If we do not do something about it, Africans and the denizens of the Third World will fork into their own species
Your attitude is probably 95% of the problem. Africa is a continent, NOT one country with one problem. In some cases it's corruption, in some cases it's war, in some cases it's AIDS or famine from a lack of rain. Believe it or not, but in other cases there is no problem and people live to an old age and retire to homes on the coast. So please try again when you get out of you Africa mentality and start looking specific problems, then you might just actually make a difference.
If this technology feeds a series of digital images directly into the brain, what would happen when connected to the brain of a blind person? Would the person, with time, be able to interpret the new information?
I imagine if this is the case, then connecting it to a camera worn by the user can possibly allow the person to see again.
The point stands with WAY less than a 50 year period of time. In fact you don't even have to go pre-Internet. What kind of security problems did people envisage in 1993, and how relevant are those problems today? Did anyone see DDOS attacks and botnets becoming the problem that is today, 15 years ago? What about spyware?
Thinking you can understand computer security problems anything more than a decade or two into the future is an exercise in futility, since the problems you can actually grasp today will probably be fixed by then as a matter of necessity.
I know many people who play this with their non-gamer girlfriends, and all of them are completely and utterly addicted. You each create a new character, it starts out super-easy, and gradually lets you learn. Also, having other real people including lots of women in the game at any point in time makes it less geeky for her.
You seem pretty age-phobic... remember there are many 15-30 year olds that actually happen to have a shred of intelligence and love good movies. I'm 26, but have enjoyed art-house and foreign movies for well over a decade now. Also, although most people dont do the art-house thing, I don't know many people of my age that didn't enjoy Pulp Fiction, Memento, Leon (The Professional), Crouching Tiger, Run Lola Run, Trainspotting and others that conform to your criteria although being mainstream, which leads me to think that the majority of people would like to see your rules getting applied, not just 40 year olds.
There's a number of posts to this tune, so why are people so afraid of their computers? People are obviously scared that they'll do something that will delete their valuable data, so perhaps the first thing to cover should be (1) where to find your data, (2) how to back up it up, and (3) how to get it back again.
The rest of the book can then really be about anything anyone here has mentioned, since the reader won't be scared to try it out for himself anymore.
Interesting what you said about your father looking up answers in wikipedia as he's watching TV. This also works beautifully for drunken debates at parties. I've bookmarked wikipedia on my phone, and every time someone argues over whether Dido is a member of Faithless or the word Mafia is an actually an acronym, and things start getting a bit heavy, you just look it up and everyone is happy in about 1 minute flat.
The apps & tools I use 98% of the time in Windows:
OpenOffice
Eclipse
J2SE 1.5
Tomcat
Apache
Gaim
Firefox
Thunderbird
The apps & tools I use 98% of the time in Linux... hey, wait a minute... erm... maybe this is why I actually can't be bothered what OS folks are running??
And how much arm-twisting exactly do you think they will be required to do? I'll tell you how much: none at all. Because the Dell's and HP's of the world need to ship the latest version of whatever operating system they support, otherwise they look outdated.
Microsoft may be the bully of the IT playground but be realistic here, Windows 2000 was already good enough and I don't see any vendors shipping that anymore.
Thank you for pointing this out - sometimes it almost appears that, as far as 'developed' countries are concerned, Africa is a country that can be classified under one big umbrella.
Wake up, people! Africa is a continent with many different economies, where you get everything from the poorest and most corrupt such as Zimbabwe and DRC to reasonably well developed countries such as South Africa.
You will be amazed to know how many technological breakthroughs have historically come from South Africa, for example Ubuntu Linux which has been hugely successful. Which makes it in my view plain and simply arrogant to say 'Africans' don't have the skills to use free software.
the Hulk was a brilliant and underappreciated film? the hulk is, I think, a much better piece of art?
Please, somebody mod the parent funny! Seriously, you must be joking. The only recent superhero movie that you can consider anywhere close to brilliant is Batman Begins, and even that does even approach a work of art. It's Hollywood special effects. If you're trying to find art then stop watching comic book adaptations go watch some of the low-budget stuff coming from independent and foreign producers. Or even better, find some high-class Japanese manga and get the best of both worlds. I highly recommend Ninja Scroll or Ghost in the Shell.
I can't tell from the article and can't see the video (stupid firewall), but looking at the pictures it appears that the design only allows it to catch if the object is thrown straight at it, since it's just a hand. What would really be cool is if it was attached to a robotic arm that will move the hand to the right position to catch the ball.
I've stopped trying to defend Linux from my pro-windows colleagues (and yes they are all techies), and just adopted an attitude of saying 'if you prefer Windows, use it'. Strangely enough since starting to do this they all start coming to me with pro-linux comments, and a couple even with questions on how to get started.
My personal explanation for this is that they felt threatened by something they did not know, which is the only reason I can think of for someone becoming that defensive.
Can anybody explain how these things will create heat shields, antennas etc?? Just having millions of bots is probably not enough, don't you need some central power source and some fairly complex electronics not to mention storage as well to send and receive data? And as for the heat shield, won't these things need some very specific chemical properties that won't be useful to any other purpose?
Since Firefox 1.0, I've stopped using Mozilla and started using Thunderbird for mail. I've also stopped using IE altogether on my windows box. Mozilla did not render some of the stuff I work on correctly - and yes, because it's not w3c compliant let's not go there.
Black said that production costs were five million South African rand (about £450,000).
You must be joking... USD to ZAR is currently 1: 5.93346. By my calculation that's either $842,678.639 if you convert from R5 mil, or R2,670,057 if you convert from $450,000
Oh and by the way I'm surprised everyone at/. is so pessimistic about this IMO this is a step in the right direction??
my redhat training manual for certification says it stands for Unix System Resources, so I would say that's technically the right answer, but in today's context it has become the user directory
I like the pieces, but the overall effect would be much better if he made a similiar silver and gold metal board as well. The cheap plastic board is the type you buy with travel chess and looks crap!
Aw damn there goes my karma again...
Historically speaking, the greatest threat to the world when it comes to WMD is the United States - the country with the largest stockpile and the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons to wage war. If you ask me, it is only logical that the US should thus disarm before any other country to make the world a safer place.
Hypothetically, if the US have never used nuclear weapons and they want the world to disarm they should lead by example and get rid of their own weapons first anyway.
errrmm... agreed... but then again, Mark Shuttleworth did pay for his own trip into space so i don't think a couple of thousand CDR's will hurt the old bank balance too much
In South Africa, crime is a serious problem in metropolitan centres due to a heavily understaffed and underpaid police force. Cameras were deployed in our city centres and had a dramatic effect on crime, since criminals do not know when they are being watched and also have nowhere to run. I don't think the word 'privacy' ever even entered the thoughts of people living in these areas since the cameras simply improved their lives dramatically, whether they have sacrificed some privacy or not.
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If we do not do something about it, Africans and the denizens of the Third World will fork into their own species
Your attitude is probably 95% of the problem. Africa is a continent, NOT one country with one problem. In some cases it's corruption, in some cases it's war, in some cases it's AIDS or famine from a lack of rain. Believe it or not, but in other cases there is no problem and people live to an old age and retire to homes on the coast. So please try again when you get out of you Africa mentality and start looking specific problems, then you might just actually make a difference.
If this technology feeds a series of digital images directly into the brain, what would happen when connected to the brain of a blind person? Would the person, with time, be able to interpret the new information?
I imagine if this is the case, then connecting it to a camera worn by the user can possibly allow the person to see again.
The point stands with WAY less than a 50 year period of time. In fact you don't even have to go pre-Internet. What kind of security problems did people envisage in 1993, and how relevant are those problems today? Did anyone see DDOS attacks and botnets becoming the problem that is today, 15 years ago? What about spyware?
Thinking you can understand computer security problems anything more than a decade or two into the future is an exercise in futility, since the problems you can actually grasp today will probably be fixed by then as a matter of necessity.
I know many people who play this with their non-gamer girlfriends, and all of them are completely and utterly addicted. You each create a new character, it starts out super-easy, and gradually lets you learn. Also, having other real people including lots of women in the game at any point in time makes it less geeky for her.
You seem pretty age-phobic... remember there are many 15-30 year olds that actually happen to have a shred of intelligence and love good movies. I'm 26, but have enjoyed art-house and foreign movies for well over a decade now. Also, although most people dont do the art-house thing, I don't know many people of my age that didn't enjoy Pulp Fiction, Memento, Leon (The Professional), Crouching Tiger, Run Lola Run, Trainspotting and others that conform to your criteria although being mainstream, which leads me to think that the majority of people would like to see your rules getting applied, not just 40 year olds.
There's a number of posts to this tune, so why are people so afraid of their computers? People are obviously scared that they'll do something that will delete their valuable data, so perhaps the first thing to cover should be (1) where to find your data, (2) how to back up it up, and (3) how to get it back again.
The rest of the book can then really be about anything anyone here has mentioned, since the reader won't be scared to try it out for himself anymore.
Interesting what you said about your father looking up answers in wikipedia as he's watching TV. This also works beautifully for drunken debates at parties. I've bookmarked wikipedia on my phone, and every time someone argues over whether Dido is a member of Faithless or the word Mafia is an actually an acronym, and things start getting a bit heavy, you just look it up and everyone is happy in about 1 minute flat.
By the way, she's not, and it might be.
- OpenOffice
- Eclipse
- J2SE 1.5
- Tomcat
- Apache
- Gaim
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
The apps & tools I use 98% of the time in Linux... hey, wait a minute... erm... maybe this is why I actually can't be bothered what OS folks are running??And how much arm-twisting exactly do you think they will be required to do? I'll tell you how much: none at all. Because the Dell's and HP's of the world need to ship the latest version of whatever operating system they support, otherwise they look outdated.
Microsoft may be the bully of the IT playground but be realistic here, Windows 2000 was already good enough and I don't see any vendors shipping that anymore.
Africa is a big continent!
Thank you for pointing this out - sometimes it almost appears that, as far as 'developed' countries are concerned, Africa is a country that can be classified under one big umbrella.
Wake up, people! Africa is a continent with many different economies, where you get everything from the poorest and most corrupt such as Zimbabwe and DRC to reasonably well developed countries such as South Africa.
You will be amazed to know how many technological breakthroughs have historically come from South Africa, for example Ubuntu Linux which has been hugely successful. Which makes it in my view plain and simply arrogant to say 'Africans' don't have the skills to use free software.
Collisions of the cosmic kind could be the source of one of nature's most lethal explosions
Amazing! And here I thought collisions of the microscopic kind caused the most lethal explosions...
the Hulk was a brilliant and underappreciated film?
the hulk is, I think, a much better piece of art?
Please, somebody mod the parent funny! Seriously, you must be joking. The only recent superhero movie that you can consider anywhere close to brilliant is Batman Begins, and even that does even approach a work of art. It's Hollywood special effects. If you're trying to find art then stop watching comic book adaptations go watch some of the low-budget stuff coming from independent and foreign producers. Or even better, find some high-class Japanese manga and get the best of both worlds. I highly recommend Ninja Scroll or Ghost in the Shell.
I can't tell from the article and can't see the video (stupid firewall), but looking at the pictures it appears that the design only allows it to catch if the object is thrown straight at it, since it's just a hand. What would really be cool is if it was attached to a robotic arm that will move the hand to the right position to catch the ball.
I've stopped trying to defend Linux from my pro-windows colleagues (and yes they are all techies), and just adopted an attitude of saying 'if you prefer Windows, use it'. Strangely enough since starting to do this they all start coming to me with pro-linux comments, and a couple even with questions on how to get started. My personal explanation for this is that they felt threatened by something they did not know, which is the only reason I can think of for someone becoming that defensive.
Can anybody explain how these things will create heat shields, antennas etc?? Just having millions of bots is probably not enough, don't you need some central power source and some fairly complex electronics not to mention storage as well to send and receive data? And as for the heat shield, won't these things need some very specific chemical properties that won't be useful to any other purpose?
Well it's not free, is it - you still have to pay to download the music. Once you've payed for it though, you can do with it what you want.
Since Firefox 1.0, I've stopped using Mozilla and started using Thunderbird for mail. I've also stopped using IE altogether on my windows box. Mozilla did not render some of the stuff I work on correctly - and yes, because it's not w3c compliant let's not go there.
Black said that production costs were five million South African rand (about £450,000).
/. is so pessimistic about this IMO this is a step in the right direction??
You must be joking... USD to ZAR is currently 1: 5.93346. By my calculation that's either $842,678.639 if you convert from R5 mil, or R2,670,057 if you convert from $450,000
Oh and by the way I'm surprised everyone at
my redhat training manual for certification says it stands for Unix System Resources, so I would say that's technically the right answer, but in today's context it has become the user directory
I like the pieces, but the overall effect would be much better if he made a similiar silver and gold metal board as well. The cheap plastic board is the type you buy with travel chess and looks crap! Aw damn there goes my karma again...
Historically speaking, the greatest threat to the world when it comes to WMD is the United States - the country with the largest stockpile and the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons to wage war. If you ask me, it is only logical that the US should thus disarm before any other country to make the world a safer place. Hypothetically, if the US have never used nuclear weapons and they want the world to disarm they should lead by example and get rid of their own weapons first anyway.
errrmm... agreed... but then again, Mark Shuttleworth did pay for his own trip into space so i don't think a couple of thousand CDR's will hurt the old bank balance too much
In South Africa, crime is a serious problem in metropolitan centres due to a heavily understaffed and underpaid police force. Cameras were deployed in our city centres and had a dramatic effect on crime, since criminals do not know when they are being watched and also have nowhere to run. I don't think the word 'privacy' ever even entered the thoughts of people living in these areas since the cameras simply improved their lives dramatically, whether they have sacrificed some privacy or not.