I first saw it in a bar, last night, during a football game. The entire bar went quiet to watch it, laughed at the right spots, everyone laughed out loud at the end, and some applauded. Sorry, but you're simply wrong, as is the original article. That ad was absolutely effective. It worked on every level.
Certainly audience attention is one measure of the effectiveness of an ad, but by no means is it the only one. Were people watching intently because the ad just wanted to fill an aching need in their life with wads of cash, or was it perhaps the novelty factor of seeing two very, very rich people act like average folk (buying shoes at a small store, showing their customer loyalty cards, eating churros and then walking into a parking lot filled with Hondas)? Certainly humanizing in the face of rumors like Jerry Seinfeld parking on 5th ave in NYC because he didn't give a damn about his porsche getting towed, etc. So ok, the ad gets your attention, maybe a chuckle at the (extra) nerdy pic of young Gates.
Does it tell you why you should buy Vista? Nope. Sure, it's part of a continuing series, but so are the PC-Mac ads, and yet each one clearly sends out a message WHILE being entertaining. IMO, this series is going to wear thin very fast and I'll be willing to place a sizable bet that in a few months your sports bar won't be all a-chuckles at the next Seinfeld/Gates ad.
Instead of asking people to type in badly form text how about answering a question only an English speaker could. Like what is the forth word from the beginning of this sentence?
25 years? That's a pittance in terms of time. Why not high-quality archival prints in hermetically sealed plastic bags? You can even loose laminate the pictures, then vacuum seal the box if you've got the moolah. The archival prints will last at least 25 years, and if you want to be safe you can toss in a dvd/thumb drive/whatever in with it. At least you'd be sure that the ultra cool infrared scanners of the future (which also serve as flying cars) will be able to recover copies of the pictures, even though they wouldn't be pristine copies.
For proof of concept, see the recent NYT story about visually etched disks being strewn around the world for 1,000 year archival, although that might be a more ambitious/dubious goal.
Neither display is actually telling you what you think it's telling you.
Who cares? When it's full, my laptop or cellphone works great. When it's empty, the thing stops working. When there's only a few bars left, I either plug it in / move to a different location. IMO, it perfectly performs its intended duty. Anything beyond that is geek pedantry and nitpicking.
There's got to be a joke in here somewhere.... Wet nature... Drop into the oven... Got to think... Lemme get another beer.
Why stop there? Anything can be a euphemism.
Frustrates phoenix...Wet nature...drop into the oven...get stuck in the scoop...damaged the lander...and of course, the universal problem everyone faces:...the vibrator had to be used longer than designed, resulting in a short circuit.
The problem with ANY "predictive" statistics (like racial profiling, for one glaring example) is that even when they become accurate enough to produce useful information, they tend to produce too many false positives.
That is an overly general statement. If that were the case, we wouldn't have any reliable spam filters. There are many statistical methodologies (including ensembles of methodologies) applied carefully to different types of domains that produce excellent and usable false positive rates. Indiscriminate use of statistical learning, and the subsequent failure at a given task, does not invalidate the method or its applicability for the task.
If I have to hit more than one button per character that's going to slow me down a lot, and
As someone who plays a musical instruments, this isn't as much of an impediment as it sounds. With time, you might find that its actually more powerful because (a) you're trained to think in terms of multiple keys and (b) you can extend these "chords" to capture complex keystrokes, so you'd actually SAVE time in vi, etc.
I don't know if it would help carpal tunnel, but the flexibility of positioning your hand in any way sure sounds like a neat thing. Plus, you could walk around your office and touch-type, hell you could even use the bathroom and keep typing if you're so inclined.
How can we convey to the public that the internet's value depends directly on ISP's not being able to discriminate traffic by content?
Unfortunately, the "public" is on the overcrowded #12 bus right now, occupying two seats and chomping down on a donut on their way to a custody hearing. In other words, a stunning majority of the public is uneducated and can't give a damn, and the reason stunts like this are done is for the nice little news blurb on the 9 o'clock Fox "news" show about how your local politician has undertaken an initiative to "end child pornography". He gets a news bite and name recognition, the public is happy that their elected man has fixed Interwebs crime, and no one gives a damn if your newsreader suddenly starts 404ing. Significant portions of the voting public aren't going to become technically inclined in the next few years, so don't expect to see things like this stop unless you can put a superhero-like spin on why Usenet should be free.
Someone left a thick softcover book on my doorstep the other day that listed the names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone in my region. Hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions.
Cute sarcasm, thanks. This, however, is more like a phonebook for cellphone numbers -- given that there's an expectation of privacy for your name when signing up for an e-mail address. I say expectation because it's almost certainly not legally covered, but still reasonable given current norms. So the GMail situation is more like AT&T revealing your full name to ANYONE if they call with your unlisted/cellphone number in hand and just say a secret word. Sure, the name/number linkage is on your business card too, but giving it out is YOUR choice and there's a reason you can't get the information by just calling AT&T (if you're not NSA,etc.).
I mean really... Does anyone with a lick of sense actually give their real name to a free web-based service?
In short, yes. Ever since GMail was launched and people discovered that its way more convenient that Outlook/Yahoo/etc., there's been a steady conversion of addresses in my contact list to "@gmail.com". People are moving to GMail as their primary mail accounts -- I don't know if you've been listening since 1998, but "free web-based email" is now often much, much better than whatever your university/company offers.
So yeah, this is a pretty big deal -- not so much for spammers, but as a privacy violation. You can't do a name lookup for an arbitrary e-mail address, and you shouldn't be able to do it for a GMail address. Someone should get an ass-kicking for this.
So is it Java or Javascript? Either the summary is wrong or this guy doesn't even know the difference between the two.
knowledge of how Java compilers work != will be exploiting a Java compiler flaw
There may be (probably are) methodological similarities between Java compilers and JavaScript interpreters that make them both vulnerable to this attack.
Now I'm no expert, but it seems like if your company is involved in a lawsuit with Corporation X, you probably shouldn't patronize the services of Corporation X, or you might lose your job.
Common sense aside, uploading copyrighted videos is clearly against any corporate internet use policy. Why should Google be held liable for the illegal actions of its employees? It's not like Google encouraged its employees to upload the Daily Show. If that doesn't hold up in court, you just got yourself a convenient way to screw your employer (convenient if, for example, you were planning on leaving the country).
here are more advanced nations, like Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, there are some in the middle of the road, like India, Egypt, Pakistan,
Just curious about your classification -- what makes Brazil and Mexico "advanced" and India and Egypt "middle of the road"? Aside from them being largely arbitrary classifications, the world's poor are pretty much the same everywhere. They're desperate, they have bleak futures and have a shockingly uniform form of suffering, no matter where they are. Small, ingenious innovations like those developed at MIT will benefit them regardless of which country they're in.
Trust me, the poorest, most rural regions of Brazil are not that different from the poorest, most rural regions of India or Thailand or Mexico. Don't assume that the newfound economic prosperity of countries like India and Brazil trickle down to the people who these inventions are targeted at.
They didn't really state it was unbeatable, just that it beats human players easily, most of the time.
Don't know which article you read, but:
So far, the robot has defeated every human opponent running in 32-bit mode, averaging three times as many goals as human players. The algorithm's success resulted from revising its strategy whenever a goal was scored against it. Some revisions were refinements of strategies, but others were outright fixes to bugs in tactics.
So small, light and snug (from the picture), that when you get knicked by a Toyota on the autobahn, it can substitute as your coffin too! Now THAT's eco-friendly.
the whole FOSS thang is nothing but an expression of Socialism.
While I, too, don't know whether to give Stallman my spare change or my ears, you seem to be making this a clash of ideology. I would kill to see your browser's user-agent, no doubt it won't be some stinking FOSS thing like Firefox. Good for you! Stay true to your ideology. Use IE or somesuch.
Besides, FOSS isn't so much like Socialism as it is charity for the greater good.
Oh and also (I'm sorry I forgot this), some of us are from socialist countries, you insensitive clod!
In Soviet Russia, Socialiasm is an expression of FOSS
Yes but do you run Linux?
Haven't read the article, but that sounds like Microsoft's Profile Guided Optimizations.
That technology already exists in GCC and has been there for a while. For those who don't know, you profile your program with gprof (or by compiling with -fprofile-generate), which generates a profile detailing where your program spends most of its time on a 'typical' run. Then you re-compile your program with gcc using the -fprofile-use switch.
In a couple of algorithms I've implemented with gcc, it's been fairly good.
Compilers aren't programmed to be viral or reproductive, but could be, even being capable of testing their offspring (compilers they've compiled) for defects.
You're joking, right? If so, excuse me for letting it fly over my head, and the subsequent tone of my post. If not, this is the most nonsense I've ever heard in a single sentence as a researcher in AI (machine learning admittedly, not skynet research).
Compilers aren't programmed to be viral or reproductive: What does this even MEAN??
capable of testing their offspring: guaranteed to be impossible, I suggest an intro to undecidability and specifically the Halting problem.
compilers they've compiled: What exactly would be the point of virally reproducing COMPILERS?? Would they gain unauthorized access, hunt down C code on your system and COMPILE IT!!...? Oh noes...
If they open source it that means it can be ported and people will be more likely to leaving windows if they can use their windows apps on another operating system.
Good point -- it would one hell of a Wine release when they can add a full layer of Windows functionality on demand. When you can run every single Windows app on a stable, secure FREE OS, suddenly Windows doesn't seem like such a necessary evil anymore. Of course, access to the Windows source would also mean that eventually Windows drivers could be natively supported on any other OS.
And Linux still does a lot better than Windows in terms of hardware compatibility.
While on your side in your flame, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. Ignoring Vista for one minute with its compulsory driver signing, etc., XP has a remarkably good support for hardware because...all mass-market vendors will necessarily write drivers for Windows, but not for Linux. I've been using Linux for 10+ years, since the days when Slackware was the most "user-friendly", and until Ubuntu 8.04, I was still wrapping Windows wireless drivers in ndiswrapper, my laptop sound refused to work in spite of all the forum workarounds and my cheap Chinese-made webcam was flat out not recognized. And this was on a stock $500 Toshiba laptop. Most of those are now solved, but it was never an issue with XP.
Of course, this says nothing about XP being "superior" to Linux from a technology point of view -- just that hardware vendors are going to release win drivers and might release linux drivers.
More importantly, does it have an API I can use to record my own brainwaves and stick my own machine learning algorithms in there? This thing could revolutionize collecting EEG data from voluntary subjects and subsequently bring up a bunch of interesting non-gaming applications.
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly audience attention is one measure of the effectiveness of an ad, but by no means is it the only one. Were people watching intently because the ad just wanted to fill an aching need in their life with wads of cash, or was it perhaps the novelty factor of seeing two very, very rich people act like average folk (buying shoes at a small store, showing their customer loyalty cards, eating churros and then walking into a parking lot filled with Hondas)? Certainly humanizing in the face of rumors like Jerry Seinfeld parking on 5th ave in NYC because he didn't give a damn about his porsche getting towed, etc. So ok, the ad gets your attention, maybe a chuckle at the (extra) nerdy pic of young Gates.
Does it tell you why you should buy Vista? Nope. Sure, it's part of a continuing series, but so are the PC-Mac ads, and yet each one clearly sends out a message WHILE being entertaining. IMO, this series is going to wear thin very fast and I'll be willing to place a sizable bet that in a few months your sports bar won't be all a-chuckles at the next Seinfeld/Gates ad.
Most brilliant ironic troll message...ever.
25 years? That's a pittance in terms of time. Why not high-quality archival prints in hermetically sealed plastic bags? You can even loose laminate the pictures, then vacuum seal the box if you've got the moolah. The archival prints will last at least 25 years, and if you want to be safe you can toss in a dvd/thumb drive/whatever in with it. At least you'd be sure that the ultra cool infrared scanners of the future (which also serve as flying cars) will be able to recover copies of the pictures, even though they wouldn't be pristine copies. For proof of concept, see the recent NYT story about visually etched disks being strewn around the world for 1,000 year archival, although that might be a more ambitious/dubious goal.
Try viewing only the unread messages in your multi-page inbox without typing in an arcane search query with modifiers.
If you want a more literal outsourcing of playing jazz parts to India, don't forget this excellent Miles Davis inspired CD compilation.
Who cares? When it's full, my laptop or cellphone works great. When it's empty, the thing stops working. When there's only a few bars left, I either plug it in / move to a different location. IMO, it perfectly performs its intended duty. Anything beyond that is geek pedantry and nitpicking.
Why stop there? Anything can be a euphemism.
Frustrates phoenix...Wet nature...drop into the oven...get stuck in the scoop...damaged the lander...and of course, the universal problem everyone faces: ...the vibrator had to be used longer than designed, resulting in a short circuit.
Thank you for a well-thought out response -- a rarity here these days it seems.
That is an overly general statement. If that were the case, we wouldn't have any reliable spam filters. There are many statistical methodologies (including ensembles of methodologies) applied carefully to different types of domains that produce excellent and usable false positive rates. Indiscriminate use of statistical learning, and the subsequent failure at a given task, does not invalidate the method or its applicability for the task.
For anyone who's actually SEEN stallman, this is the funniest quote ever. For those who haven't, here
As someone who plays a musical instruments, this isn't as much of an impediment as it sounds. With time, you might find that its actually more powerful because (a) you're trained to think in terms of multiple keys and (b) you can extend these "chords" to capture complex keystrokes, so you'd actually SAVE time in vi, etc.
I don't know if it would help carpal tunnel, but the flexibility of positioning your hand in any way sure sounds like a neat thing. Plus, you could walk around your office and touch-type, hell you could even use the bathroom and keep typing if you're so inclined.
Unfortunately, the "public" is on the overcrowded #12 bus right now, occupying two seats and chomping down on a donut on their way to a custody hearing. In other words, a stunning majority of the public is uneducated and can't give a damn, and the reason stunts like this are done is for the nice little news blurb on the 9 o'clock Fox "news" show about how your local politician has undertaken an initiative to "end child pornography". He gets a news bite and name recognition, the public is happy that their elected man has fixed Interwebs crime, and no one gives a damn if your newsreader suddenly starts 404ing. Significant portions of the voting public aren't going to become technically inclined in the next few years, so don't expect to see things like this stop unless you can put a superhero-like spin on why Usenet should be free.
Cute sarcasm, thanks. This, however, is more like a phonebook for cellphone numbers -- given that there's an expectation of privacy for your name when signing up for an e-mail address. I say expectation because it's almost certainly not legally covered, but still reasonable given current norms. So the GMail situation is more like AT&T revealing your full name to ANYONE if they call with your unlisted/cellphone number in hand and just say a secret word. Sure, the name/number linkage is on your business card too, but giving it out is YOUR choice and there's a reason you can't get the information by just calling AT&T (if you're not NSA,etc.).
In short, yes. Ever since GMail was launched and people discovered that its way more convenient that Outlook/Yahoo/etc., there's been a steady conversion of addresses in my contact list to "@gmail.com". People are moving to GMail as their primary mail accounts -- I don't know if you've been listening since 1998, but "free web-based email" is now often much, much better than whatever your university/company offers.
So yeah, this is a pretty big deal -- not so much for spammers, but as a privacy violation. You can't do a name lookup for an arbitrary e-mail address, and you shouldn't be able to do it for a GMail address. Someone should get an ass-kicking for this.
knowledge of how Java compilers work != will be exploiting a Java compiler flaw
There may be (probably are) methodological similarities between Java compilers and JavaScript interpreters that make them both vulnerable to this attack.
Common sense aside, uploading copyrighted videos is clearly against any corporate internet use policy. Why should Google be held liable for the illegal actions of its employees? It's not like Google encouraged its employees to upload the Daily Show. If that doesn't hold up in court, you just got yourself a convenient way to screw your employer (convenient if, for example, you were planning on leaving the country).
Just curious about your classification -- what makes Brazil and Mexico "advanced" and India and Egypt "middle of the road"? Aside from them being largely arbitrary classifications, the world's poor are pretty much the same everywhere. They're desperate, they have bleak futures and have a shockingly uniform form of suffering, no matter where they are. Small, ingenious innovations like those developed at MIT will benefit them regardless of which country they're in.
Trust me, the poorest, most rural regions of Brazil are not that different from the poorest, most rural regions of India or Thailand or Mexico. Don't assume that the newfound economic prosperity of countries like India and Brazil trickle down to the people who these inventions are targeted at.
Don't know which article you read, but:
So small, light and snug (from the picture), that when you get knicked by a Toyota on the autobahn, it can substitute as your coffin too! Now THAT's eco-friendly.
LibertineR (591918) says:
While I, too, don't know whether to give Stallman my spare change or my ears, you seem to be making this a clash of ideology. I would kill to see your browser's user-agent, no doubt it won't be some stinking FOSS thing like Firefox. Good for you! Stay true to your ideology. Use IE or somesuch.
Besides, FOSS isn't so much like Socialism as it is charity for the greater good.
Oh and also (I'm sorry I forgot this), some of us are from socialist countries, you insensitive clod!
In Soviet Russia, Socialiasm is an expression of FOSS
Yes but do you run Linux?
That technology already exists in GCC and has been there for a while. For those who don't know, you profile your program with gprof (or by compiling with -fprofile-generate), which generates a profile detailing where your program spends most of its time on a 'typical' run. Then you re-compile your program with gcc using the -fprofile-use switch.
In a couple of algorithms I've implemented with gcc, it's been fairly good.
You're joking, right? If so, excuse me for letting it fly over my head, and the subsequent tone of my post. If not, this is the most nonsense I've ever heard in a single sentence as a researcher in AI (machine learning admittedly, not skynet research).
Compilers aren't programmed to be viral or reproductive: What does this even MEAN??
capable of testing their offspring: guaranteed to be impossible, I suggest an intro to undecidability and specifically the Halting problem.
compilers they've compiled: What exactly would be the point of virally reproducing COMPILERS?? Would they gain unauthorized access, hunt down C code on your system and COMPILE IT!!...? Oh noes...
Good point -- it would one hell of a Wine release when they can add a full layer of Windows functionality on demand. When you can run every single Windows app on a stable, secure FREE OS, suddenly Windows doesn't seem like such a necessary evil anymore. Of course, access to the Windows source would also mean that eventually Windows drivers could be natively supported on any other OS.
While on your side in your flame, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. Ignoring Vista for one minute with its compulsory driver signing, etc., XP has a remarkably good support for hardware because...all mass-market vendors will necessarily write drivers for Windows, but not for Linux. I've been using Linux for 10+ years, since the days when Slackware was the most "user-friendly", and until Ubuntu 8.04, I was still wrapping Windows wireless drivers in ndiswrapper, my laptop sound refused to work in spite of all the forum workarounds and my cheap Chinese-made webcam was flat out not recognized. And this was on a stock $500 Toshiba laptop. Most of those are now solved, but it was never an issue with XP.
Of course, this says nothing about XP being "superior" to Linux from a technology point of view -- just that hardware vendors are going to release win drivers and might release linux drivers.
More importantly, does it have an API I can use to record my own brainwaves and stick my own machine learning algorithms in there? This thing could revolutionize collecting EEG data from voluntary subjects and subsequently bring up a bunch of interesting non-gaming applications.