Charts are nice and all, but I would life to see more work done to prevent this. Agreed.
Or perhaps, don't let idiots use the computer (computer license). It's the only way! The biggest security hole in computers isn't the computer, but the user.:( And mugging and theft are up in my neighbourhood. It's all these old people. There should be a licence for walking the street! The biggest reason for crime is people who can't put up a fight. Euthanasia at 60 is the only way!:(
Seriously though, users should definitely be educated on computer security wherever and whenever possible (ie. as a fundamental part of job training and IT education in schools). But any talk of computer licences is ridiculous.
I wonder how they will call access points for this kind of wireless service... hmmm it should start with a G... how about G-spot?;-) I hope not, it'd be impossible to ever find one.
While browsers can't even properly show non-english alphabet, this doesn't seem to be a good a idea. My native language contains many special characters and I usually end up deciphering the emails sent by mom to me, because along the way, servers replace these characters with funny things. Well is it the browsers or the servers that are the issue? AFAIK any modern browser fully supports Unicode and any other encodings so there shouldn't be an issue there. If the servers are the problem then either it's the protocol that needs updating/replacing (I don't know nearly enough about SMTP, IMAP4, or POP3 protocols to comment) or the servers themselves are non-compliant. If there's a problem it should definitely be fixed, but you really need to know what the problem is first.
I find it ironic reading stories like these where an unlimited account is told his account is in fact limited. My own broadband account is supposedly limited to 30GB a month, at which point I'd effectively be capped to 56k speeds. At the time I started the account broadband had only just been introduced and uptake was slow, the ISP said the limit most likely wouldn't be enforced for a few months. It's now over 3 years later and I've not once been capped, despite going over the 30GB limit numerous times, quite possbly 11 months per year (to give you an idea, I've downloaded nearly 2GB today). This includes P2P, various media streams, and everything else from HTTP and FTP to games etc.
The thing is, I do 90% of this downloading between 11pm and 7am, using timed download managers and just starting P2P software before I go to bed. It seems logical (to me at least) that the ISP is internally using come kind of tariff system to downplay the effect of my broadband usage at off-peak times when I'm basically not affecting contention ratios or anything else. If such a system were being used in this case it could also explain why the ISP is unable/unwilling to provide a hard limit on bandwidth. There must be dozens of people on/. who work for ISPs, any chance of a confirmation/denial on my theory?
Yeah the cheapest PCs use the cheapest parts, of course. But I'm saying that for the most part you can get as good or better pricing at just about any point along the scale. I don't know what Dell do, maybe they cheap out every place they can, personally the pre-made systems I'm talking about are from the smaller companies.
I don't see how upgrading is any different for pre-built vs. self-built. Obviously you should check out the upgradeability of a system in either case, if you fail to do so it's your own fault, not the PC manufacturer's.
Whether you buy a whole PC and don't make any major upgrades - instead opting for a whole new system 6 years down the line, or continuously upgrade every component over and over, you still end up with the same amount of waste at the end. There's very little in a PC these days that doesn't need to be upgraded eventually. Cases don't, but then again if you want to sell or make use of your old equipment it's going to need a case anyway. The "cascade" happens as it does with component-upgrading, just in starts and stops instead of a more constant flow (plus there's no worrying about hardware compatability issues and architecture/format takes care of itself).
The pre-built being cheaper than self-built only applies when all/virtually all components need upgrading. Obviously if one component fails or for whatever reason becomes outdated before anything else then you just upgrade it. No point paying for a whole new system and making a lot of good hardware redundant unnecessarily. My point is that generally upgrades take place as additions (ie. DIMMs, HDDs), not replacements, so it's just as easy to add to a new system until the fundamental components become dated (ie. CPU/motherboard, GPU) and then buy a whole new system, moving over any relevant additional components at the same time. The the older PC is passed down or sold off. For example my two previous PCs are now Linux and BSD boxes. All PCs running off a single KVM of course - a few redundant keyboards and mice are perhaps the only excess of buying pre-built that I could've otherwise avoided.
Sorry but that's completely wrong - at least in the UK. For several years now it's been possible for a shrewd buyer of pre-made systems to get a much better deal than buying the components separately. Sure, if you just buy the first PC you see an advert for you may get a peice of overpriced crap. But take a look around and there are some damn good deals to be had. Maybe you could get cheaper parts if you really take the time to look around second-hand stores and ebay etc. But that adds so much time and additional risk of failed parts that it's not usually worth it, not to mention the extra costs of actually travelling around to second-hand places to look for parts and the cost of p&p on ebay.
To put it in perspective I bought my current PC five years ago for £800. To buy the same components through the cheapest channels I could find first-hand it would've cost well over £1k.
Finally a chance for robotic exploration to shine!
on
Lunar Dustbusters
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Hello, iRobot? Yeah I'd like to place an order for 1 million Roombas. And uhhh, what kind of delivery charge is there for the Moon?
If you're assuming that any threat they find will destroy us within a year or two, then yes there's not a great deal we can do about it - Bruce Willis is always busy and Robert Duvall isn't getting any younger.
But in all likelihood any threat they find won't be destroying us within the next couple of years, it'll be something that will hit in 10 or 20 or 100 years. On those timeframes there are many things we can do, even if at this specific moment it could only be summed up as "let's give a load of smart guys a lot of money to figure out what we're going to do".
I think you're pushing the scarcity doomwatch angle a bit hard here. Yeah, after 40 odd years we've probably pushed the basic HDD design about as far as it'll go, we'll probably never get more than 1-2TB on a 3.5" drive. But then there are numerous other technologies being developed that seek to improve on the performance and data density that HDDs provide. While they might be a way behind right now, the fact is that many of these are technologies in their infancy that will, with enough R&D, increase in performance and density just as HDDs have for the past 30-40 years. While there are inherit limits on all things, to think that we are remotely close to them right now in computing strikes me as a little premature - kind of like a guy flying around in his bi-plane in 1920 at 80mph thinking "man, nobody will ever fly faster this". Of course he was wrong, the technology he was using at that moment might not have allowed faster travel, but there were new designs and new technologies that would take its place and provide so much more.
Kinda offtopic here but the Earth can sustain 6.5 billion people, in fact I'm sure I've read various studies that have come closer to 8 or even 10bn people being sustainable with the proper agriculture and social framework*. The reality of our situation right now isn't that people are dying because the Earth can't sustain them, it's because they don't have the necessary framework to survive - it's not an issue of scarcity but one of inequality.
*: Whether 8-10bn people on Earth is practical or even pleasant to live with is another matter, I'm just saying that with the right setup people could breathe and eat and do other all the things that people do without the world collapsing.
As the article notes, the amount we produce is not the same as the amount we would actually want to store. Since that 161EB includes duplications such as broadcasting, phone calls, and all manner of temporary or real-time data it's not really relevant to compare that number with storage capabilities as the summary implies.
Honestly, I don't know why the/. editors allow these "scientific articles" that only provide data in these obscure and archaic "byte" measurements. Absurd!
As my original response to your post pointed out, your rant was nothing more than meaningless words that proved nothing and made no more sense than my "cabin in the forest" speech.
I find it interesting that you apparently consider yourself a Christian and yet would refer to me as "lower class", as if you think yourself better than I. I've always found those who try to uphold the ideals of class systems to consistently be the most arrogant and vile people I've come across in my life. You might want to consider what you truly believe in life and decide if Christianity really preaches the ideals you practice. Your words would suggest otherwise.
Haha. I'll take that as a "OK so I'm talking bollocks" shall I?
I never told you to find proof of God, simply that the Universe is a conscious entity. If that's what you consider God then fine, but if the Universe is conscious then you're working within the grounds of science and therefore it is up to you to find proof of that or at least provide a consistent theory that can predict behaviour not already predicted more accurately or in a more simple manner by existing theories. Otherwise you're just another nutjob whose reasoning boils down to "because I said so".
That's based on what? Knowing as it is defined in English is a state available only to conscious entities. There is not, nor has there ever been any evidence whatsoever that the Universe is a conscious entity. Even if it were, it would not necessarily mean it knew anything. Give me evidence (proper verifiable evidence) of a conscious Universe and that it knows anything, let alone everything, and then we'll talk.
You only probably exist if the universe probably exists. Since you do not know everything then the universe knows more than you do. The universe is your God. The Universe knows nothing.
because the Through the forest lies a cabin. In the cabin is a box. In the box is a peice of paper. On the peice of paper a word has been scrawled. That word is "Truth". Read the word and remember it, consider it. Now, leave the forest and return home. Upon returning say what you have learned aloud. If you have considered Truth, the words you utter shall be thus: "What the fuck?". You are now ready to go forth and spread the word.
mindless little word games Such as the one you play. Yes, exactly. The first paragraph of my post was included in my point.
If the Universe...and...then If pigs had wings then they could fly. If nothing was everything then you wouldn't exist. Without significant restructuring of the porcine form, specifically the pectoral muscles, the pig would remain flightless even if it did have wings. Still, a pig can dream. If the Universe if finite then on a large enough scale I will not and will never have existed. Probably.
they have little God has more. Sounds like God's overcompensating for something.
Why does anything have to know everything? If the Universe came from nothing and the Universe has an end then everything can be nothing over a large enough scale. Or if the Universe were infinite the concept of everything goes out the window anyway.
More to the point, mindless little word games and random speculation will not solve the riddles of the Universe or existence. And they have little to do with the article anyway.
I'm sure there's something I'm missing here, I'll confess right out that I knew nothing about this until 5 minutes ago and I haven't bothered to try and look into it much further, but how are the credentials of a poster or an administrator relevant to WP?
Surely the entire point of WP is that it's an encyclopedia, therefore it contains no original research meaning that (in theory at least) any and every point of contention in each article can and should be backed up by a reference, meaning that no poster should need to provide any credentials. Even if Stephen Hawking provided content for the Hawking Radiation article it shouldn't be included unless referenced.
I'm sure I'm probably wrong. Now, anyone care to explain why?
Well unfortunately the idea of paying us to recycle just isn't economically viable, especially when we're talking about hazardous materials like those found in electronics. The issue of course is that expecting people to do the right right thing simply for the sake of doing it is a stretch at best, expecting them to pay extra to do the right thing is bordering on the insane. The only clear solution to that is to force people to pay the recycling fees upfront so that at the very least there's a reasonable chance they'll do what's right.
TFA also mentions another recycling scheme in Maine in which the manufacturers are forced to pay the cost of recycling. I think both manufacturers and users should pay towards the cost of recycling, that way it encourages manufacturers to try and find recycling-friendly methods of production and for the users I guess there's a chance they'll recycle if only to feel they got their money's worth. After all, even if the manufacturer paid the whole bill it would in all likelihood be passed on to the consumer in higher prices anyway.
You've never disposed of any electrical goods? Never had a faulty HDD, blown PSU, bad DIMM, fscked CRT monitor? I've still got every computer I've owned too since they all work, but I'm only 22 and I've already gone through enough broken parts and appliances to see that I'll get my money's worth if they ever introduce a recycling tax here. Even if by some fluke you never personally had to recycle a single electrical item ever it'd still be nice to know that this kind of thing could encourage others to recycle their old crap which might otherwise end up in a landfill or just get dumped - hazardous chemcicals and all.
That would mean that we can just leave them anywhere, right?
We already pay for removal when it works.... Well, Ill just open my truckbed with all these computer junk parts and gun it. Thats what road crews are for, right? - Well isn't that the point of these changes? Right now it costs you to choose to recycle it. Now you'll have to pay recycling fees up front so it's no longer financially beneficial to not recycle it.
But people don't know what we're talking about, that's my point. At least they haven't bothered to consider the full implications of what piracy is compared with theft (ie. to take a copy of something versus to take the original). This isn't a case of colloquialisms because the GGP's post made the analogy of pirating media with stealing a Ferrari. Which is, as I originally stated, absolutely incorrect.
People don't use "theft" in place of the term "piracy" or "copyright infringement" unless they don't understand the difference or intentionally wish to misrepresent piracy as theft to the uninformed reader. Either way, they can and should be called on it so that the real facts on the subject can be presented and an objective and relevant debate can be had on copyright infringement. As I said previously, that's not possible as long as one side believes copyright infringement to be just another kind of theft, in which case they will almost certainly presume that it is (or should be) subject to the same moral and legal standpoint.
It's not about semantics. It's about clarifying what the of the act of piracy is and is not. There's no point even trying to have an intelligent discussion about software piracy if one party doesn't understand what it is to the point that they can't differentiate between piracy and theft.
As far as the term "piracy" goes, I guess the last time you checked that meaning was some time before the 1990's since it has been used colloquially within this context for well over a decade. If anybody misunderstood my post to be of a nautical nature please raise your hand now.
Just because some people can't get something, doesn't make it right. I can't afford a Ferrari, but nobody would justify me stealing it. - Whether piracy is wrong under this circumstance or any other, the "piracy is theft" mantra is pure unadulterated bullshit. For God's sake stop using it.
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Seriously though, users should definitely be educated on computer security wherever and whenever possible (ie. as a fundamental part of job training and IT education in schools). But any talk of computer licences is ridiculous.
I find it ironic reading stories like these where an unlimited account is told his account is in fact limited. My own broadband account is supposedly limited to 30GB a month, at which point I'd effectively be capped to 56k speeds. At the time I started the account broadband had only just been introduced and uptake was slow, the ISP said the limit most likely wouldn't be enforced for a few months. It's now over 3 years later and I've not once been capped, despite going over the 30GB limit numerous times, quite possbly 11 months per year (to give you an idea, I've downloaded nearly 2GB today). This includes P2P, various media streams, and everything else from HTTP and FTP to games etc.
/. who work for ISPs, any chance of a confirmation/denial on my theory?
The thing is, I do 90% of this downloading between 11pm and 7am, using timed download managers and just starting P2P software before I go to bed. It seems logical (to me at least) that the ISP is internally using come kind of tariff system to downplay the effect of my broadband usage at off-peak times when I'm basically not affecting contention ratios or anything else. If such a system were being used in this case it could also explain why the ISP is unable/unwilling to provide a hard limit on bandwidth. There must be dozens of people on
Yeah the cheapest PCs use the cheapest parts, of course. But I'm saying that for the most part you can get as good or better pricing at just about any point along the scale. I don't know what Dell do, maybe they cheap out every place they can, personally the pre-made systems I'm talking about are from the smaller companies.
I don't see how upgrading is any different for pre-built vs. self-built. Obviously you should check out the upgradeability of a system in either case, if you fail to do so it's your own fault, not the PC manufacturer's.
Whether you buy a whole PC and don't make any major upgrades - instead opting for a whole new system 6 years down the line, or continuously upgrade every component over and over, you still end up with the same amount of waste at the end. There's very little in a PC these days that doesn't need to be upgraded eventually. Cases don't, but then again if you want to sell or make use of your old equipment it's going to need a case anyway. The "cascade" happens as it does with component-upgrading, just in starts and stops instead of a more constant flow (plus there's no worrying about hardware compatability issues and architecture/format takes care of itself).
The pre-built being cheaper than self-built only applies when all/virtually all components need upgrading. Obviously if one component fails or for whatever reason becomes outdated before anything else then you just upgrade it. No point paying for a whole new system and making a lot of good hardware redundant unnecessarily. My point is that generally upgrades take place as additions (ie. DIMMs, HDDs), not replacements, so it's just as easy to add to a new system until the fundamental components become dated (ie. CPU/motherboard, GPU) and then buy a whole new system, moving over any relevant additional components at the same time. The the older PC is passed down or sold off. For example my two previous PCs are now Linux and BSD boxes. All PCs running off a single KVM of course - a few redundant keyboards and mice are perhaps the only excess of buying pre-built that I could've otherwise avoided.
Sorry but that's completely wrong - at least in the UK. For several years now it's been possible for a shrewd buyer of pre-made systems to get a much better deal than buying the components separately. Sure, if you just buy the first PC you see an advert for you may get a peice of overpriced crap. But take a look around and there are some damn good deals to be had. Maybe you could get cheaper parts if you really take the time to look around second-hand stores and ebay etc. But that adds so much time and additional risk of failed parts that it's not usually worth it, not to mention the extra costs of actually travelling around to second-hand places to look for parts and the cost of p&p on ebay.
To put it in perspective I bought my current PC five years ago for £800. To buy the same components through the cheapest channels I could find first-hand it would've cost well over £1k.
Hello, iRobot? Yeah I'd like to place an order for 1 million Roombas. And uhhh, what kind of delivery charge is there for the Moon?
If you're assuming that any threat they find will destroy us within a year or two, then yes there's not a great deal we can do about it - Bruce Willis is always busy and Robert Duvall isn't getting any younger.
But in all likelihood any threat they find won't be destroying us within the next couple of years, it'll be something that will hit in 10 or 20 or 100 years. On those timeframes there are many things we can do, even if at this specific moment it could only be summed up as "let's give a load of smart guys a lot of money to figure out what we're going to do".
I think you're pushing the scarcity doomwatch angle a bit hard here. Yeah, after 40 odd years we've probably pushed the basic HDD design about as far as it'll go, we'll probably never get more than 1-2TB on a 3.5" drive. But then there are numerous other technologies being developed that seek to improve on the performance and data density that HDDs provide. While they might be a way behind right now, the fact is that many of these are technologies in their infancy that will, with enough R&D, increase in performance and density just as HDDs have for the past 30-40 years. While there are inherit limits on all things, to think that we are remotely close to them right now in computing strikes me as a little premature - kind of like a guy flying around in his bi-plane in 1920 at 80mph thinking "man, nobody will ever fly faster this". Of course he was wrong, the technology he was using at that moment might not have allowed faster travel, but there were new designs and new technologies that would take its place and provide so much more.
Kinda offtopic here but the Earth can sustain 6.5 billion people, in fact I'm sure I've read various studies that have come closer to 8 or even 10bn people being sustainable with the proper agriculture and social framework*. The reality of our situation right now isn't that people are dying because the Earth can't sustain them, it's because they don't have the necessary framework to survive - it's not an issue of scarcity but one of inequality.
*: Whether 8-10bn people on Earth is practical or even pleasant to live with is another matter, I'm just saying that with the right setup people could breathe and eat and do other all the things that people do without the world collapsing.
As the article notes, the amount we produce is not the same as the amount we would actually want to store. Since that 161EB includes duplications such as broadcasting, phone calls, and all manner of temporary or real-time data it's not really relevant to compare that number with storage capabilities as the summary implies.
That'd be 1,191,400 Libraries of Congress.
/. editors allow these "scientific articles" that only provide data in these obscure and archaic "byte" measurements. Absurd!
Honestly, I don't know why the
As my original response to your post pointed out, your rant was nothing more than meaningless words that proved nothing and made no more sense than my "cabin in the forest" speech.
I find it interesting that you apparently consider yourself a Christian and yet would refer to me as "lower class", as if you think yourself better than I. I've always found those who try to uphold the ideals of class systems to consistently be the most arrogant and vile people I've come across in my life. You might want to consider what you truly believe in life and decide if Christianity really preaches the ideals you practice. Your words would suggest otherwise.
Haha. I'll take that as a "OK so I'm talking bollocks" shall I?
I never told you to find proof of God, simply that the Universe is a conscious entity. If that's what you consider God then fine, but if the Universe is conscious then you're working within the grounds of science and therefore it is up to you to find proof of that or at least provide a consistent theory that can predict behaviour not already predicted more accurately or in a more simple manner by existing theories. Otherwise you're just another nutjob whose reasoning boils down to "because I said so".
That's based on what? Knowing as it is defined in English is a state available only to conscious entities. There is not, nor has there ever been any evidence whatsoever that the Universe is a conscious entity. Even if it were, it would not necessarily mean it knew anything. Give me evidence (proper verifiable evidence) of a conscious Universe and that it knows anything, let alone everything, and then we'll talk.
Why does anything have to know everything? If the Universe came from nothing and the Universe has an end then everything can be nothing over a large enough scale. Or if the Universe were infinite the concept of everything goes out the window anyway.
More to the point, mindless little word games and random speculation will not solve the riddles of the Universe or existence. And they have little to do with the article anyway.
I'm sure there's something I'm missing here, I'll confess right out that I knew nothing about this until 5 minutes ago and I haven't bothered to try and look into it much further, but how are the credentials of a poster or an administrator relevant to WP?
Surely the entire point of WP is that it's an encyclopedia, therefore it contains no original research meaning that (in theory at least) any and every point of contention in each article can and should be backed up by a reference, meaning that no poster should need to provide any credentials. Even if Stephen Hawking provided content for the Hawking Radiation article it shouldn't be included unless referenced.
I'm sure I'm probably wrong. Now, anyone care to explain why?
Well unfortunately the idea of paying us to recycle just isn't economically viable, especially when we're talking about hazardous materials like those found in electronics. The issue of course is that expecting people to do the right right thing simply for the sake of doing it is a stretch at best, expecting them to pay extra to do the right thing is bordering on the insane. The only clear solution to that is to force people to pay the recycling fees upfront so that at the very least there's a reasonable chance they'll do what's right.
TFA also mentions another recycling scheme in Maine in which the manufacturers are forced to pay the cost of recycling. I think both manufacturers and users should pay towards the cost of recycling, that way it encourages manufacturers to try and find recycling-friendly methods of production and for the users I guess there's a chance they'll recycle if only to feel they got their money's worth. After all, even if the manufacturer paid the whole bill it would in all likelihood be passed on to the consumer in higher prices anyway.
You've never disposed of any electrical goods? Never had a faulty HDD, blown PSU, bad DIMM, fscked CRT monitor? I've still got every computer I've owned too since they all work, but I'm only 22 and I've already gone through enough broken parts and appliances to see that I'll get my money's worth if they ever introduce a recycling tax here. Even if by some fluke you never personally had to recycle a single electrical item ever it'd still be nice to know that this kind of thing could encourage others to recycle their old crap which might otherwise end up in a landfill or just get dumped - hazardous chemcicals and all.
We already pay for removal when it works.... Well, Ill just open my truckbed with all these computer junk parts and gun it. Thats what road crews are for, right? - Well isn't that the point of these changes? Right now it costs you to choose to recycle it. Now you'll have to pay recycling fees up front so it's no longer financially beneficial to not recycle it.
I'm afraid in posting all those terms you've told us all a little too much about your surfing habits. Please put your pants on, help is on the way.
But people don't know what we're talking about, that's my point. At least they haven't bothered to consider the full implications of what piracy is compared with theft (ie. to take a copy of something versus to take the original). This isn't a case of colloquialisms because the GGP's post made the analogy of pirating media with stealing a Ferrari. Which is, as I originally stated, absolutely incorrect.
People don't use "theft" in place of the term "piracy" or "copyright infringement" unless they don't understand the difference or intentionally wish to misrepresent piracy as theft to the uninformed reader. Either way, they can and should be called on it so that the real facts on the subject can be presented and an objective and relevant debate can be had on copyright infringement. As I said previously, that's not possible as long as one side believes copyright infringement to be just another kind of theft, in which case they will almost certainly presume that it is (or should be) subject to the same moral and legal standpoint.
It's not about semantics. It's about clarifying what the of the act of piracy is and is not. There's no point even trying to have an intelligent discussion about software piracy if one party doesn't understand what it is to the point that they can't differentiate between piracy and theft.
As far as the term "piracy" goes, I guess the last time you checked that meaning was some time before the 1990's since it has been used colloquially within this context for well over a decade. If anybody misunderstood my post to be of a nautical nature please raise your hand now.