Besides, in an environment like the White House, I think it's more than just a good idea to keep a few PC's with working floppy drives at hand. Preferably down to 8" drives. Just in case you need to read some long-archived file, that has never been put on a more modern medium.
Personally I would never pay that much for a game. Or a movie. Or many other such entertainment things, I think it's really really expensive compared to many other things.
US$60 is almost HK$ 500.
The other day I bought myself a new PC (case+MB+memory) at about $1,200. The old one had died, I just transplanted the old HD and was up and running again.
My lunch costs typically $36-38 these days (when going to a simple restaurant for a hot meal with drink). One game is almost two weeks of lunch.
A pair of blue jeans costs maybe $200 a piece (no I don't buy fancy brand names, instead go to the factory outlets for same quality but much better priced clothes).
A new smartphone starts at about $1,000. Last year's models of course, but they're also highly capable. And those with big screens don't fit comfortably in my pocket anyway.
My mobile phone expenses (three subscriptions) are just over $100 a month, all in. IDD calling which I do a lot as a matter of running my business is something like $400 a month.
The summary indeed strongly suggests that these planets form (part of) the missing dark matter. So let's take that idea and run with it.
Iirc, dark matter is thought to contribute something like 80% of the total mass in our universe - several times the mass of visible matter. Without looking up the actual masses I am quite certain that the mass of the sun is several orders of magnitude larger than the mass of the planets and asteroids in our solar system together. So based on just our solar system's composition, planets and so can not account for any significant amount of DM. Indeed one would need hundreds of thousands of planets (and then decent sized planets, not small rocky ones like Earth) to come close to account for this missing mass. And that's assuming that these planets can be the DM which you say they can't as DM is not matter as we know it (with atoms and so).
Then, assuming this idea of 100,000 planets per star is true: with that many planets floating around between the stars, how come we never see them? How come they don't appear to cross our solar system? Distances between the stars may be huge but then there are a lot of those unbound planets, and stars have strong gravitational fields sucking in those unbound planets concentrating them. So the chance of meeting one of those unbound planets should be pretty high.
So one positive thing about DST is that it helps against overpopulation. And weeds out the weak individuals. Maybe we should switch to weekly time shifts.
Android's in a unique situation - it's attempting to be everything to everyone, which ultimately puts the strain on the devs. For people like me (who aren't even mobile devs by profession), this is extremely taxing. However, for companies that have staff dedicated to exactly this type of thing, this should be a non-issue.
That is only true if the need for extra dedicated staff in itself is a non-issue. I don't think those dedicated staff work for free, do not take up office space, and do not need any hardware or other supplies.
That is a specific example exactly because the final (out of court) settlement was that both would keep their trademark, and both would stick to their respective industries.
Now of course later Apple Computer started meddling in the music business again... but only after they go so big that they could get away with. Because that's what they did, obviously.
Of course. Finding exploits takes time and dedication (and possibly luck: looking at the correct piece of the code). Not likely a new exploit is discovered within the competition itself.
Actually I think if that exploit is so major then the black market is where you can get the bigger bucks (if only because they compete against Google, and want you to sell it to them, instead of disclosing it to Google).
Rest of your argument I agree with. Selling the information to Google is still profitable in the long run.
I don't think any of the bugs used for exploits throws an exception. Catching all exceptions isn't too hard: put a catch-all at the end of the code or so, whatever. Throwing an exception is an intended part of normal execution, while exploits revolve around unintended behaviour of software.
Trademarks do not necessarily have to be registered; and can be lost by not using them even though they're registered; and may be lost by not defending it (i.e. letting infringement to go on for long time, without taking any action). It's far from black and white.
Actually in this coca-cola example: just naming your server like that should be fine, assuming he's not running a shop selling coca-cola branded servers.
However coca-cola being such a well-known brand may have a case against you selling computers under the coca-cola brand. Especially if you were to paint them red, with a white wave in the middle, because in that case you obviously try to pretend to belong to the soft drink company instead of being a computer seller, and cause market confusion. Or if you would paint them in that red/white colour scheme, but calling your company the coca computer company or so.
Trademarks are indeed generally industry-specific indeed, think Apple Computer vs Apple Music as well-known example.
Sorry my bad. That's misinterpreting the government propaganda... didn't reallise the plot hadn't even come out of the planning stage. Making the reaction by authorities even more ridiculous than I considered it already.
At the time it was shut down, it was far from sure that the higgs could be found with that accellerator to begin with.
In the meantime a much better tool became available, one could argue making the Tevatron obsolete - at least for that part of particle research. I'm European and I don't really care whether the current largerst collider is in US or EU. Nice to have it on our side of the ocean but that's it. And it's not as if US scientists are kept out or so, right?
War has always been a reason for mankind to invent stuff. Mostly better ways to destroy stuff but often tech trickles down from there to less deadly use. Even now the US military is doing a lot of research, e.g. when it comes to building faster / stealthier / unmanned / etc aircraft. That can only be good for advancing flight tech, and in return giving us safer, more comfortable and more efficient airliners. And so there is a lot more coming out of this strange desire to destroy.
That the UN fails in many situations does not mean the UN is not the body that is supposed to handle it. One of the reasons the UN fails is that many countries, the US being a notorious example, don't accept the UN's decisions and go their own way. Or simply do not pay their dues, either in cash or man power. That is the problem.
The UN was set up to handle international conflict in a peaceful way, and to enhance peace in general. The fact that we have the UN is a success in itself. That it's not set up properly (e.g. giving six countries absolute veto power - thus allowing a single country to override consencus reached by the rest of the world), is another matter.
I also see a lot of fear. You see many arguments like "but how if the car in front of me breaks down?". I won't say that never happens but modern cars are really reliable so the chance is far lower than the person to your right or left not seeing you when changing lanes.
Indeed it's strange. Technology is supposed to make one's life easier; and motorway driving is boring at best.
But you have the problem of psychology: this is also a major reason why underground trains still have drivers, even though they're often run fully automatically and are on closed tracks and whatnot. And I have to admit standing in a train looking out the front window while it drives itself is a bit scary, even though you know that it is safe. Just the idea to not have a human on the controls is an issue, psychological.
Well for many people flying IS scary. Many people that board planes are a bit nervous, hoping the thing doesn't fall apart, whatnot. Yes it's irrational but that's human nature - flying is against our nature. Giving up control is scary too, for many of us (just look at/. discussions about self-driving cars, if you don't believe me). And when boarding a plane you give up control of the operation of the vehicle, and you go fly high up in the sky. A recipe for anxiety.
Now you mention: there are rules against taking pressurised gases on the plane (for decades - like aerosol cans, lighters). Actually I have never heard about any rules against inflammable liquids, while that is a rule that would make total sense to me.
The one thing I do not understand is why is this happening in so many countries. Is it that easy to get rich everywhere - just make ridiculous, useless, 6-figure machines? In London, there is not even a pat-down option if you are selected (so I am not flying out of there).
The skill is not in the making of the machines. The skill is in selling them.
And who benefits from the ridiculous 3-ounce liquid rules, besides the vendors inside airports??
The machine vendors, for example. They benefit from the whole fear-mongering that's going on here. Because liquids are forbidden because they're so dangerous, and can not be detected by metal detectors, so you need a machine that can detect them.
Or if you would like to truly enter conspiracy theory terrain: maybe the whole liquid-explosives scare was just a scam. After all not a single plane was blown up. The liquids were not even mixed to explosive yet. They weren't even taken to the airport yet. No they were found in someones home instead! Wasn't this maybe a plot of corrupt government people colluding with naked body scanners?
A large part of the US military spending goes to destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both in the name of liberation and whatnot - but the fact is that lots and lots of locals have been killed, either directly by bombs or bullets, or indirectly due to loss of their home and destruction of general infrastructure in their countries.
Not bombing Iraq and Afghanistan would save the US a lot of money (effectively lowering your immense deficits), and would have saved many lives in the countries affected. Not having military operations all over the world would possibly even have prevented many terrorist attacks to happen in the first place, due to less bad blood about US activities.
Sure you can not prevent all actions from all mad men. Most bombings on US soil have been by US nationals. But not meddling in other countries' internal affairs helps a lot (and that's not an endorsement of either the Taliban or of Saddam Hussein). Leave that meddling to the UN, it's what that organisation was set up for to begin with.
I bet you can hide serious knives (or other weapons) inside a saxophone. And indeed even very large instruments are routinely carried as cabin luggage.
The only surprising thing here is that it took so long for such an easy work-around to come to light. It's not that there are very few people working with those scanners on a daily basis, and I bet plenty of TSA front-line personnel will discuss those scanners and how they work with their friends.
Google is known to build their servers from cheap parts.
Like a RAID, but then a RAIS (Redundant Array of Independent Servers). Load distribution may be an issue as it has to seamlessly reassign tasks when a server is down for whatever reason. But for sufficiently large operations (five servers or more) this sounds to me like the way to go. Instead of trying to make every individual server highly reliable, go with the still very reliable user-grade stuff and get your reliability by redundancy. And companies like Google need more than one server anyway.
I for one usually have to re-load four times to get one that I think I can read, fail it after all, and have to try again. Maybe you're just lucky or have super-human reading skills.
if I have to start watching videos just to sign up for some forum or so, then the sign up is probably just not going to happen. Your idea sounds several orders of magnitude more annoying than the already highly annoying captchas in use (with ReCAPTCHA on the top of annoyances - most of them are simply unreadable).
Agreed. Leave the thing alone. The software installed on it is there for a reason; it's the way the company thinks is safest and most productive.
Now if you re-install it with your flavour of Windows, with your flavours of security software, and something goes wrong (you leak data): it's your fault, period.
If the laptop is with company-mandated software, managed by your company IT department, and you lose data: you can put blame on the IT department for not having it secured properly. This assuming you followed their regulations.
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Besides, in an environment like the White House, I think it's more than just a good idea to keep a few PC's with working floppy drives at hand. Preferably down to 8" drives. Just in case you need to read some long-archived file, that has never been put on a more modern medium.
Personally I would never pay that much for a game. Or a movie. Or many other such entertainment things, I think it's really really expensive compared to many other things.
US$60 is almost HK$ 500.
The other day I bought myself a new PC (case+MB+memory) at about $1,200. The old one had died, I just transplanted the old HD and was up and running again.
My lunch costs typically $36-38 these days (when going to a simple restaurant for a hot meal with drink). One game is almost two weeks of lunch.
A pair of blue jeans costs maybe $200 a piece (no I don't buy fancy brand names, instead go to the factory outlets for same quality but much better priced clothes).
A new smartphone starts at about $1,000. Last year's models of course, but they're also highly capable. And those with big screens don't fit comfortably in my pocket anyway.
My mobile phone expenses (three subscriptions) are just over $100 a month, all in. IDD calling which I do a lot as a matter of running my business is something like $400 a month.
And then a single computer game is to cost $500?!
The summary indeed strongly suggests that these planets form (part of) the missing dark matter. So let's take that idea and run with it.
Iirc, dark matter is thought to contribute something like 80% of the total mass in our universe - several times the mass of visible matter. Without looking up the actual masses I am quite certain that the mass of the sun is several orders of magnitude larger than the mass of the planets and asteroids in our solar system together. So based on just our solar system's composition, planets and so can not account for any significant amount of DM. Indeed one would need hundreds of thousands of planets (and then decent sized planets, not small rocky ones like Earth) to come close to account for this missing mass. And that's assuming that these planets can be the DM which you say they can't as DM is not matter as we know it (with atoms and so).
Then, assuming this idea of 100,000 planets per star is true: with that many planets floating around between the stars, how come we never see them? How come they don't appear to cross our solar system? Distances between the stars may be huge but then there are a lot of those unbound planets, and stars have strong gravitational fields sucking in those unbound planets concentrating them. So the chance of meeting one of those unbound planets should be pretty high.
So one positive thing about DST is that it helps against overpopulation. And weeds out the weak individuals. Maybe we should switch to weekly time shifts.
Android's in a unique situation - it's attempting to be everything to everyone, which ultimately puts the strain on the devs. For people like me (who aren't even mobile devs by profession), this is extremely taxing. However, for companies that have staff dedicated to exactly this type of thing, this should be a non-issue.
That is only true if the need for extra dedicated staff in itself is a non-issue. I don't think those dedicated staff work for free, do not take up office space, and do not need any hardware or other supplies.
That is a specific example exactly because the final (out of court) settlement was that both would keep their trademark, and both would stick to their respective industries.
Now of course later Apple Computer started meddling in the music business again... but only after they go so big that they could get away with. Because that's what they did, obviously.
Of course. Finding exploits takes time and dedication (and possibly luck: looking at the correct piece of the code). Not likely a new exploit is discovered within the competition itself.
Actually I think if that exploit is so major then the black market is where you can get the bigger bucks (if only because they compete against Google, and want you to sell it to them, instead of disclosing it to Google).
Rest of your argument I agree with. Selling the information to Google is still profitable in the long run.
I don't think any of the bugs used for exploits throws an exception. Catching all exceptions isn't too hard: put a catch-all at the end of the code or so, whatever. Throwing an exception is an intended part of normal execution, while exploits revolve around unintended behaviour of software.
Trademarks do not necessarily have to be registered; and can be lost by not using them even though they're registered; and may be lost by not defending it (i.e. letting infringement to go on for long time, without taking any action). It's far from black and white.
Actually in this coca-cola example: just naming your server like that should be fine, assuming he's not running a shop selling coca-cola branded servers.
However coca-cola being such a well-known brand may have a case against you selling computers under the coca-cola brand. Especially if you were to paint them red, with a white wave in the middle, because in that case you obviously try to pretend to belong to the soft drink company instead of being a computer seller, and cause market confusion. Or if you would paint them in that red/white colour scheme, but calling your company the coca computer company or so.
Trademarks are indeed generally industry-specific indeed, think Apple Computer vs Apple Music as well-known example.
Sorry my bad. That's misinterpreting the government propaganda... didn't reallise the plot hadn't even come out of the planning stage. Making the reaction by authorities even more ridiculous than I considered it already.
At the time it was shut down, it was far from sure that the higgs could be found with that accellerator to begin with.
In the meantime a much better tool became available, one could argue making the Tevatron obsolete - at least for that part of particle research. I'm European and I don't really care whether the current largerst collider is in US or EU. Nice to have it on our side of the ocean but that's it. And it's not as if US scientists are kept out or so, right?
War has always been a reason for mankind to invent stuff. Mostly better ways to destroy stuff but often tech trickles down from there to less deadly use. Even now the US military is doing a lot of research, e.g. when it comes to building faster / stealthier / unmanned / etc aircraft. That can only be good for advancing flight tech, and in return giving us safer, more comfortable and more efficient airliners. And so there is a lot more coming out of this strange desire to destroy.
That the UN fails in many situations does not mean the UN is not the body that is supposed to handle it. One of the reasons the UN fails is that many countries, the US being a notorious example, don't accept the UN's decisions and go their own way. Or simply do not pay their dues, either in cash or man power. That is the problem.
The UN was set up to handle international conflict in a peaceful way, and to enhance peace in general. The fact that we have the UN is a success in itself. That it's not set up properly (e.g. giving six countries absolute veto power - thus allowing a single country to override consencus reached by the rest of the world), is another matter.
I also see a lot of fear. You see many arguments like "but how if the car in front of me breaks down?". I won't say that never happens but modern cars are really reliable so the chance is far lower than the person to your right or left not seeing you when changing lanes.
Indeed it's strange. Technology is supposed to make one's life easier; and motorway driving is boring at best.
But you have the problem of psychology: this is also a major reason why underground trains still have drivers, even though they're often run fully automatically and are on closed tracks and whatnot. And I have to admit standing in a train looking out the front window while it drives itself is a bit scary, even though you know that it is safe. Just the idea to not have a human on the controls is an issue, psychological.
Well for many people flying IS scary. Many people that board planes are a bit nervous, hoping the thing doesn't fall apart, whatnot. Yes it's irrational but that's human nature - flying is against our nature. Giving up control is scary too, for many of us (just look at /. discussions about self-driving cars, if you don't believe me). And when boarding a plane you give up control of the operation of the vehicle, and you go fly high up in the sky. A recipe for anxiety.
Now you mention: there are rules against taking pressurised gases on the plane (for decades - like aerosol cans, lighters). Actually I have never heard about any rules against inflammable liquids, while that is a rule that would make total sense to me.
The one thing I do not understand is why is this happening in so many countries. Is it that easy to get rich everywhere - just make ridiculous, useless, 6-figure machines? In London, there is not even a pat-down option if you are selected (so I am not flying out of there).
The skill is not in the making of the machines. The skill is in selling them.
And who benefits from the ridiculous 3-ounce liquid rules, besides the vendors inside airports??
The machine vendors, for example. They benefit from the whole fear-mongering that's going on here. Because liquids are forbidden because they're so dangerous, and can not be detected by metal detectors, so you need a machine that can detect them.
Or if you would like to truly enter conspiracy theory terrain: maybe the whole liquid-explosives scare was just a scam. After all not a single plane was blown up. The liquids were not even mixed to explosive yet. They weren't even taken to the airport yet. No they were found in someones home instead! Wasn't this maybe a plot of corrupt government people colluding with naked body scanners?
A large part of the US military spending goes to destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both in the name of liberation and whatnot - but the fact is that lots and lots of locals have been killed, either directly by bombs or bullets, or indirectly due to loss of their home and destruction of general infrastructure in their countries.
Not bombing Iraq and Afghanistan would save the US a lot of money (effectively lowering your immense deficits), and would have saved many lives in the countries affected. Not having military operations all over the world would possibly even have prevented many terrorist attacks to happen in the first place, due to less bad blood about US activities.
Sure you can not prevent all actions from all mad men. Most bombings on US soil have been by US nationals. But not meddling in other countries' internal affairs helps a lot (and that's not an endorsement of either the Taliban or of Saddam Hussein). Leave that meddling to the UN, it's what that organisation was set up for to begin with.
I bet you can hide serious knives (or other weapons) inside a saxophone. And indeed even very large instruments are routinely carried as cabin luggage.
The only surprising thing here is that it took so long for such an easy work-around to come to light. It's not that there are very few people working with those scanners on a daily basis, and I bet plenty of TSA front-line personnel will discuss those scanners and how they work with their friends.
Google is known to build their servers from cheap parts.
Like a RAID, but then a RAIS (Redundant Array of Independent Servers). Load distribution may be an issue as it has to seamlessly reassign tasks when a server is down for whatever reason. But for sufficiently large operations (five servers or more) this sounds to me like the way to go. Instead of trying to make every individual server highly reliable, go with the still very reliable user-grade stuff and get your reliability by redundancy. And companies like Google need more than one server anyway.
I for one usually have to re-load four times to get one that I think I can read, fail it after all, and have to try again. Maybe you're just lucky or have super-human reading skills.
if I have to start watching videos just to sign up for some forum or so, then the sign up is probably just not going to happen. Your idea sounds several orders of magnitude more annoying than the already highly annoying captchas in use (with ReCAPTCHA on the top of annoyances - most of them are simply unreadable).
Agreed. Leave the thing alone. The software installed on it is there for a reason; it's the way the company thinks is safest and most productive.
Now if you re-install it with your flavour of Windows, with your flavours of security software, and something goes wrong (you leak data): it's your fault, period.
If the laptop is with company-mandated software, managed by your company IT department, and you lose data: you can put blame on the IT department for not having it secured properly. This assuming you followed their regulations.