I buy a $40,000 car. It is running great, I drive it home, I play with all the juicy add-on features, very fun. Woops, it is late, shut it off and go to bed.
Wake up the next morning, expecting to drive it in to work and arrive at my scheduled time. Turn the key in the ignition and SURPRISE! I get a message telling me to call the dealership and they will activate my vehicle. I call and read them the riot act, and they "patiently" explain that it is to prevent theft.
To HELL with THAT!!!
What we really need is a way to deactivate our payment every time someone deactivates software out from under us. There is a real and pressing need to be independent of the supplier after the software is installed.
I don't like pork-barrel politics, and I don't like vendors who believe they have an entitlement to ongoing payments.
(no I DON'T live in my mother's basement, and yes I DO write software for a living)
I wish you wouldn't criticize people who don't spell "it's" the way you do (or the dictionary does).
People who spell it that way are just smarter than the folks who write dictionaries, IMHO.:)
Think about it:
Logic path A --> can not = can (erase some letters, put in an apostrophe) t
[therefore] it is = it (erase some letters, put in an apostrophe) s = it's!
Logic path B --> possessive = add apostrophe-s
[therefore] the property pertaining to it = it's!
It really just makes more sense this way, so forget the dictionary already!
Do you not understand the concept of a "slippery slope"?
Do you not realize that treating our fellow citizens with such severe suspicion causes much more damage than the "1/2 hour of lost time"?
The terrorists did not win at the moment the planes hit the buildings, the terrorists only won when Bush announced his war on terror and we sent troops over to Iraq. They continue winning each time someone takes off a shoe because "ooooo, if we don't do this, I might get bombed out of the sky!!!!!"
DON'T ignore the pattern of government abuses! Don't trivialize what's happening. Riley hits the nail on the head when he points out that cost is unaccountably high, and benefit is un-measurably low. Just say no!
Although you make a good point, that users continually find ways to put ever faster processors to work, there is a larger effect to consider---
The real CPU hog is not the user. It is the software developer. Why, I ask you... WHY must MS Office take 3 minutes to load (OK, I exaggerate, but you get the picture)? And though MS has certainly led the way in software bloat, it's not the only culprit. Gimp and OpenOffice take truly painful amounts of time to load as well. You can watch OpenOffice working when it refreshes a page on a slower machine... not impressive.
If you look at the call stack while debugging windows apps, you will see a shocking number of levels pushed on there. It's amazing that the system is ever responsive. Seeing that is the best way to understand how a CPU which can do 1 billion operations per second, still takes ForEver to present a tool tip.
Need I go into the PCI bus or memory bus designs? Never mind the hard drive channels.
The truth is, there is amazing computing power in a $1 Motorola CPU. All the email, word processing, and text web browsing you could dream up wouldn't be any problem. You can even do modest imaging with that tiny giant... but only if you design carefully to maximize the resource!
Yes, audio and video will require more CPU, but it has become so common to package co-processors that we really have to ask why the main CPU is being taxed so.
Sure, the users will forever want more, more, more... but that's just being human. The real culprits are the sloppy designers who insist on ignoring the cost of feature creep.
"Existing law allows USPTO to accept what it calls "prior art" from the public, but it doesn't allow the public to submit any commentary related to the art without the approval of the applicant."
No wonder patent law is screwed up! The examiner is stuck with whatever the applicant wants to supply, augmented only with whatever he can come up with himself.
Oh, so it's OK to be harshly disrespectful to someone who deigns to teach you, as long as they are cluttered and unhiegenic?
Those kids were being total asses, and I wish every last one of them who got involved were to receive the same 40-day suspension.
It might help them avoid being asses when they grow up and work in the office next to mine. Even though I shower daily, I have other faults and it's reasonable to expect them to treat me... and you, RESPECTFULLY despite our shortcomings.
Fact: Businesses DO shift their hours around, there is a significant percentage (retail shops particularly) that have different winter and summer hours. They have already printed these times on their doors and brochures.
Fact: Time measurement is an extremely simple concept that has been brutally "complexified" through feature creep across several centuries. (time zones off by 15 minutes???)
Fact: People change their schedules all the time anyway.
Fact: DST is NOT about simplicity, it's a pain in the ass that comes of politicians attempting to force behaviors.
Fact: You have underestimated the power of not having both oars in the water.:)
At the end of the day (pun intended), all we really need the clocks to do is to count seconds accurately. Local interpretation of what the time means will ALWAYS be a necessary task. When I call London from Seattle, I know that they are 7 hours ahead thanks to time zones. But, that doesn't guarantee either that the business is open, or that the person I'm calling is at their desk!
Let's make a simple thing simple again and set ALL the clocks to Greenwich Meridian Time. Then us Seattle-ites will just set our alarms for 12:30 (GMT) and go to work at 13:30 when the sun is just coming up. No problem! That gets rid of the anti-meridian/post-meridian thing at the same time, that noon issue is just plain overrated.
at least we're finally starting to see significant efforts in the world, and doing nothing just because of the costs would still be more stupid that these problems.
This really is the only viable overall, long-term solution. You have to let people claim what they want, and then figure out the truth later.
I studied genealogy data for a while and found many of the same problems that Wikipedia sees are also a challenge for researching ancestry. To list just a few:
1. What is a "fact"? Can you EVER know 100% it is a fact, or at best will it always be 99% probability?
2. Was the "fact" entered correctly?
3. How does the claimant "know" this "fact"?
4. How to handle the constant flux as knowledge generally improves?
5. How to filter out copy-paste sources of "truth"? (a-la "Well 3 different databases said so!")
6. How do we know a change is an improvement?
7. How can I pick between competing claims? Even the most credentialed sometimes make mistakes, while the most clueless can parrot truth.
In my experience with all this, you really have to get away from the black & white assertions that are mutually exclusive, and instead use probabilities as weighted inputs. That way as more information becomes available it is easier to get a clear picture.
There is significant clinical evidence that abusive behavior is passed down through the generations.
Your idea has merit since in many cases it can help disrupt that cycle by getting the parents to introspect instead of just compulsively passing the abuse on down.
Or maybe I'm dreaming, since a fine may just be an opportunity for the parent to teach the child to be angry (and abusive) at the system... avoiding introspection at all costs.
Hear hear! Absolutes are ALWAYS wrong, even absolute freedom.
It must be balanced by respect for neighbors... including granting each other rights. For example we give each other the rights to life and property, otherwise there would only be the quick and the dead!
More to the point, we must be free to complain that the school district / principal is doing things wrong... but that does NOT mean we must allow abusive children to reign with terror.
Fascinating note: "placed blocks on Amazon being able to charge them." is not an option.
I had a CC gateway service stealing money from my business bank account. I went in to my bank to request a block against that company. They DO NOT OFFER THE OPTION to block a particular merchant. They said they could block a particular amount (similar to placing a stop-payment on a check), but then if the merchant tried again charging another $20 "payment didn't process fee", it would then have gone through. I literally had to close the account, despite all the inconvenience that caused.
When credit cards first came into ubiquity, I delighted in their convenience. However, things aare no longer so rosy. Now I detest the ease with which merchants make people sign broad permission statements and then reach into people's wallets to extract whatever they want to claim people owe them.
Thank-you-no, despite the convenience of on-line ordering, I'll go back to cash and cashier's checks before giving blank checks to the merchants of the world.
That is not what he is proposing. His proposition is that we link negative and positive infinity, like bending a wire into a ring and soldering it together. Then, just as you can easily refer to the point on the ring called "0", you can now also easily refer to the point on the "opposite side" of the ring, the "+/- infinity" aka "nullity" point.
There are many models where this representation could potentially be more convenient than others we have used before.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, time for a car analogy.
I buy a $40,000 car. It is running great, I drive it home, I play with all the juicy add-on features, very fun. Woops, it is late, shut it off and go to bed.
Wake up the next morning, expecting to drive it in to work and arrive at my scheduled time. Turn the key in the ignition and SURPRISE! I get a message telling me to call the dealership and they will activate my vehicle. I call and read them the riot act, and they "patiently" explain that it is to prevent theft.
To HELL with THAT!!!
What we really need is a way to deactivate our payment every time someone deactivates software out from under us. There is a real and pressing need to be independent of the supplier after the software is installed.
I don't like pork-barrel politics, and I don't like vendors who believe they have an entitlement to ongoing payments.
(no I DON'T live in my mother's basement, and yes I DO write software for a living)
Oh yea, like
I wish you wouldn't criticize people who don't spell "it's" the way you do (or the dictionary does).
People who spell it that way are just smarter than the folks who write dictionaries, IMHO.
Think about it:
Logic path A --> can not = can (erase some letters, put in an apostrophe) t
[therefore] it is = it (erase some letters, put in an apostrophe) s = it's!
Logic path B --> possessive = add apostrophe-s
[therefore] the property pertaining to it = it's!
It really just makes more sense this way, so forget the dictionary already!
Do you not understand the concept of a "slippery slope"?
Do you not realize that treating our fellow citizens with such severe suspicion causes much more damage than the "1/2 hour of lost time"?
The terrorists did not win at the moment the planes hit the buildings, the terrorists only won when Bush announced his war on terror and we sent troops over to Iraq. They continue winning each time someone takes off a shoe because "ooooo, if we don't do this, I might get bombed out of the sky!!!!!"
DON'T ignore the pattern of government abuses! Don't trivialize what's happening. Riley hits the nail on the head when he points out that cost is unaccountably high, and benefit is un-measurably low. Just say no!
Although you make a good point, that users continually find ways to put ever faster processors to work, there is a larger effect to consider---
The real CPU hog is not the user. It is the software developer. Why, I ask you... WHY must MS Office take 3 minutes to load (OK, I exaggerate, but you get the picture)? And though MS has certainly led the way in software bloat, it's not the only culprit. Gimp and OpenOffice take truly painful amounts of time to load as well. You can watch OpenOffice working when it refreshes a page on a slower machine... not impressive.
If you look at the call stack while debugging windows apps, you will see a shocking number of levels pushed on there. It's amazing that the system is ever responsive. Seeing that is the best way to understand how a CPU which can do 1 billion operations per second, still takes ForEver to present a tool tip.
Need I go into the PCI bus or memory bus designs? Never mind the hard drive channels.
The truth is, there is amazing computing power in a $1 Motorola CPU. All the email, word processing, and text web browsing you could dream up wouldn't be any problem. You can even do modest imaging with that tiny giant... but only if you design carefully to maximize the resource!
Yes, audio and video will require more CPU, but it has become so common to package co-processors that we really have to ask why the main CPU is being taxed so.
Sure, the users will forever want more, more, more... but that's just being human. The real culprits are the sloppy designers who insist on ignoring the cost of feature creep.
No they won't:
"Existing law allows USPTO to accept what it calls "prior art" from the public, but it doesn't allow the public to submit any commentary related to the art without the approval of the applicant."
No wonder patent law is screwed up! The examiner is stuck with whatever the applicant wants to supply, augmented only with whatever he can come up with himself.
But I also admire folks who can inspire others toward some dream...
Yes, but instead of "Terminators" we call them "Federal Marshalls"
They're there to protect you. Really!
Oh, so it's OK to be harshly disrespectful to someone who deigns to teach you, as long as they are cluttered and unhiegenic?
Those kids were being total asses, and I wish every last one of them who got involved were to receive the same 40-day suspension.
It might help them avoid being asses when they grow up and work in the office next to mine. Even though I shower daily, I have other faults and it's reasonable to expect them to treat me... and you, RESPECTFULLY despite our shortcomings.
Thanks but what about the most important contact info...
That @%$#! judge is the one who is supposed to be protecting the citizenry from abusive cops and unbalanced laws.
There is only one company on the Earth with lower morals than Microsoft...
Can you guess who?
Really? Where did you get this data from?
I grew up in an area where the boys KNEW not to piss on the electric fence.
Some learned the easy way, and some learned the hard way, but we all KNEW IT!
Your point is solid, but non-compelling.
Past sins do not command future performance. Let's learn already!
Fact: Businesses DO shift their hours around, there is a significant percentage (retail shops particularly) that have different winter and summer hours. They have already printed these times on their doors and brochures.
Fact: Time measurement is an extremely simple concept that has been brutally "complexified" through feature creep across several centuries. (time zones off by 15 minutes???)
Fact: People change their schedules all the time anyway.
Fact: DST is NOT about simplicity, it's a pain in the ass that comes of politicians attempting to force behaviors.
Fact: You have underestimated the power of not having both oars in the water.
At the end of the day (pun intended), all we really need the clocks to do is to count seconds accurately. Local interpretation of what the time means will ALWAYS be a necessary task. When I call London from Seattle, I know that they are 7 hours ahead thanks to time zones. But, that doesn't guarantee either that the business is open, or that the person I'm calling is at their desk!
Let's make a simple thing simple again and set ALL the clocks to Greenwich Meridian Time. Then us Seattle-ites will just set our alarms for 12:30 (GMT) and go to work at 13:30 when the sun is just coming up. No problem! That gets rid of the anti-meridian/post-meridian thing at the same time, that noon issue is just plain overrated.
at least we're finally starting to see significant efforts in the world, and doing nothing just because of the costs would still be more stupid that these problems.
And why, precisely, is it incumbent upon society to make Ms. Rowling into a billionaire?
Yes, she needs to be able to pay the bills just like the rest of us, but current copyright law goes way too far!
"Let people claim what they want."
This really is the only viable overall, long-term solution. You have to let people claim what they want, and then figure out the truth later.
I studied genealogy data for a while and found many of the same problems that Wikipedia sees are also a challenge for researching ancestry. To list just a few:
1. What is a "fact"? Can you EVER know 100% it is a fact, or at best will it always be 99% probability?
2. Was the "fact" entered correctly?
3. How does the claimant "know" this "fact"?
4. How to handle the constant flux as knowledge generally improves?
5. How to filter out copy-paste sources of "truth"? (a-la "Well 3 different databases said so!")
6. How do we know a change is an improvement?
7. How can I pick between competing claims? Even the most credentialed sometimes make mistakes, while the most clueless can parrot truth.
In my experience with all this, you really have to get away from the black & white assertions that are mutually exclusive, and instead use probabilities as weighted inputs. That way as more information becomes available it is easier to get a clear picture.
Not if it freezes first.
There is significant clinical evidence that abusive behavior is passed down through the generations.
Your idea has merit since in many cases it can help disrupt that cycle by getting the parents to introspect instead of just compulsively passing the abuse on down.
Or maybe I'm dreaming, since a fine may just be an opportunity for the parent to teach the child to be angry (and abusive) at the system... avoiding introspection at all costs.
(sigh...)
Hear hear! Absolutes are ALWAYS wrong, even absolute freedom.
It must be balanced by respect for neighbors... including granting each other rights. For example we give each other the rights to life and property, otherwise there would only be the quick and the dead!
More to the point, we must be free to complain that the school district / principal is doing things wrong... but that does NOT mean we must allow abusive children to reign with terror.
Fascinating note: "placed blocks on Amazon being able to charge them." is not an option.
I had a CC gateway service stealing money from my business bank account. I went in to my bank to request a block against that company. They DO NOT OFFER THE OPTION to block a particular merchant. They said they could block a particular amount (similar to placing a stop-payment on a check), but then if the merchant tried again charging another $20 "payment didn't process fee", it would then have gone through. I literally had to close the account, despite all the inconvenience that caused.
When credit cards first came into ubiquity, I delighted in their convenience. However, things aare no longer so rosy. Now I detest the ease with which merchants make people sign broad permission statements and then reach into people's wallets to extract whatever they want to claim people owe them.
Thank-you-no, despite the convenience of on-line ordering, I'll go back to cash and cashier's checks before giving blank checks to the merchants of the world.
In a culture where sex can't be talked about, sex will be a problem.
NASA would best address the issue, bring in experts, and make a plan (if you fail to plan you plan to fail sort of thing).
Conceivably (excuse the pun), NASA won't be able to do so, since historically it's been an issue they downplay or ignore.
because I NEVER use an alternate handle, and being the LAW ABIDING citizen that I am, I ALWAYS tell the cops everything I'm doing!
paste up a poster in the town square, announcing that the lock is broken on the back of the hardware store?
How is this different?
How much nothing can you fit in nothing?
That is not what he is proposing. His proposition is that we link negative and positive infinity, like bending a wire into a ring and soldering it together. Then, just as you can easily refer to the point on the ring called "0", you can now also easily refer to the point on the "opposite side" of the ring, the "+/- infinity" aka "nullity" point.
There are many models where this representation could potentially be more convenient than others we have used before.