I used to have a Kensington trackball a long time ago, and thought it was pretty swell. The best thing, though, was the trackball was almost exactly the same size as a pool ball so you could swap one in there.:-)
Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
Like what?
Science and the Scientific Method are pretty clearly-defined. People can try to throw spin on that, but they can't change the definition without tons of work. Anyone who does will be considered "fringe" by the global community.
In theory, if you'll excuse the pun, science welcomes all comers (who are willing to do actual science). Of course, in practice, people have invested lifetimes in research and are loathe to drop it without serious contrary evidence. But these issues weed out correctly with time.
I am highly confident that if ID is a useful scientific model, it will eventually be widely adopted (General Relativity), or it won't (Geocentric Universe), and there's nothing the government can do to change that fate.
Look at the big brain on the AC. I'd tell you right now there are other states with higher percentages of their populations in prison, but that'd just contribute to you further missing the point.
It doesn't make sense. I guess the stereotypes of California being an overly liberal state must be true.
Yup, that sounds like the only conclusion you can come to.
But for everyone else:
Over 10% of the nation's prison population is in California. California has more people in prison than any other state. More people live in California prisons than live in Dayton, Ohio. Prisons are over capacity, sometimes by a factor of two.
So it becomes a matter of "who should we kick out on the street to put in this non-violent identify thief?"
Those skilled in the art will recognize this as the obvious solution to a problem. I really need to come to grips with the fact that every single application of any software construct is patentable, no matter what. I keep forgetting that.
Those skilled in the art will also recognize this "invention" as being very similar to the Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders Project, which is notable for a) rocking and b) having gone online before the patent was filed.
It's to the point of insanity now—it's difficult to imagine any software you write doesn't violate a patent. Everyone just ignores them and hopes they don't get sued, with big companies relying on mutually assured destruction to keep the lawyers at bay. Is this really the type of patent system we want?
I can't tell from the definitions if the record-keeping would apply to my machine that runs out of my house for me and my friends (email/web stuff).
My hardware matches the description of Internet Content Hosting Provider and Internet Email Provider, but the record-keeping portion of the bill refers to "Internet Service Provider" which I presume is defined elsewhere (not in this bill.)
I frequented them quite a bit. It's great to watch some of the interaction that takes place, pretty much 100% of which is wholly predictable. So why play? Same reason people watch sitcoms--when was the last time you were blindsided by a brilliant joke in a sitcom? It's just braindead entertainment. Same with the discussion groups.
But the boards had quite a few usability problems, not the least of which was that there was no way to get a list of your own posts! Going back to check for replies was a nightmare. Ancient posts on a topic were mixed with the new ones. Navigating a large thread was horrible. The list goes on and on.
Why take them down before a replacement was available? I think it was probably due to the huge number of profane and offensive posts. Your (I'm talking to you personally, here) great-grandmother has been turning over in her grave nonstop since Yahoo Discussions came online because the word "fuck" has been uttered an average of 12.3 times per second every instant since then.
If they bring it back, I hope it's a lot more like Usenet. Especially with a killfile. Or at least something with which I can filter out every post containing the string "your an idiot". That should get rid of 50% of the traffic.
Soghoian claims that he wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability. You could argue that he went about it in a stupid way, but I don't think what he did is substantively worse than what I wrote in 2003. Or what Schumer described in 2005. Why is it that the person who demonstrates the vulnerability is vilified while the person who describes it is ignored? Or, even worse, the organization that causes it is ignored? Why are we shooting the messenger instead of discussing the problem?
Because they couldn't take down the big fish, that's why.
That, and in a huge variety of other circumstances where a normalized vector is required.
You can do a lot of vector math to calculate the relative positions of things, or how far a sphere is penetrating into a plane, say, but at the end of the day, you often want a vector that's one unit long. The process of normalizing a vector is dividing (this is where the "inverse" comes in) each element in turn by the length of the vector. The length of the vector is calculated with basically the pythagorean theorem (this is where the "square root" comes in.)
Calculating a square root and doing a divide, while not horribly slow, is slower than many people like, especially when you are doing a helluva lot of 'em. (PS2 does a square root in 13 cycles or something like that.) So this guy is four floating point mults (not too bad), an integer subtract (fast), and a shift (very fast).
I used to work in an Activision-owned studio. One day the IT guy comes through trying to with our power issues. He insists that we move the little dorm fridge (where we keep all the Coca Cola that powers us programmers) onto another circuit to help with the issue.
So, complaining, we do. And go back to work on our 20-odd brand-spankin'-new Xbox 360 dev kits.
Only later do I look at the back of the fridge and determine that it uses only half the power of a SINGLE Xbox 360.
It's amazing the entire building didn't catch fire when we had all those things plugged in.
I totally agree with the harddisk backup solution for small amounts of data. Probably 99% of the casual world's backup needs could be met with this solution.
One more thing that I'd add: buy two backup disks. I keep one at my (trusted) friend's house as an off-site. Every couple weeks, or whenever we remember, we swap disks. Seems like a lot of money to buy all those external disks, but when I consider how much of my life is digital, it's really the least I can do to protect my data.
I had over 1000 photographs on my flickr page when I uploaded about 40 images that were straight reproductions of a series of public domain paintings and drawings.
I was promptly delisted, I think maybe because one of the paintings made it to the "interesting" page.
Do you really believe that [having freedom in society inherently increases the risk of living in that society]?
Totally, but not from the goverment. The Bill of Rights with all its property protections and rights against self-incrimination and implications of privacy make a great place to hide if you're doing something wrong.
Giving up all your privacy and freedom would make it much harder to plan and execute an internal terrorist attack on the people.
I think both you and the grandposter have a valid point. What we are looking for here is a balance where the government is restricted, but is not totally impotent. We need to be protected from our aggressors, and from our protector itself.
I'm all for the privacy that requires judicial oversight on doing anything with that information. [...] Pattern detection is a pretty damn obvious tool - it's what you DO with it that matters.
I agree. And a lot of people think the government is going to abuse that data, so they don't like them to collect it.
And yes, if there's an attack, it could very well turn out that the government might have been able to prevent it if they had been allowed this monitoring ability. But some people don't like that argument, either, because it works all the way up to the top, e.g. we could have prevented this attack with camera monitors in every home.
People who oppose this kind of monitoring generally appreciate that by allowing Americans a greater degree of privacy, we are also allowing violent people to more easily hide in our midst. But they value their privacy so much as part of their freedom, they are willing to take the risks that come along with that.
Wikipedia asserts that Submarine Patents are largely no longer an issue in the US since signed the WTO's TRIPs agreements.
First to Invent does indeed sound like a major deal... What surprises me is that there is so much open source stuff being built these days that it seems like First to Invent should be blowing patents out of the water left and right. Someone makes a one-click shopping site, then Amazon patents it, then the original author claims First to Invent and sues Amazon...?
Slashdot Mirror
I used to have a Kensington trackball a long time ago, and thought it was pretty swell. The best thing, though, was the trackball was almost exactly the same size as a pool ball so you could swap one in there. :-)
Like what?
Science and the Scientific Method are pretty clearly-defined. People can try to throw spin on that, but they can't change the definition without tons of work. Anyone who does will be considered "fringe" by the global community.
In theory, if you'll excuse the pun, science welcomes all comers (who are willing to do actual science). Of course, in practice, people have invested lifetimes in research and are loathe to drop it without serious contrary evidence. But these issues weed out correctly with time.
I am highly confident that if ID is a useful scientific model, it will eventually be widely adopted (General Relativity), or it won't (Geocentric Universe), and there's nothing the government can do to change that fate.
Damn... Now I feel dated. Maybe this is a holdover from the old days.
I don't believe underscore is a valid character in a domain. Interesting that it seems to generally work, though.
Look at the big brain on the AC. I'd tell you right now there are other states with higher percentages of their populations in prison, but that'd just contribute to you further missing the point.
Yup, that sounds like the only conclusion you can come to.
But for everyone else:
Over 10% of the nation's prison population is in California. California has more people in prison than any other state. More people live in California prisons than live in Dayton, Ohio. Prisons are over capacity, sometimes by a factor of two.
So it becomes a matter of "who should we kick out on the street to put in this non-violent identify thief?"
All your base are belong to us.
I swear there was an article about this posted to Slashdot at one time or another. Guys like seeing people get what they deserve, remember.
Those skilled in the art will also recognize this "invention" as being very similar to the Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders Project, which is notable for a) rocking and b) having gone online before the patent was filed.
It's to the point of insanity now—it's difficult to imagine any software you write doesn't violate a patent. Everyone just ignores them and hopes they don't get sued, with big companies relying on mutually assured destruction to keep the lawyers at bay. Is this really the type of patent system we want?
My hardware matches the description of Internet Content Hosting Provider and Internet Email Provider, but the record-keeping portion of the bill refers to "Internet Service Provider" which I presume is defined elsewhere (not in this bill.)
*sigh*.
I frequented them quite a bit. It's great to watch some of the interaction that takes place, pretty much 100% of which is wholly predictable. So why play? Same reason people watch sitcoms--when was the last time you were blindsided by a brilliant joke in a sitcom? It's just braindead entertainment. Same with the discussion groups.
But the boards had quite a few usability problems, not the least of which was that there was no way to get a list of your own posts! Going back to check for replies was a nightmare. Ancient posts on a topic were mixed with the new ones. Navigating a large thread was horrible. The list goes on and on.
Why take them down before a replacement was available? I think it was probably due to the huge number of profane and offensive posts. Your (I'm talking to you personally, here) great-grandmother has been turning over in her grave nonstop since Yahoo Discussions came online because the word "fuck" has been uttered an average of 12.3 times per second every instant since then.
If they bring it back, I hope it's a lot more like Usenet. Especially with a killfile. Or at least something with which I can filter out every post containing the string "your an idiot". That should get rid of 50% of the traffic.
I think it is.
Distributing one with intent to harm, that's illegal.
But writing them, distributing them to people who want them, and telling people how to write them is, afaik, still legal.
Especially if you print it in a book, which is one place judges are afraid to touch.
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72045-0.html
Because they couldn't take down the big fish, that's why.
No offense intended; I assumed you knew this. I was posting for people who didn't, though. :)
That, and in a huge variety of other circumstances where a normalized vector is required.
You can do a lot of vector math to calculate the relative positions of things, or how far a sphere is penetrating into a plane, say, but at the end of the day, you often want a vector that's one unit long. The process of normalizing a vector is dividing (this is where the "inverse" comes in) each element in turn by the length of the vector. The length of the vector is calculated with basically the pythagorean theorem (this is where the "square root" comes in.)
Calculating a square root and doing a divide, while not horribly slow, is slower than many people like, especially when you are doing a helluva lot of 'em. (PS2 does a square root in 13 cycles or something like that.) So this guy is four floating point mults (not too bad), an integer subtract (fast), and a shift (very fast).
I agree. Sounds more like a multiply linked list to me.
To be fair, I learned about these in school about 15 years ago. So I've probably already forgotten all about it.
I used to work in an Activision-owned studio. One day the IT guy comes through trying to with our power issues. He insists that we move the little dorm fridge (where we keep all the Coca Cola that powers us programmers) onto another circuit to help with the issue.
So, complaining, we do. And go back to work on our 20-odd brand-spankin'-new Xbox 360 dev kits.
Only later do I look at the back of the fridge and determine that it uses only half the power of a SINGLE Xbox 360.
It's amazing the entire building didn't catch fire when we had all those things plugged in.
No kidding. Sanctuary would have been a rockin GH song.
The fact that this is being moderated "Informative" is a little disconcerting.
I totally agree with the harddisk backup solution for small amounts of data. Probably 99% of the casual world's backup needs could be met with this solution.
:-)
One more thing that I'd add: buy two backup disks. I keep one at my (trusted) friend's house as an off-site. Every couple weeks, or whenever we remember, we swap disks. Seems like a lot of money to buy all those external disks, but when I consider how much of my life is digital, it's really the least I can do to protect my data.
Don't forget to fsck them regularly.
I had over 1000 photographs on my flickr page when I uploaded about 40 images that were straight reproductions of a series of public domain paintings and drawings.
I was promptly delisted, I think maybe because one of the paintings made it to the "interesting" page.
Guess it wasn't important--or Bush would have added it back!
Totally, but not from the goverment. The Bill of Rights with all its property protections and rights against self-incrimination and implications of privacy make a great place to hide if you're doing something wrong.
Giving up all your privacy and freedom would make it much harder to plan and execute an internal terrorist attack on the people.
I think both you and the grandposter have a valid point. What we are looking for here is a balance where the government is restricted, but is not totally impotent. We need to be protected from our aggressors, and from our protector itself.
I agree. And a lot of people think the government is going to abuse that data, so they don't like them to collect it.
And yes, if there's an attack, it could very well turn out that the government might have been able to prevent it if they had been allowed this monitoring ability. But some people don't like that argument, either, because it works all the way up to the top, e.g. we could have prevented this attack with camera monitors in every home.
People who oppose this kind of monitoring generally appreciate that by allowing Americans a greater degree of privacy, we are also allowing violent people to more easily hide in our midst. But they value their privacy so much as part of their freedom, they are willing to take the risks that come along with that.
Wikipedia asserts that Submarine Patents are largely no longer an issue in the US since signed the WTO's TRIPs agreements.
First to Invent does indeed sound like a major deal... What surprises me is that there is so much open source stuff being built these days that it seems like First to Invent should be blowing patents out of the water left and right. Someone makes a one-click shopping site, then Amazon patents it, then the original author claims First to Invent and sues Amazon...?
(IANAPL)