"Enginner": n. one who drinks gin and attempts to solve problems with gin and the mathematics of gin drinking. Ex. The sot that lay in the gutter claimed to be an enginner as a passerby spat on him.
"Enginnering": trans. v. to lay out, throw up, or manage as a gin drinker (see 'enginnerate').
The publishers thought for years that it was too risky to let authors put
books online but they are gradually learning that this isn't so. Putting a
book online often increases its sales; more people read it and those who
find it useful often go buy a copy.
Funny how that works with media, isn't it? Newspapers are free to read on-line. Do they blame lack of income on that? Hell no, they probably make more money on ads that didn't cost ink and paper to print!
If we were concerned about artists, you'd put all their music online--eliminating album profits to them and labels--and pay to see the live shows. That's where they make all their money anyway.
Poor tech authors often sign anything that's in front of them to get their books out. Which means they don't make squat on the sales plus the publisher hikes the price up so that they turn a good profit. Ever bought Duda, Hart & Stork's Pattern Classification? Good luck, $100 for a six year old book!? Give me the black and white Asian release that's illegally sold on eBay for $10. Yet it remains a standard in the field.
You don't believe me that authors sign outrageous contracts? Well, this poor man had to beg to get his work online. Sounds like he didn't sign a contract that left him creative and absolute control over the distribution of this work.
Yet if they don't get it into print, it can't be used in a classroom setting. What a terrible system (hail capitalism). To all artists, authors and producers of media, please cut out the middle men that make it nearly impossible for me to afford your beautiful works and more or less cheat you out of money in a highway robbery-like scam.
Printed word was an amazing invention because it posed a method to mechanically copy texts and ideas and get them out to people. The internet allows you to do that for nearly free... use it!
I'm going to argue that this comparison between the cell batteries and this hard drive are not apt.
I'm not an electrical engineer but to the best of my understanding, batteries have complex chemicals and, ultimately, are a large capacitor storing energy with nothing but a insulator between the two negative and positive charges. Should these insulators decay, then disastrous effects can take place. Have you seen the pictures for the Dell laptops? Some of them are basically the entire battery slot burned out (top and bottom) with melted plastic, circuit board and screen. We're talking potential bodily harm here.
Again, I'm not an electrical engineer but as I understand it, hard drives are merely rotating discs or platters with a reading arm accessing them while they spin at high speeds. If something goes wrong, it grinds to a halt. There is minimal electronics and circuitry on them and that's what's malfunctioned here. We're not talking flames shooting out the side of a case or possible bodily harm but instead just a chip reaching it's melting point, producing a flash and growing carbon as it dies. And why does this article say "Maxtor" when this is most likely an isolated incident?! I mean, catastrophic failures happen in computer products no matter what the brand name is. Mean time to failure, right? Any microcontroller has this risk. Why doesn't the article list the age of the drive and the conditions it was operating under? I am most interested into whether or not this is under normal use and whether or not it happened immediately or if it's 2 years old.
I hardly find the two comparable. I've seen burned out hard drives and burned out computer components and, honestly, you have more to worry about from a cheap power supply than you do a Maxtor hard drive. When those burn out, they tend to take the things they're connected to with them.
Well, consider what they've done. They created something in which anyone can store any information about anything. And it seems to work to some extent. Yes, there are drawbacks but... well... a lot of times my research into something I don't know about starts at Wikipedia. Especially if it's something obscure because the links at the bottom of the articles are the most pertinant.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I envy and appreciate the designers of Wikipedia.
Now, I know you're going to post some examples in response to this of just crazy outlandish things (see GW's page if it isn't on lock down) but all and all, I appreciate what they've done for me.
To illustrate the shortcomings, however, enjoy this Onion Article.
The funny thing about Origin of Species is that everyone immediately was pissed that Darwin had the nerve to say that we are descendents of monkeys.
Then a few years later, people were amazed that a simple worm has 20,000 genes. <sarcasm> How could it be that such a simple lowly creature has so many genes? Isn't more better? How could humans be beat? Blasphemy! </sarcasm>
And now it's 'news' that a single cell's genome has as many genes as a human's! When will we learn that the number of genes doesn't mean 'more advanced' or 'better off'? If this single celled organism's environment caused it to evolve more genes but physically change (seemingly) very little, why are we surprised?
Seth Godin, author of several books on the Internet, including Small Is the New Big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or building tools like a link to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected.
Wow, that sounds like a great plug-in. I cannot wait for other people to start using that. That should be right down some of my friend's alleys. Some of my other friends, I couldn't even show them how to use StumbleUpon or the GMail Manager. Keep it simple for the people like my parents, please.
Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but Dotzler says there will be new features not found in current browsers.
Once again, I look forward to these plug-ins. And let's hope they're either plug-ins or disabled upon installation. You see, something that makes plane jane Mozilla so amazing is that it doesn't come as a bloated application waiting to error. More complicated programs suffer more memory and more bugs. I don't want my Mozilla to have a bazillion functions, keep it simple or you'll lose me as a fanboy.
I see these advertisements on television all the time at obscure hours of the morning. I sure would like to program games, that sounds like an interesting career. But I'd imagine the industry isn't as huge as they make it out to be and that there has to be a lot of frustrations/complications when trying to deal with licensing and hardware.
Why are these 1 year game programming schools a bad idea? Because they're highly specific. Even a 2 year technical college would give you more options than a tech school.
I am currently a developer but I went through a four year liberal arts program at a state University. I would recommend at least that experience and I value those classes above everything else I have learned. My number one fear is that people sign up for these game academies and make the mistake of investing a lot of money (through loans probably) while coming away with only the potential for working on games. This isn't a good decision, the results can be quite devastating.
I think that game emphasis should be something only sought after a four year degree at a respected university. If you don't have at least a bachelor's degree, you're setting yourself up for some big time risk.
I don't really care 3 Doors Down or Godsmack. Elton John is ok, his album Honky Tonk Chatau is in my collection. He used to write some amazing bluesy Rock and Roll that actually felt like music. His later crap is... well... crap in my opinion.
If you want to know who I listen to, it's a very wide variety but I must confess I'm more prone to listen to local bands in the states, UK or Canada. Bands like The Unicorns (now Islands), Spoon, Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzales, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, Apollo Sunshine, The Decemberists, Ok Go, The Golden Republic, etc. I really appreciate indie rock these days. Prior to that, all I lisened to was jazz, blues and classical. Anyone from popular artists like David Bowie, Bob Dylan & The Beatles to Nick Drake, Procul Harum & rare works. I'll always enjoy Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thad Jones, etc. And the classical artists I enjoy are seemingly infinite.
I see that Dispatch is a Universal artist and I love them so maybe there will be some songs I will go there for. I just hope it's all done in reasonable quality and doesn't require a standalone client application that I have to install. I hate those things.
So our "authority" is a man from Microsoft Monitor Weblog that is owned by Jupitermedia, not Microsoft. And he's speculating that these are the leaked prices. Has anyone stopped and thought that if Amazon is posting these, that they probably weren't leaked? Or maybe the fact that Amazon constantly offers products and pushes back the release date means that these aren't the real release dates?
What I'm guessing is that these are estimates for the release date but it will most likely be pushed back and that these prices are correct and direct from Microsoft. Intentional, though, not 'leaked.'
The effects are likely to be limited to the space scenes and not effect the live action scenes, so Edith Keeler will not shoot first.
It's true that Edith Keeler will not shoot first, however, let's just say that when Dr. McCoy "accidentally" injects himself with an overdose of cordrazine his trip down to the planet is a little bit more like the 60s. If-ya-know-what-I-mean.
I read the brief article clarifying this not-a-wiki initiative but what concerned me was when I read The Five Year Plan that was linked on the site to the USPTO.
The outline of the goals:
Goal 1 Optimize Patent Quality and Timeliness
Goal 2 Optimize Trademark Quality and Timeliness
Goal 3 Improve Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Domestically and Abroad
Management Goal Achieve Organizational Excellence
I recognize phrases and words that alarm me in that this document really doesn't say much or provide a 'plan' at all. For instance, its first goal is to "Optimize Patent Quality and Timeliness" which sounds like a great idea. But if you dig through the document to figure out how they will achieve this, there is naught to be found but:
Strategically, USPTO's primary emphasis is quality. For patents and trademarks, quality means timely, consistent, accurate examination. How do we achieve timely, consistent, accurate examination? Via streamlined procedures, good inputs, and great people.
Which worries me because the only quantifiable thing listed there is 'streamlined procedures' and I would prefer you aim for an intuitive & rigorous control process instead of using a bland word like streamlined. I mean, how can you determine if something really is streamlined?
Also confusing:
The formula for Certainty includes good communications so that we have consistency. It includes a capable workforce so that we have accuracy. It includes fully integrated supporting systems and uniform data to ensure reliability.
A capable workforce -- our employees -- is the single most critical component to achieving our goals.
So there's not really going to be any new tools or procedures but instead it's the 'mythical man month' approach where you just throw more people at the problem until it goes away? How do you determine a 'capable employee' and shouldn't those be the only kind you hire anyway?
Indeed the primary goal of this paper is to convince the reader that patent/trademark applications are one the rise. Unfortunately the one solution they have for that is hiring more examiners and creating focus groups. Is this really the solution?
They list search technology as an increasingly useful tool but why not data mining? I mean, you would think that the primary concern is to make this as simple as possible for the patent examiners and give them cutting edge technology to cross-reference patents. I think the most useful tool would be a thesaurus and/or a taxonomy that could allow them to link key words and identify possible prior art that a traditional search would have missed.
You know, the alternative to hiring more patent examiners is to make the grounds for a patent more stringent. Then a lot of the 'maybes' could be thrown out. In the end, I'm afraid this is just another government office or agency that's going to balloon out of control and consume tax payer dollars.
Confusion About Abbie Hoffman
on
Steal This Film
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Steal This film
First off, why isn't the 'f' capitalized? It is in the summary. Come on, even the Washington Post can handle that.
Secondly, when I saw this title, I thought immediately, Abbie Hoffman--a revolutionary.
If the four parts of "Steal This Film" have the same spirit as Abbie Hoffman's movement, then I'd probably be OK with this. And from what I've read of Hoffman's work, I think that he would be speaking out against the **AA left and right were he alive today. I'm just concerned that people will be tempted to confuse these two cinematic features.
I don't have the time to watch the first parts right now but can anyone tell me if this really is a documentary like the summary says? Because when I go to the site, they are asking for donations and from their page:
IN 2006, A GROUP OF FRIENDS DECIDED TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT FILESHARING THAT *WE* WOULD RECOGNISE. THERE HAVE BEEN A FEW DOCUMENTARIES BY 'OLD MEDIA' CREWS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE NET AND SEE PEER-TO-PEER ORGANISATION AS A THREAT TO THEIR LIVELIHOODS. THEY HAVE NO REASON TO REPRESENT THE FILESHARING MOVEMENT POSITIVELY, AND NO CAPACITY TO REPRESENT IT LUCIDLY.
(their caps, not mine) This doesn't seem to be a documentary so much as a kind of biased viewpoint of file-sharing. Aren't documentaries supposed to show all sides of the story and pose the most important views so that the viewer can understand the whole situation perfectly? And what documentaries are they thinking about that are made by 'old media' crews? Actually, the one documentary I have seen is Revolution OS which is definitely not 'old media' crews. There's no use for me to watch a documentary that simply makes me say, "Right on, brother! Preach to the choir!" I can get that if I mention RIAA or MPAA to anyone my age.
Some enjoyable quotes from Hoffman (taken from the Wikipedia entry about him):
"Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon." -- Steal This Book
"Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire."
"You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."
"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit."
Something interesting about tech companies is that concern for the environment is something that comes in usually later in the company's lifetime--after they've become millionaires. Because being green is, unfortunately, usually more expensive than the alternative.
Let's say you're making computer monitors in the early 90s and you start developing prototypes. You produce a 19" model that works well. Now, you could sink more money into the project and try to think of alterations to the design so that the chemicals inside the cathode ray tube can be safely removed before disposal... but you're not even sure how many of these will be made and the market's not looking so good and you just want to start turning a profit. Plus you have all the other guys to compete with and they don't have any sort of thing like this nor does the government demand it.
Now it's ten years later and you're well off as a company selling tens of thousands of units each year. And you get a letter saying that because your product contains harmful chemicals, you've scored low in some newspaper rating for green companies. Plus, you want to tap the hippie market and score more profits. What do you have to do to make your product 'green'? Well, what would have been a design change in the beginning is no longer possible. Not only do you have to do that but you have to change all your manufacturing plants and work out the new source for the changes in these products. Plus you've got all that inventory and raw materials sitting around waiting to be made into new monitors. Well, it just doesn't seem worth it anymore. Even if you offer dismantling them as a service, you'll have to charge nearly as much as the monitor costs--is this even realistic?
The sad fact is that (most of the time) green products need to start out as green otherwise there's a very good chance their success will allow their manufacturers to overlook the benefits from being a green product. It needs to be a design time concern. Computers have valuable metals in them--can you see an easy way of extracting these? It's a pretty complicated process right now and I don't think it's very efficient. Nobody seems concerned with asking themselves where the product goes when it's done because initially they're not afraid of making an environmental impact. But if all companies have this shortsightedness then we're bound to suffer. As good little consumers, we buy the best product (hail capitalism) and we evaluate the products based on commonly held beliefs about quality and service. Unfortunately, we lack the foresight to imagine what we do with the product when it's (usually short) life span is over.
When your CD player breaks, what do you do with it? In the old days, if a phonograph broke, you took it to a skilled craftsman who fixed it. Today we throw things away and just buy a new one constantly. This is because the labor involved with fixing the old unit is more costly than a new unit. In doing this, we really build up staggering amounts of trash--the EPA estimates that U.S. citizens generate 4.6 lbs of trash per day. Doesn't this seem like something that is going to become a logistical nightmare?
The Russian Space Agency already has a hard time completing crucial supply spacecraft for the International Space Station. Now it has committed to build spacecraft for China and help train Chinese astronauts, possibly leaving the space station grasping for seconds.
China and Russia can be friends or the "NATO of the East" or whatever you want to call it. But, to surpass your role in the ISS and instead strike up another working plan with China is kind of... well, not very supportive of the ISS.
This 2001 Treaty between the two is the first we've seen since 1950. It's great that we don't have to worry about atrocities or tension between the two neighbors but, with the current administration of the United States, I could definitely see the president of the US showing up on national TV and calling this action another Axis of Evil (tm) power move for Russia, China & Iran. It's a stupid thing to do but I only hope that this isn't seen as a reason to put pressure on these nations.
Don't download this song
Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong
Also mentionable is:
Cause you start off stealing songs
Then you're robbing liquor stores
And selling crack and running over school kids with your car!
You can send this song in an e-card at the URL of the song (which also hilariously allows you to download this song). You can also listen to it there for those of you who have a proxy blocking MySpace at work or where ever.
I look forward to the music video that is supposed to air on Yahoo music at 10:00 PM Pacific Time tonight (August 22nd).
Enjoy one of the last artists that is still concerned about his fans and music no matter how hilarious and campy it may be. He has the sense to realize that he's very well off compared to his fans and jokes about solid gold humvees and diamond studded pools.
More and more I see computers being used to harvest and cultivate data for market analysts and investors. Even Thomson has built software to deliver market news. From that link:
Thomson has built some computer programs at $150k-$200k a pop to deliver automated articles on US market news. The programs can publish a news story on, say, company financials, within 0.3 seconds of their release to the NYSE or NASDAQ. This is purportedly helpful to hedge traders and others of their ilk.
$150-$200k? Looks like there might be some profit in artificial intelligence afterall. Although I wonder if this would even be considered AI?
I read about this many days ago and tried to register on their site as an academic tester. I never received log in information so I could not partake in reading their white papers. They had posted the challenge in the Economist and on their website, they claim three accomplishments which define their "free energy":
The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts.
There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).
I hope the coefficient is greater than 0.0001% over 100%. Although all their technology page says is that this alleged free energy solution has to do with magnets. Not much else.
Furthermore, they claim they approached universities and educational institutions about validating their findings and recieved little or no support from them. Why wouldn't a university be eager to attach their name to it? Is it because of the patent?
If you're interested in reading their patent, here is the application (pdf warning). If you just want to get the gist of it, visit the Pure Energy Systems Wiki complete with diagram. It looks like a way to block and unblock a strip holding magnets, thus creating magnetic flux around a piece of metal (driving the current I believe).
Unfounded Criticism
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iPods at War
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm all for the criticism of the United States military. Or even the government. But it really angries up my blood when someone (who's probably never been in a war) criticizes a soldier who's trying to enjoy what may be the last months of his or her life.
I haven't heard any anecdotal stories about "so and so would still be alive if he hadn't been listening to his iPod." Or people's personal devices interfering with a mission. I think the number one weapon against the United States military is the IED (Improvised Explosive Devices). And these things blow up without warning. If you're super alert or playing a DS Lite in your vehicle, it's not going to make a difference when one of those things go off.
The loss of USB drives with sensitive data happens here at home, is it a surprise it happens at war?
Furthermore, if a soldier wants to play Counter Strike during his or her off-time in his or her tent, why not? If there's a surprise attack, there's not going to be much difference whether they were playing football, reading a book or playing counter strike. Human beings are distracted naturally and this is necessary, you can't ask someone to concentrate on war 100% of the time.
Our troops aren't just fighting for Democracy, they're also fighting for stable economies & developed infrastructures. I don't think it looks bad if they have gadgets and bells and whistles along with them while they're at war. These are some of the things they're fighting for them and their children to keep.
I would speculate that if you took away these devices that reminded them of home and society, their performance and morale would probably drop. I believe the USO show was designed to distract soldiers from the horrors of the war they fought, let them have an iPod if it does just that even better.
Ars Technica has put together an outstanding piece of journalism about the use of personal technology in America's military...
"Outstanding"?! It's an interesting piece but I'd hardly call it 'outstanding' or even credible journalism. Just an interesting thing to consider.
Poker seems to be a much more useful game for this research than chess.
This shouldn't be a surprise. Poker has the advantage of always being able to simply evaluate your chip count. Chess doesn't. You can't enumerate chess games through the entire gamespace so the initial opening moves are based on libraries or heuristics. In response to the machine not knowing all aspects of the "game space," I thought that there were a lot of developments in the field that allowed these to be accounted for. What ever happened to good old Trial and Error or Fuzzy Systems? Aren't these viable strategies when playing poker?
What confuses me is how the poker openings differ. I would speculate that a program would be some heuristic relating the ratio of bluffing to "playing the odds." I have gambling friends that play poker all the time and they have these rules that they follow when they play initially against people. They say it's the best until you "know" the people you're playing. Once you can read them then you deviate from the rules. The real irony is that the most successful people I know adhere to a system until they learn someone's movements. Sounds to me like I would write an application that specializes in playing the odds until it recognizes a historical action that statistically reveals the player is bluffing/not bluffing.
Simply put, unless you knew someone's reputation as being a bluffer, you would play the opening hand always the same way. Aren't we forced to program the "AI" of the poker software as being this simple heuristic? Will programs ever be able to "read" players intelligently or will they rely on Markov models & statistics they develop from playing against the same human over and over?
Most unfortunate is the fact that the primary reason my friends gamble is they don't experience the same kind of rush while playing other games as they do with poker because it's more social than other games. If we program applications to beat humans, where does the "social aspect" of the game go?
Even more interesting is the network of poker bots that are set up and running some of the web sites that host poker players. Imagine sitting down at a table of five with four of the other seats taken. Now imagine that these aren't humans but instead bots on four different IP addresses that are sharing card information over an IP connection so that they can leverage odds over you and stop themselves from making stupid mistakes (i.e. they share a card on the table for a pair but really need three of a kind to pose a threat). There's a reason why the percentages fluctuate on TV when cards are revealed whether they be in the flop or in another player's hand.
The International Space Station is a novel idea and I've always supported countries working together. After reading the Wikipedia entry on its costs, I have to question its utility versus the cost. The European Space Agency estimates it to be around 100 billion Euros which isn't cheap.
According the Wikipedia entry, NASA spends $5 billion annually on the ISS. I guess I hope to hear more news of discoveries from ISS and scientific advancements once it nears completion but I have not seen much in the news as of late. In fact, Hubble seems to be the best investment we've made next to the ISS. Is this just a proof of concept that we can work together with other nations on space exploration? What do we envision for the ISS in our future?
I know that this is an easy thing to complain about and I'm not the first to ask if it's really worth it. But can anyone tell me what $5 billion of our tax payer dollars has done for us? And why is it that construction grinds to a halt when only one of the member nations involved grounds its shuttles? Is this really an "international" space station? Also, doesn't this leave the United States eternally committed to developing this project? Will we ever be able to opt out of this even after its completion?
With the current administration in the United States, spending doesn't seem to worry them at all. And with the National Debt Clock ticking at around $8.5 trillion these days, I guess I should expect nothing more. Why is it that "small government conservatives" have the knack to make that clock jump by large percentages?
Businesses accused of aiding the Bush administration in wiretapping could also be in for a legal bruising, say civil liberties groups that have sued telecom providers AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth for allegedly helping the NSA. The ruling could set a precedent other courts can't ignore. 'Every phone company that is assisting the government in its illegal surveillance would want to think long and hard before it continues that agreement,' says Ann Beeson, the ACLU's lead attorney in the case. 'There are already lawsuits claiming that their cooperation for the past several years is illegal and now that the judge has declared it is illegal, their liability increases. The risk is much greater from a business perspective.
Wait, you mean that a company that wronged me and my fellow countrymen might be under legal penalty? You mean I might have as much right to my privacy as my government?
What a novel concept!
Let's try this: Let's conspire with a telecom provider to monitor government employee's communications and try to figure out what the government is thinking and what they're doing. Then, we'll blow the story all over the media and claim immunity based on something we just made up. We can claim that we were just making sure the federal government wasn't doing anything wrong and that if they weren't doing anything wrong, they shouldn't have to worry or press charges. I wonder if the telecom provider and those involved would be prosecuted.
Oh, and we'll use a recent event to justify our actions. Like the war in Iraq. Yeah, uh, we need to make sure no one in the government is conspiring to start another war based on false information. That's it, that's why we need to monitor your communications.
If the government is taking actions like these that are illegal for us to take ourselves, it's starts to sound less like we're on equal footing with the government and more like the government is demanding we "do what they say not what they do." Does anyone else remember back in the day when the United States was a government of the people, by the people and for the people? None of these recent NSA actions sound "for" the people. More like "against" with what should be serious legal repercussions. What the hell ever happened to a weak federal government with strong local governments? That was the basic idea for our government I thought. Instead we have some backwards beltway insiders pushing everyone around while my local county and city governments try to figure out what the hell "PC Load Letter" means.
I say we jail those responsible (government directors and telecom CEOs who oversaw it) just as any citizen who tried the same thing would be jailed.
Listen, I played bass, I worked at a music store that sold effects pedals. "Pod" meant Line 6's guitar pod. People came in and literally said, "I'll take one pod, please." I'm not kidding you, these things were huge and still are. Go into your local Guitar Center or what ever you have and say, "I'll take one pod, please." You can bet your ass the guy at the counter will pull up a guitar pod and ring it up right there.
By the end of 2002, the Line 6 people had proven themselves by designing what were unquestionably (to me, in any case) the best amp and effects models available, including the remarkable Vetta amplifiers and the best selling POD modules.
It's very popular among artists, to quote Wikipedia: "Their products are used and endorsed by artists such as James Hetfield of Metallica, Matthew Bellamy of Muse, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and The Edge of U2."
Hey, I did a bit of research on Line 6. According to Wikipedia, the iPod debuted on October 23, 2001 (or at least was unveiled).
Thanks to the internet archive, there is evidence of Line 6 having fully developed pods for sale during 2000 and 1999.
I mentioned this in the summary because I used to play bass pretty regularly and I recall around 2002 when all of the sudden these devices were the de facto standard for high quality multi-effects. Everyone came into the store I worked at asking for "pods." I recall when iPod came out that I was figuring there might be fall out but it never came. They're both associated with playing music but with completely different markets. I only wonder what logic Apple is using to sue these companies using the term Pods.
Afterall, there's a company called Pods that owns www.pods.com that rents pods for people to move their stuff in and that was established in 1998. I'm sure they've trademarked 'pod.' It's so funny how Apple is sending to cease and desist letters to companies when they should send themselves one. What a crazy double standard.
I know this is the Consumer Electronics Association and that this article only discusses shipments but what about the subscription fees related to some of those shipments?
MMOGChart says that World of Warcraft has 6.5 million+ users. Since it's a monthly subscription fee of $13, it's around $90 million a month. You can say that Blizzard must rake in a billion or so in subscription fees per year. And that's only Blizzard, isn't this a big part of the gaming industry today?
Slashdot Mirror
"Enginner": n. one who drinks gin and attempts to solve problems with gin and the mathematics of gin drinking. Ex. The sot that lay in the gutter claimed to be an enginner as a passerby spat on him.
"Enginnering": trans. v. to lay out, throw up, or manage as a gin drinker (see 'enginnerate').
If we were concerned about artists, you'd put all their music online--eliminating album profits to them and labels--and pay to see the live shows. That's where they make all their money anyway.
Poor tech authors often sign anything that's in front of them to get their books out. Which means they don't make squat on the sales plus the publisher hikes the price up so that they turn a good profit. Ever bought Duda, Hart & Stork's Pattern Classification? Good luck, $100 for a six year old book!? Give me the black and white Asian release that's illegally sold on eBay for $10. Yet it remains a standard in the field.
You don't believe me that authors sign outrageous contracts? Well, this poor man had to beg to get his work online. Sounds like he didn't sign a contract that left him creative and absolute control over the distribution of this work.
Yet if they don't get it into print, it can't be used in a classroom setting. What a terrible system (hail capitalism). To all artists, authors and producers of media, please cut out the middle men that make it nearly impossible for me to afford your beautiful works and more or less cheat you out of money in a highway robbery-like scam.
Printed word was an amazing invention because it posed a method to mechanically copy texts and ideas and get them out to people. The internet allows you to do that for nearly free
I'm going to argue that this comparison between the cell batteries and this hard drive are not apt.
I'm not an electrical engineer but to the best of my understanding, batteries have complex chemicals and, ultimately, are a large capacitor storing energy with nothing but a insulator between the two negative and positive charges. Should these insulators decay, then disastrous effects can take place. Have you seen the pictures for the Dell laptops? Some of them are basically the entire battery slot burned out (top and bottom) with melted plastic, circuit board and screen. We're talking potential bodily harm here.
Again, I'm not an electrical engineer but as I understand it, hard drives are merely rotating discs or platters with a reading arm accessing them while they spin at high speeds. If something goes wrong, it grinds to a halt. There is minimal electronics and circuitry on them and that's what's malfunctioned here. We're not talking flames shooting out the side of a case or possible bodily harm but instead just a chip reaching it's melting point, producing a flash and growing carbon as it dies. And why does this article say "Maxtor" when this is most likely an isolated incident?! I mean, catastrophic failures happen in computer products no matter what the brand name is. Mean time to failure, right? Any microcontroller has this risk. Why doesn't the article list the age of the drive and the conditions it was operating under? I am most interested into whether or not this is under normal use and whether or not it happened immediately or if it's 2 years old.
Honestly, compare these two images: Blown up Hard drive from the article and a Dell laptop result.
I hardly find the two comparable. I've seen burned out hard drives and burned out computer components and, honestly, you have more to worry about from a cheap power supply than you do a Maxtor hard drive. When those burn out, they tend to take the things they're connected to with them.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I envy and appreciate the designers of Wikipedia.
Now, I know you're going to post some examples in response to this of just crazy outlandish things (see GW's page if it isn't on lock down) but all and all, I appreciate what they've done for me.
To illustrate the shortcomings, however, enjoy this Onion Article.
The funny thing about Origin of Species is that everyone immediately was pissed that Darwin had the nerve to say that we are descendents of monkeys.
Then a few years later, people were amazed that a simple worm has 20,000 genes. <sarcasm> How could it be that such a simple lowly creature has so many genes? Isn't more better? How could humans be beat? Blasphemy! </sarcasm>
And now it's 'news' that a single cell's genome has as many genes as a human's! When will we learn that the number of genes doesn't mean 'more advanced' or 'better off'? If this single celled organism's environment caused it to evolve more genes but physically change (seemingly) very little, why are we surprised?
I see these advertisements on television all the time at obscure hours of the morning. I sure would like to program games, that sounds like an interesting career. But I'd imagine the industry isn't as huge as they make it out to be and that there has to be a lot of frustrations/complications when trying to deal with licensing and hardware.
Why are these 1 year game programming schools a bad idea? Because they're highly specific. Even a 2 year technical college would give you more options than a tech school.
I am currently a developer but I went through a four year liberal arts program at a state University. I would recommend at least that experience and I value those classes above everything else I have learned. My number one fear is that people sign up for these game academies and make the mistake of investing a lot of money (through loans probably) while coming away with only the potential for working on games. This isn't a good decision, the results can be quite devastating.
I think that game emphasis should be something only sought after a four year degree at a respected university. If you don't have at least a bachelor's degree, you're setting yourself up for some big time risk.
I don't really care 3 Doors Down or Godsmack. Elton John is ok, his album Honky Tonk Chatau is in my collection. He used to write some amazing bluesy Rock and Roll that actually felt like music. His later crap is ... well ... crap in my opinion.
If you want to know who I listen to, it's a very wide variety but I must confess I'm more prone to listen to local bands in the states, UK or Canada. Bands like The Unicorns (now Islands), Spoon, Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzales, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, Apollo Sunshine, The Decemberists, Ok Go, The Golden Republic, etc. I really appreciate indie rock these days. Prior to that, all I lisened to was jazz, blues and classical. Anyone from popular artists like David Bowie, Bob Dylan & The Beatles to Nick Drake, Procul Harum & rare works. I'll always enjoy Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thad Jones, etc. And the classical artists I enjoy are seemingly infinite.
I see that Dispatch is a Universal artist and I love them so maybe there will be some songs I will go there for. I just hope it's all done in reasonable quality and doesn't require a standalone client application that I have to install. I hate those things.
Well, that's good news.
Now if only I were a fan of some of Universal's Artists.
Guess I'll have to wait and see if the big companies follow suit.
So our "authority" is a man from Microsoft Monitor Weblog that is owned by Jupitermedia, not Microsoft. And he's speculating that these are the leaked prices. Has anyone stopped and thought that if Amazon is posting these, that they probably weren't leaked? Or maybe the fact that Amazon constantly offers products and pushes back the release date means that these aren't the real release dates?
What I'm guessing is that these are estimates for the release date but it will most likely be pushed back and that these prices are correct and direct from Microsoft. Intentional, though, not 'leaked.'
The outline of the goals:
- Goal 1 Optimize Patent Quality and Timeliness
- Goal 2 Optimize Trademark Quality and Timeliness
- Goal 3 Improve Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Domestically and Abroad
- Management Goal Achieve Organizational Excellence
I recognize phrases and words that alarm me in that this document really doesn't say much or provide a 'plan' at all. For instance, its first goal is to "Optimize Patent Quality and Timeliness" which sounds like a great idea. But if you dig through the document to figure out how they will achieve this, there is naught to be found but: Which worries me because the only quantifiable thing listed there is 'streamlined procedures' and I would prefer you aim for an intuitive & rigorous control process instead of using a bland word like streamlined. I mean, how can you determine if something really is streamlined?Also confusing: So there's not really going to be any new tools or procedures but instead it's the 'mythical man month' approach where you just throw more people at the problem until it goes away? How do you determine a 'capable employee' and shouldn't those be the only kind you hire anyway?
Indeed the primary goal of this paper is to convince the reader that patent/trademark applications are one the rise. Unfortunately the one solution they have for that is hiring more examiners and creating focus groups. Is this really the solution?
They list search technology as an increasingly useful tool but why not data mining? I mean, you would think that the primary concern is to make this as simple as possible for the patent examiners and give them cutting edge technology to cross-reference patents. I think the most useful tool would be a thesaurus and/or a taxonomy that could allow them to link key words and identify possible prior art that a traditional search would have missed.
You know, the alternative to hiring more patent examiners is to make the grounds for a patent more stringent. Then a lot of the 'maybes' could be thrown out. In the end, I'm afraid this is just another government office or agency that's going to balloon out of control and consume tax payer dollars.
Secondly, when I saw this title, I thought immediately, Abbie Hoffman--a revolutionary.
Abbie authored Steal This Book which was made into Steal This Movie which was then inspired Steal This Wiki. I heavily advise reading/watching all of them.
If the four parts of "Steal This Film" have the same spirit as Abbie Hoffman's movement, then I'd probably be OK with this. And from what I've read of Hoffman's work, I think that he would be speaking out against the **AA left and right were he alive today. I'm just concerned that people will be tempted to confuse these two cinematic features.
I don't have the time to watch the first parts right now but can anyone tell me if this really is a documentary like the summary says? Because when I go to the site, they are asking for donations and from their page: (their caps, not mine) This doesn't seem to be a documentary so much as a kind of biased viewpoint of file-sharing. Aren't documentaries supposed to show all sides of the story and pose the most important views so that the viewer can understand the whole situation perfectly? And what documentaries are they thinking about that are made by 'old media' crews? Actually, the one documentary I have seen is Revolution OS which is definitely not 'old media' crews. There's no use for me to watch a documentary that simply makes me say, "Right on, brother! Preach to the choir!" I can get that if I mention RIAA or MPAA to anyone my age.
Some enjoyable quotes from Hoffman (taken from the Wikipedia entry about him):
Something interesting about tech companies is that concern for the environment is something that comes in usually later in the company's lifetime--after they've become millionaires. Because being green is, unfortunately, usually more expensive than the alternative.
... but you're not even sure how many of these will be made and the market's not looking so good and you just want to start turning a profit. Plus you have all the other guys to compete with and they don't have any sort of thing like this nor does the government demand it.
Let's say you're making computer monitors in the early 90s and you start developing prototypes. You produce a 19" model that works well. Now, you could sink more money into the project and try to think of alterations to the design so that the chemicals inside the cathode ray tube can be safely removed before disposal
Now it's ten years later and you're well off as a company selling tens of thousands of units each year. And you get a letter saying that because your product contains harmful chemicals, you've scored low in some newspaper rating for green companies. Plus, you want to tap the hippie market and score more profits. What do you have to do to make your product 'green'? Well, what would have been a design change in the beginning is no longer possible. Not only do you have to do that but you have to change all your manufacturing plants and work out the new source for the changes in these products. Plus you've got all that inventory and raw materials sitting around waiting to be made into new monitors. Well, it just doesn't seem worth it anymore. Even if you offer dismantling them as a service, you'll have to charge nearly as much as the monitor costs--is this even realistic?
The sad fact is that (most of the time) green products need to start out as green otherwise there's a very good chance their success will allow their manufacturers to overlook the benefits from being a green product. It needs to be a design time concern. Computers have valuable metals in them--can you see an easy way of extracting these? It's a pretty complicated process right now and I don't think it's very efficient. Nobody seems concerned with asking themselves where the product goes when it's done because initially they're not afraid of making an environmental impact. But if all companies have this shortsightedness then we're bound to suffer. As good little consumers, we buy the best product (hail capitalism) and we evaluate the products based on commonly held beliefs about quality and service. Unfortunately, we lack the foresight to imagine what we do with the product when it's (usually short) life span is over.
When your CD player breaks, what do you do with it? In the old days, if a phonograph broke, you took it to a skilled craftsman who fixed it. Today we throw things away and just buy a new one constantly. This is because the labor involved with fixing the old unit is more costly than a new unit. In doing this, we really build up staggering amounts of trash--the EPA estimates that U.S. citizens generate 4.6 lbs of trash per day. Doesn't this seem like something that is going to become a logistical nightmare?
This 2001 Treaty between the two is the first we've seen since 1950. It's great that we don't have to worry about atrocities or tension between the two neighbors but, with the current administration of the United States, I could definitely see the president of the US showing up on national TV and calling this action another Axis of Evil (tm) power move for Russia, China & Iran. It's a stupid thing to do but I only hope that this isn't seen as a reason to put pressure on these nations.
I look forward to the music video that is supposed to air on Yahoo music at 10:00 PM Pacific Time tonight (August 22nd).
Enjoy one of the last artists that is still concerned about his fans and music no matter how hilarious and campy it may be. He has the sense to realize that he's very well off compared to his fans and jokes about solid gold humvees and diamond studded pools.
- The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
- The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts.
- There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).
I hope the coefficient is greater than 0.0001% over 100%. Although all their technology page says is that this alleged free energy solution has to do with magnets. Not much else.Furthermore, they claim they approached universities and educational institutions about validating their findings and recieved little or no support from them. Why wouldn't a university be eager to attach their name to it? Is it because of the patent?
If you're interested in reading their patent, here is the application (pdf warning). If you just want to get the gist of it, visit the Pure Energy Systems Wiki complete with diagram. It looks like a way to block and unblock a strip holding magnets, thus creating magnetic flux around a piece of metal (driving the current I believe).
I haven't heard any anecdotal stories about "so and so would still be alive if he hadn't been listening to his iPod." Or people's personal devices interfering with a mission. I think the number one weapon against the United States military is the IED (Improvised Explosive Devices). And these things blow up without warning. If you're super alert or playing a DS Lite in your vehicle, it's not going to make a difference when one of those things go off.
The loss of USB drives with sensitive data happens here at home, is it a surprise it happens at war?
Furthermore, if a soldier wants to play Counter Strike during his or her off-time in his or her tent, why not? If there's a surprise attack, there's not going to be much difference whether they were playing football, reading a book or playing counter strike. Human beings are distracted naturally and this is necessary, you can't ask someone to concentrate on war 100% of the time.
Our troops aren't just fighting for Democracy, they're also fighting for stable economies & developed infrastructures. I don't think it looks bad if they have gadgets and bells and whistles along with them while they're at war. These are some of the things they're fighting for them and their children to keep.
I would speculate that if you took away these devices that reminded them of home and society, their performance and morale would probably drop. I believe the USO show was designed to distract soldiers from the horrors of the war they fought, let them have an iPod if it does just that even better.
"Outstanding"?! It's an interesting piece but I'd hardly call it 'outstanding' or even credible journalism. Just an interesting thing to consider.
What confuses me is how the poker openings differ. I would speculate that a program would be some heuristic relating the ratio of bluffing to "playing the odds." I have gambling friends that play poker all the time and they have these rules that they follow when they play initially against people. They say it's the best until you "know" the people you're playing. Once you can read them then you deviate from the rules. The real irony is that the most successful people I know adhere to a system until they learn someone's movements. Sounds to me like I would write an application that specializes in playing the odds until it recognizes a historical action that statistically reveals the player is bluffing/not bluffing.
Simply put, unless you knew someone's reputation as being a bluffer, you would play the opening hand always the same way. Aren't we forced to program the "AI" of the poker software as being this simple heuristic? Will programs ever be able to "read" players intelligently or will they rely on Markov models & statistics they develop from playing against the same human over and over?
Most unfortunate is the fact that the primary reason my friends gamble is they don't experience the same kind of rush while playing other games as they do with poker because it's more social than other games. If we program applications to beat humans, where does the "social aspect" of the game go?
Even more interesting is the network of poker bots that are set up and running some of the web sites that host poker players. Imagine sitting down at a table of five with four of the other seats taken. Now imagine that these aren't humans but instead bots on four different IP addresses that are sharing card information over an IP connection so that they can leverage odds over you and stop themselves from making stupid mistakes (i.e. they share a card on the table for a pair but really need three of a kind to pose a threat). There's a reason why the percentages fluctuate on TV when cards are revealed whether they be in the flop or in another player's hand.
The International Space Station is a novel idea and I've always supported countries working together. After reading the Wikipedia entry on its costs, I have to question its utility versus the cost. The European Space Agency estimates it to be around 100 billion Euros which isn't cheap.
According the Wikipedia entry, NASA spends $5 billion annually on the ISS. I guess I hope to hear more news of discoveries from ISS and scientific advancements once it nears completion but I have not seen much in the news as of late. In fact, Hubble seems to be the best investment we've made next to the ISS. Is this just a proof of concept that we can work together with other nations on space exploration? What do we envision for the ISS in our future?
I know that this is an easy thing to complain about and I'm not the first to ask if it's really worth it. But can anyone tell me what $5 billion of our tax payer dollars has done for us? And why is it that construction grinds to a halt when only one of the member nations involved grounds its shuttles? Is this really an "international" space station? Also, doesn't this leave the United States eternally committed to developing this project? Will we ever be able to opt out of this even after its completion?
With the current administration in the United States, spending doesn't seem to worry them at all. And with the National Debt Clock ticking at around $8.5 trillion these days, I guess I should expect nothing more. Why is it that "small government conservatives" have the knack to make that clock jump by large percentages?
What a novel concept!
Let's try this: Let's conspire with a telecom provider to monitor government employee's communications and try to figure out what the government is thinking and what they're doing. Then, we'll blow the story all over the media and claim immunity based on something we just made up. We can claim that we were just making sure the federal government wasn't doing anything wrong and that if they weren't doing anything wrong, they shouldn't have to worry or press charges. I wonder if the telecom provider and those involved would be prosecuted.
Oh, and we'll use a recent event to justify our actions. Like the war in Iraq. Yeah, uh, we need to make sure no one in the government is conspiring to start another war based on false information. That's it, that's why we need to monitor your communications.
If the government is taking actions like these that are illegal for us to take ourselves, it's starts to sound less like we're on equal footing with the government and more like the government is demanding we "do what they say not what they do." Does anyone else remember back in the day when the United States was a government of the people, by the people and for the people? None of these recent NSA actions sound "for" the people. More like "against" with what should be serious legal repercussions. What the hell ever happened to a weak federal government with strong local governments? That was the basic idea for our government I thought. Instead we have some backwards beltway insiders pushing everyone around while my local county and city governments try to figure out what the hell "PC Load Letter" means.
I say we jail those responsible (government directors and telecom CEOs who oversaw it) just as any citizen who tried the same thing would be jailed.
If you want more evidence, read this article: It's very popular among artists, to quote Wikipedia: "Their products are used and endorsed by artists such as James Hetfield of Metallica, Matthew Bellamy of Muse, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and The Edge of U2."
Hey, I did a bit of research on Line 6. According to Wikipedia, the iPod debuted on October 23, 2001 (or at least was unveiled).
Thanks to the internet archive, there is evidence of Line 6 having fully developed pods for sale during 2000 and 1999.
I mentioned this in the summary because I used to play bass pretty regularly and I recall around 2002 when all of the sudden these devices were the de facto standard for high quality multi-effects. Everyone came into the store I worked at asking for "pods." I recall when iPod came out that I was figuring there might be fall out but it never came. They're both associated with playing music but with completely different markets. I only wonder what logic Apple is using to sue these companies using the term Pods.
Afterall, there's a company called Pods that owns www.pods.com that rents pods for people to move their stuff in and that was established in 1998. I'm sure they've trademarked 'pod.' It's so funny how Apple is sending to cease and desist letters to companies when they should send themselves one. What a crazy double standard.
I know this is the Consumer Electronics Association and that this article only discusses shipments but what about the subscription fees related to some of those shipments?
MMOGChart says that World of Warcraft has 6.5 million+ users. Since it's a monthly subscription fee of $13, it's around $90 million a month. You can say that Blizzard must rake in a billion or so in subscription fees per year. And that's only Blizzard, isn't this a big part of the gaming industry today?