"'Playing Russian Roulette is perfectly safe, I've done five rounds so far'."
Nice demonstration of how people misunderstand statistics and probabilities.
The odds of your death when you spin the barrel, point the gun at your head and pull the trigger are the same every single time, UNTIL after the gun fires.
An accuracy of 77% is consider a passing C grade (unfortunately) in school and is completely unacceptable in the real world business environment. It needs to be getting an A+ to be acceptable in the real world. Fire the sucker.
I'm a bit surprised that they didn't design the facility to be able to automatically and passively deal with flooding. This would make point #1 (flooding) a non-issue.
"All Fossil-Fuel Vehicles Will Vanish In 8 Years, Says Stanford Study"... "will no longer be sold anywhere in the world within the next eight years"
These statements are not the same thing. Even if the second one were true and all sales of fossil-fuel vehicles stopped in eight years there would still be tens of millions of those types of vehicles around for many decades. One of my farm trucks is a 1986/1968 (body is the newer year, engine and transmission is the older year) and it's still going strong. It does it's job. With nominal maintenance it will last 50 to 100 years more.
The new non-fossil-fuel vehicles are going to initially cost a lot more than a used fossil-fuel vehicle so a lot of people are not going to be able to afford the new vehicles for another decade beyond, more more, even if the new ones are cheaper to run.
"people will stop driving altogether"
Another faulty assumption and highly urban centric. A lot of us live out in the rural areas where there is no public transportation, no Uber, no other form of transport other than our personal vehicles.
More over, many people, especially businesses and very especially small business such as our farm, have specialized vehicles such as our delivery van, livestock hauling, farm trucks, etc. We're not going to stop driving these any decade soon.
The biggest problem with this ivory tower thinker is he lives so high up in the urban stratosphere that he can't see the nitty gritty reality.
I look forward to self-driving electric vehicles but they're not going to be here for a long time and certainly are not going to replace all fossil-fuel vehicles for decades beyond that.
Correct. And having the new OS's support legacy software would solve more than half the problem. In my experience the legacy software problem is larger than the legacy hardware problem. It would be great to have both but as you point out, the software end is easier. There is no good excuse for Apple and Microsoft creating this problem.
I wish all modern OS's would do this. There is a lot of legacy software out there that we still need and far more that would just be nice to have access to such as children's educational software that was never remade for the new OSs. Right now a lot of businesses, and families, end up having to maintain old computers to access that older software, some of which is mission critical. The modern hardware has plenty of computing power to do the emulation and modern security methods means it can be sandboxed to run safely.
I hope to see both Microsoft and Apple offering legacy support and even crossover support.
The difference is, as shown by plenty of studies, while you have an anecdotal case of a Windows machine lasting four or nine years the vast majority of them only last about two years. The studies contrast this with Macs which last two to three times longer on average.
Aye, agreed. The new Microsox _might_ be good but it isn't better than a MacBook Pro. In fact, it isn't even _as_ good as a MacBook Pro. In addition to the technical aspect there is also the fact that the MacBooks last so much longer than Windows machines and require less support. This is repeatedly shown in industry studies. We have MacBook Pros and PowerBooks (older version of MBP) that are over 10 years old and even over 15 years old and still performing their duties perfectly. When the top level users upgrade the machines pass down within our business and family because not everyone needs the latest and greatest. Meanwhile Windows machines have an average lifespan of about 2 years and a higher support cost.
Problem with this study is "Too High" is an opinion and not a fact. You may feel the taxes are Too-High and I might feel the taxes are Too-Low. How it falls on some scale of other countries is not relevant.
"Renting is already fraught with pain, from annual rent hikes to extortionate lettings fees."
Perhaps you're not aware that the real estate taxes go up, the costs of maintenance go up, the services costs go up, the cost of living for the landlord goes up, etc. You need to become a landlord and learn a bit about reality.
Your real problem is that you're stuck in the renting cycle where you choose to pay someone else to take your risks. Buy your own place and get a taste of what it is like rather than bitching.
All the problems they list are solvable with good filters. I use the Mail application on the Mac. The filters work great. My mail comes in color coded and sorted to the mailboxes so I can easily and efficiently deal with it. Often I reply using the signatures since many replies are pretty standard. Email works great.
This sounds like a nice idea but the actual implementation is a lot harder. Top down forcing this on people is very politically expedient and correct but the people proposing such things are not actually coming up with solutions, they're just dream about an ideal they want. The real world is a lot harder to deal with and isn't easily regulated and legislated.
Actually, what I'm sick of is people like you who post in the comments that they're sick of the thread's sort of stories. If you don't want to read this then simply don't. You are free to upset yourself by continuing to read AI stories or not.
Yes, and people like me will use those robots to our advantage just like we use calculators which are far better at doing multiplication, division and square roots than most humans. These are tools. Use the tools. Be empowered.
Robots are tools that allow me to do more work. I have a lot of robots.
My simplest robot is a stick that I use to quickly and easily make holes in the ground with to plant seeds. It greatly improves efficiency.
A more complex robot is my tractor. It replaces the need to have about 50 horses on my farm. That's a huge savings in time and it can do things the horses and men couldn't do freeing us up to do other interesting things.
A far more complex tool is my computers which maintain my web sites, do billing, graphics, word processing, bookkeeping and reach out to thousands of customers and many times that in potential customers 24/7. This makes it so I don't have to spend all my time on the phone or going house to house to sell my farm's products.
A wonderful robotic tool to have would be one that could do more general skills with some intelligence, a handyman. I'll have several of those down the road. They'll allow me to do far more than I can now.
Robots are tools. We've been using progressively more complex for millennia. The Luddites have always cried about fears of lost jobs but in each case the tools have empowered those of us who choose to do and create.
So what happens when travelers start carrying attack hardware & software that bites back. Imagine that the border agent sticks your phone into his reader and along with your data your phone injects a virus into his system. This can be done at very low levels. Or your 'phone' might simply send out 200,000 volts of power through the connection frying boarder patrol's expensive equipment.
Sounds like a good plot for a thriller spy movie...
A bit more science and Earth history please... It is a cycle.
You also don't appear to understand the thermodynamics issue. The problem is using energy to cool the arctic will actually warm things because no cooling technology is 100% efficient. In fact, they aren't even anywhere close. Refrigeration systems are really heat pumps that move the energy from one place to another and add energy to that stream. This results in the place the heat is dumped being a lot hotter while achieving only a little cooling. The overall net of the system is warming.
Let's stick with science rather than wishful thinking.
"Many people are worried about their bank/credit account information falling into the wrong hands."
Cash and checks eliminate that issue.
"The absence of that option means they may choose to buy from someone else instead."
Since I'm already selling at capacity that isn't an issue. Most of my sales are wholesale and they don't use credit cards or PayPal. Only a small percent use PP.
There is no particular reason for me to want to pay PayPal tens of thousands of dollars a year for what is not of value to me.
Slashdot Mirror
"'Playing Russian Roulette is perfectly safe, I've done five rounds so far'."
Nice demonstration of how people misunderstand statistics and probabilities.
The odds of your death when you spin the barrel, point the gun at your head and pull the trigger are the same every single time, UNTIL after the gun fires.
Off topic but fascinating...
An accuracy of 77% is consider a passing C grade (unfortunately) in school and is completely unacceptable in the real world business environment. It needs to be getting an A+ to be acceptable in the real world. Fire the sucker.
Oddly, whenever I hear Woz he sounds like the fox with sour grapes just out of his reach.
Is this article perhaps an accidental repost from 1986? Doomers have been writing this sort of nonsense article for decades.
I'm a bit surprised that they didn't design the facility to be able to automatically and passively deal with flooding. This would make point #1 (flooding) a non-issue.
"All Fossil-Fuel Vehicles Will Vanish In 8 Years, Says Stanford Study" ... "will no longer be sold anywhere in the world within the next eight years"
These statements are not the same thing. Even if the second one were true and all sales of fossil-fuel vehicles stopped in eight years there would still be tens of millions of those types of vehicles around for many decades. One of my farm trucks is a 1986/1968 (body is the newer year, engine and transmission is the older year) and it's still going strong. It does it's job. With nominal maintenance it will last 50 to 100 years more.
The new non-fossil-fuel vehicles are going to initially cost a lot more than a used fossil-fuel vehicle so a lot of people are not going to be able to afford the new vehicles for another decade beyond, more more, even if the new ones are cheaper to run.
"people will stop driving altogether"
Another faulty assumption and highly urban centric. A lot of us live out in the rural areas where there is no public transportation, no Uber, no other form of transport other than our personal vehicles.
More over, many people, especially businesses and very especially small business such as our farm, have specialized vehicles such as our delivery van, livestock hauling, farm trucks, etc. We're not going to stop driving these any decade soon.
The biggest problem with this ivory tower thinker is he lives so high up in the urban stratosphere that he can't see the nitty gritty reality.
I look forward to self-driving electric vehicles but they're not going to be here for a long time and certainly are not going to replace all fossil-fuel vehicles for decades beyond that.
Correct. And having the new OS's support legacy software would solve more than half the problem. In my experience the legacy software problem is larger than the legacy hardware problem. It would be great to have both but as you point out, the software end is easier. There is no good excuse for Apple and Microsoft creating this problem.
I wish all modern OS's would do this. There is a lot of legacy software out there that we still need and far more that would just be nice to have access to such as children's educational software that was never remade for the new OSs. Right now a lot of businesses, and families, end up having to maintain old computers to access that older software, some of which is mission critical. The modern hardware has plenty of computing power to do the emulation and modern security methods means it can be sandboxed to run safely.
I hope to see both Microsoft and Apple offering legacy support and even crossover support.
The difference is, as shown by plenty of studies, while you have an anecdotal case of a Windows machine lasting four or nine years the vast majority of them only last about two years. The studies contrast this with Macs which last two to three times longer on average.
Aye, agreed. The new Microsox _might_ be good but it isn't better than a MacBook Pro. In fact, it isn't even _as_ good as a MacBook Pro. In addition to the technical aspect there is also the fact that the MacBooks last so much longer than Windows machines and require less support. This is repeatedly shown in industry studies. We have MacBook Pros and PowerBooks (older version of MBP) that are over 10 years old and even over 15 years old and still performing their duties perfectly. When the top level users upgrade the machines pass down within our business and family because not everyone needs the latest and greatest. Meanwhile Windows machines have an average lifespan of about 2 years and a higher support cost.
Problem with this study is "Too High" is an opinion and not a fact. You may feel the taxes are Too-High and I might feel the taxes are Too-Low. How it falls on some scale of other countries is not relevant.
"Renting is already fraught with pain, from annual rent hikes to extortionate lettings fees."
Perhaps you're not aware that the real estate taxes go up, the costs of maintenance go up, the services costs go up, the cost of living for the landlord goes up, etc. You need to become a landlord and learn a bit about reality.
Your real problem is that you're stuck in the renting cycle where you choose to pay someone else to take your risks. Buy your own place and get a taste of what it is like rather than bitching.
I wasn't wondering. That was commentary on how the industry miss-sees things.
Meanwhile the music industry announces that CD sales have plummeted for the 17th straight year blaming the decreased sales on piracy.
All the problems they list are solvable with good filters. I use the Mail application on the Mac. The filters work great. My mail comes in color coded and sorted to the mailboxes so I can easily and efficiently deal with it. Often I reply using the signatures since many replies are pretty standard. Email works great.
This sounds like a nice idea but the actual implementation is a lot harder. Top down forcing this on people is very politically expedient and correct but the people proposing such things are not actually coming up with solutions, they're just dream about an ideal they want. The real world is a lot harder to deal with and isn't easily regulated and legislated.
Actually, what I'm sick of is people like you who post in the comments that they're sick of the thread's sort of stories. If you don't want to read this then simply don't. You are free to upset yourself by continuing to read AI stories or not.
The word power is used colloquially, as I was doing there, to mean the electric power coming out of the wall. I'm fully aware of watts. Relax.
"Soon we will have robots smarter than humans."
Yes, and people like me will use those robots to our advantage just like we use calculators which are far better at doing multiplication, division and square roots than most humans. These are tools. Use the tools. Be empowered.
Robots are tools that allow me to do more work. I have a lot of robots.
My simplest robot is a stick that I use to quickly and easily make holes in the ground with to plant seeds. It greatly improves efficiency.
A more complex robot is my tractor. It replaces the need to have about 50 horses on my farm. That's a huge savings in time and it can do things the horses and men couldn't do freeing us up to do other interesting things.
A far more complex tool is my computers which maintain my web sites, do billing, graphics, word processing, bookkeeping and reach out to thousands of customers and many times that in potential customers 24/7. This makes it so I don't have to spend all my time on the phone or going house to house to sell my farm's products.
A wonderful robotic tool to have would be one that could do more general skills with some intelligence, a handyman. I'll have several of those down the road. They'll allow me to do far more than I can now.
Robots are tools. We've been using progressively more complex for millennia. The Luddites have always cried about fears of lost jobs but in each case the tools have empowered those of us who choose to do and create.
Relax.
So what happens when travelers start carrying attack hardware & software that bites back. Imagine that the border agent sticks your phone into his reader and along with your data your phone injects a virus into his system. This can be done at very low levels. Or your 'phone' might simply send out 200,000 volts of power through the connection frying boarder patrol's expensive equipment.
Sounds like a good plot for a thriller spy movie...
And it's all possible.
A bit more science and Earth history please... It is a cycle.
You also don't appear to understand the thermodynamics issue. The problem is using energy to cool the arctic will actually warm things because no cooling technology is 100% efficient. In fact, they aren't even anywhere close. Refrigeration systems are really heat pumps that move the energy from one place to another and add energy to that stream. This results in the place the heat is dumped being a lot hotter while achieving only a little cooling. The overall net of the system is warming.
Let's stick with science rather than wishful thinking.
1) Thermodynamics wins - to freeze the arctic they will actually generate more heat increasing overall heating of the planet. Bad idea.
2) The arctic has thawed before. This is a cycle. We don't understand things enough to start messing with this stuff.
Called golden handcuffs.
"Many people are worried about their bank/credit account information falling into the wrong hands."
Cash and checks eliminate that issue.
"The absence of that option means they may choose to buy from someone else instead."
Since I'm already selling at capacity that isn't an issue. Most of my sales are wholesale and they don't use credit cards or PayPal. Only a small percent use PP.
There is no particular reason for me to want to pay PayPal tens of thousands of dollars a year for what is not of value to me.