Read the last paragraph of the general appearance and the reproductive cycle.
This one still makes me laugh. Before this, I knew it was possible to get less than accurate information from wikipedia, this was the first time I actually came across it.
Obviously depends on your city, but in here in Vancouver all buses have bike racks on them. So biking one way is a matter of tossing the bike onto the bus on the way in and riding home or vice versa. I tend to do that, but I have a 40 mile commute and cycling both ways in one day is a bit excessive for me.
One of the google talks by Violet Blue actually had some interesting information on the 2257 requirement. She did not go quite this far in criticising the law, but pointed out some very serious problems with it.
Basically, a decent chunk of people who needed to prove age for 2257 compliance basically just had pictures of them with the driver's license. Of course, many people tend not to perform under their real name and if these pictures get onto the internet, then someone else can tie a face to a real name and possibly even an address. Not a good situation in general. From what I gather, the wording of the law was pretty vague as well as to what sort of proof was required and who could eventually ask for it.
It's not the first time that any huge defects have been caused by a single character. Quoting Code Complete who in turned was referencing an article from the early 80's (Kill that Code, Gerald Weinberg), "...three of the most expensive software errors of all time-costing $1.8 billion, $900 million and $245 million- involved the change of a single character in a previously correct program.
So on the one hand, it's easy to sort of snicker that they were so close to having a correct implementation, but just missed, but on the other hand, there is a long and storied history of us programmers blowing things by a single character. I mean, isn't the 'off by one' error still one of the most common ones in development code, a instead of =, index instead of index-1 or whatever?
At least now that the defect has been isolated and can be fixed. One character fix is much better than a full redesign...
A good friend of mine is in Facebook with the name of a popular sitcom character. The fun thing with the photos is that because he is on Facebook, everyone links his Facebook name to those pictures. Even if someone did tag his real name on some random photo, you would have 300 or so photos with this guy tagged as $SitcomName and 2 with him tagged with $RealName. Note that this hasn't happened yet in photos numbering in the low hundreds, so even then, it's still theoretical. The point is, that since the $SitcomName is reasonable and not too offensive (Not Homer J Simpson, etc), if you saw his faced tagged with a different name in a tiny percentage of the images, you'd figure they were just mistakes.
I do follow pro cycling fairly seriously and always look forward to the coverage of the the Tour. If you are complaining about doping, however, you cannot really talk about the past 'heroic days' without being hypocritical. I cannot speak for the others, but the champion Coppi wasn't clean. Amphetamines and good old fashioned alcohol were heavily used back in the day.
I have as much hatred for cheaters than some, more so than most. In my high school days I was a nationally ranked athlete (not cycling) and after more than one major event was privileged enough to get to pee in a cup in front of a variable number of rapt observers. That sort of humiliation for a clean athlete leaves it's mark for the sort of people who ruin it for the rest of us.
With all that said, however, it doesn't take away from the Tour being one of the most difficult sporting events on the planet. It's a damned impressive race all around. Maybe the top contenders are doping/cheating, as there is so much money on the line for the top guys, but there (I hope, though opinons vary) are a decent percentage of racers who are clean. My only real wish is that when they do get busted, they just accept it and not try to get out of it. See David Millar vs Tyler Hamilton.
I have always felt that the ideal solution would involve a small amount of electrical current tied to the reply all button. Sure, you could hit it, but it hurts. That should alleviate the worst of the abuses while ensuring the option remains for those times when it is really needed. Then you'd still end up thinking long and hard about whether to hit that button.
Completely impossible, but one can dream, right?
I don't think they ever will though... I mean, to quote the article (quoting the ABC president of advertising):
"I'm not so sure that the whole issue really is one of commercial avoidance," Shaw said. "It really is a matter of convenience--so you don't miss your favorite show. And quite frankly, we're just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I'm not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don't fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can't skip commercials."
It's obvious that he pretty much doesn't understand his viewers. Which are, of course, the product he is selling to the advertisers. A signficant chunk of people hate commercials.
He's also ignoring the fact that on demand viewing was possible before now to anyone who had a VCR. PVRs have a lot of nice features, but the single biggest one that improves my video on demand experience is the fact that the commercials are automatically skipped for me (or require tapping a button a couple of times) rather than holding down the fast forward button and watching the high speed commercials and trying to hit the 'play' button in time again. For me, 'convenience' was the more efficient skipping of commercials.
So if google's gdp guess is roughly accurate, they are claiming that they are 'losing' 2% of the GDP per year. I just can't believe someone could actually say that with a straight face. They have to know that they are being completely dishonest.
I don't ask for much, really, just don't lie to me and don't treat me like I'm a moron, this probably has something to do with why I don't go to the movies very often anymore...
I'm personally looking forward to what could be done with Mario Party games. As soon as I read about the controller, I envisioned 4 player mini-games where your position in the room relative to other players can give you bonuses or some other nonsense.
That could be seriously entertaining.
You know, that's actually something I've been pining for for quite some time... My ideal multiplayer RPG would be something like Morrowind, with a cap of 10 or so real people able to be in the world at one time. If you feel like playing with other people, that's great, but it is by no means required.
The whole concept of the 'main quest' is something that I always enjoyed about RPGs and being able to play through them with a couple of friends is really nice.
Indeed.
A couple of years ago, I was into the show Alias. University days, so we had the big TV and got a dozen or so people out every Monday or whatever night it was on and watched it.
One fateful episode, there was a car chase, the bad guy jumps into a Ford Mustang and one of the good guys yells, "Quick, jump in the F One Fifty!" It then shifts to a closeup of the Ford F150 logo on the side of the truck for a solid 1-2 seconds, and an extended chase sequence ensued.
That was the worst example of a product placement I had ever seen and I (and about 3 others of the regular crew) just stopped watching the show then.
This is pretty much the standard problem with most military thought. Every standing army in the world, save for the ones that are winning, are preparing or fighting the last major conflict. This holds over to technological advancement that is tied in with military endeavours, which, in most western countries, is virtually every industry.
Terrorists used to hijack planes to escape or to demand something, but were not suicidal. You countered with ultra elite task forces to kill the terrorists when the plane was on the ground. This, in theory, made hijackings impossible, except for the fact that the terrorists in question learned. I think it became somewhat apparent that if you hijacked a plane, you were not going to survive, thus, might as well combine it with a suicide attack. Now we have development going towards preventing a suicide attack in planes. This in no way prepares us for whatever is coming next. (whether or not that should actually be a concern is another debate)
The political questions are completely ignored simply because they are difficult. It is easy to say, "Terrorists used knives to take over planes, therefore if there were no knives, there would be no hijackings". It is, on the other hand, quite difficult to sum up the incredibly complex set of circumstances which eventually lead to terrorist organizations actually launching attacks. It is even harder to come up with reasonable solutions that will actually have an effect in 5 or 10 years, let alone in a handful of months.
It would seem that virtually every one of our 'leaders' in recent years is obsessed with the simple, all encompassing solution to problems. Admitting that there is no easy solution to some problems quite simply does not exist.
Very well said. You can extend it into athletics as well. I make money to spend it on bicycles and bike parts so I can spend a large amount of my free time tooling around under my own power.
Recently, I was talking to a non-athlete type, who, upon learning that I raced, asked whether I was making money at it. I was so surprised by it, I wasn't terribly sure how to respond. Looking at your post though, there does seem to be a portion of the population that cannot comprehend why a person would do something without a (perhaps sizeable) monetary reward. I think that is kind of sad.
Heh. A close friend of mine is a Canadian patent examiner. A month or two ago, I got an email basically complaining about how the USPTO site was slow. Coincidentally, there was a/. story on patents on the front page. A couple of weeks later, same thing happened. I mentioned it this time and/. gained a new casual reader.
Not 5 minutes ago, I recieved an email consisting of, and I quote, "Goddamned slashdot linked the USPTO again during work hours, guess I'm staying late today..."
Well, from the perspective of the record exec who made this statement, this logic is probably completely valid. The problem of course, is that facts used to build up the argument are more or less incorrect:
I believe the thought process goes something like this: P2P downloads to lost sales are a 1 to 1 ratio. Thus, it stands to reason that web downloads are affected by the same ratio. So therefore the BBC is directly responsible for a million or so lost sales.
This is one of the reasons why pure logic can be a very dangerous thing to use in topics where the root arguments are not black and white so to speak. But that's another rant...
Indeed. Among other things, it seems that the wonderful thing about solutions and issues is that you don't really have to solve issues. You manage or deal with issues. Therefore, if the issue doesn't really go away, it's not *you* that failed, it's just that it was managed somewhat incorrectly. Wheras if something is a problem and it doesn't go away, you are basically incompetent. This fundamental difference in language is pretty powerful and is without question in use in a lot of large organizations to cover somewhat incompetent responses to real problems.
This is a trend that can be seen in pretty much any level of western society, but is particularly evident in politics, both government and corporate. Every decision has to be made in a rational, logical manner and you must be able to support it. There is also an almost religious belief that an idea or decision made logically cannot be wrong. Thus, if the end result of your decision is not what you expect, it has nothing to do with your argument being wrong, it is more likely that you just weren't right enough of the people who implemented your decision screwed up.
As long as this continues, you will never see the anti-terror legislation get weaker, and not because your government wants ultimate control. More because the people involved in writing the legislation would be outright admitting that they did not properly manage the 'terrorist issue'.
Slashdot Mirror
Read the last paragraph of the general appearance and the reproductive cycle.
This one still makes me laugh. Before this, I knew it was possible to get less than accurate information from wikipedia, this was the first time I actually came across it.
Obviously depends on your city, but in here in Vancouver all buses have bike racks on them. So biking one way is a matter of tossing the bike onto the bus on the way in and riding home or vice versa. I tend to do that, but I have a 40 mile commute and cycling both ways in one day is a bit excessive for me.
One of the google talks by Violet Blue actually had some interesting information on the 2257 requirement. She did not go quite this far in criticising the law, but pointed out some very serious problems with it.
Basically, a decent chunk of people who needed to prove age for 2257 compliance basically just had pictures of them with the driver's license. Of course, many people tend not to perform under their real name and if these pictures get onto the internet, then someone else can tie a face to a real name and possibly even an address. Not a good situation in general. From what I gather, the wording of the law was pretty vague as well as to what sort of proof was required and who could eventually ask for it.
Anyhow, a pretty interesting talk here with some relevance to the topic: Violet Blue (Google Tech Talks)
It's not the first time that any huge defects have been caused by a single character. Quoting Code Complete who in turned was referencing an article from the early 80's (Kill that Code, Gerald Weinberg), "...three of the most expensive software errors of all time-costing $1.8 billion, $900 million and $245 million- involved the change of a single character in a previously correct program. So on the one hand, it's easy to sort of snicker that they were so close to having a correct implementation, but just missed, but on the other hand, there is a long and storied history of us programmers blowing things by a single character. I mean, isn't the 'off by one' error still one of the most common ones in development code, a instead of =, index instead of index-1 or whatever? At least now that the defect has been isolated and can be fixed. One character fix is much better than a full redesign...
A good friend of mine is in Facebook with the name of a popular sitcom character. The fun thing with the photos is that because he is on Facebook, everyone links his Facebook name to those pictures. Even if someone did tag his real name on some random photo, you would have 300 or so photos with this guy tagged as $SitcomName and 2 with him tagged with $RealName. Note that this hasn't happened yet in photos numbering in the low hundreds, so even then, it's still theoretical. The point is, that since the $SitcomName is reasonable and not too offensive (Not Homer J Simpson, etc), if you saw his faced tagged with a different name in a tiny percentage of the images, you'd figure they were just mistakes.
I do follow pro cycling fairly seriously and always look forward to the coverage of the the Tour. If you are complaining about doping, however, you cannot really talk about the past 'heroic days' without being hypocritical. I cannot speak for the others, but the champion Coppi wasn't clean. Amphetamines and good old fashioned alcohol were heavily used back in the day.
I have as much hatred for cheaters than some, more so than most. In my high school days I was a nationally ranked athlete (not cycling) and after more than one major event was privileged enough to get to pee in a cup in front of a variable number of rapt observers. That sort of humiliation for a clean athlete leaves it's mark for the sort of people who ruin it for the rest of us.
With all that said, however, it doesn't take away from the Tour being one of the most difficult sporting events on the planet. It's a damned impressive race all around. Maybe the top contenders are doping/cheating, as there is so much money on the line for the top guys, but there (I hope, though opinons vary) are a decent percentage of racers who are clean. My only real wish is that when they do get busted, they just accept it and not try to get out of it. See David Millar vs Tyler Hamilton.
I have always felt that the ideal solution would involve a small amount of electrical current tied to the reply all button. Sure, you could hit it, but it hurts. That should alleviate the worst of the abuses while ensuring the option remains for those times when it is really needed. Then you'd still end up thinking long and hard about whether to hit that button. Completely impossible, but one can dream, right?
"I'm not so sure that the whole issue really is one of commercial avoidance," Shaw said. "It really is a matter of convenience--so you don't miss your favorite show. And quite frankly, we're just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I'm not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don't fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can't skip commercials."
It's obvious that he pretty much doesn't understand his viewers. Which are, of course, the product he is selling to the advertisers. A signficant chunk of people hate commercials.
He's also ignoring the fact that on demand viewing was possible before now to anyone who had a VCR. PVRs have a lot of nice features, but the single biggest one that improves my video on demand experience is the fact that the commercials are automatically skipped for me (or require tapping a button a couple of times) rather than holding down the fast forward button and watching the high speed commercials and trying to hit the 'play' button in time again. For me, 'convenience' was the more efficient skipping of commercials.
So if google's gdp guess is roughly accurate, they are claiming that they are 'losing' 2% of the GDP per year. I just can't believe someone could actually say that with a straight face. They have to know that they are being completely dishonest. I don't ask for much, really, just don't lie to me and don't treat me like I'm a moron, this probably has something to do with why I don't go to the movies very often anymore...
I'm personally looking forward to what could be done with Mario Party games. As soon as I read about the controller, I envisioned 4 player mini-games where your position in the room relative to other players can give you bonuses or some other nonsense. That could be seriously entertaining.
You know, that's actually something I've been pining for for quite some time... My ideal multiplayer RPG would be something like Morrowind, with a cap of 10 or so real people able to be in the world at one time. If you feel like playing with other people, that's great, but it is by no means required.
The whole concept of the 'main quest' is something that I always enjoyed about RPGs and being able to play through them with a couple of friends is really nice.
Technically true, but that $100 million isn't going to vanish. Someone is making cash on this whole deal, likely a tidy sum.
Indeed. A couple of years ago, I was into the show Alias. University days, so we had the big TV and got a dozen or so people out every Monday or whatever night it was on and watched it. One fateful episode, there was a car chase, the bad guy jumps into a Ford Mustang and one of the good guys yells, "Quick, jump in the F One Fifty!" It then shifts to a closeup of the Ford F150 logo on the side of the truck for a solid 1-2 seconds, and an extended chase sequence ensued. That was the worst example of a product placement I had ever seen and I (and about 3 others of the regular crew) just stopped watching the show then.
Terrorists used to hijack planes to escape or to demand something, but were not suicidal. You countered with ultra elite task forces to kill the terrorists when the plane was on the ground. This, in theory, made hijackings impossible, except for the fact that the terrorists in question learned. I think it became somewhat apparent that if you hijacked a plane, you were not going to survive, thus, might as well combine it with a suicide attack. Now we have development going towards preventing a suicide attack in planes. This in no way prepares us for whatever is coming next. (whether or not that should actually be a concern is another debate)
The political questions are completely ignored simply because they are difficult. It is easy to say, "Terrorists used knives to take over planes, therefore if there were no knives, there would be no hijackings". It is, on the other hand, quite difficult to sum up the incredibly complex set of circumstances which eventually lead to terrorist organizations actually launching attacks. It is even harder to come up with reasonable solutions that will actually have an effect in 5 or 10 years, let alone in a handful of months.
It would seem that virtually every one of our 'leaders' in recent years is obsessed with the simple, all encompassing solution to problems. Admitting that there is no easy solution to some problems quite simply does not exist.
Hm. I think I wandered a bit there.
Very well said. You can extend it into athletics as well. I make money to spend it on bicycles and bike parts so I can spend a large amount of my free time tooling around under my own power.
Recently, I was talking to a non-athlete type, who, upon learning that I raced, asked whether I was making money at it. I was so surprised by it, I wasn't terribly sure how to respond. Looking at your post though, there does seem to be a portion of the population that cannot comprehend why a person would do something without a (perhaps sizeable) monetary reward. I think that is kind of sad.
Heh. A close friend of mine is a Canadian patent examiner. A month or two ago, I got an email basically complaining about how the USPTO site was slow. Coincidentally, there was a /. story on patents on the front page. A couple of weeks later, same thing happened. I mentioned it this time and /. gained a new casual reader.
Not 5 minutes ago, I recieved an email consisting of, and I quote, "Goddamned slashdot linked the USPTO again during work hours, guess I'm staying late today..."
You mean to say that the description in the article of "south of the north pole" wasn't terribly helpful? :)
I believe the thought process goes something like this: P2P downloads to lost sales are a 1 to 1 ratio. Thus, it stands to reason that web downloads are affected by the same ratio. So therefore the BBC is directly responsible for a million or so lost sales.
This is one of the reasons why pure logic can be a very dangerous thing to use in topics where the root arguments are not black and white so to speak. But that's another rant...
Indeed. Among other things, it seems that the wonderful thing about solutions and issues is that you don't really have to solve issues. You manage or deal with issues. Therefore, if the issue doesn't really go away, it's not *you* that failed, it's just that it was managed somewhat incorrectly. Wheras if something is a problem and it doesn't go away, you are basically incompetent. This fundamental difference in language is pretty powerful and is without question in use in a lot of large organizations to cover somewhat incompetent responses to real problems.
This is a trend that can be seen in pretty much any level of western society, but is particularly evident in politics, both government and corporate. Every decision has to be made in a rational, logical manner and you must be able to support it. There is also an almost religious belief that an idea or decision made logically cannot be wrong. Thus, if the end result of your decision is not what you expect, it has nothing to do with your argument being wrong, it is more likely that you just weren't right enough of the people who implemented your decision screwed up.
As long as this continues, you will never see the anti-terror legislation get weaker, and not because your government wants ultimate control. More because the people involved in writing the legislation would be outright admitting that they did not properly manage the 'terrorist issue'.