would you use the phone number as a universally unique id?
One user might have several phone numbers, while the one phone number might have several users.
Additionally, the phone number is not portable across national borders. You can not bring your Norwegian phone number and use it with an american registrar.
Additionally users might be forced at regular basis to change their phone numbers. Me for one, had to change my phone number when I changed employer.
Database designers have known this for ages. Always assign a new unique id to any row in a table. Ids that seem unique and stable might change. Even social security numbers might change.
Oh.. Who would want all their contact info to be collected in one global system available for all?
I haven't realy looked into the jagging, but I've seen problems with resizing as well..
I worked a lot on a book-cover, which I originally did in 300dpi. The file was about 20 MB big.. So I decided swithch to 600dpi instead.. something which should have made the filesize about four times as big, but nooo..
The file was over 500MB big!!!!
GIMP has real problems handeling big images, and if you have to do a lot of layer work.. whell.. It gets troublesome.. Still use it though, but I cringe at the though of editing my webcomic in GIMP.
Re:My problems with GIMP.
on
GIMP 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
So, in the interest of its long term viablility, I formally propose a name change:
This has already been implemented in the trafficlights around my Uni four years ago or something. They measure the trafic around the lights and switch according to this. Funny walking up to the lights when there is no cars around. It will switch to green for pedestrians immediately. The same will happen if a lone car comes driving towards the corner.
I know this don't belong here, but it needs to be said.
Dude, you're cool!
If not for making the Tron suit, at least for standing up for yourself.
I salute you!
(oh.. and you met wil wheaton?)
My zerox freaked out about a year ago, and started printing yellow signs amidst the normal images. The image would for example be split in three, with bands of yellow (weak) print amidst the part..
Me and a friend sendt out a mail in 97, where we pretended to be the local police.
It was all ment to be a joke, telling another friend that their network account had been temporarily suspended due to illigal activities on the net. We thought it was hillarious as she had to be on the net to read it, but our friend didn't get it and really freaked out. Suddenly police got involved, and it was our time to panic.
Anyways, we were young back then, as well were the net.. Lesson learnt I should say. Nothing ever happened, but it put a good shock in us.
Skype sais they block credit cards that are issued in some countries, including Spain. What they don't say is that they block creditcards based on where you use them from, or based on difference between IP location and creditcard origin.
So no, they don't inform about it.
My creditcard is from Norway, which isn't on the block list of creditcard origins. My problem was that I used that creditcard from Argentina. They don't inform anywhere on their pages that they filter you as possible fraudulent based on which country you reside in (Not where your credit card is issued).
It is serious accusing people for beeing fraudulent, and this is exactly how I and many other customers felt. They discriminate people based on their location, and I would have liked to be warned about that.
Otherwise as I said, Skype is great both for VoIP between two computers and for calling regular phones. Way better than lagging and expencive phonecards.
Shit.. I didn't mean skype's transmission though.. I haven't had one problem with skypes transmission since I started using it. It is way better than normal phonecards which lag for up to 30 seconds..
(Just barely passed a midterm in a foreign language, thus I am a bitt high on nerves and word myself badly.. Please forgive me)
Since I got it working I have been calling my family for affordable prises. It makes it possible for me to call my parents, my grandparents, my siblings in Norway, and allso Friends studying in other countries all over the world. And for this I love Skype..
But!!!
There is always a but.
Skype has introdused a rather strict paying system, and in fact, it markt me as a possible fraud, thus making it impossible for me to pay.
Why?
Because I managed to use my credit card in a country from which it didn't origin. And; I did this three times, thus blocking it for ever beeing used at Skype.
This is all well and fine, as Skype must secure themselves and their customers. BUT; They inform about this nowhere. In their questions and answers, not even in their live help. I spendt one week talking to customer support, trying to get things to work, but instead of beeing honest and tell me that, sorry, I don't think it is going to work they had me try again tomorrow.
At the end of the week they were nice enough to tell me that all IP's from Argentina was blocked. Too late:)
So. Allthough they provide a nice new service, they still lack in customer support.
All grudges aside, I had a friend in norway buy credits for me, and now I am a happy ignorant skype user;)
Anyways, I buy a lot of my music off the street, literaly. A lot of bands down here in BsAs are going the way around the musicindustry and publish their own records, playing on the streets for publicity..
Ok.. I am seriously willing to risk the possiblility of being flambated once more just for saying:
This was a useless, foggy noninformative article, or am I totally off?
First of all, it speaks of readheads on FLASH memory. The problem is: there's no read:write heads on FLASH memory. It is a totally different technology, a type of RAM, where every storing cell is available at every moment. There is no read:write head, there is direct connections.
Then, trying to speak of the new fancy of vibration, it does nothing better than tellin about the hummingbird that hoovers like a miracle?
I think I understood, more due to my own pondering than the bad images of the article, how the technology is to work. A vibrating layer between a godzillian of read:write heads which allows for a very short latency.
The article though, doesn't even mention the problems this affords.
As a material vibrates, and this will be very problematic as it will not move uniformly over the whole surface. Parts of the surface will be closer to the readers, parts more off. How will the hardware take this into account?
And probably most important, the article speaks like it can directly apply the "readers" from the FLASH memory, to this new vibrating technology. Whow.. Now we now that there are no "readers" in FLASH, how will they go about that? It is far more costly to create a devise that have to read a field, than doing direct connections like in the FLASH. So visualise making how many readers? My 4 year old flash card has 96MB which affords for a stunning 805'306'368 individual bits that would need a single read:write head..
If the storagemedia is supposed to vibrate with a stunning frequenzy, there would be a limit to the thickness of the material, and thus a limit to the number of bits available for reading by each head. You can shake it horisontally and vertically, but still not get too many readable bits, which signals that there would be a problem, actually a lot of ploblems which isn't even adressed in the article.
Is there a possibility to tag the article like.. useless.. or something?
That is just so cool, I have nothing more to say. I didn't even imagine that such a simple construction could travel such distances.
I got how it propelled forward, but how is it possible to change directions perpendicular to it's axis of motion (left and right). Does it rotate so that it's wings arent at the same level? Did anyone get that part?
Interesting to see how it struggeled through the Gulf Stream which basicly makes it possible to live in Norway. Do you think they'll tell if they loose contact with one? In case, I'll be prepared to fish out my new gadget as it flows by.
Uhm.. didn't mean to offend anyone.. And I seriously didn't post to hurt anyones feelings, quakers included.
I take a master degree with focus on image recognition and AI, and as far as I can see there is no simple way to include an enemy detection algorithm. It's not like in the movies where robocop or nemesis get "armed enemy, threat: medium"
The point is that even though these machines carry a shotgun, and probably can manouver autonomously, somone have to be left in charge of controlling the gun. Otherwise hell would brake loose as I see it.
The idea of putting quakers behind it was my, and I am truely sorry for my bad humor, bad attempt to be funny, as a quaker would do the same bad job of identifying an enemy as any algorithm. That is if you can translate his actions in quake into the real world.
The point is, even though it is possible to equip a robot with a gun, doesn't mean that they're going to let it run loose with the gun. Of course there will be mesures involved in controlling it.
Thus, I don't take it as a threat at the moment.
It's not easy determining who the enemy is, even for humans. We easily put humans into categories based on very uncertain features.
As I live in Latin Amerika I get this every day. Everywhere I go people categorice me as an american based on my height, hair and skincolour, and for this I am treated badly. People in my lokal store sneered at me until they found out who I was.
Sorry about the offtrailing, but what I wanted to say is that if Humans can categorise me that wrongly based on too few facts, I'm pretty sure a machine will do the same mistake. The one day I have too prove my innocense to a machine, that is the day I fear.
Does this mean that we finally can put the quakers to good use? Give them a packbot each and lett hell lose over in the mideast. Never mind that they frag about everything that moves.
No, really, I am scared, but hey, that was the point of this article weren't it?
/"Eat the yellow dots goddamnit.. The YELLOW dots!"
The Piracy theme has been widely discussed within the closest circle of friends and family.
As of me, I find two reasons behind it.
Firstly, it's not the prize, but the availability.
I used to live a place where we had a 100MBps line, and surely the net was full of copied movies. It is possible to think that all these people are copying music to get it free. "Steeling" it, and thus making themselves criminals.
The problem is availability. You're sitting down, having a boring night, and nothing on the tv or whatsoever. And then you know that you can have a movie down in the matter of minutes.
Now, if the movie buisness had provided a download service, where you paid a REASONABLE price for the service, don't you think people would use this service rather than makin criminals of themselves? At least a certain persentage?
When renting a movie might cost 5$ in the blockbuster, how much of this goes to the moviebuisness? Not much I'm sure. What if the moviebuisness were able to skip the middle part and deliver the movies directly to us for a better price? I for one would be happy to see that day.. And ohh.. With gooood quality.
Lack of service isn't the only problem, overpricing is something everyone points out.
I recently moved to Argentina, and behold!
I can go to the premiere of a movie, paying as little as 2$, I can buy the DVD for less than 10$, aaand of course I could buy a crappy quality bootleg VCD on the streets for 5$.. So what do I do?
Now I go to the cinema twise a week, MINIMUM. And I've got myself a nice collection of DVDs.
For me this is about the only solution to the piracy "Problem".
Give the customers what they want. Better service and lower prices!
Slashdot Mirror
And you'r not able to search the list using the 10 digit keypad on your phone?
I'm able to call noob only by pressing 666 :P
would you use the phone number as a universally unique id?
One user might have several phone numbers, while the one phone number might have several users.
Additionally, the phone number is not portable across national borders. You can not bring your Norwegian phone number and use it with an american registrar.
Additionally users might be forced at regular basis to change their phone numbers. Me for one, had to change my phone number when I changed employer.
Database designers have known this for ages. Always assign a new unique id to any row in a table. Ids that seem unique and stable might change. Even social security numbers might change.
Oh.. Who would want all their contact info to be collected in one global system available for all?
No keyholes to peep through????????
I haven't realy looked into the jagging, but I've seen problems with resizing as well..
I worked a lot on a book-cover, which I originally did in 300dpi. The file was about 20 MB big.. So I decided swithch to 600dpi instead.. something which should have made the filesize about four times as big, but nooo..
The file was over 500MB big!!!!
GIMP has real problems handeling big images, and if you have to do a lot of layer work.. whell.. It gets troublesome.. Still use it though, but I cringe at the though of editing my webcomic in GIMP.
So, in the interest of its long term viablility, I formally propose a name change:
GIMP Isn't Microsoft Paint
You realize that you just named it gimPIMP?
This has already been implemented in the trafficlights around my Uni four years ago or something. They measure the trafic around the lights and switch according to this. Funny walking up to the lights when there is no cars around. It will switch to green for pedestrians immediately. The same will happen if a lone car comes driving towards the corner.
I know this don't belong here, but it needs to be said. Dude, you're cool! If not for making the Tron suit, at least for standing up for yourself. I salute you! (oh.. and you met wil wheaton?)
My zerox freaked out about a year ago, and started printing yellow signs amidst the normal images. The image would for example be split in three, with bands of yellow (weak) print amidst the part..
Now I know what happened..
Me and a friend sendt out a mail in 97, where we pretended to be the local police.
It was all ment to be a joke, telling another friend that their network account had been temporarily suspended due to illigal activities on the net. We thought it was hillarious as she had to be on the net to read it, but our friend didn't get it and really freaked out. Suddenly police got involved, and it was our time to panic.
Anyways, we were young back then, as well were the net.. Lesson learnt I should say. Nothing ever happened, but it put a good shock in us.
EA has a very young energetic workforce..
In other words, turnoverrates are very high?
Allways found it interesting how the consulting firms made bad things sound like good ones while they introdused themselves to us (UNI grads)..
.. but how do I get princess Leia on my film?
Rumors allso have it that Padme Amidala is going to wear the buns in the next innstallment.. Perhaps she'll be willing to pose..
Yeah.. My exact thoughs..
Seems like someone is modding down posts including the words 'bad transmission'.
Ohh.. shit.. Did it again.. I suspect I'm beeing flamebated any second now..
I think you got me wrong.
Skype sais they block credit cards that are issued in some countries, including Spain. What they don't say is that they block creditcards based on where you use them from, or based on difference between IP location and creditcard origin.
So no, they don't inform about it.
My creditcard is from Norway, which isn't on the block list of creditcard origins. My problem was that I used that creditcard from Argentina. They don't inform anywhere on their pages that they filter you as possible fraudulent based on which country you reside in (Not where your credit card is issued).
It is serious accusing people for beeing fraudulent, and this is exactly how I and many other customers felt. They discriminate people based on their location, and I would have liked to be warned about that.
Otherwise as I said, Skype is great both for VoIP between two computers and for calling regular phones. Way better than lagging and expencive phonecards.
Shit.. I didn't mean skype's transmission though.. I haven't had one problem with skypes transmission since I started using it. It is way better than normal phonecards which lag for up to 30 seconds..
(Just barely passed a midterm in a foreign language, thus I am a bitt high on nerves and word myself badly.. Please forgive me)
In addition to beeing a skype user, I allso lack some basic gramatic skills, or so it seems.
:)
Blame it on the bad transmission
Ok, first of all, I must say:
:)
;)
I love Skype. Really.
Since I got it working I have been calling my family for affordable prises. It makes it possible for me to call my parents, my grandparents, my siblings in Norway, and allso Friends studying in other countries all over the world. And for this I love Skype..
But!!!
There is always a but.
Skype has introdused a rather strict paying system, and in fact, it markt me as a possible fraud, thus making it impossible for me to pay.
Why?
Because I managed to use my credit card in a country from which it didn't origin. And; I did this three times, thus blocking it for ever beeing used at Skype.
This is all well and fine, as Skype must secure themselves and their customers. BUT; They inform about this nowhere. In their questions and answers, not even in their live help. I spendt one week talking to customer support, trying to get things to work, but instead of beeing honest and tell me that, sorry, I don't think it is going to work they had me try again tomorrow.
At the end of the week they were nice enough to tell me that all IP's from Argentina was blocked. Too late
So. Allthough they provide a nice new service, they still lack in customer support.
All grudges aside, I had a friend in norway buy credits for me, and now I am a happy ignorant skype user
Anyone noticed that the original story has dissapeared? (The one linked to in the old slashdot story.)
d /20040924/tc_zd/135947
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/z
Have we been waiting for this a long time?
Anyways, I buy a lot of my music off the street, literaly. A lot of bands down here in BsAs are going the way around the musicindustry and publish their own records, playing on the streets for publicity..
They tricked me, anyways..
Ok.. I am seriously willing to risk the possiblility of being flambated once more just for saying:
This was a useless, foggy noninformative article, or am I totally off?
First of all, it speaks of readheads on FLASH memory. The problem is: there's no read:write heads on FLASH memory. It is a totally different technology, a type of RAM, where every storing cell is available at every moment. There is no read:write head, there is direct connections.
Then, trying to speak of the new fancy of vibration, it does nothing better than tellin about the hummingbird that hoovers like a miracle?
I think I understood, more due to my own pondering than the bad images of the article, how the technology is to work. A vibrating layer between a godzillian of read:write heads which allows for a very short latency. The article though, doesn't even mention the problems this affords.
As a material vibrates, and this will be very problematic as it will not move uniformly over the whole surface. Parts of the surface will be closer to the readers, parts more off. How will the hardware take this into account? And probably most important, the article speaks like it can directly apply the "readers" from the FLASH memory, to this new vibrating technology. Whow.. Now we now that there are no "readers" in FLASH, how will they go about that? It is far more costly to create a devise that have to read a field, than doing direct connections like in the FLASH. So visualise making how many readers? My 4 year old flash card has 96MB which affords for a stunning 805'306'368 individual bits that would need a single read:write head..
If the storagemedia is supposed to vibrate with a stunning frequenzy, there would be a limit to the thickness of the material, and thus a limit to the number of bits available for reading by each head. You can shake it horisontally and vertically, but still not get too many readable bits, which signals that there would be a problem, actually a lot of ploblems which isn't even adressed in the article.
Is there a possibility to tag the article like.. useless.. or something?
Finally we can have proofs that the moon is made out of cheese..
I do hope it's cheddar..
That is just so cool, I have nothing more to say. I didn't even imagine that such a simple construction could travel such distances.
I got how it propelled forward, but how is it possible to change directions perpendicular to it's axis of motion (left and right). Does it rotate so that it's wings arent at the same level? Did anyone get that part?
Interesting to see how it struggeled through the Gulf Stream which basicly makes it possible to live in Norway. Do you think they'll tell if they loose contact with one? In case, I'll be prepared to fish out my new gadget as it flows by.
Oh.. I just realised one more thing..
<flamebait>
I just got judged by a machine/human conglomerate. My karma is bad it sais. My posts are flaimbaits it sais.
I'm just glad the slashdotters don't have a shotgun!
</flamebait>
Uhm.. didn't mean to offend anyone.. And I seriously didn't post to hurt anyones feelings, quakers included.
I take a master degree with focus on image recognition and AI, and as far as I can see there is no simple way to include an enemy detection algorithm. It's not like in the movies where robocop or nemesis get "armed enemy, threat: medium"
The point is that even though these machines carry a shotgun, and probably can manouver autonomously, somone have to be left in charge of controlling the gun. Otherwise hell would brake loose as I see it.
The idea of putting quakers behind it was my, and I am truely sorry for my bad humor, bad attempt to be funny, as a quaker would do the same bad job of identifying an enemy as any algorithm. That is if you can translate his actions in quake into the real world.
The point is, even though it is possible to equip a robot with a gun, doesn't mean that they're going to let it run loose with the gun. Of course there will be mesures involved in controlling it.
Thus, I don't take it as a threat at the moment.
It's not easy determining who the enemy is, even for humans. We easily put humans into categories based on very uncertain features.
As I live in Latin Amerika I get this every day. Everywhere I go people categorice me as an american based on my height, hair and skincolour, and for this I am treated badly. People in my lokal store sneered at me until they found out who I was.
Sorry about the offtrailing, but what I wanted to say is that if Humans can categorise me that wrongly based on too few facts, I'm pretty sure a machine will do the same mistake. The one day I have too prove my innocense to a machine, that is the day I fear.
Does this mean that we finally can put the quakers to good use? Give them a packbot each and lett hell lose over in the mideast. Never mind that they frag about everything that moves.
/"Eat the yellow dots goddamnit.. The YELLOW dots!"
No, really, I am scared, but hey, that was the point of this article weren't it?
The Piracy theme has been widely discussed within the closest circle of friends and family. As of me, I find two reasons behind it. Firstly, it's not the prize, but the availability. I used to live a place where we had a 100MBps line, and surely the net was full of copied movies. It is possible to think that all these people are copying music to get it free. "Steeling" it, and thus making themselves criminals. The problem is availability. You're sitting down, having a boring night, and nothing on the tv or whatsoever. And then you know that you can have a movie down in the matter of minutes. Now, if the movie buisness had provided a download service, where you paid a REASONABLE price for the service, don't you think people would use this service rather than makin criminals of themselves? At least a certain persentage? When renting a movie might cost 5$ in the blockbuster, how much of this goes to the moviebuisness? Not much I'm sure. What if the moviebuisness were able to skip the middle part and deliver the movies directly to us for a better price? I for one would be happy to see that day.. And ohh.. With gooood quality. Lack of service isn't the only problem, overpricing is something everyone points out. I recently moved to Argentina, and behold! I can go to the premiere of a movie, paying as little as 2$, I can buy the DVD for less than 10$, aaand of course I could buy a crappy quality bootleg VCD on the streets for 5$.. So what do I do? Now I go to the cinema twise a week, MINIMUM. And I've got myself a nice collection of DVDs. For me this is about the only solution to the piracy "Problem". Give the customers what they want. Better service and lower prices!