I agree. I don't there is any social contract violated there. They can only know that the ad, banner or pop-up reached you machine along with thier web content. From there it is only an assumption that you will view the ad. You could of course just close your eyes everytime you see a pop-up and press the 'x' on the window to dismiss it. The ad blocker just makes it easier for you and takes less of your time, so you can say it is a time saver tool,i.e. you could be doing it by hand or just do it faster with this tool.
But of course the advertisers target the averages, so indeed, while you may take the time and download and install the blocker the average visitor will not do that. The big question then is "what is the chance that the average user/consumer will be able to block the ad?" I think it is called something like "reachability" in marketing.
Imagine that Microsoft will issue an autoamtic upgrade to its its next browser with the ad-blocking options and all turned "on". That would be a huge problem because now you have the average consumer that is not reachable anymore by traditional web marketing channel. Then MS can expect a large law suit filed by all the adevertisers since it made its target audience un-reachable. Then Microsoft will agree to get paid by the advertisers to disable their company from the list of "banned" ad sites, or it might argue that it was a user request and if the users pay for the product they should get what they want. So, the corollary is that... lawers make a lot of money.
how long before SSN's and CC # will be there too?
on
Google Search By Number
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I am wondering how long before I plug my SSN and get some results too. Actually I already have. The university I go to uses SSNs as university id and I took this Network Security class (oh the irony!) and sure enough the supposedly "security and privacy aware" professor has posted the results of first midterm on the web indexed by SSNs. Then just a page away he posted later the results of one of the homeworks indexed by first and last names. I have both lists now and for 20 people there is 1 in 10 chance to randomly find Name and social security combination of one of these 20 people. I then went to the library, which conviniently uses only SSN and last name as a login for their machines. In about 20 minutes I knew 19 SSN and the names associated with it. All from Google.
I am not blaming Google of course, it is the fault of the university and the professor.
I liked your comment with the exception of the line that Americans are lazy. Sure, there are lazy Americans but if you have to stereotype I think in general the "lazy" label is not quite appropriate. Quite the opposite is true, Americans are encouraging workoholism and consumerism. People are taught they have the "right" to be happy and be "comfortable" (whatever that means...) and to do that they have to make money and thus they have to work, work and work, 8 to 5, 365 days a year, all their lives.
They have the least ammount of vacation days here and don't even try and have gaps in your resume when you didn't work in your life, or you will be "required" to explain and will be labeled as lazy. Whether that's right or wrong, you decide.
Poeple here are also obsessed with making money and acquiring goods. I know you'll say, well who isn't? I would answer that I have lived in other countries and it is definetly an order of magnitude higher here. People don't like to talk about money, just like they don't like to talk about sex but they obsess about it. This is the only place I have been where it is extremely not appropriate to ask someone how much money they make, it goes beyond the "I don't know you that well, why should I tell you" it is more of a "why, are you going to come and murder me, my family and my dog and steal it?" type reaction. It just shows even where people's hearts are - with their money. I would expect that in a poor country where money is to used mostly to buy food to survive, but not here, where money is to exercise the "right to be happy" and the right to "instant gratificiation" People need to buy, see and eat more and more things regardless of how much they already bought, seen and eaten.
I am always amazed at how even the poorest people still get double digit ammounts of credit cards so they can buy luxury cars, shop at GAP and get $200 shoes. I am also amazed at the rent places that tell people that cannot afford a plasma TV to just rent one and pay a monthly fee. The credit card companies want people to dig themselves into debt and end up slaving day and night to keep up with the fees.
I know that this is offtopic and that many of you will say, well then if America is so bad, "why dontcha get the fuck out and move to Canada or France.". I don't think this country is a bad country overall, in fact it is still the best one in the world and I love living here, it just that it has some bad "habbits" and stereotypes attached to it that I wish, through better education, those would go away too. That's it. Again, sorry for an offtopic, just struck a cord...
I think the stereotype of mall security guards being stupid (from the academic perspective) is there for a reason, because most of them probably don't know who Mann or Kafka is and probably have never even taken any logic or critical thinking class. To them anyone who raises a philosophical question is stupid and needs to get "a real" job, like chase and beat the criminals up.
Trying to take pictures of the cameras in the stores will just tick them off and make them even more hostile. After the incident the guys with the cameras probably thought "stupid guards, why don't they worry about invading the privacy and being a part of the _machine_" and the mall security staff probably thought "stupid idiots with their cameras, why don't they get real jobs".
So was the whole experiment useless? - I don't think so. At least the people at the ACM conference and we, here on Slashdot, are talking about it. They raised the issue in general and made others aware of it.
So are you saying you are in Chisinau right nou or are all the moldovans is US some place running their company? Just wondering, I like Chisinau a lot.
I don't think it is an issue of whether people can use the same size currency or not. Obviously they can and do. The issue is that of efficiency and cost. Each way of doing things has its pro and cons.
For example, it is possible to read the numbers and use the bills, but the eyes and the brain process color and size a lot faster than they read. It is not by much more, but have you been stuck in line where grandma is at the cashier is trying to count her bills? I wonder if it would take her less time if the bills would be easier to identify. Even if it is 30 seconds less, that is still 30 seconds out of the time of everyone in line. So it seems the major advantage of colors and sizes is easy and fast identification. That could be important.
Now the disadvantage is having to modify all the vending and self-checkout lanes in stores and in fact all money counting and processing equipment (read tens of thousands of ATMs). Since we live in a country where there are a lot of those (even the color copy machine at my school has a dollar bill reader). That's not a small thing, just the vending machine lobby is probably big enough to be heard in Congress.
Your point of organization in the wallet is subjective. I grew up in a country with colored and different sized currency it find it much easier to organize it in my wallet. The large bills go to one side and the smaller to the other side. Just looking at the pile from above it is easy to see how many of each kind of bill one has. Colors help too.
That is if you can read and know what a 1, 5, or 10 is. In Europe they just pay in colors and sizes. "That'll be a small red one and a couple medium blue ones"
I grew up in a country with different sized and colored bills and I have to say that it does make it easier to organize the wad-o-cash that way. Your eyes process color and size faster then read numbers. So if you are in a long line at Wal-Mart and grandma is counting her bills up front for 5 minutes, I wonder if having different colors and sizes would take less time, say 3 minutes.
The problem would then be that the vending machines would have to be fixed and also the self-checkout machines at the grocery stores would need to be changed. That is a strong lobby group, so probably it would not happen any time soon.
The problem I think is that the average Joe cannot understand that there is an actual percentage of risk involved, he probably doesn't know what percentage is anyway. So for Mr. Sixpack it is either "dangerous as hell - don't do it!" or "totally safe - will _never_ fail!" The real problem then is that there are a lot of those Joe Sixpacks around, including in Congress and the media.
So NASA has to translate 1% failure into "this is totally safe - will _never_ fail!" for them in order to get any funding.
The same thing goes for nuclear power plants. One small incident on the "Three Mile Island", watching Chernobyl (worst case scenario) on TV along with the bomb drill and fear of the Russkies in the childhood turned the public opinion into "dangerous as hell - let's not build any more nucular power plants! Killing people over oil is a lot more fun"
Actually most of my American professors are not from America, they are Chinese, Russian, Romanian, Indian, Greek and Egyptian.
I am not bashing Americans and saying the whole country is worse and those "great" foreigners are all better. It just happens that science, sadly, is not a strong point in the American education.
Secondary education is different, while high schools are fairly uniform, colleges are very different from each other -- some are really good, some average, some should just stick to basket weaving.
Sometime colleges compensate for the high school's shortcomings. Freshmen usually are required to take a math series in the first year, if they manage to step up and pass, they'll be ok, if not, basket weaving or plumbing is highly encouraged as an alternative career choice.
I just think, from what I have experienced, that high school science here is watered down. The kids are encouraged to run around chase a ball or play the trumpet, while they can't read or write. Teachers don't dare make the "poor" students feel stupid so they water the stuff down. In my high school back home in Russia I had to spend the whole time outside the classes doing homework and only then if I had time, do extracurricular activities. If most people failed the test they just got bad grades and that's it. (Note: that encourages some frequent cheating, a bad problem in that neck of the woods) The few of the ones that managed to do well and studied all the stuff are much better and end up coming to this country usually to teach and learn from the other people just like them from all over the world, while at the same time doing a ton of research for this country.
To summarize, I think the science program in US high schools is simplified and dumbed down to cater to the below average student, at the expense of depriving the better students of a good and thorough science curriculum.
Exactly, how about I write a program that writes an essay using a series of topics. I would select the topics and then by doing research online, it writes the essay and submits it to his grading program. Also by then the input patterns that generate most best grades will be known and my program will try to use them as much as possible and I will get straight As. It goes without saying that I will also give the program to everyone else who's professors use that grading method.
Seriously though, my sponsor paid around $4000 for a quarter of college so my professor can sit down and read the work and write back what mistakes I made. What else does a sociology professor have to do besides teach and grade papers? What is he getting payed for?
This is a big problem for the drug companies. Each one of those pills has to have a short, unique and easily remembered and pronounced name. Finding a new company name is hard but doing that for every product is even harder. I heard currently they are just using words from other languages, especially Latin. I remember my friend in her graphic design class had to make up a company name for her final project, it is not as easy as it seems. Eventually she just used a slighly modified Swedish name and the problem was solved.
It's like with any test. If you pass, the first thing it shows is that you can do _that_ particular test well. Of course the reason for the test is to show that you are knowledgeble in the whole domain that the test was compiled from, but that is a speculation. You are right, I can spend the whole year, doing nothing but learning all the algorithms that might show up on the exam, and practice to solve a common set of problem fast, sothen I migth do well on that contest, but I might still not do well in general in college or workplace.
That said, I also happen to be from Russia, and I can say that in general education system there is more thorough and more focused on the science than here in US (I went to schools in US too). Here all schools seem to be doing is try to make students comfortable, they have a hundreds of clubs and activities for after school. Everyone and their little brother wants to play sports or play in the band first then study. Schools try to be fun, instead of trying to make student learn something usefull. I remember coming to this country and doing my sophomore grade in fairly good high school, but I had to take calculus with the graduating seniors and I remember tutoring them in math even though I was an average student at home in that subject.
Not just cost but also reliability (in the end also a cost issue). Having water flow among the CPUs, hard drives and all other components is just asking for trouble. In case of a leak it won't be just one damaged CPU, or one memory stick so the system can still compensate and keep going, but the whole box or maybe rack might be ruined.
This doesn't seem like an either or situation or a large research question. A cost and reliability analysis should determine what it better for each individual setup.
I agree. Also I think the counter argument presented in the submission says that it forces the wealthiest to disclose their IP also, is not a good one, because the wealthiest by definition have all the money they want so they will not use GPLed tools or platforms and just buy proprietary software or develop their own software under thier own proprietary license.
My friend works for that lab at Caltech. I visited the facility last summer. Pretty interesting equipment they have there. Looked like flux capacitors to me. They started a new company, they will pitch their results to the investors and then try to sell it.
I don't know if it is an April fool's joke. If it is, it is probably half-true. I know they use a small cantilever that vibrates and depending what molecules attach to it the frequency at which the cantilever will vibrate. The plan was to develop large oranic molecules detectector.
I thought of that too, I am not sure but I believe it is because html is a markup language, it only specifies what elements in the text are what (what is a body what is meta infor what is a list) but it is up to each individual browser to interpret that however they whish (go figure how big font size +1 is supposed to be). PDF and PS are page description language, they specify the format (layout and appearance) in a platform independent manner so the same file would look the same on windows, mac, linux etc.
I ran into this problem a while ago when I was a freshman in college and I wrote my fist resume to send to a company for a co-op position and I was going to show show "cool" I was and hand wrote the document in html (that was 1998) and sent it. At the company when I arived the HR person interviewing me had printed out my resume and it looked nothing like what I had on my browser, it took 1.5 pages instead of 1 and the fonts looked ugly.
The better solution is to switch or upgrade professors. I know one professor that would return all the MS Word.doc files back to the sender and ask them to submit in an industry standard format, he never said what those are, we assumed pdf and ps. And it is not because he couldn't view them, he could, he just wanted to "teach us a lesson"
He tried something like it, had partial success with wireless power transmission: some link though it seems you need the earth for it so will not work in space. Also on Slashdot before: try this
I also remember reading in a Russian science and technology journal (Yiuniy Tehnik) in the early 90s, about a patent to have a huge solar array in space that would send the power to the ground as a microwave beam.
I thought of that too. And I also don't think we should worry as much about talking to other civilizations. We cannot even peacefully and normally talk to our human peers on this planet. There are currently wars and so many conflicts here on earth why would we even want to bother to get involved with aliens? Just imagine how well we can communicate with someone from a different culture (say a tribe in Africa), or would most of us even feel a little uncomfortable around others of a different race, even though we can speak the language?
I came to realize this during watching Solaris and other movies by Tarkovskii. There is a monologue where one of the characters talks about that.
I know this sounds like some silly hippie talk, so go ahead mod me down for not wanting to talk to the Romulans.
Calling people dumbasses and primitive then saying how educated you are, points to the fact that you might not be quite "educated". Think about that for a little bit. Your score of 1 and your label as a "troll" might give you a hint. You insult people in hopes of getting some reaction back, and start a flamewar.
Thanks for calling me a dumbass, I see your score 1, I wonder why? Your lack of social skills would probably make you a good victim for the $scico's...
Wow, sorry man, that is quite a story. They are currently recruiting my cousin back home in Russia. You think people here are ignorant of Scient0l0gy, you can imagine ex-Soviet Union. He, like me has a speech impediment but a worse case of it, he stutters quite a bit, which made him introverted and shy, but he is a great artist, very intelligent and and a good Christian. Last year when I visited him he showed me this book he is reading that had a volcano on it, and sure enough, it was R0n's "poison." translated in Russian. Then he described how these very nice business-looking people approached him and invited him to their office, asked him to take a test and of course told him he is very shy, introverted, anti-social and basically as messed up as one can get. But of course, they had just the answer.
He made the mistake of telling them how he has difficulty to communicating with others, especially girls, and that is what they wanted. He was "happy" that those people wanted to listen to him and said they can help him. They made him buy some very expensive herbal crap to drink and signed him up for courses which he is paying for. They know his address, home phone number, his parent's names, where he works and all this stuff.
When I told him about who they were and what they do he was very surprized. I told him my story from the Hollywood Celebrity Center visit and told him that scient0l0gy (and dianet1cs) are not compatible with Christianity. Hopefully he listened. We've talked since over email but I didn't ask if he went back and he didn't mention it. Somehow I am afraid he did though.
Sorry for replying to my own post, I forgot to mention something, I was talking about the Celebrity Center in LA, around Hollywood, I think they might have other ones in other cities too . Here is the link
Here is something fun. Did you know that you can tour the Sc1entol0gy Celebr1ty Center? Try and call them up and tell them you are interested in touring the building. They'll think you are interested in converting, and will agree then tell you about when to be there.
Come with friends, don't go alone! Those people are nutty. I was there last year in the spring with three of my friends. It was a wierd and interesting experience. We got there and there were all these, what seemed like zombies walking around. All with perpetual smiles on their faces, dressed in business suites with ties and women in nice dresses. Very clean and very spooky. We made up fake names, addresses, phones, and such and made up some problems we have (Sc1ent0log1sts like to tell you how messed up you are so they can "help you". Make sure to have stuff for them to bite on - "addicted to Slashdot" - that would work).
You do get to tour the building but you have to watch their tape, that ends in the "convert to 5cientology or die and suffer" type of message, quite amusing!
Then you can get young cute zombie girls to try to convince you to sign up for courses just so you can find out about 5cientol0gy. I had fun with mine, she was 17 and came from Michigan. Scient0logy, she claims, helped her cure some chronic sinus problem. Instead of talking about me and my problems she ended up running back and forth to her supervisor / boss for answers. I asked for scientific data and she gave me an evil look mixed with a sigh, "not one of those again..." then she brought me books written by Ron. I could hardly hold myself from laughing.
The saddest thing to see was when we toured the basement and they have all these saunas there. In the sauna, supposedly, you get your toxins out by staying in the steam until you pass out and drink overpriced herb tea. And there I saw this old Asian woman, who couldn't speak English too well. She was sitting down by the sauna center looking around like she was scared and lost. Hovering around her was another one of those cute zobmie clones, trying to persuade her to sign up for another "amazing" sauna experience. The old lady was nervously smilling and politely nodding her head. Of course she was going to sign up for another $1000 sauna clensing session, there is was no way she could resist those vultures. I felt sick to my stomach, she will probably end up giving them all her retirement money. Ron sure came up with the perfect scheme to make money.
Then we saw Ron's office, where (of course!) his spirit is still present, and then the library, where they almost forced us to buy the great works by Ron.
In the library, I saw those pseudo-lie detectors they use, basically a skin resistance meter. At RadioShack they are $30, at the "Celebrity Center" they are $4000! I was told they measure "mental mass". I thought of asking what the units are and how they are derived from other known physical quantities, but I thought I shouldn't piss them off too bad, I saw how nutty they really were by then and started to be a little scared. Then we left.
Anyway, it was a fun experience. Though I would share it. Anyone else had any interesing encounters with those people?
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But of course the advertisers target the averages, so indeed, while you may take the time and download and install the blocker the average visitor will not do that. The big question then is "what is the chance that the average user/consumer will be able to block the ad?" I think it is called something like "reachability" in marketing.
Imagine that Microsoft will issue an autoamtic upgrade to its its next browser with the ad-blocking options and all turned "on". That would be a huge problem because now you have the average consumer that is not reachable anymore by traditional web marketing channel. Then MS can expect a large law suit filed by all the adevertisers since it made its target audience un-reachable. Then Microsoft will agree to get paid by the advertisers to disable their company from the list of "banned" ad sites, or it might argue that it was a user request and if the users pay for the product they should get what they want. So, the corollary is that ... lawers make a lot of money.
I am not blaming Google of course, it is the fault of the university and the professor.
They have the least ammount of vacation days here and don't even try and have gaps in your resume when you didn't work in your life, or you will be "required" to explain and will be labeled as lazy. Whether that's right or wrong, you decide.
Poeple here are also obsessed with making money and acquiring goods. I know you'll say, well who isn't? I would answer that I have lived in other countries and it is definetly an order of magnitude higher here. People don't like to talk about money, just like they don't like to talk about sex but they obsess about it. This is the only place I have been where it is extremely not appropriate to ask someone how much money they make, it goes beyond the "I don't know you that well, why should I tell you" it is more of a "why, are you going to come and murder me, my family and my dog and steal it?" type reaction. It just shows even where people's hearts are - with their money. I would expect that in a poor country where money is to used mostly to buy food to survive, but not here, where money is to exercise the "right to be happy" and the right to "instant gratificiation" People need to buy, see and eat more and more things regardless of how much they already bought, seen and eaten.
I am always amazed at how even the poorest people still get double digit ammounts of credit cards so they can buy luxury cars, shop at GAP and get $200 shoes. I am also amazed at the rent places that tell people that cannot afford a plasma TV to just rent one and pay a monthly fee. The credit card companies want people to dig themselves into debt and end up slaving day and night to keep up with the fees.
I know that this is offtopic and that many of you will say, well then if America is so bad, "why dontcha get the fuck out and move to Canada or France.". I don't think this country is a bad country overall, in fact it is still the best one in the world and I love living here, it just that it has some bad "habbits" and stereotypes attached to it that I wish, through better education, those would go away too. That's it. Again, sorry for an offtopic, just struck a cord...
Trying to take pictures of the cameras in the stores will just tick them off and make them even more hostile. After the incident the guys with the cameras probably thought "stupid guards, why don't they worry about invading the privacy and being a part of the _machine_" and the mall security staff probably thought "stupid idiots with their cameras, why don't they get real jobs".
So was the whole experiment useless? - I don't think so. At least the people at the ACM conference and we, here on Slashdot, are talking about it. They raised the issue in general and made others aware of it.
So are you saying you are in Chisinau right nou or are all the moldovans is US some place running their company? Just wondering, I like Chisinau a lot.
For example, it is possible to read the numbers and use the bills, but the eyes and the brain process color and size a lot faster than they read. It is not by much more, but have you been stuck in line where grandma is at the cashier is trying to count her bills? I wonder if it would take her less time if the bills would be easier to identify. Even if it is 30 seconds less, that is still 30 seconds out of the time of everyone in line. So it seems the major advantage of colors and sizes is easy and fast identification. That could be important.
Now the disadvantage is having to modify all the vending and self-checkout lanes in stores and in fact all money counting and processing equipment (read tens of thousands of ATMs). Since we live in a country where there are a lot of those (even the color copy machine at my school has a dollar bill reader). That's not a small thing, just the vending machine lobby is probably big enough to be heard in Congress.
Your point of organization in the wallet is subjective. I grew up in a country with colored and different sized currency it find it much easier to organize it in my wallet. The large bills go to one side and the smaller to the other side. Just looking at the pile from above it is easy to see how many of each kind of bill one has. Colors help too.
I grew up in a country with different sized and colored bills and I have to say that it does make it easier to organize the wad-o-cash that way. Your eyes process color and size faster then read numbers. So if you are in a long line at Wal-Mart and grandma is counting her bills up front for 5 minutes, I wonder if having different colors and sizes would take less time, say 3 minutes.
The problem would then be that the vending machines would have to be fixed and also the self-checkout machines at the grocery stores would need to be changed. That is a strong lobby group, so probably it would not happen any time soon.
So NASA has to translate 1% failure into "this is totally safe - will _never_ fail!" for them in order to get any funding.
The same thing goes for nuclear power plants. One small incident on the "Three Mile Island", watching Chernobyl (worst case scenario) on TV along with the bomb drill and fear of the Russkies in the childhood turned the public opinion into "dangerous as hell - let's not build any more nucular power plants! Killing people over oil is a lot more fun"
I am not bashing Americans and saying the whole country is worse and those "great" foreigners are all better. It just happens that science, sadly, is not a strong point in the American education.
Secondary education is different, while high schools are fairly uniform, colleges are very different from each other -- some are really good, some average, some should just stick to basket weaving.
Sometime colleges compensate for the high school's shortcomings. Freshmen usually are required to take a math series in the first year, if they manage to step up and pass, they'll be ok, if not, basket weaving or plumbing is highly encouraged as an alternative career choice.
I just think, from what I have experienced, that high school science here is watered down. The kids are encouraged to run around chase a ball or play the trumpet, while they can't read or write. Teachers don't dare make the "poor" students feel stupid so they water the stuff down. In my high school back home in Russia I had to spend the whole time outside the classes doing homework and only then if I had time, do extracurricular activities. If most people failed the test they just got bad grades and that's it. (Note: that encourages some frequent cheating, a bad problem in that neck of the woods) The few of the ones that managed to do well and studied all the stuff are much better and end up coming to this country usually to teach and learn from the other people just like them from all over the world, while at the same time doing a ton of research for this country.
To summarize, I think the science program in US high schools is simplified and dumbed down to cater to the below average student, at the expense of depriving the better students of a good and thorough science curriculum.
Exactly, how about I write a program that writes an essay using a series of topics. I would select the topics and then by doing research online, it writes the essay and submits it to his grading program. Also by then the input patterns that generate most best grades will be known and my program will try to use them as much as possible and I will get straight As. It goes without saying that I will also give the program to everyone else who's professors use that grading method. Seriously though, my sponsor paid around $4000 for a quarter of college so my professor can sit down and read the work and write back what mistakes I made. What else does a sociology professor have to do besides teach and grade papers? What is he getting payed for?
This is a big problem for the drug companies. Each one of those pills has to have a short, unique and easily remembered and pronounced name. Finding a new company name is hard but doing that for every product is even harder. I heard currently they are just using words from other languages, especially Latin. I remember my friend in her graphic design class had to make up a company name for her final project, it is not as easy as it seems. Eventually she just used a slighly modified Swedish name and the problem was solved.
That said, I also happen to be from Russia, and I can say that in general education system there is more thorough and more focused on the science than here in US (I went to schools in US too). Here all schools seem to be doing is try to make students comfortable, they have a hundreds of clubs and activities for after school. Everyone and their little brother wants to play sports or play in the band first then study. Schools try to be fun, instead of trying to make student learn something usefull. I remember coming to this country and doing my sophomore grade in fairly good high school, but I had to take calculus with the graduating seniors and I remember tutoring them in math even though I was an average student at home in that subject.
This doesn't seem like an either or situation or a large research question. A cost and reliability analysis should determine what it better for each individual setup.
I agree. Also I think the counter argument presented in the submission says that it forces the wealthiest to disclose their IP also, is not a good one, because the wealthiest by definition have all the money they want so they will not use GPLed tools or platforms and just buy proprietary software or develop their own software under thier own proprietary license.
My friend works for that lab at Caltech. I visited the facility last summer. Pretty interesting equipment they have there. Looked like flux capacitors to me. They started a new company, they will pitch their results to the investors and then try to sell it. I don't know if it is an April fool's joke. If it is, it is probably half-true. I know they use a small cantilever that vibrates and depending what molecules attach to it the frequency at which the cantilever will vibrate. The plan was to develop large oranic molecules detectector.
I thought of that too, I am not sure but I believe it is because html is a markup language, it only specifies what elements in the text are what (what is a body what is meta infor what is a list) but it is up to each individual browser to interpret that however they whish (go figure how big font size +1 is supposed to be). PDF and PS are page description language, they specify the format (layout and appearance) in a platform independent manner so the same file would look the same on windows, mac, linux etc. I ran into this problem a while ago when I was a freshman in college and I wrote my fist resume to send to a company for a co-op position and I was going to show show "cool" I was and hand wrote the document in html (that was 1998) and sent it. At the company when I arived the HR person interviewing me had printed out my resume and it looked nothing like what I had on my browser, it took 1.5 pages instead of 1 and the fonts looked ugly.
The better solution is to switch or upgrade professors. I know one professor that would return all the MS Word .doc files back to the sender and ask them to submit in an industry standard format, he never said what those are, we assumed pdf and ps. And it is not because he couldn't view them, he could, he just wanted to "teach us a lesson"
I also remember reading in a Russian science and technology journal (Yiuniy Tehnik) in the early 90s, about a patent to have a huge solar array in space that would send the power to the ground as a microwave beam.
In US, most banks re-issue new cards every 2 or 3 years because the old ones get worn out? Do banks do that in UK?
I came to realize this during watching Solaris and other movies by Tarkovskii. There is a monologue where one of the characters talks about that.
I know this sounds like some silly hippie talk, so go ahead mod me down for not wanting to talk to the Romulans.
Calling people dumbasses and primitive then saying how educated you are, points to the fact that you might not be quite "educated". Think about that for a little bit. Your score of 1 and your label as a "troll" might give you a hint. You insult people in hopes of getting some reaction back, and start a flamewar.
Thanks for calling me a dumbass, I see your score 1, I wonder why? Your lack of social skills would probably make you a good victim for the $scico's...
He made the mistake of telling them how he has difficulty to communicating with others, especially girls, and that is what they wanted. He was "happy" that those people wanted to listen to him and said they can help him. They made him buy some very expensive herbal crap to drink and signed him up for courses which he is paying for. They know his address, home phone number, his parent's names, where he works and all this stuff. When I told him about who they were and what they do he was very surprized. I told him my story from the Hollywood Celebrity Center visit and told him that scient0l0gy (and dianet1cs) are not compatible with Christianity. Hopefully he listened. We've talked since over email but I didn't ask if he went back and he didn't mention it. Somehow I am afraid he did though.
Sorry for replying to my own post, I forgot to mention something, I was talking about the Celebrity Center in LA, around Hollywood, I think they might have other ones in other cities too . Here is the link
Come with friends, don't go alone! Those people are nutty. I was there last year in the spring with three of my friends. It was a wierd and interesting experience. We got there and there were all these, what seemed like zombies walking around. All with perpetual smiles on their faces, dressed in business suites with ties and women in nice dresses. Very clean and very spooky. We made up fake names, addresses, phones, and such and made up some problems we have (Sc1ent0log1sts like to tell you how messed up you are so they can "help you". Make sure to have stuff for them to bite on - "addicted to Slashdot" - that would work).
You do get to tour the building but you have to watch their tape, that ends in the "convert to 5cientology or die and suffer" type of message, quite amusing!
Then you can get young cute zombie girls to try to convince you to sign up for courses just so you can find out about 5cientol0gy. I had fun with mine, she was 17 and came from Michigan. Scient0logy, she claims, helped her cure some chronic sinus problem. Instead of talking about me and my problems she ended up running back and forth to her supervisor / boss for answers. I asked for scientific data and she gave me an evil look mixed with a sigh, "not one of those again..." then she brought me books written by Ron. I could hardly hold myself from laughing.
The saddest thing to see was when we toured the basement and they have all these saunas there. In the sauna, supposedly, you get your toxins out by staying in the steam until you pass out and drink overpriced herb tea. And there I saw this old Asian woman, who couldn't speak English too well. She was sitting down by the sauna center looking around like she was scared and lost. Hovering around her was another one of those cute zobmie clones, trying to persuade her to sign up for another "amazing" sauna experience. The old lady was nervously smilling and politely nodding her head. Of course she was going to sign up for another $1000 sauna clensing session, there is was no way she could resist those vultures. I felt sick to my stomach, she will probably end up giving them all her retirement money. Ron sure came up with the perfect scheme to make money.
Then we saw Ron's office, where (of course!) his spirit is still present, and then the library, where they almost forced us to buy the great works by Ron.
In the library, I saw those pseudo-lie detectors they use, basically a skin resistance meter. At RadioShack they are $30, at the "Celebrity Center" they are $4000! I was told they measure "mental mass". I thought of asking what the units are and how they are derived from other known physical quantities, but I thought I shouldn't piss them off too bad, I saw how nutty they really were by then and started to be a little scared. Then we left.
Anyway, it was a fun experience. Though I would share it. Anyone else had any interesing encounters with those people?