You make the assumption that they would think it is worth trying to travel at sunlight speeds. Our race has little interest in a voyage to even the nearest star if it is going to take that long. My guess is that if they didn't have an FTL drive they would even start, at least if they are anything like us. They might launch a Voyager like spacecraft, but they'd likely lose contact with it before it got anywhere interesting. as for going to the effort to make something more robust, it's still unlikely they'd undertake anything that takes millions of years to get a return. Can you imagine the taxpayers of any nation undertaking any project that takes millions of years to reach its goal, if it ever does?
That makes a couple bad assumptions. First, we don't know how to protect humans from Cosmic radiation on even a short voyage, let alone a super long 300 year voyage. Second, the advances of our civilization depend on having a very large population in which people can specialize in just about every possible way. I doubt you could make a spacecraft big enough to carry all the different kinds of specialists you'd need at the other end to even rebuild a rocket of known design. You'd have to be able to fully colonize and exploit the world and train all the different kinds of scientists and engineers you'll need to design new rockets and systems to cope with different conditions and resources on alien worlds. So even if you could survive the voyage, 300 years and then launching new expeditions seems ridiculously optimistic.
Dude, that's really ignorant. Life is WAY to complex to be reduced to what you are describing. The process involved in just DNA replication (not counting the transcription and translation processes involved in protein synthesis) in even the simplest prokaryotic cells involves more than 30 specialized proteins that perform the tasks of accurately copying the genetic material. They include DNA polymerases, primases, helicases, topoisomerases, DNA binding proteins, DNA ligases, and editing enzymes. And these are just for simple prokaryotes, not eukaryotes. All these protein mechanisms MUST be present for just this one process in this one simple form of life. but there's a major chicken and the egg problem here: the information on how to build the proteins necessary to do DNA duplication is encoded on the DNA. So you have to have the cellular machinery to use the DNA information, but you can't build the machinery until you have the information from DNA.
Having just DNA is like having an x86 executable program that knows how to manufacture both a brand new computer and the machines necessary to build that computer... It's not going to get far if you have only that program and no existing machines for it to make use of. And having just amino acids or proteins is no better than just having the machinery... It's going to just sit there unless you have a program to run it.
This new theory (and all theories along this line) are totally bizarre because they fail at a fundamental level to account for what life is. Having an Amino acid or even a random chain of them gets you no closer to life than having base elements swirling around. You need the entire system: both the information as stored on DNA and molecular equipment that can process that information. You can't just have an amino acid chain form over here and have another form over there and somehow get life from that. A self replicating machine with encoded information about how to build itself is clearly more than a random assemblage of chemicals on an asteroid, or even in an ocean. For any origin theory to succeed it must provide an explanation of these things:
1. It must explain the origin of the system for storing and encoding digital information in the cell.
2. It must explain the origin of the information itself that is stored in DNA
3. It must explain the origin of the integrated complexity, or functional interdependence, of the cell's information processing system.
This is why, like it or not, there is no plausible naturalistic origin theory at this time. It is why Intelligent Design can't be gotten rid of... It is the only theory that currently offers an explanation that accounts for these three points. You may not like the explanation, but the only cause we know of that leads to the effect of having information or information processing systems is intelligence. There is no known chemical process or law of nature that would lead to an integrated, information processing system that contains the information necessary to replicate itself.
High school textbooks often get this next point wrong: Natural Selection is not a possible theory, because it presupposes the existence of life that it can act upon. Getting the first life requires a different origin theory, and as yet there aren't any other than intelligent design that can account for all the evidence. This is the very reason famous Athiest Antony Flew became a diest.
Sorry to get on my soapbox, but these ignorant theories that come out every day about life magically happening on an asteroid, or life magically arising because a world happens to have water are really starting to irritate me. It's only a plausible theory if it can account for everything we currently know. I'm interested in hearing all theories that can do this, naturalistic or otherwise, but if it can't even explain the basic facts that must be explained, the don't call it an origin theory, don't pretend it's legitimate, and don't waste the electrons sending it to me.
There's quite a bit more to it then that. How about the feature where Netflix figures out what shows I like based on what I watch (and data about what other people watching the show watch)? I have found and watched all kinds of older TV shows that I've never heard of that are really great shows. Torrent clients don't do that either.
The only reason I use checks anymore is because of mistakes made by others.
I have another reason for paying by check. It's because I'm forced to by idiotic government agencies that are still stuck in the past. For example, I just got my Minnesota license plate renewal form mailed to me. It said I can pay online electronically or mail in a check. I go online and I'm told that I will be charged a "handling fee" of $2.95 if I pay electronically. What a bunch of clowns must work at the DMV! Since when do you want to encourage people to pay in a way that requires manual processing labor? Most businesses are long past this, but I guess the government would prefer to grow and keep as many people on the payroll as possible rather than become more efficient and shrink headcount. I of course paid by check to avoid the extra charge, so some paper pusher will end up manually have to open my letter, enter my information into a system, manually deposit the check, etc. Way to go DMV.
And state government says our taxes aren't high enough and that they need to be raised again. Whatever.
When we get to streaming 8k 3D lossless video to every person in the world, that is when the bandwidth rise will entirely flatten out. At least that's my prediction.
I base that assumption on the idea that I don't see anything currently out there more intensive than video, but then again, maybe we'll have invented transporter imaging technology and be sending high resolution maps of every atom in someone's body around the net. So I leave open the idea that I could be wrong about the curve ending.
Most of us will never see even one. How many of us have even seen a 10G link?
I have. Many of you working in core IT will soon if you haven't already. They are all over the place in the heart of the biggest networks. This is because of the way common network architecture is done. Most networks at major corporations or institutions have a central core of some sort where all the VLANs run. That core is typically carrying traffic from most of the network segments all over the company. Sure, local traffic out at remote sites won't be going back there, but most of the server traffic in a headquarters datacenter will be running through a core like that. And when you have hundreds of servers hitting the core, nothing but 10G will cut it, which is why it is becoming so common in the heart of the corporate datacenter.
So it really comes down to what you do. On the client side you won't see this for a very long time, if ever, because most clients don't even use 100 MB in most circumstances. But it's all over for core corporate IT.
pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
I agree the article was good, but I don't think saying Microsoft has become like IBM goes far enough. Yes, it has IBM's bad tendencies, but they have some even WORSE ones! For example, I don't see IBM trying to enter every new tech category that comes along. Yet Microsoft does, even when they are years late and have no strategy that will make their late entering product superior.
For an example of how bad this really is, ignore their late entry into smartphones, tablets, Internet search, and standards compliant browsers. It's worse and more widespread than that. They are even trying to get into things like network load balancing and authentication devices. Why? They aren't a company that specializes in that. As an example, take their Unified Access Gateway (UAG) product line (which many have never heard of, but one of the things it does is unified authentication and access control at the edge of the network). It gets blown away by F5's Access Policy Manager in performance, customizability, ease of use and feature set. Microsoft is a software company... why are they trying to compete with a company like F5 Networks, a company that specializes in advanced network devices like load balancers, Layer 7 firewalls, load balancing between data centers, and access policy management?
By trying to be first in everything Microsoft is starting to fall behind in everything. Even IBM wasn't that stupid, and they've sold off things like PCs/Laptops once they saw the writing on the wall. It's time for Microsoft to do the same. If they focused on the core areas they are really good at, which are Windows, Office, Enterprise Software (Exchange, SharePoint), Servers, and Development Tools, and dumped all the other stuff (Bing, Music, Consumer Electronics), they'd be insanely profitable and hopefully become even better and more focused in the core competencies. And they wouldn't even have to face Apple or Google for the most part... they play in different areas.
I know some would say that if Microsoft loses it's dominance in consumer devices it will lose the enterprise, but it doesn't have to be that way. We're still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop, but that hasn't kept Linux from being a smash hit in the datacenter.
I don't think the issue is whether people can be taught for low amounts money. Clearly they can. Just have a HUGE number listening online, and you can make a living easilly by spreading the cost among them. Per student, it will be very low.
The real problem is the cost of evaluating what students know. You can't give someone a master's degree unless you can evaluate that they know their stuff, or else the degree becomes worthless. And evaluations require tests. True, you *could* make all the tests multiple choice, but what about times when a hands on test in a lab environment is needed? What about times when creativity is required in the answer, or designs have to be drawn, etc, and it can't be fit into a multiple choice test? A computer can't grade that. Humans have to. Hiring TAs for 160,000 people is going to raise the cost far above $100. Unless he plans to just do multiple choice, in which case, his students will likely be good at memorization and not hands on application. And cheating may also be easier with 160,000 people taking anonymous multiple choice tests.
And I would also argue a lot of good educations require hands on lab training too, which is something else that becomes costly when you think of test lab infrastructures for so many people.
Unless you have candles. Because that's seriously about the only light source that will be left to us, unless LEDs suddenly make a huge technological leap. In the US, congress banned the incandescent light, and a ban on Mercury would eliminate all flourescent lighting (including all the new CFLs). So yeah, back to candles. Government people are such morons.
You do realize that even if the taxes you propose are imposed:
1. They won't collect as much money as they say they will, because taxes generally hurt economic growth and/or cause people to hide money and
2. even if they got as much money as they expect, it won't help because congress always raises spending even more than the amount they get in new taxes. Always. Every single time. It's a historical fact. Let me repeat it again: every time they raise taxes, they raise spending even more, so they still will have deficit spending and won't have enough for the telescope.
So in summary, if you want a space telescope, the best thing you could advocate would be dramatically cutting spending elsewhere, and then maybe we would have money for that. Perhaps if we weren't a foodstamps nation with a record number of people claiming benefits we could afford this?
Infrastructure that in the US has collapsed thanks to greed on the part of executives, mergers and, well, greed again on the part of stockholders.
I highly disagree with this statement. The only part that is true at all is the word greed, but not when it applies to stockholders. Try applying the word "greed" to farmers, welfare moms, ethanol producers, algae for energy researchers, medicaid recipients, and everyone else with a hand out taking a government subsidy, and then you will be getting close. A nation on the verge of bankruptcy with everyone refusing to give up their subsidies is a nation that can't afford a space program.
As far as the executives, stockholders, and private sector go, they are the ONLY Americans still pursuing the original dream. Whether it's Scaled Composites designing innovative new spacecraft for suborbital tourism, or Elon Musk's SpaceX designing the latest and best heavy lift rockets, the truly private sector (outside the military industrial complex) is the entity moving everything forward.
I'm not seeing where this is good for the business, especially considering that the security fix for Firefox 4 is well-known and free (upgrade to Firefox 5).
That's because you don't understand how a large corporation works, and have never worked for one. Large corporations have many THOUSANDS of custom written applications, as well as many 3rd party applications they buy that rely on a browser (typically IE). They need time to test all of these apps before upgrading the browser to make sure things don't break. For example, our company uses Remedy, a 3rd party client application, for IT change management/incident reporting. Unfortunately, though it is mostly a stand alone client app, Remedy uses the IE engine (via some IE.dlls) for display. An upgrade to IE 9 (at least on the version of Remedy we are on) instantly breaks it so that you can't read tickets. Similary, some SAP Netweaver components throw a "browser is not supported" message for IE 9. Some of our custom apps, especially the older ones written in early ASP.Net or Classic ASP, do not display correctly on the new version. Some 3rd party browser plugins don't work. Security testing needs to be done.
All of this takes time. Everything has to be tested, and all the problems like those mentioned above have to be ferreted out and mitigated before the new browser can be rolled out, or key productivity tools and processes will break. That is why a stable release cycle, as well as security support for older versions (rather than instant End of Life) is critically important to businesses. It has nothing to do with "vendor lock-in" as you suppose.
The first (and hopefully last time) I was rooted was in '99 on a Redhat box through FTP using a buffer overflow.
How do you know you aren't rooted now, at this very moment? The first rule of security is that there are only two states when it comes to being compromised:
1. You know you are compromised.
2. You are unsure if you are compromised.
Sorry to be a little pedantic, but it's true. There's no way to know for a fact that you have not been compromised, especially if you are connected to remote systems. A good enough attacker may have gotten in and covered his tracks.
In other words, it can very well start slow, but build up a hell of a lot of steam with time.
What's really going to be amazing is if Microsoft, which started even slower, manages to pull something off in the phone arena. I've heard more screaming from pundits about how they will never be a contender than I've heard about any other company, but the Windows 7 phone wasn't half bad for a first try. I'd love to see them grab some market share, if for no other reason than three huge players competing will really start to push the quality envelope.
The Xoom was half-baked and lacklustre, and no other tablet has been widely available for a reasonable amount of time.
That's all there is to it.
I absolutely disagree with that statement. Yes, it may have been half-baked and lacklustre, but that's not all there is to it. I think he makes a very good point in the article that the attitude of a lot of non-Apple fanboys is "why use one of these tablets, which are glorified smartphones with a big screen, when I could use a real computer?" He's right that while those users really like their Android phones, that an Android tablet may not be adopted due to laptops and, to some extent, netbooks, out-competing them.
This is of course anecdotal, but I firmly fall into that category. I have no desire to pay 600 or more dollars for a keyboardless toy. Because that really is what these tablets are. They do lightweight web surfing, lightweight games, and that's pretty much it. I'm not going to sit and write reports, code, play real games, etc, using one of those. I am open to tablet sized devices, but only if they do something really different than what my laptop can do. For example, I own a kindle because the e-ink screen is dramatically better for reading than any LCD based option. Everything about it is purpose built to excel at reading, and it does. But an iPad? Other than booting quickly it does nothing my laptop can't do, and there is much my laptop can do that it can't (and for quick booting and light web surfing in a pinch, I have my Android phone).
The other comment I'll add is this: He says in the article that there are a few Windows tablet fanboys. I guess count me as one of them, because I do love a Windows 7 convertible tablet (with a keyboard). It eats the iPad for lunch. It runs real, full featured programs... any Windows program I want. In college, I can fold it flat, hold the stylus and write on the screen just like I would a piece of paper. Microsoft OneNote's handwriting search is just about perfect... I can find any note I ever took, even in my own handwriting, in less than a second. And I can take engineering notes... just try doing that with any other device, whether the iPad or normal laptop... there are so many special symbols you'll never be able to. And the screen is multitouch (and this tablet is a few years old). Yes, the iPhone is cheaper (but much less powerful), lighter, and can boot faster, and I don't deny that. But that's what my Android smartphone is for, and when I want a real tablet to do real things with, I pick Windows 7.
Can you provide evidence for this? Every US car I've ever driven also shows speeds in km right under the mph. And fuel gauges don't show anything at all except a relative measure of fullness, and the odometer is not important for vehicle road operation. Can you explain how an imperial car is not "calibrated" for metric and not allowed on Canadian roads? Note: I'm baiting you a little, because I've driven US cars into Canada, and the customs officials didn't say "you can't have that imperialist car on this road!"
Leaving your front door wide open when your house is full of a lot of valuable shit is not the answer.
That anology doesn't quite work though. Modern OS's and applications don't leave the door open. The problem is that they are complex enough that there are always places where unintended interactions will happen, and those interactions can be exploited by malicious code or users. In essence, it's akin to find a weak spot in the wall of your house and drilling an entrance hole. So I think the grandparent's point still stands: the systems that need firewalling are what is broken in this model, because even if you try to close and lock the doors people can still break in anyway.
I don't like paying taxes, because I don't like paying for everyone else's unearned security. Out of my own pocket, I have saved a six months emergency fund in the bank that could sustain my family for six months should I lose my job. But apparently I'm the only one left who actually saves for a rainy day, because all my medicare taxes go to medicare, and then on top of that an additional 24.3% of my general taxes go to healthcare (again, much of that amount medicare and medicaid), another 21.9% goes to job and family security (unemployment, housing, foodstamps, unearned income credit, etc), and another 5% goes to education and job training. So 100% of my medicare taxes, plus 46.2% of my general taxes go to pay for people who won't provide for themselves and won't save for their own security and/or made poor decisions.
And don't even get me started on social security... I pay through the nose for a system that won't be there when I retire (because it is a ponzi scheme) because a bunch of entitled baby boomers didn't bother to save anything for retirement and are going to bankrupt the whole thing. I actually save for my own retirement (imagine that), but it's pretty hard to get a lot together for that when the government takes almost 13% of my income by force to pay for the retirement of those who didn't bother to prepare for it.
And the worst part of it all? The government has no legal right to fund anything on the list I just mentioned, as none of those things are in the constitution. The military spending is one of the only things on that tax receipt that is actually constitutional (not saying it can't be cut, because it probably should be, but I think we should start with the unconstitutional programs that reward irresponsibility and punish the responsible).
I agree, although I must point out that of the things you listed, only one, weapons, is actually a power given to the federal government to fund. So it ought to be infinitely larger than those other categories, as they should be at zero (on the federal level, if states or the people want to fund them that is entirely up to them).
That said, it is ridiculous that the federal government is paying for "railroad retirement and income security", and that it is as large as scientific research. I mean, seriously? Can't the railroad people pay for their retirement like the rest of us? Should we have a "flight attendent retirement and income security" category too? I hope we can gore everyone's ox and cut out all these ridiculous special interest categories in the next budget.
The point I *was* making is that the if there's an accident, the gov'ts automatically involved. Rescue services will come out, they'll have to remove the wreckage, they'll have to make sure the area's safe from fire and toxins, etc.
That's such a cop out. Why does the government have to be involved? If someone is risking their life climbing a mountain, why is it the government's job to come rescue them? Or, if the government is going to rescue them, then why not charge the people who caused the government to have to come out? I just don't see why people expect rescue services to be some free thing provided by the government. They shouldn't be, at least not in the case where the government is bailing out people who took unusual risks (mountain climbing, waterskiing behind a helicopter, the balloon boy hoax in Colorado, etc). In cases where the rescue isn't something likely to be needed by the average citizen (such as a heart attack or getting locked in a room), it should be payed by the party who caused it.
The gov'ts the one that comes in and puts out the fire when the helicopter crashes.
So what does that have to do with anything? A) they don't have to come if they don't want to (ie make a law that says no putting out fires related to helicopter waterskiing), B), as long as his property is the only thing likely to be affected, which it was in this case, then that's his risk to take and C) he pays money for the fire protection service anyway. Granted, being a taxpayer who pays for fire protection doesn't mean you can go around recklessly playing with matches and gasoline, but this isn't something like that. He's flying a helicopter over a lake, which is certainly not a likely fire risk even to his property, let alone anyone elses. So saying the government should get to tell him what to do because just because they are the ones who employ firemen is retarded.
Funny story from work (though not funny at the time). DFS accidentally deleted our IIS configuration, so we tried to restore from backups. The backups were there, but a firewall was misconfigured between the web server and the backup server. It allowed the backup server to take backups, but not send traffic the other way to restore backups. That ended up being a pretty frantic moment as we raced around trying to get some sneakernet going to get the config file back.
So even if you see the backups out on your server, do yourself a favor and do a test restore, just in case! Always better to find out your network is a one way street before the crisis!
I thought that was a good idea once, until I realized that eventually mines will probably run out, and then where will we get our raw materials to build anything with? Assuming we didn't launch trash into the sun, then the landfill will be the next frontier in mining and raw material extraction. And if we did launch it all into the sun, we are toast. So I recommend burying it in the dirt until we can figure out how to harvest it.
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You make the assumption that they would think it is worth trying to travel at sunlight speeds. Our race has little interest in a voyage to even the nearest star if it is going to take that long. My guess is that if they didn't have an FTL drive they would even start, at least if they are anything like us. They might launch a Voyager like spacecraft, but they'd likely lose contact with it before it got anywhere interesting. as for going to the effort to make something more robust, it's still unlikely they'd undertake anything that takes millions of years to get a return. Can you imagine the taxpayers of any nation undertaking any project that takes millions of years to reach its goal, if it ever does?
That makes a couple bad assumptions. First, we don't know how to protect humans from Cosmic radiation on even a short voyage, let alone a super long 300 year voyage. Second, the advances of our civilization depend on having a very large population in which people can specialize in just about every possible way. I doubt you could make a spacecraft big enough to carry all the different kinds of specialists you'd need at the other end to even rebuild a rocket of known design. You'd have to be able to fully colonize and exploit the world and train all the different kinds of scientists and engineers you'll need to design new rockets and systems to cope with different conditions and resources on alien worlds. So even if you could survive the voyage, 300 years and then launching new expeditions seems ridiculously optimistic.
Dude, that's really ignorant. Life is WAY to complex to be reduced to what you are describing. The process involved in just DNA replication (not counting the transcription and translation processes involved in protein synthesis) in even the simplest prokaryotic cells involves more than 30 specialized proteins that perform the tasks of accurately copying the genetic material. They include DNA polymerases, primases, helicases, topoisomerases, DNA binding proteins, DNA ligases, and editing enzymes. And these are just for simple prokaryotes, not eukaryotes. All these protein mechanisms MUST be present for just this one process in this one simple form of life. but there's a major chicken and the egg problem here: the information on how to build the proteins necessary to do DNA duplication is encoded on the DNA. So you have to have the cellular machinery to use the DNA information, but you can't build the machinery until you have the information from DNA. Having just DNA is like having an x86 executable program that knows how to manufacture both a brand new computer and the machines necessary to build that computer... It's not going to get far if you have only that program and no existing machines for it to make use of. And having just amino acids or proteins is no better than just having the machinery... It's going to just sit there unless you have a program to run it. This new theory (and all theories along this line) are totally bizarre because they fail at a fundamental level to account for what life is. Having an Amino acid or even a random chain of them gets you no closer to life than having base elements swirling around. You need the entire system: both the information as stored on DNA and molecular equipment that can process that information. You can't just have an amino acid chain form over here and have another form over there and somehow get life from that. A self replicating machine with encoded information about how to build itself is clearly more than a random assemblage of chemicals on an asteroid, or even in an ocean. For any origin theory to succeed it must provide an explanation of these things: 1. It must explain the origin of the system for storing and encoding digital information in the cell. 2. It must explain the origin of the information itself that is stored in DNA 3. It must explain the origin of the integrated complexity, or functional interdependence, of the cell's information processing system. This is why, like it or not, there is no plausible naturalistic origin theory at this time. It is why Intelligent Design can't be gotten rid of... It is the only theory that currently offers an explanation that accounts for these three points. You may not like the explanation, but the only cause we know of that leads to the effect of having information or information processing systems is intelligence. There is no known chemical process or law of nature that would lead to an integrated, information processing system that contains the information necessary to replicate itself. High school textbooks often get this next point wrong: Natural Selection is not a possible theory, because it presupposes the existence of life that it can act upon. Getting the first life requires a different origin theory, and as yet there aren't any other than intelligent design that can account for all the evidence. This is the very reason famous Athiest Antony Flew became a diest. Sorry to get on my soapbox, but these ignorant theories that come out every day about life magically happening on an asteroid, or life magically arising because a world happens to have water are really starting to irritate me. It's only a plausible theory if it can account for everything we currently know. I'm interested in hearing all theories that can do this, naturalistic or otherwise, but if it can't even explain the basic facts that must be explained, the don't call it an origin theory, don't pretend it's legitimate, and don't waste the electrons sending it to me.
There's quite a bit more to it then that. How about the feature where Netflix figures out what shows I like based on what I watch (and data about what other people watching the show watch)? I have found and watched all kinds of older TV shows that I've never heard of that are really great shows. Torrent clients don't do that either.
I'm not from Britain, but I know you will have to pry their pints away from their cold, dead hands...
I have another reason for paying by check. It's because I'm forced to by idiotic government agencies that are still stuck in the past. For example, I just got my Minnesota license plate renewal form mailed to me. It said I can pay online electronically or mail in a check. I go online and I'm told that I will be charged a "handling fee" of $2.95 if I pay electronically. What a bunch of clowns must work at the DMV! Since when do you want to encourage people to pay in a way that requires manual processing labor? Most businesses are long past this, but I guess the government would prefer to grow and keep as many people on the payroll as possible rather than become more efficient and shrink headcount. I of course paid by check to avoid the extra charge, so some paper pusher will end up manually have to open my letter, enter my information into a system, manually deposit the check, etc. Way to go DMV.
And state government says our taxes aren't high enough and that they need to be raised again. Whatever.
When we get to streaming 8k 3D lossless video to every person in the world, that is when the bandwidth rise will entirely flatten out. At least that's my prediction.
I base that assumption on the idea that I don't see anything currently out there more intensive than video, but then again, maybe we'll have invented transporter imaging technology and be sending high resolution maps of every atom in someone's body around the net. So I leave open the idea that I could be wrong about the curve ending.
I have. Many of you working in core IT will soon if you haven't already. They are all over the place in the heart of the biggest networks. This is because of the way common network architecture is done. Most networks at major corporations or institutions have a central core of some sort where all the VLANs run. That core is typically carrying traffic from most of the network segments all over the company. Sure, local traffic out at remote sites won't be going back there, but most of the server traffic in a headquarters datacenter will be running through a core like that. And when you have hundreds of servers hitting the core, nothing but 10G will cut it, which is why it is becoming so common in the heart of the corporate datacenter.
So it really comes down to what you do. On the client side you won't see this for a very long time, if ever, because most clients don't even use 100 MB in most circumstances. But it's all over for core corporate IT.
pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
I agree the article was good, but I don't think saying Microsoft has become like IBM goes far enough. Yes, it has IBM's bad tendencies, but they have some even WORSE ones! For example, I don't see IBM trying to enter every new tech category that comes along. Yet Microsoft does, even when they are years late and have no strategy that will make their late entering product superior.
For an example of how bad this really is, ignore their late entry into smartphones, tablets, Internet search, and standards compliant browsers. It's worse and more widespread than that. They are even trying to get into things like network load balancing and authentication devices. Why? They aren't a company that specializes in that. As an example, take their Unified Access Gateway (UAG) product line (which many have never heard of, but one of the things it does is unified authentication and access control at the edge of the network). It gets blown away by F5's Access Policy Manager in performance, customizability, ease of use and feature set. Microsoft is a software company... why are they trying to compete with a company like F5 Networks, a company that specializes in advanced network devices like load balancers, Layer 7 firewalls, load balancing between data centers, and access policy management?
By trying to be first in everything Microsoft is starting to fall behind in everything. Even IBM wasn't that stupid, and they've sold off things like PCs/Laptops once they saw the writing on the wall. It's time for Microsoft to do the same. If they focused on the core areas they are really good at, which are Windows, Office, Enterprise Software (Exchange, SharePoint), Servers, and Development Tools, and dumped all the other stuff (Bing, Music, Consumer Electronics), they'd be insanely profitable and hopefully become even better and more focused in the core competencies. And they wouldn't even have to face Apple or Google for the most part... they play in different areas.
I know some would say that if Microsoft loses it's dominance in consumer devices it will lose the enterprise, but it doesn't have to be that way. We're still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop, but that hasn't kept Linux from being a smash hit in the datacenter.
I don't think the issue is whether people can be taught for low amounts money. Clearly they can. Just have a HUGE number listening online, and you can make a living easilly by spreading the cost among them. Per student, it will be very low.
The real problem is the cost of evaluating what students know. You can't give someone a master's degree unless you can evaluate that they know their stuff, or else the degree becomes worthless. And evaluations require tests. True, you *could* make all the tests multiple choice, but what about times when a hands on test in a lab environment is needed? What about times when creativity is required in the answer, or designs have to be drawn, etc, and it can't be fit into a multiple choice test? A computer can't grade that. Humans have to. Hiring TAs for 160,000 people is going to raise the cost far above $100. Unless he plans to just do multiple choice, in which case, his students will likely be good at memorization and not hands on application. And cheating may also be easier with 160,000 people taking anonymous multiple choice tests.
And I would also argue a lot of good educations require hands on lab training too, which is something else that becomes costly when you think of test lab infrastructures for so many people.
Unless you have candles. Because that's seriously about the only light source that will be left to us, unless LEDs suddenly make a huge technological leap. In the US, congress banned the incandescent light, and a ban on Mercury would eliminate all flourescent lighting (including all the new CFLs). So yeah, back to candles. Government people are such morons.
You do realize that even if the taxes you propose are imposed:
So in summary, if you want a space telescope, the best thing you could advocate would be dramatically cutting spending elsewhere, and then maybe we would have money for that. Perhaps if we weren't a foodstamps nation with a record number of people claiming benefits we could afford this?
I highly disagree with this statement. The only part that is true at all is the word greed, but not when it applies to stockholders. Try applying the word "greed" to farmers, welfare moms, ethanol producers, algae for energy researchers, medicaid recipients, and everyone else with a hand out taking a government subsidy, and then you will be getting close. A nation on the verge of bankruptcy with everyone refusing to give up their subsidies is a nation that can't afford a space program.
As far as the executives, stockholders, and private sector go, they are the ONLY Americans still pursuing the original dream. Whether it's Scaled Composites designing innovative new spacecraft for suborbital tourism, or Elon Musk's SpaceX designing the latest and best heavy lift rockets, the truly private sector (outside the military industrial complex) is the entity moving everything forward.
That's because you don't understand how a large corporation works, and have never worked for one. Large corporations have many THOUSANDS of custom written applications, as well as many 3rd party applications they buy that rely on a browser (typically IE). They need time to test all of these apps before upgrading the browser to make sure things don't break. For example, our company uses Remedy, a 3rd party client application, for IT change management/incident reporting. Unfortunately, though it is mostly a stand alone client app, Remedy uses the IE engine (via some IE.dlls) for display. An upgrade to IE 9 (at least on the version of Remedy we are on) instantly breaks it so that you can't read tickets. Similary, some SAP Netweaver components throw a "browser is not supported" message for IE 9. Some of our custom apps, especially the older ones written in early ASP .Net or Classic ASP, do not display correctly on the new version. Some 3rd party browser plugins don't work. Security testing needs to be done.
All of this takes time. Everything has to be tested, and all the problems like those mentioned above have to be ferreted out and mitigated before the new browser can be rolled out, or key productivity tools and processes will break. That is why a stable release cycle, as well as security support for older versions (rather than instant End of Life) is critically important to businesses. It has nothing to do with "vendor lock-in" as you suppose.
How do you know you aren't rooted now, at this very moment? The first rule of security is that there are only two states when it comes to being compromised:
Sorry to be a little pedantic, but it's true. There's no way to know for a fact that you have not been compromised, especially if you are connected to remote systems. A good enough attacker may have gotten in and covered his tracks.
What's really going to be amazing is if Microsoft, which started even slower, manages to pull something off in the phone arena. I've heard more screaming from pundits about how they will never be a contender than I've heard about any other company, but the Windows 7 phone wasn't half bad for a first try. I'd love to see them grab some market share, if for no other reason than three huge players competing will really start to push the quality envelope.
I absolutely disagree with that statement. Yes, it may have been half-baked and lacklustre, but that's not all there is to it. I think he makes a very good point in the article that the attitude of a lot of non-Apple fanboys is "why use one of these tablets, which are glorified smartphones with a big screen, when I could use a real computer?" He's right that while those users really like their Android phones, that an Android tablet may not be adopted due to laptops and, to some extent, netbooks, out-competing them.
This is of course anecdotal, but I firmly fall into that category. I have no desire to pay 600 or more dollars for a keyboardless toy. Because that really is what these tablets are. They do lightweight web surfing, lightweight games, and that's pretty much it. I'm not going to sit and write reports, code, play real games, etc, using one of those. I am open to tablet sized devices, but only if they do something really different than what my laptop can do. For example, I own a kindle because the e-ink screen is dramatically better for reading than any LCD based option. Everything about it is purpose built to excel at reading, and it does. But an iPad? Other than booting quickly it does nothing my laptop can't do, and there is much my laptop can do that it can't (and for quick booting and light web surfing in a pinch, I have my Android phone).
The other comment I'll add is this: He says in the article that there are a few Windows tablet fanboys. I guess count me as one of them, because I do love a Windows 7 convertible tablet (with a keyboard). It eats the iPad for lunch. It runs real, full featured programs... any Windows program I want. In college, I can fold it flat, hold the stylus and write on the screen just like I would a piece of paper. Microsoft OneNote's handwriting search is just about perfect... I can find any note I ever took, even in my own handwriting, in less than a second. And I can take engineering notes... just try doing that with any other device, whether the iPad or normal laptop... there are so many special symbols you'll never be able to. And the screen is multitouch (and this tablet is a few years old). Yes, the iPhone is cheaper (but much less powerful), lighter, and can boot faster, and I don't deny that. But that's what my Android smartphone is for, and when I want a real tablet to do real things with, I pick Windows 7.
Can you provide evidence for this? Every US car I've ever driven also shows speeds in km right under the mph. And fuel gauges don't show anything at all except a relative measure of fullness, and the odometer is not important for vehicle road operation. Can you explain how an imperial car is not "calibrated" for metric and not allowed on Canadian roads? Note: I'm baiting you a little, because I've driven US cars into Canada, and the customs officials didn't say "you can't have that imperialist car on this road!"
That anology doesn't quite work though. Modern OS's and applications don't leave the door open. The problem is that they are complex enough that there are always places where unintended interactions will happen, and those interactions can be exploited by malicious code or users. In essence, it's akin to find a weak spot in the wall of your house and drilling an entrance hole. So I think the grandparent's point still stands: the systems that need firewalling are what is broken in this model, because even if you try to close and lock the doors people can still break in anyway.
I don't like paying taxes, because I don't like paying for everyone else's unearned security. Out of my own pocket, I have saved a six months emergency fund in the bank that could sustain my family for six months should I lose my job. But apparently I'm the only one left who actually saves for a rainy day, because all my medicare taxes go to medicare, and then on top of that an additional 24.3% of my general taxes go to healthcare (again, much of that amount medicare and medicaid), another 21.9% goes to job and family security (unemployment, housing, foodstamps, unearned income credit, etc), and another 5% goes to education and job training. So 100% of my medicare taxes, plus 46.2% of my general taxes go to pay for people who won't provide for themselves and won't save for their own security and/or made poor decisions.
And don't even get me started on social security... I pay through the nose for a system that won't be there when I retire (because it is a ponzi scheme) because a bunch of entitled baby boomers didn't bother to save anything for retirement and are going to bankrupt the whole thing. I actually save for my own retirement (imagine that), but it's pretty hard to get a lot together for that when the government takes almost 13% of my income by force to pay for the retirement of those who didn't bother to prepare for it.
And the worst part of it all? The government has no legal right to fund anything on the list I just mentioned, as none of those things are in the constitution. The military spending is one of the only things on that tax receipt that is actually constitutional (not saying it can't be cut, because it probably should be, but I think we should start with the unconstitutional programs that reward irresponsibility and punish the responsible).
I agree, although I must point out that of the things you listed, only one, weapons, is actually a power given to the federal government to fund. So it ought to be infinitely larger than those other categories, as they should be at zero (on the federal level, if states or the people want to fund them that is entirely up to them).
That said, it is ridiculous that the federal government is paying for "railroad retirement and income security", and that it is as large as scientific research. I mean, seriously? Can't the railroad people pay for their retirement like the rest of us? Should we have a "flight attendent retirement and income security" category too? I hope we can gore everyone's ox and cut out all these ridiculous special interest categories in the next budget.
That's such a cop out. Why does the government have to be involved? If someone is risking their life climbing a mountain, why is it the government's job to come rescue them? Or, if the government is going to rescue them, then why not charge the people who caused the government to have to come out? I just don't see why people expect rescue services to be some free thing provided by the government. They shouldn't be, at least not in the case where the government is bailing out people who took unusual risks (mountain climbing, waterskiing behind a helicopter, the balloon boy hoax in Colorado, etc). In cases where the rescue isn't something likely to be needed by the average citizen (such as a heart attack or getting locked in a room), it should be payed by the party who caused it.
So what does that have to do with anything? A) they don't have to come if they don't want to (ie make a law that says no putting out fires related to helicopter waterskiing), B), as long as his property is the only thing likely to be affected, which it was in this case, then that's his risk to take and C) he pays money for the fire protection service anyway. Granted, being a taxpayer who pays for fire protection doesn't mean you can go around recklessly playing with matches and gasoline, but this isn't something like that. He's flying a helicopter over a lake, which is certainly not a likely fire risk even to his property, let alone anyone elses. So saying the government should get to tell him what to do because just because they are the ones who employ firemen is retarded.
Funny story from work (though not funny at the time). DFS accidentally deleted our IIS configuration, so we tried to restore from backups. The backups were there, but a firewall was misconfigured between the web server and the backup server. It allowed the backup server to take backups, but not send traffic the other way to restore backups. That ended up being a pretty frantic moment as we raced around trying to get some sneakernet going to get the config file back.
So even if you see the backups out on your server, do yourself a favor and do a test restore, just in case! Always better to find out your network is a one way street before the crisis!
I thought that was a good idea once, until I realized that eventually mines will probably run out, and then where will we get our raw materials to build anything with? Assuming we didn't launch trash into the sun, then the landfill will be the next frontier in mining and raw material extraction. And if we did launch it all into the sun, we are toast. So I recommend burying it in the dirt until we can figure out how to harvest it.