Wow, I've never seen that document before. It's quite interesting.
One thing to notice is that the connection between Bin Laden and Sept. 11 is entirely by association. Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers are known to be associated with Al Qaida, and Bin Laden clearly shares the same beliefs as the hijackers. It doesn't follow that Bin Laden is responsible.
Other commentary I've read (sorry, no link handy) indicates that Al Qaida, like a lot of other subversive organizations, isn't really very centralized. It's possible, and even probable, that a group of people with loose ties to a certain part of the network got some assistance from other people associated with Al Quaida. It's unlikely that Bin Laden or anybody else 'ordered' the attack.
It's also equally possible that some other party with a beef against the U.S. set things in motion and some of the people recruited to do the dirty work also had ties with Al Qaida.
The bottom line is that nobody really knows, and nobody will ever know unless somebody involved with the attack steps forward. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter. Bin Laden is known to support terrorism, even if his connection to this particular attack is unclear, so he's a useful target for Bush. Bin Laden might even help Bush get re-elected if this thing drags out long enough.
The article mentions how annoying Clippy is, but says that MS researchers still think a 'helpful' interface is a good idea if done properly. Can anybody think of a good way to do this without it becoming annoying?
One thing that I really hate about those little characters is that they get in the way and take control of the computer away from me. But what if a little box on the task bar showed the three 'most likely' things you wanted to do and you could activate them (complete with little wizards if the task is complex) by clicking?
When my newest console can dynamically model a stadium full of people that look and sound like the real thing, maybe that will be enough.
I think that's actually pretty close. I'd bet that the next generation of consoles (say around 2005) can acheive effects comparable to the Final Fantasy movie. In other words, strikingly lifelike, but not quite 'real'. The next generation after that will be indistinguishable from reality. At that point there won't be anywhere for graphics to go.
And when all of the people in that stadium can pass a Turing test, maybe, just maybe, that will be enough.
How will that improve gameplay?
Re:"Sorcerer's Stone" vs. "Philosopher's Stone"
on
Review: Harry Potter
·
· Score: 2
Wow! So they figured the cost of having the word 'philosopher' in the title was greater than the cost of shooting all those scenes twice?!
So philosopher mean something different in the U.S. that I don't know about? I've never been aware of any kind of negative connotation attached to the word.
"Sorcerer's Stone" vs. "Philosopher's Stone"
on
Review: Harry Potter
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Does anybody know why they changed the name (of both the book and movie) for the U.S.? Did they dub the movie as well to change the name of the stone?
I'm just curious because I can't imagine why they would go to so much trouble to eliminate the word "philosopher".
It's not just for telemedicine. The idea is to give enhanced feedback, superior to what you would get with just touch. This would allow a surgeon cut exactly what's intended, even if visual or tactile feedback isn't enough to distinguish between different types of tissue.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Energy Management System", but if the interface isn't heavily interactive, I'd go with a browser front-end. If you can, use Mozilla and XUL. It allows you to build really nice interfaces easily.
Browser-based apps aren't going to replace everything. Highly interactive things like word-processors, spreadsheets, etc. aren't suitable for browsers, but if the interface is form-based I think it's the way to go.
The obvious advantage in your case is that the interface code is painlessly cross-platform. You still have to worry about lower level stuff, but that's much easier to do properly if you eliminate the GUI.
You're joking, but I think that's almost the point. Instead of cutting bits out of the film to acheive a certain rating, you leave everything in. Then if you want to focus on the nudity you're able to do that, while somebody else can still watch the PG13 version
With the current system the movie distributor has to find a compromise that will maximize sales. With this system that's not needed.
I know exactly what you mean. The first time I saw Clerks was with friends and I thought it was brilliant. So when I was spending the week with my girlfriend's family and we wanted to rent a movie I mentioned how much I liked it and us "young folk" rented it. Somehow I forgot just how crude the movie is - or I guess I just didn't notice the first time around.
It's not nearly as funny if your girlfriend's mother is sitting in the room when one of characters discovers she's just had sex with a corpse.
I'm not sure this rating system would have saved me though. The movie really wouldn't be the same without the crude jokes.
I really like this idea. Personally I have no problem with sex, nudity, etc., but I'm really squeamish about certain types of violence. It would be really cool if I could set my personal viewing preferences to "maximum sex, minimum torture", while still allowing other people to watch "no sex please, but lots of violence". It's a brilliant idea.
What if your browser sent the site a cryptographically signed token consisting of the URL, a timestamp, a serial number, and your PayPal (insert random payment service of choice) account number.
The site would forward all the tokens on to the payment service for re-imbursement. Duplicate serial numbers or incorrect signatures would not be honoured and you could peruse your bill and refute any fraudulent claims that did somehow get through.
I think this is quite feasible technically. That doesn't mean it would succeed in the market.
Well, not all managers are as stupid as they seem:-). They may have given up on your VP, but they'll try again with the next one. I bet they're on good terms with a few other managers around your datacenter though:-).
You haven't seen these guys work. They'll find somebody in the company to be their internal advocate and they'll keep feeding that person FUD, while building personal relationships over golf, dinner, etc.
Did your company just get a new CIO, CFO, CEO, Manager IT, whatever? Microsoft, IBM, HP, etc. all know this and have already offered him dinner at a nice restaurant. They know that they don't need to convince the techies, just a few well-placed managers.
I submitted it, so I guess I'm biased. I agree that this isn't unusual. It's news because most people don't get to see how killer sales operations work (as I mentioned, IBM is also very agressive).
It's also useful for anybody who might be bidding against MS to have some insight into what they're up to. If you have a fortune 1000 client then it might be worthwhile to find out what their MS sales rep. has been up to.
That's an interesting scenario, but I believe the content needs to be protected by the creator, not a user. So, if I perchance some MP3s, and someone hacked my account to grab them, That hack wouldn't be considered illegal under the DMCA.
I'm not sure that's true, but even if it is I don't see how it makes a difference. The most likely scenario is a content creator uses his network drive while creating the content. Somebody else who has access to the machine hacks it and steals the content.
And remember, judges are supposed to go by the spirit of the law, not necessarily the letter.
I'm not sure that's really true either, but by the time the case gets to the courts the poor programmer has already spent several months in jail. Think about this for a second. Why should a U.K. citizen risk getting embroiled in the American legal system? He doesn't live there, vote there, or have any particular interest in becoming a martyr like Dimitri. Would you get involved in human rights protests in China while on vacation there? I doubt it. You can sympathize, but in the end it's not your battle. It's the same with Alan.
Re:Another day...
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Without having read the book, it sounds like the whole point is that these wacko theories, while strange, are just as good as any other theory to explain phenomena we don't understand.
I suppose you could say that God reaches out and pushes massive bodies together. Or that invisible chewing gum binds things together. It may well be that the "truth" (if we ever discover it) will be just as strange. Certainly quantum theory is bizarre and, if people I respect didn't keep telling me it was true, I wouldn't beleive it.
It doesn't sound like Adams is a an anti-religious zealot at all, but rather somebody who's very aware of the limits of scientific knowledge.
But there can be restrictions placed on re-publishing the source. So IBM cannot make anybody sign an NDA or other agreement to keep it secret. One of the thousands of people who receive the code from IBM will publish it openly.
There are lots of small examples: Borland, Netscape, Intel (when they tried to produce media software or something like that), pretty much every PC manufacturer. But the really big obvious one is IBM with OS/2.
Microsoft started working on OS/2 with IBM. Then they essentially sabotaged the project while working on NT behind the scenes. By the time IBM figured out what was going on and took over the development on their own, it was too late.
I have a sneaking suspician that IBM's conversion to the Linux religion is partially due to bitter IBM execs who finally see a chance to settle an old score with Microsoft.
I was trying to figure this one out myself. My best guess is that thinks Open Source requires commodity hardware, and figures that Microsoft helped to create the commodity PC platform.
I'll grant that MS helped to create the PC (although it wasn't entirely their doing by any means - Intel and IBM certainly had a role to play), I'm at a loss as to why this would be relavent to Open Source. Free/Open Source software tends to be much more cross-platform than proprietary stuff, so it's a pretty bizarre statement.
Could it be that Bill still doesn't get this whole Free Software thing? Can he really be that clueless about the non-Wintel universe?
I haven't tried any version of XP, but my understanding was that MS did a lot of feature work between the first RC and the final release. So what MS calls a release candidate is what most people call a Beta.
I do think Ximian has a better QA process. Keep in mind that Evolution is only 700k lines of code. They don't need a six month feature freeze to get the product stable. MS, on the other hand, typically releases pre-alpha code as version 1, and only gets to stable release on version three, about six years later.
You have to wonder about the negative spin on this. 24% of the largest, most conservative companies in the country are planning to use Linux next year. This is good news. Considering that two years ago nobody believed Linux could make it into enterprise datacenters, this is amazing progress.
When interpreting these figures you need to remember that:
Large companies move very slowly. Some of these people are still using OS/2.
Many of these companies don't think about which OS they're using so much as which vendor they're using. In particular, many of these accounts are controlled by IBM. As IBM puts more and more energy into Linux, these accounts will (very) slowly follow.
ICANN is only relavent as long as everybody uses their DNS. I don't understand why somebody with some moral authority in the IT world doesn't just set up an alternative. I know there are in fact several alternatives, but these are private companies that nobody has heard about.
So who could do it? The IETF and the ACM come to mind. There are probably a few others.
Note that you don't have to switch all at once, you can still fall back to legacy ICANN domains if the new domain system doesn't find a match.
My "ultimate" domain name scheme would allow anything as a.tld (although you could set up a few with restricted access, perhaps '.trademark' or something like that). That way, for example, IBM could use "buy.ibm", while somebody who doesn't like IBM could use "dontbuy.ibm". There would be no way to purchase all the domains under a.tld.
Slashdot Mirror
Do know if the users who start out liking the little beast start to get annoyed with it later on?
If so, then one could imagine a Clippy that not only learns your habits, but also notices when you're likely to be annoyed with it and hides.
Wow, I've never seen that document before. It's quite interesting.
One thing to notice is that the connection between Bin Laden and Sept. 11 is entirely by association. Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers are known to be associated with Al Qaida, and Bin Laden clearly shares the same beliefs as the hijackers. It doesn't follow that Bin Laden is responsible.
Other commentary I've read (sorry, no link handy) indicates that Al Qaida, like a lot of other subversive organizations, isn't really very centralized. It's possible, and even probable, that a group of people with loose ties to a certain part of the network got some assistance from other people associated with Al Quaida. It's unlikely that Bin Laden or anybody else 'ordered' the attack.
It's also equally possible that some other party with a beef against the U.S. set things in motion and some of the people recruited to do the dirty work also had ties with Al Qaida.
The bottom line is that nobody really knows, and nobody will ever know unless somebody involved with the attack steps forward. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter. Bin Laden is known to support terrorism, even if his connection to this particular attack is unclear, so he's a useful target for Bush. Bin Laden might even help Bush get re-elected if this thing drags out long enough.
The article mentions how annoying Clippy is, but says that MS researchers still think a 'helpful' interface is a good idea if done properly. Can anybody think of a good way to do this without it becoming annoying?
One thing that I really hate about those little characters is that they get in the way and take control of the computer away from me. But what if a little box on the task bar showed the three 'most likely' things you wanted to do and you could activate them (complete with little wizards if the task is complex) by clicking?
I think that's actually pretty close. I'd bet that the next generation of consoles (say around 2005) can acheive effects comparable to the Final Fantasy movie. In other words, strikingly lifelike, but not quite 'real'. The next generation after that will be indistinguishable from reality. At that point there won't be anywhere for graphics to go.
How will that improve gameplay?
Wow! So they figured the cost of having the word 'philosopher' in the title was greater than the cost of shooting all those scenes twice?!
So philosopher mean something different in the U.S. that I don't know about? I've never been aware of any kind of negative connotation attached to the word.
Does anybody know why they changed the name (of both the book and movie) for the U.S.? Did they dub the movie as well to change the name of the stone?
I'm just curious because I can't imagine why they would go to so much trouble to eliminate the word "philosopher".
It's not just for telemedicine. The idea is to give enhanced feedback, superior to what you would get with just touch. This would allow a surgeon cut exactly what's intended, even if visual or tactile feedback isn't enough to distinguish between different types of tissue.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Energy Management System", but if the interface isn't heavily interactive, I'd go with a browser front-end. If you can, use Mozilla and XUL. It allows you to build really nice interfaces easily.
Browser-based apps aren't going to replace everything. Highly interactive things like word-processors, spreadsheets, etc. aren't suitable for browsers, but if the interface is form-based I think it's the way to go.
The obvious advantage in your case is that the interface code is painlessly cross-platform. You still have to worry about lower level stuff, but that's much easier to do properly if you eliminate the GUI.
You're joking, but I think that's almost the point. Instead of cutting bits out of the film to acheive a certain rating, you leave everything in. Then if you want to focus on the nudity you're able to do that, while somebody else can still watch the PG13 version
With the current system the movie distributor has to find a compromise that will maximize sales. With this system that's not needed.
I know exactly what you mean. The first time I saw Clerks was with friends and I thought it was brilliant. So when I was spending the week with my girlfriend's family and we wanted to rent a movie I mentioned how much I liked it and us "young folk" rented it. Somehow I forgot just how crude the movie is - or I guess I just didn't notice the first time around.
It's not nearly as funny if your girlfriend's mother is sitting in the room when one of characters discovers she's just had sex with a corpse.
I'm not sure this rating system would have saved me though. The movie really wouldn't be the same without the crude jokes.
I really like this idea. Personally I have no problem with sex, nudity, etc., but I'm really squeamish about certain types of violence. It would be really cool if I could set my personal viewing preferences to "maximum sex, minimum torture", while still allowing other people to watch "no sex please, but lots of violence". It's a brilliant idea.
What if your browser sent the site a cryptographically signed token consisting of the URL, a timestamp, a serial number, and your PayPal (insert random payment service of choice) account number.
The site would forward all the tokens on to the payment service for re-imbursement. Duplicate serial numbers or incorrect signatures would not be honoured and you could peruse your bill and refute any fraudulent claims that did somehow get through.
I think this is quite feasible technically. That doesn't mean it would succeed in the market.
For example: Canada's Globe & Mail
Well, not all managers are as stupid as they seem :-). They may have given up on your VP, but they'll try again with the next one. I bet they're on good terms with a few other managers around your datacenter though :-).
You haven't seen these guys work. They'll find somebody in the company to be their internal advocate and they'll keep feeding that person FUD, while building personal relationships over golf, dinner, etc.
Did your company just get a new CIO, CFO, CEO, Manager IT, whatever? Microsoft, IBM, HP, etc. all know this and have already offered him dinner at a nice restaurant. They know that they don't need to convince the techies, just a few well-placed managers.
I submitted it, so I guess I'm biased. I agree that this isn't unusual. It's news because most people don't get to see how killer sales operations work (as I mentioned, IBM is also very agressive).
It's also useful for anybody who might be bidding against MS to have some insight into what they're up to. If you have a fortune 1000 client then it might be worthwhile to find out what their MS sales rep. has been up to.
I'm not sure that's true, but even if it is I don't see how it makes a difference. The most likely scenario is a content creator uses his network drive while creating the content. Somebody else who has access to the machine hacks it and steals the content.
I'm not sure that's really true either, but by the time the case gets to the courts the poor programmer has already spent several months in jail. Think about this for a second. Why should a U.K. citizen risk getting embroiled in the American legal system? He doesn't live there, vote there, or have any particular interest in becoming a martyr like Dimitri. Would you get involved in human rights protests in China while on vacation there? I doubt it. You can sympathize, but in the end it's not your battle. It's the same with Alan.
Without having read the book, it sounds like the whole point is that these wacko theories, while strange, are just as good as any other theory to explain phenomena we don't understand.
I suppose you could say that God reaches out and pushes massive bodies together. Or that invisible chewing gum binds things together. It may well be that the "truth" (if we ever discover it) will be just as strange. Certainly quantum theory is bizarre and, if people I respect didn't keep telling me it was true, I wouldn't beleive it.
It doesn't sound like Adams is a an anti-religious zealot at all, but rather somebody who's very aware of the limits of scientific knowledge.
But there can be restrictions placed on re-publishing the source. So IBM cannot make anybody sign an NDA or other agreement to keep it secret. One of the thousands of people who receive the code from IBM will publish it openly.
There are lots of small examples: Borland, Netscape, Intel (when they tried to produce media software or something like that), pretty much every PC manufacturer. But the really big obvious one is IBM with OS/2.
Microsoft started working on OS/2 with IBM. Then they essentially sabotaged the project while working on NT behind the scenes. By the time IBM figured out what was going on and took over the development on their own, it was too late.
I have a sneaking suspician that IBM's conversion to the Linux religion is partially due to bitter IBM execs who finally see a chance to settle an old score with Microsoft.
I was trying to figure this one out myself. My best guess is that thinks Open Source requires commodity hardware, and figures that Microsoft helped to create the commodity PC platform.
I'll grant that MS helped to create the PC (although it wasn't entirely their doing by any means - Intel and IBM certainly had a role to play), I'm at a loss as to why this would be relavent to Open Source. Free/Open Source software tends to be much more cross-platform than proprietary stuff, so it's a pretty bizarre statement.
Could it be that Bill still doesn't get this whole Free Software thing? Can he really be that clueless about the non-Wintel universe?
I haven't tried any version of XP, but my understanding was that MS did a lot of feature work between the first RC and the final release. So what MS calls a release candidate is what most people call a Beta.
I do think Ximian has a better QA process. Keep in mind that Evolution is only 700k lines of code. They don't need a six month feature freeze to get the product stable. MS, on the other hand, typically releases pre-alpha code as version 1, and only gets to stable release on version three, about six years later.
You have to wonder about the negative spin on this. 24% of the largest, most conservative companies in the country are planning to use Linux next year. This is good news. Considering that two years ago nobody believed Linux could make it into enterprise datacenters, this is amazing progress.
When interpreting these figures you need to remember that:
Yes, but on some high-end equipment you hot-swap other components: controllers, CPUs, memory.
ICANN is only relavent as long as everybody uses their DNS. I don't understand why somebody with some moral authority in the IT world doesn't just set up an alternative. I know there are in fact several alternatives, but these are private companies that nobody has heard about.
So who could do it? The IETF and the ACM come to mind. There are probably a few others.
Note that you don't have to switch all at once, you can still fall back to legacy ICANN domains if the new domain system doesn't find a match.
My "ultimate" domain name scheme would allow anything as a .tld (although you could set up a few with restricted access, perhaps '.trademark' or something like that). That way, for example, IBM could use "buy.ibm", while somebody who doesn't like IBM could use "dontbuy.ibm". There would be no way to purchase all the domains under a .tld.