Think of congested traffic as though it were a fluid mechanics problem, molecules of liquid passing through a pipe whose diameter (number of lanes) changes. The molecules fill every portion of the pipe. They don't artificially contract into a smaller stream a quarter of a mile before the pipe restriction.
Yet you won't make the fluid move quicker by going quicker before the restriction. In most cases where there is merging the limitation is the reduced capacity of the merged section (a packed highway isn't somehow going to go the same speed in 2 lanes as it does in 3), not the merging beforehand. One action that absolutely infuriates me is when people go over to onramps, zip up as far as they can, and then merge back : They are doing nothing to speed up traffic (except for themselves), but instead they are putting themselves in front of all those they've passed. It might not seem like a big deal, but pretty soon while crawling along Joe Considerate is spending an extra 15 minutes because 600 cars passed him on the merging lane.
It goes to show that our culture prizes a sort of equality of suffering over problem resolution.
While I don't so much care about motorcycles (though the moment they enter the center lane they have foresaken any right to use an actual lane until they have cleared the congestion, otherwise they _WILL_ slow up everyone else as they move back and prevent motion in a lane), people do care about themselves suffering more because of inconsiderate people who take every advantage, even illegal, that they can get. If you're going to petition that people passing on the merging lane somehow magically makes traffic move quicker then I will respond that you need a refresher in that fluids course.
Uh huh. While this appears to be nothing more than a pretty lame troll, you're exactly the sort of angry person that I'm talking about: Well gosh, thank-you for telling me what you consider appropriate behaviour.
However, your suggestion is absolutely useless. You see, train stations tend to have hundreds or thousands of people all mulling about, with a pickup area that has hundreds of cars coming and going (and not to mention in my case often my wife can't make it in which case I find alternate transport from the opposite side of the train). A cellphone is an efficiency coordination tool, and your personal sanctioning of it is absolutely irrelevant to me.
Ppl talk and do stuff all the time and behave quite normally without cell phones.
I honestly believe that one of the reasons that people do silly things while talking on a cell phone has to do with a combination of poor quality (even with great new digital phones there is still breaking out, fade outs, etc. Yelling into the cell phone "HELLO? HELLO? HELLO? HELLO? YOU THERE?" of course doesn't help, but it is a symptom of the disease) and the fact that people are without visual clues when they talk: i.e. When your boss is telling you something he has no idea how much concentration that you can put into listening at any moment, so he barrels on with the conversation nonstop, while you direct every ounce of your brain power to listening and interpreting what he's saying. When two people are in a car talking to each other, on the other hand, the passenger pauses the conversation while the driver changes lanes, backs into a spot, etc: These little visual clues give us a chance to slow down for a minute.
If you want an example, look at how people handle their cellphone: They seem to try to jam it right into their brain, and often as they try hard to listen they'll turn their eyes towards the cell phone side of their head. On the flip side though there are veteran cellphone users who aren't distracted while using the cellphone, but instead they use tools like saying "just one second, ok", or "I'll call you when I'm in the office, but thanks for the update Bob".
..All of our wonderful commo toys make it too easy to concentrate on the act of communicating even when we have nothing at all to say.
You do have a mouth, don't you? And when you speak to someone, is it a long, drawn out silence followed by "the final word"?
Instant messaging, email, and even cellphones, all enable something called conversation where two or more people exchange ideas back and forth, neither making any grand claims about what they're saying being the final word, but rather an eventual conclusion is drawn out of the ether (or, in other cases, it isn't because it shouldn't be).
I was on a train recently when the cellphone in my pocket started vibrating ("is that a cell phone in your pocket...") an alert to me. Anyways, as I was pulling it to read the display (which ended up being a voicemail indication) I noticed the man in the opposing seat wagging his head back and forth in utter disgust, apparently, that I was using a cellphone. Other times I've spoken to my wife as I approached the station to see if she's waiting, and again I've noticed the moral superiors wagging their heads at the use of a cellphone. Note that I am a _very_ quiet cell phone talker (I long ago realized that the compression technology in modern cell phones make whispering functionally equal to yelling, and hence the latter is just a sign of a low intelligence ignorant brute), and me lightly talking to my wife is absolutely eclipsed by the sounds of shuffing newspapers, people clearing their throats, and just general conversations going on throughout the train.
I guess my point is this: I will concede, without any doubt, that the same social morons and ignoramuses still exist, and now rather than just talking to the person beside them at 96dbA, now they do it into a cellphone. I also will concede that it is unbelievably irritating hearing an endless chorus of ringtones by people who don't realize that yes, there is a volume setting other than superloud. At the same time though a lot of the anti-cellphone rage just seems to be redirected anger: People just simply can't stand each other nowadays, and cell phones give us an easy target.
...you should already be prepared to read lots of typos and shorthand spellings
Sorry, but it just reads like a very, very lame 1996 IRC session, when the kids first realized that they could create their own sub-language. Of course most of them quickly moved on, and said language became the realm of "newbies".
Perhaps he could have started it off with an "All Your Base Are Belong To Us", or "YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK!", or "Is that your final answer?".
I completely agree: This is the sort of abuse of the patent system that absolutely thwarts innovation (because people who might have an actual reasonable hope of producing something like this will be put off by this onerous patent which, by its very uselessness, claims a vast realm of possible technology, yet the patenter themselves have offered absolutely nothing more than every single child has thought up at some point (I know I had this simple idea as a child, although I immediately realized that there are an infinite points of light hitting any one point by an infinite number of angles, so simply putting a composite sensor and opposing light wouldn't be sufficient).
I just don't understand why people are so negative...
Sort of like when the guy cut and pasted an advertisement as a Slashdot article, it's the spirit of the submission that leads to the likely response. In this case the submission basically argues that one should use a "cheap 128MB video card" as RAM, yet in my neck of the woods I can buy over a GB of DDR333 RAM for less than I can buy a 128MB videocard. It just was a really nonsensical way of wording that.
While they use the term "VRAM", harkening back to the days when you could get a DRAM or VRAM equipped Virge 3D (the VRAMs were better, if only because they allowed for higher refresh rates at higher resolutions), I think they only mean "using the RAM on your video card as main system RAM", and of course most video cards come with DDR RAM these days.
I think I have a editor stalker. I had a comment a few days ago modded down as on-topic, despite the fact it wasn't and that it went onto to get 4, Insightful, or something like that.
I'm just going out on a limb here, but I suspect that you might want to consider your user website link a possible reason why you got modded down.
How very true. Firstly, text like "the new breed PC of tomorrow" is just pathetic given that there is absolutely nothing revolutionary in it apart from size, but for that we have the "computer of tomorrow" that we call "laptops", and they're even more space efficient. Perhaps they think SPDIF (on low end soundcards, and some motherboard headers) or gigabit LAN is really impressive, however anyone can ad that in their PC if they so desired.
What's especially laughable, though, is looking at their heatsink (a large piece of copper) and seeing the phrase "patent pending". Give me a break: I think the cookware industry has some prior art on the use of metal to spread heat.
This is a blatant advertisement, and nothing less. Was Slashdot kidding when they had the april fools story stating that they'd intermix ads with real articles?
You've apparently missed the entire concept of evolutionary adaptation.
Oh I'm fully aware of Darwinism, and I don't entirely believe that it is the sole explanation for adaption. i.e. I believe in survival of the fittest, but on the flip side I do believe that there is an intelligent, intentional manipulation of offspring traits by parents to best cope with the world. I say this having studied biology as a refresher course and in high school, so I have absolutely no credentials to speak of in this realm, however something about the survival of the fittest explanation just doesn't seem complete. Even using the example you gave regarding penicillin, what possible difference would a person not completing the medicine's regiment make to the survival of P-resistant strains of bacteria? Of course, it wouldn't: They're either resistant, or they're not, and it seems more likely that "injured" but not killed regular bacteria adapted their "offspring" to be p-resistant with what they have learned, so to speak.
(and, er, what's the difference between a virus and a germ?)
Doesn't "germ" generally just mean "small nasty things"? It isn't, as far as I'm aware, a scientific term, but rather is a historic term used before the things that affect us were classified, and hence includes viruses, bacteria, or even really tiny bugs if one were so inclined as to stretch the interpretation that far (goatse style).
Regarding viruses: I've often been fascinated to here people talk about viruses "replicating", or about some sort of viral intelligence: Perhaps I'm just way out there (medicine is NOT my field, although my wife is a researcher for a drug company, so I..err...have proximity basis to say these things:-)), but is a virus nothing more than a spec of organic matter that causes interference in living organisms? While the differentiation may seem irrelevant, I find it questionable when news reports talk about viruses adapting, or as some evil force, when in reality I believe they are really our own bodies hurting themselves by reproducing and being confused by little strands of genetic matter. Bacteria is a little life form, whereas viruses are just a water droplet that, if it gets in that chip in your cars paint, will lead to internal rusting throughout. Blah.
Re:People are scared of things they don't understa
on
E-terrorism, Bark or Bite?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What's the biggest rage in the world right now? The Internet.
They have the internet on computers now?
As such, the fact that it's a magic black box that is connected to everything means that it's a danger, and needs to be regulated.
There is a very real danger in that many systems that have no material reason for being on the internet are accessible from the internet: Maybe the control systems company thought it'd be more economical than using a private frame relay, or they wanted to be able to put in their presentations "Internet enabled". We're talking about the control systems for hydroelectric dams, some power generation and control facilities, traffic control systems, etc. The danger in these cases is very real.
However, personally I would completely agree that there should be a heavy amount of regulation. For instance, each ISP needs to have some onus of responsibility for the traffic originating from them to peering partners. I'm not saying that UUNet needs to censor alt.binaries.*, but rather that a massive DOS attack originating from UUNet sources should be quenched by UUNet and should not be allowed to saturate the destination. There are a myriad of situations like that where the internet is far too reckless (for instance, as has been mentioned in a million postings otherwise, all ISPs should dump packets which contain functionally invalid source IPs. It's pretty trivial stuff).
I'm not really saying that it's fair use, but rather am somewhat sarcastically bringing up a caveman mentality point that most GPL/anti software copyright fanatics continually bring up: The only thing stopping us from using other people's comic book characters, in these people's minds, is artificial limits (i.e. legal copyrights), therefore it should be free for all to use.
In reality I find what MIT did to be mighty lame, regardless of how few copies went out, and they were legally bound to ask for permission, and if they found royalty costs too high they could feel free to draw their own original works, or find a competitor.
I appreciate that they deserve compensation for this blatant theft of their IP (though note that irony of that: Wouldn't most slashdotters claim that MIT was just pursuing "fair use" if they paid for their own copy?), but I find this section of their lawsuit a bit absurd:
MIT's unwarranted use of Radix's lead character, "Valerie Fiores," permanently damaged the comic book, said creator Ray Lai.
"People who buy Radix buy a fantasy," said Lai. "Now MIT says all future U.S. soldiers will look like Radix. They're saying Radix is not fantasy, it's reality. By doing that, MIT stole our ability to market Radix as escapist entertainment."
..But not the majority of kitchen appliances:) - or vacumns, unless just to spook your pets
Actually, don't laugh-It works! Prior to our last move, my wife and I allowed our two cats to jump on, sleep on, kneed on, and otherwise abuse our livingroom furniture, but one of the first things we did when we moved was to replace the old furniture with new furniture. As hard as it was to do, this necessitated making the new furniture a "no go" zone for the cats, both of whom had gotten very use to the idea that it was their domain (the reason, btw, is because I have not, and will not, get my cats declawed, however they damage upholstery just by moving around as they insist upon using their claws for added stability). Quickly they learned that any transgressions in our presence would lead to a rapid shushing, and they stopped, but I knew by tell tail crinkles on the surface that I'd carefully smoothed as a test that they'd ventured on the forbidden land during the night, and when we were away. Anyways, I set up one of the X10 infrared sensors on the edge of the couch (the "Hawkeye II", I believe:-}), and hooked up a vacuum cleaner in the on position to a nearby X10 controlled relay. That night, in the middle of the night, I was jarred awake by the sound of a cat scurrying up the stairs, and a vacuum humming away. After several nights of sporatic vacuum activations, the lesson was learned and the cats equated the couches with bad things, and ceased going on them. Anyways, long story short (whoops, too late for that now!), it worked great.
but VS 6/C++ works a hell of a lot better than VS.NET/C++
Offtopic, but what in the world do you mean by that comment? You realize, of course, that you can create non-.NET projects in VS.NET with C++, with all of the features of VS6, plus a hell of a lot? Additionally, the compiler is vastly optimized in the.NET version.
I have several very large projects which I've "converted" to VS.NET C++ (from VS6 C++), and it was absolutely painless (mind you I don't use the MFC, and I only partially use the ATL), and the end result is that I have a vastly improved debugger, a marginally better editor, and greatly improved code optimization for some types of code.
Don't be thrown off just because of the.NET team: Microsoft knows that most successful projects out there (on the Win32 platform) are developed in C++ (usually with neither MFC or ATL, but rather direct COM and Win32), so they wouldn't dare do anything to mess with that.
I highly recommend that you get a copy of Peopleware. It is a fantastic book overall, but it deals in extent with the death march that is development overtime. I highly recommend you give a copy to your boss as a "Boss' day" present or the like, feigning that you're not quite sure what it's about.
It's not a spelling error, but rather it's a fairly common word transposition where people confuse the meanings of effect and affect. In any case, it's hardly mockworthy.
Google is NOT a "gatekeeper" on the we. It DOES however possess significant market power because as you observed it is the search engine of choice.
Yup, Google is great for sure, however in essence we have elected Google to being the gatekeeper of the web by making it so important. Just like the elections, though, one can't simply brush off any criticism by saying "Yeah, well he was voted in, so deal with it": Criticism is a part of the system that made Google the winner, and now that Google is in charge, so to speak, critical evaluations of Google's technologies and implementations is critically important. I'm not saying that Google should change based on the crticism, but said criticism can help consumers understand the benefits and weaknesses, perhaps helping get the next big thing off the ground.
Many of the replies to criticisms (even constructive) of Google have been along the lines of "Yeah, well it's good enough, so shut up". That's just sad. I appreciate that Google has few ads, and that they're powered by Linux, and that they were the underdog that made it, however none of that explains the belief on here that Google is a saint that is beyond reproach. Google is a business and represents individuals, and as such it will be driven by selfish interests (note that this is not a negative. Selfish merely means in their own best interest, not overtly greedy or maniacal or anything like that), so everything they do can't be judged in a manner that presumes that they're only concerned for the common good.
Re:That is a really really stupid question.
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 1
A t1 is a t1 is a t1
Actually, that isn't true. A T1 is 24 DS0 64Kbps connections, and many vendors sell partial (plenty of T1 variants. However, if one contracts for 1.544Mbps and the vendor says they'll install that, it's doubtful that they'll put in something less just to be tricky.
An exercise in character assassinations
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've skimmed plenty of the below comments and they all seem to agree that this anti-google guy is a goofball.
This whole bizarre Salon article and the followup Slashdot postings seems like a horrible, reprehensible character assassination because someone said something that someone else didn't like (is it too late, and Google has gotten too powerful:-}). If you read the Salon article with a critical eye, you'll see an article slamming someone who actually made a fairly logical and reasonably thought-out complaint about the PageRank system, carefully interspacing comments about his counterculture past with his simple belief that the "democractic" nature of PageRank isn't democratic at all. With wink of the eye comments like "(using the royal "we")" make it very clear what the bias of the author is: Disparage this guy no matter what. They went so far as to make claims on behalf of him (which I can't see in his article), such as "In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld."" : Funny, but I don't see that in his paper, but instead that appears to be Salon making some rhetorical exaggerations to push his opinion to extremes.
The bizarrest thing is how quickly everyone hopped on the bandwagon to slam this "kook", all based upon the carefully manipulative wording of a Salon article. It is especially disconcerting given that this is the type of guy (questioning "the establishment") that the Slashdot crowd usually hoists on their shoulders and casts as their hero. This Salon article is DISPICABLE, and the methods that the author uses to villainize this guy is a study in evasive techniques (Google's cookie and search tracking doesn't matter, you see, because there are sites that are worse).
Slashdot Mirror
Think of congested traffic as though it were a fluid mechanics problem, molecules of liquid passing through a pipe whose diameter (number of lanes) changes. The molecules fill every portion of the pipe. They don't artificially contract into a smaller stream a quarter of a mile before the pipe restriction.
Yet you won't make the fluid move quicker by going quicker before the restriction. In most cases where there is merging the limitation is the reduced capacity of the merged section (a packed highway isn't somehow going to go the same speed in 2 lanes as it does in 3), not the merging beforehand. One action that absolutely infuriates me is when people go over to onramps, zip up as far as they can, and then merge back : They are doing nothing to speed up traffic (except for themselves), but instead they are putting themselves in front of all those they've passed. It might not seem like a big deal, but pretty soon while crawling along Joe Considerate is spending an extra 15 minutes because 600 cars passed him on the merging lane.
It goes to show that our culture prizes a sort of equality of suffering over problem resolution.
While I don't so much care about motorcycles (though the moment they enter the center lane they have foresaken any right to use an actual lane until they have cleared the congestion, otherwise they _WILL_ slow up everyone else as they move back and prevent motion in a lane), people do care about themselves suffering more because of inconsiderate people who take every advantage, even illegal, that they can get. If you're going to petition that people passing on the merging lane somehow magically makes traffic move quicker then I will respond that you need a refresher in that fluids course.
Uh huh. While this appears to be nothing more than a pretty lame troll, you're exactly the sort of angry person that I'm talking about: Well gosh, thank-you for telling me what you consider appropriate behaviour.
However, your suggestion is absolutely useless. You see, train stations tend to have hundreds or thousands of people all mulling about, with a pickup area that has hundreds of cars coming and going (and not to mention in my case often my wife can't make it in which case I find alternate transport from the opposite side of the train). A cellphone is an efficiency coordination tool, and your personal sanctioning of it is absolutely irrelevant to me.
Ppl talk and do stuff all the time and behave quite normally without cell phones.
I honestly believe that one of the reasons that people do silly things while talking on a cell phone has to do with a combination of poor quality (even with great new digital phones there is still breaking out, fade outs, etc. Yelling into the cell phone "HELLO? HELLO? HELLO? HELLO? YOU THERE?" of course doesn't help, but it is a symptom of the disease) and the fact that people are without visual clues when they talk: i.e. When your boss is telling you something he has no idea how much concentration that you can put into listening at any moment, so he barrels on with the conversation nonstop, while you direct every ounce of your brain power to listening and interpreting what he's saying. When two people are in a car talking to each other, on the other hand, the passenger pauses the conversation while the driver changes lanes, backs into a spot, etc: These little visual clues give us a chance to slow down for a minute.
If you want an example, look at how people handle their cellphone: They seem to try to jam it right into their brain, and often as they try hard to listen they'll turn their eyes towards the cell phone side of their head. On the flip side though there are veteran cellphone users who aren't distracted while using the cellphone, but instead they use tools like saying "just one second, ok", or "I'll call you when I'm in the office, but thanks for the update Bob".
..All of our wonderful commo toys make it too easy to concentrate on the act of communicating even when we have nothing at all to say.
You do have a mouth, don't you? And when you speak to someone, is it a long, drawn out silence followed by "the final word"?
Instant messaging, email, and even cellphones, all enable something called conversation where two or more people exchange ideas back and forth, neither making any grand claims about what they're saying being the final word, but rather an eventual conclusion is drawn out of the ether (or, in other cases, it isn't because it shouldn't be).
I was on a train recently when the cellphone in my pocket started vibrating ("is that a cell phone in your pocket...") an alert to me. Anyways, as I was pulling it to read the display (which ended up being a voicemail indication) I noticed the man in the opposing seat wagging his head back and forth in utter disgust, apparently, that I was using a cellphone. Other times I've spoken to my wife as I approached the station to see if she's waiting, and again I've noticed the moral superiors wagging their heads at the use of a cellphone. Note that I am a _very_ quiet cell phone talker (I long ago realized that the compression technology in modern cell phones make whispering functionally equal to yelling, and hence the latter is just a sign of a low intelligence ignorant brute), and me lightly talking to my wife is absolutely eclipsed by the sounds of shuffing newspapers, people clearing their throats, and just general conversations going on throughout the train.
I guess my point is this: I will concede, without any doubt, that the same social morons and ignoramuses still exist, and now rather than just talking to the person beside them at 96dbA, now they do it into a cellphone. I also will concede that it is unbelievably irritating hearing an endless chorus of ringtones by people who don't realize that yes, there is a volume setting other than superloud. At the same time though a lot of the anti-cellphone rage just seems to be redirected anger: People just simply can't stand each other nowadays, and cell phones give us an easy target.
...you should already be prepared to read lots of typos and shorthand spellings
Sorry, but it just reads like a very, very lame 1996 IRC session, when the kids first realized that they could create their own sub-language. Of course most of them quickly moved on, and said language became the realm of "newbies".
Perhaps he could have started it off with an "All Your Base Are Belong To Us", or "YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK!", or "Is that your final answer?".
I completely agree: This is the sort of abuse of the patent system that absolutely thwarts innovation (because people who might have an actual reasonable hope of producing something like this will be put off by this onerous patent which, by its very uselessness, claims a vast realm of possible technology, yet the patenter themselves have offered absolutely nothing more than every single child has thought up at some point (I know I had this simple idea as a child, although I immediately realized that there are an infinite points of light hitting any one point by an infinite number of angles, so simply putting a composite sensor and opposing light wouldn't be sufficient).
I just don't understand why people are so negative...
Sort of like when the guy cut and pasted an advertisement as a Slashdot article, it's the spirit of the submission that leads to the likely response. In this case the submission basically argues that one should use a "cheap 128MB video card" as RAM, yet in my neck of the woods I can buy over a GB of DDR333 RAM for less than I can buy a 128MB videocard. It just was a really nonsensical way of wording that.
While they use the term "VRAM", harkening back to the days when you could get a DRAM or VRAM equipped Virge 3D (the VRAMs were better, if only because they allowed for higher refresh rates at higher resolutions), I think they only mean "using the RAM on your video card as main system RAM", and of course most video cards come with DDR RAM these days.
...How to use that "cheap" P4 as a, err, inexpensive coffee warmer.
I think I have a editor stalker. I had a comment a few days ago modded down as on-topic, despite the fact it wasn't and that it went onto to get 4, Insightful, or something like that.
I'm just going out on a limb here, but I suspect that you might want to consider your user website link a possible reason why you got modded down.
since i bought one, and i liked it, i tought it could be interesting.
Out of curiousity, where'd you buy it?
How very true. Firstly, text like "the new breed PC of tomorrow" is just pathetic given that there is absolutely nothing revolutionary in it apart from size, but for that we have the "computer of tomorrow" that we call "laptops", and they're even more space efficient. Perhaps they think SPDIF (on low end soundcards, and some motherboard headers) or gigabit LAN is really impressive, however anyone can ad that in their PC if they so desired.
What's especially laughable, though, is looking at their heatsink (a large piece of copper) and seeing the phrase "patent pending". Give me a break: I think the cookware industry has some prior art on the use of metal to spread heat.
This is a blatant advertisement, and nothing less. Was Slashdot kidding when they had the april fools story stating that they'd intermix ads with real articles?
You've apparently missed the entire concept of evolutionary adaptation.
Oh I'm fully aware of Darwinism, and I don't entirely believe that it is the sole explanation for adaption. i.e. I believe in survival of the fittest, but on the flip side I do believe that there is an intelligent, intentional manipulation of offspring traits by parents to best cope with the world. I say this having studied biology as a refresher course and in high school, so I have absolutely no credentials to speak of in this realm, however something about the survival of the fittest explanation just doesn't seem complete. Even using the example you gave regarding penicillin, what possible difference would a person not completing the medicine's regiment make to the survival of P-resistant strains of bacteria? Of course, it wouldn't: They're either resistant, or they're not, and it seems more likely that "injured" but not killed regular bacteria adapted their "offspring" to be p-resistant with what they have learned, so to speak.
(and, er, what's the difference between a virus and a germ?)
:-)), but is a virus nothing more than a spec of organic matter that causes interference in living organisms? While the differentiation may seem irrelevant, I find it questionable when news reports talk about viruses adapting, or as some evil force, when in reality I believe they are really our own bodies hurting themselves by reproducing and being confused by little strands of genetic matter. Bacteria is a little life form, whereas viruses are just a water droplet that, if it gets in that chip in your cars paint, will lead to internal rusting throughout. Blah.
Doesn't "germ" generally just mean "small nasty things"? It isn't, as far as I'm aware, a scientific term, but rather is a historic term used before the things that affect us were classified, and hence includes viruses, bacteria, or even really tiny bugs if one were so inclined as to stretch the interpretation that far (goatse style).
Regarding viruses: I've often been fascinated to here people talk about viruses "replicating", or about some sort of viral intelligence: Perhaps I'm just way out there (medicine is NOT my field, although my wife is a researcher for a drug company, so I..err...have proximity basis to say these things
What's the biggest rage in the world right now? The Internet.
They have the internet on computers now?
As such, the fact that it's a magic black box that is connected to everything means that it's a danger, and needs to be regulated.
There is a very real danger in that many systems that have no material reason for being on the internet are accessible from the internet: Maybe the control systems company thought it'd be more economical than using a private frame relay, or they wanted to be able to put in their presentations "Internet enabled". We're talking about the control systems for hydroelectric dams, some power generation and control facilities, traffic control systems, etc. The danger in these cases is very real.
However, personally I would completely agree that there should be a heavy amount of regulation. For instance, each ISP needs to have some onus of responsibility for the traffic originating from them to peering partners. I'm not saying that UUNet needs to censor alt.binaries.*, but rather that a massive DOS attack originating from UUNet sources should be quenched by UUNet and should not be allowed to saturate the destination. There are a myriad of situations like that where the internet is far too reckless (for instance, as has been mentioned in a million postings otherwise, all ISPs should dump packets which contain functionally invalid source IPs. It's pretty trivial stuff).
I'm not really saying that it's fair use, but rather am somewhat sarcastically bringing up a caveman mentality point that most GPL/anti software copyright fanatics continually bring up: The only thing stopping us from using other people's comic book characters, in these people's minds, is artificial limits (i.e. legal copyrights), therefore it should be free for all to use.
In reality I find what MIT did to be mighty lame, regardless of how few copies went out, and they were legally bound to ask for permission, and if they found royalty costs too high they could feel free to draw their own original works, or find a competitor.
I appreciate that they deserve compensation for this blatant theft of their IP (though note that irony of that: Wouldn't most slashdotters claim that MIT was just pursuing "fair use" if they paid for their own copy?), but I find this section of their lawsuit a bit absurd:
MIT's unwarranted use of Radix's lead character, "Valerie Fiores," permanently damaged the comic book, said creator Ray Lai.
"People who buy Radix buy a fantasy," said Lai.
"Now MIT says all future U.S. soldiers will look like Radix. They're saying Radix is not fantasy, it's reality. By doing that, MIT stole our ability to market Radix as escapist entertainment."
..But not the majority of kitchen appliances :) - or vacumns, unless just to spook your pets
:-}), and hooked up a vacuum cleaner in the on position to a nearby X10 controlled relay. That night, in the middle of the night, I was jarred awake by the sound of a cat scurrying up the stairs, and a vacuum humming away. After several nights of sporatic vacuum activations, the lesson was learned and the cats equated the couches with bad things, and ceased going on them. Anyways, long story short (whoops, too late for that now!), it worked great.
Actually, don't laugh-It works! Prior to our last move, my wife and I allowed our two cats to jump on, sleep on, kneed on, and otherwise abuse our livingroom furniture, but one of the first things we did when we moved was to replace the old furniture with new furniture. As hard as it was to do, this necessitated making the new furniture a "no go" zone for the cats, both of whom had gotten very use to the idea that it was their domain (the reason, btw, is because I have not, and will not, get my cats declawed, however they damage upholstery just by moving around as they insist upon using their claws for added stability). Quickly they learned that any transgressions in our presence would lead to a rapid shushing, and they stopped, but I knew by tell tail crinkles on the surface that I'd carefully smoothed as a test that they'd ventured on the forbidden land during the night, and when we were away. Anyways, I set up one of the X10 infrared sensors on the edge of the couch (the "Hawkeye II", I believe
but VS 6/C++ works a hell of a lot better than VS .NET/C++
.NET version.
.NET team: Microsoft knows that most successful projects out there (on the Win32 platform) are developed in C++ (usually with neither MFC or ATL, but rather direct COM and Win32), so they wouldn't dare do anything to mess with that.
Offtopic, but what in the world do you mean by that comment? You realize, of course, that you can create non-.NET projects in VS.NET with C++, with all of the features of VS6, plus a hell of a lot? Additionally, the compiler is vastly optimized in the
I have several very large projects which I've "converted" to VS.NET C++ (from VS6 C++), and it was absolutely painless (mind you I don't use the MFC, and I only partially use the ATL), and the end result is that I have a vastly improved debugger, a marginally better editor, and greatly improved code optimization for some types of code.
Don't be thrown off just because of the
I highly recommend that you get a copy of Peopleware. It is a fantastic book overall, but it deals in extent with the death march that is development overtime. I highly recommend you give a copy to your boss as a "Boss' day" present or the like, feigning that you're not quite sure what it's about.
It's not a spelling error, but rather it's a fairly common word transposition where people confuse the meanings of effect and affect. In any case, it's hardly mockworthy.
Google is NOT a "gatekeeper" on the we. It DOES however possess significant market power because as you observed it is the search engine of choice.
Yup, Google is great for sure, however in essence we have elected Google to being the gatekeeper of the web by making it so important. Just like the elections, though, one can't simply brush off any criticism by saying "Yeah, well he was voted in, so deal with it": Criticism is a part of the system that made Google the winner, and now that Google is in charge, so to speak, critical evaluations of Google's technologies and implementations is critically important. I'm not saying that Google should change based on the crticism, but said criticism can help consumers understand the benefits and weaknesses, perhaps helping get the next big thing off the ground.
Many of the replies to criticisms (even constructive) of Google have been along the lines of "Yeah, well it's good enough, so shut up". That's just sad. I appreciate that Google has few ads, and that they're powered by Linux, and that they were the underdog that made it, however none of that explains the belief on here that Google is a saint that is beyond reproach. Google is a business and represents individuals, and as such it will be driven by selfish interests (note that this is not a negative . Selfish merely means in their own best interest, not overtly greedy or maniacal or anything like that), so everything they do can't be judged in a manner that presumes that they're only concerned for the common good.
A t1 is a t1 is a t1
Actually, that isn't true. A T1 is 24 DS0 64Kbps connections, and many vendors sell partial (plenty of T1 variants. However, if one contracts for 1.544Mbps and the vendor says they'll install that, it's doubtful that they'll put in something less just to be tricky.
I've skimmed plenty of the below comments and they all seem to agree that this anti-google guy is a goofball.
:-}). If you read the Salon article with a critical eye, you'll see an article slamming someone who actually made a fairly logical and reasonably thought-out complaint about the PageRank system, carefully interspacing comments about his counterculture past with his simple belief that the "democractic" nature of PageRank isn't democratic at all. With wink of the eye comments like "(using the royal "we")" make it very clear what the bias of the author is: Disparage this guy no matter what. They went so far as to make claims on behalf of him (which I can't see in his article), such as "In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld."" : Funny, but I don't see that in his paper, but instead that appears to be Salon making some rhetorical exaggerations to push his opinion to extremes.
This whole bizarre Salon article and the followup Slashdot postings seems like a horrible, reprehensible character assassination because someone said something that someone else didn't like (is it too late, and Google has gotten too powerful
The bizarrest thing is how quickly everyone hopped on the bandwagon to slam this "kook", all based upon the carefully manipulative wording of a Salon article. It is especially disconcerting given that this is the type of guy (questioning "the establishment") that the Slashdot crowd usually hoists on their shoulders and casts as their hero. This Salon article is DISPICABLE, and the methods that the author uses to villainize this guy is a study in evasive techniques (Google's cookie and search tracking doesn't matter, you see, because there are sites that are worse).