... I'm surprised how few people remember that just a year ago, or so, the news was that scientists finally decided to poke around with an egg plus an egg and found that it's insanely easy to fertilize an egg using the DNA extracted from another egg, no sperm required.
I mean, without keeping that in mind, this news has no context or relevance.
They've already shown it's easy to fertilize an egg using another egg. This just *barely* puts us back in the game, again. Anyways, saying this is excited is like being gay and saying "ha, take that, ladies!"
Doulb-plus! Even if, by some miniscule chance or miracle, they manage to guess that it's a book on Erlang you've given them without even unwrapping it, imagine how surprised they'll be when they see the cover! No-one EVER would have guessed a book on programming languages would have THAT cover!
Seriously of them? This group has a name that sounds like they support free access to research papers; yet, counterintuitively, they are opposed to research being freely available? And yet, ironically, their latest work sounds like it would force a great deal of scientific research into the public eye?......... And this guy who can get recognition for something that's, I dunno, as old as pythagoras or some shit? (Not a mathematician).......... Is it just me or can you get a lot out of the world just by doing the old "hey went THIS way! No he went THAT way no he went THISwayhewentTHATwayhewentTHISwashewentTHATwayhewent whoops, where'd your wallet go? I just saw the nabber! He went THIS way! No he went THAT way! No he went THIS way he went THAT way he went THISwayhewentTHATwayhewentTHIS..." BUT ON A PROFESSIONAL BASIS?!?!
Everything the guy does is derivative, politically founded work only posing as "art", which he even goes so far as to get politically embroiled in lieu of performance. He even looks like a moron. GOD how can this man keep his job?
Huh. Okay, I have the solution. He's putting a camera on his head is a career *move*, as in he knows he's too foolish and moronic to continue to teach for very long, so he's preparing for a career in reality TV directing.
all exorbitance is disgusting. i can't even imagine what google pretends to need all these people for. the last few major changes to their search engine and news section could have been accomplished by a single coder. i understand they have their own language (or pseudo language, not entirely sure) but that itself seems like really awful bloat for a search engine. and their own browser? i haven't even given it a look-over. it's that unimportant. they shouldn't be trying to expand so much, they're just going to get top-heavy and sink. too bad for them, i guess, but they sure have been getting annoying, lately. and it might be off-topic, but facebook is never going to 'kill gmail'. they can't even make their 'notes' function properly. anyways, it looks really bad, to me, overly huge companies with all these ostensible 'employees' going after their own 'towns'. it's just the future of litigation; it'll all go wrong. nobody remembers pullman town? how about enron -- they were a utopia, too, weren't they? or the branch davidian complex. heaven's gate. etc.
Oh yeah, well, in Soviet Russia, old gets YOU! In Soviet Russia, balloon weathers YOU! In Soviet Russia, dead horse beats YOU! In Soviet Russia, objectivity disappreciates YOU! In Soviet Russia, joke moderates YOU! In Soviet Russia, dots slash YOU!
Yeah, I was pretty disappointed, too, when I saw the Vulture and it was a full-on aeroplane. I didn't know what I expected, maybe a huge paper plane that could somehow carry the camera, or maybe a microcamera, something besides a regular camera and what appears to be the same kind of plane radio hobbyists fly. If they had been a bit more honest there wouldn't have been this feeling of loss. Meanwhile, there's still the opportunity to one-up them via honesty, and put a real folded-paper airplane up there with a microcamera and memory stick or transmitter up there.
For a moment I started to feel sympathy for the bigots and despots in Israel who call Palestinians "cockroaches" and who would "push them into the sea". It's extremely cruel and heartbreaking how people are treated under extreme Islam and I'd be pretty damn cagey, too, if I had them for millenial neighbors. I usually side with what I see as the underdog or victim of injustice, but it's hard to help somebody who's self-inflicting. By that same token, I think I'd be crazy-ass martyring myself and self-inflicting, too, if I had to live next to the Biblical jews for thousands of years.
People go on about the human rights aspect of it all the time but it's really just about a prime piece of real estate, the "rock" or "temple mount". It's where the Ark of the Covenant was placed and where Mohamet ascended into heaven. At one time the temple of Solomon was there, and now there's the Dome. Some people argue this, some people argue that. "This belongs there", "that belongs to them", "they were there first", "they beat them fair and square", "this is acclaimed by so and so", "this is argued by blah blah", "mine", "ours", "his", and on and on. And there's plenty of murder to back up all the arguments, and with each murder there's a declaration that victory was by divine will, and then that person gets killed and it's this big game of "king of the hill".
Ultimately, what I guess this story does for me is balance out the entire Jerusalem equation, to the extent that I just really don't care about that part of the world so much and could care less how they handle each other. Obviously the whole spiritual, closeness with God thing doesn't do people much good, at all, unless you want to count lowering the population and restraining humanity's ecological footprint as "good" and can tolerate the proven evil of religious states.
Funny how nearsighted people continue to bicker about who's more right between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, when even a cursory glance from a distance shows that all three comprise the most heinous affront to humanity on the planet. Unabashed, self-righteous murderers all, and mostly over this one single stone outcropping. I swear to God, I'm starting to believe that were were beating our chests and jacking off on that thing all the way back in monkeydom.
Is this where Bill Gates has to hand back all his ill gotten gains and call it a wrap, move back into a garage? One that opens automatically when the owner approaches the door?
"most elevators installed since the early 1990's, the close door button has no effect"
and yet i frequently use the close door button to real effect in nearly every elevator i have been in in the last fifteen years including ones installed since 2000.
meanwhile, some news claims aren't factual but people believe they are because they are made by news agencies.
a. A monkey with a satellite dish implanted in its skull; satellite uplink to the artist's AI in orbit, back to the computer through cellular phone cradled in acoustic coupler; inevitable ICBMs release spray paints from passing, low-flying trajectories.
b. Use "good hand" to pay fashion models to pose as prostitutes for reality TV show; approach and pay them again to use their finely functioning, perfect and precise bodies as cybernetic extensions of artist's abilities.
c. Look up arcane, ancient method of problemsolving called "ambidexterity", attempt humanity's first-ever successful usage of unexpected "other" hand to accomplish task previously thought only possible for "real" hand; bewarned, if the conjurer is not powerful enough, the summoned sinister one from the other side of everything will take over, attempt to choke the life out of more popular hand that shows up to take the credit when recovery is complete.
amen. fucking morons these days. you know what? scratch that. that's not a moron. that person really, cruelly, likes the idea that they just shit all over some downtrodden poor person's parade, the kind of person who slavers over news stories that go on in gruesome detail about abductions, rape and torture all without ever making any political statements or calls to action in print.
These arguments against separating internet crimes are rife with logical fallacies, so many that I don't have the energy to get into it all.
Let me remind everybody that the whole idea of persecuting someone for crimes using computer data as evidence is a relatively new development.
New, mostly because computers haven't been around forever, even if they've been around *your* whole lifetime.
New, as well, because people forget that laws shouldn't be molded because it'd be aW3s0m3 to have them read or act a certain way, they should be molded to make the most common sense and protect the most rights while not sacrificing any other rights in the process.
Let me give you an example, which I love to bring up again, and again, and again, because it's SO perfect, of just what happens when people get carried away thinking their nerdish, little virual realities should bear more weight in big, real, grown-ups world. In the much-hated Martha Stewart's famous trial that every middle-to-lower income person in the country was bloodthirsty for, computer evidence was used to find her guilty. Computer evidence, mind you, that didn't exist, though there was a handy excuse: the testimony of one of Stewart's computer workers explained that there was at one time incriminating evidence on the computer (some memos or something) that Martha ordered him to delete, and that she then ordered him to delete the logs of his evil, dishonest, nerdly work so nobody would know he'd done what he'd done. Then, presumably, he deleted the logs of those deletions, as well, and so on. Point is, the testimony stood. The nonexistent logs and memos and everything actually were admitted as evidence to the jury. So was the testimony of the investigator who filed the original charges, even though he later was found guilty of perjury for said testimony.
The point is, nobody in America should be tried on any digital evidence, whatsoever. Everybody who knows enough about technology knows this. Despite what you and your friends might tell each other, every day fewer and fewer people know jack shit about technology and what it's capable of. Usually at this point everybody is thinking: "child porn". Whether that's because you laugh every day at Pedo Bear and other joke sites that put the subject lightly, or because you're really concerned about it, only the internet knows. But just recently it was shown that all you have to do is claim that somebody else put your porn on your computer and get them in trouble, instead. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/08/06/150216
The point is that it's a very, very, very, very slippery slope, indeed (and this isn't your classic slippery slope argument) when you start mucking around with using computer data as evidence. The last thing you want to do is give it MORE presumable tangibility in court. It's perfectly FINE that computer crimes are in a separate class, that way you can ensure that the evidence is treated as categorically weaker than the typical evidence, supporting lesser verdicts.
Why stop at wide-open storage? Why not put a common terminal BBS in a firmware and attach several backup storages, upload/download directories, a virus scanner, even forums, and make it something relatively safe and functional? Then attach that to a wireless, give it a photovoltaic cell for a voltage source, attach a few capacitors to charge for night time use, cover the PVC with a layer or quartz and encase the whole thing in a piece of granite, and sink *that* into something.
As it is, the USB sticking out of a wall idea is one of the most retarded things... it's so obvious, maybe the artist should have stopped and said "there are reasons why this hasn't been done, yet", and not stopped at "oh some capitalist would steal it -- voila, cement!"
I've read a lot of the comments at the article and here at/. and, all opinions considered, I have to agree that it was a fairly irresponsible decision on the artist's behalf.
1. Could poke some kid's eye out, should have been recessed into the wall
2. Could break off in your USB port or cable, should have been recessed into the wall;
3. Could be filled with things you don't want to go near like viruses and other malware, maybe should have been set up with some firmware attached as mediator;
4. Surprisingly, not mentioned: could be filled with things you don't want to go near like child pornography, which will temporarily be in your possession while you're "jacked in there lil' chummer";
5. Also not mentioned: easily spoofed performance art, with malicious self-activating-firmware or voltage sources attached, to become a very, very, very malicious device to hook up to with anything at all, especially valuable hardware and software (also easily torn out and replaced with evil twin);
6. Also not mentioned: these things don't all appear to be in the most secure sorts of areas, and will likely become targeted by hoodlums looking to score a quick laptop or other portable device.
7. The liability of any wrong coming to any computer users through these devices, I am pretty sure (I'm not a lawyer) could be traceable directly back to the artist.
To all those who got off on how it's the digital equivalent of GPS: frankly, it's the digital equivalent of fucking a crack-whore, or actually putting your shit up-to/into a real "glory hole".
I just started taking Electronics courses this year in college. Within the first week came the news of the Memristor and all the promise that holds for our collective data storage future. I was a bit upset because the component wasn't going to be part of the curriculum and it was too late to negotiate for it, especially since the textbooks had already been to print and delivered to the bookstores. I'm getting above a 4.0 in Electronics, but, I still feel like I'm missing something.
What that something is, is reliable storage. Hard drives always, always sucked. That they're magnetically sensitive is bad enough, but then there are all the problems with intolerance to shock and temperature, and the high rate of defects. The last three "hard drives" I bought were years ago: three 50gb Seagates in a row came to me with flaws that caused a total breakdown of the drive within a couple of weeks. I sent them back and got replacements in due time, great, excellent, but they all failed.
I eventually gave away my too-expensive, quickly-marginalised desktop computer and opted for doing as much as I could with rental and public computer time and a USB stick. The flash memory just seems like it never fails and I loath every time I have a thought of "the market sure is looking nice, should I get my own computer again" and the inevitable "what size HD will I get -- oh great what brand will I get, how many times will I have to send it back and demand a working one, how long until the whole thing fails" thoughts arise. Especially when I'm too mobile, now, for a desktop machine and will have to decide on something from the laptop industry. What if I set my new computer down too hard? What if I have to jog with it or have to carry it through the city in the winter? Will my HD still have retrievable data on it? I hate the idea, the very concept. I've always hated them since having to learn the habit of including PARK.EXE in all my close-out batfiles. Before even Windows 95, there was that sinister "you better shut this thing down right if you ever want to see it operational, again" phantom.
And when I go out to buy memory, like when I had to price my first "card" memory two weeks ago for my new camera, I keep asking, "do you have memristors, yet? Well you better get them in as soon as you see them, because I'm tired of paying for this decaying, decrepid shit you call a memory." I'm already pressuring the salespeople to make sure they sell me something good, because the last thing I want is to lose bytes of my flash memory to that elusive cataclysm of writing to the location one too many times. And the last thing I want to do next to that is ever again learn the hard way exactly when and why Windows and Mac-OS do not want you to have your USB stick back for any reason until they're done doing whatever the hell they think it is they're doing to your flash memory.
I think all of this shit should just be fucking thrown out in protest and we should put a boot up the entire industry's collective ass until they start throwing us cheap-ass like CRAZY cheap-ass memristors like confetti in the streets. Because all this overpriced horseshit failing every time you blink or fucking sneeze at it is the only thing I, and I'm sure most of you as well, fucking HATE about computing!
Pfft. Fucking great. Now people who have absolutely no valid interest in the moon as a scientific and archaeological object being the Earth's oldest possible artifact and hugest object in our neighborhood are going to go there and start fighting over it. We will see a face or shattered moon and/or moonless sky in our lifetimes.
Slashdot Mirror
... I'm surprised how few people remember that just a year ago, or so, the news was that scientists finally decided to poke around with an egg plus an egg and found that it's insanely easy to fertilize an egg using the DNA extracted from another egg, no sperm required.
I mean, without keeping that in mind, this news has no context or relevance.
They've already shown it's easy to fertilize an egg using another egg. This just *barely* puts us back in the game, again. Anyways, saying this is excited is like being gay and saying "ha, take that, ladies!"
Doulb-plus! Even if, by some miniscule chance or miracle, they manage to guess that it's a book on Erlang you've given them without even unwrapping it, imagine how surprised they'll be when they see the cover! No-one EVER would have guessed a book on programming languages would have THAT cover!
That does NOT look like a good cover for a book on computer programming!!!
Seriously of them? This group has a name that sounds like they support free access to research papers; yet, counterintuitively, they are opposed to research being freely available? And yet, ironically, their latest work sounds like it would force a great deal of scientific research into the public eye? ... ... ... And this guy who can get recognition for something that's, I dunno, as old as pythagoras or some shit? (Not a mathematician). ... ... ... Is it just me or can you get a lot out of the world just by doing the old "hey went THIS way! No he went THAT way no he went THISwayhewentTHATwayhewentTHISwashewentTHATwayhewent whoops, where'd your wallet go? I just saw the nabber! He went THIS way! No he went THAT way! No he went THIS way he went THAT way he went THISwayhewentTHATwayhewentTHIS..." BUT ON A PROFESSIONAL BASIS?!?!
In Soviet Russia.
The way you put it is so hilarious. Total LOL. "Here's some hope and change for yeah Nyeaaahhhh RATATATATAT"
"Mistah Obomber, yeeaaahhh the drones is here yous solemnly requested audience with."
Everything the guy does is derivative, politically founded work only posing as "art", which he even goes so far as to get politically embroiled in lieu of performance. He even looks like a moron. GOD how can this man keep his job?
Huh. Okay, I have the solution. He's putting a camera on his head is a career *move*, as in he knows he's too foolish and moronic to continue to teach for very long, so he's preparing for a career in reality TV directing.
all exorbitance is disgusting. i can't even imagine what google pretends to need all these people for. the last few major changes to their search engine and news section could have been accomplished by a single coder. i understand they have their own language (or pseudo language, not entirely sure) but that itself seems like really awful bloat for a search engine. and their own browser? i haven't even given it a look-over. it's that unimportant. they shouldn't be trying to expand so much, they're just going to get top-heavy and sink. too bad for them, i guess, but they sure have been getting annoying, lately. and it might be off-topic, but facebook is never going to 'kill gmail'. they can't even make their 'notes' function properly. anyways, it looks really bad, to me, overly huge companies with all these ostensible 'employees' going after their own 'towns'. it's just the future of litigation; it'll all go wrong. nobody remembers pullman town? how about enron -- they were a utopia, too, weren't they? or the branch davidian complex. heaven's gate. etc.
Oh yeah, well, in Soviet Russia, old gets YOU!
In Soviet Russia, balloon weathers YOU!
In Soviet Russia, dead horse beats YOU!
In Soviet Russia, objectivity disappreciates YOU!
In Soviet Russia, joke moderates YOU!
In Soviet Russia, dots slash YOU!
Yeah, I was pretty disappointed, too, when I saw the Vulture and it was a full-on aeroplane. I didn't know what I expected, maybe a huge paper plane that could somehow carry the camera, or maybe a microcamera, something besides a regular camera and what appears to be the same kind of plane radio hobbyists fly. If they had been a bit more honest there wouldn't have been this feeling of loss. Meanwhile, there's still the opportunity to one-up them via honesty, and put a real folded-paper airplane up there with a microcamera and memory stick or transmitter up there.
For a moment I started to feel sympathy for the bigots and despots in Israel who call Palestinians "cockroaches" and who would "push them into the sea". It's extremely cruel and heartbreaking how people are treated under extreme Islam and I'd be pretty damn cagey, too, if I had them for millenial neighbors. I usually side with what I see as the underdog or victim of injustice, but it's hard to help somebody who's self-inflicting. By that same token, I think I'd be crazy-ass martyring myself and self-inflicting, too, if I had to live next to the Biblical jews for thousands of years.
People go on about the human rights aspect of it all the time but it's really just about a prime piece of real estate, the "rock" or "temple mount". It's where the Ark of the Covenant was placed and where Mohamet ascended into heaven. At one time the temple of Solomon was there, and now there's the Dome. Some people argue this, some people argue that. "This belongs there", "that belongs to them", "they were there first", "they beat them fair and square", "this is acclaimed by so and so", "this is argued by blah blah", "mine", "ours", "his", and on and on. And there's plenty of murder to back up all the arguments, and with each murder there's a declaration that victory was by divine will, and then that person gets killed and it's this big game of "king of the hill".
Ultimately, what I guess this story does for me is balance out the entire Jerusalem equation, to the extent that I just really don't care about that part of the world so much and could care less how they handle each other. Obviously the whole spiritual, closeness with God thing doesn't do people much good, at all, unless you want to count lowering the population and restraining humanity's ecological footprint as "good" and can tolerate the proven evil of religious states.
Funny how nearsighted people continue to bicker about who's more right between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, when even a cursory glance from a distance shows that all three comprise the most heinous affront to humanity on the planet. Unabashed, self-righteous murderers all, and mostly over this one single stone outcropping. I swear to God, I'm starting to believe that were were beating our chests and jacking off on that thing all the way back in monkeydom.
Is this where Bill Gates has to hand back all his ill gotten gains and call it a wrap, move back into a garage? One that opens automatically when the owner approaches the door?
India's economy is so strong that half of its electricity is FREE!
That's fine until you consider that there really are "grand" conspiracies that target real individuals, most of whom are totally unawares.
"most elevators installed since the early 1990's, the close door button has no effect"
and yet i frequently use the close door button to real effect in nearly every elevator i have been in in the last fifteen years including ones installed since 2000.
meanwhile, some news claims aren't factual but people believe they are because they are made by news agencies.
Many things spring to mind.
a. A monkey with a satellite dish implanted in its skull; satellite uplink to the artist's AI in orbit, back to the computer through cellular phone cradled in acoustic coupler; inevitable ICBMs release spray paints from passing, low-flying trajectories.
b. Use "good hand" to pay fashion models to pose as prostitutes for reality TV show; approach and pay them again to use their finely functioning, perfect and precise bodies as cybernetic extensions of artist's abilities.
c. Look up arcane, ancient method of problemsolving called "ambidexterity", attempt humanity's first-ever successful usage of unexpected "other" hand to accomplish task previously thought only possible for "real" hand; bewarned, if the conjurer is not powerful enough, the summoned sinister one from the other side of everything will take over, attempt to choke the life out of more popular hand that shows up to take the credit when recovery is complete.
so. you really think slashdot is how the chinese people tell each other about underground internet.
amen. fucking morons these days. you know what? scratch that. that's not a moron. that person really, cruelly, likes the idea that they just shit all over some downtrodden poor person's parade, the kind of person who slavers over news stories that go on in gruesome detail about abductions, rape and torture all without ever making any political statements or calls to action in print.
you know, some things just don't need god damned reporting to help them along. fucking yellow journalism.
These arguments against separating internet crimes are rife with logical fallacies, so many that I don't have the energy to get into it all.
Let me remind everybody that the whole idea of persecuting someone for crimes using computer data as evidence is a relatively new development.
New, mostly because computers haven't been around forever, even if they've been around *your* whole lifetime.
New, as well, because people forget that laws shouldn't be molded because it'd be aW3s0m3 to have them read or act a certain way, they should be molded to make the most common sense and protect the most rights while not sacrificing any other rights in the process.
Let me give you an example, which I love to bring up again, and again, and again, because it's SO perfect, of just what happens when people get carried away thinking their nerdish, little virual realities should bear more weight in big, real, grown-ups world. In the much-hated Martha Stewart's famous trial that every middle-to-lower income person in the country was bloodthirsty for, computer evidence was used to find her guilty. Computer evidence, mind you, that didn't exist, though there was a handy excuse: the testimony of one of Stewart's computer workers explained that there was at one time incriminating evidence on the computer (some memos or something) that Martha ordered him to delete, and that she then ordered him to delete the logs of his evil, dishonest, nerdly work so nobody would know he'd done what he'd done. Then, presumably, he deleted the logs of those deletions, as well, and so on. Point is, the testimony stood. The nonexistent logs and memos and everything actually were admitted as evidence to the jury. So was the testimony of the investigator who filed the original charges, even though he later was found guilty of perjury for said testimony.
The point is, nobody in America should be tried on any digital evidence, whatsoever. Everybody who knows enough about technology knows this. Despite what you and your friends might tell each other, every day fewer and fewer people know jack shit about technology and what it's capable of. Usually at this point everybody is thinking: "child porn". Whether that's because you laugh every day at Pedo Bear and other joke sites that put the subject lightly, or because you're really concerned about it, only the internet knows. But just recently it was shown that all you have to do is claim that somebody else put your porn on your computer and get them in trouble, instead. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/08/06/150216
The point is that it's a very, very, very, very slippery slope, indeed (and this isn't your classic slippery slope argument) when you start mucking around with using computer data as evidence. The last thing you want to do is give it MORE presumable tangibility in court. It's perfectly FINE that computer crimes are in a separate class, that way you can ensure that the evidence is treated as categorically weaker than the typical evidence, supporting lesser verdicts.
But the USB stick alone is such an issue.
Why stop at wide-open storage? Why not put a common terminal BBS in a firmware and attach several backup storages, upload/download directories, a virus scanner, even forums, and make it something relatively safe and functional? Then attach that to a wireless, give it a photovoltaic cell for a voltage source, attach a few capacitors to charge for night time use, cover the PVC with a layer or quartz and encase the whole thing in a piece of granite, and sink *that* into something.
As it is, the USB sticking out of a wall idea is one of the most retarded things... it's so obvious, maybe the artist should have stopped and said "there are reasons why this hasn't been done, yet", and not stopped at "oh some capitalist would steal it -- voila, cement!"
I've read a lot of the comments at the article and here at /. and, all opinions considered, I have to agree that it was a fairly irresponsible decision on the artist's behalf.
1. Could poke some kid's eye out, should have been recessed into the wall
2. Could break off in your USB port or cable, should have been recessed into the wall;
3. Could be filled with things you don't want to go near like viruses and other malware, maybe should have been set up with some firmware attached as mediator;
4. Surprisingly, not mentioned: could be filled with things you don't want to go near like child pornography, which will temporarily be in your possession while you're "jacked in there lil' chummer";
5. Also not mentioned: easily spoofed performance art, with malicious self-activating-firmware or voltage sources attached, to become a very, very, very malicious device to hook up to with anything at all, especially valuable hardware and software (also easily torn out and replaced with evil twin);
6. Also not mentioned: these things don't all appear to be in the most secure sorts of areas, and will likely become targeted by hoodlums looking to score a quick laptop or other portable device.
7. The liability of any wrong coming to any computer users through these devices, I am pretty sure (I'm not a lawyer) could be traceable directly back to the artist.
To all those who got off on how it's the digital equivalent of GPS: frankly, it's the digital equivalent of fucking a crack-whore, or actually putting your shit up-to/into a real "glory hole".
I just started taking Electronics courses this year in college. Within the first week came the news of the Memristor and all the promise that holds for our collective data storage future. I was a bit upset because the component wasn't going to be part of the curriculum and it was too late to negotiate for it, especially since the textbooks had already been to print and delivered to the bookstores. I'm getting above a 4.0 in Electronics, but, I still feel like I'm missing something.
What that something is, is reliable storage. Hard drives always, always sucked. That they're magnetically sensitive is bad enough, but then there are all the problems with intolerance to shock and temperature, and the high rate of defects. The last three "hard drives" I bought were years ago: three 50gb Seagates in a row came to me with flaws that caused a total breakdown of the drive within a couple of weeks. I sent them back and got replacements in due time, great, excellent, but they all failed.
I eventually gave away my too-expensive, quickly-marginalised desktop computer and opted for doing as much as I could with rental and public computer time and a USB stick. The flash memory just seems like it never fails and I loath every time I have a thought of "the market sure is looking nice, should I get my own computer again" and the inevitable "what size HD will I get -- oh great what brand will I get, how many times will I have to send it back and demand a working one, how long until the whole thing fails" thoughts arise. Especially when I'm too mobile, now, for a desktop machine and will have to decide on something from the laptop industry. What if I set my new computer down too hard? What if I have to jog with it or have to carry it through the city in the winter? Will my HD still have retrievable data on it? I hate the idea, the very concept. I've always hated them since having to learn the habit of including PARK.EXE in all my close-out batfiles. Before even Windows 95, there was that sinister "you better shut this thing down right if you ever want to see it operational, again" phantom.
And when I go out to buy memory, like when I had to price my first "card" memory two weeks ago for my new camera, I keep asking, "do you have memristors, yet? Well you better get them in as soon as you see them, because I'm tired of paying for this decaying, decrepid shit you call a memory." I'm already pressuring the salespeople to make sure they sell me something good, because the last thing I want is to lose bytes of my flash memory to that elusive cataclysm of writing to the location one too many times. And the last thing I want to do next to that is ever again learn the hard way exactly when and why Windows and Mac-OS do not want you to have your USB stick back for any reason until they're done doing whatever the hell they think it is they're doing to your flash memory.
I think all of this shit should just be fucking thrown out in protest and we should put a boot up the entire industry's collective ass until they start throwing us cheap-ass like CRAZY cheap-ass memristors like confetti in the streets. Because all this overpriced horseshit failing every time you blink or fucking sneeze at it is the only thing I, and I'm sure most of you as well, fucking HATE about computing!
Pfft. Fucking great. Now people who have absolutely no valid interest in the moon as a scientific and archaeological object being the Earth's oldest possible artifact and hugest object in our neighborhood are going to go there and start fighting over it. We will see a face or shattered moon and/or moonless sky in our lifetimes.