The web makes is easier to find information fast, and with no tie to physical medium, yes, but when it comes to the veracity of the information, it can be difficult to make a case for whether or not it is accurate.
Anybody can type anything and have it show up on the web. Most of the time, it is even well-meaning information, eg, with the intent of being accurate. The issue is that people sometimes make mistakes. When you're writing about who your favorite Pokemon character is, mistaking the stats of Pikachu for Megamonkey isn't that bad. When you're posting information about a medical procedure or tolerances on a shear pin, though, being wrong can literally be the difference between life and death. The advantage encyclopedias have over web content is that everything much pass peer review and fact checkers.
I predict that while the 'paper encyclopedia' business may suffer in the future, the businesses that generate the content may begin to restore revenue by offering information that is in digitally signed chunks of information that an end user can be sure of or by offering fact checking services for people who can sacrifice context for finding out if a specific fact is true. Maybe a publically available article about gunpowder will give me all the steps needed to safely make it, but I might then pay $.5 to ask an intelligent software agent at Brittanica.com to read the URL of that public article and tell me if it's accurate or not.
I love encyclopedias, and I think there will be a market for them well into the future (people still buy dictionaries, don't they?), but part of capitalism is keeping your business relevant, and it looks like the encyclopedia companies have some challenges ahead of them.
I work in the software industry, and the recent death of a co-worker has me thinking about what I do with my time. Could I support my family with an at-home job? Could I work somewhere that lets me spend more time with my kids?
Sure, I make pretty good scratch, but what fun is the money if you never get a chance to spend it?
These questions and more are definately floating around our office.
Why was this modded offtopic? I'm guessing the moderator didn't recognize what he was talking about. I was actually looking to see if there was a Fithp post before I posted.
Background, in the Niven book 'Footfall', the first indications they see of the incoming alien invasion is weird, spoke-like distortions in the rings of Saturn.
A robot needs to be more then a computer on wheels. The essence of what makes a robot neat is the idea that it can interact with its surroundings.
For this to be really fantastic, it needs an arm, and by arm I mean something better than a piece of plastic with a cupholder on the end of it.
For something really interesting, offer to put a mounting point on the front for an arm to attach to and an industry standard servo controller. Total investment, $100, and now your users can build their own arm. This is assuming that the company doesn't have the expertise to make the arms themselves.
The RSA is starved for cash, this is probably a fantasy until money appears. Based on their history, I would guess that this is a balloon they are floating to try and get parties with deeper pockets (eg, NASA, maybe the ESA) to offer the development funding.
Of interest, NASA had a similar idea in the 1960s with their 'Big Gemini' program and the 'Apollo Rescue CSM' program. It's very feasible, and the Soyuz is a solid design.
Sadly, interest in things being open source is transitioning (my cynical colleagues might say it already has) from being about controlling quality and maintaining code that a corporation might 'sunset' to being more about religion.
Many of todays open source advocates seem to have lost touch with the reasons they originally became attached to the concept. This can only hurt the future success of these projects as more and more people associate this with zealotry instead of technical excellence.
When I see the figure that 90% is illegal, I have to wonder, is that 90% as individual items are counted? Or 90% by file volume?
When I run searches on P2P networks, there are a lot of porn videos advertising websites that are available, presumably legally. If there are 100 porn advertising videos that take up the space of one copy of Lord of the Rings, would the people that generated this statistic say that the content is 50% legal and 50% illegal? Or would they say that roughly 1% (1 video out of a total of 101) is illegal?
I remember reading about Nestle bringing baby formula to 3rd world countries. "Use this instead of your own breast milk. The succesful and healthy parents in the United States do, so it must be better."
The problems started to show up immediately. First, there was a limited supply, so the parents would try to stretch the formula. Second, there isn't usually a source of purified water in the middle of poverty stricken 3rd world, so they would use water that often had bacteria. 3rd, after using the introductory supply up, they were basically forced to keep using it going forward because the mothers had lost the ability to generate milk.
Nestle made a great profit because there was a high demand, funded through help funds, and also because they generated a captive audience.
I wonder if there will be equivalents here where Microsoft essentially 'addicts' them to using their software while leaving any content expiration intact so they'll be obligated to stick to acquiring new MS things going forward.
The above post should be Humorous, not Interesting. The Vostok was built back in the 1960s, and the V2 was fueled by LOX and Alcohol, not liquid hydrogen as is implied....but Bob is still definately your uncle.
Designing network security is easy, I already learned about this in movies and books by Gibson. First, you need to cyberjack a killer ICE. If you use a BLACK ICE, you can actually kill the jackers that are cracking into your mainframe by overloading their neural interfaces.
Something else you might do is write defensive viruses that sit on your router and can be deployed against attackers.
Another thing that has good success is having circuit breakers hooked to your network interface that can channel all the power from your corporate reactor straight into the network. This will cause any attackers machine to burst into flame.
Artificial intelligence bots can be a cheap way to get good security, but keep in mind that they can go rogue, so also keep a stable of CircuitRunners, basically AI Bounty Hunters that can track down your security AIs and terminate them if they go rogue. Symantec makes good CircuitRunners, I hear.
Oh, be sure to hire a network administrator that 'knows linux'. It's probably best to hire someone young who has the dexterity to use the 3d flythrough administration interface.
Good luck, and be secure in the knowledge that you can now jack into your iron in safety!
Absolutely! I've been thinking of that for a while too. I'd buy one if it did both AM and FM and could integrate with my car audio system as easilly as a Tivo or ReplayTV integrates with my home entertainment system.
I looked, and while my home AP wasn't listed, an unsecured but unconnected (to a network) one at my work was.
Of interest, none of my corporate APs were listed, even though they are near the disconnected, unsecured WAP. This company uses MAC filtering, I wonder if that means it doesn't show up for Netstumbler? If so, there may have been many, many more APs in their flight path.
Re:You already have several robots in your home
on
The Robots are Coming
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Oh sweet jesus, you are stupid.
I know I'm gonna end up burning precious, precious karma for this post, but good lord. I weep for a human race that includes your DNA.
In a Tom Clancy book (Debt of Honor, I think), a computer programmer takes advantage of a weakness in the stock market to induce a crash. After a week of the market shut down, they recover by resetting the prices to where they were the day before the glitch and instructing stock brokers on steps to avoid re-creating the crash.
It doesn't apply to this situation, but the specifics of how they do it is interesting for anyone who might want to check out the book.
I for one am outraged about (subject matter)! This is just another instance of (the government/corporation name) sticking it to those of us who still care about (music/freedom/software)!
In conclusion, stop (subject matter) now!
Regards, Chairboy
PS, does (subject matter) (run on linux/support OGG Vorbis)? Because if it doesn't, I'm (not buying it/further upset)!
If you object to laws that prohibit certain types of objectionable content AND you object to programs that give parents controls, then YOU'RE the hypocrite. You can't have both.
Symantec doesn't say no to guns at all. The article is about the Parental Controls feature. If a parent wants to stop their kids from visiting gun sites, they click that option.
The feature is just about giving control to parents. If you object to laws prohibiting controversial content on the internet AND you complain when a company gives parents a tool to manage this themselves, you're a hypocrite.
I suspect it's less of an issue of ethics disapearing then it is that companies are becoming more transparent.
The immediacy of todays news, people with personal weblogs, and web sites that can stir up interest in a little news item probably means that companies are just being exposed more.
I'm not suggesting that corporations are filled with crouched over profit dwarves, physically drooling over the prospect of sucking some sap dry, it's just that the little decisions that 'sounded good at the time' are being scrutinized more closely.
Slashdot Mirror
The web makes is easier to find information fast, and with no tie to physical medium, yes, but when it comes to the veracity of the information, it can be difficult to make a case for whether or not it is accurate.
Anybody can type anything and have it show up on the web. Most of the time, it is even well-meaning information, eg, with the intent of being accurate. The issue is that people sometimes make mistakes. When you're writing about who your favorite Pokemon character is, mistaking the stats of Pikachu for Megamonkey isn't that bad. When you're posting information about a medical procedure or tolerances on a shear pin, though, being wrong can literally be the difference between life and death. The advantage encyclopedias have over web content is that everything much pass peer review and fact checkers.
I predict that while the 'paper encyclopedia' business may suffer in the future, the businesses that generate the content may begin to restore revenue by offering information that is in digitally signed chunks of information that an end user can be sure of or by offering fact checking services for people who can sacrifice context for finding out if a specific fact is true. Maybe a publically available article about gunpowder will give me all the steps needed to safely make it, but I might then pay $.5 to ask an intelligent software agent at Brittanica.com to read the URL of that public article and tell me if it's accurate or not.
I love encyclopedias, and I think there will be a market for them well into the future (people still buy dictionaries, don't they?), but part of capitalism is keeping your business relevant, and it looks like the encyclopedia companies have some challenges ahead of them.
I work in the software industry, and the recent death of a co-worker has me thinking about what I do with my time. Could I support my family with an at-home job? Could I work somewhere that lets me spend more time with my kids?
Sure, I make pretty good scratch, but what fun is the money if you never get a chance to spend it?
These questions and more are definately floating around our office.
Why was this modded offtopic? I'm guessing the moderator didn't recognize what he was talking about. I was actually looking to see if there was a Fithp post before I posted.
Background, in the Niven book 'Footfall', the first indications they see of the incoming alien invasion is weird, spoke-like distortions in the rings of Saturn.
A robot needs to be more then a computer on wheels. The essence of what makes a robot neat is the idea that it can interact with its surroundings.
For this to be really fantastic, it needs an arm, and by arm I mean something better than a piece of plastic with a cupholder on the end of it.
For something really interesting, offer to put a mounting point on the front for an arm to attach to and an industry standard servo controller. Total investment, $100, and now your users can build their own arm. This is assuming that the company doesn't have the expertise to make the arms themselves.
> So-called sophisticated coding techniques only lead to unreadable code..
That IS the point, I'm sure you realize.
Of interest, NASA had a similar idea in the 1960s with their 'Big Gemini' program and the 'Apollo Rescue CSM' program. It's very feasible, and the Soyuz is a solid design.
Sadly, interest in things being open source is transitioning (my cynical colleagues might say it already has) from being about controlling quality and maintaining code that a corporation might 'sunset' to being more about religion.
Many of todays open source advocates seem to have lost touch with the reasons they originally became attached to the concept. This can only hurt the future success of these projects as more and more people associate this with zealotry instead of technical excellence.
When I see the figure that 90% is illegal, I have to wonder, is that 90% as individual items are counted? Or 90% by file volume?
When I run searches on P2P networks, there are a lot of porn videos advertising websites that are available, presumably legally. If there are 100 porn advertising videos that take up the space of one copy of Lord of the Rings, would the people that generated this statistic say that the content is 50% legal and 50% illegal? Or would they say that roughly 1% (1 video out of a total of 101) is illegal?
I remember reading about Nestle bringing baby formula to 3rd world countries. "Use this instead of your own breast milk. The succesful and healthy parents in the United States do, so it must be better."
The problems started to show up immediately. First, there was a limited supply, so the parents would try to stretch the formula. Second, there isn't usually a source of purified water in the middle of poverty stricken 3rd world, so they would use water that often had bacteria. 3rd, after using the introductory supply up, they were basically forced to keep using it going forward because the mothers had lost the ability to generate milk.
Nestle made a great profit because there was a high demand, funded through help funds, and also because they generated a captive audience.
I wonder if there will be equivalents here where Microsoft essentially 'addicts' them to using their software while leaving any content expiration intact so they'll be obligated to stick to acquiring new MS things going forward.
The above post should be Humorous, not Interesting. The Vostok was built back in the 1960s, and the V2 was fueled by LOX and Alcohol, not liquid hydrogen as is implied. ...but Bob is still definately your uncle.
Is this article technical or is it political? It sounds as if it might be better suited for the opinion pages.
Designing network security is easy, I already learned about this in movies and books by Gibson. First, you need to cyberjack a killer ICE. If you use a BLACK ICE, you can actually kill the jackers that are cracking into your mainframe by overloading their neural interfaces.
Something else you might do is write defensive viruses that sit on your router and can be deployed against attackers.
Another thing that has good success is having circuit breakers hooked to your network interface that can channel all the power from your corporate reactor straight into the network. This will cause any attackers machine to burst into flame.
Artificial intelligence bots can be a cheap way to get good security, but keep in mind that they can go rogue, so also keep a stable of CircuitRunners, basically AI Bounty Hunters that can track down your security AIs and terminate them if they go rogue. Symantec makes good CircuitRunners, I hear.
Oh, be sure to hire a network administrator that 'knows linux'. It's probably best to hire someone young who has the dexterity to use the 3d flythrough administration interface.
Good luck, and be secure in the knowledge that you can now jack into your iron in safety!
Excellent idea, and it looks like there's a company that's almost ready to offer something similar!
http://www.gotuit.com/audio/
Absolutely! I've been thinking of that for a while too. I'd buy one if it did both AM and FM and could integrate with my car audio system as easilly as a Tivo or ReplayTV integrates with my home entertainment system.
Remarkably bad math. Escape velocity is closer to Mach 25.
Oh, and flying upside down doesn't have a magical affect on whether or not you escape or not.
I looked, and while my home AP wasn't listed, an unsecured but unconnected (to a network) one at my work was.
Of interest, none of my corporate APs were listed, even though they are near the disconnected, unsecured WAP. This company uses MAC filtering, I wonder if that means it doesn't show up for Netstumbler? If so, there may have been many, many more APs in their flight path.
Oh sweet jesus, you are stupid.
I know I'm gonna end up burning precious, precious karma for this post, but good lord. I weep for a human race that includes your DNA.
In a Tom Clancy book (Debt of Honor, I think), a computer programmer takes advantage of a weakness in the stock market to induce a crash. After a week of the market shut down, they recover by resetting the prices to where they were the day before the glitch and instructing stock brokers on steps to avoid re-creating the crash.
It doesn't apply to this situation, but the specifics of how they do it is interesting for anyone who might want to check out the book.
Wow, I guess you didn't realize that a conference like this usually has multiple conference rooms going simultaneously with overlapping talks.
Me: 1 point
Anonymous Coward: Zero
Dear slashdot,
I for one am outraged about (subject matter)! This is just another instance of (the government/corporation name) sticking it to those of us who still care about (music/freedom/software)!
In conclusion, stop (subject matter) now!
Regards,
Chairboy
PS, does (subject matter) (run on linux/support OGG Vorbis)? Because if it doesn't, I'm (not buying it/further upset)!
I suppose that if they were stacking bricks, then your extrapolation might mean something.
Supposedly they have a better idea of the pace of their development then you do.
"I'm no statistics expert" indeed.
That's fine, then just use UDP.
Problem solved.
If you object to laws that prohibit certain types of objectionable content AND you object to programs that give parents controls, then YOU'RE the hypocrite. You can't have both.
Symantec doesn't say no to guns at all. The article is about the Parental Controls feature. If a parent wants to stop their kids from visiting gun sites, they click that option.
The feature is just about giving control to parents. If you object to laws prohibiting controversial content on the internet AND you complain when a company gives parents a tool to manage this themselves, you're a hypocrite.
I suspect it's less of an issue of ethics disapearing then it is that companies are becoming more transparent.
The immediacy of todays news, people with personal weblogs, and web sites that can stir up interest in a little news item probably means that companies are just being exposed more.
I'm not suggesting that corporations are filled with crouched over profit dwarves, physically drooling over the prospect of sucking some sap dry, it's just that the little decisions that 'sounded good at the time' are being scrutinized more closely.