As a BC'er, I've been against it from the start. In spite of their prestige, the Olympic games have a profoundly negative effect on both the economy and the local environment. When you've just destroyed an entire forest, buying two "green" zambonis only adds insult to injury.
"There arent flash apps for the iphone hosted on newgrounds BECAUSE IT DOESNT SUPPORT FLASH."
But the people complaining about the lack of Flash are complaining that they can't play *existing* games, which nullifies your point. And AndrewStephens is correct in that current Flash games wouldn't work anyway because the hardware and UI paradigms are too different.
No one wants developers to make *new* Flash games for the iPhone either. We want people to make native iPhone games instead that will run faster, use the GPU, save state on exit, etc.
"If nothing else, simulations of the human brain accurate down to the individual neuron could easily achieve this, even if it requires substantially more powerful computers than we have now."
I highly doubt it. Consciousness and intelligence are higher-order emergent properties that are quite poorly understood. If you created a simulation of billions of individual neurons that reacted similarly to real neurons (to the best of our limited knowledge on neuron function), you wouldn't have intelligence, you'd just have a bunch of neurons firing randomly.
"I'm fairly sure only a tiny percent of the people using social networking services really care about privacy."
You may be right, but that is surely spoken like someone who hasn't had to live in fear of imprisonment or execution for his opinions and personal relationships, unlike millions of other people today.
"The problem is PayPal wants to do the functions of a bank but does not want to be registered as a bank"
Whoever said that doesn't know what a bank does. It's not about holding money for you (everyone from your mutual fund advisor to escrow services to pre-paid cell phone vendors does that) or enabling financial transactions (any retailer can do that) or enabling currency exchanges (any hotel can do that).
When Paypal says you have $100 in your account, they actually have that money somewhere waiting for you to withdraw.
When a bank says you have $100 in your account, they actually take your money and spend it on champagne, Vegas hotel rooms, politicians, and investments of dubious value. When you go to withdraw it, they borrow $100 from someone else or even create it out of thin air.
That is the difference, and that's why banks face a host of regulations and insurance requirements that Paypal does not.
"On a more serious note, such transcripts at least allow you to get an idea of the rough content and tone of a message without having to stop and listen to it, a much more concentration-intensive task."
What part of Stephen Fry's amusing example has *anything* to do with the actual content of the message? It didn't even get the caller's name right. All Stephen Fry could have gleaned from that was that his own name was Stephen. Thanks, Google Voice!
Google's translator apparently does no grammatical analysis, relying entirely on an internal corpus of bilingual documents to make word and phrase equivalency guesses. On top of that, it has no AI for understanding context and analyzing semantic ambiguities. So unless you're asking it to translate simple phrases it already has a perfect translation of in its database, it's hard to see how Google Translate will ever be more than a poorly-functioning gimmick. For languages like Japanese omit subjects, nest clauses a lot, and rely heavily on pragmatics for comprehension, machine translation is a disaster.
Trying to vote corrupt politicians out of office is like trying to win at roulette by betting on every number. The game is rigged so you simply cannot win.
I agree with 99% of your post but have one minor nit to pick.
"The only responsibility Google has is to make a profit. That's what 'corporation' means. "
A corporation can be formed for practically anything, not just profit. The corporate charter lays out what the purpose and goals of the corporation are. Google's charter was unique, if I recall correctly, in that they pledged to place certain ethical values above profits, and they are obligated to continue doing so.
"I've also ordered a 130-in-one electronics kit for my daughter because I remember how much fun I had with mine. Alas, Radio Shack no longer sells them..."
In Japan, they sell these kinds of things at the bookstore, in the kids section or magazine section.
Nevertheless, when it's in liquid form, its atoms are not arranged in a tetrahedral lattice, so I don't see how it could be called diamond. That's like calling liquid water "ice" because it'll turn to ice when you freeze it.
It depends on language too. Japanese input on most phones and on the iPhone is predictive, so it suggests the next word or particle based on grammatical rules and your own typing history.
I agree 100%. Mathematical algorithm patents are not recognized in most countries outside the US, so make an international Firefox version that only visitors who claim to be outside the US can download.
To be honest, there's just nothing good to read in the legacy media. I do check Google News a few times a week, and usually the headlines are so insipid and un-newsworthy that I just don't bother clicking any. Besides, when are the major news sites capable of getting any important facts right or reporting on a story with any depth. Instead, I go to Reddit and find a few articles that are actually of interest.
Hm, let's see what's on Google News right now. - News about an election I don't care about. - Nonsense about Obama doing yet more to screw up, I mean save, the financial system. - News about officials meeting to boost airline security. Nothing new there— we all know they won't be happy until we fly naked and in chains. - Palin and McLame news. Yawn... - More opinion-without-facts on Apple and Bing, by PC World, the magazine that was relevant 15 years ago. - More Conan O'Brien stuff. Don't care. - Someone semi-famous has pneumonia. Wow. - American Idol crap. - LA Times' recipe for "crazy cake". Yeah, I'll bookmark that. - Sports news about sports I don't follow.
" I can't get the latest to compile, on two different linux boxes (one Debian, one Ubuntu), so I've been using my older copy on the Debian machine. My binary won't run on the Ubuntu box, though so I needed an older version. I had to grab an svn snapshot of a previous release to get the older source code, and then their manky build system tries to download certain packages from a handbrake-run ftp in order to get specific versions of certain libraries, which fails to work since they've removed those files specific to the older version of handbrake. "
Ah yes, a day in the life of a Linux user. Thanks for reminding me of those frustrating times.:)
Yes, database pollution sounds like a problem to me. Not only do you have to deal with AOL-speak and horrific spelling disasters of every kind, there's the issue of broken English and nonsensical English produced through machine translation, which shows up on corporate websites a lot more than it should.
The Dutch government wasted 200 million euros on a crazy snake oil scheme, and you're happy because the concept of spending enormous amounts of money to keep people from getting the sniffles is a great trade-off?
Maybe you could hook me up with the Dutch health office. I have some, er, tiger-repellent badges I'd like to sell. I hear hundreds of your countrymen could be bitten by tigers if nothing is done, so act fast.
So statistically, if they keep working at it and try a few hundred more times, they should get lucky with a few ibex kids that survive infancy. Though I suppose it would be better if they had DNA from a few different specimens in order to establish a breeding colony with some genetic variety.
I actually used to use Yahoo's link directory back when it was actively maintained. Heck, I was using it as early as '94 or '95. Then they stopped maintaining it and encouraged all visitors to use their lousy search engine, which is when I gave up and looked for other options, settling on Google.
Slashdot Mirror
As a BC'er, I've been against it from the start. In spite of their prestige, the Olympic games have a profoundly negative effect on both the economy and the local environment. When you've just destroyed an entire forest, buying two "green" zambonis only adds insult to injury.
"There arent flash apps for the iphone hosted on newgrounds BECAUSE IT DOESNT SUPPORT FLASH."
But the people complaining about the lack of Flash are complaining that they can't play *existing* games, which nullifies your point. And AndrewStephens is correct in that current Flash games wouldn't work anyway because the hardware and UI paradigms are too different.
No one wants developers to make *new* Flash games for the iPhone either. We want people to make native iPhone games instead that will run faster, use the GPU, save state on exit, etc.
"If nothing else, simulations of the human brain accurate down to the individual neuron could easily achieve this, even if it requires substantially more powerful computers than we have now."
I highly doubt it. Consciousness and intelligence are higher-order emergent properties that are quite poorly understood. If you created a simulation of billions of individual neurons that reacted similarly to real neurons (to the best of our limited knowledge on neuron function), you wouldn't have intelligence, you'd just have a bunch of neurons firing randomly.
"I'm fairly sure only a tiny percent of the people using social networking services really care about privacy."
You may be right, but that is surely spoken like someone who hasn't had to live in fear of imprisonment or execution for his opinions and personal relationships, unlike millions of other people today.
"The problem is PayPal wants to do the functions of a bank but does not want to be registered as a bank"
Whoever said that doesn't know what a bank does. It's not about holding money for you (everyone from your mutual fund advisor to escrow services to pre-paid cell phone vendors does that) or enabling financial transactions (any retailer can do that) or enabling currency exchanges (any hotel can do that).
When Paypal says you have $100 in your account, they actually have that money somewhere waiting for you to withdraw.
When a bank says you have $100 in your account, they actually take your money and spend it on champagne, Vegas hotel rooms, politicians, and investments of dubious value. When you go to withdraw it, they borrow $100 from someone else or even create it out of thin air.
That is the difference, and that's why banks face a host of regulations and insurance requirements that Paypal does not.
"On a more serious note, such transcripts at least allow you to get an idea of the rough content and tone of a message without having to stop and listen to it, a much more concentration-intensive task."
What part of Stephen Fry's amusing example has *anything* to do with the actual content of the message? It didn't even get the caller's name right. All Stephen Fry could have gleaned from that was that his own name was Stephen. Thanks, Google Voice!
Google's translator apparently does no grammatical analysis, relying entirely on an internal corpus of bilingual documents to make word and phrase equivalency guesses. On top of that, it has no AI for understanding context and analyzing semantic ambiguities. So unless you're asking it to translate simple phrases it already has a perfect translation of in its database, it's hard to see how Google Translate will ever be more than a poorly-functioning gimmick. For languages like Japanese omit subjects, nest clauses a lot, and rely heavily on pragmatics for comprehension, machine translation is a disaster.
Hasn't anyone learned by now?
Trying to vote corrupt politicians out of office is like trying to win at roulette by betting on every number. The game is rigged so you simply cannot win.
I agree with 99% of your post but have one minor nit to pick.
"The only responsibility Google has is to make a profit. That's what 'corporation' means. "
A corporation can be formed for practically anything, not just profit. The corporate charter lays out what the purpose and goals of the corporation are. Google's charter was unique, if I recall correctly, in that they pledged to place certain ethical values above profits, and they are obligated to continue doing so.
"I've also ordered a 130-in-one electronics kit for my daughter because I remember how much fun I had with mine. Alas, Radio Shack no longer sells them..."
In Japan, they sell these kinds of things at the bookstore, in the kids section or magazine section.
Nevertheless, when it's in liquid form, its atoms are not arranged in a tetrahedral lattice, so I don't see how it could be called diamond. That's like calling liquid water "ice" because it'll turn to ice when you freeze it.
We're tired of people's opinions, so no, we don't want yours. But thanks for asking.
It depends on language too. Japanese input on most phones and on the iPhone is predictive, so it suggests the next word or particle based on grammatical rules and your own typing history.
I agree 100%. Mathematical algorithm patents are not recognized in most countries outside the US, so make an international Firefox version that only visitors who claim to be outside the US can download.
To be honest, there's just nothing good to read in the legacy media. I do check Google News a few times a week, and usually the headlines are so insipid and un-newsworthy that I just don't bother clicking any. Besides, when are the major news sites capable of getting any important facts right or reporting on a story with any depth. Instead, I go to Reddit and find a few articles that are actually of interest.
Hm, let's see what's on Google News right now.
- News about an election I don't care about.
- Nonsense about Obama doing yet more to screw up, I mean save, the financial system.
- News about officials meeting to boost airline security. Nothing new there— we all know they won't be happy until we fly naked and in chains.
- Palin and McLame news. Yawn...
- More opinion-without-facts on Apple and Bing, by PC World, the magazine that was relevant 15 years ago.
- More Conan O'Brien stuff. Don't care.
- Someone semi-famous has pneumonia. Wow.
- American Idol crap.
- LA Times' recipe for "crazy cake". Yeah, I'll bookmark that.
- Sports news about sports I don't follow.
That's a feature in my opinion. DRM is a defect and needs to die in the marketplace.
" I can't get the latest to compile, on two different linux boxes (one Debian, one Ubuntu), so I've been using my older copy on the Debian machine. My binary won't run on the Ubuntu box, though so I needed an older version. I had to grab an svn snapshot of a previous release to get the older source code, and then their manky build system tries to download certain packages from a handbrake-run ftp in order to get specific versions of certain libraries, which fails to work since they've removed those files specific to the older version of handbrake. "
Ah yes, a day in the life of a Linux user. Thanks for reminding me of those frustrating times. :)
Yes, database pollution sounds like a problem to me. Not only do you have to deal with AOL-speak and horrific spelling disasters of every kind, there's the issue of broken English and nonsensical English produced through machine translation, which shows up on corporate websites a lot more than it should.
The Dutch government wasted 200 million euros on a crazy snake oil scheme, and you're happy because the concept of spending enormous amounts of money to keep people from getting the sniffles is a great trade-off?
Maybe you could hook me up with the Dutch health office. I have some, er, tiger-repellent badges I'd like to sell. I hear hundreds of your countrymen could be bitten by tigers if nothing is done, so act fast.
And I thought Americans were crazy.
If I had a million upmods, they would be yours.
> I've noticed at my regional chain store as well more videos are marked "rental" meaning they can't be sold as "used" later.
Yes, my old DVD collection at home used have quite a few of these "for rental only" movies that I had bought from local movie rental stores. :)
So statistically, if they keep working at it and try a few hundred more times, they should get lucky with a few ibex kids that survive infancy. Though I suppose it would be better if they had DNA from a few different specimens in order to establish a breeding colony with some genetic variety.
I actually used to use Yahoo's link directory back when it was actively maintained. Heck, I was using it as early as '94 or '95. Then they stopped maintaining it and encouraged all visitors to use their lousy search engine, which is when I gave up and looked for other options, settling on Google.
Actually, the iPhone lets you change your search provider in the configuration settings.
1. Quebec has (along with Russia) the world's best hockey players and the winningest team in all of sports history.
2. Juste Pour Rire, North America's number-one comedy club, is in Montreal.