I was just at Walgreens last night to try to find one of these suckers (who offer a different packaging, but same concept and circuitry). They didn't have them. I was going to go to a couple area Ritz to see if they had them. But noooooo. Slashdot broke the story and now Ritz will yank them off the shelves or others will grab them first.
Apparently, in German of the day, a B-flat was written 'B', while a B was written 'H'. Johann Sebastian included the phrase Bb A C B as a signature motif in some of his works. At least, that's what I've read-- I have an ear that's more tinny than a soup can.
The bit about the wedding photographer sounds like he had some grudge against his (or his daughter's) photographer. Whine whine whine.
If you hire a bargain-basement photographer's assistant, you might get stunning Annie-Liebowicz-level artwork. But the chances are that you'll get fifty images that are ill-timed, ill-posed, ill-conceived, ill-focused or ill-processed. You pay the money to someone who will get the best possible angle on the critical moments that the wedding couple will want to remember for the rest of their lives. Sometimes that requires a nudge to move Aunt Marge out of the way. It's not an occasion you're going to want to repeat if the photographer got it all wrong.
The same goes for an airline pilot... think about all the training you're depending on. Sure, it's "routine" to fly from coast to coast, but emergencies happen and it's the pilot's experience and training that you're paying for. It's a little late to complain that you didn't get your money's worth, once you've landed safe and sound after a boring flight.
It may be intentional now, but when screensavers first came out with password locks, it was usually capricious behavior from the kids who "reviewed" the display models. Locking a Gui screen is one step up from programming a machine to loop "K-MART SUX" in BASIC.
B) Steal a truck WEEKS in advance , have time to throughly remove any id , electronic shutdown aids, put fake plates on, respray, fill with a chemical
of your choice and drive normally into the city unrecognized?
Why did I just hear the theme to the A-Team playing, and imagine a long useless video segment of Face and Murdock fighting over who gets to use the welding torch next?
I love Tufte's books-- have three of them on my shelf. They're very intricate and excellent. They're visceral studies in how you can achieve excellence.
But that's just the problem: they are over the top. Not everyone is an aesthete.
Most people would rather just type a few lines into a PowerPoint template and flash it onto an 800x600 screen, rather than hire a team of graphic artists to develop a diecut 1200dpi offset-print folder of reports which draw a visual metaphor between daVinci's visions and last quarter's sales in the Kansas region. And most of the time, audiences would rather skim than study, too.
I see Tufte as belonging somewhere between Knuth and Escher. If you consider his valid points and enjoy the energy he brings to the craft, great. But keep pragmatism in the process too: if it's good enough, ship it, and refine it for the next revision.
What is the kind of physical shielding that one can install to shield against EMP (such as produced by nuclear detonation)? This should avoid most of the damage from the indiscriminate E-bombs, as the article mentions.
Secondly, the article wafts past the issue of shielding against the harder "laser-like" weaponry's effects. Whether they skip it for security's sake or limited knowledge sake, they just avoid the whole issue.
This has been discussed over and over. The word 'effectively' here does not describe the efficacy of the measure, just that the measure was put in place with the intention that it would control access. A door is an effective barrier, even if the lock is not utilized or people hand out the keys like candy on Halloween.
Um, dude, the "editors" have long ago announced that they sell about one front-page story per day. Did you think the stories about ThinkGeek's latest gadgets or the newest silent-harddrive product were grassroots submissions?
I'm dropping a quick note in support of Open and Auditable voting
rights, and in the rights to discuss the implementation of such systems.
Currently, a leading manufacturer of electronic voting systems named
Diebold Systems is attempting to squelch critics and critical discussion
of their products and business methods. Some of these critics are your
students, as you are probably well aware. Such Cease and Desist orders
are the first step in a campaign to control those who would dissent,
and to intimidate those who would research.
I believe this discussion rightly should include the publication of
confidential business memoranda that have been acquired from Diebold
Systems. These memoranda may show certain antipathy to the proper
methodology and design for a secure voting infrastructure. It is only
through such exposition that a frank discussion of security and
responsibility can be pursued.
Lastly, I am very concerned at corporate influence in government
function. I have long held the position that "a corporation has no
vested interest in the rights of the individual." I am not anti-
business or anti-profit, but companies which perform vital government
functions such as producing voting equipment must be adherent to the
principles of a free and informed electorate, both in products and in
deeds.
I recommend you support your students, and support their cause to
inform the public where possible on these issues.
Please show your students that Democracy and Research are more important
than corporate greed, and that transparency is critical when building a
government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
I run Debian Woody servers, so I apt-get update && apt-get upgrade every morning. Since I never have to reboot, that is not an issue.
Blind trust and ultimate faith is an admiral trait for a priest, but the accountant likes accountability, the engineer likes to minimize design dependencies, and the scientist likes empirical evidence and repeatable results.
I prefer to know what the patch contains, and who signed the bundle, even if I don't hand-compile it myself. I prefer to see if others choke when they drink the kool-aid, before I gulp it down myself.
My fifth-grade teacher let me borrow her Speedball calligraphy nibs and one of their annual samplers. I have since loved fine writing. I gave my young niece a calligraphy set years later, and wrote this out for her:
Every day, machines print out pages and glue them together, and machines
send thousands of copies of each book to everybody who wants to read.
Think of a world where you could not go to a store to buy a book.
Before these machines existed, if you wanted a book, you had to write it
yourself. For hundreds of years, artists called "scribes" would copy
every page in a book by hand, taking care not to make mistakes. It could
take many years to write all the pages for just one book.
Practice is essential. The first letters are always rough and crude, but
this cannot make the new artist lose hope. Imagine each letter is its
own little picture. Emotions are built up from words, words are built up
of letters, letters are built up of strokes, strokes are made up of
motions. From emotions to motions. The more you practice, the more your
thoughts and feelings will shape your writing.
When the words you want to write are so important that you would spend
time and energy on each page, good penmanship is very important. May
every word you create be beautiful, in both meaning and in lettering.
I didn't keep a copy of the inked version, but I should write it out again with a little more embellishment and flourish, and scan the results.
The press rightly continues to use the word 'piracy' for illicit
copying and distribution of original materials. Some think it's
a new phenomenon, and hard to square with the traditional image
of the Jolly Roger and swashbuckling robbers-at-sea. The use of
the word 'piracy' as signifying an unauthorized copy of a
manuscript is hundreds of years old, long before modern Copyright
doctrine was developed.
From http://www.ninch.org/forum/price.report.html:
There was very little trust in the print medium when it was
first developed--it was seen as unstable and subject to piracy
and fraudulent copying. Authenticity was hard to guarantee:
indeed, the term "piracy" was first used by John Fell, Bishop
of Oxford, to describe certain pernicious practices of early
printers and booksellers. A "pirate" was someone who
participated in the "unauthorized reprinting of a title
recognized to belong to someone else." "Stationers" eventually
emerged as the trusted practitioners who were placed in charge
of various aspects of publishing--practices we would now
recognize as printing, publishing, editing, and
bookselling. Stationers worked out the conventional practices
of making books, and thus made printing a viable economic
enterprise with the elaborate complexity of producing a book
eventually invisible to all but the practitioners in the
trade.
That's Dr. John Fell (1625-86), who was given the title of
Bishop of Oxford in 1675.
I follow this usage as well, but few dictionaries seem to back this up. Insure is mopping up after a disaster, Ensure is proactive avoidance of a disaster, Assure is just saying there will be no disaster.
Patents are not about who is right, or who is first; patents are
about who will sue.
The US PTO is a money-making service for the government,
and this fact is why it operates as it does.
There is a misconception that it is the central duty of the
PTO to form a blockade against granting patents. The PTO can
and will block applications where there's heavy similarity with
prior art or existing patents, but that's really just a
guideline to using the service, not the core function.
The meager regulatory behavior also weakens further in tough
economies, because Big Business believes that having patents,
even if they are untenable, will generate revenue; the
administrations can open the floodgates at will.
The PTO's purpose is to grant patents for a fee, and it's
wholly suited to do so.
The application vetting process of the PTO is a cost
center for the operation of the PTO. This is akin to saying
that customer service is a cost center for the operation
of AT&T. It is required, but they'll cut costs as much as
they can get away with.
To fix the patent application vetting process, two things must
happen:
Congress must stop using the PTO's filing fees as a revenue
source for other pet interests instead of the PTO's own
budget, and
The PTO needs to allow third parties to aid the vetting
process by challenging potential patents before they're
granted.
As of 15 March 2001, the USPTO has changed their policies to
solve that second problem. They can now publish patent
applications before the patent itself is awarded to the
applicant. Third parties may now submit "helpful" arguments
against controversial applications. The USPTO can then weigh
obviousness against challenges without incurring the costs of
doing all the searching themselves.
Breaking patents by finding simple prior art is not enough for
most cases. Patents already granted are almost never cracked,
certainly not by someone using an independent third party's
prior art. In the famous Heinlein/Waterbed case, the patent was denied before it
was ever granted by the Patent Office. Once a patent has been
granted, the Patent Office rarely will get involved in
disputes; that is a matter for the courts.
There are three concepts which really need to sink into the head of anyone trying to develop a good user interface on any kind of tool, device or application.
* know the users their goals
* don't make the user feel stupid
* provide rich feedback so the user is confident
Any application which merely connects APIs to Widgets will just fail horribly. The GUI isn't intended to expose the implementation to direct, marionette-style control. The GUI is there to understand the user's intentions and then achieve the desired results with the internal tools available.
Any "Ask Slashdot" submission which basically follows the form, "Which is better?" or "Which is best?" will generate more page hits, and thus more revenue for Slashdot. This is "Which text mud client is best?" To spark it even further, it has the "Which is better, graphical or text games" implication, and the editor added a link to one app but not a list of them.
If you took two or three samples from different to-the-theater reels, and cross-correlated those, you would be removing the grain from the DUPLICATION process, not the grain from the original from-camera film.
I know that a plane "wants to fly." I have no fear of strapping a lawnmower engine to a Cessna milk crate and puttering around the skies. I understand that the Thunderbirds are pulling some heavy G forces.
I also know the Thunderbirds work hard to stay well within the operational envelope for safety: they don't want their pilots to die, and they don't want their recruitable and financier spectators to die.
However, I've also seen what a couple of birds sucked into a jet intake will do to the blades of the turbofan, the high-pressure compressor, and all the other stages behind. Jets, by their very nature, push the envelope of known materials science, even when they're flown well within engineered limits and operational envelopes.
Planes stay in the air only because so many people have spent so many years designing and building and piloting machines which can do the nearly impossible.
I work at a major aerospace firm, and they're going crazy with enthusiasm about 100 years of flight, of course. One of their brochures highlights a small modern jet banking sharply, composited over an old sepia-toned photograph of an enthusiastic 1900s crowd of spectators.
The first thing that came to mind was the cynical tagline, "100 Years of Air Show Disasters." Unfortunately, given some other crazed wackos before and after the Kitty Hawk, I'm sure that we're already past that milestone. Last week's Air Force Thunderbirds disaster was a sombre reminder of how hard it is to stay in the air even under ideal conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just at Walgreens last night to try to find one of these suckers (who offer a different packaging, but same concept and circuitry). They didn't have them. I was going to go to a couple area Ritz to see if they had them. But noooooo. Slashdot broke the story and now Ritz will yank them off the shelves or others will grab them first.
Damn, damn, damn, damn! Damn, damn, damn, damn! Damn, damn, damn, damn!
Apparently, in German of the day, a B-flat was written 'B', while a B was written 'H'. Johann Sebastian included the phrase Bb A C B as a signature motif in some of his works. At least, that's what I've read-- I have an ear that's more tinny than a soup can.
The bit about the wedding photographer sounds like he had some grudge against his (or his daughter's) photographer. Whine whine whine.
If you hire a bargain-basement photographer's assistant, you might get stunning Annie-Liebowicz-level artwork. But the chances are that you'll get fifty images that are ill-timed, ill-posed, ill-conceived, ill-focused or ill-processed. You pay the money to someone who will get the best possible angle on the critical moments that the wedding couple will want to remember for the rest of their lives. Sometimes that requires a nudge to move Aunt Marge out of the way. It's not an occasion you're going to want to repeat if the photographer got it all wrong.
The same goes for an airline pilot... think about all the training you're depending on. Sure, it's "routine" to fly from coast to coast, but emergencies happen and it's the pilot's experience and training that you're paying for. It's a little late to complain that you didn't get your money's worth, once you've landed safe and sound after a boring flight.
It may be intentional now, but when screensavers first came out with password locks, it was usually capricious behavior from the kids who "reviewed" the display models. Locking a Gui screen is one step up from programming a machine to loop "K-MART SUX" in BASIC.
So as long as I don't ripple more then, say, a couple hundred mil I should be fine?
--
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
B) Steal a truck WEEKS in advance , have time to throughly remove any id , electronic shutdown aids, put fake plates on, respray, fill with a chemical of your choice and drive normally into the city unrecognized?
Why did I just hear the theme to the A-Team playing, and imagine a long useless video segment of Face and Murdock fighting over who gets to use the welding torch next?
But that's just the problem: they are over the top. Not everyone is an aesthete.
Most people would rather just type a few lines into a PowerPoint template and flash it onto an 800x600 screen, rather than hire a team of graphic artists to develop a diecut 1200dpi offset-print folder of reports which draw a visual metaphor between daVinci's visions and last quarter's sales in the Kansas region. And most of the time, audiences would rather skim than study, too.
I see Tufte as belonging somewhere between Knuth and Escher. If you consider his valid points and enjoy the energy he brings to the craft, great. But keep pragmatism in the process too: if it's good enough, ship it, and refine it for the next revision.
Secondly, the article wafts past the issue of shielding against the harder "laser-like" weaponry's effects. Whether they skip it for security's sake or limited knowledge sake, they just avoid the whole issue.
No, you damned shopping cart, I don't want "Folding Prams!" Where are the Golden Grahams!?
"Enjoy our selection of kitchenware including four types of rolling pins in aisle 16."
This has been discussed over and over. The word 'effectively' here does not describe the efficacy of the measure, just that the measure was put in place with the intention that it would control access. A door is an effective barrier, even if the lock is not utilized or people hand out the keys like candy on Halloween.
Um, dude, the "editors" have long ago announced that they sell about one front-page story per day. Did you think the stories about ThinkGeek's latest gadgets or the newest silent-harddrive product were grassroots submissions?
Currently, a leading manufacturer of electronic voting systems named Diebold Systems is attempting to squelch critics and critical discussion of their products and business methods. Some of these critics are your students, as you are probably well aware. Such Cease and Desist orders are the first step in a campaign to control those who would dissent, and to intimidate those who would research.
I believe this discussion rightly should include the publication of confidential business memoranda that have been acquired from Diebold Systems. These memoranda may show certain antipathy to the proper methodology and design for a secure voting infrastructure. It is only through such exposition that a frank discussion of security and responsibility can be pursued.
Lastly, I am very concerned at corporate influence in government function. I have long held the position that "a corporation has no vested interest in the rights of the individual." I am not anti- business or anti-profit, but companies which perform vital government functions such as producing voting equipment must be adherent to the principles of a free and informed electorate, both in products and in deeds.
I recommend you support your students, and support their cause to inform the public where possible on these issues.
Please show your students that Democracy and Research are more important than corporate greed, and that transparency is critical when building a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
I run Debian Woody servers, so I apt-get update && apt-get upgrade every morning. Since I never have to reboot, that is not an issue.
Blind trust and ultimate faith is an admiral trait for a priest, but the accountant likes accountability, the engineer likes to minimize design dependencies, and the scientist likes empirical evidence and repeatable results.
I prefer to know what the patch contains, and who signed the bundle, even if I don't hand-compile it myself. I prefer to see if others choke when they drink the kool-aid, before I gulp it down myself.
-1, "Bzzzzt wrong" post.
--
Moderation is a waste of time.
Before these machines existed, if you wanted a book, you had to write it yourself. For hundreds of years, artists called "scribes" would copy every page in a book by hand, taking care not to make mistakes. It could take many years to write all the pages for just one book.
Practice is essential. The first letters are always rough and crude, but this cannot make the new artist lose hope. Imagine each letter is its own little picture. Emotions are built up from words, words are built up of letters, letters are built up of strokes, strokes are made up of motions. From emotions to motions. The more you practice, the more your thoughts and feelings will shape your writing.
When the words you want to write are so important that you would spend time and energy on each page, good penmanship is very important. May every word you create be beautiful, in both meaning and in lettering.
I didn't keep a copy of the inked version, but I should write it out again with a little more embellishment and flourish, and scan the results.
[RANT]
The press rightly continues to use the word 'piracy' for illicit copying and distribution of original materials. Some think it's a new phenomenon, and hard to square with the traditional image of the Jolly Roger and swashbuckling robbers-at-sea. The use of the word 'piracy' as signifying an unauthorized copy of a manuscript is hundreds of years old, long before modern Copyright doctrine was developed. From http://www.ninch.org/forum/price.report.html:
That's Dr. John Fell (1625-86), who was given the title of Bishop of Oxford in 1675.
[/RANT]
Immediately after Lucas said he could legally make a 3 DVD Indiana Jones box set, he also announced plans for Indiana Four.
I whole-heartedly expect to see a Peter Jackson "The Hobbit" hit theaters after they box the ultimate LotR trilogy DVD set.
I also whole-heartedly expect to see a "Matrix 4" after they box the ultimate trilogy DVD set.
I am. http://www.halley.cc/ed/microrants/
I follow this usage as well, but few dictionaries seem to back this up. Insure is mopping up after a disaster, Ensure is proactive avoidance of a disaster, Assure is just saying there will be no disaster.
Patents are not about who is right, or who is first; patents are about who will sue.
The US PTO is a money-making service for the government, and this fact is why it operates as it does.
There is a misconception that it is the central duty of the PTO to form a blockade against granting patents. The PTO can and will block applications where there's heavy similarity with prior art or existing patents, but that's really just a guideline to using the service, not the core function.
The meager regulatory behavior also weakens further in tough economies, because Big Business believes that having patents, even if they are untenable, will generate revenue; the administrations can open the floodgates at will.
The PTO's purpose is to grant patents for a fee, and it's wholly suited to do so.
The application vetting process of the PTO is a cost center for the operation of the PTO. This is akin to saying that customer service is a cost center for the operation of AT&T. It is required, but they'll cut costs as much as they can get away with.
To fix the patent application vetting process, two things must happen:
As of 15 March 2001, the USPTO has changed their policies to solve that second problem. They can now publish patent applications before the patent itself is awarded to the applicant. Third parties may now submit "helpful" arguments against controversial applications. The USPTO can then weigh obviousness against challenges without incurring the costs of doing all the searching themselves.
Breaking patents by finding simple prior art is not enough for most cases. Patents already granted are almost never cracked, certainly not by someone using an independent third party's prior art. In the famous Heinlein/Waterbed case, the patent was denied before it was ever granted by the Patent Office. Once a patent has been granted, the Patent Office rarely will get involved in disputes; that is a matter for the courts.
[/RANT]
There are three concepts which really need to sink into the head of anyone trying to develop a good user interface on any kind of tool, device or application. * know the users their goals * don't make the user feel stupid * provide rich feedback so the user is confident Any application which merely connects APIs to Widgets will just fail horribly. The GUI isn't intended to expose the implementation to direct, marionette-style control. The GUI is there to understand the user's intentions and then achieve the desired results with the internal tools available.
Any "Ask Slashdot" submission which basically follows the form, "Which is better?" or "Which is best?" will generate more page hits, and thus more revenue for Slashdot. This is "Which text mud client is best?" To spark it even further, it has the "Which is better, graphical or text games" implication, and the editor added a link to one app but not a list of them.
If you took two or three samples from different to-the-theater reels, and cross-correlated those, you would be removing the grain from the DUPLICATION process, not the grain from the original from-camera film.
I also know the Thunderbirds work hard to stay well within the operational envelope for safety: they don't want their pilots to die, and they don't want their recruitable and financier spectators to die.
However, I've also seen what a couple of birds sucked into a jet intake will do to the blades of the turbofan, the high-pressure compressor, and all the other stages behind. Jets, by their very nature, push the envelope of known materials science, even when they're flown well within engineered limits and operational envelopes.
Planes stay in the air only because so many people have spent so many years designing and building and piloting machines which can do the nearly impossible.
The first thing that came to mind was the cynical tagline, "100 Years of Air Show Disasters." Unfortunately, given some other crazed wackos before and after the Kitty Hawk, I'm sure that we're already past that milestone. Last week's Air Force Thunderbirds disaster was a sombre reminder of how hard it is to stay in the air even under ideal conditions.