I agree. I have advocated using XHTL data providers as dataset which can be slurped into Flex/AIR/Flash using E4X, ECMAScripts XML operators.
Cheers/Duane
The Latin phrase "deus ex machina" (promounced "Day-us ex mack-in-a") has its origins in Greek tragedy (how fitting). It refers to situations in which a mechanical crane was used to lower actors playing a god or gods onto the stage. Though the phrase is accurately translated as "God from a machine," in literary criticism, it is often translated to "God on a machine."The machine referred to in the phrase is the crane employed in the task. It often referred to situations where the god solved an apparently unsolvable problem, then simply was lifted out, like the student would be if Yamaha ever produced this and it killed thousands of bystanders.
The Greek tragedian Euripides is notorious for using this plot device as a means to resolve a hopeless situation. For example, in Euripides' play Alcestis, the eponymous heroine agrees to give up her own life to Death in exchange for sparing the life of her husband, Admetus. In doing so, however, she imposes upon him a series of extreme promises. Admetus is torn between choosing death or choosing to obey these unreasonable restrictions. In the end, though, Heracles shows up and seizes Alcestis from Death, restoring her to life and freeing Admetus from the promises. The first person known to have criticized the device was Aristotle in his Poetics, where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play.
Source: Largely plagarized from Wikipedia.
IN this case the machine is a wearable motorcycle which has not useful purpose.
I had originally contemplated that this was the case however figured that due to my self declared war on spammers, they decided to spoof my email as the send bit. I am 100% sure I have not been hacked or any system compromised but it was really a crappy experience nonetheless.
http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2008/04/spam-war-deepens-am-i-winning.html
Not sure as I haven't read the documents in their entirety yet - this just happened yesterday at midnight. The official URL is www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200804/050108AdobeOSP.html
If it is not answered there, please ping me personally at dnickull at adobe dot com and I'll find out for you (for better or worse). If these are things we are not doing right still, people need to know so please don't hesitate.
Thank you. I work for Adobe and have been involved in more open source and open standards stuff including PDF going to ISO, The core Flash runtime VM (Tamarin) going open source to SourceForge, the Flex Compiler going open source and the data services component going open source and free (BlaseDS). Adobe really is listening to groups like Slashdot and from now on, anyone who thinks they can write a leaner Flash Player can go ahead and do it.
The real reason why cell phones are banned on planes has nothing to do with their interference with a planes navigation system. Think about it - if there was even a minimal chance that a cell phone could cause a crash of a commercial jet, no one would be allowed to bring one on board. The FAA has tests and will fail any wire not shielded to withstand such interference.
The real reason is that cell phone networks are based on a 2 dimensional system. Cell towers grant leases based on which tower has the strongest signal from a particular phone. When the user of the phone moves from one tower's coverage to another, the lease is transferred. If a plane full of people flew over a metropolitan area with 150 cell phones negotiating leases, chaos ensues as the system is not designed to support a 3 dimensional model. Newer networks are but the older ones will be problematic. I highly suspect the British trial will have a special base on the plane which will take all the leases so the ground towers will not be affected.
The last reason is annoyance. I actually used Skype on planes from Vancouver to Frankfurt equipped with Boeing's Connexion internet service. While the trial ended, it was clear that using Skype on an overnight commercial flight could cause a great deal of annoyance to passengers wanting to sleep. ON local flights, it might be acceptable for a few sociopaths to talk the entire time thus ensuring their fellow passengers have full details of their personal lives.
I personally think that it will be less than two days before we see a newspaper article about a cleaning crew finding a passenger duct taped to the planes toilet with a cell phone shoved up his hind side.
At the border, I use the Nexus pass (works on retina scans). This is very efficient and violates no rights IMO between Canada and the US. Unlike the other people traveling to the USA who must get fingerprints, I feel that even if I was a criminal, I will not likely be leaving my retina imprints behind at the scene of a crime. Fingerprint and DNA Databases already exist in the US as well.
Nevertheless, The pros seem to outweigh some of the cons. Long line ups at border crossings can be avoided by allowing pre-cleared people faster portal access. Likewise, some fraud can be prevented.
There are civil liberty issues which I am aware of and this would have to be a democratic decision, made by informed residents. It would be nice if this is going to happen, that it be transparent and national vs. compartmentalized, regional and secret.
Circa 1900, Ferry Porsche developed what has been regarded as the world's first hybrid car. See: http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2007/11/09/070253.html. The issues with Diesel are the glow plugs have to be used in colder weather starts when the combustion chamber cools for a longer period (requires more energy) and the torque required to turn over the engine (due to the high compression ratios used in diesel engines) is greater. This eats more electricity form the battery in conditions where lots of starts, stops are done.
I was born there. Nanaimo, BC has huge problems but is a very ingenious city. It survived the crash of the mines and subsequently the crash of the logging industry by continually re-inventing itself. My dad and others are huge techolnogy users. In fact, my great uncle, Kenneth MacKenzie (developer of Astitine on the periodic table of elements, part of the Manhattan project, UCLA professor Emeritus) was from there too. There are tons of tech geeks in this city and real estate is really cheap.
I actually didn't see any earlier link to the Onion (using Safari Version 3.0.4 (5523.15) (webkit engine), Intel MacBook Pro, Leopard 10.5.2) however viewing with FF it shows up. I have screenshots.
Bug??
Nevertheless, very funny. The Onion guys must be ROTFL.
class FrustrationDetection {
public static void main(String[] args) {/*God knows, they have the most data on this topic*/
computerUser myUser = new ComputerUser;
Anyone who has a basic knowledge of physics knows hydrogen is stupid. If you have electricity, use batteries - you can skip the 400 pounds of ice and twenty five other major problems with trying to convert good electricity into hydrogen and back again. It will never work for terrestrial applications. See:
http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2005/12/hydrogen-a gain-tweedle-dumb-and.html
and
http://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp
Hydrogen is dumb. Hydrogen is a bad idea.
Never liked his style. The record industry is stuck in the 1950's. Doom and retaliation are like the UK gov banning the Sex pistols.
My choice - my own music
http://www.myspace.com/22ndcentury
which is free to download for everyone, not just/.'ers. Style is sort of soundgarden, pistols, ramones, acdc. don't think I'll pay for CD pressing for all though as it is environmentally a very bad idea. mp3 downloads are better.
duane
First, Mac has been steadily eating into the PC market for the last 3 years with notable gains in Laptop share. Tim Oreilly stated (for better or worse) "watch the Alpha-geeks". The Alpha geeks at RSA, Java One and other conferences are largely using Mac laptops. At a recent code challenge at Java One 2007, my observation during one heat was all but one of the contestants were on Macbook Pro's.
The second item is a statistic I read somewhere stating that in the next decade, about 50% or more of the people connecting to the internet for the very first time, will do so via a wireless device as opposed to a laptop, desktop. MS has made huge strides into the portable device market but has serious competition there.
Me? I want my iPhone the day they arrive in Canada.
Yes they are nano techology bots and we now know all your secrets.... Blame Canada. We also have miniature cameras hidden inside maple syrup bottles and listening devices embedded in bacon packaging;-)
Seriously - the flowers are part of a breast cancer capmpaign and somewhat harmless. Besides - collect them if you can - they are somewhat limited in production./dc
Most consumers probably want a change of 2 minutes. I am also sceptical that in 5 minutes you can recharge enough battery life to drive a car 150 KM. Still - if the 5 minute claim works, this is good news.
What if you could make a standard for the batteries themselves and fuel stations offered quick change (not charge) capabilities where you pull in and replace your battery. A measuring device could credit you back for unused power in the battery you came in with and you would get charged for the power you take. This type of thing would have to be standardized and regulated (proper testing of batteries, quick change system and process, standard interfaces, centralized billing).
Another idea might be to make commercial trucks use the same overhead wires that cities use for electric buses. The city would provide the power for free and the trucks would carry a reserve battery to get them to and from places where the wires don't reach.
These are two ideas that are within our reach as a civilisation from a pure technical perspective. If the electricity is cleanly generated (wind, solar, hydro electric), it effectively would reduce hydrocarbon emissions.
Concur. Thanks for the research tip. It truly amazes me how many peopel think they can "create" energy from nothing. The hydrogen dweebs used to be at the top of my list but this guy takes the cake.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. How can someone seriously think this is free energy? An astronauts energy comes from somewhere so the chain is biomass->digest(chemical process)->kinetic->electricity? Reminds me of the old question "you are in space with a chicken, some grain and an egg. What should you do?" A: Eat the chicken before it eats the grain, then make a grain omlette.
On the counter side of my rant, this may solve the problem of astronaut musculas atrophy by making every movement a bit harder.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I have advocated using XHTL data providers as dataset which can be slurped into Flex/AIR/Flash using E4X, ECMAScripts XML operators. Cheers /Duane
Not to mention hurricanes and faulty electronic voting machines.... ;-)
The Latin phrase "deus ex machina" (promounced "Day-us ex mack-in-a") has its origins in Greek tragedy (how fitting). It refers to situations in which a mechanical crane was used to lower actors playing a god or gods onto the stage. Though the phrase is accurately translated as "God from a machine," in literary criticism, it is often translated to "God on a machine."The machine referred to in the phrase is the crane employed in the task. It often referred to situations where the god solved an apparently unsolvable problem, then simply was lifted out, like the student would be if Yamaha ever produced this and it killed thousands of bystanders. The Greek tragedian Euripides is notorious for using this plot device as a means to resolve a hopeless situation. For example, in Euripides' play Alcestis, the eponymous heroine agrees to give up her own life to Death in exchange for sparing the life of her husband, Admetus. In doing so, however, she imposes upon him a series of extreme promises. Admetus is torn between choosing death or choosing to obey these unreasonable restrictions. In the end, though, Heracles shows up and seizes Alcestis from Death, restoring her to life and freeing Admetus from the promises. The first person known to have criticized the device was Aristotle in his Poetics, where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play. Source: Largely plagarized from Wikipedia. IN this case the machine is a wearable motorcycle which has not useful purpose.
I had originally contemplated that this was the case however figured that due to my self declared war on spammers, they decided to spoof my email as the send bit. I am 100% sure I have not been hacked or any system compromised but it was really a crappy experience nonetheless. http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2008/04/spam-war-deepens-am-i-winning.html
Not sure as I haven't read the documents in their entirety yet - this just happened yesterday at midnight. The official URL is www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200804/050108AdobeOSP.html If it is not answered there, please ping me personally at dnickull at adobe dot com and I'll find out for you (for better or worse). If these are things we are not doing right still, people need to know so please don't hesitate.
Thank you. I work for Adobe and have been involved in more open source and open standards stuff including PDF going to ISO, The core Flash runtime VM (Tamarin) going open source to SourceForge, the Flex Compiler going open source and the data services component going open source and free (BlaseDS). Adobe really is listening to groups like Slashdot and from now on, anyone who thinks they can write a leaner Flash Player can go ahead and do it.
The code for the player is already open - look up the Tamarin project in SourceForge
The real reason why cell phones are banned on planes has nothing to do with their interference with a planes navigation system. Think about it - if there was even a minimal chance that a cell phone could cause a crash of a commercial jet, no one would be allowed to bring one on board. The FAA has tests and will fail any wire not shielded to withstand such interference.
The real reason is that cell phone networks are based on a 2 dimensional system. Cell towers grant leases based on which tower has the strongest signal from a particular phone. When the user of the phone moves from one tower's coverage to another, the lease is transferred. If a plane full of people flew over a metropolitan area with 150 cell phones negotiating leases, chaos ensues as the system is not designed to support a 3 dimensional model. Newer networks are but the older ones will be problematic. I highly suspect the British trial will have a special base on the plane which will take all the leases so the ground towers will not be affected.
The last reason is annoyance. I actually used Skype on planes from Vancouver to Frankfurt equipped with Boeing's Connexion internet service. While the trial ended, it was clear that using Skype on an overnight commercial flight could cause a great deal of annoyance to passengers wanting to sleep. ON local flights, it might be acceptable for a few sociopaths to talk the entire time thus ensuring their fellow passengers have full details of their personal lives.
I personally think that it will be less than two days before we see a newspaper article about a cleaning crew finding a passenger duct taped to the planes toilet with a cell phone shoved up his hind side.
At the border, I use the Nexus pass (works on retina scans). This is very efficient and violates no rights IMO between Canada and the US. Unlike the other people traveling to the USA who must get fingerprints, I feel that even if I was a criminal, I will not likely be leaving my retina imprints behind at the scene of a crime. Fingerprint and DNA Databases already exist in the US as well.
Nevertheless, The pros seem to outweigh some of the cons. Long line ups at border crossings can be avoided by allowing pre-cleared people faster portal access. Likewise, some fraud can be prevented.
There are civil liberty issues which I am aware of and this would have to be a democratic decision, made by informed residents. It would be nice if this is going to happen, that it be transparent and national vs. compartmentalized, regional and secret.
My $0.02 (CAD) worth.
D
Circa 1900, Ferry Porsche developed what has been regarded as the world's first hybrid car. See: http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2007/11/09/070253.html. The issues with Diesel are the glow plugs have to be used in colder weather starts when the combustion chamber cools for a longer period (requires more energy) and the torque required to turn over the engine (due to the high compression ratios used in diesel engines) is greater. This eats more electricity form the battery in conditions where lots of starts, stops are done.
I was born there. Nanaimo, BC has huge problems but is a very ingenious city. It survived the crash of the mines and subsequently the crash of the logging industry by continually re-inventing itself. My dad and others are huge techolnogy users. In fact, my great uncle, Kenneth MacKenzie (developer of Astitine on the periodic table of elements, part of the Manhattan project, UCLA professor Emeritus) was from there too. There are tons of tech geeks in this city and real estate is really cheap.
I actually didn't see any earlier link to the Onion (using Safari Version 3.0.4 (5523.15) (webkit engine), Intel MacBook Pro, Leopard 10.5.2) however viewing with FF it shows up. I have screenshots. Bug?? Nevertheless, very funny. The Onion guys must be ROTFL.
Did the author check the sources?
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks
WTF???
The algorithm should be quite simple:
/*God knows, they have the most data on this topic*/
import net.nickull.computerUsers.*;
class FrustrationDetection {
public static void main(String[] args) {
computerUser myUser = new ComputerUser;
osString foo = System.getOperatingSystem();
switch (foo) {
case Win2000:
myUser.status = myUser.status + "frustrated beyond belief";
break;
case Win98:
myUser.status = myUser.status + "postal";
break;
case XP:
myUser.status = myUser.status + "suicidal due to O/S bloat from service packs";
break;
case Vista:
myUser.status = myUser.status + "incomprehesible angry";
myUser.doFirearmOwnershipCheck();
company.hideFromUser();
break;
case (Linux || Unix || OSX):
myUser.status = myUser.status + productive and happy;
break;
}
}
}
Sadly, if you splice in a new gene, you can patent it.
Anyone who has a basic knowledge of physics knows hydrogen is stupid. If you have electricity, use batteries - you can skip the 400 pounds of ice and twenty five other major problems with trying to convert good electricity into hydrogen and back again. It will never work for terrestrial applications. See: http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2005/12/hydrogen-a gain-tweedle-dumb-and.html
and
http://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp
Hydrogen is dumb. Hydrogen is a bad idea.
Never liked his style. The record industry is stuck in the 1950's. Doom and retaliation are like the UK gov banning the Sex pistols.
My choice - my own music http://www.myspace.com/22ndcentury which is free to download for everyone, not just /.'ers. Style is sort of soundgarden, pistols, ramones, acdc. don't think I'll pay for CD pressing for all though as it is environmentally a very bad idea. mp3 downloads are better.
duane
"C'mon. It's the only education we got"....
Triple XXX
First, Mac has been steadily eating into the PC market for the last 3 years with notable gains in Laptop share. Tim Oreilly stated (for better or worse) "watch the Alpha-geeks". The Alpha geeks at RSA, Java One and other conferences are largely using Mac laptops. At a recent code challenge at Java One 2007, my observation during one heat was all but one of the contestants were on Macbook Pro's.
The second item is a statistic I read somewhere stating that in the next decade, about 50% or more of the people connecting to the internet for the very first time, will do so via a wireless device as opposed to a laptop, desktop. MS has made huge strides into the portable device market but has serious competition there.
Me? I want my iPhone the day they arrive in Canada.
Yes they are nano techology bots and we now know all your secrets.... Blame Canada. We also have miniature cameras hidden inside maple syrup bottles and listening devices embedded in bacon packaging ;-)
/dc
Seriously - the flowers are part of a breast cancer capmpaign and somewhat harmless. Besides - collect them if you can - they are somewhat limited in production.
Most consumers probably want a change of 2 minutes. I am also sceptical that in 5 minutes you can recharge enough battery life to drive a car 150 KM. Still - if the 5 minute claim works, this is good news.
What if you could make a standard for the batteries themselves and fuel stations offered quick change (not charge) capabilities where you pull in and replace your battery. A measuring device could credit you back for unused power in the battery you came in with and you would get charged for the power you take. This type of thing would have to be standardized and regulated (proper testing of batteries, quick change system and process, standard interfaces, centralized billing). Another idea might be to make commercial trucks use the same overhead wires that cities use for electric buses. The city would provide the power for free and the trucks would carry a reserve battery to get them to and from places where the wires don't reach. These are two ideas that are within our reach as a civilisation from a pure technical perspective. If the electricity is cleanly generated (wind, solar, hydro electric), it effectively would reduce hydrocarbon emissions.
Concur. Thanks for the research tip. It truly amazes me how many peopel think they can "create" energy from nothing. The hydrogen dweebs used to be at the top of my list but this guy takes the cake.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. How can someone seriously think this is free energy? An astronauts energy comes from somewhere so the chain is biomass->digest(chemical process)->kinetic->electricity? Reminds me of the old question "you are in space with a chicken, some grain and an egg. What should you do?" A: Eat the chicken before it eats the grain, then make a grain omlette. On the counter side of my rant, this may solve the problem of astronaut musculas atrophy by making every movement a bit harder.
"They were beaming all their TV signals into my trailer park without my permission. Why shouldn't i be able to watch them".