Interestingly, during tests, "conversations [were] actually changing based on what was on the screen,"
Of course: DURING TESTS. The sole purpose of the test is to test what they're testing, so it's the subject of interest without any magic required. How about influencing a real world call, emergent call, bad news call, good news call. Anything-else-than-playing-with-the-system call.
And their scheme has a flaw: I can keep talking with my screen turned off. Their advertisers better be dumb enough not to figure out that one.
Since Firefox users like to push forward NoScript a lot as some safety precaution (I run it for 2 months, and finally got fed up with enabling virtually any site I visit, so it operates, what's the point), I read a very interesting article about the embeddable nature of IE.
You see, if Firefox can play WMP files on your machine (Windows machine) then every time you open a page (or video) in Firefox you potentially open IE, since WMP can open pages directly inside, and it uses IE regardless of your preferences.
Similar situation occurs with IM-s like Skype and ICQ.
As another commenter said above, security is illusion. Pure and simple.
Unlike mass, heat energy, and electromagnetic radiation, joy and pain do not exist outside the brain. Electrically induced joy is every bit as real as monetarily induced joy.
If you believe that you must consider it amazing to take drugs that make you happy.
The fact we exist as complex beings today, is that we evolved to understand out environment and synchronize our being to our surroundings. This means, unless there's some catastrophe that selects simpler, sturdier organisms, natural selection generally "prefers" creatures that better understand their environment and are able to act out in it with better understanding and efficiency.
You equating billions of years of evolution to reach this level, to a rod in your brain that makes you happy, is kinda sad.
When I was on anti-depressants I acted in a way that, in retrospect, wasn't natural for me. I did some very weird things and occasionally embarrased myself, which is something that I don't like to do. What the fuck was I thinking back then? And was it really caused by anti-depressants, or have I simply changed? I don't know, but I'm now very wary of any artificial means of making yourself happy or less depressed.
Few weeks ago when we talked about Singularity AI (AI that produces smarter AI and so on), I made a post and within it had ironic remark that AI's happiness level you could imagine as some sort of mood_level number. Training the AI to increase it's mood level when it meets our criteria would be a way to keep its behavior within given guidelines.
Thing is, of course, it's the same for us. People replied that the robot would just up its mood_level with a tool or a program, and go on a killing spree.
In the end though, AI or actual intelligence is a very complex system. If the system says you're sad, you'd rather look into why you're sad and try changing things in your environment or actions.
The current state of psychology science would rather look at the symptom of another problem and try to "hack it". You can fool yourself you're happy by tweaking your "mood_level", but you realize the one you're lying you is yourself, it's no different that measuring your temperature with a thermometer with "it's all ok! don't look at the scale" written all over it.
Depression is apparently a big problem. There's the argument some people are depressed because of chemical imbalance, well but is there any research going into the difference between both? Nope, instead let's prod rods in our brain, and take drugs.
They should sell those rods and meds together with pink glasses.
It only makes business sense to prevent Google from acquiring whenever you can. This seems equivalent to the FCC asking the telecoms how they feel about Google buying/leasing some airwaves.
The questionnaire does not make sense, but it's only now as the EU Antitrust commission starts attacking geeks' favorite Google (DoubleClick) and Apple (iTunes / DRM) you'll see how the EU Antitrust commission operates.
The bias though which the community spins EU's actions is hilarious, but I see this is consistent to what they did with Microsoft, charging them nearly a billion because they shipped a video player in their OS.
I've a question: who'll protect us from the monopoly of the EU? Did anyone ask YOU if you want them protecting your rights in THIS particular fashion? Did someone ask you when EU slapped VAT and sales tax on online purchases? Do I have a choice, short of moving to a different continent.
Life is short, take more risks, why not consider moving if you believe you'll end up with better access to something you need? Internet will be more and more essential and eventually become the primary means of delivery of modern media in the next 5 to 7 years.
People are very mobile nowadays, if they don't like something or see an opportunity, they just move and grab it.
Consider also that this is a choice you make not only for you, but also your wife and children. They'll share your pain or benefits, whatever you choose to do.
You could consider not selling your place but renting it, and renting a place elsewhere for your family (or buying it in mortgage installments). This way you won't end up on the street if something goes awry, and always have a home to go back to.
I'm sorry if this totally not applies to your situation (it's possible, I know very little), but it's always good to think outside the box for a bit and think about how it may play out.
"In May the Wi-Fi Alliance got so bored waiting for the IEEE to complete the standard"
I know it's harder to figure out anthromorphism doesn't apply to organisations, since they're made out of people, but can you honestly imagine the following in the documents: "Today we voted to start delivering draft-based wifi kits, because we were bored".
If you'll look for reasons, look for logistics, money, deadlines and contracts.
I do pull the plug from time to time. But it's a laptop, it just keeps running Windows on batteries.
As for you, I doubt you have laptop, let alone be able to install Linux on a laptop without hurting yourself fatally, seeing you have difficulty spelling "Windows".
One: ME. But ME was the best time to release a crappy Windows, if I could so say.
The prosumers and professionals have moved to Windows 2000 which was a great OS, plenty of people kept their Windows 98 which also performed very adequately for the hardware and software we used at those times.
ME was a blunder, but there was 98 and 2000 to make it subtle and make it easy for Microsoft to swipe it under the rug and forget about it.
With Vista it's completely different story. Vista is for home users, prosumers and professionals. It has been released after building incredible hype for over 5 years in development.
Professionals have nothing to migrate to (no 2000 analog) and consumers feel cosy with their XP, but Microsoft was killing XP OEM prematurely.
Basically they have screwed big time, and they knew it from the very start but hoped marketing and ignorance will buy them some time.
Do you remember the grand plans Microsoft had for marketing Vista? It was supposed to outdo the Windows 95 campaign in cost, visibility and impressiveness.
But Microsoft just did a so-so release event and went quiet. They knew they had a turd and opted to save their money for Windows 7's campaign.
So is it with some folks who, when MS releases PR memos about vaporware, fix their vision on this "future" OS, freezing themselves out of any current improvements. Just what MS wants.
I like your analog, but I think the reaction you see is more likely because people prefer to stick to XP until something better than XP and Vista comes along (hopefully 7).
The only thing that could impress those people, would be faster release of XP SP3, since the sheer amount of patches required after reinstall is incredible.
I'm in that crowd, and while I'm watching how they go with Vista SP1, I have to say I've pretty much given up on this OS release as a whole.
Windows 7 will be the product that decides the future of Microsoft. They simply can't afford two crappy releases in a row.
(I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening in to the conversation that got that concession out of M$.) This is just M$ offering the same thing to other vendors, who are probably losing a lot of business to people who want XP and can only get it from Dell.
Me too:(
You know, many experts predicted people will skip Vista and go for the next Windows (if for any at all). And those aren't the kinda experts which damn the latest Windows version each time as a sport.
I'm a Microsoft fanboy, but I also feel my stomach turning upside down seeing what they did with Vista as a whole.
And the fact this happened means people actively reject Vista en masse, for Microsoft this means they will have to do big time correction on their Vista projected sales (which included all previously guaranteed OEM sales). One more step into confirming this "people will skip Vista" theory.
I have a really hard time imagining the large herbivorous dinosaurs with feathers.... Not that that means anything, just that I have sucky imagination;-)
Some dragons are drawn with feathers instead of scales. It looks pretty good.
The problem seems to be people keep imagining that those feathers are same as present day feathers, and brightly colored. In fact, the Discovery raptors had brightly colored feathers which didn't make any sense for a carnivore.
I would expect more subdued hues, lots of gray and brown, so they are not as noticeable to their pray.
In fact, from some distance, it wouldn't look much different compared to scales, it'll just be somewhat less shiny.
And it wants it's shocking feathered velociraptor back.
You can see Disocvery documentaries from years ago where the velociraptor is small and feathered.
SO. F*CKIN'. WHAT.
Yes, Jurassic Park is fiction, not documentary, and also the story says they filled-in some holes in the dino DNA with grod DNA and so on (so they're not perfect replica of the original dinosaurs).
But also it's a damn entertainment movie. You can either get entertained (Jurassic's velcoraptors kick ass! well at least in the first two movies), or get pedantic and rediscovered the damn feathers each few years.
So in retrospect, how are Google Ads better than other ads. We have now images, animated GIF-s, videos, and Flash banners.
Looks like Google reintroduced the same old type of banners we all hated, while riding on the inertia by their initial introduction of text ads.
Tell me this: why they still only show text ads on their own site? Is it possible they perfectly realize how much worse the other types of banners are, but keep pushing them for revenue to 3rd parties? Hypocrisy.
It was a trojan horse, to take over the advertising market. This gained them enough cash to buy out other big banner networks (DoubleClick) and now they're bigger than ever.
In very few industries other than microelectronics has anything like Moore's Law applied, and that's not from a lack of economic incentive, but from the plain uncooperativity of Mother Nature.
Well, rather microelectronics is the youngest technology of everything you mentioned, still in development. There was a time when speed and fuel efficiency doubled each 18 months for cars too.
Moore's Law isn't eternal though. Even worse, it's not eternally relevant. Remember P4-s? They had more transistors than Pentium M but ran slower and ate more electricity.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly, during tests, "conversations [were] actually changing based on what was on the screen,"
Of course: DURING TESTS. The sole purpose of the test is to test what they're testing, so it's the subject of interest without any magic required. How about influencing a real world call, emergent call, bad news call, good news call. Anything-else-than-playing-with-the-system call.
And their scheme has a flaw: I can keep talking with my screen turned off. Their advertisers better be dumb enough not to figure out that one.
If you run Firefox, install NoScript plugin
Since Firefox users like to push forward NoScript a lot as some safety precaution (I run it for 2 months, and finally got fed up with enabling virtually any site I visit, so it operates, what's the point), I read a very interesting article about the embeddable nature of IE.
You see, if Firefox can play WMP files on your machine (Windows machine) then every time you open a page (or video) in Firefox you potentially open IE, since WMP can open pages directly inside, and it uses IE regardless of your preferences.
Similar situation occurs with IM-s like Skype and ICQ.
As another commenter said above, security is illusion. Pure and simple.
Let's ban compilation to make sure all software is open source. That must be great for business!
This just demonstrates how emotional states are subjective.
But we knew this already didn't we.
Unlike mass, heat energy, and electromagnetic radiation, joy and pain do not exist outside the brain. Electrically induced joy is every bit as real as monetarily induced joy.
If you believe that you must consider it amazing to take drugs that make you happy.
The fact we exist as complex beings today, is that we evolved to understand out environment and synchronize our being to our surroundings. This means, unless there's some catastrophe that selects simpler, sturdier organisms, natural selection generally "prefers" creatures that better understand their environment and are able to act out in it with better understanding and efficiency.
You equating billions of years of evolution to reach this level, to a rod in your brain that makes you happy, is kinda sad.
When I was on anti-depressants I acted in a way that, in retrospect, wasn't natural for me. I did some very weird things and occasionally embarrased myself, which is something that I don't like to do. What the fuck was I thinking back then? And was it really caused by anti-depressants, or have I simply changed? I don't know, but I'm now very wary of any artificial means of making yourself happy or less depressed.
Few weeks ago when we talked about Singularity AI (AI that produces smarter AI and so on), I made a post and within it had ironic remark that AI's happiness level you could imagine as some sort of mood_level number. Training the AI to increase it's mood level when it meets our criteria would be a way to keep its behavior within given guidelines.
Thing is, of course, it's the same for us. People replied that the robot would just up its mood_level with a tool or a program, and go on a killing spree.
In the end though, AI or actual intelligence is a very complex system. If the system says you're sad, you'd rather look into why you're sad and try changing things in your environment or actions.
The current state of psychology science would rather look at the symptom of another problem and try to "hack it". You can fool yourself you're happy by tweaking your "mood_level", but you realize the one you're lying you is yourself, it's no different that measuring your temperature with a thermometer with "it's all ok! don't look at the scale" written all over it.
Depression is apparently a big problem. There's the argument some people are depressed because of chemical imbalance, well but is there any research going into the difference between both? Nope, instead let's prod rods in our brain, and take drugs.
They should sell those rods and meds together with pink glasses.
The candidate I voted for ran on that platform, and is now doing what he promised when I voted for him.
Hehe, you're so sure of yourself, that I'll have to ask you: who you voted for, what he promised and what he did. So I check myself.
I'm very curious of what you described happened actually in reality.
It only makes business sense to prevent Google from acquiring whenever you can. This seems equivalent to the FCC asking the telecoms how they feel about Google buying/leasing some airwaves.
The questionnaire does not make sense, but it's only now as the EU Antitrust commission starts attacking geeks' favorite Google (DoubleClick) and Apple (iTunes / DRM) you'll see how the EU Antitrust commission operates.
The bias though which the community spins EU's actions is hilarious, but I see this is consistent to what they did with Microsoft, charging them nearly a billion because they shipped a video player in their OS.
I've a question: who'll protect us from the monopoly of the EU? Did anyone ask YOU if you want them protecting your rights in THIS particular fashion? Did someone ask you when EU slapped VAT and sales tax on online purchases? Do I have a choice, short of moving to a different continent.
Eclipse + Java + CVS, woohoo. Welcome to three years ago. How about instead let's try: TextMate / Netbeans, Ruby [..]. SVN or Git
Some of us pick our tools according to the product we want to make, not according to what's hip and ultra cool right now.
PS: Thanks for comparing Eclipse with Textmate. Made my day.
Life is short, take more risks, why not consider moving if you believe you'll end up with better access to something you need? Internet will be more and more essential and eventually become the primary means of delivery of modern media in the next 5 to 7 years.
People are very mobile nowadays, if they don't like something or see an opportunity, they just move and grab it.
Consider also that this is a choice you make not only for you, but also your wife and children. They'll share your pain or benefits, whatever you choose to do.
You could consider not selling your place but renting it, and renting a place elsewhere for your family (or buying it in mortgage installments). This way you won't end up on the street if something goes awry, and always have a home to go back to.
I'm sorry if this totally not applies to your situation (it's possible, I know very little), but it's always good to think outside the box for a bit and think about how it may play out.
"In May the Wi-Fi Alliance got so bored waiting for the IEEE to complete the standard"
I know it's harder to figure out anthromorphism doesn't apply to organisations, since they're made out of people, but can you honestly imagine the following in the documents: "Today we voted to start delivering draft-based wifi kits, because we were bored".
If you'll look for reasons, look for logistics, money, deadlines and contracts.
Do us all a favor,
just pull the plug, windoze luser
I do pull the plug from time to time. But it's a laptop, it just keeps running Windows on batteries.
As for you, I doubt you have laptop, let alone be able to install Linux on a laptop without hurting yourself fatally, seeing you have difficulty spelling "Windows".
You were planning on returning?
Hell I ain't returnin'. It's my god damn property, I found it, I built it up, I'm keepin' it.
And don't you try and send any spaceships with tea 'cause I'm gonna wreck 'em with my bare hands, you good for nothing imperialists!
Any "PowerTaskManager" or something :(?
Please?
As opposed to how many in the past?
One: ME. But ME was the best time to release a crappy Windows, if I could so say.
The prosumers and professionals have moved to Windows 2000 which was a great OS, plenty of people kept their Windows 98 which also performed very adequately for the hardware and software we used at those times.
ME was a blunder, but there was 98 and 2000 to make it subtle and make it easy for Microsoft to swipe it under the rug and forget about it.
With Vista it's completely different story. Vista is for home users, prosumers and professionals. It has been released after building incredible hype for over 5 years in development.
Professionals have nothing to migrate to (no 2000 analog) and consumers feel cosy with their XP, but Microsoft was killing XP OEM prematurely.
Basically they have screwed big time, and they knew it from the very start but hoped marketing and ignorance will buy them some time.
Do you remember the grand plans Microsoft had for marketing Vista? It was supposed to outdo the Windows 95 campaign in cost, visibility and impressiveness.
But Microsoft just did a so-so release event and went quiet. They knew they had a turd and opted to save their money for Windows 7's campaign.
So is it with some folks who, when MS releases PR memos about vaporware, fix their vision on this "future" OS, freezing themselves out of any current improvements. Just what MS wants.
I like your analog, but I think the reaction you see is more likely because people prefer to stick to XP until something better than XP and Vista comes along (hopefully 7).
The only thing that could impress those people, would be faster release of XP SP3, since the sheer amount of patches required after reinstall is incredible.
I'm in that crowd, and while I'm watching how they go with Vista SP1, I have to say I've pretty much given up on this OS release as a whole.
Windows 7 will be the product that decides the future of Microsoft. They simply can't afford two crappy releases in a row.
(I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening in to the conversation that got that concession out of M$.) This is just M$ offering the same thing to other vendors, who are probably losing a lot of business to people who want XP and can only get it from Dell.
:(
Me too
You know, many experts predicted people will skip Vista and go for the next Windows (if for any at all). And those aren't the kinda experts which damn the latest Windows version each time as a sport.
I'm a Microsoft fanboy, but I also feel my stomach turning upside down seeing what they did with Vista as a whole.
And the fact this happened means people actively reject Vista en masse, for Microsoft this means they will have to do big time correction on their Vista projected sales (which included all previously guaranteed OEM sales). One more step into confirming this "people will skip Vista" theory.
No wonder the dinos went nuts and started killing people. You mixed in DNA from evil villian and Legion of Doom member Gorilla Grodd
:( Well, that explains why Velociraptors where able to steal Grant's credit cards and order enormous amount of crap online in JP 3.
Yea
I have a really hard time imagining the large herbivorous dinosaurs with feathers.... Not that that means anything, just that I have sucky imagination ;-)
Some dragons are drawn with feathers instead of scales. It looks pretty good.
The problem seems to be people keep imagining that those feathers are same as present day feathers, and brightly colored. In fact, the Discovery raptors had brightly colored feathers which didn't make any sense for a carnivore.
I would expect more subdued hues, lots of gray and brown, so they are not as noticeable to their pray.
In fact, from some distance, it wouldn't look much different compared to scales, it'll just be somewhat less shiny.
Does that mean Spielberg is going to retouch Jurassic Park to add feathers?
No, but the Jurassic Park 4 seems to get it right.
And it wants it's shocking feathered velociraptor back.
You can see Disocvery documentaries from years ago where the velociraptor is small and feathered.
SO. F*CKIN'. WHAT.
Yes, Jurassic Park is fiction, not documentary, and also the story says they filled-in some holes in the dino DNA with grod DNA and so on (so they're not perfect replica of the original dinosaurs).
But also it's a damn entertainment movie. You can either get entertained (Jurassic's velcoraptors kick ass! well at least in the first two movies), or get pedantic and rediscovered the damn feathers each few years.
As if someone gives a damn.
So in retrospect, how are Google Ads better than other ads. We have now images, animated GIF-s, videos, and Flash banners.
Looks like Google reintroduced the same old type of banners we all hated, while riding on the inertia by their initial introduction of text ads.
Tell me this: why they still only show text ads on their own site? Is it possible they perfectly realize how much worse the other types of banners are, but keep pushing them for revenue to 3rd parties? Hypocrisy.
It was a trojan horse, to take over the advertising market. This gained them enough cash to buy out other big banner networks (DoubleClick) and now they're bigger than ever.
Enjoy, the wolf in sheep's clothes.
An online survey asked "are you online".
100% answered "yes"...
I do recall someone telling me that no CPU would ever run at more than 2GHz, as it would then start emitting microwave radiation...
That's nothing, every time I drive my car faster than 20km/hour, I can't breathe...
In very few industries other than microelectronics has anything like Moore's Law applied, and that's not from a lack of economic incentive, but from the plain uncooperativity of Mother Nature.
Well, rather microelectronics is the youngest technology of everything you mentioned, still in development. There was a time when speed and fuel efficiency doubled each 18 months for cars too.
Moore's Law isn't eternal though. Even worse, it's not eternally relevant. Remember P4-s? They had more transistors than Pentium M but ran slower and ate more electricity.