Yes I noticed that after I'd posted, apparently I can't count past 2.
I could suggest it was the excitement of actually finding a relevant use for a Slashdot meme but it is however Monday, so I'm pulling out that card as my excuse instead!
That's because the ones marching for the US to leave are the nutjobs with the guns and bombs whilst the ones who like US security are the ones that would be the target of these weapons.
If the latter group marches, what do you think will happen to them?
The case you're talking about is that of a merging of departments and this is bound to lead to hiccups (although being public sector where incompetence is rife, some rather impressive hiccups admittedly). Over time when they're used to being one department there will be efficiency gains but it aint gonna happen over night, and again, being public sector, it wont happen very quickly at all, but I do believe it will happen, just a shame we have no one with the power and will to kick them into shape to do it faster.
...usage caps were sold as a legit tool for ISPs despite advertising unlimited because these caps affected only a tiny minority of heavy users.
I'm not convinced 1million is a tiny minority. It's about time the ASA actually did some work for once and punished broadband providers for not advertising their caps more obviously. Last time it was brought up they said they didn't need to force them to change their practices for the above mentioned reason that caps were high enough to only effect a very small amount of users.
Even Plus Net which prides itself in being open and which is probably one of the most open out the lot can be quite evil. When I renewed my contract with them for a year I don't recall seeing anywhere (except perhaps in the depths of the contract which I did read but must have overlooked) that by renewing my contract I'd accept a change in the definition of off-peak from midnight to 4pm down to midnight to 8am.
Of course, it wasn't until I hit my 20gb on-peak cap within a couple of weeks that I looked into it and found I'd started being metred during the previously off-peak 8am to 4pm.
Similarly when I stuck with their old package I noticed my speeds dropped below their advertised maximum caps at times also.
If this is the kind of practice arguably the UK's most transparent ISP engages in it's no wonder users are confused about caps. The argument about the validity of ISPs imposing caps is one thing but the fact is that ISPs can't even be honest to their customers either and I'd argue this is the crux of the problem in terms of end user confusion on the issue.
I say this because he donated a sizeable amount to the Republican campaign.
I simply do not believe if Will Wright gave any care to evolutionary theory and evolutionary biology he would be such a staunch Republican supporter in this election.
It is as you say rather scary that Spore is passed off as a game about evolutionary theory when it in fact teaches quite the opposite- intelligent design. One has to wonder what Will Wright's real motives behind suggesting this is a game about evolution actually are.
I'd argue that's more an issue of game specific design problems though than an issue with the advantages/disadvantages of the MMO genre as a whole.
DAoC did indeed require a massive amount of time investment compared to most other MMOs and whilst time does play into the majority it is good to see with some of the more recent ones such as Warhammer online that they are making some effort to make MMOs a little more casual.
Personally I always figured the best MMO commercially is one where your players always come back but only need to spend a minimal amount of time in game to get their enjoyment, afterall getting subscription costs whilst lowering bandwidth and hardware costs is surely only going to be good for business! The issue most MMOs seem to have is that they don't have enough real content to keep their players hooked so they keep them hooked by making it take ages to complete said content by adding time sinks and use that to keep people playing.
Again without meaning to sound like I'm hyping Warhammer Online up I do at least like the fact I can log in, do a couple of quick quests, maybe a couple of scenarios and log out after maybe only an hour and come away feeling like I actually got somewhere. That's a far cry from DAoC's ML raids on their release for example which could take upwards of a single 10hr sitting worst case.
People do get to be special in MMOs. Particularly in those with a strong PvP element like Ultima Online had, like Dark Age of Camelot had and so on. Those who rack up the most kills, those who are the best players are always more respected/hated than your average joe.
You make your own name in an MMO, sure you may not be playing Luke Skywalker but if you can defeat anyone else 1 vs 1 on a server then be sure that many will look up to you and many more will hate you.
It goes further than just PvP though, I've seen people who for example in Ultima Online had the most money, the most rare items and so forth and were themselves looked up to. I've seen blacksmiths who can churn out more perfect quality armour by having the mental (in?)capacity to sit their mindlessly crafting away and still be nice enough to charge reasonable prices. There's also raid leaders, people who may have led raids to kill the biggest monster in game however many times more than the next one down or who have led hundreds of allies through certain tough quests for example.
Every MMO server/side has it's heroes and that's what some people like about MMOs, you get to be a hero, someone special where you get real recognition from real players rather than simply NPCs telling you you're great in single player games.
It may sound a little sad, but the phenomena really does exist. You're only like everyone else in an MMO if you don't bring anything to the community, if you want to do well or simply if you have the time to do well and stand out you absolutely can. For some being not Luke Skywalker, but a character of their own creation who stands out as a leader to their team mates is good enough for them.
"So let met get this straight. You're comparing a document that's several centuries old to a scientific paper written by a dispassionate mathematician studying the data results from an array of cinetheodolites [l-3com.com]? One of those two documents is by it's very definition the heart of theology. The other is very clearly scientific analysis. One we trust based on our belief system. The other we trust because we can replicate the experiment and verify the data with other equipment."
But that's the problem, could it really hold up to scrutiny by respected figures? It's easy to say that there is a lack of peer review for these types of research because of the damage it does to one's career but perhaps this damage to the career stems from the fact UFO research has historically abused the scientific process much like intelligent design and most anti-global warming research does.
If someone says something is scientific it doesn't add an air of validity to it and again this is the danger that intelligent design plays on that people are quick to put faith in science in the same way they put faith in religion.
I'm all for fully peer reviewed papers that are peer reviewed by some of the most respected figures but I'm absolutely not going to blindly trust papers by people who write them in order to try and add an air of validity to their existing beliefs. It's easy then to point out people who have been involved in said research previously being skeptics but again it's one of the human minds biggest faults that exposure to a particular subject can lead to belief in it even if unwarranted.
I'm not someone who thinks we're alone in the universe but I do realise that planets old enough to result in the chance of housing an advanced civilisation are too far away to reach us without breaking the speed of light, something which, as far as we know is impossible. Could we be wrong on that? Sure, would I place a bet on us being wrong? No. Similarly, I wouldn't place what I believe on it either because the fact is that that is real peer reviewed, time tested science and this is where the conflict lies, real peer reviewed, time tested science conflicts with what you suggest goes for being science.
One other important point is that of the supposedly unexplainable sightings/abductions they are all very different pointing to the idea that we're being visited not by one, but by many advanced civilisations and this makes even less sense statistically and scientifically.
I think you missed the point. From your very own comment it sounds like what they were saying is that if you have your PC turned off for 16hrs of the day using 1 watt and being able to turn it on and be productive instantly is better than sitting waiting for a couple of minutes using 100s of watts for the system to boot up from full power off before you can be productive. It sounds like what they were saying is effectively that a few minutes of time where you can't do anything at 100 watts is worse than hours of time where you can't do anything at 1 watt.
I'm not arguing the case either way as I don't have any numbers to judgeby but it sounds like a possibility.
"One might consider something like this [engadget.com] a modern re-imagining of Ezekiel's wheels."
Indeed one might.
But then, the text is so obscure and non-sensical for the most part one might make pretty much whatever they want from it.
You're making the same mistake that most people with religious beliefs make. The problem is that all the quotes you give sound much like your average fantasy/sci-fi story, just because something was written in ancient times doesn't mean it's not still fiction. Fiction isn't a genre that just appeared in the 20th century.
In another couple of thousand years I'd hope people have become intelligent enough in general to not look back at Lord of the rings and read descriptions of the giant eagles as proof that we all believed in alien spaceships visiting Earth.
"1. that there is something unidentified in our airspace. Project Twinkle definitively proves this."
Yes, roughly as well as the Bible proves god exists.
The crux of the problem is this, whilst we have UFO sightings world wide the sheer number reported from the US is entirely disproportionate- especially abduction reports.
The number of reports from the rest of the world simply don't match up to those from the US, statistically it just doesn't make sense unless someone can suggest a valid reason why visitors from another world would be interest mainly in Americans?
We have people who say they've seen UFOs but we still have no photos that aren't either extremely poor quality or been exposed as hoaxes. This means the reality is we still have no more evidence for UFO visits than we do for the existence of god and the UFO is consistently, as in all your examples provided only as something unprovable "Oh it moved too fast for us to catch", how convenient.
There's also plenty of room for plausible explanations in many cases too, how can people be so sure Russians don't have aircraft as high tech as proposed by the aurora project, it's not like the Russians are somehow less capable of keeping secrets, with their oppresive regime quite the contrary.
Even in this newly released report a pretty obvious answer is sitting right in front of us. The incident happened in 1991, the object was brown. What was flying to/from the UK in 1991? British Tornado and Jaguar aircraft to and from Iraq from the first gulf war. The MoD confirmed it wasn't a balloon, a missile, a rocket and nothing more- why in war time would they confirm the flight path of their military jets?
If we get some evidence that's a little more concrete then great, but whilst UFOs remain as provable as the existence of god in the context given then it really can't be given any more merit than religious belief.
HAWX, the arcade-style flightsim that's coming out under the Tom Clancy brand is due to include Ghost Teams, Rainbow teams and such apparently, so there were already plans to bring the Tom Clancy universe together before this at least.
The IWF issues a blacklist that all UK ISPs implement so yes, it does act to decide what content is blacklisted in the UK. It is much more than just a hotline.
This blacklist deals with child porn. Criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content aren't filtered by this blacklist but are passed on to the authorities and ISPs to deal with via take downs instead.
Thank you however for demonstrating exactly what the problem is with the IWF. That people don't even realise that it does act as a censor.
Again, I support the work they do currently if it is as suggested, however I do not support the fact that they are allowed to manage it without any oversight or public awareness.
Whilst to be fair as far as I understand it does a good job in that it focuses entirely on child porn and hasn't as I'm aware stepped out of this remit I am a little concerned that it came into play without anyone ever really noticing or anyone ever really being told.
Can we be sure this organisation does only do what it says it does? Can we be sure it doesn't ever abuse it's powers? Would we ever know if it did?
It is not run by the government and is an independent organisation, so not having a connection to the government increases my confidence in it a million fold at least however.
Perhaps this was the crux of the problem, they used a defence of suggesting if they hand it over it would be self-incriminating?
Wouldn't a better defence have been to suggest that the data encrypted was entirely irrelevant to the case. Wouldn't it then be up to the police to actually do some police work and prove otherwise?
By using a self-incrimination defence it's effectively admitting, yeah you've got some data that's evidence locked up but you're not handing it over. Surely it's better to simply just deny the encrypted data is relevant to the case or even that you've no idea what that encrypted data is. Hell, claim it's your own personal copyrighted works or some trade secrets and get them to prove to a court either that it's not or that they need access to said private content. I'd have thought both of these would put the burden on the police to do police work in an ideal scenario.
That said, Labour's totalitarian regime doesn't follow the ideal scenario mindset and innocent until proven guilty means nothing anymore so I guess either way these people were screwed.
If the people are guilty then it's great they've been caught, but the way they go about reach the goal is entirely unacceptable and comes down to one thing - the police are too damn lazy to actually do any police work nowadays. It's all about abusing various laws and technologies Labour has handed them which they really shouldn't have.
This is the problem, whilst things like Joomla are fantastic to get you up and running near instantly, they're also useless if you want to step away from their way of doing things with regards to categories/sections and such.
There isn't a one size fits all CMS out there. You make compromises and choose which gives you the best fit to your problem but if you end up using one that is quite low level (well, probably a framework rather than a CMS e.g. Zend) to give you the flexibility you need whilst still missing some points due consideration really has to be given to building one yourself.
Indeed but I can understand what the article might be getting at without having read it yet.
It's always best to use the best language for the job and far to many Java or.NET shops will use Java and.NET for everything even when there are much better tools for the job. It's a problem that arises time and time again and it took some time to convince many C++ developers that whilst C++ could do everything it wasn't necessarily best for everything.
If the article is suggesting these languages should be used for the sake of being used then that is rather daft and I don't know why we see many blogs like this (e.g. "Use F# it's awesome!"- well no, it's not in every scenario). If however it's suggesting that these languages each have a specific niche that it should be used for where it beats the likes of Java/.NET then yes he's on to something.
There's always a balance of course, a project consisting of 20 different languages would also almost certainly be rather stupid and messy, but there's a balance to strike for sure to achieve maximum efficiency, stability and features and in some cases there is merit in using more than one language.
It's been known for a long time that noises/vibrations bring worms to the surface. The only news here is that they're imitating the sounds created by moles (if that's really even true).
Even when I repot a plant in the garden and take it out of it's old pot and crumble the old soil mix away from it's roots the bits of soil falling off hit the floor and make worms come up because of the tapping sound of small objects hitting the floor presumably being much like the sound of rain hitting the floor.
I know this because the plants I repot are usually cacti and with the spikes resting on the floor and the rootball up in the air the worms have at times been dumb enough to come up underneath the cacti and ended up getting themself impaled on the spikes. I don't particularly like worms, especially ones I have to extract cactus spines from.
But I was coming from a different path from you, however if anything you have an advantage.
I didn't go to Uni or get a degree but worked in tech. support for 7 years starting when I was 18. I've always liked programming and have done it since I was young, and whilst I have now nearly finished my degree having done it full time alongside work the important thing to realise is that you have to be able to show you're a good programmer and a degree by itself wont cut it. If you can do it the 2 - 5 years thing becomes irrelevant as I was able to get a few interviews with a good CV and then outshine many candidates who had been programming for years.
If you can demonstrate on your CV not just a long list of languages but that you understand the fundamentals of programming and can work with any language thrown at you, if you can show you understand not just a UI API like Windows forms but how to build one from the ground up and hence how to work with Swing through to Windows forms through to MFC's Windowing classes for example then you're in with a good chance of getting that first interview.
The difficulty is you have to know these things, you wont be able to blag it so put some work into learning everything you can. It may be a year before you're ready, you may not be able to move straight away. It's probably worth working on some open source projects if you can.
The payoff is that if you do put in the time, effort and energy a lot of firms will care little about your experience but the fact that you have demonstrated all the way through that you can do the job and with such a good understanding, possibly even do it better than people who have been a "programmer" for years but only know Java and will use that language for everything even when it's simply not the right tool for the job.
But I also take issue with the premise that we're one clock cycle away from true AI.
A dog giving you it's paw after it's been trained to do so is thought to be intelligent behaviour by most, yet a human doing the same certainly wouldn't be seen as something that is a sign of particular intelligence.
A person being able to do some difficult math in short time is thought to be intelligent but a computer performing the same action not so.
The point is, the definition of intelligence is a moving goal post, it does in itself depend on context. As an aside, context is one of the biggest challenges facing AI but ironically one of the few that solutions to the Turing test go some way to solving.
The reason I take issue with the original comment is because we've had true AI for a long time, the biggest dissapointment for some is that it's simply been weak AI, however programs that can solve the Turing test are still not certifiable as strong AI so the original comment really makes little sense. It either meant we're close to strong AI, in which case it's wrong, we're not, or it meant we haven't yet achieved true AI, which again is wrong, we have.
AI has brought us a lot but as soon as it becomes a technique that is understood and used by many rather than a small set of AI researchers it stops being seen as AI, it starts being seen as just another algorithm. The problem is this will always be the case, because if we can create a computer simulation of a real brain as a set of clever algorithms it's still going to be just another set of algorithms. Similarly though this is where your comment seems a little short sighted because it faces the same issue - like with intelligence, there is no clear definition of understanding, one possible suggestion for a definition is that of being able to make associations, but this is something computers can do so for the communication to not contain understanding we'd only ever be using a definition of understanding that adds some mysticism to what understand is rather than the reality of it being just another process that occurs in the human brain at the end of the day.
These new tests can't be put down because they're not strong AI however, they increase our understanding of AI and lead to better tools. After all most online automated support assistants stem from attempts to solve the Turing tests.
People have overly high expectations for AI due to various sci-fi movies through the ages that have portrayed strong AI and as such when they see programs that can't quite complete the Turing test they're less than impressed. AI has given us everything from computer game opponents through to important data mining techniques through to self-repairing hardware/software. It's an important field and one that deserves a lot more respect than it gets, after all, many of the advancements that led to the modern computer were based around the quests for intelligent machines in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes I noticed that after I'd posted, apparently I can't count past 2.
I could suggest it was the excitement of actually finding a relevant use for a Slashdot meme but it is however Monday, so I'm pulling out that card as my excuse instead!
1. Create article about designing coin and winning contest
2. Post same article to Slashdot including link to website with story MULTIPLE TIMES
4. Farm ad revenue
3. Profit
That's because the ones marching for the US to leave are the nutjobs with the guns and bombs whilst the ones who like US security are the ones that would be the target of these weapons.
If the latter group marches, what do you think will happen to them?
The case you're talking about is that of a merging of departments and this is bound to lead to hiccups (although being public sector where incompetence is rife, some rather impressive hiccups admittedly). Over time when they're used to being one department there will be efficiency gains but it aint gonna happen over night, and again, being public sector, it wont happen very quickly at all, but I do believe it will happen, just a shame we have no one with the power and will to kick them into shape to do it faster.
No but from what I understand one guy at least knows that the economy doesn't work how the current leader thinks it works.
...usage caps were sold as a legit tool for ISPs despite advertising unlimited because these caps affected only a tiny minority of heavy users.
I'm not convinced 1million is a tiny minority. It's about time the ASA actually did some work for once and punished broadband providers for not advertising their caps more obviously. Last time it was brought up they said they didn't need to force them to change their practices for the above mentioned reason that caps were high enough to only effect a very small amount of users.
Even Plus Net which prides itself in being open and which is probably one of the most open out the lot can be quite evil. When I renewed my contract with them for a year I don't recall seeing anywhere (except perhaps in the depths of the contract which I did read but must have overlooked) that by renewing my contract I'd accept a change in the definition of off-peak from midnight to 4pm down to midnight to 8am.
Of course, it wasn't until I hit my 20gb on-peak cap within a couple of weeks that I looked into it and found I'd started being metred during the previously off-peak 8am to 4pm.
Similarly when I stuck with their old package I noticed my speeds dropped below their advertised maximum caps at times also.
If this is the kind of practice arguably the UK's most transparent ISP engages in it's no wonder users are confused about caps. The argument about the validity of ISPs imposing caps is one thing but the fact is that ISPs can't even be honest to their customers either and I'd argue this is the crux of the problem in terms of end user confusion on the issue.
I say this because he donated a sizeable amount to the Republican campaign.
I simply do not believe if Will Wright gave any care to evolutionary theory and evolutionary biology he would be such a staunch Republican supporter in this election.
It is as you say rather scary that Spore is passed off as a game about evolutionary theory when it in fact teaches quite the opposite- intelligent design. One has to wonder what Will Wright's real motives behind suggesting this is a game about evolution actually are.
You are the scariest person I've ever encountered on Slashdot, that is an achievement beyond all other achievements.
After reading your posts I see why people would want the option to have traumatic memories erased.
Because the article is written by British press for their default British readership perhaps?
Lot more expensive though ;)
I'd argue that's more an issue of game specific design problems though than an issue with the advantages/disadvantages of the MMO genre as a whole.
DAoC did indeed require a massive amount of time investment compared to most other MMOs and whilst time does play into the majority it is good to see with some of the more recent ones such as Warhammer online that they are making some effort to make MMOs a little more casual.
Personally I always figured the best MMO commercially is one where your players always come back but only need to spend a minimal amount of time in game to get their enjoyment, afterall getting subscription costs whilst lowering bandwidth and hardware costs is surely only going to be good for business! The issue most MMOs seem to have is that they don't have enough real content to keep their players hooked so they keep them hooked by making it take ages to complete said content by adding time sinks and use that to keep people playing.
Again without meaning to sound like I'm hyping Warhammer Online up I do at least like the fact I can log in, do a couple of quick quests, maybe a couple of scenarios and log out after maybe only an hour and come away feeling like I actually got somewhere. That's a far cry from DAoC's ML raids on their release for example which could take upwards of a single 10hr sitting worst case.
People do get to be special in MMOs. Particularly in those with a strong PvP element like Ultima Online had, like Dark Age of Camelot had and so on. Those who rack up the most kills, those who are the best players are always more respected/hated than your average joe.
You make your own name in an MMO, sure you may not be playing Luke Skywalker but if you can defeat anyone else 1 vs 1 on a server then be sure that many will look up to you and many more will hate you.
It goes further than just PvP though, I've seen people who for example in Ultima Online had the most money, the most rare items and so forth and were themselves looked up to. I've seen blacksmiths who can churn out more perfect quality armour by having the mental (in?)capacity to sit their mindlessly crafting away and still be nice enough to charge reasonable prices. There's also raid leaders, people who may have led raids to kill the biggest monster in game however many times more than the next one down or who have led hundreds of allies through certain tough quests for example.
Every MMO server/side has it's heroes and that's what some people like about MMOs, you get to be a hero, someone special where you get real recognition from real players rather than simply NPCs telling you you're great in single player games.
It may sound a little sad, but the phenomena really does exist. You're only like everyone else in an MMO if you don't bring anything to the community, if you want to do well or simply if you have the time to do well and stand out you absolutely can. For some being not Luke Skywalker, but a character of their own creation who stands out as a leader to their team mates is good enough for them.
"So let met get this straight. You're comparing a document that's several centuries old to a scientific paper written by a dispassionate mathematician studying the data results from an array of cinetheodolites [l-3com.com]? One of those two documents is by it's very definition the heart of theology. The other is very clearly scientific analysis. One we trust based on our belief system. The other we trust because we can replicate the experiment and verify the data with other equipment."
But that's the problem, could it really hold up to scrutiny by respected figures? It's easy to say that there is a lack of peer review for these types of research because of the damage it does to one's career but perhaps this damage to the career stems from the fact UFO research has historically abused the scientific process much like intelligent design and most anti-global warming research does.
If someone says something is scientific it doesn't add an air of validity to it and again this is the danger that intelligent design plays on that people are quick to put faith in science in the same way they put faith in religion.
I'm all for fully peer reviewed papers that are peer reviewed by some of the most respected figures but I'm absolutely not going to blindly trust papers by people who write them in order to try and add an air of validity to their existing beliefs. It's easy then to point out people who have been involved in said research previously being skeptics but again it's one of the human minds biggest faults that exposure to a particular subject can lead to belief in it even if unwarranted.
I'm not someone who thinks we're alone in the universe but I do realise that planets old enough to result in the chance of housing an advanced civilisation are too far away to reach us without breaking the speed of light, something which, as far as we know is impossible. Could we be wrong on that? Sure, would I place a bet on us being wrong? No. Similarly, I wouldn't place what I believe on it either because the fact is that that is real peer reviewed, time tested science and this is where the conflict lies, real peer reviewed, time tested science conflicts with what you suggest goes for being science.
One other important point is that of the supposedly unexplainable sightings/abductions they are all very different pointing to the idea that we're being visited not by one, but by many advanced civilisations and this makes even less sense statistically and scientifically.
I think you missed the point. From your very own comment it sounds like what they were saying is that if you have your PC turned off for 16hrs of the day using 1 watt and being able to turn it on and be productive instantly is better than sitting waiting for a couple of minutes using 100s of watts for the system to boot up from full power off before you can be productive. It sounds like what they were saying is effectively that a few minutes of time where you can't do anything at 100 watts is worse than hours of time where you can't do anything at 1 watt.
I'm not arguing the case either way as I don't have any numbers to judgeby but it sounds like a possibility.
"One might consider something like this [engadget.com] a modern re-imagining of Ezekiel's wheels."
Indeed one might.
But then, the text is so obscure and non-sensical for the most part one might make pretty much whatever they want from it.
You're making the same mistake that most people with religious beliefs make. The problem is that all the quotes you give sound much like your average fantasy/sci-fi story, just because something was written in ancient times doesn't mean it's not still fiction. Fiction isn't a genre that just appeared in the 20th century.
In another couple of thousand years I'd hope people have become intelligent enough in general to not look back at Lord of the rings and read descriptions of the giant eagles as proof that we all believed in alien spaceships visiting Earth.
"1. that there is something unidentified in our airspace. Project Twinkle definitively proves this."
Yes, roughly as well as the Bible proves god exists.
The crux of the problem is this, whilst we have UFO sightings world wide the sheer number reported from the US is entirely disproportionate- especially abduction reports.
The number of reports from the rest of the world simply don't match up to those from the US, statistically it just doesn't make sense unless someone can suggest a valid reason why visitors from another world would be interest mainly in Americans?
We have people who say they've seen UFOs but we still have no photos that aren't either extremely poor quality or been exposed as hoaxes. This means the reality is we still have no more evidence for UFO visits than we do for the existence of god and the UFO is consistently, as in all your examples provided only as something unprovable "Oh it moved too fast for us to catch", how convenient.
There's also plenty of room for plausible explanations in many cases too, how can people be so sure Russians don't have aircraft as high tech as proposed by the aurora project, it's not like the Russians are somehow less capable of keeping secrets, with their oppresive regime quite the contrary.
Even in this newly released report a pretty obvious answer is sitting right in front of us. The incident happened in 1991, the object was brown. What was flying to/from the UK in 1991? British Tornado and Jaguar aircraft to and from Iraq from the first gulf war. The MoD confirmed it wasn't a balloon, a missile, a rocket and nothing more- why in war time would they confirm the flight path of their military jets?
If we get some evidence that's a little more concrete then great, but whilst UFOs remain as provable as the existence of god in the context given then it really can't be given any more merit than religious belief.
HAWX, the arcade-style flightsim that's coming out under the Tom Clancy brand is due to include Ghost Teams, Rainbow teams and such apparently, so there were already plans to bring the Tom Clancy universe together before this at least.
The IWF issues a blacklist that all UK ISPs implement so yes, it does act to decide what content is blacklisted in the UK. It is much more than just a hotline.
This blacklist deals with child porn. Criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content aren't filtered by this blacklist but are passed on to the authorities and ISPs to deal with via take downs instead.
Thank you however for demonstrating exactly what the problem is with the IWF. That people don't even realise that it does act as a censor.
See here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/07/bt_iwf_trails/
here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/may/26/onlinesupplement
or here:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2119771/web-watchdog-issues-paedophile-blacklist
Again, I support the work they do currently if it is as suggested, however I do not support the fact that they are allowed to manage it without any oversight or public awareness.
www.iwf.org.uk
Whilst to be fair as far as I understand it does a good job in that it focuses entirely on child porn and hasn't as I'm aware stepped out of this remit I am a little concerned that it came into play without anyone ever really noticing or anyone ever really being told.
Can we be sure this organisation does only do what it says it does? Can we be sure it doesn't ever abuse it's powers? Would we ever know if it did?
It is not run by the government and is an independent organisation, so not having a connection to the government increases my confidence in it a million fold at least however.
Perhaps this was the crux of the problem, they used a defence of suggesting if they hand it over it would be self-incriminating?
Wouldn't a better defence have been to suggest that the data encrypted was entirely irrelevant to the case. Wouldn't it then be up to the police to actually do some police work and prove otherwise?
By using a self-incrimination defence it's effectively admitting, yeah you've got some data that's evidence locked up but you're not handing it over. Surely it's better to simply just deny the encrypted data is relevant to the case or even that you've no idea what that encrypted data is. Hell, claim it's your own personal copyrighted works or some trade secrets and get them to prove to a court either that it's not or that they need access to said private content. I'd have thought both of these would put the burden on the police to do police work in an ideal scenario.
That said, Labour's totalitarian regime doesn't follow the ideal scenario mindset and innocent until proven guilty means nothing anymore so I guess either way these people were screwed.
If the people are guilty then it's great they've been caught, but the way they go about reach the goal is entirely unacceptable and comes down to one thing - the police are too damn lazy to actually do any police work nowadays. It's all about abusing various laws and technologies Labour has handed them which they really shouldn't have.
...and minus a massive amount of customization
This is the problem, whilst things like Joomla are fantastic to get you up and running near instantly, they're also useless if you want to step away from their way of doing things with regards to categories/sections and such.
There isn't a one size fits all CMS out there. You make compromises and choose which gives you the best fit to your problem but if you end up using one that is quite low level (well, probably a framework rather than a CMS e.g. Zend) to give you the flexibility you need whilst still missing some points due consideration really has to be given to building one yourself.
Indeed but I can understand what the article might be getting at without having read it yet.
It's always best to use the best language for the job and far to many Java or .NET shops will use Java and .NET for everything even when there are much better tools for the job. It's a problem that arises time and time again and it took some time to convince many C++ developers that whilst C++ could do everything it wasn't necessarily best for everything.
If the article is suggesting these languages should be used for the sake of being used then that is rather daft and I don't know why we see many blogs like this (e.g. "Use F# it's awesome!"- well no, it's not in every scenario). If however it's suggesting that these languages each have a specific niche that it should be used for where it beats the likes of Java/.NET then yes he's on to something.
There's always a balance of course, a project consisting of 20 different languages would also almost certainly be rather stupid and messy, but there's a balance to strike for sure to achieve maximum efficiency, stability and features and in some cases there is merit in using more than one language.
It's been known for a long time that noises/vibrations bring worms to the surface. The only news here is that they're imitating the sounds created by moles (if that's really even true).
Even when I repot a plant in the garden and take it out of it's old pot and crumble the old soil mix away from it's roots the bits of soil falling off hit the floor and make worms come up because of the tapping sound of small objects hitting the floor presumably being much like the sound of rain hitting the floor.
I know this because the plants I repot are usually cacti and with the spikes resting on the floor and the rootball up in the air the worms have at times been dumb enough to come up underneath the cacti and ended up getting themself impaled on the spikes. I don't particularly like worms, especially ones I have to extract cactus spines from.
But I was coming from a different path from you, however if anything you have an advantage.
I didn't go to Uni or get a degree but worked in tech. support for 7 years starting when I was 18. I've always liked programming and have done it since I was young, and whilst I have now nearly finished my degree having done it full time alongside work the important thing to realise is that you have to be able to show you're a good programmer and a degree by itself wont cut it. If you can do it the 2 - 5 years thing becomes irrelevant as I was able to get a few interviews with a good CV and then outshine many candidates who had been programming for years.
If you can demonstrate on your CV not just a long list of languages but that you understand the fundamentals of programming and can work with any language thrown at you, if you can show you understand not just a UI API like Windows forms but how to build one from the ground up and hence how to work with Swing through to Windows forms through to MFC's Windowing classes for example then you're in with a good chance of getting that first interview.
The difficulty is you have to know these things, you wont be able to blag it so put some work into learning everything you can. It may be a year before you're ready, you may not be able to move straight away. It's probably worth working on some open source projects if you can.
The payoff is that if you do put in the time, effort and energy a lot of firms will care little about your experience but the fact that you have demonstrated all the way through that you can do the job and with such a good understanding, possibly even do it better than people who have been a "programmer" for years but only know Java and will use that language for everything even when it's simply not the right tool for the job.
But I also take issue with the premise that we're one clock cycle away from true AI.
A dog giving you it's paw after it's been trained to do so is thought to be intelligent behaviour by most, yet a human doing the same certainly wouldn't be seen as something that is a sign of particular intelligence.
A person being able to do some difficult math in short time is thought to be intelligent but a computer performing the same action not so.
The point is, the definition of intelligence is a moving goal post, it does in itself depend on context. As an aside, context is one of the biggest challenges facing AI but ironically one of the few that solutions to the Turing test go some way to solving.
The reason I take issue with the original comment is because we've had true AI for a long time, the biggest dissapointment for some is that it's simply been weak AI, however programs that can solve the Turing test are still not certifiable as strong AI so the original comment really makes little sense. It either meant we're close to strong AI, in which case it's wrong, we're not, or it meant we haven't yet achieved true AI, which again is wrong, we have.
AI has brought us a lot but as soon as it becomes a technique that is understood and used by many rather than a small set of AI researchers it stops being seen as AI, it starts being seen as just another algorithm. The problem is this will always be the case, because if we can create a computer simulation of a real brain as a set of clever algorithms it's still going to be just another set of algorithms. Similarly though this is where your comment seems a little short sighted because it faces the same issue - like with intelligence, there is no clear definition of understanding, one possible suggestion for a definition is that of being able to make associations, but this is something computers can do so for the communication to not contain understanding we'd only ever be using a definition of understanding that adds some mysticism to what understand is rather than the reality of it being just another process that occurs in the human brain at the end of the day.
These new tests can't be put down because they're not strong AI however, they increase our understanding of AI and lead to better tools. After all most online automated support assistants stem from attempts to solve the Turing tests.
People have overly high expectations for AI due to various sci-fi movies through the ages that have portrayed strong AI and as such when they see programs that can't quite complete the Turing test they're less than impressed. AI has given us everything from computer game opponents through to important data mining techniques through to self-repairing hardware/software. It's an important field and one that deserves a lot more respect than it gets, after all, many of the advancements that led to the modern computer were based around the quests for intelligent machines in the first place.