I personally purposefully open my laptops some time after I buy them to see how they are inside and acquire knowledge about how each company makes its laptops (although nowadays many of them are just rebranded generic laptops). I also download the tech docs whenever available, and I have repaired some of my laptops as well as some other people's laptops without any "formal" training in laptop repairs other than some books, the tech docs, and lots of practical knowledge acquired with lots of experimentation (and, in the early days when I was still a child, dead computers, lost warranties, and lost money, but it worths it!). Of course, this is not practical for everyone, and sometimes you face problems that can't be solved easily, but I still maintain that everyone should strive to acquire as much knowledge as possible about the equipment they buy and use.
There is no better place to find great developers than the open source community. Have someone in your company act as a liaison with the free software community. Identify prominent people and find out whether they would accept employment or relocation. If you really want people smarter than the average cubicle drone, that's a great way to hire.
I have two Transmeta Crusoe Flybooks and they are very slow compared to PM processors of equal GHz. The company and the technology is interesting, but I am afraid the Crusoe processor has failed to deliver any advantages to the customer. Unless Transmeta can build a faster CPU, people won't buy their products. The CPU is not the only component using up power. Why should we invest so much research in energy efficient CPUs while we still use storage with moving parts (HDDs)? Why not invest all of our resources in researching and implementing better batteries?
What's the best way to protect your docs when you send your PC off for a repair then? I'm not even sure I know how to reformat my XP machines.
The best way to protect your docs is to acquire knowledge about the machines you are operating, both from a hardware and a software perspective. Then you will be able to repair everything yourself and not surrender your machine to unprofessional technicians.
If you are an average male geek, avoid reading this organisation's name aloud, especially if you are in front of an audience of respectable members of society.
That's correct. In a hypothetical world with a stable environment, the rules would evolve over time to perfectly fit that environment. But in the real world everything is in motion and new threats and opportunities arise every day. The problem is knowing which rules are optimal in any given situation. Considering that the environment is changing all the time, there may be no constantly perfect rules. If a rule says "always follow the leader" it will lead to survival only as long as the leader is a good one; groups with bad leaders would probably do better with rules such as "challenge the leader".
The key to swarm intelligence is evolution and experience over a long time. Individuals who aren't responsible and don't follow the rules get wiped out by predators or accidents (or the society itself), and individuals have strong reasons for following the society's rules (personal survival). The corollary of this is that if we want to make humans behave intelligently within a group, we must make sure they know the rules and that failure to observe the rules would lead to personal and group death.
why they want US citizenship
on
Explosives Camp
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· Score: 1
I guess that they probably require US citizenship in order to be able to catch someone if they do something nasty. A person from another country can escape easier, but a US citizen is subject to the US legal system and is a foreigner in any other country, and is probably easier to track down by US authorities. However, in my opinion, this doesn't increase safety at all. A terrorist could possess fabricated documents or really have dual citizenship.
Agriculture could benefit from the use of robots. It's good to see developments in this area, especially considering that global crop output could be affected by climate change and we may need to more drastically upgrade our agricultural efficiency in the future. However, I think more research should be taken in the applications of nanotechnology and molecular machinery on agriculture. While a robot is good, a swarm of nanorobots or molecular machines would be much better and with greater efficiency, taking care of our crops at the molecular level.
Hardly not evil, Google. The funny thing here is that as long as this legal battle continues, more and more people learn about the young businessman's services, while at the same time Google's reputation as a "do no evil" company is challenged.
I can't see any profit for Google here, monetary or otherwise. I wonder why they continue pursuing this case.
Furthermore, the name they chose for their email services is wrong. GMail says nothing. They should have made it GoogleMail, since this would allow people unfamiliar with the service to quickly apply Google's reputation on GoogleMail. Surprisingly as it may seem, there are A LOT of people who do use the Internet and still do not know about GMail. But I'm sure they would know it better if it was named GoogleMail, since most Internet users have at least heard of Google.
If this case was filled in America, I wouldn't be surprised if the judge reasoned that the "collective rights" of thousands of email users surpassed the rights of a single businessman, even if he started using the name 4 years earlier.
This looks like a smart young businessman. Fighting Google instead of selling a name means he gets publicity, and it looks like he is sure that he can turn this publicity into profit for his company and himself. Bad to hear Google preferred to fight him in courts instead of trying to find a way to get him on board. This is the way of big bureaucratic corporations that lack innovation, and I would expect smarter choices from a company that seeks to employ the brightest engineers. I guess such a smart (and resourceful, for being able to withstand so long against a giant) businessman would be an asset if Google could persuade him to join them. Now thanks to this legal battle, more people than previously know about his business, and this is only good for him and I am sure he knows it. I wonder what he is going to release in, say, 5 or 10 years.
They succeed in acquiring lots of resources, and that's good for them, but how successful are they in other fields? Have they acquired lots of knowledge about the world they live in, for example? We know that knowledge is power, and you would expect from an ambitious resourceful individual to strive for more power, therefore for more knowledge. A wealthy person is in a very good position to acquire much more knowledge than any poor person would ever be able to dream of. The rich can buy an unlimited quantity of books and journals and have much more free time in their hands than the poor. They would still have to sit down and read a lot, but they afford to do it, while the poor must work (usually for someone else) and therefore are unable to acquire a great slice of the known human knowledge. Of course, they can employ other people who do know stuff, but this isn't enough. If a rich person's airplane malfunctions over the Sahara desert and they are alone without any communications device available and no money on them, they wouldn't know how to find water and what they should do to get protected from heatstroke. They wouldn't have a chance to find where the north is. If they found themselves near some distinctive geographical features, they would still not know where they were, as they would have no knowledge of geography. If they walked within a jungle, they wouldn't know what is safe to eat and what is poisonous. They would also not know what to do if they got injured or encountered aggressive animals. Their power comes from interaction with the rest of the human society, but if they find themselves in a situation unable to communicate with anyone else, their money make no difference in their survival or not. However, a person who has invested their free time in acquiring a great deal of knowledge would have more chances to survive in uncommon environments. Knowledge makes you more adaptable to changes in your environment. Not only that, but knowledge can help a rich person to think of new businesses or help them to better spot a lucrative investment. However, I know that many well-off and rich people with lots of time in their hands do not understand why knowledge is power and think that they would always be able to hire a specialist to do work for them. They have succeed in becoming wealthy, but they have failed in other areas of life. Yet, many people equate success with money. Who would you consider more successful? A person who worths $50 billion and knows nothing and is going to die from cancer (because they don't know what antioxidants and what foods protect from cancer, ie they don't even know what and how to eat), or someone who worths "only" $25 billion but knows a great deal about everything? I would certainly vote for the latter.
Version skipping is bad IMHO. I can understand that some uninformed users might pay some attention to that when choosing what to buy, but I hope that an OS could have other features to attract users than a version number. Innovation is the key to greater adoption among users, not version numbers.
This is supposed to be developed by a university? You know the motto of most university researchers, don't you? publish or perish
Most researchers at universities are not mentally capable of producing high-impact theories like those of Einstein, so they end up writing nonsense every day and trying to publish as much as they can to keep their salary going.
Also note that most university researchers outside the US are in fact government employees.
I see many comments using the claim that such a high technology flying saucer couldn't crash so easily in the middle of NM. Surely Roswell didn't harbour aliens, but the former is not a correct claim, I think: It only takes an engineer angry with their boss for high technology to fail, or (better) an alcoholic flying saucer captain.
People until now had only one way to become famous and get remembered after their death in the books of history: They should do something newsworthy during their life, such as discovering something new in science, becoming a great artist or philosopher, or becoming the leader of a nation. Now there is a new way to save your name in the abyss of history: Just write a note saying that you witnessed something newsworthy, die silently, and wait until someone finds your note. Newspapers and television channels will quickly pick up to let millions of people know about you, and if what you witnessed had anything to do with the paranormal then thousands of lowly UFO magazines will help to brainwash billions of potential customers... er readers that you are the new prophet who witnessed the apocalypsis or the second coming of Christ, and suddenly your name will be featured on any new church built, as a new religion fuelled by the stupidity of the masses will consider you the new God for the next 2000 years. What an easy way to apotheosis!
Citibank's online system worked brilliantly well with Konqueror until someone decided to update the online banking application to make it more "secure". Guess what was one of the security features they implemented. While in the past the application worked just fine with Konqueror, it is now programmed to check the browser string and completely disallow you to use the banking system unless the string is that of MSIE or Mozilla, asking you to update your "outdated" browser instead. Of course, it still runs perfectly well if you make your Konqueror to report an MSIE or Mozilla string. Bureaucratic organisations excel in making unnecessary choices, implementing them in the most worst way possible, and presenting them as security features. Anyway, this is better than the banking application of other banks that can work only with MSIE thanks to mystery Javascript. But even this is nothing compared with what I have seen at another bank, where all customers get by default access to the informational banking application with their credit card's number as the username and their birth date as the password, meaning that any cracker having these two pieces of information at hand would be able to find out your address, phone number, list of CC transactions, CC balance, and other private data.
So, your bank wants to check your PC to see if you have an antivirus? Brilliant! Show them your GNU/Linux/BSD/MacOS/Solaris box and let them figure it out.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say fortunately.
I personally purposefully open my laptops some time after I buy them to see how they are inside and acquire knowledge about how each company makes its laptops (although nowadays many of them are just rebranded generic laptops). I also download the tech docs whenever available, and I have repaired some of my laptops as well as some other people's laptops without any "formal" training in laptop repairs other than some books, the tech docs, and lots of practical knowledge acquired with lots of experimentation (and, in the early days when I was still a child, dead computers, lost warranties, and lost money, but it worths it!). Of course, this is not practical for everyone, and sometimes you face problems that can't be solved easily, but I still maintain that everyone should strive to acquire as much knowledge as possible about the equipment they buy and use.
There is no better place to find great developers than the open source community. Have someone in your company act as a liaison with the free software community. Identify prominent people and find out whether they would accept employment or relocation. If you really want people smarter than the average cubicle drone, that's a great way to hire.
I have two Transmeta Crusoe Flybooks and they are very slow compared to PM processors of equal GHz. The company and the technology is interesting, but I am afraid the Crusoe processor has failed to deliver any advantages to the customer. Unless Transmeta can build a faster CPU, people won't buy their products. The CPU is not the only component using up power. Why should we invest so much research in energy efficient CPUs while we still use storage with moving parts (HDDs)? Why not invest all of our resources in researching and implementing better batteries?
The best way to protect your docs is to acquire knowledge about the machines you are operating, both from a hardware and a software perspective. Then you will be able to repair everything yourself and not surrender your machine to unprofessional technicians.
This is a direct attack on GNU Radio, a project that every self-respecting hacker should at least know about, if not actually using it.
If you are an average male geek, avoid reading this organisation's name aloud, especially if you are in front of an audience of respectable members of society.
That's correct. In a hypothetical world with a stable environment, the rules would evolve over time to perfectly fit that environment. But in the real world everything is in motion and new threats and opportunities arise every day. The problem is knowing which rules are optimal in any given situation. Considering that the environment is changing all the time, there may be no constantly perfect rules. If a rule says "always follow the leader" it will lead to survival only as long as the leader is a good one; groups with bad leaders would probably do better with rules such as "challenge the leader".
The key to swarm intelligence is evolution and experience over a long time. Individuals who aren't responsible and don't follow the rules get wiped out by predators or accidents (or the society itself), and individuals have strong reasons for following the society's rules (personal survival). The corollary of this is that if we want to make humans behave intelligently within a group, we must make sure they know the rules and that failure to observe the rules would lead to personal and group death.
I guess that they probably require US citizenship in order to be able to catch someone if they do something nasty. A person from another country can escape easier, but a US citizen is subject to the US legal system and is a foreigner in any other country, and is probably easier to track down by US authorities. However, in my opinion, this doesn't increase safety at all. A terrorist could possess fabricated documents or really have dual citizenship.
Agriculture could benefit from the use of robots. It's good to see developments in this area, especially considering that global crop output could be affected by climate change and we may need to more drastically upgrade our agricultural efficiency in the future. However, I think more research should be taken in the applications of nanotechnology and molecular machinery on agriculture. While a robot is good, a swarm of nanorobots or molecular machines would be much better and with greater efficiency, taking care of our crops at the molecular level.
If this case was filled in America, I wouldn't be surprised if the judge reasoned that the "collective rights" of thousands of email users surpassed the rights of a single businessman, even if he started using the name 4 years earlier.
This looks like a smart young businessman. Fighting Google instead of selling a name means he gets publicity, and it looks like he is sure that he can turn this publicity into profit for his company and himself. Bad to hear Google preferred to fight him in courts instead of trying to find a way to get him on board. This is the way of big bureaucratic corporations that lack innovation, and I would expect smarter choices from a company that seeks to employ the brightest engineers. I guess such a smart (and resourceful, for being able to withstand so long against a giant) businessman would be an asset if Google could persuade him to join them. Now thanks to this legal battle, more people than previously know about his business, and this is only good for him and I am sure he knows it. I wonder what he is going to release in, say, 5 or 10 years.
They succeed in acquiring lots of resources, and that's good for them, but how successful are they in other fields? Have they acquired lots of knowledge about the world they live in, for example? We know that knowledge is power, and you would expect from an ambitious resourceful individual to strive for more power, therefore for more knowledge. A wealthy person is in a very good position to acquire much more knowledge than any poor person would ever be able to dream of. The rich can buy an unlimited quantity of books and journals and have much more free time in their hands than the poor. They would still have to sit down and read a lot, but they afford to do it, while the poor must work (usually for someone else) and therefore are unable to acquire a great slice of the known human knowledge. Of course, they can employ other people who do know stuff, but this isn't enough. If a rich person's airplane malfunctions over the Sahara desert and they are alone without any communications device available and no money on them, they wouldn't know how to find water and what they should do to get protected from heatstroke. They wouldn't have a chance to find where the north is. If they found themselves near some distinctive geographical features, they would still not know where they were, as they would have no knowledge of geography. If they walked within a jungle, they wouldn't know what is safe to eat and what is poisonous. They would also not know what to do if they got injured or encountered aggressive animals. Their power comes from interaction with the rest of the human society, but if they find themselves in a situation unable to communicate with anyone else, their money make no difference in their survival or not. However, a person who has invested their free time in acquiring a great deal of knowledge would have more chances to survive in uncommon environments. Knowledge makes you more adaptable to changes in your environment. Not only that, but knowledge can help a rich person to think of new businesses or help them to better spot a lucrative investment. However, I know that many well-off and rich people with lots of time in their hands do not understand why knowledge is power and think that they would always be able to hire a specialist to do work for them. They have succeed in becoming wealthy, but they have failed in other areas of life. Yet, many people equate success with money. Who would you consider more successful? A person who worths $50 billion and knows nothing and is going to die from cancer (because they don't know what antioxidants and what foods protect from cancer, ie they don't even know what and how to eat), or someone who worths "only" $25 billion but knows a great deal about everything? I would certainly vote for the latter.
Version skipping is bad IMHO. I can understand that some uninformed users might pay some attention to that when choosing what to buy, but I hope that an OS could have other features to attract users than a version number. Innovation is the key to greater adoption among users, not version numbers.
So, the Roswell aliens crashed on our little planet to study what caused its inhabitants to throw little rubber ducks in their world ocean?
I see many comments using the claim that such a high technology flying saucer couldn't crash so easily in the middle of NM. Surely Roswell didn't harbour aliens, but the former is not a correct claim, I think: It only takes an engineer angry with their boss for high technology to fail, or (better) an alcoholic flying saucer captain.
People until now had only one way to become famous and get remembered after their death in the books of history: They should do something newsworthy during their life, such as discovering something new in science, becoming a great artist or philosopher, or becoming the leader of a nation. Now there is a new way to save your name in the abyss of history: Just write a note saying that you witnessed something newsworthy, die silently, and wait until someone finds your note. Newspapers and television channels will quickly pick up to let millions of people know about you, and if what you witnessed had anything to do with the paranormal then thousands of lowly UFO magazines will help to brainwash billions of potential customers... er readers that you are the new prophet who witnessed the apocalypsis or the second coming of Christ, and suddenly your name will be featured on any new church built, as a new religion fuelled by the stupidity of the masses will consider you the new God for the next 2000 years. What an easy way to apotheosis!
Here in Europe in most cases we can change the SIM easily. Why not in the US?
Citibank's online system worked brilliantly well with Konqueror until someone decided to update the online banking application to make it more "secure". Guess what was one of the security features they implemented. While in the past the application worked just fine with Konqueror, it is now programmed to check the browser string and completely disallow you to use the banking system unless the string is that of MSIE or Mozilla, asking you to update your "outdated" browser instead. Of course, it still runs perfectly well if you make your Konqueror to report an MSIE or Mozilla string. Bureaucratic organisations excel in making unnecessary choices, implementing them in the most worst way possible, and presenting them as security features. Anyway, this is better than the banking application of other banks that can work only with MSIE thanks to mystery Javascript. But even this is nothing compared with what I have seen at another bank, where all customers get by default access to the informational banking application with their credit card's number as the username and their birth date as the password, meaning that any cracker having these two pieces of information at hand would be able to find out your address, phone number, list of CC transactions, CC balance, and other private data.
So, your bank wants to check your PC to see if you have an antivirus? Brilliant! Show them your GNU/Linux/BSD/MacOS/Solaris box and let them figure it out.