I did comp sci (undergrad) in the days when we used unix/VMS to learn and so I have a pretty good understanding of architecture and the basics of threads and processes. The one thing that never sat well with me was that as processor speed "exploded" in the last 5 years, I was under the impression that a "lot" of the performance increase was achieved by parallelising stuff in the execution core. (You can see that my knowledge is _limited_) So as a result unless your applications could somehow take advantage of this parallelism a given bit of code would never really get the full benefit of todays uber processors. So all the speed gains were only really marginal improvements.
I think the advent of SMT confirms that it is indeed the case that a given process cannot of itself (unless it is _real_ special) take full advantage of a modern processor and so SMT is a way of reducing the problem by assuming that whilst one process aint enough to take full advantage, two processes are able to make more advantage. It sure makes sense to me.
But it also presents the very interesting question of the marginal benefit of execution pipelines compared to complexity in the front end to allow SMT. What I mean is, what are the trade offs between having a "virtual" (for want of a better word) processor for each execution pipepline rather than using them to out of order execute parts of a single stream of instructions. Is it simply a question of the nature of the work being undertaken my the machine? Ie a processor with 8 pipelines serving 20 users doing stuff, would it be better doing 1 bis of work from each of 8 users or maybe 2-4 bits of stuff from 4-2 users. And can we answer that question heuristically to allow the front end to make good use of each pipeline with a variable profile over the chaing use of the machine. Fascinating (well to me anyway).
First, I think that commute in this context would exclude anyone who lives close enough to work that walking is an option. I certainly wasn't meaning anyone whose attention was required to actual to the driving (and walking counts despite the way some pedistrians behave).
Second, the distractions of which you speak would be equally as bad for audio/reading, so I don't really think there is anything inherently problematic to the platform there.
As for what would you watch for a brief time, well, there is a business model just waiting to be had. What about last night's hour long episode of XYZ or the newscast that you downloaded just before you left the house or the Simpsons episode you felt like watching that day. Or highlights of the football that you missed yesterday. The list is endless. The means by which they end up in your PMC will prove interesting, certainly to start with.
As for the price point and "people who can afford will have laptops" issues. I think that the evidence to the contrary comes in two forms. First mobile phones. It is almost never the case that a mobile phone "owner" buys the hardware outright at the start. It is always subsidised by the service provider (interesting that it is the other way around for the iPod and it is this feature that leads some analysts to say that in the long term that is only going to be a margnial player in Apples balance sheet. But I digress.) and second I know lots of people (myself included, although I don't commute) who have a laptop at work but do not take it home because it is too much of a PITA.
As for whether or not the device will succeed? I don't know. It may be that it is as you say, "doomed to failure" from the beginning. In fact it probably is. My point was that it is not because of the lack of desire for "video on the go" that the system will fail. I know that if I had a 80 minute commute into Moorgate, I would love to be able to watch tele. I might even be willing to pay a couple of pounds a day (250 business days a year, over 2 years). Which might be enought to justify subsidising the hardware to affordable and giving me access to some good content. I dunno.
There are a millions people around the world who commute for at least an hour each way in a vehicle that does not require their attention (ie train/bus) to proceed. That is a market for which these devices might be very appropriate. The "doomed to failure"ness of these devices is not due to the lack of desire to watch video on the go. You must remember that most of the world is not like America and commuting mostly does not involve driving.
I know the whole SCO thing is such a troll, but I just despair of how such fuckwits can gain so much from such despicable acts. Thankfully they are all in the US which means that the RICO statute might be applied in the end http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/ usam/title9/110mcrm.htm, specifically s9-110.310 which I reckon the bastards at SCO would qualify under about 5 of the 7 categories.
Go get 'em boys. (Actually I realise that this result is (a) unlikely and (b) probably only arguably applicable at best, but I really just needed to vent!)
I met a guy whose business is "legitmately" increasing the ranking of _your_site in the google index (interpret that as you wish!). I cannot believe the crap for which people will part with their money.
I think the big difference between software (and certain other products) and things like cars is that the other things are physical objects that cannot use the same solution without additional marginal cost. Sure it is true that there is some marginal cost for new deployments of an existing free software solution but that is very different to the cost of each additional car or fax machine that the state will buy.
In addition to this actual difference that justifies treating software differently, there are numerous examples where the state will choose one supplier over another for non (purely) economic reasons, for example is to plump for the local manufacturer over the foreign competitor. Not such a big deal in the US but in ther countries the cars driven by the government employees (and particulalry officials) can be quite a point of contention.
I agree with you almost entirely. Except that when you say;
I also disagree with his proposal that we should shun proprietary software for the sake of encouraging the development of free software
I disagree with you in the context of the state's use of software. It should _never_ be proprietary. Indeed I believe the state should fund the writing/improving of the free version to meet their needs rather than purchase the non-free equivalent. I am happy to limit this requirement to the same category of applications for which you (and I) believe that free software will eventually drive out non free software, however I would be even happier not to limit it at all. The reason why the state should mandate the free solution is that the state is well able to make the long term decision that having these applications will be of more benefit to all citizens in the long run than the short term cost of improving the software or accepting reduced functionality. Indeed, I would argue that it is the duty of rational government to make these kind of decisions.
The "people like belonging to groups" thing is even more important because it has two big impacts. Remember that we do infact belong to many groups at a time, so the groups we are in allow us to quickly (and accurately) assess people we meet on the basis that they are "inside" this group or "outside" that group. This behaviour is very deep in humans (probably in most higher brain function animals as well). So the first impact is that we feel very comfortable using groups to judge others.
The second impact is the insider outsider problem. That is, our beliefs will change depending on whether we are inside or outside a particular group. One of the best examples of this is unemployment benefits. If you are inside the group "unemployed" you thing they should be higher and yet if you are outside that group you will almost universally believe they should be lower. And if you change groups (and it is a particularly good example because that is a possibility) your beliefs will probably change to the other view as well.
Re:Some truth is harmful; some taboos, useful.
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What You Can't Say
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In relation to the US Consitution it is very clear that they didn't mean equal in the sense of "the same capacity" they meant equal in the sense of "entitled" to the benefits of the consitution. And it is clear that the framers envisaged differences between people when one looks at the writings of some of them, for example, Madison; http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7947/Suffrage.html, where it is clear he sees a difference between some citizens and others.
To suggest that they were asserting equality of capacity is disingenouous at best.
And here in the UK, the "tabloid" moniker used so derogatorially by the original poster was particularly accurate until recently. One of the reputable "broadsheet" papers started to produce a tabloid edition, an exact copy of the broadsheet version just in a smaller format (a completely different typesetting, a very interesting technical problem if you ask me). This strategy proved so successful that one of the most famous broadsheets in the world "The Times" copied the format and it too prodcues a tabloid version ("The Times" is now a Murdoch rag, so perhaps it found the move to the new size a little easier than most!).
So, over here at least, I can envisage the phrase tabloid changing meaning in the coming years to refer specifically to papers with the more purient content rather than just the size.
The thing that always amuses me about addiction is that it is so rare to be walking along the street trip over a broken piece of footpath and end up with a lit cigarette in your mouth (substitute crack pipe, skag needle, cup 'o' joe or whatever). This one particularly gets me with smokers (and yes I have never smoked), not only does one have to find a ciagrette and light it and put it in your mouth, an active triumvirite in itself, but you get to give the government the price of lunch for every pack you buy as well, when you factor in what it is doing to your body, it is just insane.
Turning to caffeine, I drink a lot of cola. On average about 3 litres a day probably. Coffee, not much, maybe three cups a week (usally after dinner out) and always espresso based. I would argue that I do it because I really like the taste of those two beverages in the right place. However, I also drink a lot of water. At work, probably two litres a day, because it is there and coke isn't, and then if eating out table water (often mineral). I don't think that I am addicted to caffeine, in that I do not suffer the gotta have it to get started thing, and I don't suffer withdrawal if I don't get it thing. No headaches, no nothing.
So all that considered, take the following for what it's worth, I would recommend the advice from the previous posters about going cold turkey. First, I did it myself, for six months, for a "no monetary reward" bet to prove a lack of addiction (maybe I just succeeded out of spite, but I stopped all caffeine, except where it might occur naturally, like some chocolate. But definitely no coffee, no soft drinks etc etc) and there are four things I would suggest.
First, and it may be a bit obvious, avoid the substances. Reomve, the soft drinks, tea and coffee from you home, and if you can from work (even if it is tell your colleagues to stop you lapsing).
Second drink loads of water, if you drink too much you will just go to the toilet lots. No biggie, but it really helps to flush stuff out.
Thirdly, break the routine, much of your caffeine process will be habit. You know, the coffee you have with breakfast, whatever, just avoid your routine for a few days (have breakfast out, or in), just make a change. This is really only until the craving stops, then you can modify the previous routine to exclude caffeine.
Finally, this helps some people, find a substitute. Whether it is a piece of gum, candy, or even a glass of water, or a game of solitare. When you feel your need grow. Break what you are doing and do the same thing each time. This way you are not fighting the need to do distract yourself as well as the need to have caffeine.
Most technology can be used to violate your privacy.
OnStar is a good system, and can even save your life in the event of an accident.
Or, the government can use it to track you down and assassinate you because of your contributions to/.
Which one of these two situations are you more likely to be in?
Very true. But. The real issue is _why_ do they need to collect all the personal data. If privacy is a right and I am not _necessarily_ saying that it is, but if it is a right then Onstar is a classic example of a system that could be built in a way that was privacy enabled. For example, the identifying attribute of the Onstar enabled vehicle is unrelated to the owner of the vehicle, an arbitrary identifier, say a number. The status/history of that "account" is recorded without any identifying information, (payment history might be a useful piece of information). The person who purchased service can choose to have _no_ contact from Onstar and can initiate all contact themselves, any such contact must be stored with all identifying information (incoming phone number, incoming email address etc) removed. Etc, etc.
This approach will allow the service provider to collect almost all the information they do currently to improve their service without needing to store any information that enables anyone to track down the vehicle of a specific individual. An exception to this would be payments made to keep the service going, they would likely come from a bank and have to identify the service account they are crediting. Law enforcement could request access to those records from the bank and then request an order to have access to the account, however you could even work around that by tying a request for the service to the identification of a valid account by the user at the time of using the service, with the user identifying a secret piece of information about the account to authenticate that it is their account. That way the service provider could eliminate any link between a paid up account and a particular vehicle.
This may sound overly paranoid, and as complicated as my poor description sounds, it really isn't any big deal to do these things. This is the important point in my view. If one views privacy as important then these systems (all systems?) can be built in such a way as to eliminate the possibility of invading privacy. Now this returns to the point in the article that the only wayt to "get real privacy" is to "not collect the information in the first place". For private services, this is all achievable in the price, clearly a "privacy enabled" service could be a premium service, but that is the choice of both the service provider and the punter. But what about the state?
When it comes to how much information the state collects about it's citizens it can get more complex. First there is the question of identity, how does one prove ones identity to the state for the receipt of services. Again the question can be solved more generically, I do not need to prove that I am J Public of 101 Privacy Lane to get access to healthcare, I just need to prove that I am entitled to access healthcare. How do i do that, well, I hold a card that says I am entitled to healthcare and I can prove that the card refers to me, the bearer of the card (biometrically or otherwise). The entire mentallity of the state wrt identity for the collection of state benefits (largely) is so focused on a single uber system of being able to prove _who_ you are that the risks to privacy are frightening. Whereas all they really need is to be able to prove that the punter is entitled to collect the benefit. The problem is that this abstraction is more expensive than just having a big file on everyone, but _WE_ need to decide of that expense is justified.
And the expense is not just in the sense that the systems themselves cost more, but also that there are certain undesriable consequences of this privacy. Tracking down all the people tacking pilot training might be impos
There are no original games any more, any originality of powerful 3D engines has been used up a few years back already...
On the contrary. Whilst it is true that the standard categories of games such as platform, RTS, TBS, FPS, racing are well explored, it only takes the next Lemmings to make a new category (Perhaps Pikmin qualifies? I don't know, and I don't really care). The next innovation will be in real world gaming. Right now there are a few organisations experimenting but in my mind I see... Real maps of the real world (we have them), roamable "game machine" with always on connectivity (we have them, just about) [ideally with locability of the handset built in, but that is an optional extra] and a group of people (friends) with a Day travelcard running around achieving stuff (maybe even not achieving stuff if a goalless gameplay can be made entertaining). Games we used to play as kids, treasure hunts, target, even chasings, take on a whole new dimension when you can tie comms, computing and information on the run.
I purchased a Hedgren bag over seven years ago. It has been around the world several times since then almost always with a laptop in it. It has proved to be incredibly robust and quite versitile. The thing I like most about mine is that it is a soft bag of a brief case size with a fold over top and a brief case handle, however it has an optional over should strap and optional backpack style straps. The backpack style straps mean that I can carry the hugely laden bag without screwing up my back. Very convenient.
The bag is seriously tough. All the "loaded" fittings are metal (they look and feel like gal steel) and it has really been around the world twice with at least 6 return trips London/Sydney as well, on average about 15 - 20 trips a year and because it is expandable it can double as a small overnight bag (particularly without the laptop:-) I have only ever superficially damaged a laptop that was inside when I have dropped it, and I have several (many) times.
Their website shows an extraordinary range of products around today, mine has a metal plate rivetted into the back with a serial number around the 500,000 number. I suspect that if that policy has continued then the numbers will be a little higher now. But by the same token seven years is a long time for a manufacturer to maintain "early days" quality (if that is where they started).
You used to be able to find a broker in Shanghai, by following the yellow cable out of the exchange building and around the streets of the town as it stopped by their offices.
Actually that's not quite true, but there was a yellow cable that left the exchange building and went to various different installations where exchange activities (including trading) took place. It was just hanging off the poles and you could easily track amongst the spaghetti at the time. That was back in '96, the last time I was there. I dread to think what it must look like now.
Digital tv means providers can finally start to monitor who is watching what and when, this means they get to build up massive databases of viewing patterns.
Not in my world buddy! here in the UK, I have free to air digital TV and there ain't no way for them to tell which channel I am watching at any given time. I am not sure about the technology of determining which channels are being watched without some kind of "upstream" connection in addition to just the decoder, but even so the broadcast version I am using certainly can't be monitored so the Digital TV itself does not automatically give the montioring of viewing information about which you speak.
Do you mean the only "logical" reason or the only "legitimate" reason. Because as far as industry logic goes, they love region encoding because it allows them to charge a different price in a different market. The same DVDE costing $20 in one market and $7 in another that is more price sensitive.
Release schedules, bah, a mere contrivance. As far as "cinema" goes, there is some justification for differing release schedules, primarily to match the blockbusters to the peak movie going season which can differ significantly in different markets. But also because in some places there just weren't (still aren't???) enough big screens to handle all the big films at the same peak season times.
I stopped buying DVD about 2 years ago for this very reason, I cannot abide funding an industry whose goal is to destroy my rights as a consumer, not to mention the fact that they are price gouging me to distraction.
Mmmm, 64 bit integers. I don't know about you folks but AFAIC there is much to be gained from being able to handle big and precise floating point numbers as integers. The math is so much more pleasant. As Kronecker said, "God made the integers; all else is the work of Man" and so it is particularly true with computers. Oh to be able to store price x quantity in an integer, yummy.
Ever heard of a little technology called XML? Quite popular on UNIX and Windows apparently.
Of course. And if you think that it is anything even remotely close to a solution to the issue I discussed then you have completely missed the point. An XSLT is the nearest thing to useful in this space, but the problem remains, your userid field is my useridentifier field and the writing of that translation is exactly the problem. In this context XML solves nothing, just provides a language in which to implement solutions. Whilst this may be an improvement, it is arguable at best.
"They don't like GUIs much, except as lipstick painted cleanly on top of textual programs, and they don't like binary file formats. This is because a textual interface is easier to program against than, say, a GUI interface"
This is so naive as to be laughable. The thing that soooo many windows programmers do not understand is that the "text" based paradigm of the UNIX world is exactly that a paradigm and the metaphysics of that paradigm are so deeply ingrained in the approach to programming that the real benefits are often underestimated. If I write a command line program, I need only understand 4 interfaces stdin, stdout, stderr and argv and only half of them are readable! Within that, we have lines and whitespace as standard concepts, again trivial to grok.
As a programmer it is up to me to present my output in the format understood by the stdin/argv scanner of the program I want to call and the process by which I can discover that format is of varying difficulty based on the complexity and quality of the program I wish to call, but generally pretty simple process nonetheless.
The next generation of interaction between programs (or lets call them objects) requires a huge leap in complexity. It is this next generation paradigm that many windows programmers would claim to use. But for it to work, the self discovery of those input and output formats and some standard nomenclature to allow them to communicate with each other to make the discovery is required. For example, my spreadsheet program may have many different inputs, a clipboard, a file interface, a dynamic data interface etc etc and its outputs might be equally complex, but the critical thing is that it must be able to tell my data capture program that it is a spreadsheet stlye application and that phrase "spreadsheet" style application must make as much sense as a "stdin/stdout" style application makes today. Whilst I agree with this posters point about creating an object, and then using a GUI to call it, the point is somewhat moot since the discovery process means that in the Object focused world there is no capacity for this communication to take place and so the programmer is left with the task of doing all the mapping between objects since a "data capturey" type object doesn't really grok the metaphysics of how to present to a "spreadsheety" type application. Now, don't misunderstand, I am not suggesting that UNIX can do this any better, but the paradigm under which a unix programmer operates understands something about the metaphysics of how applications talk to each other and so the UNIX programmer will think in a reuse/talking to other programs kinda way to a level, even if it is at, overall, a lower level of functional richness, that a windows programmer cannot really hope to emulate.
Either those that thought they bought low did not Buy options or they did not lose money due to having to cover the position because an option is just that, optional, if you don't want to exercise the option you don't have to. I suspect there is an element of the urban legend about the 'options position' aspect to this story since the only option that makes sense to have bought was a put and as such that put would have, depending on the strike, been really cheap (at least to start with:-) and may even still be in the money.
Now if they bought futures then, yes, they are in a hole. But then they would be idiots and they got what they deserved
I always liked the idea of a freighter with a nuclear powered hot air balloon for shipping freight (nuclear for the cheapness of the hot air). Unfortunately the size of the balloon was prohibitive, but the image of a "ship" that was loaded at a normal dock, sailed out to sea and then inflated its ballon to rise ten or so kilometers in the air and then fly off at 5 - 10 times the spead of a normal sea freighter is very appealing to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I did comp sci (undergrad) in the days when we used unix/VMS to learn and so I have a pretty good understanding of architecture and the basics of threads and processes. The one thing that never sat well with me was that as processor speed "exploded" in the last 5 years, I was under the impression that a "lot" of the performance increase was achieved by parallelising stuff in the execution core. (You can see that my knowledge is _limited_) So as a result unless your applications could somehow take advantage of this parallelism a given bit of code would never really get the full benefit of todays uber processors. So all the speed gains were only really marginal improvements.
I think the advent of SMT confirms that it is indeed the case that a given process cannot of itself (unless it is _real_ special) take full advantage of a modern processor and so SMT is a way of reducing the problem by assuming that whilst one process aint enough to take full advantage, two processes are able to make more advantage. It sure makes sense to me.
But it also presents the very interesting question of the marginal benefit of execution pipelines compared to complexity in the front end to allow SMT. What I mean is, what are the trade offs between having a "virtual" (for want of a better word) processor for each execution pipepline rather than using them to out of order execute parts of a single stream of instructions. Is it simply a question of the nature of the work being undertaken my the machine? Ie a processor with 8 pipelines serving 20 users doing stuff, would it be better doing 1 bis of work from each of 8 users or maybe 2-4 bits of stuff from 4-2 users. And can we answer that question heuristically to allow the front end to make good use of each pipeline with a variable profile over the chaing use of the machine. Fascinating (well to me anyway).
First, I think that commute in this context would exclude anyone who lives close enough to work that walking is an option. I certainly wasn't meaning anyone whose attention was required to actual to the driving (and walking counts despite the way some pedistrians behave).
Second, the distractions of which you speak would be equally as bad for audio/reading, so I don't really think there is anything inherently problematic to the platform there.
As for what would you watch for a brief time, well, there is a business model just waiting to be had. What about last night's hour long episode of XYZ or the newscast that you downloaded just before you left the house or the Simpsons episode you felt like watching that day. Or highlights of the football that you missed yesterday. The list is endless. The means by which they end up in your PMC will prove interesting, certainly to start with.
As for the price point and "people who can afford will have laptops" issues. I think that the evidence to the contrary comes in two forms. First mobile phones. It is almost never the case that a mobile phone "owner" buys the hardware outright at the start. It is always subsidised by the service provider (interesting that it is the other way around for the iPod and it is this feature that leads some analysts to say that in the long term that is only going to be a margnial player in Apples balance sheet. But I digress.) and second I know lots of people (myself included, although I don't commute) who have a laptop at work but do not take it home because it is too much of a PITA.
As for whether or not the device will succeed? I don't know. It may be that it is as you say, "doomed to failure" from the beginning. In fact it probably is. My point was that it is not because of the lack of desire for "video on the go" that the system will fail. I know that if I had a 80 minute commute into Moorgate, I would love to be able to watch tele. I might even be willing to pay a couple of pounds a day (250 business days a year, over 2 years). Which might be enought to justify subsidising the hardware to affordable and giving me access to some good content. I dunno.
There are a millions people around the world who commute for at least an hour each way in a vehicle that does not require their attention (ie train/bus) to proceed. That is a market for which these devices might be very appropriate. The "doomed to failure"ness of these devices is not due to the lack of desire to watch video on the go. You must remember that most of the world is not like America and commuting mostly does not involve driving.
I know the whole SCO thing is such a troll, but I just despair of how such fuckwits can gain so much from such despicable acts. Thankfully they are all in the US which means that the RICO statute might be applied in the end http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/ usam/title9/110mcrm.htm, specifically s9-110.310 which I reckon the bastards at SCO would qualify under about 5 of the 7 categories.
Go get 'em boys. (Actually I realise that this result is (a) unlikely and (b) probably only arguably applicable at best, but I really just needed to vent!)
I met a guy whose business is "legitmately" increasing the ranking of _your_site in the google index (interpret that as you wish!). I cannot believe the crap for which people will part with their money.
I think the big difference between software (and certain other products) and things like cars is that the other things are physical objects that cannot use the same solution without additional marginal cost. Sure it is true that there is some marginal cost for new deployments of an existing free software solution but that is very different to the cost of each additional car or fax machine that the state will buy.
In addition to this actual difference that justifies treating software differently, there are numerous examples where the state will choose one supplier over another for non (purely) economic reasons, for example is to plump for the local manufacturer over the foreign competitor. Not such a big deal in the US but in ther countries the cars driven by the government employees (and particulalry officials) can be quite a point of contention.
I agree with you almost entirely. Except that when you say;
I also disagree with his proposal that we should shun proprietary software for the sake of encouraging the development of free software
I disagree with you in the context of the state's use of software. It should _never_ be proprietary. Indeed I believe the state should fund the writing/improving of the free version to meet their needs rather than purchase the non-free equivalent. I am happy to limit this requirement to the same category of applications for which you (and I) believe that free software will eventually drive out non free software, however I would be even happier not to limit it at all. The reason why the state should mandate the free solution is that the state is well able to make the long term decision that having these applications will be of more benefit to all citizens in the long run than the short term cost of improving the software or accepting reduced functionality. Indeed, I would argue that it is the duty of rational government to make these kind of decisions.
The "people like belonging to groups" thing is even more important because it has two big impacts. Remember that we do infact belong to many groups at a time, so the groups we are in allow us to quickly (and accurately) assess people we meet on the basis that they are "inside" this group or "outside" that group. This behaviour is very deep in humans (probably in most higher brain function animals as well). So the first impact is that we feel very comfortable using groups to judge others.
The second impact is the insider outsider problem. That is, our beliefs will change depending on whether we are inside or outside a particular group. One of the best examples of this is unemployment benefits. If you are inside the group "unemployed" you thing they should be higher and yet if you are outside that group you will almost universally believe they should be lower. And if you change groups (and it is a particularly good example because that is a possibility) your beliefs will probably change to the other view as well.
In relation to the US Consitution it is very clear that they didn't mean equal in the sense of "the same capacity" they meant equal in the sense of "entitled" to the benefits of the consitution. And it is clear that the framers envisaged differences between people when one looks at the writings of some of them, for example, Madison; http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7947/Suffrage .html, where it is clear he sees a difference between some citizens and others.
To suggest that they were asserting equality of capacity is disingenouous at best.
And here in the UK, the "tabloid" moniker used so derogatorially by the original poster was particularly accurate until recently. One of the reputable "broadsheet" papers started to produce a tabloid edition, an exact copy of the broadsheet version just in a smaller format (a completely different typesetting, a very interesting technical problem if you ask me). This strategy proved so successful that one of the most famous broadsheets in the world "The Times" copied the format and it too prodcues a tabloid version ("The Times" is now a Murdoch rag, so perhaps it found the move to the new size a little easier than most!).
So, over here at least, I can envisage the phrase tabloid changing meaning in the coming years to refer specifically to papers with the more purient content rather than just the size.
The thing that always amuses me about addiction is that it is so rare to be walking along the street trip over a broken piece of footpath and end up with a lit cigarette in your mouth (substitute crack pipe, skag needle, cup 'o' joe or whatever). This one particularly gets me with smokers (and yes I have never smoked), not only does one have to find a ciagrette and light it and put it in your mouth, an active triumvirite in itself, but you get to give the government the price of lunch for every pack you buy as well, when you factor in what it is doing to your body, it is just insane.
Turning to caffeine, I drink a lot of cola. On average about 3 litres a day probably. Coffee, not much, maybe three cups a week (usally after dinner out) and always espresso based. I would argue that I do it because I really like the taste of those two beverages in the right place. However, I also drink a lot of water. At work, probably two litres a day, because it is there and coke isn't, and then if eating out table water (often mineral). I don't think that I am addicted to caffeine, in that I do not suffer the gotta have it to get started thing, and I don't suffer withdrawal if I don't get it thing. No headaches, no nothing.
So all that considered, take the following for what it's worth, I would recommend the advice from the previous posters about going cold turkey. First, I did it myself, for six months, for a "no monetary reward" bet to prove a lack of addiction (maybe I just succeeded out of spite, but I stopped all caffeine, except where it might occur naturally, like some chocolate. But definitely no coffee, no soft drinks etc etc) and there are four things I would suggest.
First, and it may be a bit obvious, avoid the substances. Reomve, the soft drinks, tea and coffee from you home, and if you can from work (even if it is tell your colleagues to stop you lapsing).
Second drink loads of water, if you drink too much you will just go to the toilet lots. No biggie, but it really helps to flush stuff out.
Thirdly, break the routine, much of your caffeine process will be habit. You know, the coffee you have with breakfast, whatever, just avoid your routine for a few days (have breakfast out, or in), just make a change. This is really only until the craving stops, then you can modify the previous routine to exclude caffeine.
Finally, this helps some people, find a substitute. Whether it is a piece of gum, candy, or even a glass of water, or a game of solitare. When you feel your need grow. Break what you are doing and do the same thing each time. This way you are not fighting the need to do distract yourself as well as the need to have caffeine.
Hope it helps.
Most technology can be used to violate your privacy. OnStar is a good system, and can even save your life in the event of an accident. Or, the government can use it to track you down and assassinate you because of your contributions to /.
Which one of these two situations are you more likely to be in?
Very true. But. The real issue is _why_ do they need to collect all the personal data. If privacy is a right and I am not _necessarily_ saying that it is, but if it is a right then Onstar is a classic example of a system that could be built in a way that was privacy enabled. For example, the identifying attribute of the Onstar enabled vehicle is unrelated to the owner of the vehicle, an arbitrary identifier, say a number. The status/history of that "account" is recorded without any identifying information, (payment history might be a useful piece of information). The person who purchased service can choose to have _no_ contact from Onstar and can initiate all contact themselves, any such contact must be stored with all identifying information (incoming phone number, incoming email address etc) removed. Etc, etc.
This approach will allow the service provider to collect almost all the information they do currently to improve their service without needing to store any information that enables anyone to track down the vehicle of a specific individual. An exception to this would be payments made to keep the service going, they would likely come from a bank and have to identify the service account they are crediting. Law enforcement could request access to those records from the bank and then request an order to have access to the account, however you could even work around that by tying a request for the service to the identification of a valid account by the user at the time of using the service, with the user identifying a secret piece of information about the account to authenticate that it is their account. That way the service provider could eliminate any link between a paid up account and a particular vehicle.
This may sound overly paranoid, and as complicated as my poor description sounds, it really isn't any big deal to do these things. This is the important point in my view. If one views privacy as important then these systems (all systems?) can be built in such a way as to eliminate the possibility of invading privacy. Now this returns to the point in the article that the only wayt to "get real privacy" is to "not collect the information in the first place". For private services, this is all achievable in the price, clearly a "privacy enabled" service could be a premium service, but that is the choice of both the service provider and the punter. But what about the state?
When it comes to how much information the state collects about it's citizens it can get more complex. First there is the question of identity, how does one prove ones identity to the state for the receipt of services. Again the question can be solved more generically, I do not need to prove that I am J Public of 101 Privacy Lane to get access to healthcare, I just need to prove that I am entitled to access healthcare. How do i do that, well, I hold a card that says I am entitled to healthcare and I can prove that the card refers to me, the bearer of the card (biometrically or otherwise). The entire mentallity of the state wrt identity for the collection of state benefits (largely) is so focused on a single uber system of being able to prove _who_ you are that the risks to privacy are frightening. Whereas all they really need is to be able to prove that the punter is entitled to collect the benefit. The problem is that this abstraction is more expensive than just having a big file on everyone, but _WE_ need to decide of that expense is justified.
And the expense is not just in the sense that the systems themselves cost more, but also that there are certain undesriable consequences of this privacy. Tracking down all the people tacking pilot training might be impos
There are no original games any more, any originality of powerful 3D engines has been used up a few years back already...
On the contrary. Whilst it is true that the standard categories of games such as platform, RTS, TBS, FPS, racing are well explored, it only takes the next Lemmings to make a new category (Perhaps Pikmin qualifies? I don't know, and I don't really care). The next innovation will be in real world gaming. Right now there are a few organisations experimenting but in my mind I see... Real maps of the real world (we have them), roamable "game machine" with always on connectivity (we have them, just about) [ideally with locability of the handset built in, but that is an optional extra] and a group of people (friends) with a Day travelcard running around achieving stuff (maybe even not achieving stuff if a goalless gameplay can be made entertaining). Games we used to play as kids, treasure hunts, target, even chasings, take on a whole new dimension when you can tie comms, computing and information on the run.
I purchased a Hedgren bag over seven years ago. It has been around the world several times since then almost always with a laptop in it. It has proved to be incredibly robust and quite versitile. The thing I like most about mine is that it is a soft bag of a brief case size with a fold over top and a brief case handle, however it has an optional over should strap and optional backpack style straps. The backpack style straps mean that I can carry the hugely laden bag without screwing up my back. Very convenient.
:-) I have only ever superficially damaged a laptop that was inside when I have dropped it, and I have several (many) times.
The bag is seriously tough. All the "loaded" fittings are metal (they look and feel like gal steel) and it has really been around the world twice with at least 6 return trips London/Sydney as well, on average about 15 - 20 trips a year and because it is expandable it can double as a small overnight bag (particularly without the laptop
Their website shows an extraordinary range of products around today, mine has a metal plate rivetted into the back with a serial number around the 500,000 number. I suspect that if that policy has continued then the numbers will be a little higher now. But by the same token seven years is a long time for a manufacturer to maintain "early days" quality (if that is where they started).
You used to be able to find a broker in Shanghai, by following the yellow cable out of the exchange building and around the streets of the town as it stopped by their offices.
Actually that's not quite true, but there was a yellow cable that left the exchange building and went to various different installations where exchange activities (including trading) took place. It was just hanging off the poles and you could easily track amongst the spaghetti at the time. That was back in '96, the last time I was there. I dread to think what it must look like now.
Digital tv means providers can finally start to monitor who is watching what and when, this means they get to build up massive databases of viewing patterns.
Not in my world buddy! here in the UK, I have free to air digital TV and there ain't no way for them to tell which channel I am watching at any given time. I am not sure about the technology of determining which channels are being watched without some kind of "upstream" connection in addition to just the decoder, but even so the broadcast version I am using certainly can't be monitored so the Digital TV itself does not automatically give the montioring of viewing information about which you speak.
BTW, as far as nuke disposal, there's a good reason for a lunar colony... =)
Did not Space 1999 teach you anything!!!
Do you mean the only "logical" reason or the only "legitimate" reason. Because as far as industry logic goes, they love region encoding because it allows them to charge a different price in a different market. The same DVDE costing $20 in one market and $7 in another that is more price sensitive.
Release schedules, bah, a mere contrivance. As far as "cinema" goes, there is some justification for differing release schedules, primarily to match the blockbusters to the peak movie going season which can differ significantly in different markets. But also because in some places there just weren't (still aren't???) enough big screens to handle all the big films at the same peak season times.
I stopped buying DVD about 2 years ago for this very reason, I cannot abide funding an industry whose goal is to destroy my rights as a consumer, not to mention the fact that they are price gouging me to distraction.
Mmmm, 64 bit integers. I don't know about you folks but AFAIC there is much to be gained from being able to handle big and precise floating point numbers as integers. The math is so much more pleasant. As Kronecker said, "God made the integers; all else is the work of Man" and so it is particularly true with computers. Oh to be able to store price x quantity in an integer, yummy.
Ever heard of a little technology called XML? Quite popular on UNIX and Windows apparently.
Of course. And if you think that it is anything even remotely close to a solution to the issue I discussed then you have completely missed the point. An XSLT is the nearest thing to useful in this space, but the problem remains, your userid field is my useridentifier field and the writing of that translation is exactly the problem. In this context XML solves nothing, just provides a language in which to implement solutions. Whilst this may be an improvement, it is arguable at best.
"They don't like GUIs much, except as lipstick painted cleanly on top of textual programs, and they don't like binary file formats. This is because a textual interface is easier to program against than, say, a GUI interface"
This is so naive as to be laughable. The thing that soooo many windows programmers do not understand is that the "text" based paradigm of the UNIX world is exactly that a paradigm and the metaphysics of that paradigm are so deeply ingrained in the approach to programming that the real benefits are often underestimated. If I write a command line program, I need only understand 4 interfaces stdin, stdout, stderr and argv and only half of them are readable! Within that, we have lines and whitespace as standard concepts, again trivial to grok.
As a programmer it is up to me to present my output in the format understood by the stdin/argv scanner of the program I want to call and the process by which I can discover that format is of varying difficulty based on the complexity and quality of the program I wish to call, but generally pretty simple process nonetheless.
The next generation of interaction between programs (or lets call them objects) requires a huge leap in complexity. It is this next generation paradigm that many windows programmers would claim to use. But for it to work, the self discovery of those input and output formats and some standard nomenclature to allow them to communicate with each other to make the discovery is required. For example, my spreadsheet program may have many different inputs, a clipboard, a file interface, a dynamic data interface etc etc and its outputs might be equally complex, but the critical thing is that it must be able to tell my data capture program that it is a spreadsheet stlye application and that phrase "spreadsheet" style application must make as much sense as a "stdin/stdout" style application makes today. Whilst I agree with this posters point about creating an object, and then using a GUI to call it, the point is somewhat moot since the discovery process means that in the Object focused world there is no capacity for this communication to take place and so the programmer is left with the task of doing all the mapping between objects since a "data capturey" type object doesn't really grok the metaphysics of how to present to a "spreadsheety" type application. Now, don't misunderstand, I am not suggesting that UNIX can do this any better, but the paradigm under which a unix programmer operates understands something about the metaphysics of how applications talk to each other and so the UNIX programmer will think in a reuse/talking to other programs kinda way to a level, even if it is at, overall, a lower level of functional richness, that a windows programmer cannot really hope to emulate.
$0.02
Either those that thought they bought low did not Buy options or they did not lose money due to having to cover the position because an option is just that, optional, if you don't want to exercise the option you don't have to. I suspect there is an element of the urban legend about the 'options position' aspect to this story since the only option that makes sense to have bought was a put and as such that put would have, depending on the strike, been really cheap (at least to start with :-) and may even still be in the money.
Now if they bought futures then, yes, they are in a hole. But then they would be idiots and they got what they deserved
Perhaps they could call it the Common Desktop Environment or something. Sounds like a great idea.
Dont you mean s/h/e/it
I always liked the idea of a freighter with a nuclear powered hot air balloon for shipping freight (nuclear for the cheapness of the hot air). Unfortunately the size of the balloon was prohibitive, but the image of a "ship" that was loaded at a normal dock, sailed out to sea and then inflated its ballon to rise ten or so kilometers in the air and then fly off at 5 - 10 times the spead of a normal sea freighter is very appealing to me.