Given that we seem to be not too far off from a future where genetic modifications, even in humans, will be increasingly common, it seems plausible that we could have a combination of genetics and cybernetics that will mitigate, or even eliminate, the effects of long-term space travel.
So, basically, success boils down to not making dumb decisions, feeling like to need to prove yourself, and knowing you can do better than where you are in life? Seems like a blinding flash of the obvious, in a lot of ways...and the Irish and Italians proved this a hundred or more years ago.
Whatever one's political philosophy about them is, drones really are the future -- if one gets shot down, no expensive pilot lost and no embarrassing flag-draped coffins. Can hotseat pilots to allow for long loiter times. No need to have a cockpit for a pilot. Latency and jamming is an issue, but is steadily improving. It's the same way with aircraft carriers, which are steadily becoming welfare for defense contractors and an easy target for ballistic anti-ship missiles, super cavitating torpedos, etc. Defense needs to get out of the 20th century mindset, and out of the pockets of Congress, and into the business of actually building useful stuff.
My sense, in reading a considerable number of articles about astrophysics, etc, is that we are in a period which is awaiting the next big breakthrough in knowledge, along the lines of what Newton and Einstein produced. There are still too many unknowns and ambiguities that need to be resolved by discovering a piece of the puzzle which we don't even know exists yet, and I think people are still trying to get their heads wrapped about quantum physics. That said, I'm not a physicist, just an interested lay person, so I may be wrong in that summation, but it seems many of the discussions occurring these days at least pay a backhanded nod to that sort of notion.
I have worked in nothing but open office environments over the years, and I hate them. I know all the usual BS arguments for them, such as "fostering collaboration" and other buzzword crap, but if that works so well, why does everyone grab a meeting room in order to work on something? Instead of having a quiet space to focus on a problem, I get to hear my coworkers going on about how they're sick, the sports game I don't care about, and a hundred other things that I have no interest in, none of which are conducive to a good programming environment. Wherever I'm at, I'll find the "quiet corner" of the building I can go work in, be it a lab, or an unused conference room, or some other place that the voices of meaningless don't penetrate.
When a government is corrupt, dishonest, and incompetent, then a whistleblower and a spy are essentially the same thing, as they threaten the positions and livelihoods of the corrupt, dishonest, and incompetent politicians and bureaucrats who comprise it.
My concern with this kind of case has always been the "fencing off" of the "open range" of ideas, art, and concepts. In other words, okay, so "candy" in games is now trademarked. Maybe next is "marble" or "bucks" or "battle" or something. People want to look to one place or another to develop something new and interesting, but hey, you have to pay rent to use the land...err...the idea. Given that ideas are generally derived from a long process of exposure to different cultural experiences and concepts (the "candy man" concept has been around for a long time -- look at the original Willie Wonka and the candyman song), it's not a whole lot different from saying that they're going to stake their claim to one part or another of our shared cultural experiences. I think this is what is more offensive than anything else about this kind of move and why it angers people so much, myself included.
It's an interesting hypothesis and not without merit. As the above poster points out, though, religion IS on the decline in the US. Unfortunately, philosophy (in the sense of having some guiding principles for living and/or viewing the world) also seems to be in decline as people become reactive. Personally, I think a civilization tends to run out of steam at a certain point and just runs out the clock until someone smarter or stronger comes along. That is exacerbated when people start to wallow in their comforts, get lazy, and forget that nature seems to have an "up or out" policy of sorts.
Eh, it's not just scientific knowledge as a problem -- they also have problems with math, believing they can spend hundreds of billions more per year than they take in and not suffer consequences to the financial system at some point. I would also point out that the USSR tried to stamp out religion and still fell apart in the end.
Anyone who's ever worked in software has to realize that the incompetent pinheads that they've worked with before are still floating around out there, doing ever more damage, instead of just fading away and working as a greeter at Wal-Mart. I've worked with people whose code was terrible, at best, and who were barely able to get their crap to compile. I've also worked with people who had no concept of security (including storing plain text passwords). They've moved on to other software positions, and are still writing bad code for some surprisingly large names. And then, there's the pressure factor. I was once asked to implement a feature that the same as removing any user validation from a high-dollar enterprise app. I flatly refused, because I could pretty much walk out and be in another job within a couple of days. Would a person who is on edge of technical incompetency, and knowing their prospects are limited, take the same position? No, they'll say "Yes sir!", bang that code out, and move on to the next debacle. Good management would alleviate this, but let's face it -- bad managers are a dime a dozen, too.
Without getting political, if we're going to spend public money on research, energy and space exploration probably make more sense than anything else right now. Oil is eventually going to run out and we will eventually face an extinction threat to the species at some point (yes, true, research into disease might help with the next plague, but there are asteroids, global war, and many other things to consider). A long-term survival strategy is not keeping all of us on this single planet, but rather, spreading out to the stars, and the continuing discovery of earthlike planets is eventually going to lead us to one that is habitable.
Or, every nation building new nuclear weapons could maybe scrap the idea and work on space exploration, fusion power, renewable food production, anagathics, or a hundred other good ideas that might actually be of some use instead of a one-time "End it all in case of national butthurt" button.
While this is not quite what the article is talking about, right around the holidays is probably the best time to stage an attack, as I think the BBC (?) found out already. Where I work, the place was running on a skeleton crew, with the IT staff at a bare minimum and handling service calls instead of doing any network monitoring or maintenance (what do you deal with first -- system maintenance or someone in sales who can't connect to the server and is making a big stink about it?). Social engineering probably works great in the week or so before the holidays...figure out where the company Christmas party is going to be, then crash it. Find someone who's sloshed and start talking them up. If not that, people are still busy and distracted, gifts are often delivered, and so on. Everyone in a company, and especially IT managers, really need to step up their awareness during this time of year, not get lax about it.
It seems inevitable that there is life in the universe besides on Earth (sorry, human exceptionalists). The issue is having refined enough tools to allow us to search for it, not unlike the invention of the microscope leading to the discovery of germs. After all, if life exists on earth, we are already past the proving that the universe can host life...it's just a question of finding it.
Thanks, that does make more sense now. I live in the Midwest and know of a number of people who don't have a "lifestyle" around tech, but make considerable use and modification of it on a regular basis. Come to think of it, I bought my laptop backpack at Wal Mart, lol...
I'm not usually one to take exception to published research, but I am skeptical of this. The real problem here is that most people view computers as little black boxes that use a lot of elves and magic to keep them working. Malware, viruses, whatever, are as understandable to most people as ergot was to the Puritans in Salem, 1692. Substituting one sort of warning for another is not going to make a significant difference "in the wild," because people's frame of reference doesn't put them in the right mindset to understand what is going on. I've had extended periods of time where my hardware didn't have anti-virus installed and I never had a problem with malware. On the other hand, I have relatives who all run anti-virus and it's a slow but steady trickle of people needing me to remove stuff from their machines. The real solution, if it's even possible, is to educate users enough on their systems to where they at least have a semi-informed idea of what is going on with their hardware, and can make smart decisions on their use from that solid starting point.
Looking at a chart for this part of the Midwest, there have been plenty of days this cold, if not significantly colder. The real problem here is crappy reporting, short memories, an ignorance of historical data, and general sensationalism. The big laugher is in last sentence of the last linked article: "Brutal conditions are expected in Detroit, which has had only five days in living memory when temperatures stayed below freezing all day." Really? No one knows the difference between 0 degree F and freezing? Between this kind of sloppy reporting and naming winter storms, the public interest in meteorology is going to taper off even further, once we all get through this and it gets back into the 40s by the end of the week. When weather news then becomes marginalized, people pay even less attention to the realities of climate change and other issues...maybe that's the point, I don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that we seem to be not too far off from a future where genetic modifications, even in humans, will be increasingly common, it seems plausible that we could have a combination of genetics and cybernetics that will mitigate, or even eliminate, the effects of long-term space travel.
So, basically, success boils down to not making dumb decisions, feeling like to need to prove yourself, and knowing you can do better than where you are in life? Seems like a blinding flash of the obvious, in a lot of ways...and the Irish and Italians proved this a hundred or more years ago.
Not sure I'd consider bloatware to be "abnormal." Seems pretty ubiquitous in recent years. Deviant, warped, evil, insidious all work, though.
Whatever one's political philosophy about them is, drones really are the future -- if one gets shot down, no expensive pilot lost and no embarrassing flag-draped coffins. Can hotseat pilots to allow for long loiter times. No need to have a cockpit for a pilot. Latency and jamming is an issue, but is steadily improving. It's the same way with aircraft carriers, which are steadily becoming welfare for defense contractors and an easy target for ballistic anti-ship missiles, super cavitating torpedos, etc. Defense needs to get out of the 20th century mindset, and out of the pockets of Congress, and into the business of actually building useful stuff.
My sense, in reading a considerable number of articles about astrophysics, etc, is that we are in a period which is awaiting the next big breakthrough in knowledge, along the lines of what Newton and Einstein produced. There are still too many unknowns and ambiguities that need to be resolved by discovering a piece of the puzzle which we don't even know exists yet, and I think people are still trying to get their heads wrapped about quantum physics. That said, I'm not a physicist, just an interested lay person, so I may be wrong in that summation, but it seems many of the discussions occurring these days at least pay a backhanded nod to that sort of notion.
I have worked in nothing but open office environments over the years, and I hate them. I know all the usual BS arguments for them, such as "fostering collaboration" and other buzzword crap, but if that works so well, why does everyone grab a meeting room in order to work on something? Instead of having a quiet space to focus on a problem, I get to hear my coworkers going on about how they're sick, the sports game I don't care about, and a hundred other things that I have no interest in, none of which are conducive to a good programming environment. Wherever I'm at, I'll find the "quiet corner" of the building I can go work in, be it a lab, or an unused conference room, or some other place that the voices of meaningless don't penetrate.
When a government is corrupt, dishonest, and incompetent, then a whistleblower and a spy are essentially the same thing, as they threaten the positions and livelihoods of the corrupt, dishonest, and incompetent politicians and bureaucrats who comprise it.
My concern with this kind of case has always been the "fencing off" of the "open range" of ideas, art, and concepts. In other words, okay, so "candy" in games is now trademarked. Maybe next is "marble" or "bucks" or "battle" or something. People want to look to one place or another to develop something new and interesting, but hey, you have to pay rent to use the land...err...the idea. Given that ideas are generally derived from a long process of exposure to different cultural experiences and concepts (the "candy man" concept has been around for a long time -- look at the original Willie Wonka and the candyman song), it's not a whole lot different from saying that they're going to stake their claim to one part or another of our shared cultural experiences. I think this is what is more offensive than anything else about this kind of move and why it angers people so much, myself included.
I can't help but think of this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Can%20I%20borrow%20a%20feeling%3F
It's an interesting hypothesis and not without merit. As the above poster points out, though, religion IS on the decline in the US. Unfortunately, philosophy (in the sense of having some guiding principles for living and/or viewing the world) also seems to be in decline as people become reactive. Personally, I think a civilization tends to run out of steam at a certain point and just runs out the clock until someone smarter or stronger comes along. That is exacerbated when people start to wallow in their comforts, get lazy, and forget that nature seems to have an "up or out" policy of sorts.
Eh, it's not just scientific knowledge as a problem -- they also have problems with math, believing they can spend hundreds of billions more per year than they take in and not suffer consequences to the financial system at some point. I would also point out that the USSR tried to stamp out religion and still fell apart in the end.
"Sure." "Okay." "lolz." "Whats for dinner?" "No." "K." "don't be a dick"
Anyone who's ever worked in software has to realize that the incompetent pinheads that they've worked with before are still floating around out there, doing ever more damage, instead of just fading away and working as a greeter at Wal-Mart. I've worked with people whose code was terrible, at best, and who were barely able to get their crap to compile. I've also worked with people who had no concept of security (including storing plain text passwords). They've moved on to other software positions, and are still writing bad code for some surprisingly large names. And then, there's the pressure factor. I was once asked to implement a feature that the same as removing any user validation from a high-dollar enterprise app. I flatly refused, because I could pretty much walk out and be in another job within a couple of days. Would a person who is on edge of technical incompetency, and knowing their prospects are limited, take the same position? No, they'll say "Yes sir!", bang that code out, and move on to the next debacle. Good management would alleviate this, but let's face it -- bad managers are a dime a dozen, too.
Without getting political, if we're going to spend public money on research, energy and space exploration probably make more sense than anything else right now. Oil is eventually going to run out and we will eventually face an extinction threat to the species at some point (yes, true, research into disease might help with the next plague, but there are asteroids, global war, and many other things to consider). A long-term survival strategy is not keeping all of us on this single planet, but rather, spreading out to the stars, and the continuing discovery of earthlike planets is eventually going to lead us to one that is habitable.
Would the mafia collecting protection money not be considered a "good" or "service," then?
How long is it going to be before paper and pen communication become most popular again?
Or, every nation building new nuclear weapons could maybe scrap the idea and work on space exploration, fusion power, renewable food production, anagathics, or a hundred other good ideas that might actually be of some use instead of a one-time "End it all in case of national butthurt" button.
Probably, but someone thought it was valuable enough to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/29/bbc-hacked-christmas-access-britain_n_4515229.html
While this is not quite what the article is talking about, right around the holidays is probably the best time to stage an attack, as I think the BBC (?) found out already. Where I work, the place was running on a skeleton crew, with the IT staff at a bare minimum and handling service calls instead of doing any network monitoring or maintenance (what do you deal with first -- system maintenance or someone in sales who can't connect to the server and is making a big stink about it?). Social engineering probably works great in the week or so before the holidays...figure out where the company Christmas party is going to be, then crash it. Find someone who's sloshed and start talking them up. If not that, people are still busy and distracted, gifts are often delivered, and so on. Everyone in a company, and especially IT managers, really need to step up their awareness during this time of year, not get lax about it.
It seems inevitable that there is life in the universe besides on Earth (sorry, human exceptionalists). The issue is having refined enough tools to allow us to search for it, not unlike the invention of the microscope leading to the discovery of germs. After all, if life exists on earth, we are already past the proving that the universe can host life...it's just a question of finding it.
Thanks, that does make more sense now. I live in the Midwest and know of a number of people who don't have a "lifestyle" around tech, but make considerable use and modification of it on a regular basis. Come to think of it, I bought my laptop backpack at Wal Mart, lol...
So, they're trying to put together a tech site that isn't tech? Isn't that just, like, a site?
I'm not usually one to take exception to published research, but I am skeptical of this. The real problem here is that most people view computers as little black boxes that use a lot of elves and magic to keep them working. Malware, viruses, whatever, are as understandable to most people as ergot was to the Puritans in Salem, 1692. Substituting one sort of warning for another is not going to make a significant difference "in the wild," because people's frame of reference doesn't put them in the right mindset to understand what is going on. I've had extended periods of time where my hardware didn't have anti-virus installed and I never had a problem with malware. On the other hand, I have relatives who all run anti-virus and it's a slow but steady trickle of people needing me to remove stuff from their machines. The real solution, if it's even possible, is to educate users enough on their systems to where they at least have a semi-informed idea of what is going on with their hardware, and can make smart decisions on their use from that solid starting point.
They still need to lift a ban on weed and frozen pizzas (if there is one) to get the full Western "console experience"...
Looking at a chart for this part of the Midwest, there have been plenty of days this cold, if not significantly colder. The real problem here is crappy reporting, short memories, an ignorance of historical data, and general sensationalism. The big laugher is in last sentence of the last linked article: "Brutal conditions are expected in Detroit, which has had only five days in living memory when temperatures stayed below freezing all day." Really? No one knows the difference between 0 degree F and freezing? Between this kind of sloppy reporting and naming winter storms, the public interest in meteorology is going to taper off even further, once we all get through this and it gets back into the 40s by the end of the week. When weather news then becomes marginalized, people pay even less attention to the realities of climate change and other issues...maybe that's the point, I don't know.