Here's something interesting that a friend of mine had to say about this dumbass scheme:
Yep, just sounds like the same old shit. What happens if [I] watch chapter seven on the DVD a couple of times and then try to watch the whole movie again. Does it stop at the end of chapter 6 or just skip 7 cuz it's unreadable?
10^9 is great, but what's the signal to noise ratio? How many of them are "Hay I am 133t d00dz give me warez and pr0n!"? I mean, the s/n ratio on the Web is pitiful anyway...
And how many of those one billion web pages are actively updated? I quit a job with (unnamed employer) a year and a half ago, and nobody has updated the Web server there since I left. The only reason it no longer has my name on it is because I changed the contact info...but the content is completely unchanged.
Finally, this is a press release. Press releases are written by the companies or commissioned by companies and distributed to news agencies which usually don't bother to do any but the most basic redaction. It's like free advertising. As I believe someone else pointed out, this isn't a "hey cool, a billion Web pages," it's "hey, our indexing software can index a billion pages, don't you want to buy it?". Always be wary of the source...usually, if you read something positive about a product or a technology, you can bet that somebody is getting paid for it. (Yes, this includes reviews...remember, we have to keep the advertisers happy.)
Math is actually quite easy. Most people are simply too lazy or uninterested to bother trying to learn it. (Either that, or an incredibly huge segment of our society consists of idiots.)
Or could it be that math teachers and professors have no idea what they're doing? I got mostly top grades in mathematics, except for geometry, but I hit some kind of wall with matrix operations in linear algebra.
When I told the professor of my linear algebra class that I was having trouble (and he knew it; I had just miserably failed an exam), you know what his response was? "Drop the class and get of here. I don't want you in my classroom tomorrow."
So which is it? Lazy? I studied and tried to complete the assignments. Uninterested? At that point I was a math major. Idiot? I sure hope not.
I realize this post wasn't aimed at me specifically, and I shouldn't take it so personally, but I think that educators need to carry some responsibility for actually doing the educating, just as students need to carry some responsibility for actually doing the learning.
I want to know why we're/he's so certain that we haven't seen tourists from the future. I mean, assuming that time travelers would be responsible citizens of the space-time continuum, wouldn't they want to hide their presence as much as possible?
Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates has tourists from the present going back into the past. Nobody in the past knows that they're from the future. (Of course, then it all goes horribly wrong, but no spoilers here. Good book.)
But as the saying goes, the only time travel we're ever going to do is forward, one second at a time.
(As a side note, it looks like I was writing my second message while jetpack was posting...looking at my second post, it sounded as if I may have been slamming jetpack a little, which I wasn't.)
Having said that, though, if you accept the dictionary definition of a gadget as a small specialized mechanical or electronic device then the telegraph might just qualify.
Still, the transistor and the vacuum tube, since they aren't self-contained devices (i.e. they don't do anything by themselves, but rather in conjuction with other things) don't qualify as gadgets.
Neither does a computer, as a computer isn't specialized (at least not anymore). I think the computer has graduated from gadget (ENIAC, UNIVAC, and others of their ilk, to stretch the definition of "small") to tool.
I would think that any list of top gadgets should probably include:
Seriously, though, none of those things--with the exception of the electric hand "dryer"--is really a gadget, is it? I always thought a gadget was a fun little toy that isn't really essential but is nonetheless neat to own or use. Like a cell phone or a Palm Pilot or one of those little boxes with four buttons that utters cute little phrases or makes various electronic weapon sounds.
The telegraph wasn't a gadget; Joe Consumer of the 1800's didn't have one laying around his house, couldn't pick one up at Wal-Mart or what have you. The telegraph in its heyday was a professional communications device that required specially trained operators, a situation that really doesn't have a widely-used modern analogue. (Maybe it does, but I don't know what it is; we can dial phone numbers for ourselves now and send e.mail and so forth without the need for someone to translate our messages into dots and dashes and tap them out. Communication is a lot more direct now.)
The transistor isn't a gadget. You can buy one at Radio Shack, but it doesn't do anything by itself. You can't play with a transistor. Well, you can, but you'd be fairly eccentric.
"Portable fire" in the form of lighters...yeah, I can see that being a gadget.
And so on. I thought the inclusion of the electric hand "dryer (no, they don't really get your hands dry and they're a waste of time compared with the approximately two seconds it takes to dry your hands with a paper towel) was actually pretty funny. I don't think it was really meant to be taken seriously as one of the most significant inventions of all time.
...if Chaney just wanted his 35 bucks back and said "Hey, no problem, glad to do it." As it is, he comes off like a glory-hounding jerk. It rubs me the wrong way when people think that they have a right to a reward of some sort for doing a favor, as this guy seems to (the article doesn't quote him directly, but implies that he thinks that M$ should cut him in on a share of the Hotmail revenue). Whatever happened to doing something nice just for its own sake?
Personally, I would watch ST V again before I would watch any of the Next Generation films a second time. I would watch ST V again before another viewing of III or IV. In fact, I've done all of those things. Trek V was a disappointment to me when it first came out, but seeing how far downhill the franchise has fallen since then, I think it holds its own.
Insurrection was by far the worst. It was crammed full of [obscene gerund] fanboy moments.
The only reason I continue to go to Star Trek movies when they come out is the vain hope that the day will come when there's another good one. Of course, it won't happen, since they'll only make TNG-era movies from now on, but I hold out hope nonetheless.
As Robert said in Free Enterprise (which movie everyone should see): "I would never live in the 24th century. I [obscene gerund] hate Next Generation! Only the original. Only Classic!"
Like Shatner or hate him, the character didn't deserve to die in such a bogus way
It was always my opinion that Kirk's first "death" in that movie--getting sucked into the Nexus while saving the Enterprise-B--was the perfect death, exactly the way Kirk would want to go out.
Now, dying under a pile of rocks while pulling Baldy's ass out of the fire, that's a different story altogether.
If the government doesn't give a flying flip what law-abiding citizens do, then why have surveillance at all? There's really no way to separate criminals from straights just by looking at them. None at all--unless you catch the criminal in the act, and even then...there are many different types of criminals. All of the fancy surveillance techniques aren't going to catch the guy who's embezzling a few thousand bucks a year from the gas station he works at.
Several cities in the U.S. already have video surveillance in some areas, run by the cities themselves. It's only a matter of time before the proposed British system makes its way here.
It's also only a matter of time before you are stopped on the street for having long hair and a tattoo. Just because you can't envision it personally doesn't mean it's not going to happen; governments abuse power, and that's all there is to it. The nature of government is to sustain itself, and it does that by taking and maintaining power.
This is a tricky balancing act, actually; someone already used the Franklin quote about trading liberty for security. I think that, in principle, everyone wants less crime, but the ways in which we go about achieving that goal leave something to be desired at times. Surveillance and computers aren't the answer; the answer is enforcing the laws we already have.
Besides, the police have no legal responsibility to you. The police are there for cleanup, not prevention. That sometimes crimes are prevented by police is happy accident, not intentional design.
In order for there to be no crime, the average citizen will have to submit to being treated like a criminal. That's unacceptable to a lot of people.
It's for "detecting troubled youth" today. It's for tracking everyone tomorrow.
This is the way bad things happen. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," as the saying goes. I don't particularly care if what they want to use it for right this very second is noble or not. It's potential future applications of the technology that I'd be worried about.
It doesn't matter how it works. Remember, GIGO. All it can possibly look for is previously-identified indicators--in other words, for things we already know about. It doesn't matter what the selection factors are.
The technology will be abused by the BATF. It's what they do. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But sometime.
Except that the one-minute ADnD combat round is abstract, meaning that it represents the ebb and flow of battle, slashes, cuts and parries. IDHTBIFOM, but that's pretty much how the DMG and PHB describe it.
Of course, they could just be going with the 6-second combat round from the Player's Option books.:P
Except that the one-minute ADnD combat round is abstract, meaning that it represents the ebb and flow of battle, slashes, cuts and parries. IDHTBIFOM, but that's pretty much how the DMG and PHB describe it.
Of course, they could just be going with the 6-second combat round from the Player's Option books.
Also, higher level fighters get more than one attack per round:P
The article mentions the possibility of a GPS unit attached to the device. Not to get paranoid here, but what about the potential ability for users to be tracked when they're wearing one of these?
In my darker moments, I sometimes think that the incredible proliferation of portable electronic devices--cell phones, pagers, PDAs, laptops, wearables, etc.--is intended not to give you freedom, as their makers and advertisers promise, but to keep you chained. Tools of the corporations, to enslave the masses with invisible chains. The idea of a wearable PC really scares me sometimes.
Then it passes, and all I can think is "cool!" And you know what? That's even more frightening.
As any consumer would buy a laptop, they'll buy a wearable computer.
There's lots of ways to interpret this; another is that he's saying "Since anybody would buy a laptop, anybody would buy a wearable."
I read it as saying "In the same manner as you would buy a laptop, you'll be able to buy one of these." IOW, you go to your local big-box, say "I want that one!" and take it home. You don't have to "be someone", or be in the right place at the right time, to get your hands on one.
These things are badges, though--as in "wear this at all times, prominently displayed." That means that anybody who knows how to read barcodes can read yours any time. With an ID card, you can at least partially prevent anybody from reading it.
My elementary/middle/high school used a randomly generated four-digit number, with the two-digit year of graduation prepended, as an ID number. My local school district uses a randomly generated six-digit number--if you're 123456, 123457 could be sitting next to you or in a classroom clear across the city.
Using the SSN is not only illegal (as others have pointed out), it's also astoundingly lazy. When I was in school, everybody knew everybody else's ID number. Hell, in my circle of friends, we'd actually adress each other by number as a joke.
This is dangerous. Not to even mention the whole idea of badges...
You can in fact trademark common-language terms for specific use, such as advertising slogans and corporate presence. For example, Nike, with "Just Do It", and Microsoft, with "Where Do You Want To Go Today", did just that. In practical terms, it doesn't mean that you owe those companies a buck if you use the phrase in conversation--but you're prohibited from using it in advertising or corporate presence. To use AOL as an example, my local ISP can't distribute a custom e.mail client that burbles "You've got mail!" when you get a piece of e.mail, because that's part of AOL's corporate presence and thus is protected. (And by the way, according to what I've read, AOL was not allowed to claim protection on the similar-but-not-identical "You have mail"--they do protect "You've got mail".)
And it is the sad truth, as pointed out elsewhere, that AOL *has* to sue this woman, because if they don't and this happens again in a different context later, they will be vulnerable on the "non-protection" issue. Even if the suit is ultimately thrown out, they have to make the attempt.
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Yep, just sounds like the same old shit. What happens if [I] watch chapter seven on the DVD a couple of times and then try to watch the whole movie again. Does it stop at the end of chapter 6 or just skip 7 cuz it's unreadable?
Let's hope this dies a well-deserved death.
And how many of those one billion web pages are actively updated? I quit a job with (unnamed employer) a year and a half ago, and nobody has updated the Web server there since I left. The only reason it no longer has my name on it is because I changed the contact info...but the content is completely unchanged.
Finally, this is a press release. Press releases are written by the companies or commissioned by companies and distributed to news agencies which usually don't bother to do any but the most basic redaction. It's like free advertising. As I believe someone else pointed out, this isn't a "hey cool, a billion Web pages," it's "hey, our indexing software can index a billion pages, don't you want to buy it?". Always be wary of the source...usually, if you read something positive about a product or a technology, you can bet that somebody is getting paid for it. (Yes, this includes reviews...remember, we have to keep the advertisers happy.)
Or could it be that math teachers and professors have no idea what they're doing? I got mostly top grades in mathematics, except for geometry, but I hit some kind of wall with matrix operations in linear algebra.
When I told the professor of my linear algebra class that I was having trouble (and he knew it; I had just miserably failed an exam), you know what his response was? "Drop the class and get of here. I don't want you in my classroom tomorrow."
So which is it? Lazy? I studied and tried to complete the assignments. Uninterested? At that point I was a math major. Idiot? I sure hope not.
I realize this post wasn't aimed at me specifically, and I shouldn't take it so personally, but I think that educators need to carry some responsibility for actually doing the educating, just as students need to carry some responsibility for actually doing the learning.
Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates has tourists from the present going back into the past. Nobody in the past knows that they're from the future. (Of course, then it all goes horribly wrong, but no spoilers here. Good book.)
But as the saying goes, the only time travel we're ever going to do is forward, one second at a time.
(As a side note, it looks like I was writing my second message while jetpack was posting...looking at my second post, it sounded as if I may have been slamming jetpack a little, which I wasn't.)
Still, the transistor and the vacuum tube, since they aren't self-contained devices (i.e. they don't do anything by themselves, but rather in conjuction with other things) don't qualify as gadgets.
Neither does a computer, as a computer isn't specialized (at least not anymore). I think the computer has graduated from gadget (ENIAC, UNIVAC, and others of their ilk, to stretch the definition of "small") to tool.
I would think that any list of top gadgets should probably include:
Seriously, though, none of those things--with the exception of the electric hand "dryer"--is really a gadget, is it? I always thought a gadget was a fun little toy that isn't really essential but is nonetheless neat to own or use. Like a cell phone or a Palm Pilot or one of those little boxes with four buttons that utters cute little phrases or makes various electronic weapon sounds.
The telegraph wasn't a gadget; Joe Consumer of the 1800's didn't have one laying around his house, couldn't pick one up at Wal-Mart or what have you. The telegraph in its heyday was a professional communications device that required specially trained operators, a situation that really doesn't have a widely-used modern analogue. (Maybe it does, but I don't know what it is; we can dial phone numbers for ourselves now and send e.mail and so forth without the need for someone to translate our messages into dots and dashes and tap them out. Communication is a lot more direct now.)
The transistor isn't a gadget. You can buy one at Radio Shack, but it doesn't do anything by itself. You can't play with a transistor. Well, you can, but you'd be fairly eccentric.
"Portable fire" in the form of lighters...yeah, I can see that being a gadget.
And so on. I thought the inclusion of the electric hand "dryer (no, they don't really get your hands dry and they're a waste of time compared with the approximately two seconds it takes to dry your hands with a paper towel) was actually pretty funny. I don't think it was really meant to be taken seriously as one of the most significant inventions of all time.
I think this is probably just a case of crappy writing on the part of the reporters, but Chaney doesn't come off very well in the article.
...if Chaney just wanted his 35 bucks back and said "Hey, no problem, glad to do it." As it is, he comes off like a glory-hounding jerk. It rubs me the wrong way when people think that they have a right to a reward of some sort for doing a favor, as this guy seems to (the article doesn't quote him directly, but implies that he thinks that M$ should cut him in on a share of the Hotmail revenue). Whatever happened to doing something nice just for its own sake?
Insurrection was by far the worst. It was crammed full of [obscene gerund] fanboy moments.
The only reason I continue to go to Star Trek movies when they come out is the vain hope that the day will come when there's another good one. Of course, it won't happen, since they'll only make TNG-era movies from now on, but I hold out hope nonetheless.
As Robert said in Free Enterprise (which movie everyone should see): "I would never live in the 24th century. I [obscene gerund] hate Next Generation! Only the original. Only Classic!"
It was always my opinion that Kirk's first "death" in that movie--getting sucked into the Nexus while saving the Enterprise-B--was the perfect death, exactly the way Kirk would want to go out.
Now, dying under a pile of rocks while pulling Baldy's ass out of the fire, that's a different story altogether.
Several cities in the U.S. already have video surveillance in some areas, run by the cities themselves. It's only a matter of time before the proposed British system makes its way here.
It's also only a matter of time before you are stopped on the street for having long hair and a tattoo. Just because you can't envision it personally doesn't mean it's not going to happen; governments abuse power, and that's all there is to it. The nature of government is to sustain itself, and it does that by taking and maintaining power.
This is a tricky balancing act, actually; someone already used the Franklin quote about trading liberty for security. I think that, in principle, everyone wants less crime, but the ways in which we go about achieving that goal leave something to be desired at times. Surveillance and computers aren't the answer; the answer is enforcing the laws we already have.
Besides, the police have no legal responsibility to you. The police are there for cleanup, not prevention. That sometimes crimes are prevented by police is happy accident, not intentional design.
In order for there to be no crime, the average citizen will have to submit to being treated like a criminal. That's unacceptable to a lot of people.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
It's for "detecting troubled youth" today. It's for tracking everyone tomorrow.
This is the way bad things happen. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," as the saying goes. I don't particularly care if what they want to use it for right this very second is noble or not. It's potential future applications of the technology that I'd be worried about.
It doesn't matter how it works. Remember, GIGO. All it can possibly look for is previously-identified indicators--in other words, for things we already know about. It doesn't matter what the selection factors are.
The technology will be abused by the BATF. It's what they do. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But sometime.
Of course, they could just be going with the 6-second combat round from the Player's Option books. :P
Of course, they could just be going with the 6-second combat round from the Player's Option books.
Also, higher level fighters get more than one attack per round :P
In my darker moments, I sometimes think that the incredible proliferation of portable electronic devices--cell phones, pagers, PDAs, laptops, wearables, etc.--is intended not to give you freedom, as their makers and advertisers promise, but to keep you chained. Tools of the corporations, to enslave the masses with invisible chains. The idea of a wearable PC really scares me sometimes.
Then it passes, and all I can think is "cool!" And you know what? That's even more frightening.
There's lots of ways to interpret this; another is that he's saying "Since anybody would buy a laptop, anybody would buy a wearable."
I read it as saying "In the same manner as you would buy a laptop, you'll be able to buy one of these." IOW, you go to your local big-box, say "I want that one!" and take it home. You don't have to "be someone", or be in the right place at the right time, to get your hands on one.
My elementary/middle/high school used a randomly generated four-digit number, with the two-digit year of graduation prepended, as an ID number. My local school district uses a randomly generated six-digit number--if you're 123456, 123457 could be sitting next to you or in a classroom clear across the city.
Using the SSN is not only illegal (as others have pointed out), it's also astoundingly lazy. When I was in school, everybody knew everybody else's ID number. Hell, in my circle of friends, we'd actually adress each other by number as a joke.
This is dangerous. Not to even mention the whole idea of badges...
And it is the sad truth, as pointed out elsewhere, that AOL *has* to sue this woman, because if they don't and this happens again in a different context later, they will be vulnerable on the "non-protection" issue. Even if the suit is ultimately thrown out, they have to make the attempt.