, etc., are wrong. They're similar in that electricity is used. It's different according to the voltage, freqency and placement.
As for the invasiveness of them (except TENS), that's not good, but we're working on it. If we can get TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) to focus down small enough, get a more portable power supply, and get a probe that's significantly smaller than the present ping pong paddle sized device, we'll have a definite improvement over the best available now.
""The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,'' said U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)"
The amount of sunlight depends on the rotation and tilt of the earth, not an arbitrary setting on a time marking device. Nothing, including this law, can change that. You can't legislate nature.
Institute flex time nationwide and you solve most of this problem, and others. More people take the early bias on flex time rather than the late. It also helps solve traffic congestion. Less congestion means less petrol burned less efficiently, reducing emissions.
"If that's not fast enough for you, come and write for me."
/. whiner, unwilling to put effort into changing what I complain about.
Let it not be said I'm just another
Offer sent via email.
There's only 10 more of the most recent NIAC phase 1 awards to trickle through the delay lines between the nodes of the blogohypersphere and find their way to /. as "news".
m =05-01
Or you can get it over with and read them all at http://www.niac.usra.edu/studies/studies.jsp?cpnu
You can also check the "call for proposals" link and wait until they open it up again, and send your Great Big Idea for consideration. Also, students can do the same, for scholarship money at http://www.niac.usra.edu/students/index.html