So why does your cell phone have to ring at all? Mine is permanently set to vibrate only, and clipped to my belt. If I'm talking to someone in person and I get a phone call, I just completely ignore it. The other person doesn't even know I am ignoring a call. Why should the caller have priority over whoever I'm talking to now? Perhaps it runs counter to prevailing cultural norms, but I do not believe that a ringing phone creates an obligation to answer it. (And yes, I ignore my landline at home all the time--whoever it is can talk to my answering machine. Drives my wife bananas.)
Speaking of women, they would at a disadvantage using the "vibrate-only" method, because most of them don't like to walk around with their phones clipped to their belts (if they have belts). Instead, they stick their phones in their purses, then go crazy digging around in there when their phone rings--assuming they can even find their purse.
Hmm...perhaps there is money to be made here. Cellular lingerie! How about The Phone Bra? Phone Garter? The possibilities are breath-taking. This could give "pleasure mode" a whole new meaning...
The two conflicting goals were 1) Allow Anonymity and 2) Allow Business Critical Transactions. Those two requirements create an insurmountable conflict for the design of the Internet. You can not possibly (it is impossible) to achieve both simultaneously.
If you mean "impossible" in a technical sense, then you are completely wrong. There are no insurmountable technical barriers to creating an electronic infrastructure that permits commercial transactions that are both anonymous and secure. Such an infrastructure is not technically impossible--it is politically infeasible, because the governments of the world's nation-states will not permit it. (Such transactions would be difficult to tax, for one thing.)
Using known cryptographic techniques, there is nothing that prevents you from establishing a unique identity that is not traceable to your true name, but that can nevertheless be authenticated for commercial purposes. Such transactions would, of course, depend on the cooperation of financial institutions (e.g. banks) who are publicly known and trusted. If such a "virtual person" wanted to engage in a commerical transaction with another party (who may or may not be anonymous himself), then the financial institution could act as a go-between without either party ever learning the other's true name. Depending on the nature of the transaction, other services might be required--for example, the bank might hold funds in escrow until the goods are delivered to the specified location, or the requested service is performed.
For truly anonymous transactions, even the financial agent must be unaware of its client's true name. Again, there's no technical reason why this can't be so. All communications between an account holder and his bank could be authenticated by public/private key technology. The bank only needs the ability to uniquely identify the accountholder, and--of course--there must be sufficient funds in the anonymous account to cover the transaction.
As I said, such things are politically infeasible at present. However, as the nation-state continues to weaken, it is possible that we will see the rise of anonymous banking and commerce. This will raise some serious moral questions, of course--trade in illegal substances and stolen goods are only one problematic issue. Another is that it would become possible to solicit illegal services--such as taking up a collection to finance the assassination of a politician whom you particularly despise.
Science fiction author Neal Stephenson writes about these issues in his books Snow Crash and Cryptonomicron.
You may be aware that the UK leads the world with a billion CCTV cameras on every street corner.
Here's something I've been wanting to find out for a while: is there any evidence that such omnipresent surveillance deters crime or helps capture criminals? Surely there are statistics about this. If the cameras turn out to be enormously useful in this capacity, then at least a case can be made that surveillance of public places is a good thing. If not...then I wonder why the cameras are still there. Isn't it the (British) government's responsibility to justify its surveillance practices? Have they done so?
Er...yes, of course. Apparently x8B is one of those European-style single quotes (at least that's what I think the purpose of that character is) that looks like a small left angle bracket. (There's a double version as well.)
That's what I get for posting from work, where I have to keep looking over my shoulder watching for my boss, who doesn't understand that posting to/. is research.
"Full width" vs. "Half width" (or, as I prefer, "half-wit") characters exist for typographical convenience in rendering Japanese characters. (Take a look at the Unicode spec, section 10.3 for example http://www.unicode.org/book/ch10.pdf/). This does not, however, explain why certain symbols that are already defined in other parts of the Unicode standard, such as the less-than symbol (or left angle bracket) are duplicated there. I suspect that it has something to do with possible confusions that might arise when parsing or transcoding mixed double-byte and single-byte characters...but that's just a guess.
In any case, the effect of this is that there are 2 ways of producing the < glyph: you can use character code x8B or xFF1C. However, your experiments have shown that browsers do not treat these two codes as being the same character...even though they look the same. I'm not sure if that's right or wrong, if there is a right and wrong way to handle this issue (I suppose that means it's excellent grounds for a religious war)--it's just important that it be handled consistently. From what you found, IE and FF are consistent with each other, while IIS handles the two codes as identical characters. I would think that IIS would at least be on the same page with IE...but wait, thats MS we're talking about.
Full-width and half-width encoding is a technique for encoding Unicode characters.
That comes as a complete surprise to me, and I thought I knew at least a little about Unicode and other character encoding schemes. The usual methods of encoding Unicode character points are UTF-8 (variable-length scheme where characters may be represented by anything from one to six bytes), UTF-16 (fixed-width double byte encoding), UTF-32 (fixed-length 4 byte encoding), and well there's UTF-7 and other oddballs. But the closest I've ever heard of "half width" and "full width" is in connection with Asian--specifically Japanese--characters. There are Asian character sets that have "half-width" and "full-width" variants. Though this is inconsistent with the original intent of Unicode, these character variants (each pair of which are really forms of the same character that have different widths) were defined as separate Unicode characters.
Maybe everyone else knows what they're talking about, and I missed some crucial piece of information...but I don't understand how mistaking one character for another is going to break anything--you'll just have the wrong characters. Anyway, are they talking about HTML content sent via HTTP, or URLS, or what? Can anyone explain this better? Or am I not supposed to understand it?
He could just as easily have called up, claimed to have "just got back from holiday and forgotten my login details" and given Sarah his boss' name. 30 seconds later, he's got his boss' user ID and the password reset on the boss' account.
Maybe I'm "retarted"...but I thought that's exactly what the guy did. That was the point of calling from his boss' phone, right?
Hmm.*peeks out of cubicle at boss' office and notices it's empty* Hmmmmmmmm.
/. is so educational, that's why I keep coming back.
Well if what you say is true, no one should really complain if no one but Amazon can do it. After all, its a bad idea.
The point is that such a patent would give Amazon the right to sue any other merchant who is deemed by Amazon to infringe on their patent. Because "1 click" is so simple and obvious, any vendor who uses a simple and obvious method for submitting web orders would be open to harrassment by Amazon. In effect, Amazon could argue that "Vendor x has a simple and obvious method for ordering stuff, and this infringes on our patent. We demand that Vendor X immediately design a complicated and obfuscated way of submitting orders via their web page".
It's sad that a business which has done so much to advance web commerce should believe it must resort to such tactics.
Hey, that technology should be 20 years old...the movie version of 1984 had insta-poof document disposals in it. Or did that prediction not come true? Must be the only one.
You paid $35 for the paper? You're more dedicated than I...or is there some legal way to get the article for free?
Not wanting to spend the money, I have to content myself with the (presumably non-restricted) abstract:
Almost two decades ago, Fleischmann and Pons reported excess enthalpy generation in the negatively polarized Pd/D-D2O system, which they attributed to nuclear reactions. In the months and years that followed, other manifestations of nuclear activities in this system were observed, viz. tritium and helium production and transmutation of elements. In this report, we present additional evidence, namely, the emission of highly energetic charged particles emitted from the Pd/D electrode when this system is placed in either an external electrostatic or magnetostatic field. The density of tracks registered by a CR-39 detector was found to be of a magnitude that provides undisputable evidence of their nuclear origin. The experiments were reproducible. A model based upon electron capture is proposed to explain the reaction products observed in the Pd/D-D2O system.
Damn, that sounds pretty break-throughish to me...or is the abstract itself hyperbole?
Though the poster who suggested outlawing recycling was modded "funny", he was quite right. (Many a truth is spoken in jest--especially when karma is at stake.)
You create more carbon dioxide emissions by making paper and burying it to get rid of the minute amount of carbon that the tree(s) obtained from its photosynthesis process.
Where did you get this idea? As far as I know, making paper doesn't involve burning it, so I don't see how you're liberating CO2 during the process. Are you saying that the energy used in making paper results in the release of CO2? Maybe--but it takes energy to make recycled paper, also.
Trees contain a "minute" amount of carbon? Have you ever made the close acquaintance of either a tree or a chemistry text? Both are composed of cellulose (C6H10O5)...and that amounts to quite a lot of carbon.
Also, by outlawing the recycling of paper, you'll reduce the number of trees that are still alive, and eventually wipe out all the trees in the world, and thus, contribute MORE to global warming than minimizing its effect on the planet.
You don't know how paper is made, what's involved in recycling it, what trees are composed of...and you haven't the foggiest notion about what kind of trees are used in making paper. Trees destined for paper are farmed. They are usually rapidly growing trees that reach maturity in about 20 years; after they're cut down, the area is re-seeded so that the process can be repeated. That's the economical way to make paper, and the paper companies have been doing it this way for many years. Each cycle results in a non-negligible quantity of carbon being isolated and (we can only hope) buried, so making paper results in a net reduction of the CO2 "greenhouse gas". Furthermore, paper-making does not result in a net decrease of the number of trees in the world.
Paper recycling is one of those measures that makes no sense, but it gives ignorant people a good feeling about themselves, so I guess we're going to be stuck with for a long time to come.
Seems like many scientists and laymen alike, seem to want to have this common-sense intuitive answer to everything. What's wrong with good old mathematical formulas? Why is it so important to "feel" how the theory works?
I have absolutely no quarrel with mathematical formulae (I find them quite inoffensive), nor am I in pursuit of a "common-sense intuitive answer to everything"--whatever that might be. Quantum mechanics can say anything they want to (when they crawl out from under their tiny cars). I have a problem though, when they say things that sound as though they were in contradiction to what normal, sensible people would say.
For example, that business about Mr. Schrödinger's poor cat being in limbo until someone opens his box...that still strikes me as mighty peculiar. I know real Quantum Scientists are smart people, and so they must be trying to say something important. I definitely should be paying attention. Unfortunately, I simply don't understand what they're saying--I am not saying that it is false. I have found, however, that as soon as I ask a quantum mechanic to explain what he means, he starts talking about "wave function collapse", and when that leaves me with a blank stare, he usually tells me that I "just don't understand the math". I think you can't have it both ways: you can say things that have to do with the universe of our "common sense experience", but also insist that those statements can't be understood in an ordinary way.
I've found that these discussions get very heated very quickly. In fact, the worst flame war in which I was ever involved centered on precisely this topic, back in the USENET days (sci.physics, I think). As I recall, someone had said that "observation" alters the phenomenon that is being observed. I asked what was, to me, a very straightforward question: do you mean that the mechanics of the instruments involved affect the behavior of the tiny particles we're observing (e.g., as bouncing electrons off another electron to determine its position or vector would affect its behavior), or is this some more mysterious interaction--does, perhaps, the act of taking cognizance of the observed phenomen cause the change? Or is it something different still? My correspondent reacted as though I had denigrated the sexual performance of his younger sister.
So please let me say this: I am not trying to piss anyone off. I am trying to (gently) point out that the days when physics has power to explain the world of our experience may be in the past. I believe that while QM may be useful as a theory (i.e., it has "predictive power"), it has caused both naive hangers-on and smart people who ought to know better to say some pretty strange things. Unfortunately, these are very complex issues in the philosophy of science, and I do not remotely have adequate time to do them justice.
Consider a cat of the Schroedinger subspecies. In the experiment, it is neither alive nor dead until observed. A rock, positioned near the detection apparatus, can observe the result. So for the rock, the cat is either alive or dead. But until YOU observe the rock, you don't know whether the rock is happy that the cat is alive, or sad that...
I'm quite sure I don't get it. Indeed, I am certain about only one thing in this discussion: whatever you mean by "observe" is most peculiar--in fact, I've never encountered this particular use of the word. Could you enlighten me by giving some examples of what it might mean for rocks to "observe"? Are some rocks more observant than others? Is gneiss more perceptive than granite?
No doubt, I am misunderstanding what you have said. Perhaps you have a special, technical sense of the word "observe" in mind? If so, its use requires a bit of explanation...and a caveat that it has nothing to do with the word as I would ordinarily use it. For example:
"I have never had the opportunity to observe the rings of saturn."
"I observed that the injured man was shaking, and took measures to prevent shock."
"He strictly observes all kosher rules"
I'm not even going to touch that stuff about the rock being "sad" about the dead cat...
As someone else has pointed out, it's a pity that most physicists are given no philosophical training; though the benefits of such training may be rather limited, it does tend to encourage linguistic precision.
For several decades (the 50s through the 70s) Detroit had the American public convinced that they absolutely had to have a new car every year. (Well, every two years, at least.) Detroit had car-buyers convinced that tremendous technical strides were made every year, and that this year's car made last year's obsolete. The car-makers did this by introducing superficial cosmetic changes and adding pointless "innovations" (remember the push-button automatic gear shift?), then marketing them as major leaps into the technological future.
Perhaps the archetypal feature of this type was the tail fin. It's hard to say when the evolution of the tail fin began--maybe 1950 or so, when they were just a line of chrome that marked a ridge that ran along the trunk of the car to the tail lights. Each year, the fins became more prominent, growing into things resembling the wings of a jet fighter, and eventually (at least in some models) taking over the entire trunk lid with their swooping, razor-edged lines. Having reached the limits of absurdity, a reverse evolution set in, that culminated in the slow shrinkage of the fin until it became vestigial, then disappeared altogether.
I don't think anyone ever actually said that tail fins would make your car run faster or handle better. But that was hardly necessary--how could something so cool and "aerodynamic" not be a good thing? Most importantly--as far as the auto-makers were concerned, the dimensions of the tail fins were a clear visual indicator of who had this year's model, and who was stuck with last-years lame obsolete piece of junk with those inferior fins.
What's this got to do with Windows Vista? Surely, the parallells aren't that hard to see. Microsoft has normal PC users convinced that operating system technology is being continually and rapidly advanced by the MicroSerfs of Redmond, and that if you don't have this year's model you're just a technical lamer. Furthermore, the chief way that MS differentiates the iterations of its Operating Systems is through superficial visual changes--but instead of bigger tail fins, we get a "glitzier" GUI. That's because MS feels that Joe user wouldn't be able to understand any technical reasons why one OS might be prefereable to another, and--more imporantly--because there really aren't any reasons why Vista is clearly preferable to XP--or even Windows 2K. (Unless, of course, you need some feature that MS has refused to retrofit into a previous Window release just to make sure that you will have to switch. For example, when I went wireless, I really wanted WPA-PSK security, but that wasn't available for Win 2K, so I had to switch to XP.)
I suppose the only hope is that MS screws up so bad with a new OS release that people just refuse to buy it, or to buy computers that have it preinstalled. Maybe Vista is that OS, I don't know. When that day comes, maybe MS--or their successors--will build a really good OS. One that's modular, so that you can swap out chunks as they become obsolete, or are found to have fatal security flaws, and recompile the sucker. And hey, maybe people will wise up to the fact that a GUI is just another modular layer that you can slap on top of an operating system, and that you don't need to replace the guts of the OS if you want latest coolest 3D icons with those gotta-have tail fins.
A good programmer keeps things as simple as possible. They will be easier to maintain in the future. I'm afraid that this is unneeded layer of abstraction or some nut case trying to "utilize cores" for the sake of it. No one has only one application running at one time. The OS is usually running, you have a network process, etc. If I write my application to use one core, I'm giving the user more options to do with the other cores whatever he wants. Let the scheduler work with the futuristic hardware and sort that crap out.
OK, I'm going to reveal my ignorance here for all to see. I do some programming, but as a sideline (I make tools for myself when automation would make a job easier). I had thought that if a program was "multithreaded", then this meant that the OS could assign different threads to run on different processors of your multiprocessor machine, and thus permit quicker execution of CPU-intensive applications. I have a dual processor machine here at work, and it's frustrating to see a job that takes a half hour to run consistently using only 50% of CPU. (No, I didn't write the software in question.) I keep thinking that if only the application was multi-threaded, then it would finish in 15 minutes. Am I wrong?
I'm more than a little suspicious that multiprocessor motherboards and multicore CPUs are just another piece of marketing hype to separate me from my money. (Sort of like having a 64 bit chip when I run a 32 bit OS because there aren't that many drivers and apps out there that will run on 64 bit machines...but all the AMD CPUs are 64 bit now, so I pay for all those bits whether I like it or not...)
Actually, HP solved the inkjet print head clogging problem quite a while ago...in a sense. As far as I can tell, HP Deskjet printers are the only ones in which the print head and the cartridge are one and the same. That means if your head clogs, you throw away the cartridge, not the printer. Of course, if you consider the price of cartridges, you might just be ahead if you dump the printer.
Re:Are they better, or just different?
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eSATA Connectors
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I agree with you that the first SATA connectors were brain-dead. For the life of me, I can't understand what the designers were thinking when they didn't include a latch. However, I never really had problems with the plugs falling off--it was just a source of neurotic worry, like whether I turned off the soldering iron after I used it last time. In any case, the advantages of the SATA cable (thin, greater maximum length than the old IDE cables, no slave/master foo) outweighed any worries about the wobbly connectors, so I've been using SATA ever since it first came out.
However, you speak of "the current SATA connecters"; have you really looked at SATA cables recently? The last couple of times I built a PC, the SATA cables came with little clips that lock them firmly into place. I'm not sure if this is part of a new standard, or if some manufacturers are simply doing the obvious. Perhaps you should look around for some of these "clippy" cables.
I do wish someone would come up with a connector that I could look at, and instantly tell which way to plug it in. Of course, I'm kind of challenged in the area of visual/spatial perception...I even have trouble with those D shaped connectors for the video output. I'll look at one, look at the socket, decide which way it has to go...and find I'm trying to plug it in backwards. Diodes give me panic attacks.
Yeah, it's called 'meth', and Nazi soldiers used it while conducting Blitzkrieg. Not a new development.
My, that is a novel suggestion as to how the techniques of "Blitzkrieg" came into being. I suppose it should have been obvious me--it's well known that their soldiers are "fanatic" or "drug-crazed", while ours are "higly motivated".
It might be interesting to ask whether the pilots who were involved in the disturbingly frequent "friendly fire" incidents during our recent ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq were flying high in more than one sense. But nobody will.
It's peculiar that neither of you "neuroscientists" took the opportunity to point out that neural signals are not electrical impulses--they're electrochemical state changes that propagate along nerve axons at a pretty sedate speed (measured in feet per seconds), and not any form of electrical current akin to what flows through a wire when you connect it across the poles of a battery (or pass the wire through a magnetic field, or whatever). The current in the wire travels quite a bit faster than 60 fps...
The misconception that the brain is full of little conductors, and that its operation is just like a computer, with electrical voltages and organic logic gates giving rise to "thoughts" is dear to the common mind. This misconception is responsible for the glamour exercised by one of the great follies of the age: the notion that we are in an essential and important way like computers, and that computers could be made to be--in some deeply significant way--like us.
As "neuroscientists" you know better than this, of course. The broad outlines of what happens when a neuron transmits a signal are pretty uncontroversial (though I'm sure that there are plenty of spirited arguments about the details). This article wasn't an attack on your views, but on the popular belief.
Perhaps the perpetrator of the article was trying to let a little air out of that particular balloon? Then again, I suppose my surprise would not be too great if I were to learn that some theoretical physicists are so truly dull as to think that they could teach neurophysiologists a thing or two. An interdisciplinary education is a rare phenomenon these days, and the specialists never bother talking to each other--let alone to us normal geeks.
By the way, IANANSIAAP (I am not a neuroscientist, I am a philospher.
You're mostly correct. Normally, an applicant should never specify a salary or salary range during the interview process (above all, do not do it during a preliminary "phone screen"). Your objective should be to obtain an offer, and then negotiate salary. The reason for this is that before you have a firm offer, salary demands can only hurt you--the interview process exists to weed people out, and a high number can kill your chances at this point, while a low number will not help you. (Nobody wants to hire a cheap idiot...well, almost nobody.) Turn aside questions about salary by saying things like, "I really think this is the perfect job for me, and you are the kind of employer I've always wanted to work for. Salary is only a small part of the picture--many other factors will enter into making a decision to accept a potential offer from you". Yadda yadda yadda.
The picture changes completely when the prospective employer makes you an offer. The employer is now committed--you have successfully sold yourself as a desirable employee: they want you, and you know it. You will never be in a stronger position to negotiate than you are in those magic 5 minutes just after you obtain an offer, but have not yet accepted it. Unless the offer is obviously a generous one, ask for whatever you want--go a bit high to give yourself some negotiating room. I have never had an employer withdraw an offer at this point, but you should avoid being unreasonable or appearing greedy. Thank them for their offer, act flattered that they want you, and give some reasons for why you need and deserve more money than they proposed.
The problem I have run into lately is that I'm at a point in my career (or careen) where my salary has gone much higher than the average for people who do what I do. Several times, I have gotten to the offer stage, and found that what the employer wanted to pay was completely out of the ballpark. Going through a job search and interview process is time consuming and exhausting; I really hate to waste my time by pursuing a job that I'm not going to be able to accept, but the few times I've broken the "no numbers" rule have had exactly the effect one would expect--an abrupt cessation of interest on the part of the employer. I would really like to find an answer to this dilemma...anybody out there thought of a good one?
I can only agree how much of a pain this was. Once I'd typed in my 25 numbers and letters, Windows never bothered me or asked me about it again. How intolerably annoying is that?!
Well count yourself lucky. I had a quite a hassle last time MS questioned my right to run my legitimately purchased copy of XP. I had to type that stupid code at least 4 or 5 times in response to robotic prompts. After getting disconnected the first couple of times, I finally got transferred to some guy in Uttermost Thule who sneeringly asked "are you sure you are running this copy of XP on just one computer?" He then promised to fix me up with a new sekrit kode, but put me on Eternal Hold instead. Not to be easily discouraged, I called one more time, and must have connected to a robot who just got oiled, because it gave me a working sekrit kode. I call that a royal PITA.
Now, I know I was given a hard time because I had swapped out my CPU and motherboard in the span of about 3 weeks. Probably, Macthorpe doesn't ever open his box, so doesn't get hassled. I guess it violates MS's expectations and goes contrary to their business model to have people build their own computers and swap out CPUs and motherboards, so I guess that makes me an enemy in their eyes. I suppose I should have expected that, knowing who I was doing business with. My bad.
No other network I have tried (and I HAVE personally tried all of the other ones) even comes close to Verizon's coverage in the Northeast.
That may be true. But it's not true if you want service that extends outside the United States. I was a Verizon customer once. I had to make a quick trip to Europe, and since I was about due for a new phone anyway, I went to Verizon and asked for a phone that would work in Europe. The clerk stared at me as though I'd requested a connection to Mars. Eventually, I elicited the information that they could get me a "world phone" in "a couple of weeks". I went to the T Mobile store, and got a quad-band phone without any fuss, and it worked flawlessly in the European countries (Switzerland and Germany) that I visited. I've been with T Mobile ever since. And I haven't had any problems with connections in the US, either.
Not to mention you'd probably indent the code in any other language, python just gets rid of the extra braces.
Yeah, but once you screw up the indents in a whole file of Python source, you're not going to think that this is such a great thing. See, if you accidentally flatten out the indents of Python code, you have no clue where blocks used to begin and end. If the same thing happened in Perl, you could easily straighten things out by using the curlies as cues. (Heck, my editor will fix indents automatically for Perl.) This actually happened to me once--I accidentally sucked out all the leading spaces of every line of a Python program. The resulting mess made me re-think my infatuation with the language.
Having tried Python and having used Perl for years, I can't think of any reason why we need Python. Seems to me that anything you can do in Python you can also do in Perl. The reverse may be true, but ask yourself...does the world really need another programming language? I'm not going to be fanatic about it...use anything you think will do the job. But I'm not going to be using a language that gets upset if my indents are a off by a space, and that runs counter to my intuitive perception that white space is syntactically meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
So why does your cell phone have to ring at all? Mine is permanently set to vibrate only, and clipped to my belt. If I'm talking to someone in person and I get a phone call, I just completely ignore it. The other person doesn't even know I am ignoring a call. Why should the caller have priority over whoever I'm talking to now? Perhaps it runs counter to prevailing cultural norms, but I do not believe that a ringing phone creates an obligation to answer it. (And yes, I ignore my landline at home all the time--whoever it is can talk to my answering machine. Drives my wife bananas.)
Speaking of women, they would at a disadvantage using the "vibrate-only" method, because most of them don't like to walk around with their phones clipped to their belts (if they have belts). Instead, they stick their phones in their purses, then go crazy digging around in there when their phone rings--assuming they can even find their purse.
Hmm...perhaps there is money to be made here. Cellular lingerie! How about The Phone Bra? Phone Garter? The possibilities are breath-taking. This could give "pleasure mode" a whole new meaning...
If you mean "impossible" in a technical sense, then you are completely wrong. There are no insurmountable technical barriers to creating an electronic infrastructure that permits commercial transactions that are both anonymous and secure. Such an infrastructure is not technically impossible--it is politically infeasible, because the governments of the world's nation-states will not permit it. (Such transactions would be difficult to tax, for one thing.)
Using known cryptographic techniques, there is nothing that prevents you from establishing a unique identity that is not traceable to your true name, but that can nevertheless be authenticated for commercial purposes. Such transactions would, of course, depend on the cooperation of financial institutions (e.g. banks) who are publicly known and trusted. If such a "virtual person" wanted to engage in a commerical transaction with another party (who may or may not be anonymous himself), then the financial institution could act as a go-between without either party ever learning the other's true name. Depending on the nature of the transaction, other services might be required--for example, the bank might hold funds in escrow until the goods are delivered to the specified location, or the requested service is performed.
For truly anonymous transactions, even the financial agent must be unaware of its client's true name. Again, there's no technical reason why this can't be so. All communications between an account holder and his bank could be authenticated by public/private key technology. The bank only needs the ability to uniquely identify the accountholder, and--of course--there must be sufficient funds in the anonymous account to cover the transaction.
As I said, such things are politically infeasible at present. However, as the nation-state continues to weaken, it is possible that we will see the rise of anonymous banking and commerce. This will raise some serious moral questions, of course--trade in illegal substances and stolen goods are only one problematic issue. Another is that it would become possible to solicit illegal services--such as taking up a collection to finance the assassination of a politician whom you particularly despise.
Science fiction author Neal Stephenson writes about these issues in his books Snow Crash and Cryptonomicron.
Here's something I've been wanting to find out for a while: is there any evidence that such omnipresent surveillance deters crime or helps capture criminals? Surely there are statistics about this. If the cameras turn out to be enormously useful in this capacity, then at least a case can be made that surveillance of public places is a good thing. If not...then I wonder why the cameras are still there. Isn't it the (British) government's responsibility to justify its surveillance practices? Have they done so?
Er...yes, of course. Apparently x8B is one of those European-style single quotes (at least that's what I think the purpose of that character is) that looks like a small left angle bracket. (There's a double version as well.)
That's what I get for posting from work, where I have to keep looking over my shoulder watching for my boss, who doesn't understand that posting to /. is research.
"Full width" vs. "Half width" (or, as I prefer, "half-wit") characters exist for typographical convenience in rendering Japanese characters. (Take a look at the Unicode spec, section 10.3 for example http://www.unicode.org/book/ch10.pdf/). This does not, however, explain why certain symbols that are already defined in other parts of the Unicode standard, such as the less-than symbol (or left angle bracket) are duplicated there. I suspect that it has something to do with possible confusions that might arise when parsing or transcoding mixed double-byte and single-byte characters...but that's just a guess.
In any case, the effect of this is that there are 2 ways of producing the < glyph: you can use character code x8B or xFF1C. However, your experiments have shown that browsers do not treat these two codes as being the same character...even though they look the same. I'm not sure if that's right or wrong, if there is a right and wrong way to handle this issue (I suppose that means it's excellent grounds for a religious war)--it's just important that it be handled consistently. From what you found, IE and FF are consistent with each other, while IIS handles the two codes as identical characters. I would think that IIS would at least be on the same page with IE...but wait, thats MS we're talking about.
This comment does not make a bit of sense. What are "semantics carrying containers"? Why would Unicode be harder to secure than Shift-JIS or ANSI?
That comes as a complete surprise to me, and I thought I knew at least a little about Unicode and other character encoding schemes. The usual methods of encoding Unicode character points are UTF-8 (variable-length scheme where characters may be represented by anything from one to six bytes), UTF-16 (fixed-width double byte encoding), UTF-32 (fixed-length 4 byte encoding), and well there's UTF-7 and other oddballs. But the closest I've ever heard of "half width" and "full width" is in connection with Asian--specifically Japanese--characters. There are Asian character sets that have "half-width" and "full-width" variants. Though this is inconsistent with the original intent of Unicode, these character variants (each pair of which are really forms of the same character that have different widths) were defined as separate Unicode characters.
Maybe everyone else knows what they're talking about, and I missed some crucial piece of information...but I don't understand how mistaking one character for another is going to break anything--you'll just have the wrong characters. Anyway, are they talking about HTML content sent via HTTP, or URLS, or what? Can anyone explain this better? Or am I not supposed to understand it?
Er...tell me, just how can you know that?
Maybe I'm "retarted"...but I thought that's exactly what the guy did. That was the point of calling from his boss' phone, right?
Hmm.*peeks out of cubicle at boss' office and notices it's empty* Hmmmmmmmm.
The point is that such a patent would give Amazon the right to sue any other merchant who is deemed by Amazon to infringe on their patent. Because "1 click" is so simple and obvious, any vendor who uses a simple and obvious method for submitting web orders would be open to harrassment by Amazon. In effect, Amazon could argue that "Vendor x has a simple and obvious method for ordering stuff, and this infringes on our patent. We demand that Vendor X immediately design a complicated and obfuscated way of submitting orders via their web page".
It's sad that a business which has done so much to advance web commerce should believe it must resort to such tactics.
Hey, that technology should be 20 years old...the movie version of 1984 had insta-poof document disposals in it. Or did that prediction not come true? Must be the only one.
Not wanting to spend the money, I have to content myself with the (presumably non-restricted) abstract:
Damn, that sounds pretty break-throughish to me...or is the abstract itself hyperbole?
Though the poster who suggested outlawing recycling was modded "funny", he was quite right. (Many a truth is spoken in jest--especially when karma is at stake.)
Where did you get this idea? As far as I know, making paper doesn't involve burning it, so I don't see how you're liberating CO2 during the process. Are you saying that the energy used in making paper results in the release of CO2? Maybe--but it takes energy to make recycled paper, also.
Trees contain a "minute" amount of carbon? Have you ever made the close acquaintance of either a tree or a chemistry text? Both are composed of cellulose (C6H10O5)...and that amounts to quite a lot of carbon.
You don't know how paper is made, what's involved in recycling it, what trees are composed of...and you haven't the foggiest notion about what kind of trees are used in making paper. Trees destined for paper are farmed. They are usually rapidly growing trees that reach maturity in about 20 years; after they're cut down, the area is re-seeded so that the process can be repeated. That's the economical way to make paper, and the paper companies have been doing it this way for many years. Each cycle results in a non-negligible quantity of carbon being isolated and (we can only hope) buried, so making paper results in a net reduction of the CO2 "greenhouse gas". Furthermore, paper-making does not result in a net decrease of the number of trees in the world.
Paper recycling is one of those measures that makes no sense, but it gives ignorant people a good feeling about themselves, so I guess we're going to be stuck with for a long time to come.
I have absolutely no quarrel with mathematical formulae (I find them quite inoffensive), nor am I in pursuit of a "common-sense intuitive answer to everything"--whatever that might be. Quantum mechanics can say anything they want to (when they crawl out from under their tiny cars). I have a problem though, when they say things that sound as though they were in contradiction to what normal, sensible people would say.
For example, that business about Mr. Schrödinger's poor cat being in limbo until someone opens his box...that still strikes me as mighty peculiar. I know real Quantum Scientists are smart people, and so they must be trying to say something important. I definitely should be paying attention. Unfortunately, I simply don't understand what they're saying--I am not saying that it is false. I have found, however, that as soon as I ask a quantum mechanic to explain what he means, he starts talking about "wave function collapse", and when that leaves me with a blank stare, he usually tells me that I "just don't understand the math". I think you can't have it both ways: you can say things that have to do with the universe of our "common sense experience", but also insist that those statements can't be understood in an ordinary way.
I've found that these discussions get very heated very quickly. In fact, the worst flame war in which I was ever involved centered on precisely this topic, back in the USENET days (sci.physics, I think). As I recall, someone had said that "observation" alters the phenomenon that is being observed. I asked what was, to me, a very straightforward question: do you mean that the mechanics of the instruments involved affect the behavior of the tiny particles we're observing (e.g., as bouncing electrons off another electron to determine its position or vector would affect its behavior), or is this some more mysterious interaction--does, perhaps, the act of taking cognizance of the observed phenomen cause the change? Or is it something different still? My correspondent reacted as though I had denigrated the sexual performance of his younger sister.
So please let me say this: I am not trying to piss anyone off. I am trying to (gently) point out that the days when physics has power to explain the world of our experience may be in the past. I believe that while QM may be useful as a theory (i.e., it has "predictive power"), it has caused both naive hangers-on and smart people who ought to know better to say some pretty strange things. Unfortunately, these are very complex issues in the philosophy of science, and I do not remotely have adequate time to do them justice.
I'm quite sure I don't get it. Indeed, I am certain about only one thing in this discussion: whatever you mean by "observe" is most peculiar--in fact, I've never encountered this particular use of the word. Could you enlighten me by giving some examples of what it might mean for rocks to "observe"? Are some rocks more observant than others? Is gneiss more perceptive than granite?
No doubt, I am misunderstanding what you have said. Perhaps you have a special, technical sense of the word "observe" in mind? If so, its use requires a bit of explanation...and a caveat that it has nothing to do with the word as I would ordinarily use it. For example:
I'm not even going to touch that stuff about the rock being "sad" about the dead cat...
As someone else has pointed out, it's a pity that most physicists are given no philosophical training; though the benefits of such training may be rather limited, it does tend to encourage linguistic precision.
For several decades (the 50s through the 70s) Detroit had the American public convinced that they absolutely had to have a new car every year. (Well, every two years, at least.) Detroit had car-buyers convinced that tremendous technical strides were made every year, and that this year's car made last year's obsolete. The car-makers did this by introducing superficial cosmetic changes and adding pointless "innovations" (remember the push-button automatic gear shift?), then marketing them as major leaps into the technological future.
Perhaps the archetypal feature of this type was the tail fin. It's hard to say when the evolution of the tail fin began--maybe 1950 or so, when they were just a line of chrome that marked a ridge that ran along the trunk of the car to the tail lights. Each year, the fins became more prominent, growing into things resembling the wings of a jet fighter, and eventually (at least in some models) taking over the entire trunk lid with their swooping, razor-edged lines. Having reached the limits of absurdity, a reverse evolution set in, that culminated in the slow shrinkage of the fin until it became vestigial, then disappeared altogether.
I don't think anyone ever actually said that tail fins would make your car run faster or handle better. But that was hardly necessary--how could something so cool and "aerodynamic" not be a good thing? Most importantly--as far as the auto-makers were concerned, the dimensions of the tail fins were a clear visual indicator of who had this year's model, and who was stuck with last-years lame obsolete piece of junk with those inferior fins.
What's this got to do with Windows Vista? Surely, the parallells aren't that hard to see. Microsoft has normal PC users convinced that operating system technology is being continually and rapidly advanced by the MicroSerfs of Redmond, and that if you don't have this year's model you're just a technical lamer. Furthermore, the chief way that MS differentiates the iterations of its Operating Systems is through superficial visual changes--but instead of bigger tail fins, we get a "glitzier" GUI. That's because MS feels that Joe user wouldn't be able to understand any technical reasons why one OS might be prefereable to another, and--more imporantly--because there really aren't any reasons why Vista is clearly preferable to XP--or even Windows 2K. (Unless, of course, you need some feature that MS has refused to retrofit into a previous Window release just to make sure that you will have to switch. For example, when I went wireless, I really wanted WPA-PSK security, but that wasn't available for Win 2K, so I had to switch to XP.)
I suppose the only hope is that MS screws up so bad with a new OS release that people just refuse to buy it, or to buy computers that have it preinstalled. Maybe Vista is that OS, I don't know. When that day comes, maybe MS--or their successors--will build a really good OS. One that's modular, so that you can swap out chunks as they become obsolete, or are found to have fatal security flaws, and recompile the sucker. And hey, maybe people will wise up to the fact that a GUI is just another modular layer that you can slap on top of an operating system, and that you don't need to replace the guts of the OS if you want latest coolest 3D icons with those gotta-have tail fins.
OK, I'm going to reveal my ignorance here for all to see. I do some programming, but as a sideline (I make tools for myself when automation would make a job easier). I had thought that if a program was "multithreaded", then this meant that the OS could assign different threads to run on different processors of your multiprocessor machine, and thus permit quicker execution of CPU-intensive applications. I have a dual processor machine here at work, and it's frustrating to see a job that takes a half hour to run consistently using only 50% of CPU. (No, I didn't write the software in question.) I keep thinking that if only the application was multi-threaded, then it would finish in 15 minutes. Am I wrong?
I'm more than a little suspicious that multiprocessor motherboards and multicore CPUs are just another piece of marketing hype to separate me from my money. (Sort of like having a 64 bit chip when I run a 32 bit OS because there aren't that many drivers and apps out there that will run on 64 bit machines...but all the AMD CPUs are 64 bit now, so I pay for all those bits whether I like it or not...)
Actually, HP solved the inkjet print head clogging problem quite a while ago...in a sense. As far as I can tell, HP Deskjet printers are the only ones in which the print head and the cartridge are one and the same. That means if your head clogs, you throw away the cartridge, not the printer. Of course, if you consider the price of cartridges, you might just be ahead if you dump the printer.
I agree with you that the first SATA connectors were brain-dead. For the life of me, I can't understand what the designers were thinking when they didn't include a latch. However, I never really had problems with the plugs falling off--it was just a source of neurotic worry, like whether I turned off the soldering iron after I used it last time. In any case, the advantages of the SATA cable (thin, greater maximum length than the old IDE cables, no slave/master foo) outweighed any worries about the wobbly connectors, so I've been using SATA ever since it first came out.
However, you speak of "the current SATA connecters"; have you really looked at SATA cables recently? The last couple of times I built a PC, the SATA cables came with little clips that lock them firmly into place. I'm not sure if this is part of a new standard, or if some manufacturers are simply doing the obvious. Perhaps you should look around for some of these "clippy" cables.
I do wish someone would come up with a connector that I could look at, and instantly tell which way to plug it in. Of course, I'm kind of challenged in the area of visual/spatial perception...I even have trouble with those D shaped connectors for the video output. I'll look at one, look at the socket, decide which way it has to go...and find I'm trying to plug it in backwards. Diodes give me panic attacks.
My, that is a novel suggestion as to how the techniques of "Blitzkrieg" came into being. I suppose it should have been obvious me--it's well known that their soldiers are "fanatic" or "drug-crazed", while ours are "higly motivated".
Seriously, there's nothing new here. For example, benzedrine and other stimulants were routinely issued to U.S. Air Force pilots to keep them awake during WW II. In fact, the U.S. Air Force still issues amphetamines to its pilots and pressure them to take these "go pills". (For example, take a look at http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id= 1425252002 or http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/a pj/apj97/spr97/cornum.html or http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,57434,00. htmlhere.
It might be interesting to ask whether the pilots who were involved in the disturbingly frequent "friendly fire" incidents during our recent ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq were flying high in more than one sense. But nobody will.
It's peculiar that neither of you "neuroscientists" took the opportunity to point out that neural signals are not electrical impulses--they're electrochemical state changes that propagate along nerve axons at a pretty sedate speed (measured in feet per seconds), and not any form of electrical current akin to what flows through a wire when you connect it across the poles of a battery (or pass the wire through a magnetic field, or whatever). The current in the wire travels quite a bit faster than 60 fps...
The misconception that the brain is full of little conductors, and that its operation is just like a computer, with electrical voltages and organic logic gates giving rise to "thoughts" is dear to the common mind. This misconception is responsible for the glamour exercised by one of the great follies of the age: the notion that we are in an essential and important way like computers, and that computers could be made to be--in some deeply significant way--like us.
As "neuroscientists" you know better than this, of course. The broad outlines of what happens when a neuron transmits a signal are pretty uncontroversial (though I'm sure that there are plenty of spirited arguments about the details). This article wasn't an attack on your views, but on the popular belief.
Perhaps the perpetrator of the article was trying to let a little air out of that particular balloon? Then again, I suppose my surprise would not be too great if I were to learn that some theoretical physicists are so truly dull as to think that they could teach neurophysiologists a thing or two. An interdisciplinary education is a rare phenomenon these days, and the specialists never bother talking to each other--let alone to us normal geeks.
By the way, IANANSIAAP (I am not a neuroscientist, I am a philospher.
You're mostly correct. Normally, an applicant should never specify a salary or salary range during the interview process (above all, do not do it during a preliminary "phone screen"). Your objective should be to obtain an offer, and then negotiate salary. The reason for this is that before you have a firm offer, salary demands can only hurt you--the interview process exists to weed people out, and a high number can kill your chances at this point, while a low number will not help you. (Nobody wants to hire a cheap idiot...well, almost nobody.) Turn aside questions about salary by saying things like, "I really think this is the perfect job for me, and you are the kind of employer I've always wanted to work for. Salary is only a small part of the picture--many other factors will enter into making a decision to accept a potential offer from you". Yadda yadda yadda.
The picture changes completely when the prospective employer makes you an offer. The employer is now committed--you have successfully sold yourself as a desirable employee: they want you, and you know it. You will never be in a stronger position to negotiate than you are in those magic 5 minutes just after you obtain an offer, but have not yet accepted it. Unless the offer is obviously a generous one, ask for whatever you want--go a bit high to give yourself some negotiating room. I have never had an employer withdraw an offer at this point, but you should avoid being unreasonable or appearing greedy. Thank them for their offer, act flattered that they want you, and give some reasons for why you need and deserve more money than they proposed.
The problem I have run into lately is that I'm at a point in my career (or careen) where my salary has gone much higher than the average for people who do what I do. Several times, I have gotten to the offer stage, and found that what the employer wanted to pay was completely out of the ballpark. Going through a job search and interview process is time consuming and exhausting; I really hate to waste my time by pursuing a job that I'm not going to be able to accept, but the few times I've broken the "no numbers" rule have had exactly the effect one would expect--an abrupt cessation of interest on the part of the employer. I would really like to find an answer to this dilemma...anybody out there thought of a good one?
Well count yourself lucky. I had a quite a hassle last time MS questioned my right to run my legitimately purchased copy of XP. I had to type that stupid code at least 4 or 5 times in response to robotic prompts. After getting disconnected the first couple of times, I finally got transferred to some guy in Uttermost Thule who sneeringly asked "are you sure you are running this copy of XP on just one computer?" He then promised to fix me up with a new sekrit kode, but put me on Eternal Hold instead. Not to be easily discouraged, I called one more time, and must have connected to a robot who just got oiled, because it gave me a working sekrit kode. I call that a royal PITA.
Now, I know I was given a hard time because I had swapped out my CPU and motherboard in the span of about 3 weeks. Probably, Macthorpe doesn't ever open his box, so doesn't get hassled. I guess it violates MS's expectations and goes contrary to their business model to have people build their own computers and swap out CPUs and motherboards, so I guess that makes me an enemy in their eyes. I suppose I should have expected that, knowing who I was doing business with. My bad.
That may be true. But it's not true if you want service that extends outside the United States. I was a Verizon customer once. I had to make a quick trip to Europe, and since I was about due for a new phone anyway, I went to Verizon and asked for a phone that would work in Europe. The clerk stared at me as though I'd requested a connection to Mars. Eventually, I elicited the information that they could get me a "world phone" in "a couple of weeks". I went to the T Mobile store, and got a quad-band phone without any fuss, and it worked flawlessly in the European countries (Switzerland and Germany) that I visited. I've been with T Mobile ever since. And I haven't had any problems with connections in the US, either.
Yeah, but once you screw up the indents in a whole file of Python source, you're not going to think that this is such a great thing. See, if you accidentally flatten out the indents of Python code, you have no clue where blocks used to begin and end. If the same thing happened in Perl, you could easily straighten things out by using the curlies as cues. (Heck, my editor will fix indents automatically for Perl.) This actually happened to me once--I accidentally sucked out all the leading spaces of every line of a Python program. The resulting mess made me re-think my infatuation with the language.
Having tried Python and having used Perl for years, I can't think of any reason why we need Python. Seems to me that anything you can do in Python you can also do in Perl. The reverse may be true, but ask yourself...does the world really need another programming language? I'm not going to be fanatic about it...use anything you think will do the job. But I'm not going to be using a language that gets upset if my indents are a off by a space, and that runs counter to my intuitive perception that white space is syntactically meaningless.