Thanks! What strikes me as odd, though, is that it seems like some mechanically-inclined tradesman on staff for CBS would have been able to make the board more random... Oh, great; now I've splintered this into a thread on randomness!
*sigh* this is why I just gotta get a dish (no cable out in the boonies where I live...): I had no idea about the GSN report. I always thought there was a pattern to the way the numbers and the Whammies flashed on the screen (every once in a while someone would just freeze up and let the thing run through two or three cycles, then it seemed pretty apparent...) Oh, well.
Better than what? Better than represent the people of America? The PTC, the PTA, the ACLU and the NRA (as well as the NFL, the WWF and the NOW and a ka-hundred other acronyms) are made up of citizens whose rights to representation and action are equal. Like it or not (and I don't like MOST of the things government does...), this really is the way it was intended to work, and the lesson here (as with all experiences with the government on all levels) is this: if you like it, then contribute; vote, campaign, debate, interact, etc. and if you don't like it, then contribute; vote, campaign, debate, interact, etc.
"It'll be more like a 100-mile piece of paper fluttering to the ground."
O...M...G!!! a 100-mile piece of paper could make a 100-mile paper cut!!! What would we do?!?! Are there any contingency plans in place to handle a 100-mile paper cut? Is there even an order in for a big enough bottle of Bactine?!?!?! And, for that matter, just think how much Bactine would make a 100-mile paper cut sting!!! Nope, this whole thing's starting to sound just a bit too risky... I say we revisit the "giant rubber band" idea someone had (of course, getting snapped by a giant rubber band is liable to sting quite a bit too...Dang it, why does space travel have to be so risky?!?!?!)
And thank you, too!
(hmmm, I didn't realze/. "makes you wait 20 seconds between replies" (nor did I realize it had been only 19 seconds since I replied to the other/.-er...grr...) Oh well. One, Mississippi...two, Mississippi...
Yes, I realize I should know this one already, but I can't seem to recall ever hearing his name actually said out loud and it aggravates me that I mentally stumble through every instance of his name in print.
Oh, great: now I've gone and distracted myself from my actual JOB (fortunately, this site'll be/.'d beyond all recognition within moments and I'll be able to get back to work...)
Maybe they'd let us CLEP the course for $3500 if we promised to buy the textbook at the campus bookstore instead of the "outlaw" place across the street...
the US federal government also happens to run a bunch of huge social insurance businesses (social security, medicare, etc.), but they seem to be doing that quite well, actually.
Yeah, running a "business" is really hard work when all you have to do to correct a costly "business mistake" is to go pick more money off the money tree...
Folks, I'd like to nominate the parent (of this post, not the parent of this quickly warming thread), as the "poster child" for R'ing TFA (or TFP in this case...) From my original post:
That's what's missing with the internet: a truly controlling authority with rapid response capabilities to answer "emergency" calls such as we might expect to come in to the local 911 switchboard, plus the ability (and willingness) to quarantine "sites" that pose a potential "public health risk" to the rest of the 'net. That's both bad (from a potential-victim standpoint) and good (from a personal liberties standpoint)
the phrase "good (from a personal liberties standpoint)" refers to the internet's LACK of a single watchdog administration that has "the ability (and willingness) to quarantine "sites" that pose a potential "public health risk" to the rest of the 'net" I no more than anyone else (and certainly less than most!) want to be told what to do (especially to be told "take your online presence 'off the air' because the very material it's constructed of -- i.e. IE (pun intended) -- is 'dangerous to your neighbors', etc.") and, like most Americans who have had several generations to get used-to and fond-of their liberties, I'd probably tell them that if they lack the authority to force me to comply that they can just go eat a sandwich. And that sentence brings us squarely back on topic: without and unless there's some overlording authority that has the power and the willingness to enforce some "terms of usage" for the internet at large we're going to continue to see unpatched/insecure systems of all types (and yes, that includes Linux...and yes, that includes all the "alternate browsers", etc. -- if you think they're bulletproof then you're falling victim to the same delusions that Microsoft suffers; they just haven't been attacked on a wide enough scale (yet) for the vulnerabilities to have been discovered and publicized) because there're always going to be people who feel that their time is better spent doing something else (and, for the record, I agree that they're wrong, but simply asking them nicely to "go to all that extra effort", as they'd see it, simply isn't working.)
Yes, people can be depended upon to police themselves. To a certain extent, that is. But you're always going to have someone who feels that their needs at that moment outweigh the safety of others around them: speed limits on the physical roadways are an excellent example. Even with speed limits being enforced by the police, there is always one guy (and yes, on occasion it's ME) who thinks that his need to get to work on time outweighs the potential risk to others around him -- it isn't a sure thing that he'll crash into a busload of school children any more than it's a sure thing that a particular unpatched server will be infected by OU812.\/!RUS or whatever, but the potential exists for reasons ranging from simple carelessness to wanton recklessness, and without enforcement most people would see little reason to always "watch their speed". That's not an endorsement of "Big Brother" so much as an acceptance of the fact that if we're to ever stand a chance of "securing the internet" we've got to do a little more than appeal to people's sense of public responsibility.
If there was a public health risk - such as biohazardous material - even in a private storefront - the city or state would close off the area and warn people not to go there. Yes, you might have people wanting to go anyway, but they've been warned.
Oh, you'd not only have people wanting to go there, you'd have people determined to go there (whether just to "test their mettle" or because they're crazy or just stupid or whatever), and the authorities would physically block access to the site by closing roads and posting armed security personnel around the perimeter. That's what's missing with the internet: a truly controlling authority with rapid response capabilities to answer "emergency" calls such as we might expect to come in to the local 911 switchboard, plus the ability (and willingness) to quarantine "sites" that pose a potential "public health risk" to the rest of the 'net. That's both bad (from a potential-victim standpoint) and good (from a personal liberties standpoint), but there's got to be some middle ground better than just running the internet "WFO" and depending on the good nature and virtue of the general public.
Ah, the many (and strange) interconnections within our lives; your last statement reminded me of a bit of trivia I came across just this week at The Jargon Dictionary in the definition of Kluge From the def:
"...Other sources report that `kluge' was common Navy slang in the WWII era for any piece of electronics that worked well on shore but consistently failed at sea."
I guess if it didn't work on shore (but worked well in the water) they'd have to call it an "Egulk"...
I'm referring, of course, to my willingness to buy, rent, or even entertain (pun intended) the notion of watching one -- when will these "entertainment moguls" learn that they can't just keep spitting in their (potential) customers' faces indefinitely and expect there to not (eventually) be a financial backlash?
Is piracy a problem for that industry? Sure, but guess what, guys: piracy's a problem for the SOFTWARE industry too, and (with some comical "crippleware" exceptions) WE'VE not resorted to self-destructing products to prevent the illegitimate distribution of OUR hard work! (Unfortunately, the self-destructing-product scheme only seems effective in preventing the legitimate distribution of something, but it's a high-priced lesson always learned too late.)
If it weren't so irritating I'd laugh, though, because this reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide's device of a "shoe event horizon". Plus, how long until someone tries the "but officer, I was just trying to get home with my DVD of Star Wars, Episode Eleven before it self-destructed!" excuse to get out of a speeding rap?
And I can't help but think there'll be a lot of people compulsively humming the Mission: Impossible theme on the way home with their movies; "Your mission, should you choose to accept it...this DVD will self-destruct in five seconds..."
"...I am now calling on the Linux community to boycott my creation until its current owners
stop accepting money from Microsoft to publish blatantly anti-Linux/pro-Microsoft ads."
Who's Billy DeBeck, you ask? Why, just the guy who created the comic strip character Barney Google (you know, the guy with the "goo-goo-googly eyes"?!) and King Features Syndicate for distributing the cartoon for the past EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS (which, by the way, doesn't predate Mr. Kastner but which DOES predate the coining of the word "googol" by at least a decade.)
It's this kind of frivolous abuse of the courts that keeps real and legitimate cases that might bring about real reforms and improvements from being effective (or even successful.)
Meredes? Screw that crap; I'd rather upgrade my Delorean/Time-Machine replica so that any dents, paint chips, rust spots, etc. would automatically and instantly heal themselves. Or instead would morph into a Hummer when I needed to haul twelve people, a Lambourghini when I needed to haul butt, a boat when I "needed" to go fishing, etc., etc., etc. I say if we're going to dream, let's dream BIG and quit this squabbling over whether or not we or some spotted owls are going to get killed by this stuff; of COURSE things will die because of this stuff: it's STUFF (this just in: stuff kills things. More at 11...) What most people who are worried about this stuff are *really* worried about is that instead of living off someone else's sweat and hard work (i.e. patenting something that is more or less a gigantic "duh!", like timed-press buttons or single-click ordering, and then suing the crap out of anyone with the ingenuity and ambition to make a buck off of it rather than actually DO the work themselves...) they're going to have to (*GASP!*) get out and DO some work themselves (apparently, they're good at making the intuitive leap that not ALL effort will be erradicated by this stuff, just like not all housework was erradicated by the advent of the vacuum cleaner and the washing machine.)
THANK YOU!! I hadn't seen that diagram since way back in high school when I built a variant of the vortex tube for a science fair (essentially, I tapered the tube along the horizontal axis, so the "cold" end was at the point-end of a cone shape...at least I think it was the cold end; that was twenty years, two careers, and several (root)beers ago...)
Here's a link to one company that's apparently making some money from the idea (and a couple of other clever air-based devices -- check out the "air conveyor" and "air amplifier")
So, how long before this "genre" goes open-source?
on
The Novel as Software
·
· Score: 1
"Temperature and heart rate should be easy - infrared pyrometers are used in industry to measure, with accuracy, the temperature of a surface, no reason it shouldn't work to point it at a person & get a number"
That's exactly the way the "SARS test" in the Shanghai International Airport works; they herd (yes, "herd" is the appropriate term) passengers-to-be past a checkpoint where there's a lone infrared imager scanning the single-file line -- most likely they swoop in to perform more detailed investigations if you trip the temp limit...don't know for sure since nobody tripped it while we were there (as far as we know...)
["A biomonitor that will give you a signal (on your mobile with wireless technology)"]
Why bother carrying a "mobile" when you're already toting around a processor the size of a flea's earlobe inside you? All it'd have to do to report to you is transmit the info directly into your nervous system (which it's already hooked up to in the first place) and Presto! no worry about the info being intercepted and decoded by Wal-Mart so they know whether you need toothpaste (or Viagra, or Odor Eaters, etc...) and send a message of their own to your handheld device.
So, does this stuff have the potential to be abso-freaking-lutely COOL? Sure! Does it also have the potential to be an equally terrifying nightmare? Sure! Just look at how "cool" the automobile is compared to a covered wagon:
MUCH faster (cross country: days -vs- months)
more convenient (inclement weather? Who cares!)
more effective ("perishables" less likely to perish, resulting in expansion of produce markets, etc.)
more comfortable (hot? A/C! cold? Heat!)
Now, let's consider how "terrifying" the automobile is -vs- the covered wagon:
top speed approx. 10X (take somebody from 1862 for a little drive at 90mph and listen for their heart to explode!)
if you don't have to worry about the horse freezing to death, you might be more likely to get out on a night that's literally "not fit for man nor beast", and get yourself frozen to death
Things (and, *gasp!* ideas) move around so much faster we can't keep up!
no matter WHAT the mode of travel, people carry germs with them; faster cross-country transit times for people = faster cross-country transit times for germs
Upheaval in markets/supply lines (Suddenly nobody wants to buy my cleverly-concocted artificial orange flavoring in Massachusetts - formerly my best customers - because the real thing is available year-round at about the same cost from Florida!)
Like it or not, riding around in a covered wagon will make you tough (either that or it'll kill you...); if we start driving these newfangled "automobiles" instead of our trusty old covered wagons, we're liable to go soft and get lazy!
All that, and we still haven't considered how many people (not to mention squirrels and puppies) are run down by speeding automobiles every year (that's not to say there wasn't the occassional smushing of a squirrel or clueless pedestrian back in the "horse-and-buggy" days, but still...) My point: (betcha thought I wasn't going to end up having one, didn't you?) every revolution we can see coming sparks fear and dread in the population about to undergo said revolution, mostly because it upsets the "status-quo"; whether or not they admit it most people prefer the familiar to the unfamiliar and change is upsetting to our basic nature (got an infant handy? Try effecting a drastic change in his/her sleeping or eating schedule sometime -- you'll hear complaints. Loud complaints.) Does the fact that this "revolution" is being received almost exactly as previous ones were mean that we're silly to consider the implications and we should instead rush headlong into the unknown? Of course not, but history tells us that once the dust settles we'll all be better off (generally speaking, that is...)
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Thanks! What strikes me as odd, though, is that it seems like some mechanically-inclined tradesman on staff for CBS would have been able to make the board more random... Oh, great; now I've splintered this into a thread on randomness !
*sigh* this is why I just gotta get a dish (no cable out in the boonies where I live...): I had no idea about the GSN report. I always thought there was a pattern to the way the numbers and the Whammies flashed on the screen (every once in a while someone would just freeze up and let the thing run through two or three cycles, then it seemed pretty apparent...) Oh, well.
Better than what? Better than represent the people of America? The PTC, the PTA, the ACLU and the NRA (as well as the NFL, the WWF and the NOW and a ka-hundred other acronyms) are made up of citizens whose rights to representation and action are equal . Like it or not (and I don't like MOST of the things government does...), this really is the way it was intended to work, and the lesson here (as with all experiences with the government on all levels) is this: if you like it, then contribute; vote, campaign, debate, interact, etc. and if you don't like it, then contribute; vote, campaign, debate, interact, etc.
O...M... G!!! a 100-mile piece of paper could make a 100-mile paper cut!!! What would we do?!?! Are there any contingency plans in place to handle a 100-mile paper cut? Is there even an order in for a big enough bottle of Bactine?!?!?! And, for that matter, just think how much Bactine would make a 100-mile paper cut sting!!!
Nope, this whole thing's starting to sound just a bit too risky... I say we revisit the "giant rubber band" idea someone had (of course, getting snapped by a giant rubber band is liable to sting quite a bit too...Dang it, why does space travel have to be so risky?!?!?!)
And thank you, too! /. "makes you wait 20 seconds between replies" (nor did I realize it had been only 19 seconds since I replied to the other /.-er...grr...) Oh well. One, Mississippi...two, Mississippi...
(hmmm, I didn't realze
I can't believe I didn't think to try M-W myself; I refer people there at least once every couple of days myself!! Duh...
Thanks!!
Yes, I realize I should know this one already, but I can't seem to recall ever hearing his name actually said out loud and it aggravates me that I mentally stumble through every instance of his name in print.
I can't believe they didn't remember this!
/.'d beyond all recognition within moments and I'll be able to get back to work...)
Oh, great: now I've gone and distracted myself from my actual JOB (fortunately, this site'll be
(the above is entended entire as sarcasm)
Dang it! In the future PLEASE , instead of appending such a statement to the bottom of your post, please use this statement at the top of your post:
"The following is intended entire as sarcasm"
I had my asbestos typing gloves all donned and was just cracking my knuckles when I got to that line...
Maybe they'd let us CLEP the course for $3500 if we promised to buy the textbook at the campus bookstore instead of the "outlaw" place across the street...
Yeah, running a "business" is really hard work when all you have to do to correct a costly "business mistake" is to go pick more money off the money tree...
From my original post:
the phrase "good (from a personal liberties standpoint)" refers to the internet's LACK of a single watchdog administration that has "the ability (and willingness) to quarantine "sites" that pose a potential "public health risk" to the rest of the 'net"
I no more than anyone else (and certainly less than most!) want to be told what to do (especially to be told "take your online presence 'off the air' because the very material it's constructed of -- i.e. IE (pun intended) -- is 'dangerous to your neighbors', etc.") and, like most Americans who have had several generations to get used-to and fond-of their liberties, I'd probably tell them that if they lack the authority to force me to comply that they can just go eat a sandwich. And that sentence brings us squarely back on topic: without and unless there's some overlording authority that has the power and the willingness to enforce some "terms of usage" for the internet at large we're going to continue to see unpatched/insecure systems of all types (and yes, that includes Linux...and yes, that includes all the "alternate browsers", etc. -- if you think they're bulletproof then you're falling victim to the same delusions that Microsoft suffers; they just haven't been attacked on a wide enough scale (yet) for the vulnerabilities to have been discovered and publicized) because there're always going to be people who feel that their time is better spent doing something else (and, for the record, I agree that they're wrong, but simply asking them nicely to "go to all that extra effort", as they'd see it, simply isn't working.)
Yes, people can be depended upon to police themselves. To a certain extent, that is. But you're always going to have someone who feels that their needs at that moment outweigh the safety of others around them: speed limits on the physical roadways are an excellent example. Even with speed limits being enforced by the police, there is always one guy (and yes, on occasion it's ME ) who thinks that his need to get to work on time outweighs the potential risk to others around him -- it isn't a sure thing that he'll crash into a busload of school children any more than it's a sure thing that a particular unpatched server will be infected by OU812.\/!RUS or whatever, but the potential exists for reasons ranging from simple carelessness to wanton recklessness, and without enforcement most people would see little reason to always "watch their speed". That's not an endorsement of "Big Brother" so much as an acceptance of the fact that if we're to ever stand a chance of "securing the internet" we've got to do a little more than appeal to people's sense of public responsibility.
I guess if it didn't work on shore (but worked well in the water) they'd have to call it an "Egulk"...
I'm referring, of course, to my willingness to buy, rent, or even entertain (pun intended) the notion of watching one -- when will these "entertainment moguls" learn that they can't just keep spitting in their (potential) customers' faces indefinitely and expect there to not (eventually) be a financial backlash?
Is piracy a problem for that industry? Sure, but guess what, guys: piracy's a problem for the SOFTWARE industry too, and (with some comical "crippleware" exceptions) WE'VE not resorted to self-destructing products to prevent the illegitimate distribution of OUR hard work! (Unfortunately, the self-destructing-product scheme only seems effective in preventing the legitimate distribution of something, but it's a high-priced lesson always learned too late.)
If it weren't so irritating I'd laugh, though, because this reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide's device of a "shoe event horizon". Plus, how long until someone tries the "but officer, I was just trying to get home with my DVD of Star Wars, Episode Eleven before it self-destructed!" excuse to get out of a speeding rap?
And I can't help but think there'll be a lot of people compulsively humming the Mission: Impossible theme on the way home with their movies; "Your mission, should you choose to accept it...this DVD will self-destruct in five seconds..."
Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
...after all, what was it Jesus said about a house divided against itself?
Judging from your choice of words, you're Sideshow Bob , aren't you?!?! ;-)
Who's Billy DeBeck, you ask? Why, just the guy who created the comic strip character Barney Google (you know, the guy with the "goo-goo-googly eyes"?!) and King Features Syndicate for distributing the cartoon for the past EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS (which, by the way, doesn't predate Mr. Kastner but which DOES predate the coining of the word "googol" by at least a decade.)
It's this kind of frivolous abuse of the courts that keeps real and legitimate cases that might bring about real reforms and improvements from being effective (or even successful.)
Meredes? Screw that crap; I'd rather upgrade my Delorean/Time-Machine replica so that any dents, paint chips, rust spots, etc. would automatically and instantly heal themselves. Or instead would morph into a Hummer when I needed to haul twelve people, a Lambourghini when I needed to haul butt, a boat when I "needed" to go fishing, etc., etc., etc. I say if we're going to dream, let's dream BIG and quit this squabbling over whether or not we or some spotted owls are going to get killed by this stuff; of COURSE things will die because of this stuff: it's STUFF (this just in: stuff kills things. More at 11...) What most people who are worried about this stuff are *really* worried about is that instead of living off someone else's sweat and hard work (i.e. patenting something that is more or less a gigantic "duh!", like timed-press buttons or single-click ordering, and then suing the crap out of anyone with the ingenuity and ambition to make a buck off of it rather than actually DO the work themselves...) they're going to have to (*GASP!*) get out and DO some work themselves (apparently, they're good at making the intuitive leap that not ALL effort will be erradicated by this stuff, just like not all housework was erradicated by the advent of the vacuum cleaner and the washing machine.)
Or at least 30-times-better than most of the crap they're charging 30-times-as-much to get into these days...
THANK YOU!! I hadn't seen that diagram since way back in high school when I built a variant of the vortex tube for a science fair (essentially, I tapered the tube along the horizontal axis, so the "cold" end was at the point-end of a cone shape...at least I think it was the cold end; that was twenty years, two careers, and several (root)beers ago...)
Here's a link to one company that's apparently making some money from the idea (and a couple of other clever air-based devices -- check out the "air conveyor" and "air amplifier")
Huh? Oh, yeah...
Why bother carrying a "mobile" when you're already toting around a processor the size of a flea's earlobe inside you? All it'd have to do to report to you is transmit the info directly into your nervous system (which it's already hooked up to in the first place ) and Presto! no worry about the info being intercepted and decoded by Wal-Mart so they know whether you need toothpaste (or Viagra, or Odor Eaters, etc...) and send a message of their own to your handheld device.
So, does this stuff have the potential to be abso-freaking-lutely COOL? Sure! Does it also have the potential to be an equally terrifying nightmare? Sure! Just look at how "cool" the automobile is compared to a covered wagon:
- MUCH faster (cross country: days -vs- months)
- more convenient (inclement weather? Who cares!)
- more effective ("perishables" less likely to perish, resulting in expansion of produce markets, etc.)
- more comfortable (hot? A/C! cold? Heat!)
Now, let's consider how "terrifying" the automobile is -vs- the covered wagon:- top speed approx. 10X (take somebody from 1862 for a little drive at 90mph and listen for their heart to explode!)
- if you don't have to worry about the horse freezing to death, you might be more likely to get out on a night that's literally "not fit for man nor beast", and get yourself frozen to death
- Things (and, *gasp!* ideas) move around so much faster we can't keep up!
- no matter WHAT the mode of travel, people carry germs with them; faster cross-country transit times for people = faster cross-country transit times for germs
- Upheaval in markets/supply lines (Suddenly nobody wants to buy my cleverly-concocted artificial orange flavoring in Massachusetts - formerly my best customers - because the real thing is available year-round at about the same cost from Florida!)
- Like it or not, riding around in a covered wagon will make you tough (either that or it'll kill you...); if we start driving these newfangled "automobiles" instead of our trusty old covered wagons, we're liable to go soft and get lazy!
All that, and we still haven't considered how many people (not to mention squirrels and puppies) are run down by speeding automobiles every year (that's not to say there wasn't the occassional smushing of a squirrel or clueless pedestrian back in the "horse-and-buggy" days, but still...)My point: (betcha thought I wasn't going to end up having one, didn't you?)
every revolution we can see coming sparks fear and dread in the population about to undergo said revolution, mostly because it upsets the "status-quo"; whether or not they admit it most people prefer the familiar to the unfamiliar and change is upsetting to our basic nature (got an infant handy? Try effecting a drastic change in his/her sleeping or eating schedule sometime -- you'll hear complaints. Loud complaints.) Does the fact that this "revolution" is being received almost exactly as previous ones were mean that we're silly to consider the implications and we should instead rush headlong into the unknown? Of course not, but history tells us that once the dust settles we'll all be better off (generally speaking, that is...)