Though this seems like a much safer alternative to today's credit/debit cards, although like TFA says, what will this really do for security? How long until a flaw is discovered or it is cracked?
So I'm guessing you wrote that just so you could get in an early comment.
Or are you really concerned about security on an item which literally has all of its information printed right on its surface which you hand to strangers and gets stored in a third party database. Oh and I forgot that most of the printing is actually raised so it can be recorded with a simple piece of paper and a crayon.
You are worried that something could be less secure than THAT? Well I suppose adding a speaker for blind cashiers might be a bit less secure...
So I repeat: So? I'd still rather keep the 5-6 car space, rather than tailgate and risk being thrown through my windshield if the car in front suddenly stops.
So? Wear your seatbelt and you won't get thrown through the windshield;)
If you locate some actual skeptics, people capable of analyzing the evidence, who have come to the opposite conclusion of the vast majority of actual climatologists, I'd love to hear from them.
What about people who aren't skeptics, but are damned tired of the whole thing being hijacked as a way to sell people on junk ideas.
All the good intention in the world won't do you any good if the 'fix' isn't practical.
I'm just thinking of it from a 5 minute rule. If a user can't figure out the basic use of a program that is designed to make things easier or fun for them within 5 minutes, they are going to get frustrated and go back to what they are used to.
I'm just worried that if you rely too much upon your users, it's not going to get done.
If a road is near maximum capacity but still maintaining the speed if you do not maintain speed you become a hazard to other drivers. So the 'safer' option is to give as much distance as you can without encouraging 'lane hopping' drivers. Keeping the speed differential to a minimum is safer than attempting to maintain a following distance which would be safe if traffic was light.
I think it's going to have trouble meeting collision safety standards, actually, although it can't possibly be more dangerous than my motorcycle.
I've always thought it odd that we are so terribly worried about safety standards for cars, yet we allow motorcycles. Now, don't get me wrong, I think we should allow motorcycles. It just drives me nuts when we see some rather interesting designs and concepts ignored because it won't meet our standards even though you could make a simple (but clear and obvious) warning that such and such a vehicle does not meet the motor vehicle safety standards.
Maybe a class 'experimental' license that you have to get before you can drive one just to show that you are fully educated about the safety risks and how to mitigate them through behavior (extreme defensive driving).
Hmm. Guess what happens if you screw up my finances?
I likely lose my security clearance. As a result, I'm effectively blackballed from the industry in which I have built my career. My skills do not translate to the traditional commercial world without a lot of 'years lost'
So not only would my financial life have been destroyed, but all of the experience built up in my career as well. It would be like smashing the fingers of a pianist. My safety net and my means to rebuild one destroyed in one fell swoop.
People understand that. Damnit, facebook is down. But when you split the community, people will say, "Hey, is diaspora down?" non-techie: "Dunno what's wrong, it works for me, maybe your computer is busted."
Service is down people understand.
Some part of the service that isn't actually connected to the service is down... People won't understand that.
It's like trying to get your computer tweaked for gaming. People pop in the DVD and expect it to install and run. When a cryptic error comes back "There is something wrong, click here to send a memory dump" Is it your video card, sound card, a driver issue, some other weird incompatability.
When Facebook goes down, it is Facebook that brings it back up. But the same will not be true for Diaspora, they will be reliant on that Third Party to bring that section of their users back online, or their users to switch to a new service.
Even though both services will have the same problem, any additional complication for the users will likely result in them dumping the system after getting confused.
Don't get me wrong, I like Diaspora, but I can just see this ending up like a LOT of open source projects in which things that people are used to are changed because the developer decided, 'It's better this way, get used to it.' It's what kills me every time I try to use GIMP. (Open Office seemed to learn this lesson) GIMP is damned annoying to just get it working without having to learn a new way of doing things.
Diaspora is going to have to make this aspect of itself damned near transparent to the users otherwise it's going to lose because of early negative opinions.
Out of curiosity I picked up some Coke from Mexico that was made from sugar, and some from the States that was made from HFCS.
My friends and I held a blind taste test and while we could detect a slight difference in taste, it certainly wasn't very pronounced, and a lot of times, we got it wrong (expecting the sugar one to be less sweet) The problem was partially because we knew one was HFCS and the other was sugar so we might have been expecting some things. But that experiement was probably a lot more accurate than 20-30 year old memories about how awesome Coke was back in the day.
What I DID enjoy, were a few colas that were called 'Simply Cola' or something like that which while made with sugar, used a LOT less than what is standard today. It let you taste the flavors a lot more and the sugar was not overpowering.
The only thing I can think of is that maybe the Coke from 30 years ago had less sugar in it than the Coke produced today, but I have no evidence for that. I just think that a lot of our memories from the good old days may have been enhanced with age.
I live in America too. I do this really crazy thing called "looking at the list of ingredients" when I buy food at the supermarket. If "everything" has HFCS in it where you live, then you must live in a really shitty place. I haven't consumed HFCS in years
What ingredients are used at restaurants? Good on you if you have the ability to prepare everything you eat personally. Even then, do you never eat out? Of course, I think you are referring to the fact that you don't consume HFCS in levels similar to people who drink sodas and the like.
It's sometimes hard to find things that don't have HFCS in it and your statement that they must live in a shitty place is just ignorant. There are foods today which used to not have HFCS in it and now they do. Things are being sweetened when before they weren't.
I remember when you could go to the store and buy a simple cereal product like Crisped Rice and look at the ingredients and see, Ingredients: Rice.
Not here, unfortunately Aus is the perfect breeding grounds for em, you can usually get paid to go out and shoot the little bastards:)
Maybe you should try bringing one of the North American predators over there and introduce them into the wild. They certainly keep our rabbit population in check.
So what happens when some chunk of users lose access or data because of a third party screwup? Is that possible in this system? It sounds like it. What happens when the first 'free' service that gets a fair amount of users has a public data leak?
That is utterly correct. It's too late. Facebook has hit critical mass and Dispora is too late to the party
What would prevent you from making a Facebook page that essentially said:
Hey, this is IndustrialComplex's page, You may reach me at Diaspora. Learn here why I won't use facebook: link link. Facebook then becomes an advertising tool for a competing service.
The friends that can't figure it out? Well, are they the kind of friends you need. The companies and the bands, etc... They WILL establish a presence on Diaspora. But frankly, I don't really think that any of that is all that necessary for a peer to peer social networking platform.
Well that depends on how you define a home PC. Would a cell phone that was plugged into a base station which provided a keyboard/interface and a large monitor-sized display be considered a PC or a cell phone? Would a PC that becomes so small that you can stick a monitor and wireless data receiver on it for voip be considered a phone?
In essence, if you are asking: Will significant numbers of people ever give up a monitor/keyboard/mouse or the equivalent in favor of using a 4.3" screen exclusively? The answer to that is no. Will we see some major advances in HIDs? Most likely, but you won't ever see the primary interface become a cell phone until the following are packaged into the phone:
1. A micro projector (spreadsheets, documents, and the like require a much larger display than a cell phone) 2. A projection keyboard. (8 finger + thumb typing would be necessary to even get close to the interface speed of a home PC) 3. A projection trackpad. (Tracks your finger motions over a flat surface as if it were a standard trackpad)
Essentially, you have to figure out a way to decouple the display and the interface. You then have to expand them so that they are of a size which is comparable to a standard PC/laptop. Without that, you will not see any real encroachment since the current limitations of a cell phone make it highly insufficient as a replacement.
Little Johnny can warez the portable version of Postal 2 in about 2 hours if he was so inclined & had a broadband Internet connection. It ignores everything you just mentioned above.
I tell Little Johnny no. If Little Johnny ignores me his Little Johnny ass is going to be outside trimming the hedge instead of doing fun Little Johnny things.
It's not going to immediately hurt him, so punishment after the fact is perfectly adequate to address the situation and builds respect and trust between the parent and child.
This subsection does not apply to-- (A) a temporary transfer of a handgun or ammunition to a juvenile or to the possession or use of a handgun or ammunition by a juvenile if the handgun and ammunition are possessed and used by the juvenile--
That's an important part too. All it does is nullify possession of handguns without adult supervision/consent.
That's a rather 'tricky' statement don't you think? First, I'll agree with you in that gravity doesn't technically reach zero. But it does appear to have to propagate. In a system many thousand of lightyears across, propagation delay would be significant.
Not only that, but wouldn't the galaxy have expanded several million, if not billions of miles in the 27,000 years it would take for light to travel from one end to the other? (I'm not trusting my back of the envelope calcuations which put it at expanding 500 billion miles over 27,000 years)
I don't believe that at all; it sounds like marketing-speak. Intel's using, what, eight CPUs to do real-time RAY TRACING, and that's MORE demanding than the rasterizering paradigm that modern GPUs are based on. Certainly a GPU is more specialized and efficient than a similar-scale general purpose CPU, but I think the performance ratio is closer to 4::1 than 100::1.
It's all in the design. (YAY! Car analogy time)
You have to transport 1,000 people from NY to Miami faster than another person. Complete the challenge and win $10M. There are two vehicles, you pick first:
2 seat Ferrari 40 seat Bus
GPUs DO get a boost from things like just having to worry about processing graphics as opposed to managing the computer, but they get a MUCH bigger boost due to the fact that they are optimized to do certain tasks very quickly.
The Bus is designed to move a lot of people, the Ferrari is designed to move 1 or two people very quickly, and you can easily argue that the Ferrari is the much more powerful, advanced, carefully engineered design. The Ray Tracing activity is a bit like taking the Ferarri engine out and using it to power a pump and then taking the bus engine out and using it as well. Neither were really designed to do that, so it doesn't really work as a good comparison.
There is a reason why it was hard to emulate something like the Playstation for a long time even though computer processors were orders of magnitude more powerful than the one in the original Playstation.
Well, Id imagine it takes quite a bit longer than the IBM super computer to do an equal amount of work.
An equal amount of computation, sure. But how much computation is necessary to get useful results? Both may not be working on problems of equal magnitude.
A backhoe can move more dirt than I can with a shovel, but if all I have to move is 1 cubic meter, and the backhoe has to move 1000... my workload is still a lot less.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it legal for you to own a bomb in the US?
I don't know, let's find out. You can pass lots of laws that don't pass Constitutional muster.
But that's beside the point. If I have a nuclear bomb, just who is going to tell me no?
Though this seems like a much safer alternative to today's credit/debit cards, although like TFA says, what will this really do for security? How long until a flaw is discovered or it is cracked?
So I'm guessing you wrote that just so you could get in an early comment.
Or are you really concerned about security on an item which literally has all of its information printed right on its surface which you hand to strangers and gets stored in a third party database. Oh and I forgot that most of the printing is actually raised so it can be recorded with a simple piece of paper and a crayon.
You are worried that something could be less secure than THAT? Well I suppose adding a speaker for blind cashiers might be a bit less secure...
So I repeat: So? I'd still rather keep the 5-6 car space, rather than tailgate and risk being thrown through my windshield if the car in front suddenly stops.
So? Wear your seatbelt and you won't get thrown through the windshield ;)
If you locate some actual skeptics, people capable of analyzing the evidence, who have come to the opposite conclusion of the vast majority of actual climatologists, I'd love to hear from them.
What about people who aren't skeptics, but are damned tired of the whole thing being hijacked as a way to sell people on junk ideas.
All the good intention in the world won't do you any good if the 'fix' isn't practical.
I'm just thinking of it from a 5 minute rule. If a user can't figure out the basic use of a program that is designed to make things easier or fun for them within 5 minutes, they are going to get frustrated and go back to what they are used to.
I'm just worried that if you rely too much upon your users, it's not going to get done.
If your username included 'military', the proletariat might not mind.
observational humor; not picking on you personally.
Alas, MilitaryIndustrialComplex, was longer than Slashdot would accept. ;)
So?
If a road is near maximum capacity but still maintaining the speed if you do not maintain speed you become a hazard to other drivers. So the 'safer' option is to give as much distance as you can without encouraging 'lane hopping' drivers. Keeping the speed differential to a minimum is safer than attempting to maintain a following distance which would be safe if traffic was light.
I think it's going to have trouble meeting collision safety standards, actually, although it can't possibly be more dangerous than my motorcycle.
I've always thought it odd that we are so terribly worried about safety standards for cars, yet we allow motorcycles. Now, don't get me wrong, I think we should allow motorcycles. It just drives me nuts when we see some rather interesting designs and concepts ignored because it won't meet our standards even though you could make a simple (but clear and obvious) warning that such and such a vehicle does not meet the motor vehicle safety standards.
Maybe a class 'experimental' license that you have to get before you can drive one just to show that you are fully educated about the safety risks and how to mitigate them through behavior (extreme defensive driving).
Imagine that. Engineers building bombs and weapons. Sometimes a noble profession, sometimes just another job.
Can't it be both?
I'm guessing that your solution to a beehive in your backyard is to run up and kick it.
Depends on how much I don't like the person catching it.
Hmm. Guess what happens if you screw up my finances?
I likely lose my security clearance. As a result, I'm effectively blackballed from the industry in which I have built my career. My skills do not translate to the traditional commercial world without a lot of 'years lost'
So not only would my financial life have been destroyed, but all of the experience built up in my career as well. It would be like smashing the fingers of a pianist. My safety net and my means to rebuild one destroyed in one fell swoop.
What happens when facebook does?
People understand that. Damnit, facebook is down. But when you split the community, people will say, "Hey, is diaspora down?" non-techie: "Dunno what's wrong, it works for me, maybe your computer is busted."
Service is down people understand.
Some part of the service that isn't actually connected to the service is down... People won't understand that.
It's like trying to get your computer tweaked for gaming. People pop in the DVD and expect it to install and run. When a cryptic error comes back "There is something wrong, click here to send a memory dump" Is it your video card, sound card, a driver issue, some other weird incompatability.
When Facebook goes down, it is Facebook that brings it back up. But the same will not be true for Diaspora, they will be reliant on that Third Party to bring that section of their users back online, or their users to switch to a new service.
Even though both services will have the same problem, any additional complication for the users will likely result in them dumping the system after getting confused.
Don't get me wrong, I like Diaspora, but I can just see this ending up like a LOT of open source projects in which things that people are used to are changed because the developer decided, 'It's better this way, get used to it.' It's what kills me every time I try to use GIMP. (Open Office seemed to learn this lesson) GIMP is damned annoying to just get it working without having to learn a new way of doing things.
Diaspora is going to have to make this aspect of itself damned near transparent to the users otherwise it's going to lose because of early negative opinions.
Coca Cola was awesome back then.
Was it?
Out of curiosity I picked up some Coke from Mexico that was made from sugar, and some from the States that was made from HFCS.
My friends and I held a blind taste test and while we could detect a slight difference in taste, it certainly wasn't very pronounced, and a lot of times, we got it wrong (expecting the sugar one to be less sweet) The problem was partially because we knew one was HFCS and the other was sugar so we might have been expecting some things. But that experiement was probably a lot more accurate than 20-30 year old memories about how awesome Coke was back in the day.
What I DID enjoy, were a few colas that were called 'Simply Cola' or something like that which while made with sugar, used a LOT less than what is standard today. It let you taste the flavors a lot more and the sugar was not overpowering.
The only thing I can think of is that maybe the Coke from 30 years ago had less sugar in it than the Coke produced today, but I have no evidence for that. I just think that a lot of our memories from the good old days may have been enhanced with age.
I live in America too. I do this really crazy thing called "looking at the list of ingredients" when I buy food at the supermarket. If "everything" has HFCS in it where you live, then you must live in a really shitty place. I haven't consumed HFCS in years
What ingredients are used at restaurants? Good on you if you have the ability to prepare everything you eat personally. Even then, do you never eat out? Of course, I think you are referring to the fact that you don't consume HFCS in levels similar to people who drink sodas and the like.
It's sometimes hard to find things that don't have HFCS in it and your statement that they must live in a shitty place is just ignorant. There are foods today which used to not have HFCS in it and now they do. Things are being sweetened when before they weren't.
I remember when you could go to the store and buy a simple cereal product like Crisped Rice and look at the ingredients and see, Ingredients: Rice.
Not here, unfortunately Aus is the perfect breeding grounds for em, you can usually get paid to go out and shoot the little bastards :)
Maybe you should try bringing one of the North American predators over there and introduce them into the wild. They certainly keep our rabbit population in check.
Oh ugh, that sounds horrible.
So what happens when some chunk of users lose access or data because of a third party screwup? Is that possible in this system? It sounds like it. What happens when the first 'free' service that gets a fair amount of users has a public data leak?
That is utterly correct. It's too late. Facebook has hit critical mass and Dispora is too late to the party
What would prevent you from making a Facebook page that essentially said:
Hey, this is IndustrialComplex's page, You may reach me at Diaspora. Learn here why I won't use facebook: link link. Facebook then becomes an advertising tool for a competing service.
The friends that can't figure it out? Well, are they the kind of friends you need. The companies and the bands, etc... They WILL establish a presence on Diaspora. But frankly, I don't really think that any of that is all that necessary for a peer to peer social networking platform.
How long until they encroach on home PCs?
Well that depends on how you define a home PC. Would a cell phone that was plugged into a base station which provided a keyboard/interface and a large monitor-sized display be considered a PC or a cell phone? Would a PC that becomes so small that you can stick a monitor and wireless data receiver on it for voip be considered a phone?
In essence, if you are asking: Will significant numbers of people ever give up a monitor/keyboard/mouse or the equivalent in favor of using a 4.3" screen exclusively? The answer to that is no. Will we see some major advances in HIDs? Most likely, but you won't ever see the primary interface become a cell phone until the following are packaged into the phone:
1. A micro projector (spreadsheets, documents, and the like require a much larger display than a cell phone)
2. A projection keyboard. (8 finger + thumb typing would be necessary to even get close to the interface speed of a home PC)
3. A projection trackpad. (Tracks your finger motions over a flat surface as if it were a standard trackpad)
Essentially, you have to figure out a way to decouple the display and the interface. You then have to expand them so that they are of a size which is comparable to a standard PC/laptop. Without that, you will not see any real encroachment since the current limitations of a cell phone make it highly insufficient as a replacement.
Little Johnny can warez the portable version of Postal 2 in about 2 hours if he was so inclined & had a broadband Internet connection. It ignores everything you just mentioned above.
I tell Little Johnny no. If Little Johnny ignores me his Little Johnny ass is going to be outside trimming the hedge instead of doing fun Little Johnny things.
It's not going to immediately hurt him, so punishment after the fact is perfectly adequate to address the situation and builds respect and trust between the parent and child.
This subsection does not apply to--
(A) a temporary transfer of a handgun or ammunition to a juvenile or to the possession or use of a handgun or ammunition by a juvenile if the handgun and ammunition are possessed and used by the juvenile--
That's an important part too. All it does is nullify possession of handguns without adult supervision/consent.
what's the opposite of "privatize"? Publicize?
Socialize.
Gravity doesn't have a range.
That's a rather 'tricky' statement don't you think? First, I'll agree with you in that gravity doesn't technically reach zero. But it does appear to have to propagate. In a system many thousand of lightyears across, propagation delay would be significant.
Not only that, but wouldn't the galaxy have expanded several million, if not billions of miles in the 27,000 years it would take for light to travel from one end to the other? (I'm not trusting my back of the envelope calcuations which put it at expanding 500 billion miles over 27,000 years)
I don't believe that at all; it sounds like marketing-speak. Intel's using, what, eight CPUs to do real-time RAY TRACING, and that's MORE demanding than the rasterizering paradigm that modern GPUs are based on. Certainly a GPU is more specialized and efficient than a similar-scale general purpose CPU, but I think the performance ratio is closer to 4::1 than 100::1.
It's all in the design. (YAY! Car analogy time)
You have to transport 1,000 people from NY to Miami faster than another person. Complete the challenge and win $10M. There are two vehicles, you pick first:
2 seat Ferrari
40 seat Bus
GPUs DO get a boost from things like just having to worry about processing graphics as opposed to managing the computer, but they get a MUCH bigger boost due to the fact that they are optimized to do certain tasks very quickly.
The Bus is designed to move a lot of people, the Ferrari is designed to move 1 or two people very quickly, and you can easily argue that the Ferrari is the much more powerful, advanced, carefully engineered design. The Ray Tracing activity is a bit like taking the Ferarri engine out and using it to power a pump and then taking the bus engine out and using it as well. Neither were really designed to do that, so it doesn't really work as a good comparison.
There is a reason why it was hard to emulate something like the Playstation for a long time even though computer processors were orders of magnitude more powerful than the one in the original Playstation.
The galaxies in the simulation develop planets, scientists, and their own Galaxy Simulators???
Has anyone else been bothered the fact that energy is quantized? It always made me feel like we were looking at pixels we weren't supposed to see :)
Why should I be bothered, if you look at it just the right way, it looks like...
Turtles.
Well, Id imagine it takes quite a bit longer than the IBM super computer to do an equal amount of work.
An equal amount of computation, sure. But how much computation is necessary to get useful results? Both may not be working on problems of equal magnitude.
A backhoe can move more dirt than I can with a shovel, but if all I have to move is 1 cubic meter, and the backhoe has to move 1000... my workload is still a lot less.