I can handle it if they want to give the hot new movies to newer customers and make me wait for a couple weeks. OK, fine. I just wish they'd send me SOMETHING instead of sitting on my DVD for a day. Send me one of my rare choices. And yes, I do have a life outside DVDs, but I practically NEVER watch TV these days, so DVDs are usually my night's entertainment (except for Mythbusters, BattleStar Galactica, and South Park).
I just started reading "The Wisdom of Crowds" tonight. One of the first questions in my mind was, "Can a crowd create art? What happens if people get to vote on brush-strokes & color?" Looks like this website is an interesting experiment on that idea.
Schneier has said several times that "half a million computers were infected". However, I saw that famous graph that said half a million networks were infected. Who is right?
I recall this Slashdot story from several years ago (damn, I can't believe a Slashdot headline has stayed with me that long). Sadly, the links referenced in the article are broken, so I don't recall exactly what it was about.
I read Bodanis' book awhile ago. IIRC, he dedicates a whole chapter to each part of the equation and it's history. So while I am aware of what ^2 means, I found the history of the concept of squaring to be interesting. The book isn't a math/physics lesson; it's a history lesson
Sun's motto is "The network is the computer". They've been saying this for decades, and people are just starting to figure out what they mean. A PC without a network connection is becoming increasingly useless. (Anyone at work have a protected computer lab without an internet connection? Frustrating, isn't it?) There will probably be a day when we'll do word processing over the web, which makes sense. The idea that my documents will only be stored on my local disk drive will seem ridiculous. Maybe Google will do something like this, displaying ads on the margins based on what I've written. Let's consider some current web apps:
And no, someone doesn't have to replicate MS Office in a web app on the first try. Good enough will do. Convenience will be more important that 5,234 menu items that most people don't even use.
And to the people who mention games....how many of your games do you play in single player mode, without an internet connection?
The summary of this article is very unclear about the point. To be clear: people didn't download Opera because it uses Google. Rather, they were *able* to get Opera for free because Opera had an alternative revenue stream with Google.
If the census 2000 information really deserves saving it will be copied hundreds of times into different isolated servers by individuals or companies who use the information.
FYI, the same division of Lockheed that is doing the archives did the 2000 census. In fact, the demo for the 2010 census occured in the same room the just a few weeks before we did our Archives demo.
I'm not going to go into Lockheed's plan in detail, but you may be happy to know that my teammates were well aware of the OASIS standards and their value.
A lot of people in these comments keep saying, "I can solve this problem for $10k! Convert everyone to Open Office!" That's all well and good, but people, we are already DECADES behind on this problem. Whether you like it or not, there's a boatload of Word95/Excel/BMP/etc files out there (and worse).
This is a real concern, and one that Lockheed spent a lot of time working on. Another issue is authenticity: what's to stop someone in the year 2050 from inserting some new records and claiming they were from 2005? These are problems that currently exist in the paper world, and they will exist in the digital world as well.
Microfiches (sp?) aren't accessible to a grandmother sitting at home browsing the NARA website and doing genealogy research. Also, I'm sure there are some librarians in New Orleans who can give you explicit details on the problems of storing microfiche which hasn't been backed up.
There was a public competition. Lockheed Martin and Harris Corporation were the two companies who won the initial competition and were given money for analysis and design. Lockheed won.
The two companies that were "down selected" to compete in the Analysis & Design phase were Lockheed Martin and Harris Corporation. I don't recall what companies participated in the initial competition...I doubt Google was involved.
Lockheed partners include BearingPoint Inc., McLean VA; Fenestra Technologies Corp.,
Germantown, MD; FileTek Inc., Rockville, MD; History Associates Inc.,
Rockville, MD; EDS Corp., Plano, TX; Image Fortress Corp., Westford, MA;
Metier Ltd., Washington, DC; Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC),
San Diego, CA; and Tessella Inc., Newton, MA.
All these people whinging about about how cd's won't last - I'm pretty confident that if I bother to hold on to the cdroms in my draw, provided they're kept in their cases/good condition they'll be just as playable (on the same hardware) in 100 years.
Frankly I hope (probably all) of the stuff in my e-mail isn't around in 100 years.
The amount of data we are talking about is HUGE. There is no way humans could manually upgrade the data. It would be a technical and policy nightmare. As for preserving emails, the email messages of the executive branch contain much historical significance.
Mebbe if we kept email as plain text we wouldnt have to ask this question.
We don't have a choice. Not only do we have to keep track of the text of the message, but we also have to archive the attachments and the arrangement (i.e. if this email is just one message in a dozen-email exchange, that has to be preserved).
It'll probably be some $50 million database system that runs on Microsoft Windows 2003 Server and requires Oracle along with a mish-mash of Visual Basic.NET applications to accept data input and display it. I mean hell, we'll still be running Windows in 2090 so it only makes sense to stick with standards.
I worked on Lockheed's demo and sat through their entire presentation to the NARA staff. What you describe could not be further from the truth. The design team was well aware of the value of open standards, and avoided vendor lock-in like the plague.
That's government purchasing for you. Research is not part of the process. In governments that are completely corrupt, purchase decisions are purely political.
I got news for you: this happens a lot in the private sector, too. Company XYZ is getting venture capital from Microsoft, so they use all Microsoft tools. Company ABC is using BEA as a sub-contractor, so they use all BEA tools. At least the school in TFA realize they have a problem.
On a related note, has anyone ever thought of branding a Linux distro specifically for education and schools?
I'm talking more about the typical Marvel/DC mega-franchises based on 40-year old comic book characters, not graphic novels like Sin City. I agree that The Incredibles was very good.
I'm just getting sick of comic book movies, even the good ones. They're becoming so predictable:
First 15 minutes: Hero(s) is a normal person Next 5 minutes: Hero(s) is exposed to some type of trauma/radiation Next 10 minutes: Everything's normal, except the hero realizes he can suddenly a) jump over buildings b) smash cars c) shoot flames Nest 60 minutes: Lot's of stuff blowing up and getting destroyed as the hero tries to defeat his nemesis with comparable powers.
Must haves: - Members of the public that are afraid of the hero (allegories for racism) - Hero is misunderstood and thought to be evil - Boring romantic entanglements - Setup for a sequel
I really can't take one more damn "origin story" in another comic book movie. If they make an Iron Man movie or a new Superman movie, they should start the movie 5 years into the hero's career. This was my major complaint with Fantastic Four. I actually *would* like to see a sequel to this movie where they could just go all-out with the characters right from the start.
I thought they only made airplanes? Tell me Cheney wasn't CEO of them too...
No, we make much more than airplanes. We're involved with Customs, law enforcement, air traffic control, GPS, combat training systems, the US/Canadian/UK censuses (sp?), and even the National Archives, among many other things. Unlike Cheney, our CEO is actually a real businessman.
Slashdot Mirror
I can handle it if they want to give the hot new movies to newer customers and make me wait for a couple weeks. OK, fine. I just wish they'd send me SOMETHING instead of sitting on my DVD for a day. Send me one of my rare choices. And yes, I do have a life outside DVDs, but I practically NEVER watch TV these days, so DVDs are usually my night's entertainment (except for Mythbusters, BattleStar Galactica, and South Park).
I just started reading "The Wisdom of Crowds" tonight. One of the first questions in my mind was, "Can a crowd create art? What happens if people get to vote on brush-strokes & color?" Looks like this website is an interesting experiment on that idea.
I'm usually skeptical of novels with 2 authors, but maybe I'll check this one out.
Schneier has said several times that "half a million computers were infected". However, I saw that famous graph that said half a million networks were infected. Who is right?
I recall this Slashdot story from several years ago (damn, I can't believe a Slashdot headline has stayed with me that long). Sadly, the links referenced in the article are broken, so I don't recall exactly what it was about.
I read Bodanis' book awhile ago. IIRC, he dedicates a whole chapter to each part of the equation and it's history. So while I am aware of what ^2 means, I found the history of the concept of squaring to be interesting. The book isn't a math/physics lesson; it's a history lesson
Sun's motto is "The network is the computer". They've been saying this for decades, and people are just starting to figure out what they mean. A PC without a network connection is becoming increasingly useless. (Anyone at work have a protected computer lab without an internet connection? Frustrating, isn't it?) There will probably be a day when we'll do word processing over the web, which makes sense. The idea that my documents will only be stored on my local disk drive will seem ridiculous. Maybe Google will do something like this, displaying ads on the margins based on what I've written. Let's consider some current web apps:
- Flickr: Storing photos online.
- Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail: Storing email online.
- Blogging: Storing journals online.
Noticing a pattern?
And no, someone doesn't have to replicate MS Office in a web app on the first try. Good enough will do. Convenience will be more important that 5,234 menu items that most people don't even use.
And to the people who mention games....how many of your games do you play in single player mode, without an internet connection?
The summary of this article is very unclear about the point. To be clear: people didn't download Opera because it uses Google. Rather, they were *able* to get Opera for free because Opera had an alternative revenue stream with Google.
Rock! nothing beats good old rock....
Sadly, neither IE6 nor Firefox have fully implemented a Rock Rendering Engine.
If the census 2000 information really deserves saving it will be copied hundreds of times into different isolated servers by individuals or companies who use the information.
FYI, the same division of Lockheed that is doing the archives did the 2000 census. In fact, the demo for the 2010 census occured in the same room the just a few weeks before we did our Archives demo.
NARA recently re-organized some of their website. Info on the ERA project should now be available here.
I'm not going to go into Lockheed's plan in detail, but you may be happy to know that my teammates were well aware of the OASIS standards and their value.
A lot of people in these comments keep saying, "I can solve this problem for $10k! Convert everyone to Open Office!" That's all well and good, but people, we are already DECADES behind on this problem. Whether you like it or not, there's a boatload of Word95/Excel/BMP/etc files out there (and worse).
This is a real concern, and one that Lockheed spent a lot of time working on. Another issue is authenticity: what's to stop someone in the year 2050 from inserting some new records and claiming they were from 2005? These are problems that currently exist in the paper world, and they will exist in the digital world as well.
Microfiches (sp?) aren't accessible to a grandmother sitting at home browsing the NARA website and doing genealogy research. Also, I'm sure there are some librarians in New Orleans who can give you explicit details on the problems of storing microfiche which hasn't been backed up.
There was a public competition. Lockheed Martin and Harris Corporation were the two companies who won the initial competition and were given money for analysis and design. Lockheed won.
The two companies that were "down selected" to compete in the Analysis & Design phase were Lockheed Martin and Harris Corporation. I don't recall what companies participated in the initial competition...I doubt Google was involved.
Lockheed partners include BearingPoint Inc., McLean VA; Fenestra Technologies Corp., Germantown, MD; FileTek Inc., Rockville, MD; History Associates Inc., Rockville, MD; EDS Corp., Plano, TX; Image Fortress Corp., Westford, MA; Metier Ltd., Washington, DC; Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), San Diego, CA; and Tessella Inc., Newton, MA.
All these people whinging about about how cd's won't last - I'm pretty confident that if I bother to hold on to the cdroms in my draw, provided they're kept in their cases/good condition they'll be just as playable (on the same hardware) in 100 years. Frankly I hope (probably all) of the stuff in my e-mail isn't around in 100 years.
The amount of data we are talking about is HUGE. There is no way humans could manually upgrade the data. It would be a technical and policy nightmare. As for preserving emails, the email messages of the executive branch contain much historical significance.
Mebbe if we kept email as plain text we wouldnt have to ask this question.
We don't have a choice. Not only do we have to keep track of the text of the message, but we also have to archive the attachments and the arrangement (i.e. if this email is just one message in a dozen-email exchange, that has to be preserved).
It'll probably be some $50 million database system that runs on Microsoft Windows 2003 Server and requires Oracle along with a mish-mash of Visual Basic .NET applications to accept data input and display it. I mean hell, we'll still be running Windows in 2090 so it only makes sense to stick with standards.
I worked on Lockheed's demo and sat through their entire presentation to the NARA staff. What you describe could not be further from the truth. The design team was well aware of the value of open standards, and avoided vendor lock-in like the plague.
That's government purchasing for you. Research is not part of the process. In governments that are completely corrupt, purchase decisions are purely political.
I got news for you: this happens a lot in the private sector, too. Company XYZ is getting venture capital from Microsoft, so they use all Microsoft tools. Company ABC is using BEA as a sub-contractor, so they use all BEA tools. At least the school in TFA realize they have a problem.
On a related note, has anyone ever thought of branding a Linux distro specifically for education and schools?
I'm talking more about the typical Marvel/DC mega-franchises based on 40-year old comic book characters, not graphic novels like Sin City. I agree that The Incredibles was very good.
I'm just getting sick of comic book movies, even the good ones. They're becoming so predictable:
First 15 minutes: Hero(s) is a normal person
Next 5 minutes: Hero(s) is exposed to some type of trauma/radiation
Next 10 minutes: Everything's normal, except the hero realizes he can suddenly a) jump over buildings b) smash cars c) shoot flames
Nest 60 minutes: Lot's of stuff blowing up and getting destroyed as the hero tries to defeat his nemesis with comparable powers.
Must haves:
- Members of the public that are afraid of the hero (allegories for racism)
- Hero is misunderstood and thought to be evil
- Boring romantic entanglements
- Setup for a sequel
I really can't take one more damn "origin story" in another comic book movie. If they make an Iron Man movie or a new Superman movie, they should start the movie 5 years into the hero's career. This was my major complaint with Fantastic Four. I actually *would* like to see a sequel to this movie where they could just go all-out with the characters right from the start.
I don't know if Google ever stops calling things "beta". Google News has been out for almost 3 years, and it's still called "beta".
"You make a grown man cry."
Well, if it could make a "dead man come", that would be really special.
I thought they only made airplanes? Tell me Cheney wasn't CEO of them too...
No, we make much more than airplanes. We're involved with Customs, law enforcement, air traffic control, GPS, combat training systems, the US/Canadian/UK censuses (sp?), and even the National Archives, among many other things. Unlike Cheney, our CEO is actually a real businessman.