..and with your "bonus" electromagnetic effect, how do you propose keeping folks with small EMP generators from driving around the neighborhood? War driving could have a whole new meaning...
I went to a presentation that was given by Dr. Begich earlier his winter, wherein he spoke to some of the issues that come up when bodies are exposed to electromagnetic waves. A lot of his talk was directed at some things such as the HAARP array here in Alaska, and some of the research being done with very powerful signals. However, for parts of the talk he discussed some of the studies as done by institutions in Europe - especially Scandinavian countries (which have had a significant nation-wide adoption of cellular technologies for longer than the US) - and the fact that there are studies that show an increase in the frequency in brain cancer and tumors on individuals using cell phones.
The individuals in the study used cellphones for work and personal use, which meant that they were being subjected to the waves for large portions of the day (business men and the like with 4-8 hours of phone time). There was not a 100% cancer rate amongst these people, but there was a statistically significant increase in cancer rates on the sides of the head that the phone was being held up to.
He said that European nations tend to have a policy to inform the public of possible risks, then allow them to make their own decisions as to the safety (or lack) of the devices. This, of course, is in contrast to the American model of a study having to be performed, then duplicated by three or four other organizations (some of whom are typically being funded by the companies being investigated) before it can even be discussed seriously.
I know that there are some risks to the increase in EMW that I am being exposed to, and I also understand that long term effects are not yet known. Yes, there is evidence that EMW causes problems. Yes, there is much more that needs to be studied. Yes, I will still keep my wireless router, cell-phone, portable phone, and microwave. Yes, my tinfoil hat keeps me safe at night.
I'll be completely honest... I would love a box of Communist O's with a picture of Stalin on the front, purchased on that Capitalist wonder that is eBay. I wouldn't eat them, merely keep them on the mantle above the fireplace. Talk about a conversation starter, woo!
Just to disagree with you, I am a year and a half since departed from college. I always owned fairly crappy used cars, wore a modest wardrobe, and generally was very careful with my money. However, if there was something especially nice that I wanted to purchase, I would work extra hours, I would save, I would do what I could, and then buy it. While you can make all of the sweeping and generalizing statements about "the typical college student" that you wish, please also acknowledge that there are non-Hummer driving poor college students who still saved up to buy nice things.
To buy a PS3: -Work 4 extra hours at PT job (38 $/wk) -Go out to eat one less meal (8 $/wk) -One less movie a month (2 $/wk) -One less pack of beer a week (8 $/wk)
That's an easy 56 bucks a week (it wouldn't be hard to minimize pretty much all expenses to push it beyond 75), which would add up in a couple of months. And that is how I bought a nice bike, a PS2, and a computer while still going to school full time (without help from parents in any sense).
Yes, the Escalade kids will have them. But it isn't that big of a stretch to think that someone capable of planning ahead might have done just that, unless you wish to categorize all college students as fiscally irresponsible saps incapable of saving for future purchases.
I browsed through a bunch of the comments and, time after time, found myself reading that this quasi-epidemic is the result of a lazy, unintellectual population living in a country with a poor education system. First off, as a son of an ex-counsellor / ex-teacher / current principal, as well as a prospective pursuer of a Master's in Teaching, I am quite aware of the broad spectrum of problems that are facing our educational system. I cannot deny that, but I also feel that there what we have is not a total waste. Secondly, as a recent college graduate, I am not far removed from this same system which we are discussing. While I admit that there is a large problem in the drive of many of my peers from high school, not to mention the apathy of far too many of those getting post-secondary degrees, I do not feel that it is an innate laziness, as was claimed in many threads above, that is the root cause of it all.
I am currently living with a girl (not in a relationship with her) who has recently decided to drop out of college. When asking her what the cause of this is, she has said time and time again that it is to make more money. After all, working part time in a small restaurant does not bring in a great deal of cash. So, if she takes a higher paying job now and begins working full time, she sees that her income goes from about 200 a week to almost 500. By year's end, she figures, that gain in 15,000 dollars will be well worth it. Some of our mutual friends made the same move in high school by dropping out to work for the immediate cash, and indeed, at the moment, life seems pretty good for them in comparison to her.
This shortsighted, more now, instant-gratification mindset that my generation seems to have is more the root than a general sense of laziness and apathy, IMO. I try to tell her that, with my degree, I am making 15,000 a year more than a woman in my office with twenty years of work experience, all because I have a degree and she does not. I then point out that, if my career keeps along its current path, I will be making about 30,000 more than her in a few years, while she will be staying at the same pay scale, give or take a bit of adjustment for tiny annual bonuses.
Sadly, many people don't see that connection between being poor for a few years in the promise of increased income as being worthwhile. I want it NOW, they say, not realizing how the net gain will be cancelled out within a couple of years from graduation.
I won't touch on multi-lingual issues, stagnant educational structure, or anything else, as that would push this long post to the realm of the ridiculous.
I am curious what you mean when you say "average gamer" when referencing the 80% who cannot afford the new PS3. If you mean the 13-year old, then yes, 600 is way out of their range, and parents are a little less likely to spring for such a system. However, amongst the college and high school gamers out there (not to mention computer programming 30-40 y/o folks, making over 70k a year), 600 (or 700, which is what you are quoting) is doable.
I think that we can simplify this by breaking it out in the way that the systems have been marketed. The PS3 is targeted at GAMERS. People who spend money on video games and hardware on a somewhat-regular basis. New 500 dollar graphics card? Sure. New, 2000 dollar screen? Sure. Upgraded sound system? Sure. 600 dollar, high performance console? Why not.
The Wii, on the otherhand, is marketed for NONGAMERS. Not to say that it will not be a very fun system for playing games. It is just that it looks to appeal to the mothers, girls, children, and other people who would not regularly buy a system. There was an interview yesterday on Buisiness Week that addressed this very concept, with the famed creators discussing how they were making a mother-friendly system.
Nintendo is in fact making a great move. I will agree with you there. I will probably be buying one of the systems here during the holiday season. However, I feel that Sony is also making a good move. Is it better or worse than Nintendo's move? No, just different. We will see how it pans out over the next year, and then make a judgement.
Hey mods...the above post is not off topic, it is merely pointing out that articles, blurbs, and summaries should make the distinction that Indians (ala India) are not the same as Native Americans. Hundreds of years after the initial confusion and we are still getting this stuff wrong. Indians are not native to the Amazon.
...a decent point, although I must admit that all of my friends, family, and coworkers look at me like a freak as I tote about my two-year old phone. I cannot cite my source, but somewhere out there I was reading that the typical consumer is expected to keep gadgets such as phones for one year, and that the constant flow of newer, "better" (ha!) phones keeps the purchasing of new products moving along quite nicely.
And my hard drive failed on my iPod before my battery had a chance to become too annoying.
This concept of "everyone and their dog making a website on MySpace" somehow diluting the market seems absurd. I do not know many high school students or young adults who go out and hire programmers (which, as touched on in other replies, are not all CS majors, and vice versa) to build their sites. The "I can do it myself attitude" won't hurt the jobs out there, because those people weren't paying customers to begin with. As to bands who are now on MySpace, a lot of the indie groups are using it because they were not able to hire out for their own domain and site. How is MySpace reducing the need for programmers to create solid and technically-sound work?
People seem to have forgotten that years ago there were places such as geocities and tripod, praised for their capacity to bring the internet to everyone. Everyone could, and would, make their own site. What did we see as the masses made their presence known? Poor design, overuse of blink tags and frames, combined with a general lack of understanding of navigation and layout.
What do we see in the MySpace rush of "web developers" that we are facing? Poor design, overuse of widgets and media players, and a general lack of understanding of complete sentences and color theory. I hardly feel that the advent of CSS-based social pages is going to destroy the market for talent and an understanding of the principles behind web design.
You didn't do a very good job looking at their site if all that you came away with was their scheduling software. Right from their homepage you are given two links - Software or Intellectual Property. From their IP link, you might find out that "In addition to the approximate 40 patents the company has secured or acquired over the past 15 years, Forgent has applied for dozens of patents relating to various products and software the company has developed over the past several years."
So, if you actually read what they do with software, you will find that their software does both scheduling and asset tracking. What, a company that has developed useful products that fit a definite market and have a definite place in the business world, yet has made contributions to the advancement of technology as well? How does that make them guilty of patent trolling?
Such claimes must be backed up by evidence.
Is this libel?!
SUE SUE SUE SUE SUE!
You use this word, but I think you know not what it means. The term you are likely looking for is "difference in opinion" or "contrary view" or "amusing disagreement" - unless, of course, you have the statistical analysis and numbers available to explain why it is that the one thing keeping Linux from storming the good ol' home PC market is excessive wisget and GUI design. Even then, I think that the term you would be looking for is "correction" or "FYI" or something along those lines.
I am going to go drink some black fly chardonnay in the rain on this, my wedding day. Because it's ironic?
The system has a success rate of 80%, which means that far too many false positives (or, in the case of crimes, false negatives) will be flagged. If you look at the videos that they used to typify the violent/non-violent behaviors, showing a hug and a push, you can see that the actors they had moved in very deilberate and unrealistic manners.
So, we have a system that fails 20% of the time (for really, in a system such as this, it is failure rate that is the concern) when using highly exaggerated actions. How many hugs have you had where the impact of it send you and the person in your arms staggering backwards? How many confrontations have you seen where one person is within inches of another's face, pushing and bumping in very small stages? How many muggings or holdups have you seen that are kept low-profile? Many. So, imagine this system, which already fails 1/5 of the time, trying to deduce the complexities of human interaction.
I hate to break it to you, but telemarketing is based upon the solid business case that it does in fact work. Companies would not be engaging in telemarketing if it weren't for the fact that it has a decent ROI when compared to other wide-reaching marketing campaigns. This article, while definitely not the most recent one out there, speaks of the 5-15% success rate.
As annoying as we find SPAM (both the food and the email), telemarketers, and mass mailings, they do show a return on the marketing investment. Yes, some people are turned away from the product or service because of the annoyance, but plenty of others buy into it to keep this machine running.
One of the best ways to hurt their bottom line is to eat up their time, so that they waste valuable time trying to convince you (or your baby daughter, or your drunk dorm buddies, or your shoutboard, or your own hold music) that the sale is worth it. If their returns dropped low enough, they would stop doing it as it became an ineffective business model.
Not that I have the patience to do that more than once a or twice a month.
Or you could use the following:
I present to you the number for your free annual credit report-
1-877-322-8228
The number to stop receiving pre-approved credit card offers and other junk mail-
1-888-567-8688
And the number to stop receiving solicitations telemarketers-
1-888-382-1222
You see, it isn't that the scouts themselves are the threats. Nazi Germany had its Hitler-Jugend and Deutsches Yungvolk, both of which were organizations that trained up the youth to be proper citizens. Additionally, these children were turned into informants and quasi-police. Were the children a threat? No. They were a tool and a commodity to the party. Imagine a dorm full of college students (aka IP Pirates) with one or two scouts who are willing to inform the Powers that Be about all subversive music downloads occuring on campus?
In all honesty, though, it will probably be some of these scouts who are the worst pirates. I know that one of my brother's little scout buddies is quite proud of his collection of Chinese-subtitled pirated movies that he torrented off of a variety of sites. Make the video, get the badge, and then sit around and listen to all of your ill-gotten music, okay kids?
Perhaps I am way off base on this one, but I believe that what you meant to say is that not everything is built in-house by Apple, when instead you said designed. I am pretty sure that the actual design is done by a variety of excellent industrial design teams. Yes, a lot of the internal components come from outside manufacturers, but the design of the end product is still internal to the Apple team. We all know that Apple's success comes from its view of the end result - the Apple experience - as opposed to the individual components.
So, yes, they use other parts in an acknowledgement that they are not the best at everything, but they still design their products and work very closely with manufacturers to ensure that the components fit the end design (let us just ignore the industry-wide battery SNAFU for now).
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to use an analogy of vandals mortaring your snowman. For, you see, the problem with the e-vandals is that they are not actually physically present when they attack your snowman. Yes, there is proof that they attacked you, but chances are that determining their physical location is hard. Sure, you could look at the trajectory of the incoming projectile, but even then you are having to do a lot of imprecise and possibly flawed work to find out just where these attacks are coming from.
Another analogy, regarding security, is that of the attractive and financially well-endowed woman walking in a dark alley in a bad part of town. Sure, she SHOULD be safe, because she is a human and everyone should have some sort of basic respect for the dignity and humanity of all other people. Why is it, then, that she should have mace or a gun in her handbag? Why does she need to take a precaution to mitigate actual harm to her person? Why should she avoid a part of town known as being dangerous?
Apply this to web development. Why should developers protect their code? Why should they take extra steps to secure their sites and servers? Quite simply, the internet is a bad part of town, and we need to make sure that we are not doing things that make us susceptible to attack.
Concertina wire is more likely to help than counting on the prosecution of attackers and vandals.
You are absolutely right, we should be offended that someone made a parody of something that is so true. I mean, the gall of some people, making fun of themselves and others. Gay and black people are fortunate that they have escaped the wrath of popular media and comedy. I mean, just imagine it...blatantly gay people being the butt of jokes on a televised series? Oh, Will and Grace. Black people being criticized and stereotyped on public television...oh, sorry, Chris Rock and 90% of the black comedians out there beat you to it.
If we can't look at some of the stereotypes and laugh, then something is wrong. The great thing about disagreeing with stereotypes is that we can then educate people about the fallacies of their own biased and incorrect views. If you think that we are getting a bad rap (pun only partially intended here) from this video, then get out there and say why it is so wrong.
I laugh because I am white and nerdy, but know that I am much more than white and nerdy. I mean, I am tall, and well, I guess that I am just tall, white and nerdy. But still, I am more!
My uncle went through the trooper training up here, and had the good fortune of taking a solid dose of pepper spray to the face (and then had to fight off an attacker, control a situation, and wait before rinsing out his eyes) - all because they wanted the troopers to know that a) it hurts like an MF b-tch to get sprayed in the face and b) people can still function with such pain in their eyes.
Other friends that have done police training had said that they had to get zapped, but I haven't had a chance to watch the video footage of those incidents.
Some people have said that it isn't fair to subject the police to such measures, but it is crucial to make them aware of what it feels like so they know when it is necessary to apply this force, and when it is excessive.
That said, sometimes going through such an experience can be a crutch to abusing it, because they can say that they know what to use it, and have been through the pain and so justified it, even if it was so obviously an egregious abuse of power.
I have this one all figured out, folks. Let the climate shift happen (which, if my understanding is correct, means some parts of the world get warmer while others freeze over due to oceanic currents drifting and whatnot), and inform the world that all is doomed. Instill fear, which may be quite justified, as the world is drastically changed. Claim to have an solution that is equally drastic, but wholly justified. Watch as the nuclear devices are deployed in a last ditch effort to create a new thermal cell that melts the increased glaciation. Be somewhat shocked that the military chose certain strategic locations, but overjoyed for the terrors of cold, and, well, terror, have been destroyed!
Ummm...
Profit? And then bow down to our new cocroach overlords!
I played with the Mindstorms kits for a while in one of my EE courses. It was fun and fairly simple, but, as tends to be the case, cut out a lot of the low-level stuff that makes robotics and engineering so fun. I have been planning on picking up the BASIC stamp kit sometime, so that I can play with a bit more, have greater control, and probably spend more time debugging my projects.
Mindstorms is great, NXT sounds pretty cool, but I will take my BASIC kit, I do believe.
I am not sure about your toaster, but mine has coils that begin to glow when I turn it on. So some of the enegry is being expended as light, right?
Unless, of course, I have magnetic toaster coils that respond directly to the input of bread, resulting in free energy and little black crusty pieces of toast. Do I need to include the effort of scraping off burnt niblets in my equation of net energy gain from the bread/coil interaction?
People will rail against the "spreading thin" of Google as they offer a wider variety of services. Dozens of failed or mediocre offerings, oh my. If we look at certain other fields where the drive is to innovate and create a new and powerful product we find similar, if not significantly worse, failure rates. The medical and pharmaceutical industries are full of failures and high R&D costs. However, when they get their one single success it provides a level of value that will support them to their next great hit.
Google is doing the right thing in two ways here - they are allowing their developers to think and work on their own pet projects, which will ensure retention of some of the best and brightest, and they are understanding that for every brilliant idea there will be a string of failures. If they spend one billion on R&D (made that number up for the sake of argument), drop 999 products that aren't winners and get one single product that becomes a 6-billion-a-year success, they will have done the best thing for their investors, for their developers, and for their own continued growth.
Your super-sensitivity might need to be increased to realize that 70,000 false positives is actually closer to 200 per day than 2000.
Shoot, let's use some real numbers. Heathrow's four terminals service 63.2 million passengers per year, with 90 different airlines (assuming that the airlines listed on their website are unique to each terminal, with 13 @ T1, 28 @ T2, 43 @ T3, and 6 @ T4). Multiply 63,200,000 by.01% (which is.0001) and you get 6320 false positives a year. Divide that by 365 days in a year and you get 17 false positives in a day. So, if I am correct in understanding that there are 90 airlines (and making the DUMB assumption that they each fly out the same number of passengers per airline), each airline will get a false positive every five days or so.
Of course, I think that the 99.99% is arbitrary. Point is that, even with a 1% false positive rate, we will have 1700 falses per day, which is just over one per flight for the 1250 flights that leave the airport on a typical day. One extra screening per flight? Maybe two? Not too shabby.
However, this is not to say that I support the whole practice of making us "more secure" by restricting our freedomns, allowing false arrests and unnecessary interrogations, etc etc. I think that much of what is being done in the name of safety is ridiculous. But, as far as statistically reducing the number of times that people of Arabic or any other Middle Eastern descent are wrongly questioned just because of their names or appearances, such technology might help.
I would rather have a machine make a false claim than a human make a racially-driven assumption.
Slashdot Mirror
..and with your "bonus" electromagnetic effect, how do you propose keeping folks with small EMP generators from driving around the neighborhood? War driving could have a whole new meaning...
I went to a presentation that was given by Dr. Begich earlier his winter, wherein he spoke to some of the issues that come up when bodies are exposed to electromagnetic waves. A lot of his talk was directed at some things such as the HAARP array here in Alaska, and some of the research being done with very powerful signals. However, for parts of the talk he discussed some of the studies as done by institutions in Europe - especially Scandinavian countries (which have had a significant nation-wide adoption of cellular technologies for longer than the US) - and the fact that there are studies that show an increase in the frequency in brain cancer and tumors on individuals using cell phones.
The individuals in the study used cellphones for work and personal use, which meant that they were being subjected to the waves for large portions of the day (business men and the like with 4-8 hours of phone time). There was not a 100% cancer rate amongst these people, but there was a statistically significant increase in cancer rates on the sides of the head that the phone was being held up to.
He said that European nations tend to have a policy to inform the public of possible risks, then allow them to make their own decisions as to the safety (or lack) of the devices. This, of course, is in contrast to the American model of a study having to be performed, then duplicated by three or four other organizations (some of whom are typically being funded by the companies being investigated) before it can even be discussed seriously.
I know that there are some risks to the increase in EMW that I am being exposed to, and I also understand that long term effects are not yet known. Yes, there is evidence that EMW causes problems. Yes, there is much more that needs to be studied. Yes, I will still keep my wireless router, cell-phone, portable phone, and microwave. Yes, my tinfoil hat keeps me safe at night.
I'll be completely honest ... I would love a box of Communist O's with a picture of Stalin on the front, purchased on that Capitalist wonder that is eBay. I wouldn't eat them, merely keep them on the mantle above the fireplace. Talk about a conversation starter, woo!
Just to disagree with you, I am a year and a half since departed from college. I always owned fairly crappy used cars, wore a modest wardrobe, and generally was very careful with my money. However, if there was something especially nice that I wanted to purchase, I would work extra hours, I would save, I would do what I could, and then buy it. While you can make all of the sweeping and generalizing statements about "the typical college student" that you wish, please also acknowledge that there are non-Hummer driving poor college students who still saved up to buy nice things.
To buy a PS3:
-Work 4 extra hours at PT job (38 $/wk)
-Go out to eat one less meal (8 $/wk)
-One less movie a month (2 $/wk)
-One less pack of beer a week (8 $/wk)
That's an easy 56 bucks a week (it wouldn't be hard to minimize pretty much all expenses to push it beyond 75), which would add up in a couple of months. And that is how I bought a nice bike, a PS2, and a computer while still going to school full time (without help from parents in any sense).
Yes, the Escalade kids will have them. But it isn't that big of a stretch to think that someone capable of planning ahead might have done just that, unless you wish to categorize all college students as fiscally irresponsible saps incapable of saving for future purchases.
I browsed through a bunch of the comments and, time after time, found myself reading that this quasi-epidemic is the result of a lazy, unintellectual population living in a country with a poor education system. First off, as a son of an ex-counsellor / ex-teacher / current principal, as well as a prospective pursuer of a Master's in Teaching, I am quite aware of the broad spectrum of problems that are facing our educational system. I cannot deny that, but I also feel that there what we have is not a total waste. Secondly, as a recent college graduate, I am not far removed from this same system which we are discussing. While I admit that there is a large problem in the drive of many of my peers from high school, not to mention the apathy of far too many of those getting post-secondary degrees, I do not feel that it is an innate laziness, as was claimed in many threads above, that is the root cause of it all.
I am currently living with a girl (not in a relationship with her) who has recently decided to drop out of college. When asking her what the cause of this is, she has said time and time again that it is to make more money. After all, working part time in a small restaurant does not bring in a great deal of cash. So, if she takes a higher paying job now and begins working full time, she sees that her income goes from about 200 a week to almost 500. By year's end, she figures, that gain in 15,000 dollars will be well worth it. Some of our mutual friends made the same move in high school by dropping out to work for the immediate cash, and indeed, at the moment, life seems pretty good for them in comparison to her.
This shortsighted, more now, instant-gratification mindset that my generation seems to have is more the root than a general sense of laziness and apathy, IMO. I try to tell her that, with my degree, I am making 15,000 a year more than a woman in my office with twenty years of work experience, all because I have a degree and she does not. I then point out that, if my career keeps along its current path, I will be making about 30,000 more than her in a few years, while she will be staying at the same pay scale, give or take a bit of adjustment for tiny annual bonuses.
Sadly, many people don't see that connection between being poor for a few years in the promise of increased income as being worthwhile. I want it NOW, they say, not realizing how the net gain will be cancelled out within a couple of years from graduation.
I won't touch on multi-lingual issues, stagnant educational structure, or anything else, as that would push this long post to the realm of the ridiculous.
I am curious what you mean when you say "average gamer" when referencing the 80% who cannot afford the new PS3. If you mean the 13-year old, then yes, 600 is way out of their range, and parents are a little less likely to spring for such a system. However, amongst the college and high school gamers out there (not to mention computer programming 30-40 y/o folks, making over 70k a year), 600 (or 700, which is what you are quoting) is doable.
I think that we can simplify this by breaking it out in the way that the systems have been marketed. The PS3 is targeted at GAMERS. People who spend money on video games and hardware on a somewhat-regular basis. New 500 dollar graphics card? Sure. New, 2000 dollar screen? Sure. Upgraded sound system? Sure. 600 dollar, high performance console? Why not.
The Wii, on the otherhand, is marketed for NONGAMERS. Not to say that it will not be a very fun system for playing games. It is just that it looks to appeal to the mothers, girls, children, and other people who would not regularly buy a system. There was an interview yesterday on Buisiness Week that addressed this very concept, with the famed creators discussing how they were making a mother-friendly system.
Nintendo is in fact making a great move. I will agree with you there. I will probably be buying one of the systems here during the holiday season. However, I feel that Sony is also making a good move. Is it better or worse than Nintendo's move? No, just different. We will see how it pans out over the next year, and then make a judgement.
[i am nobody's fanboy]
Hey mods...the above post is not off topic, it is merely pointing out that articles, blurbs, and summaries should make the distinction that Indians (ala India) are not the same as Native Americans. Hundreds of years after the initial confusion and we are still getting this stuff wrong. Indians are not native to the Amazon.
Perhaps you meant some of these indigeneous peoples from Brazil:
* Ache
* Aconã
* Aimoré (Botocudo)
* Anacé
* Apinajé
* Aranã
* Asheninka
* Atikum-Umã
* Awá
* Baniwa
* Caingang (Kaingang)
* Caripuna
* Caxixó
* Fulni-o
* Guajajara
* Guaraní
* Jeripankó
* Juká
* Kaimbé
* Kalabaça-Jandaíra
* Kalankó
* Kamayurá (Kamaiurá)
* Kambiwá
* Kanindé
* Kantaruré
* Kapinawá
* Karajá
* Karapotó
* Kariri-Xokó
* Karuazu
* Kiriri
* Katuquina (Catökinn)
* Kaxinawa
* Kayapo
* Korubo
* Koiupanká
* Krahó
* Krenak
* Macuxi
* Matipu
* Maxakali
* Munduruku
* Ofayé
* Panará
* Pankaiuká
* Pankará
* Pankararé
* Pankararu
* Pankaru
* Pataxó
* Pataxó-Hã-Hã-Hãe
* Payaku
* Pipipã de Kambixuru
* Pirahã
* Pitaguary
* Potiguara
* Quilombolo
* Tapirape
* Tapeba
* Tapuia
* Tamoio
* Terena
* Ticuna
* Tremembé
* Truká
* Tsohom Djapa
* Tumbalalá
* Tupinambá
* Tupiniquim (Tupinikim)
* Waiapi
* Waorani
* Wassu-Cocal
* Xacriaba
* Xavante
* Xerente
* Xokó
* Xucuru
* Yanomami
* Yawalapiti
* Yawanawa
...a decent point, although I must admit that all of my friends, family, and coworkers look at me like a freak as I tote about my two-year old phone. I cannot cite my source, but somewhere out there I was reading that the typical consumer is expected to keep gadgets such as phones for one year, and that the constant flow of newer, "better" (ha!) phones keeps the purchasing of new products moving along quite nicely. And my hard drive failed on my iPod before my battery had a chance to become too annoying.
This concept of "everyone and their dog making a website on MySpace" somehow diluting the market seems absurd. I do not know many high school students or young adults who go out and hire programmers (which, as touched on in other replies, are not all CS majors, and vice versa) to build their sites. The "I can do it myself attitude" won't hurt the jobs out there, because those people weren't paying customers to begin with. As to bands who are now on MySpace, a lot of the indie groups are using it because they were not able to hire out for their own domain and site. How is MySpace reducing the need for programmers to create solid and technically-sound work?
People seem to have forgotten that years ago there were places such as geocities and tripod, praised for their capacity to bring the internet to everyone. Everyone could, and would, make their own site. What did we see as the masses made their presence known? Poor design, overuse of blink tags and frames, combined with a general lack of understanding of navigation and layout.
What do we see in the MySpace rush of "web developers" that we are facing? Poor design, overuse of widgets and media players, and a general lack of understanding of complete sentences and color theory. I hardly feel that the advent of CSS-based social pages is going to destroy the market for talent and an understanding of the principles behind web design.
You didn't do a very good job looking at their site if all that you came away with was their scheduling software. Right from their homepage you are given two links - Software or Intellectual Property. From their IP link, you might find out that "In addition to the approximate 40 patents the company has secured or acquired over the past 15 years, Forgent has applied for dozens of patents relating to various products and software the company has developed over the past several years."
So, if you actually read what they do with software, you will find that their software does both scheduling and asset tracking. What, a company that has developed useful products that fit a definite market and have a definite place in the business world, yet has made contributions to the advancement of technology as well? How does that make them guilty of patent trolling?
Such claimes must be backed up by evidence.
Is this libel?!
SUE SUE SUE SUE SUE!
You use this word, but I think you know not what it means. The term you are likely looking for is "difference in opinion" or "contrary view" or "amusing disagreement" - unless, of course, you have the statistical analysis and numbers available to explain why it is that the one thing keeping Linux from storming the good ol' home PC market is excessive wisget and GUI design. Even then, I think that the term you would be looking for is "correction" or "FYI" or something along those lines.
I am going to go drink some black fly chardonnay in the rain on this, my wedding day. Because it's ironic?
The system has a success rate of 80%, which means that far too many false positives (or, in the case of crimes, false negatives) will be flagged. If you look at the videos that they used to typify the violent/non-violent behaviors, showing a hug and a push, you can see that the actors they had moved in very deilberate and unrealistic manners.
So, we have a system that fails 20% of the time (for really, in a system such as this, it is failure rate that is the concern) when using highly exaggerated actions. How many hugs have you had where the impact of it send you and the person in your arms staggering backwards? How many confrontations have you seen where one person is within inches of another's face, pushing and bumping in very small stages? How many muggings or holdups have you seen that are kept low-profile? Many. So, imagine this system, which already fails 1/5 of the time, trying to deduce the complexities of human interaction.
What, it became a pretty nifty streaming media service?
I hate to break it to you, but telemarketing is based upon the solid business case that it does in fact work. Companies would not be engaging in telemarketing if it weren't for the fact that it has a decent ROI when compared to other wide-reaching marketing campaigns. This article, while definitely not the most recent one out there, speaks of the 5-15% success rate.
As annoying as we find SPAM (both the food and the email), telemarketers, and mass mailings, they do show a return on the marketing investment. Yes, some people are turned away from the product or service because of the annoyance, but plenty of others buy into it to keep this machine running.
One of the best ways to hurt their bottom line is to eat up their time, so that they waste valuable time trying to convince you (or your baby daughter, or your drunk dorm buddies, or your shoutboard, or your own hold music) that the sale is worth it. If their returns dropped low enough, they would stop doing it as it became an ineffective business model.
Not that I have the patience to do that more than once a or twice a month.
Or you could use the following:
I present to you the number for your free annual credit report-
1-877-322-8228
The number to stop receiving pre-approved credit card offers and other junk mail-
1-888-567-8688
And the number to stop receiving solicitations telemarketers-
1-888-382-1222
You see, it isn't that the scouts themselves are the threats. Nazi Germany had its Hitler-Jugend and Deutsches Yungvolk, both of which were organizations that trained up the youth to be proper citizens. Additionally, these children were turned into informants and quasi-police. Were the children a threat? No. They were a tool and a commodity to the party. Imagine a dorm full of college students (aka IP Pirates) with one or two scouts who are willing to inform the Powers that Be about all subversive music downloads occuring on campus? In all honesty, though, it will probably be some of these scouts who are the worst pirates. I know that one of my brother's little scout buddies is quite proud of his collection of Chinese-subtitled pirated movies that he torrented off of a variety of sites. Make the video, get the badge, and then sit around and listen to all of your ill-gotten music, okay kids?
Perhaps I am way off base on this one, but I believe that what you meant to say is that not everything is built in-house by Apple, when instead you said designed. I am pretty sure that the actual design is done by a variety of excellent industrial design teams. Yes, a lot of the internal components come from outside manufacturers, but the design of the end product is still internal to the Apple team. We all know that Apple's success comes from its view of the end result - the Apple experience - as opposed to the individual components. So, yes, they use other parts in an acknowledgement that they are not the best at everything, but they still design their products and work very closely with manufacturers to ensure that the components fit the end design (let us just ignore the industry-wide battery SNAFU for now).
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to use an analogy of vandals mortaring your snowman. For, you see, the problem with the e-vandals is that they are not actually physically present when they attack your snowman. Yes, there is proof that they attacked you, but chances are that determining their physical location is hard. Sure, you could look at the trajectory of the incoming projectile, but even then you are having to do a lot of imprecise and possibly flawed work to find out just where these attacks are coming from.
Another analogy, regarding security, is that of the attractive and financially well-endowed woman walking in a dark alley in a bad part of town. Sure, she SHOULD be safe, because she is a human and everyone should have some sort of basic respect for the dignity and humanity of all other people. Why is it, then, that she should have mace or a gun in her handbag? Why does she need to take a precaution to mitigate actual harm to her person? Why should she avoid a part of town known as being dangerous?
Apply this to web development. Why should developers protect their code? Why should they take extra steps to secure their sites and servers? Quite simply, the internet is a bad part of town, and we need to make sure that we are not doing things that make us susceptible to attack.
Concertina wire is more likely to help than counting on the prosecution of attackers and vandals.
It's the Pac Man logo. You can read more about the references and little bits of trivia here at the wikipedia on White and Nerdy.
You are absolutely right, we should be offended that someone made a parody of something that is so true. I mean, the gall of some people, making fun of themselves and others. Gay and black people are fortunate that they have escaped the wrath of popular media and comedy. I mean, just imagine it...blatantly gay people being the butt of jokes on a televised series? Oh, Will and Grace. Black people being criticized and stereotyped on public television...oh, sorry, Chris Rock and 90% of the black comedians out there beat you to it.
If we can't look at some of the stereotypes and laugh, then something is wrong. The great thing about disagreeing with stereotypes is that we can then educate people about the fallacies of their own biased and incorrect views. If you think that we are getting a bad rap (pun only partially intended here) from this video, then get out there and say why it is so wrong.
I laugh because I am white and nerdy, but know that I am much more than white and nerdy. I mean, I am tall, and well, I guess that I am just tall, white and nerdy. But still, I am more!
My uncle went through the trooper training up here, and had the good fortune of taking a solid dose of pepper spray to the face (and then had to fight off an attacker, control a situation, and wait before rinsing out his eyes) - all because they wanted the troopers to know that a) it hurts like an MF b-tch to get sprayed in the face and b) people can still function with such pain in their eyes. Other friends that have done police training had said that they had to get zapped, but I haven't had a chance to watch the video footage of those incidents. Some people have said that it isn't fair to subject the police to such measures, but it is crucial to make them aware of what it feels like so they know when it is necessary to apply this force, and when it is excessive. That said, sometimes going through such an experience can be a crutch to abusing it, because they can say that they know what to use it, and have been through the pain and so justified it, even if it was so obviously an egregious abuse of power.
I have this one all figured out, folks. Let the climate shift happen (which, if my understanding is correct, means some parts of the world get warmer while others freeze over due to oceanic currents drifting and whatnot), and inform the world that all is doomed. Instill fear, which may be quite justified, as the world is drastically changed. Claim to have an solution that is equally drastic, but wholly justified. Watch as the nuclear devices are deployed in a last ditch effort to create a new thermal cell that melts the increased glaciation. Be somewhat shocked that the military chose certain strategic locations, but overjoyed for the terrors of cold, and, well, terror, have been destroyed!
Ummm...
Profit?
And then bow down to our new cocroach overlords!
I played with the Mindstorms kits for a while in one of my EE courses. It was fun and fairly simple, but, as tends to be the case, cut out a lot of the low-level stuff that makes robotics and engineering so fun. I have been planning on picking up the BASIC stamp kit sometime, so that I can play with a bit more, have greater control, and probably spend more time debugging my projects. Mindstorms is great, NXT sounds pretty cool, but I will take my BASIC kit, I do believe.
I am not sure about your toaster, but mine has coils that begin to glow when I turn it on. So some of the enegry is being expended as light, right?
Unless, of course, I have magnetic toaster coils that respond directly to the input of bread, resulting in free energy and little black crusty pieces of toast. Do I need to include the effort of scraping off burnt niblets in my equation of net energy gain from the bread/coil interaction?
People will rail against the "spreading thin" of Google as they offer a wider variety of services. Dozens of failed or mediocre offerings, oh my. If we look at certain other fields where the drive is to innovate and create a new and powerful product we find similar, if not significantly worse, failure rates. The medical and pharmaceutical industries are full of failures and high R&D costs. However, when they get their one single success it provides a level of value that will support them to their next great hit.
Google is doing the right thing in two ways here - they are allowing their developers to think and work on their own pet projects, which will ensure retention of some of the best and brightest, and they are understanding that for every brilliant idea there will be a string of failures. If they spend one billion on R&D (made that number up for the sake of argument), drop 999 products that aren't winners and get one single product that becomes a 6-billion-a-year success, they will have done the best thing for their investors, for their developers, and for their own continued growth.
Your super-sensitivity might need to be increased to realize that 70,000 false positives is actually closer to 200 per day than 2000.
.01% (which is .0001) and you get 6320 false positives a year. Divide that by 365 days in a year and you get 17 false positives in a day. So, if I am correct in understanding that there are 90 airlines (and making the DUMB assumption that they each fly out the same number of passengers per airline), each airline will get a false positive every five days or so.
Shoot, let's use some real numbers. Heathrow's four terminals service 63.2 million passengers per year, with 90 different airlines (assuming that the airlines listed on their website are unique to each terminal, with 13 @ T1, 28 @ T2, 43 @ T3, and 6 @ T4). Multiply 63,200,000 by
Of course, I think that the 99.99% is arbitrary. Point is that, even with a 1% false positive rate, we will have 1700 falses per day, which is just over one per flight for the 1250 flights that leave the airport on a typical day. One extra screening per flight? Maybe two? Not too shabby.
However, this is not to say that I support the whole practice of making us "more secure" by restricting our freedomns, allowing false arrests and unnecessary interrogations, etc etc. I think that much of what is being done in the name of safety is ridiculous. But, as far as statistically reducing the number of times that people of Arabic or any other Middle Eastern descent are wrongly questioned just because of their names or appearances, such technology might help.
I would rather have a machine make a false claim than a human make a racially-driven assumption.