There should be a public fund that goes to worthy companies. And to make sure that we give the money to the right people, we'll put a panel of experts together to judge the merits of these startups.
Like Solyndra? Not trolling - really - but if I assimilated one concept from shows like Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, is that it's almost impossible to predict winners and losers for many (most?) ideas, so ensuring money goes to the "right people" is problematic regardless of the expertise of the people evaluating the ideas.
In addition, especially from watching Connections, it's seems difficult to know what idea, especially small, seemingly insignificant ones, may inspire or lay the foundation for other, perhaps larger and/or more important, ideas.
While quick charging technology installed at strategic points along a planned route might be a good fit for inner city buses, it's not going to be of much use to electric vehicles that stop infrequently.
Ya, that sort of thing hasn't really worked out for petrol-type vehicles at all. If only there were places I could buy gasoline (or electricity) along the way... Oh well, one can dream.
If I give you a bag of marbles every day and you do not discard them, then you are still collecting them. It doesn't matter whether you took them from me or whether I give them to you willingly.
Well... I'm collecting bags that happen to contain marbles. You collected the marbles and placed them into the bags. Unfortunately, a lot of things in the legal sense can depend on semantics.
In the case of James Clapper, the senator questioning him was Ron Wyden (D - Oregon) who is currently on the Select Committee on Intelligence and (I imagine) already very well knows all about PRISM and such. According to this Huffington Post article (and probably others), Clapper was given the list of Sen. Wyden's questions prior to the meeting so Clapper would have a chance to give a "straight answer" - about a classified program in a public meeting - to a question Wyden already knew the answer. Clapper said he gave the most truthful untruthful answer he could given the situation. Wyden should be bitch slapped for asking the question in the first place. I understand they're trying to cover their asses, but what part of "classified" don't elected officials understand.
Given the ruthless efficiency with which the PRISM system collected communications, I'd compare it more closely to the former East German (DDR) Stasi
Technically, if you believe the NSA has no direct access, the ISPs and Telcos actually collected the information and sent the NSA copies. [ So when James Clapper, was asked, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" and he responded, "No" he wasn't technically lying to Congress... ]
But they have a simple solution: they can just walk away from their unpaid internship without losing anything.
Often, an internship is associated with college credit for which the student has paid tuition. Quitting an internship would be like dropping a class and, after some point in the semester, there's no refund for that tuition.
That would be funny. A lab technician standing next to you instead of a microscope(scanning electron... whatever they use) and asking you what you see and you trying to describe it to them in words, or drawing a little picture, lol. Not trying to be mean, just a funny image to me.
As the owner/operator of a complex network of around 100 billion neurons, along with support infrastructure, I'm not entirely sympathetic to your desire to continue emitting lead. Nothing personal.
I tried to turn myself in at the local police station. I told the officer there that I had borrowed a book from someone else. I had not paid for it. My friend has also read it. So, that's three people, in three different households, that have all read this book for the price of one!
The officer threatened to give me a fine for wasting his time, then sent me home.
You joke, but a long (long) time ago when I was in college, I worked at a restaurant and a guy came in, sat down at a booth and asked us to call the Police because he wanted to turn himself in. We called the Police and got him a free soda while he waited quietly. Two officers showed up and approached his booth, from two different angles, with their hands on their weapons. They talked with him a bit then one officer went out to the squad car to (presumably) pull some info off the computer. After a short time, the officers said he was wanted for a minor traffic offense in a neighboring state, but nothing they could/would arrest him for. They advised us to call them back if he got unruly and left. The guy then ordered lunch and went quietly on his way...
Is it wrong for me to hope you die of the most unimaginably awful cancer, that will cause you to ooze horrible puss-like fluids that reek so awfully you're family won't be able to bear to be around you, and they will pray to God each and every night that you finally die... but you don't, and just linger in that state for years.
Neither do most of - anymore. At one time Dennis Miller was a very liberal comic who turned very conservative after 9/11. He started off on Saturday Night Live and ended up on Fox News. What a waste.
I find your sig and comment to be the very embodiment of the inherent duality of man. Or to put it another way, it's all fun and games till cob666's got some product to move.
Or, to diverge a bit, if it were Apple: It's all fun and games until someone adds an "i".
This thing weighs only a little more than my work laptop...
Sure, but your laptop probably also has an Ethernet port, external monitor port, internal optical drive... (and not Windows 8)...you know, things that help make it useful all around. Perhaps these things are not important to everyone, though I don't use wireless, so an Ethernet port is pretty useful for me.
Just as Hollywood injected scenes of drunken programming into “The Social Network”, Hollywood can’t seem to believe that software is made with logic, precision and concentration.
Duh. This is the same Hollywood that gave us the (horrible) scene in The Net where Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) does a "whois" query that results in a picture of a guy's driver's license. Sure, I get it. Day-to-day CS work is not very exciting or photogenic, but it (often) involves real work.
The simplest and most obvious answer: it's easier and faster to just not bother and start from scratch.
In addition, X was originally written when networks and client systems were slow(er). Many of original design decisions are no longer appropriate with respect to the X server code complexity and maintenance requirements. A long (long) time ago, I wrote a program (called CXC - Concurrent X Control) to manage the low-level X protocol (think everything in the X11 Volume 0 book) and support transparent X traffic interception, blocking, redirection and insertion for a CBT application (called CAST) and, if I remember correctly, I remember wanting to off myself (or at least start drinking heavily) after trying to make sense of it all. Just my $.02.
If you own a window, you hereby agree to receiving my brick through it. Of course, this wonderful service is voluntary, so if you do not want to receive my brick through your window, simply remove any windows from your property.
I'd prefer if your defenestration service was available on an opt-in rather than opt-out basis...
... some of us actually HAVE been running Linux for 20 years...
Or more to the point, Linux, BSD, SunOS / Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, UNICOS, etc... [ ya, I've used / administered them *all* - except AIX and A/UX - because I'm old:-) ]... I actually didn't have a Windows PC at work until 1998. I had a desktop system running BSDi in the early 1990s, disk-less SunOS workstations before that, a Xerox 1108 workstation before that and ASCII terminals on BSD systems before that. One of my favorite systems was an SGI workstation.
The benefit of meeting online is that you're pretty much forced to talk, and talk, and talk. It's not like you can take them to a movie and then then make out in the back of the car - instead you'll have to show them that you're a likeable person they would like to spend more time with. On the other hand, the guy you ran into in the coffee-shop who ask you out to see a movie may be the biggest creep in modern history
Ya. Now if only there were a way to meet and talk and talk and talk with a person face-to-face, in-real-life, instead of *having* to go to a movie and then make out in the car...
TL:DR; Online dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other before meeting.
IRL dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other *during* the meeting.
As for me, I met my wife in 1985 (when I was 22 and she 41) when I helped her to set up her new home (after she separated from her second husband). After a few days, she offered to pay me for all my work and I suggested she take me out to dinner instead. We were together for 20.5 years before she died in 2006 of a brain tumor - just seven weeks after diagnosis. (I haven't dated anyone since.) Remember Sue...
Agreed, a 'bot' might be nothing special in terms of coding, if you know how, but it *is* established terminology.
Sure, but given the description in TFA, I'm not sure it really applies. Scanning a local database for data *somehow* inserted from remote sources isn't anything bot-like... I think the interviewees were just trying to up the cool factor. My systems generate reports all the time - yawn. Sometimes my scripts even page/email me - automatically! Wow, I must be some sort of guru!:-)
The "robot" is effectively an algorithm that crawls a database of performance stats collected from equipment across the NextG mobile network.
So, it searches *a* database of stats collected from remote equipment. How that information is collected isn't mentioned, but "syslog" would be one way. Even if it was collected directly from remote equipment, that could be done by a simple Perl script and a few modules. Certainly nothing even remotely (no pun intended) special about any of that. I did stuff like that before the "Web" was even invented (yes, I'm old). Still, ultimately, it's just a program. Thanks for the link anyway...
Engineers used an internally-developed software 'robot' to crawl log files from the network.
Seriously? I know it's actually stated that way in TFA, but are people that stupid that they can't simply say "program"? In all likelihood, it's probably a 10-line Perl script. (Said as Perl fan, myself.)
If you've ever worked on a team you can probably recall a time when, as a group, you produced work that was not as good as any one of you could have done on your own. Sarah Mei had this sort of sub-par teamwork experience,...
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There should be a public fund that goes to worthy companies. And to make sure that we give the money to the right people, we'll put a panel of experts together to judge the merits of these startups.
Like Solyndra? Not trolling - really - but if I assimilated one concept from shows like Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, is that it's almost impossible to predict winners and losers for many (most?) ideas, so ensuring money goes to the "right people" is problematic regardless of the expertise of the people evaluating the ideas.
In addition, especially from watching Connections, it's seems difficult to know what idea, especially small, seemingly insignificant ones, may inspire or lay the foundation for other, perhaps larger and/or more important, ideas.
While quick charging technology installed at strategic points along a planned route might be a good fit for inner city buses, it's not going to be of much use to electric vehicles that stop infrequently.
Ya, that sort of thing hasn't really worked out for petrol-type vehicles at all. If only there were places I could buy gasoline (or electricity) along the way... Oh well, one can dream.
If I give you a bag of marbles every day and you do not discard them, then you are still collecting them. It doesn't matter whether you took them from me or whether I give them to you willingly.
Well... I'm collecting bags that happen to contain marbles. You collected the marbles and placed them into the bags. Unfortunately, a lot of things in the legal sense can depend on semantics.
In the case of James Clapper, the senator questioning him was Ron Wyden (D - Oregon) who is currently on the Select Committee on Intelligence and (I imagine) already very well knows all about PRISM and such. According to this Huffington Post article (and probably others), Clapper was given the list of Sen. Wyden's questions prior to the meeting so Clapper would have a chance to give a "straight answer" - about a classified program in a public meeting - to a question Wyden already knew the answer. Clapper said he gave the most truthful untruthful answer he could given the situation. Wyden should be bitch slapped for asking the question in the first place. I understand they're trying to cover their asses, but what part of "classified" don't elected officials understand.
Given the ruthless efficiency with which the PRISM system collected communications, I'd compare it more closely to the former East German (DDR) Stasi
Technically, if you believe the NSA has no direct access, the ISPs and Telcos actually collected the information and sent the NSA copies. [ So when James Clapper, was asked, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" and he responded, "No" he wasn't technically lying to Congress... ]
But they have a simple solution: they can just walk away from their unpaid internship without losing anything.
Often, an internship is associated with college credit for which the student has paid tuition. Quitting an internship would be like dropping a class and, after some point in the semester, there's no refund for that tuition.
That would be funny. A lab technician standing next to you instead of a microscope(scanning electron... whatever they use) and asking you what you see and you trying to describe it to them in words, or drawing a little picture, lol. Not trying to be mean, just a funny image to me.
Almost... From The Far Side: It's a Mammoth
As the owner/operator of a complex network of around 100 billion neurons, along with support infrastructure, I'm not entirely sympathetic to your desire to continue emitting lead. Nothing personal.
You're on /. so it can't be *that* complex :-)
I tried to turn myself in at the local police station. I told the officer there that I had borrowed a book from someone else. I had not paid for it. My friend has also read it. So, that's three people, in three different households, that have all read this book for the price of one!
The officer threatened to give me a fine for wasting his time, then sent me home.
You joke, but a long (long) time ago when I was in college, I worked at a restaurant and a guy came in, sat down at a booth and asked us to call the Police because he wanted to turn himself in. We called the Police and got him a free soda while he waited quietly. Two officers showed up and approached his booth, from two different angles, with their hands on their weapons. They talked with him a bit then one officer went out to the squad car to (presumably) pull some info off the computer. After a short time, the officers said he was wanted for a minor traffic offense in a neighboring state, but nothing they could/would arrest him for. They advised us to call them back if he got unruly and left. The guy then ordered lunch and went quietly on his way...
Prison should be reserved for people who pose a serious threat to society. Is copying a DVD and selling it a serious threat?
That depends entirely on the DVD. Making more copies of movies like Glitter and Gigli should result in serious mandatory jail time.
[ So /. proliferation of what movies would you consider a jail-able offense? ]
Bricking them or recovering them was a request of many businesses and officers of the law. Dry up the demand and you will slow down the theft.
But then, you wouldn't be forced to buy new phones...
Is it wrong for me to hope you die of the most unimaginably awful cancer, that will cause you to ooze horrible puss-like fluids that reek so awfully you're family won't be able to bear to be around you, and they will pray to God each and every night that you finally die... but you don't, and just linger in that state for years.
Is that wrong?
Will there be a podcast of all that?
I have no idea who that is.
Neither do most of - anymore. At one time Dennis Miller was a very liberal comic who turned very conservative after 9/11. He started off on Saturday Night Live and ended up on Fox News. What a waste.
I find your sig and comment to be the very embodiment of the inherent duality of man. Or to put it another way, it's all fun and games till cob666's got some product to move.
Or, to diverge a bit, if it were Apple: It's all fun and games until someone adds an "i".
This thing weighs only a little more than my work laptop ...
Sure, but your laptop probably also has an Ethernet port, external monitor port, internal optical drive... (and not Windows 8) ...you know, things that help make it useful all around. Perhaps these things are not important to everyone, though I don't use wireless, so an Ethernet port is pretty useful for me.
Just as Hollywood injected scenes of drunken programming into “The Social Network”, Hollywood can’t seem to believe that software is made with logic, precision and concentration.
Duh. This is the same Hollywood that gave us the (horrible) scene in The Net where Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) does a "whois" query that results in a picture of a guy's driver's license. Sure, I get it. Day-to-day CS work is not very exciting or photogenic, but it (often) involves real work.
Why not fix X?
The simplest and most obvious answer: it's easier and faster to just not bother and start from scratch.
In addition, X was originally written when networks and client systems were slow(er). Many of original design decisions are no longer appropriate with respect to the X server code complexity and maintenance requirements. A long (long) time ago, I wrote a program (called CXC - Concurrent X Control) to manage the low-level X protocol (think everything in the X11 Volume 0 book) and support transparent X traffic interception, blocking, redirection and insertion for a CBT application (called CAST) and, if I remember correctly, I remember wanting to off myself (or at least start drinking heavily) after trying to make sense of it all. Just my $.02.
If you own a window, you hereby agree to receiving my brick through it. Of course, this wonderful service is voluntary, so if you do not want to receive my brick through your window, simply remove any windows from your property.
I'd prefer if your defenestration service was available on an opt-in rather than opt-out basis...
Holy crap! Even more reason to ensure my car doors are locked, lest it end up in China. :-) ]
[ and a car analogy to boot
... some of us actually HAVE been running Linux for 20 years ...
Or more to the point, Linux, BSD, SunOS / Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, UNICOS, etc... [ ya, I've used / administered them *all* - except AIX and A/UX - because I'm old :-) ]... I actually didn't have a Windows PC at work until 1998. I had a desktop system running BSDi in the early 1990s, disk-less SunOS workstations before that, a Xerox 1108 workstation before that and ASCII terminals on BSD systems before that. One of my favorite systems was an SGI workstation.
The benefit of meeting online is that you're pretty much forced to talk, and talk, and talk. It's not like you can take them to a movie and then then make out in the back of the car - instead you'll have to show them that you're a likeable person they would like to spend more time with. On the other hand, the guy you ran into in the coffee-shop who ask you out to see a movie may be the biggest creep in modern history
Ya. Now if only there were a way to meet and talk and talk and talk with a person face-to-face, in-real-life, instead of *having* to go to a movie and then make out in the car...
TL:DR; Online dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other before meeting.
IRL dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other *during* the meeting.
As for me, I met my wife in 1985 (when I was 22 and she 41) when I helped her to set up her new home (after she separated from her second husband). After a few days, she offered to pay me for all my work and I suggested she take me out to dinner instead. We were together for 20.5 years before she died in 2006 of a brain tumor - just seven weeks after diagnosis. (I haven't dated anyone since.) Remember Sue...
YMMV
Agreed, a 'bot' might be nothing special in terms of coding, if you know how, but it *is* established terminology.
Sure, but given the description in TFA, I'm not sure it really applies. Scanning a local database for data *somehow* inserted from remote sources isn't anything bot-like... I think the interviewees were just trying to up the cool factor. My systems generate reports all the time - yawn. Sometimes my scripts even page/email me - automatically! Wow, I must be some sort of guru! :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_robot
Sure, but from TFA:
The "robot" is effectively an algorithm that crawls a database of performance stats collected from equipment across the NextG mobile network.
So, it searches *a* database of stats collected from remote equipment. How that information is collected isn't mentioned, but "syslog" would be one way. Even if it was collected directly from remote equipment, that could be done by a simple Perl script and a few modules. Certainly nothing even remotely (no pun intended) special about any of that. I did stuff like that before the "Web" was even invented (yes, I'm old). Still, ultimately, it's just a program. Thanks for the link anyway...
Engineers used an internally-developed software 'robot' to crawl log files from the network.
Seriously? I know it's actually stated that way in TFA, but are people that stupid that they can't simply say "program"? In all likelihood, it's probably a 10-line Perl script. (Said as Perl fan, myself.)
If you've ever worked on a team you can probably recall a time when, as a group, you produced work that was not as good as any one of you could have done on your own. Sarah Mei had this sort of sub-par teamwork experience, ...
Wow, Sarah Mei has worked with Congress?