Actually, the first example comparing "The Old Way" and "The New Way" on the Station Exchange website specifically deals with character exchange and preventing people from being ripped off by people who take the money then change the password on the sold account before the buyer can log in.
Absolutely. I've worked in technical support and spoken to a customer who reported what they thought was a bug in our product. I directed the customer to another website (I don't remember whose... maybe Microsoft's, maybe NVidia's) where the page EXPLICITLY STATED that this was a bug in that other company's product... and they still wanted to know when we were going to fix "our bug" so they didn't have to download the fix from the other company's website.
*head bangs on desk*
*head bangs on desk*
*head bangs on desk*
I agree. Wikipedia's a fine first source. If you need information and need to have a source to list in, say, a bibliography or works cited document, you can go to Wikipedia and get some general information and sources that you can then look up elsewhere. For instance, today's featured article is about Apollo 8. At the bottom of that entry, there are 11 web links and 5 references to books, complete with ISBN numbers.
Typing one of those ISBN numbers into my local library's catalog search page yielded the information that while my local library doesn't have it, several of the other libraries with which my local library is associated do have copies available for borrowing. In addition, there's a few subjects under which this book could be found; clicking on those links yielded a dozen or so other texts all on the same subject.
If they pass a bill knowing that it is an unconstitutional regulation of speech, their behinds are on the line at the next election.
I think you underestimate the apathy of the general voting populace of the United States. After all, if being involved in a fatal accident didn't prevent someone from being reelected, I doubt passing an unconstitutional regulation will prevent someone from being reelected unless that legislation were to make American Idol illegal. That might actually give the general populace of the US a smack upside the head. Unfortunately, I think that's about all that would do so:(
I'd guess they're probably seeding whatever pseudorandom number generator they're using with some value based on the time, so if you and the poster above you tried to generate a random story at exactly the same time, you may have seeded the PRNG with the same starting value, hence the identical stories.
I'm not quite sure if a small bolt of plasma actually counts as a slug... although the Starfuries do have missiles, which I guess you could count as big slugs.
In the first line of your comment, you have an unnecessary "small". Unless you're working on a very very specialized project, the number of users of the code will outnumber the number of developers and testers by at least an order of magnitude, sometimes more. No matter how creative the developer or tester are, the users will always come up with at least a couple of ways to break the product that you never thought of. "What's this bug report? If you press and hold left-Shift, then press and hold 8, and finally Page Down three times the program will crash? What the... why... *sputtering*... why in the world did the person who filed this bug report ever do that???" [That's only a slight exaggeration from some bug reports I've seen.]
They've got enough names for a long long time if they use domestic cat breed names. Admittedly "OS X Turkish Angora" sounds a little less impressive than "OS X Tiger", but some of the names might be kind of cute, and Apple could win some fans if they were to use a picture of a cat of that breed in the advertising simply from the cuteness factor.
Ah, but you know that I could only answer A or E, so you would have put the iocane powder in one of those options so clearly I can't choose either of those options. But you're a Slashdot poster, so you know that I know you know I could only answer A or E, so you wouldn't put the iocane in either of those options. Therefore... hey, is that Natalie Portman with a bowl of grits? *switches poll options while your head is turned* Oh sorry, my mistake, just Cmdr. Taco with some oatmeal. Well, I've made my choice, and I choose E. *selects poll option* Hahahaha... never choose anything other than CowboyNeal when karma is on the line! HA HA HA HA... *thud*
Sorry, for some reason I was reminded of The Princess Bride when I read your post.
This article is rediculous. First of all, humans in space is a complete joke: there is very little of interest in space. Humans on other planets is another story.
I disagree with your statement that there is very little of interest in space. Both asteroids and comets are of great interest. Why, you ask? Many comets are made of ice -- frozen water, which will be quite useful if we're going to create colonies either in space or on the surface of other worlds. In addition, if we keep on pumping crap into Earth's rivers, lakes, and oceans we may need some of that water ourselves in the not-too-distant future.
As for asteroids, the C-type, S-type, and M-type asteroids could provide us with valuable resources for manufacturing, either for products to be used to explore other planets or for products to ship back to Earth.
Colonizing the ocean floor would be much more difficult than colonizing space. In space, the pressure difference between inside the space capsule (1 atmosphere) and outside (0 atmosphere) is 1 atmosphere, so the space capsule doesn't have to withstand _that_ much pressure. I believe that in the ocean, the outside pressure increases by 1 atmosphere every 10 meters or so -- meaning that if you want to go down 1000 meters, your ocean capsule has to withstand a pressure differential of 99 atmospheres pressing in. Now true, you'd have to travel farther to get to orbit than you would to get to the ocean floor, but the conditions at your destination are actually better in space in terms of pressure.
Your final comment was On this survival front, no scientist could possibly prove that life is safier anywhere else than on the Earth, where it has been happily plodding along for a few billion years, and so far been unobserved anywhere else.. Think of it as an insurance policy. Right now, if something were to happen, humanity is an uninsured "liver" (one who lives) and we'd be screwed. If we had the insurance policy of a self-sustaining colony off-planet, then even if something were to happen to Earth that kills off humanity, we can fall back on our insurance policy.
It's not a matter of whether or not anyplace else is safer than Earth -- I wouldn't exactly say Earth is all that safe right now. Read the current concerns about nuclear warfare. Add to that biological and chemical weapons and I think you'll see we could do a pretty damn good job killing off either all life or just all human life on the planet. If that were to happen, I wouldn't want that to be the end of humanity.
From watching the first episode of the NBC version and most if not all of the BBC version of Coupling, I don't think NBC tried to give the jokes an American context. They simply did a find-and-replace on the actors and actresses -- the dialog in the NBC version was pretty much exactly the same as the BBC version. That's part of why I didn't watch the second episode of the NBC version -- if I wanted to watch Coupling as it was written for the BBC version, I'd watch the BBC version!
Now if NCB had given American actors and actresses bios for the characters of Steve, Susan, Patrick, Jane, Jeff, and Sally to serve as a foundation and let them act out something _similar to_ but _distinct from_ the British version, it might have succeeded. There was and is enough depth in each of those characters to have taken the NBC version in a completely different but still interesting and funny direction from the BBC version.
We now bring you a special report... the United States Department of Homeland Security has just announced it has acquired internet service provider AOL. Secretary Michael Chertoff had this statement for the press about the acquisition: "We believe that Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist networks throughout the world have been using AOL Instant Messenger, and so acquiring AOL's infrastructure will bring us one step closer to finding Al Qaeda. In addition, now we won't need Congress to renew the PATRIOT Act... we'll have all the information we need thanks to AOL's databases of subscriber information." No word on how much the Department of Homeland Security is paying for AOL, but given that this is a government agency, estimates start at three times AOL's net worth.
Figuring out how to remove the virus is a technical thing.
Creating useful instructions for user to use to remove the virus is also a technical thing.
Using the instructions to remove the virus shouldn't be a technical thing.
I think that software companies that create virus scanners or virus removal programs should have a usability staff to review the warnings that they send out and maybe even a few in-house testers -- one young kid, one person who has little if any computer experience, and one technically-strong person.
If the young kid can understand the instructions, you know the houses where the kids use the computer most of the time and are semi-responsible for fixing the computer when it breaks will be able to use the instructions. If the non-technical person can understand the instructions, you'll cover the houses where a non-technical older person maintains the computer. Finally, if the technical person understands the instructions, you'll know that technically strong users will be able to find useful information in the instructions.
If you start hanging out around the Pentagon (just chose that as an example) and are taking photographs like mad [especially of the guards and the security features], don't you think someone will get a little suspicious?
As for using a small plane, try doing that over a major city where there's a no-fly zone, either temporary or permanent.
US street maps are pretty good for navigating, but they don't show much detail. What if you want to know if there is a parking lot close to where you want to visit? For instance, since I live in Massachusetts, I might want to go to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. If I want to take my life into my own hands, I might drive into the city and want to park near Fenway. The street map probably won't show me where I can park... but go to Google Maps, search for "Fenway Park, Boston, MA", then zoom in all the way on the satellite map and select point A. Now some of those places where lots of cars are parked may not be public parking lots, but it'll give me some places to check when I get to Fenway.
One feature that would be really cool for Google to add would be the ability to click on a point on the satellite map and, if that location is a business (to avoid privacy concerns), show the contact information (name, address, and phone number) for that business. They must have that info for local.google.com, so tying the two together would be very cool.
If we had a magic portal through which we could discard all our waste products, I'd rather have it go into the sun rather than onto Mars. We may eventually be able to live on Mars, either by building structures to make small areas habitable for humans or by terraforming the entire planet. I'd hate to run into a pair of someone's old gym socks if that happens. I don't think we're going to be colonizing the sun anytime soon, though, and nuclear fusion does a pretty nice job of taking care of a lot of waste products.
Agreed. I hope that eventually the whole miniseries comes out on DVD a la The Animatrix. I'd probably pay $20-$25 for it. Alternately, they could bundle it with the Ultra Super-Spiffy Deluxe Premium Platinum Mega edition of the Episodes 1, 2, and 3 box set.
I used to work for a company that did some engine controls for the military, navy ships mostly. Their specs and test procedures were incredible. The equipment wasn't the most current technology, but they wanted to make SURE the control we built for their ships worked, no matter the cost.
Of course. You don't want your latest & greatest warship steaming out of port on its maiden voyage going *putt* *putt* *putt* [or even worse, not steaming out of port on its maiden voyage at all.]
Actually, it seems like more often than not governments are willing to spend lots of money, especially on things like technology. Now, if it's a new road or school building they are going to be as cheap as possible.
"If something goes wrong on your car and you want to look under the hood, be my guest. If not, you can go to any mechanic you want to try to fix it -- you don't have to go back to the dealer and take their word as to what's wrong with your car."
Agreed. I'm planning on waiting to get either a DS or a PSP (or both) until they've had a chance to work out the kinks and until the set of applications designed specifically for each system is a bit larger. [I don't need a DS to play GBA games; I have a GBA for that.]
Of course, the release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children might just have an impact on when I decide what system or systems to get...
Hopefully your auto-reply software is configured to realize "Hey, I just sent an auto-reply to the email address that sent me an auto-reply... let's not bother them a second time." See here and here and here.
I would hope that this service from IBM would also be configured by default in such a way that it avoids the infinite-challenge-loop (and is hard to configure to set up such a loop.)
That process sounds like it could be streamlined somewhat. Why does the request go to the IT staff before the manager has approved it? I would assume that if a staff member needs to go to a certain site that has been blocked, his or her manager knows why they need to do that. I understand that there may be internal protocols that require that the process be done in this order, but it sounds like this might be a better solution:
User files a request for access to a blocked site.
Manager receives request, discusses it with user, approves it.
IT receives request, investigates site, approves it.
IT uses some internal resource (say a password-protected webpage) to request that the blocked site be unblocked.
Request automatically updates the filters or queues the request so that multiple sites can be unblocked at once by the filter maintainer.
Once request or maintainer has modified the filters, the user and their manager are automatically informed.
Note that most of what's written there is stuff you're already doing -- but it avoids the problem of investigating a site that the manager might not allow the user to access even if it's okay from the IT standpoint. In addition, you have documented buy-in from the user's manager in case any policy gets violated.
Everybody makes mistakes. Having a high-but-finite and changeable limit prevents a mistake made by a trusted user from getting out-of-control while still allowing that user to get close to the threshold of control.
For instance, imagine writing a recursive program to calculate the factorial of a number (note: no error checking included, and I'm letting the kth factorial number for k
function y = factorial(x) if x <= 2 y = 1; else y = factorial(x-1) + factorial(x-2); end
Now assume that instead of typing (x-1) in the recursive call on the next to last line, the user types (x+1). If the user calls this with x > 2 and you don't have some limit on the number of recursive calls a function can make, this program will never end (unless you exceed the stack limit, which is not a graceful way to exit.) If there is a limit, the program will hit that limit and error, giving the programmer a chance to catch their typo. If the user really was interested in blowing the stack and they have the authority to change the recursion limit, they can do so if they want... but they have to explicitly point the recursive gun at their foot and explicitly pull the trigger. They won't get shot accidentally.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the first example comparing "The Old Way" and "The New Way" on the Station Exchange website specifically deals with character exchange and preventing people from being ripped off by people who take the money then change the password on the sold account before the buyer can log in.
Absolutely. I've worked in technical support and spoken to a customer who reported what they thought was a bug in our product. I directed the customer to another website (I don't remember whose ... maybe Microsoft's, maybe NVidia's) where the page EXPLICITLY STATED that this was a bug in that other company's product ... and they still wanted to know when we were going to fix "our bug" so they didn't have to download the fix from the other company's website.
*head bangs on desk*
*head bangs on desk*
*head bangs on desk*
I agree. Wikipedia's a fine first source. If you need information and need to have a source to list in, say, a bibliography or works cited document, you can go to Wikipedia and get some general information and sources that you can then look up elsewhere. For instance, today's featured article is about Apollo 8. At the bottom of that entry, there are 11 web links and 5 references to books, complete with ISBN numbers.
Typing one of those ISBN numbers into my local library's catalog search page yielded the information that while my local library doesn't have it, several of the other libraries with which my local library is associated do have copies available for borrowing. In addition, there's a few subjects under which this book could be found; clicking on those links yielded a dozen or so other texts all on the same subject.
If they pass a bill knowing that it is an unconstitutional regulation of speech, their behinds are on the line at the next election.
:(
I think you underestimate the apathy of the general voting populace of the United States. After all, if being involved in a fatal accident didn't prevent someone from being reelected, I doubt passing an unconstitutional regulation will prevent someone from being reelected unless that legislation were to make American Idol illegal. That might actually give the general populace of the US a smack upside the head. Unfortunately, I think that's about all that would do so
I'd guess they're probably seeding whatever pseudorandom number generator they're using with some value based on the time, so if you and the poster above you tried to generate a random story at exactly the same time, you may have seeded the PRNG with the same starting value, hence the identical stories.
Even B5 used "slugthrowers".
... although the Starfuries do have missiles, which I guess you could count as big slugs.
I'm not quite sure if a small bolt of plasma actually counts as a slug
In the first line of your comment, you have an unnecessary "small". Unless you're working on a very very specialized project, the number of users of the code will outnumber the number of developers and testers by at least an order of magnitude, sometimes more. No matter how creative the developer or tester are, the users will always come up with at least a couple of ways to break the product that you never thought of. "What's this bug report? If you press and hold left-Shift, then press and hold 8, and finally Page Down three times the program will crash? What the ... why ... *sputtering* ... why in the world did the person who filed this bug report ever do that???" [That's only a slight exaggeration from some bug reports I've seen.]
They've got enough names for a long long time if they use domestic cat breed names. Admittedly "OS X Turkish Angora" sounds a little less impressive than "OS X Tiger", but some of the names might be kind of cute, and Apple could win some fans if they were to use a picture of a cat of that breed in the advertising simply from the cuteness factor.
Ah, but you know that I could only answer A or E, so you would have put the iocane powder in one of those options so clearly I can't choose either of those options. But you're a Slashdot poster, so you know that I know you know I could only answer A or E, so you wouldn't put the iocane in either of those options. Therefore ... hey, is that Natalie Portman with a bowl of grits? *switches poll options while your head is turned* Oh sorry, my mistake, just Cmdr. Taco with some oatmeal. Well, I've made my choice, and I choose E. *selects poll option* Hahahaha ... never choose anything other than CowboyNeal when karma is on the line! HA HA HA HA ... *thud*
Sorry, for some reason I was reminded of The Princess Bride when I read your post.
This article is rediculous. First of all, humans in space is a complete joke: there is very little of interest in space. Humans on other planets is another story.
I disagree with your statement that there is very little of interest in space. Both asteroids and comets are of great interest. Why, you ask? Many comets are made of ice -- frozen water, which will be quite useful if we're going to create colonies either in space or on the surface of other worlds. In addition, if we keep on pumping crap into Earth's rivers, lakes, and oceans we may need some of that water ourselves in the not-too-distant future.
As for asteroids, the C-type, S-type, and M-type asteroids could provide us with valuable resources for manufacturing, either for products to be used to explore other planets or for products to ship back to Earth.
Colonizing the ocean floor would be much more difficult than colonizing space. In space, the pressure difference between inside the space capsule (1 atmosphere) and outside (0 atmosphere) is 1 atmosphere, so the space capsule doesn't have to withstand _that_ much pressure. I believe that in the ocean, the outside pressure increases by 1 atmosphere every 10 meters or so -- meaning that if you want to go down 1000 meters, your ocean capsule has to withstand a pressure differential of 99 atmospheres pressing in. Now true, you'd have to travel farther to get to orbit than you would to get to the ocean floor, but the conditions at your destination are actually better in space in terms of pressure.
Your final comment was On this survival front, no scientist could possibly prove that life is safier anywhere else than on the Earth, where it has been happily plodding along for a few billion years, and so far been unobserved anywhere else.. Think of it as an insurance policy. Right now, if something were to happen, humanity is an uninsured "liver" (one who lives) and we'd be screwed. If we had the insurance policy of a self-sustaining colony off-planet, then even if something were to happen to Earth that kills off humanity, we can fall back on our insurance policy.
It's not a matter of whether or not anyplace else is safer than Earth -- I wouldn't exactly say Earth is all that safe right now. Read the current concerns about nuclear warfare. Add to that biological and chemical weapons and I think you'll see we could do a pretty damn good job killing off either all life or just all human life on the planet. If that were to happen, I wouldn't want that to be the end of humanity.
From watching the first episode of the NBC version and most if not all of the BBC version of Coupling, I don't think NBC tried to give the jokes an American context. They simply did a find-and-replace on the actors and actresses -- the dialog in the NBC version was pretty much exactly the same as the BBC version. That's part of why I didn't watch the second episode of the NBC version -- if I wanted to watch Coupling as it was written for the BBC version, I'd watch the BBC version!
Now if NCB had given American actors and actresses bios for the characters of Steve, Susan, Patrick, Jane, Jeff, and Sally to serve as a foundation and let them act out something _similar to_ but _distinct from_ the British version, it might have succeeded. There was and is enough depth in each of those characters to have taken the NBC version in a completely different but still interesting and funny direction from the BBC version.
We now bring you a special report ... the United States Department of Homeland Security has just announced it has acquired internet service provider AOL. Secretary Michael Chertoff had this statement for the press about the acquisition: "We believe that Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist networks throughout the world have been using AOL Instant Messenger, and so acquiring AOL's infrastructure will bring us one step closer to finding Al Qaeda. In addition, now we won't need Congress to renew the PATRIOT Act ... we'll have all the information we need thanks to AOL's databases of subscriber information." No word on how much the Department of Homeland Security is paying for AOL, but given that this is a government agency, estimates start at three times AOL's net worth.
Figuring out how to remove the virus is a technical thing.
Creating useful instructions for user to use to remove the virus is also a technical thing.
Using the instructions to remove the virus shouldn't be a technical thing.
I think that software companies that create virus scanners or virus removal programs should have a usability staff to review the warnings that they send out and maybe even a few in-house testers -- one young kid, one person who has little if any computer experience, and one technically-strong person.
If the young kid can understand the instructions, you know the houses where the kids use the computer most of the time and are semi-responsible for fixing the computer when it breaks will be able to use the instructions. If the non-technical person can understand the instructions, you'll cover the houses where a non-technical older person maintains the computer. Finally, if the technical person understands the instructions, you'll know that technically strong users will be able to find useful information in the instructions.
If you start hanging out around the Pentagon (just chose that as an example) and are taking photographs like mad [especially of the guards and the security features], don't you think someone will get a little suspicious?
... but go to Google Maps, search for "Fenway Park, Boston, MA", then zoom in all the way on the satellite map and select point A. Now some of those places where lots of cars are parked may not be public parking lots, but it'll give me some places to check when I get to Fenway.
As for using a small plane, try doing that over a major city where there's a no-fly zone, either temporary or permanent.
US street maps are pretty good for navigating, but they don't show much detail. What if you want to know if there is a parking lot close to where you want to visit? For instance, since I live in Massachusetts, I might want to go to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. If I want to take my life into my own hands, I might drive into the city and want to park near Fenway. The street map probably won't show me where I can park
One feature that would be really cool for Google to add would be the ability to click on a point on the satellite map and, if that location is a business (to avoid privacy concerns), show the contact information (name, address, and phone number) for that business. They must have that info for local.google.com, so tying the two together would be very cool.
The thrust of its knife will be long and deep, deeper and deeper, thrusting until Linux lays spent and quivering on...
...
Given that this is a story about Paris Hilton, the first time I read it my brain just kind of ignored the phrase "of its knife" in your comment
If we had a magic portal through which we could discard all our waste products, I'd rather have it go into the sun rather than onto Mars. We may eventually be able to live on Mars, either by building structures to make small areas habitable for humans or by terraforming the entire planet. I'd hate to run into a pair of someone's old gym socks if that happens. I don't think we're going to be colonizing the sun anytime soon, though, and nuclear fusion does a pretty nice job of taking care of a lot of waste products.
Agreed. I hope that eventually the whole miniseries comes out on DVD a la The Animatrix. I'd probably pay $20-$25 for it. Alternately, they could bundle it with the Ultra Super-Spiffy Deluxe Premium Platinum Mega edition of the Episodes 1, 2, and 3 box set.
I used to work for a company that did some engine controls for the military, navy ships mostly. Their specs and test procedures were incredible. The equipment wasn't the most current technology, but they wanted to make SURE the control we built for their ships worked, no matter the cost.
Of course. You don't want your latest & greatest warship steaming out of port on its maiden voyage going *putt* *putt* *putt* [or even worse, not steaming out of port on its maiden voyage at all.]
Actually, it seems like more often than not governments are willing to spend lots of money, especially on things like technology. Now, if it's a new road or school building they are going to be as cheap as possible.
You've got that right.
No, it's more like telling that average driver:
"If something goes wrong on your car and you want to look under the hood, be my guest. If not, you can go to any mechanic you want to try to fix it -- you don't have to go back to the dealer and take their word as to what's wrong with your car."
Agreed. I'm planning on waiting to get either a DS or a PSP (or both) until they've had a chance to work out the kinks and until the set of applications designed specifically for each system is a bit larger. [I don't need a DS to play GBA games; I have a GBA for that.]
...
Of course, the release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children might just have an impact on when I decide what system or systems to get
So Tom Green is to Canada as David Hasselhoff is to Germany?
"Where the *yawn* #@*% did I *yawn* put that !)&^$! *yawn* hammer?"
The typical thing that Clocky will say once said Slashdot user finds the hammer:
"*crunch*"
Hopefully your auto-reply software is configured to realize "Hey, I just sent an auto-reply to the email address that sent me an auto-reply ... let's not bother them a second time." See here and here and here.
I would hope that this service from IBM would also be configured by default in such a way that it avoids the infinite-challenge-loop (and is hard to configure to set up such a loop.)
Note that most of what's written there is stuff you're already doing -- but it avoids the problem of investigating a site that the manager might not allow the user to access even if it's okay from the IT standpoint. In addition, you have documented buy-in from the user's manager in case any policy gets violated.
For instance, imagine writing a recursive program to calculate the factorial of a number (note: no error checking included, and I'm letting the kth factorial number for k
Now assume that instead of typing (x-1) in the recursive call on the next to last line, the user types (x+1). If the user calls this with x > 2 and you don't have some limit on the number of recursive calls a function can make, this program will never end (unless you exceed the stack limit, which is not a graceful way to exit.) If there is a limit, the program will hit that limit and error, giving the programmer a chance to catch their typo. If the user really was interested in blowing the stack and they have the authority to change the recursion limit, they can do so if they want