The primary problem with your argument is the idea of what is critical. Is Ford Motor Company's network critical? Well... considering the effect on the economy if it were taken down: probably.
So basically, every company over a certain economic size ends up having themselves monitored and controlled even MORE.
Likewise, this is a wonderful way to get complete control of the telecommunications grid so you can stick your stuff in where-ever your like. I bet it would quickly be followed up with audits, and then there would be problems because no one uses common hardware, then there would be government suppliers that those critical companies would have to use...
>>with knowledge patented
From the post, there's the problem. Facts, and knowledge, shouldn't be patented. You don't patent the fact that the earth has a moon. You don't patent the fact sex gets people pregnant. You patent tools that do things - such as TEST for a certain condition, help you to look at the moon more clearly, or keep people from getting pregnant.
She's very outspoken on many issues - so much so that she writes an opinion blog. Read it some and you'll get a flavor of who she is - she's very pro-women, pro-affirmative action, and pro-social engineering. She's also pro-legislate from the bench, and she seems to enjoy trying to do so.
br.
It's no wonder she's taking literary license with how the trial is running. She thinks she should be the judge, jury, and defending/prosecuting attourney!
I live on a dirt road, and all I can say is that some people have more dollars than cents.
Having a seperator between you and the road (it's called trees.... etc) more than takes care of the dust issue, and results in a far prettier curbside than manicured and cemented suburbia. If, however, you're one of those people who just have to have everything mowed like a golf course (including your ditch), then yep, you may end up with dust issues.
Actual rural areas with corn fields and the like understand that you actually need trees and bushes to break the wind and dust.
I suspect that this "compass" is a GPS based compass that uses the dopplar of the GPS signal to determine direction and speed. As such, under a certain speed, it's going to crap out on you because the noise will become too great and the doppler shift not enough.
It's funny how people say it can't be done - I'd guess they're people who haven't innovated much in their lifetime.
How about an Iriduim satelite phone as the communication device? Last time I checked sending data over those is pretty easy.
After all, you're not flying the plane real time. That's all programmed into the pic microcontroller. You're just sending it waypoints.
GPS? Most GPS units send out simple NMEA data that directly interfaces to a computer port. So I take 2 GPS units. Perhaps in something as small and light as a cellphone. (Do newer Iridium phones have GPS now too? I don't know....). There's probably already and iphone app to do it....
This isn't nearly as hard as people think it is. Hell, I compete yearly in FIRST (www.usfirst.org), and they use gyroscopes, digital compasses, (ducted fans this year), plus cheap PIC microcontrollers that could easily handle this sort of thing. That's just a highschool competition.
I hate this type of mentality. Yes, certainly, improving organization is a direct route to more productivity on the desktop. However, that does not mean the current model is broken.
You've had people trying to improve the use of the desktop space ever since it's been invented. They've come up with a huge number of horrible ideas. As several other posters have pointed out - the first thing most people do upon installing xp is turn off "group similar icons"! Likewise, how many people actually use things like 3D browsing, etc?
Productivity is directly equal to absolutely minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your result. Period. ANYTHING can be measured in this very, very easy to understand and easy to calculate metric. The current tabs system allows you to get to anything you need within a click - sometimes two if you have multiple browsers open.
This system has been used in many other locations - spreadsheets, etc - and so far no one has found a solution to make it take fewer clicks. Between alt-tabbing and single clicks, you can get anywhere very, very quickly. You want to improve on it? Make our buttons nameable - so we can get rid of a button on the taskbar that says "Inbox - Microsoft Outlook" and change the fucking thing to "Inbox" so it takes up only 6 characters! Likewise - Why do I have to look at icons that say "Autocad 2007 - [C:/..." that presents NO useful information, instead of just the file name? Or, another nice one, when I've got a folder open, the button says "C:\Documents and Se...". Wunderbar! I certainly know what THAT button means!
Get rid of the stupid little icons, and actually put text there that explains what it is. "Inbox". "Autocad - Layout" (the file name without extension).
Heck - the button that I've got for this comment session is "Slashdot Commens | Mozilla Preparing to Scrap Tabbed Browsing? - Microsoft Internet Exploer". That's fucking usefull when you can only see the first 15 or so characters.
Hopefully these go the way of support R&D by American private enterprise, and don't end up being dumped into government think-tank projects that simply feed the political morass that is Washington.
You are ENTIRELY wrong.
I'd suggest investigating FIRST Lego-League (www.usfirst.org). My children have been participating on teams since they were 3.
From FIRST Lego, they can upgrade to FLC, or Vex, and from there to FIRST Robotics. It's an incredible progression that is worth 10x of what they will get out of most of their actual school classes.
Stainless steel wire instead of something like Spectra or Dyneema?
What about the motion losses from pedaling under water?
Why bother with this crap of crossing the ocean, when it's clear he'll have a chase boat with provisions, etc? Obviously he can't stay in the water for 50+ days.
Seems like there were a lot of very bad engineering decisions made on this thing.
In addition, I can't believe he'd suggest going under water only a meter or two in the ocean. Does he now how large the waves get, and what will happen if he hits any type of real weather out there?
Exactly.
If you want to be free of those restrictions, move to an area where you can buy land.
Of course, out where I am, we have our own rules. You can't own a lot smaller than 5 acres. That's to prevent all these moron "Jam more in" developers from coming in and turning the whole area into a subdivision. People just weren't meant to live that close together...
Perhaps that was the case. I've been involved in a few of these "power" struggles. Being part of a large organization myself, I'll venture a guess that the policy that she was told to follow was so lengthy and political that it would have resulted in:
A. No one EVER getting the email
B. The email not getting out in time
C. The email getting "editted" or "changed" so it didn't have it's desired effect.
If it's anything like what I tend to be involved with, the so-called "policy" in place is specifically there to prevent you from contact anyone of importance - not to facilitate it. It's a matter of the so-called "powerful" not wanting to deal with the lesser folk. Many profs I've dealth with in college were like that: they would become very upset if questioned.
This argument strikes me as incredibly naive.
If the ISP's were to guarantee that you had that bandwidth, they would have to massively over-structure themselves to ensure that they always had enough bandwidth if every single one of their users logged on at once.That is equivalent to engineering a road with the expectation of every single person in that area getting on it all at once. It would be a collosal waste of money and time.
In addition, they have no way of guaranteeing your bandwidth once you get off their network.
Bandwidth is priced based on shared - equipment. The ISP uses some model to predict usage and scales their hardware to that model. If they didn't do that, your current prices wouldn't be anything like what you're looking at today.
Throttling is just fine. However, it needs to be throttled evenly - everyone's bandwidth needs to drop by a given amount. You can't (or shouldn't at least) single out a given user because he's using a certain program.
However, I think if you investigate your terms of service you will find that they reserve the right to handle this any way they see fit. After all, they ARE a business, and they don't HAVE to do business with you. The internet is not some right.
We use the Motorola Advisor Gold. They are wonderful devices - never break (I've known employees who have dropped them in the toilet and they still functioned afterwards), have a clear screen, good backlite, strong vibrate, and continue to vibrate if you do not acknowledge them.
Great little tool for knowing when the assembly line is down.
I wonder what type of speeds that "free" wireless is going to provide. I know that current wireless offerings - i.e. mobile evdo cards share the tower bandwidth - and generally speaking those towers do NOT have enough bandwidth to support folks on them. I watch speeds on my work system vary from 1500k at night to 500k during the day.
Gee. I was pretty darn happy with my long distance wireless broadband up till 3 months ago. I paid 39.95 a month for a 6 megabit down 500kbit up connection. I live 10 miles outside the nearest DSL, just as far from cable, and the wireless provider in our area doesn't have line of sight.
Yet I was able to happily run my gaming, my voip, my email through Sprint Broad Band Direct. Right up until the FCC "reallocated" the spectrum and took my broadband away.
Sorry that I'm a skeptic, but I rarely see positive change from government intervention. In this case I saw a very very negative one, as I'm back to 28.8 dial up, the highest our phone lines in this area support.
Slashdot Mirror
The primary problem with your argument is the idea of what is critical. Is Ford Motor Company's network critical? Well... considering the effect on the economy if it were taken down: probably.
So basically, every company over a certain economic size ends up having themselves monitored and controlled even MORE.
Likewise, this is a wonderful way to get complete control of the telecommunications grid so you can stick your stuff in where-ever your like. I bet it would quickly be followed up with audits, and then there would be problems because no one uses common hardware, then there would be government suppliers that those critical companies would have to use...
No thanks.
>>with knowledge patented From the post, there's the problem. Facts, and knowledge, shouldn't be patented. You don't patent the fact that the earth has a moon. You don't patent the fact sex gets people pregnant. You patent tools that do things - such as TEST for a certain condition, help you to look at the moon more clearly, or keep people from getting pregnant.
Have you read up on this particular judge?
She's very outspoken on many issues - so much so that she writes an opinion blog. Read it some and you'll get a flavor of who she is - she's very pro-women, pro-affirmative action, and pro-social engineering. She's also pro-legislate from the bench, and she seems to enjoy trying to do so.
br. It's no wonder she's taking literary license with how the trial is running. She thinks she should be the judge, jury, and defending/prosecuting attourney!
I live on a dirt road, and all I can say is that some people have more dollars than cents.
Having a seperator between you and the road (it's called trees.... etc) more than takes care of the dust issue, and results in a far prettier curbside than manicured and cemented suburbia. If, however, you're one of those people who just have to have everything mowed like a golf course (including your ditch), then yep, you may end up with dust issues.
Actual rural areas with corn fields and the like understand that you actually need trees and bushes to break the wind and dust.
I suspect that this "compass" is a GPS based compass that uses the dopplar of the GPS signal to determine direction and speed. As such, under a certain speed, it's going to crap out on you because the noise will become too great and the doppler shift not enough.
It's funny how people say it can't be done - I'd guess they're people who haven't innovated much in their lifetime.
How about an Iriduim satelite phone as the communication device? Last time I checked sending data over those is pretty easy.
After all, you're not flying the plane real time. That's all programmed into the pic microcontroller. You're just sending it waypoints.
GPS? Most GPS units send out simple NMEA data that directly interfaces to a computer port. So I take 2 GPS units. Perhaps in something as small and light as a cellphone. (Do newer Iridium phones have GPS now too? I don't know....). There's probably already and iphone app to do it....
This isn't nearly as hard as people think it is. Hell, I compete yearly in FIRST (www.usfirst.org), and they use gyroscopes, digital compasses, (ducted fans this year), plus cheap PIC microcontrollers that could easily handle this sort of thing. That's just a highschool competition.
In fact, TARDEC sponsors FIRST teams.......
I hate this type of mentality. Yes, certainly, improving organization is a direct route to more productivity on the desktop. However, that does not mean the current model is broken. You've had people trying to improve the use of the desktop space ever since it's been invented. They've come up with a huge number of horrible ideas. As several other posters have pointed out - the first thing most people do upon installing xp is turn off "group similar icons"! Likewise, how many people actually use things like 3D browsing, etc? Productivity is directly equal to absolutely minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your result. Period. ANYTHING can be measured in this very, very easy to understand and easy to calculate metric. The current tabs system allows you to get to anything you need within a click - sometimes two if you have multiple browsers open. This system has been used in many other locations - spreadsheets, etc - and so far no one has found a solution to make it take fewer clicks. Between alt-tabbing and single clicks, you can get anywhere very, very quickly. You want to improve on it? Make our buttons nameable - so we can get rid of a button on the taskbar that says "Inbox - Microsoft Outlook" and change the fucking thing to "Inbox" so it takes up only 6 characters! Likewise - Why do I have to look at icons that say "Autocad 2007 - [C:/..." that presents NO useful information, instead of just the file name? Or, another nice one, when I've got a folder open, the button says "C:\Documents and Se...". Wunderbar! I certainly know what THAT button means! Get rid of the stupid little icons, and actually put text there that explains what it is. "Inbox". "Autocad - Layout" (the file name without extension). Heck - the button that I've got for this comment session is "Slashdot Commens | Mozilla Preparing to Scrap Tabbed Browsing? - Microsoft Internet Exploer". That's fucking usefull when you can only see the first 15 or so characters.
Hopefully these go the way of support R&D by American private enterprise, and don't end up being dumped into government think-tank projects that simply feed the political morass that is Washington.
You'd think a technology page would at least be compatible with browsers so I didn't have to look at ads that cover up 70% of the top story.
The server is running linux.
So you say you'll never use the browser, and yet you're advocating what features you want added to it...
You are ENTIRELY wrong. I'd suggest investigating FIRST Lego-League (www.usfirst.org). My children have been participating on teams since they were 3. From FIRST Lego, they can upgrade to FLC, or Vex, and from there to FIRST Robotics. It's an incredible progression that is worth 10x of what they will get out of most of their actual school classes.
Stainless steel wire instead of something like Spectra or Dyneema? What about the motion losses from pedaling under water? Why bother with this crap of crossing the ocean, when it's clear he'll have a chase boat with provisions, etc? Obviously he can't stay in the water for 50+ days. Seems like there were a lot of very bad engineering decisions made on this thing. In addition, I can't believe he'd suggest going under water only a meter or two in the ocean. Does he now how large the waves get, and what will happen if he hits any type of real weather out there?
Exactly. If you want to be free of those restrictions, move to an area where you can buy land. Of course, out where I am, we have our own rules. You can't own a lot smaller than 5 acres. That's to prevent all these moron "Jam more in" developers from coming in and turning the whole area into a subdivision. People just weren't meant to live that close together...
Grab a good nintendo emulator like nesticle, and download a couple hundred roms for them off the net.
Perhaps that was the case. I've been involved in a few of these "power" struggles. Being part of a large organization myself, I'll venture a guess that the policy that she was told to follow was so lengthy and political that it would have resulted in: A. No one EVER getting the email B. The email not getting out in time C. The email getting "editted" or "changed" so it didn't have it's desired effect. If it's anything like what I tend to be involved with, the so-called "policy" in place is specifically there to prevent you from contact anyone of importance - not to facilitate it. It's a matter of the so-called "powerful" not wanting to deal with the lesser folk. Many profs I've dealth with in college were like that: they would become very upset if questioned.
After all, most of the folks that read this site have been storing it for years... and years... and years... and years...
This argument strikes me as incredibly naive. If the ISP's were to guarantee that you had that bandwidth, they would have to massively over-structure themselves to ensure that they always had enough bandwidth if every single one of their users logged on at once.That is equivalent to engineering a road with the expectation of every single person in that area getting on it all at once. It would be a collosal waste of money and time. In addition, they have no way of guaranteeing your bandwidth once you get off their network. Bandwidth is priced based on shared - equipment. The ISP uses some model to predict usage and scales their hardware to that model. If they didn't do that, your current prices wouldn't be anything like what you're looking at today. Throttling is just fine. However, it needs to be throttled evenly - everyone's bandwidth needs to drop by a given amount. You can't (or shouldn't at least) single out a given user because he's using a certain program. However, I think if you investigate your terms of service you will find that they reserve the right to handle this any way they see fit. After all, they ARE a business, and they don't HAVE to do business with you. The internet is not some right.
Yeah... we could put them in prison to punish them. Uh-oh....
We're lucky Monkeys didn't patent opposable thumbs.
We use the Motorola Advisor Gold. They are wonderful devices - never break (I've known employees who have dropped them in the toilet and they still functioned afterwards), have a clear screen, good backlite, strong vibrate, and continue to vibrate if you do not acknowledge them. Great little tool for knowing when the assembly line is down.
I like Avira. Turning off their nag is as simple as putting a security policy to deny the .exe that runs that ads.
So we're proposing the Federal government enact a law to make privacy policies easier to read?
Has anyone read the entire tax law recently, much less ALL the laws we're supposed to know?
Ignorance is no defense, after all.
I wonder what type of speeds that "free" wireless is going to provide. I know that current wireless offerings - i.e. mobile evdo cards share the tower bandwidth - and generally speaking those towers do NOT have enough bandwidth to support folks on them. I watch speeds on my work system vary from 1500k at night to 500k during the day.
Gee. I was pretty darn happy with my long distance wireless broadband up till 3 months ago. I paid 39.95 a month for a 6 megabit down 500kbit up connection. I live 10 miles outside the nearest DSL, just as far from cable, and the wireless provider in our area doesn't have line of sight. Yet I was able to happily run my gaming, my voip, my email through Sprint Broad Band Direct. Right up until the FCC "reallocated" the spectrum and took my broadband away. Sorry that I'm a skeptic, but I rarely see positive change from government intervention. In this case I saw a very very negative one, as I'm back to 28.8 dial up, the highest our phone lines in this area support.