32 bit dies in 2038 because a long on a 32 bit machine is...32 bits. On a 64 bit machine, you won't need to worry anytime soon (assuming the compiler defines long as 64 bit which would be expected).
There are even weird systems out there. DomainOS used signed 32 bit to count 1/4 seconds since 1/1/1980 (or something like that). They rolled over in Nov. 1997, and are still running fine.
--Kevin, in Vegas, waiting for the party to begin.
I expect to go try Vegas for a couple years after I'm done with school. My sister lives there now, and it looks pretty nice -- high speed access is cheap, rent isn't too bad, and there's always something to do. The disadvantage as I understand it is that after a few years you realize that it also attracts total losers would haven't made it anywhere else so thought they might take a stab at Vegas. That and no one is actually *from* vegas.
Since mention was made of what hte libertarians would say about this, I thought I'd give what libertarians would generally agree on in this area. Licensing serves two purposes main purposes -- to provide information to the consumer about whether they can rely on someone, which libertarians would support (but see below), and to prevent consumers from doing business with people the government doesn't approve of.
If I were ordering drugs online, I would like to see that the pharmacy is licensed by someone who I believe is qualified to evaluate a pharmacy, like a state board. I don't particularly care whether it is california's (where i live) board of health that has licensed them. I just want to know that they aren't selling rat poison as aspirin. I don't need a federal law requiring licensing for drug sales over the internet, I just need a federal law that makes fraud a crime, so that no one can say they are licensed by whoever unless they are really licensed by them. You don't need to force people to go for this kind of licensing. People won't buy anything from people who aren't licensed. A better term would be "certified". It's like being UL Listed. In this scenario, my chances of getting a bad prescription are very low.
The other purpose of licensing is similar to the charters governments used to grant. It isn't to protect the consumer, it's to make sure that some industry is in fact controlled by the government. The government wants to keep an eye on drug companies and licensing is the easiest way to do it (why track them down when you can just require them to register). This doesn't have a damn thing to do with my getting a bad prescription, but it does mean that I can't get a bottle of decent painkillers to carry for emergencies when going on off road motorcycle trips without having to worry about whether the federal government approves of what I'm doing.
This is the argument libertarians would give about why this licensing is a bad idea. In fact, we really want to avoid the licensing because we want people to be able to buy their heroin online cheaply so that they don't have to rob us for drug money, or lurk in alleyways and bring down property values.
which they either obtained by improper means or knew or should have known was obtained by others by improper means
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but the above quote from the letter is very likely the key to their case. Even those IP cases are now pretty much wars of attrition, where whoever can afford to keep fighting wins, Trade Secrets aren't protected unless you can show that they were obtained from the original company. If I independently discover a method of, e.g., organizing a database, another company can't force me to stop using it unless they can show that I got the idea from them. (Well, unless they patent it).
It is "Berkeley Software Distribution", right? I've also heard "Berkeley Standard Distribution", but that makes less sense than "Berkeley Software Design". Maybe "Berkeley Standard Design"?
I'm amazed no one has mentioned a critical step -- fire the examiner who approved the patent with as much fanfare as possible. Sure, in the best of all worlds, we could get a patent office with sane policies, but that doesn't appear to be an option right now. A good substitute is just to "encourage" examiners to actually check the patents before they approve them. Saying "you approve an idiotic patent, we fire you" would go a long way toward reforming the patent system.
Then again, so do people in every other country, it's just that trash pickup isn't buried where you can't see what you're paying here. You still can't really tell whether you're getting the shaft on health care, because with insurance, the stated cost of having a doctor take your blood pressure is more than the yearly cost of the health insurance, so who knows what it would cost without all the regulation.
For some absurd reason, a lot of people see the internet as some sort of "interactive TV". If it were something like this, then censorware might make sense, but the internet is not an entertainment device, or a communication device. The internet is a growing subset of the world. I don't know how easily I can explain this. People like to divide things up into categories. For example, you divide businesses in an area into "stores", "consumer services", "manufacturing companies", and so on. You divide the community up into "businesses", "government", "homes", and so on. It seems natural to people to include the internet as one of these categories, but it isn't.
The internet isn't a category of this type. It isn't a service either. The internet is a separate community, which to some extent mirrors the physical world, and to some degree doesn't. Saying "the internet shouldn't be used as a babysitter" shows that you think the internet is a depository of information and entertainment. You say that you can't watch over your kid every second, but tell me, when you are walking through the bad part of town, are you going to let your kid out of you sight? If a preacher on a street corner is saying something you don't like, is it his responsibility to be quiet, or is it your responsibility to keep your kid at home if you want them to be sheltered?
It isn't an alternative between "use the internet as a baby sitter" and "look over the kids shoulder every second". There is another solution, which people have been using for a lot longer than the internet has been around for similar situtations. Don't let your kids use the internet. When they use the internet, watch them. You aren't going to let a 10 y.o. take the bus to another town by himself (compare, internet is babysitter), so when he needs to go somewhere, you go with him (looking over his shoulder every second).
The censorware "solution" is the equivalent of sanitizing the whole world to make it suitable for children (how young? teenagers? three year olds?). People may claim that censorware doesn't prevent people who want to read whatever from seeing it, but it is clear from what is going on (censorware companies pushing governments for... manditory censorware in schools and libraries e.g.) that it would quickly be "optional" in name only.
As a catholic, the idea probably didn't occur to you, but to a large number of people, asking religious leaders a question of morals is like asking politicians a question of economics. There is no reason to believe they have better answers than the man in the street, and from their track record, one would have to assume their answers are significantly worse than what the scientists would come up with. But, like asking the president what's good for the economy, asking the pope whether something is ethical is good PR.
What is morals anyway? If you ask the pope, it means conforming to what the church says. Is this actually the right question to ask, "does genetic research agree with catholic ethics"? Or should we ask "do the benefits of genetic research outway the risks"? I do not believe that religious leaders have anything to contribute to this second question, and to me (an atheist), the fact that they are considering consulting religious leaders suggests that they can't be bothered to way the costs and benefits themselves, and are looking for someone else to make the decision for them. This I consider irresponsible.
The decisions should be made by those who best understand the issues. The issues are not religious issues, they are cost/benefit or risk/return issues, and geneticists are those best qualified to make that call.
--Kevin
Re:sort of a return to the olden days...
on
IDs in Color Copies
·
· Score: 2
The critical difference between encoding a serial number and what we had with typewriters is this:
Given a typewritten letter, and a typewriter, an expert can determine whether the letter was typed on that typewriter. Given a typewritten letter only, the expert can determine that the font is 120cpi courier.
Given a photocopy with a serial number embedded in it, the manufacturer can determine that it's from a model number X4000, sold in Des Moines on June 17, 1999. If the user registered, or by consulting store receipts, you might be able to track this down to the person who made the copy.
It's a difference between evidence that will actually let you track down the person you want, versus evidence that will let you demonstrate that the person you found is in fact the person you want.
Given that any "crime" that this would be useful in, that is, any situation wherein someone wants to track someone down based on a piece of paper, has a very high likelihood of being an abuse of government power, or unrelated to any actual crime, is very high, and given that in a situation where a real crime has been committed (e.g. murder, as mentioned), the authorities will have other ways of tracking someone down, this is a very bad idea.
I think that may be the longest sentence I have ever written.
I think this is a great idea. Linux, and most open source software is built by and for computer geeks. That is, it's the kind of software that if it didn't exist, a developer would write or buy for internal use. This is a vast oversimplification, of course, but it's true to a degree. It's not that programmers only write programming applications, but that when you're considering a project, you probably aren't going to get involved in a project that you wouldn't use.
Can you see an open source "Print Shop"-like program? Sure, you can say "But we have TeX, print shop is inferior." Yes, it is, but Print Shop is usable by grandma who wants to create birthday cards for the kids, while the Gimp and LaTeX really aren't.
I don't think Cosource would actually generate low end consumer software like this, but there would be more software in that direction -- usable by people who aren't computer geeks. Some examples of what I think could come out of this:
Tools for graphics professionals. We have the Gimp (which I must admit I haven't used), but it would be great to have a good vector drawing program, good animation programs, and stuff like that. How about a rendering package that doesn't cost thousands of dollars? The cost to develop these (time-wise) may be too high for people to do it for their own use, or just for fun, but maybe there are people out there who would sponser it.
Handicapped accessibility software -- like rendering software, the cost to develop is high for the number of people who would actually use it. There's a number of foundations and charities out there who would put up money to getting free software to make it easier for e.g. the blind to use computers.
Software drivers -- maybe internal development works too, but maybe it could be done cheaper in open source. Or perhaps the company doesn't want to develop drivers for X high-end sound card, but there are people out there who have the card, and want to use it, but don't have the skills to write a driver.
Niche apps -- companies that make VR glasses can't sell many of them if there isn't software to use them. On the other hand, an app isn't likely tied to a single system, so it might make sense for makers of VR equipment to support a project to develop some sort of VR chat software. There are probably other similar cases, but VR is the one that came to mind.
I'm a big believer in the power of the free market. Ronald Coase got a nobel prize for demonstrating that one of the limiters on the free market is the cost of making transactions. Cosource provides a system for allowing some of these transactions, so is a definite plus.
I don't think genetic engineering is necessary in this area. All we need to do is legalize heroin and repeal helmet laws, and let the stupid kill themselves off.
As an aside, helmet laws have cut down the already short supply of organs for transplants. Nothing like a healthy young man with with a crushed skull for organ harvesting.
Yes, this is sarcasm, but this is also exactly how I decide who to vote for.
The cryptography community usually believes they are a couple years behind the NSA, given that the NSA reads all their papers, but doesn't publish its own work.
I had been skeptical of Echelon being able to do word recognition on phone conversations, but I expect that the NSA is ahead of private industry in this area too, so Echolon looks plausible.
I'm guessing the movement would actually be easier than on land, but our current technology has a major limitation -- it weighs 7 kg. That's as much as a real big house cat, but it's volume looks to be way to little to support that.
I can't wait -- new from JPL -- robotic martian sidewinders that can't get stuck up against a rock.
I don't know the whole story, but why are we all talking about it in Nov 1999? Is it because he just recently had his FOIA request fulfilled? A lot of good being able to check up on your government does when it takes six years for them to answer. In 1933, Hitler was a punk in Munich. In 1939 (six years later), he was invading Poland.
I've only used VC++ for a little while, but I don't think it's the kind of program you could use intuitively. By that I mean, when I'm doing perl in gvim, I can enter stuff as fast as i can type. In VC++, I can't do that. I'll go to where I need something, type two lines, go to a menu, do something else, and so on. It's not that the VC++ interface makes it impossible to enter code without moving your hands off the keyboard, but it's that when you're using VC++, you aren't really entering code most of the time. You're inheriting from some other class and copying and pasting some code, or linking a dialog box to a class, or stuff like that, which is not done with a keyboard. Programming in C or Perl in a unix environment is pretty much a two dimensional process -- you have an array of files (all your code and headers or modules) and you have an array of characters within the files. Programming in VC++ seems to be different, like you're working on a single 3 dimensional object, going inside to ad something, coming outside to run a wire around, glueing another part on here. It's not that the interface is different (it is, but that's beside the point), it's that the tasks you're performing are totally different.
I also find that I work on web pages in a different way depending on whether I'm using gvim (windows) or BBEdit (macintosh) as the editor.
When I need to type in ALL CAPS, I just hold down the left shift button. For some reason, I hit all modifier keys with my left hand, and when I need an A, Q or Z, I use my left ring finger and pinky. Yeah, it's not what they taught you in school, but I do about 60 wpm like that.
To me, nerd is more pejorative than geek is. I think of a geek as anyone who gets their satisfaction out of a non-social activity. We have computer geeks, who get their satisfaction out of computers, and don't really care when they last talked to someone face to face. We have drama geeks, music geeks, and so on. Anyone who cares more about what they are doing than about what other people think of them. This (I think) also fits the original meaning of geek (as in side show geek) more closely than than the "ability" definition.
A nerd, to me, is a bookworm, who gets his validation in whether he conforms to the artificial reward system setup by the schools, and doesn't really care about anything beyond that. This definition doesn't really work for people out of school, but you can recognize people who would have fit this definition when they were in school, and call them nerds too.
Okay, as an experiment as to "what life will be like in the digital future", it's bunk. As a status report to how far along we are toward a totally wired life, it's interesting. It also gives us a good idea of where we can automate, and where we will still be going outside (evil light, bright orb, hurts my eyes, aah!). Obviously, shopping for sandwiches on the web doesn't make sense. You aren't looking for the best sandwich on the planet, you're looking for a decent sandwich that you can be eating within a half hour. In general, I'd say that anything that everyone buys, and are highly replaceable (as in, I don't care exactly what I get, any one of a number of things that fulfills these requirements) don't make sense to buy or sell online. Look at where the web boomed first -- books, music and videos. Why? Because they are special interest items. Not books in general, of course, but any given book isn't of interest to 99% of the population. On the other hand, I don't really care whether I use Suave, Tresemmé, or whatever other shampoo. This is something I should continue buying at the local store. Human contact is an area where we don't really know yet. On the one hand, there are obvious advantages to being in the same physical room as someone, but there's also the issue that I may have a lot more to talk about with someone half way around the world than with my neighbor.
Is there actually anyone out there doing weather simulations? I run seti@home because I like giving my computer something to do, and crypto projects seem like a total waste of time (what exactly are they proving? everyone already knows the results, and the public and the politicians don't care). Given that Arecibo wouldn't be able to detect our civilization from further than about a light year, I might want to try weather simulations.
The idea of determining the optimal encoding is pretty much what the LZW patent is about. In LZW, the code tables change as the data is encoded. There is a website statistics package that writes GIF files without using constant code tables, which can be decompressed with an LZW reader, but are generated without infringing the patent. Or at least, without infringing the patent in some people's opinion. LZW is a perfect example of why software patents should be avoided -- if it had been known to be patented from day one, GIF never would have caught on, and we would have used simpler compression methods, preferring a 10% increase in file size instead of the license fees. This, of course, is the antithesis of the supposed purpose of the patent system, which is to encourage the use of new technology through publication.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps choose a code name with the first letter indicating the version number. Clearly Manhattan should be older than Slink.
--Kevin
couldn't resist:
first post in the year 2000.
Just watched teh ceremonies from Kiribati on HNN.
32 bit dies in 2038 because a long on a 32 bit machine is...32 bits. On a 64 bit machine, you won't need to worry anytime soon (assuming the compiler defines long as 64 bit which would be expected).
There are even weird systems out there. DomainOS used signed 32 bit to count 1/4 seconds since 1/1/1980 (or something like that). They rolled over in Nov. 1997, and are still running fine.
--Kevin, in Vegas, waiting for the party to begin.
I expect to go try Vegas for a couple years after I'm done with school. My sister lives there now, and it looks pretty nice -- high speed access is cheap, rent isn't too bad, and there's always something to do. The disadvantage as I understand it is that after a few years you realize that it also attracts total losers would haven't made it anywhere else so thought they might take a stab at Vegas. That and no one is actually *from* vegas.
Since mention was made of what hte libertarians would say about this, I thought I'd give what libertarians would generally agree on in this area. Licensing serves two purposes main purposes -- to provide information to the consumer about whether they can rely on someone, which libertarians would support (but see below), and to prevent consumers from doing business with people the government doesn't approve of.
If I were ordering drugs online, I would like to see that the pharmacy is licensed by someone who I believe is qualified to evaluate a pharmacy, like a state board. I don't particularly care whether it is california's (where i live) board of health that has licensed them. I just want to know that they aren't selling rat poison as aspirin. I don't need a federal law requiring licensing for drug sales over the internet, I just need a federal law that makes fraud a crime, so that no one can say they are licensed by whoever unless they are really licensed by them. You don't need to force people to go for this kind of licensing. People won't buy anything from people who aren't licensed. A better term would be "certified". It's like being UL Listed. In this scenario, my chances of getting a bad prescription are very low.
The other purpose of licensing is similar to the charters governments used to grant. It isn't to protect the consumer, it's to make sure that some industry is in fact controlled by the government. The government wants to keep an eye on drug companies and licensing is the easiest way to do it (why track them down when you can just require them to register). This doesn't have a damn thing to do with my getting a bad prescription, but it does mean that I can't get a bottle of decent painkillers to carry for emergencies when going on off road motorcycle trips without having to worry about whether the federal government approves of what I'm doing.
This is the argument libertarians would give about why this licensing is a bad idea. In fact, we really want to avoid the licensing because we want people to be able to buy their heroin online cheaply so that they don't have to rob us for drug money, or lurk in alleyways and bring down property values.
--Kevin
which they either obtained by improper means or knew or should have known was obtained by others by improper means
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but the above quote from the letter is very likely the key to their case. Even those IP cases are now pretty much wars of attrition, where whoever can afford to keep fighting wins, Trade Secrets aren't protected unless you can show that they were obtained from the original company. If I independently discover a method of, e.g., organizing a database, another company can't force me to stop using it unless they can show that I got the idea from them. (Well, unless they patent it).
--Kevin
It is "Berkeley Software Distribution", right? I've also heard "Berkeley Standard Distribution", but that makes less sense than "Berkeley Software Design". Maybe "Berkeley Standard Design"?
I'm amazed no one has mentioned a critical step -- fire the examiner who approved the patent with as much fanfare as possible. Sure, in the best of all worlds, we could get a patent office with sane policies, but that doesn't appear to be an option right now. A good substitute is just to "encourage" examiners to actually check the patents before they approve them. Saying "you approve an idiotic patent, we fire you" would go a long way toward reforming the patent system.
--Kevin
We also pay for trash pickup.
Then again, so do people in every other country, it's just that trash pickup isn't buried where you can't see what you're paying here. You still can't really tell whether you're getting the shaft on health care, because with insurance, the stated cost of having a doctor take your blood pressure is more than the yearly cost of the health insurance, so who knows what it would cost without all the regulation.
That's almost word for word how I learned it. I think this is at least as offical as Pathalogically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.
user ftp
pass ftp
Anonymous didn't let me in either. don't know why.
For some absurd reason, a lot of people see the internet as some sort of "interactive TV". If it were something like this, then censorware might make sense, but the internet is not an entertainment device, or a communication device. The internet is a growing subset of the world. I don't know how easily I can explain this. People like to divide things up into categories. For example, you divide businesses in an area into "stores", "consumer services", "manufacturing companies", and so on. You divide the community up into "businesses", "government", "homes", and so on. It seems natural to people to include the internet as one of these categories, but it isn't.
... manditory censorware in schools and libraries e.g.) that it would quickly be "optional" in name only.
The internet isn't a category of this type. It isn't a service either. The internet is a separate community, which to some extent mirrors the physical world, and to some degree doesn't. Saying "the internet shouldn't be used as a babysitter" shows that you think the internet is a depository of information and entertainment. You say that you can't watch over your kid every second, but tell me, when you are walking through the bad part of town, are you going to let your kid out of you sight? If a preacher on a street corner is saying something you don't like, is it his responsibility to be quiet, or is it your responsibility to keep your kid at home if you want them to be sheltered?
It isn't an alternative between "use the internet as a baby sitter" and "look over the kids shoulder every second". There is another solution, which people have been using for a lot longer than the internet has been around for similar situtations. Don't let your kids use the internet. When they use the internet, watch them. You aren't going to let a 10 y.o. take the bus to another town by himself (compare, internet is babysitter), so when he needs to go somewhere, you go with him (looking over his shoulder every second).
The censorware "solution" is the equivalent of sanitizing the whole world to make it suitable for children (how young? teenagers? three year olds?). People may claim that censorware doesn't prevent people who want to read whatever from seeing it, but it is clear from what is going on (censorware companies pushing governments for
--Kevin
As a catholic, the idea probably didn't occur to you, but to a large number of people, asking religious leaders a question of morals is like asking politicians a question of economics. There is no reason to believe they have better answers than the man in the street, and from their track record, one would have to assume their answers are significantly worse than what the scientists would come up with. But, like asking the president what's good for the economy, asking the pope whether something is ethical is good PR.
What is morals anyway? If you ask the pope, it means conforming to what the church says. Is this actually the right question to ask, "does genetic research agree with catholic ethics"? Or should we ask "do the benefits of genetic research outway the risks"? I do not believe that religious leaders have anything to contribute to this second question, and to me (an atheist), the fact that they are considering consulting religious leaders suggests that they can't be bothered to way the costs and benefits themselves, and are looking for someone else to make the decision for them. This I consider irresponsible.
The decisions should be made by those who best understand the issues. The issues are not religious issues, they are cost/benefit or risk/return issues, and geneticists are those best qualified to make that call.
--Kevin
The critical difference between encoding a serial number and what we had with typewriters is this:
Given a typewritten letter, and a typewriter, an expert can determine whether the letter was typed on that typewriter. Given a typewritten letter only, the expert can determine that the font is 120cpi courier.
Given a photocopy with a serial number embedded in it, the manufacturer can determine that it's from a model number X4000, sold in Des Moines on June 17, 1999. If the user registered, or by consulting store receipts, you might be able to track this down to the person who made the copy.
It's a difference between evidence that will actually let you track down the person you want, versus evidence that will let you demonstrate that the person you found is in fact the person you want.
Given that any "crime" that this would be useful in, that is, any situation wherein someone wants to track someone down based on a piece of paper, has a very high likelihood of being an abuse of government power, or unrelated to any actual crime, is very high, and given that in a situation where a real crime has been committed (e.g. murder, as mentioned), the authorities will have other ways of tracking someone down, this is a very bad idea.
I think that may be the longest sentence I have ever written.
--Kevin
I think this is a great idea. Linux, and most open source software is built by and for computer geeks. That is, it's the kind of software that if it didn't exist, a developer would write or buy for internal use. This is a vast oversimplification, of course, but it's true to a degree. It's not that programmers only write programming applications, but that when you're considering a project, you probably aren't going to get involved in a project that you wouldn't use.
Can you see an open source "Print Shop"-like program? Sure, you can say "But we have TeX, print shop is inferior." Yes, it is, but Print Shop is usable by grandma who wants to create birthday cards for the kids, while the Gimp and LaTeX really aren't.
I don't think Cosource would actually generate low end consumer software like this, but there would be more software in that direction -- usable by people who aren't computer geeks. Some examples of what I think could come out of this:
Tools for graphics professionals. We have the Gimp (which I must admit I haven't used), but it would be great to have a good vector drawing program, good animation programs, and stuff like that. How about a rendering package that doesn't cost thousands of dollars? The cost to develop these (time-wise) may be too high for people to do it for their own use, or just for fun, but maybe there are people out there who would sponser it.
Handicapped accessibility software -- like rendering software, the cost to develop is high for the number of people who would actually use it. There's a number of foundations and charities out there who would put up money to getting free software to make it easier for e.g. the blind to use computers.
Software drivers -- maybe internal development works too, but maybe it could be done cheaper in open source. Or perhaps the company doesn't want to develop drivers for X high-end sound card, but there are people out there who have the card, and want to use it, but don't have the skills to write a driver.
Niche apps -- companies that make VR glasses can't sell many of them if there isn't software to use them. On the other hand, an app isn't likely tied to a single system, so it might make sense for makers of VR equipment to support a project to develop some sort of VR chat software. There are probably other similar cases, but VR is the one that came to mind.
I'm a big believer in the power of the free market. Ronald Coase got a nobel prize for demonstrating that one of the limiters on the free market is the cost of making transactions. Cosource provides a system for allowing some of these transactions, so is a definite plus.
--Kevin
I don't think genetic engineering is necessary in this area. All we need to do is legalize heroin and repeal helmet laws, and let the stupid kill themselves off.
As an aside, helmet laws have cut down the already short supply of organs for transplants. Nothing like a healthy young man with with a crushed skull for organ harvesting.
Yes, this is sarcasm, but this is also exactly how I decide who to vote for.
--Kevin
The cryptography community usually believes they are a couple years behind the NSA, given that the NSA reads all their papers, but doesn't publish its own work.
I had been skeptical of Echelon being able to do word recognition on phone conversations, but I expect that the NSA is ahead of private industry in this area too, so Echolon looks plausible.
--Kevin
I'm guessing the movement would actually be easier than on land, but our current technology has a major limitation -- it weighs 7 kg. That's as much as a real big house cat, but it's volume looks to be way to little to support that.
I can't wait -- new from JPL -- robotic martian sidewinders that can't get stuck up against a rock.
I don't know the whole story, but why are we all talking about it in Nov 1999? Is it because he just recently had his FOIA request fulfilled? A lot of good being able to check up on your government does when it takes six years for them to answer. In 1933, Hitler was a punk in Munich. In 1939 (six years later), he was invading Poland.
I've only used VC++ for a little while, but I don't think it's the kind of program you could use intuitively. By that I mean, when I'm doing perl in gvim, I can enter stuff as fast as i can type. In VC++, I can't do that. I'll go to where I need something, type two lines, go to a menu, do something else, and so on. It's not that the VC++ interface makes it impossible to enter code without moving your hands off the keyboard, but it's that when you're using VC++, you aren't really entering code most of the time. You're inheriting from some other class and copying and pasting some code, or linking a dialog box to a class, or stuff like that, which is not done with a keyboard. Programming in C or Perl in a unix environment is pretty much a two dimensional process -- you have an array of files (all your code and headers or modules) and you have an array of characters within the files. Programming in VC++ seems to be different, like you're working on a single 3 dimensional object, going inside to ad something, coming outside to run a wire around, glueing another part on here. It's not that the interface is different (it is, but that's beside the point), it's that the tasks you're performing are totally different.
I also find that I work on web pages in a different way depending on whether I'm using gvim (windows) or BBEdit (macintosh) as the editor.
When I need to type in ALL CAPS, I just hold down the left shift button. For some reason, I hit all modifier keys with my left hand, and when I need an A, Q or Z, I use my left ring finger and pinky. Yeah, it's not what they taught you in school, but I do about 60 wpm like that.
To me, nerd is more pejorative than geek is. I think of a geek as anyone who gets their satisfaction out of a non-social activity. We have computer geeks, who get their satisfaction out of computers, and don't really care when they last talked to someone face to face. We have drama geeks, music geeks, and so on. Anyone who cares more about what they are doing than about what other people think of them. This (I think) also fits the original meaning of geek (as in side show geek) more closely than than the "ability" definition.
A nerd, to me, is a bookworm, who gets his validation in whether he conforms to the artificial reward system setup by the schools, and doesn't really care about anything beyond that. This definition doesn't really work for people out of school, but you can recognize people who would have fit this definition when they were in school, and call them nerds too.
Okay, as an experiment as to "what life will be like in the digital future", it's bunk. As a status report to how far along we are toward a totally wired life, it's interesting. It also gives us a good idea of where we can automate, and where we will still be going outside (evil light, bright orb, hurts my eyes, aah!). Obviously, shopping for sandwiches on the web doesn't make sense. You aren't looking for the best sandwich on the planet, you're looking for a decent sandwich that you can be eating within a half hour. In general, I'd say that anything that everyone buys, and are highly replaceable (as in, I don't care exactly what I get, any one of a number of things that fulfills these requirements) don't make sense to buy or sell online. Look at where the web boomed first -- books, music and videos. Why? Because they are special interest items. Not books in general, of course, but any given book isn't of interest to 99% of the population. On the other hand, I don't really care whether I use Suave, Tresemmé, or whatever other shampoo. This is something I should continue buying at the local store. Human contact is an area where we don't really know yet. On the one hand, there are obvious advantages to being in the same physical room as someone, but there's also the issue that I may have a lot more to talk about with someone half way around the world than with my neighbor.
Is there actually anyone out there doing weather simulations? I run seti@home because I like giving my computer something to do, and crypto projects seem like a total waste of time (what exactly are they proving? everyone already knows the results, and the public and the politicians don't care). Given that Arecibo wouldn't be able to detect our civilization from further than about a light year, I might want to try weather simulations.
The idea of determining the optimal encoding is pretty much what the LZW patent is about. In LZW, the code tables change as the data is encoded. There is a website statistics package that writes GIF files without using constant code tables, which can be decompressed with an LZW reader, but are generated without infringing the patent. Or at least, without infringing the patent in some people's opinion. LZW is a perfect example of why software patents should be avoided -- if it had been known to be patented from day one, GIF never would have caught on, and we would have used simpler compression methods, preferring a 10% increase in file size instead of the license fees. This, of course, is the antithesis of the supposed purpose of the patent system, which is to encourage the use of new technology through publication.