If you want to live away from people do not expect to have same communications even in the 21st century.
When I built a cabin in the woods in the seventies, we had phone (which was difficult). Being stupider than you, we assumed this meant we had modern communications. But you already divined the invention of the internet! Wow, with that kind of foresight, you must have billions in your stock portfolio. Congratulations!
Oh, you mean things have changed and now we "should move." I bet I can guess your solution to starvation in Africa. After all, there's plenty of food in Kansas.
I use Vista on a 26kbps dialup connection
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It's not pretty, but after a monsterous crap-ectomy, it's no worse than XP. I have a dial-up shortcut on my desktop, but in the old days, XP would automatically fire up the dialer when you started a browser or mail reader. Now you have to manually connect first since all vista software expects an always-on connection.
I get all updates (slowly) and even have Vista SP1 installed now. One hint, you must eliminate all desktop gadgets (which are unconscionable bandwidth pigs).
If the decision were made this year, makes sense.
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Part of the package when you buy those nice, expensive, quaint, historic old cottages is that they tend to be in out-of-the-way areas; that's the selling point, in fact, for a lot of people.
What if you didn't move there? What if you already lived there with all the regular services before the internet was invented?
Now, the solution that says "just move" is actually forcing people out of their long-time homes. And, since any network increases in value as more people are on it, you're admitting you've given up on adding value to the internet. Sounds a lot like "I'm on the network, you can stop building now."
I've lived in a rural house for 20+ years. I wasn't getting away from anything, it had electric, TV, phone.
Now it is without usable internet. But that's my fault because in the seventies, I should have guessed that there would be such a thing as internet, then I should have divined there would be no service to my area. Of course, it's so obvious! What was I thinking?
And why did the power company wire to the curb?
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That's what my parents did when they moved to a rural community that had no electricity; the power company wired to the curb & they paid for the remaining mile into the woods.
And why did the company wire to the curb? Because they were required to by law. I'd love to have the local ISP "wire to the curb" and I'll take it the final 1000 feet. But that's never going to happen. If the same laws that apply to telecom were in effect with electrification, then half the rural houses would now be condemned as unlivable.
Remember that not everyone chose to live in a place with no internet. We lived in a house with all services, then 20 years later, it's market value dropped to zero since the current popular solution to "no internet" is "move out." And we're supposed to be happy, and not seek redress, now that we've been essentially forced from our homes like refugees with no hope of recouping costs as the market value is now hovering around 0.
An "elephant" is a big animal. The "elephant" is the particular animal living with us that we all feed and wash (as in "Who forgot to feed the elephant?"). Notice NO need for capitalization.
Just because it's the one YOU use, doesn't make it a proper noun.
The reason we use e-mail is because we are certain that the messages we send will arrive
This is NOT the case now. In fact, I hear people meet each other all the time with the question "Did you get that thing I sent you?" How many pieces of mail did you send that you assumed went through without acknowledgment? If I mail you, who I've never mailed before, and don't hear a human reply, has it gone through?
I certainly don't assume so. In fact, why didn't I hear back? Probably got blocked somewhere....
So if that's your definition of usable email, email hasn't been usable for almost 10 years.
His hostility toward religion... isn't based on the actual, rigorous testing of any falsifiable hypothesis.
Um, isn't "People will kill, maim, and generally act shitty toward one another using their religion as justification" a scientifically verifiable hypothesis? And, hey, what do you know, turns out it's true, so a reasonable man should do what is possible to make people cut it out.
The fact that there is absolutely 0 chance of getting people to cut it out shouldn't disqualify it as a worthy goal.
I've had these fears myself, and each day I anxiously comb the news for the trigger which will suspend the November elections.
But I thought it was just me. To see someone else voice these exact same fears is, um, unsettling.
Never in my life have I wished so hard to be shown to be an ass. The day after effective elections I'll put up a huge celebratory banner on my homepage declaring "I was wrong!" I can hardly wait....
I have also heard for years that we shouldn't worry since population will soon level off. However, in no country has the population decreased. No where. Never. Ever. Italy's population increased from 57.5 million to 58 million from 2000 to 2007. Japan's population increased from 126.5 million to 127.5 million in the same time. And Japan supposedly has the fastest falling population. Yeah, it's practically a ghost country. Guess there's nothing to worry about.
Yes, population will decrease, but it will not be due to our careful planning, it will be the 4 horsemen who do the work.
And before you assume I'm part of the problem (as 84% of people are), I added 0 children to the population. The 2 children who already existed that I helped raise are now productive engineers each with 0 children of their own.
My home phone ends with 9800 and the local pizza parlor's phone is 9700. It's not a busy place and we get maybe a call or two a month (at dinner time of course).
I thought about what to do and here's my solution: When someone calls for a pizza I say "you probably want xxx-9700, his pizza is great." A friendly person who gives you useful information in response to a mistake--it's so rare and unlikely, most people are very nice and I never seem to have to give it out twice to the same person.
Jeez. Is it so hard to be nice? Sure, I could screw the pizza place, but I don't understand why I should. The guy's just trying to make a living, which is hard enough without some misguided vigilante punishing your customers for an honest mistake.
We all know that lots of people post here and that their abilities, faculties and competencies span a broad spectrum.
But who knew just how low one end of that spectrum is?
I guess thanks is in order to you, AC, for giving us all a reality check. Keep your minds in working order everybody--what you see above has happened to what was once an actual human being! Frightening.
I work at a US hospital IT department and while I think there's plenty of information that is sent without thought to many questionable places (both corporations and public agencies), I have never heard of the wholesale grabbing of DNA info on patients. As far as I know, gathering and reporting of DNA info doesn't happen in our birthing center or indeed anywhere in our hospital (and it would be hard to hide from me--I'm the network admin who sets up communications to various third parties).
A world without cellphones and the other million pocket-sized public life eliminators? I don't know, it actually sounds pretty good to me.
I'm not a Luddite because I love technology (I have an '03 Master's in IT from Harvard) and I'm making a living in the IT industry. But for what it is worth, I have never owned any of the devices you mention (gaming devices, music players, cell phones).
OK, let's see, we've got a secret bugging system that no one is allowed to discuss, that is run by unknown people and has unknown capabilities. This situation is ripe for abuse since no one is allowed to provide oversight.
So if a bunch of sleazoids in Virginia want to listen to your daughter talk dirty to her boyfriend, there's no way to know and even if you did, nothing you can do about it.
And yet the remedy is legislative? Really? Yeah, if we pass a law to forbid casual spying on domestic citizens for no reason other than prurient interest, that'll take care of it!
OK, so now the database is getting pretty big and it can now name almost everything you look at. So I walk through an airplane terminal looking for my boss and the goggles label everything they recognize: "Planter, escalator, linoleum, courtesy phone, shoes, window, roof truss, coffee cup, wristwatch, suitcase, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc....
Oh yeah, this is going to help me tremendously. Now instead of having to try to pick out my boss from all those other passengers, I have to try to pick him out from all the labels blocking my view.
I have a small utility that makes DNS calls to build up a picture of all 5-letter domains (which are actually bought domains). It then graphically shows this info and does some statistics on various letter combinations as being more or less likely to be in a domain. The 30 million possibles give a pretty good dataset.
Now I throw my software in the garbage because some slimeballs wanted to make another 0.000001 cents per subscriber.
I wanted to try the 6-letter domains (all 890 million), but now that dream is dead.
If we don't pay back the debt, that means no one shows up at the treasury auctions and THAT will cause devastation. It's not the current debt that will kill us. It's the fact that we can't go 30 days without begging the world's investors that we'd gladly pay them Tuesday for a hamburger today. The day they stop being nice (or when we indicate there's a chance we won't pay them back) is the day we become a third world country.
Oh, and fuck you too.
They don't have to call in loans. They just have to not loan us a few billion next month--i.e., just not show up for the next treasury auction--and they'd cause more widespread devastation than any nuke.
And if they decided to start dumping some of the trillions in US cash on the currency market, they'd immediately eliminate the USA as a superpower.
Of course, economists will tell you they won't because that would cost them money. I say once they want to devastate us, they might decide they could afford to lose a few bucks on the deal. And this would be a relatively cheap way to destroy us--probably cheaper than buying ICBM fuel.
I've started a car at -44 degrees (not wind chill--that's a mythical concept) and let me tell you, it's not pretty. I think at the really cold temperatures in the antarctic, you really do want to run the generator non-stop.
Also, it was litres, so less than 300 gallons.
If there's a man in the middle, I send you my public key. They intercept, store and replace with their own. The other end uses the MITM's key to encrypt, and the MITM can easily read it. They then re-encrypt with your stored key and no one's the wiser.
Public key isn't safe when there's a man in the middle!
If every fiber is tapped, how do you propose to distribute the keys? Having a man in the middle means your encrypted communication is not safe.
For now, I think you have to hand deliver any key you want to use. Not exactly convenient, but look at the lengths our enemies (i.e., our governments) will go to install men in the middle. We must be willing to go to lengths as well.
We did not move to the sticks, weighing the pros and cons of internet access, deciding we wanted to move anyway, then bitched about it. When my wife and I built the house twenty-some years ago, our rational was: "Cities have phones, we have phones. No problem."
I did not realize that a future service would come along to obsolete my house! NOW I have to move out?!?
I'm guessing if a dirty bomb goes off in your city and your house is made unlivable, you wouldn't just kick back and say "Well, it serves me right for choosing to live here." But believe me, I'll be thinking it.
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When I built a cabin in the woods in the seventies, we had phone (which was difficult). Being stupider than you, we assumed this meant we had modern communications. But you already divined the invention of the internet! Wow, with that kind of foresight, you must have billions in your stock portfolio. Congratulations!
Oh, you mean things have changed and now we "should move." I bet I can guess your solution to starvation in Africa. After all, there's plenty of food in Kansas.
I get all updates (slowly) and even have Vista SP1 installed now. One hint, you must eliminate all desktop gadgets (which are unconscionable bandwidth pigs).
What if you didn't move there? What if you already lived there with all the regular services before the internet was invented?
Now, the solution that says "just move" is actually forcing people out of their long-time homes. And, since any network increases in value as more people are on it, you're admitting you've given up on adding value to the internet. Sounds a lot like "I'm on the network, you can stop building now."
Now it is without usable internet. But that's my fault because in the seventies, I should have guessed that there would be such a thing as internet, then I should have divined there would be no service to my area. Of course, it's so obvious! What was I thinking?
And why did the company wire to the curb? Because they were required to by law. I'd love to have the local ISP "wire to the curb" and I'll take it the final 1000 feet. But that's never going to happen. If the same laws that apply to telecom were in effect with electrification, then half the rural houses would now be condemned as unlivable.
Remember that not everyone chose to live in a place with no internet. We lived in a house with all services, then 20 years later, it's market value dropped to zero since the current popular solution to "no internet" is "move out." And we're supposed to be happy, and not seek redress, now that we've been essentially forced from our homes like refugees with no hope of recouping costs as the market value is now hovering around 0.
"I can't wait to not need this!" is my new favorite quotation. Let's make t-shirts (another thing no one is waiting for)....
Just because it's the one YOU use, doesn't make it a proper noun.
This is NOT the case now. In fact, I hear people meet each other all the time with the question "Did you get that thing I sent you?" How many pieces of mail did you send that you assumed went through without acknowledgment? If I mail you, who I've never mailed before, and don't hear a human reply, has it gone through?
I certainly don't assume so. In fact, why didn't I hear back? Probably got blocked somewhere....
So if that's your definition of usable email, email hasn't been usable for almost 10 years.
Um, isn't "People will kill, maim, and generally act shitty toward one another using their religion as justification" a scientifically verifiable hypothesis? And, hey, what do you know, turns out it's true, so a reasonable man should do what is possible to make people cut it out.
The fact that there is absolutely 0 chance of getting people to cut it out shouldn't disqualify it as a worthy goal.
But I thought it was just me. To see someone else voice these exact same fears is, um, unsettling.
Never in my life have I wished so hard to be shown to be an ass. The day after effective elections I'll put up a huge celebratory banner on my homepage declaring "I was wrong!" I can hardly wait....
Yes, population will decrease, but it will not be due to our careful planning, it will be the 4 horsemen who do the work.
And before you assume I'm part of the problem (as 84% of people are), I added 0 children to the population. The 2 children who already existed that I helped raise are now productive engineers each with 0 children of their own.
I thought about what to do and here's my solution: When someone calls for a pizza I say "you probably want xxx-9700, his pizza is great." A friendly person who gives you useful information in response to a mistake--it's so rare and unlikely, most people are very nice and I never seem to have to give it out twice to the same person.
Jeez. Is it so hard to be nice? Sure, I could screw the pizza place, but I don't understand why I should. The guy's just trying to make a living, which is hard enough without some misguided vigilante punishing your customers for an honest mistake.
But who knew just how low one end of that spectrum is?
I guess thanks is in order to you, AC, for giving us all a reality check. Keep your minds in working order everybody--what you see above has happened to what was once an actual human being! Frightening.
I work at a US hospital IT department and while I think there's plenty of information that is sent without thought to many questionable places (both corporations and public agencies), I have never heard of the wholesale grabbing of DNA info on patients. As far as I know, gathering and reporting of DNA info doesn't happen in our birthing center or indeed anywhere in our hospital (and it would be hard to hide from me--I'm the network admin who sets up communications to various third parties).
I'm not a Luddite because I love technology (I have an '03 Master's in IT from Harvard) and I'm making a living in the IT industry. But for what it is worth, I have never owned any of the devices you mention (gaming devices, music players, cell phones).
So if a bunch of sleazoids in Virginia want to listen to your daughter talk dirty to her boyfriend, there's no way to know and even if you did, nothing you can do about it.
And yet the remedy is legislative? Really? Yeah, if we pass a law to forbid casual spying on domestic citizens for no reason other than prurient interest, that'll take care of it!
I feel safer already.
Oh yeah, this is going to help me tremendously. Now instead of having to try to pick out my boss from all those other passengers, I have to try to pick him out from all the labels blocking my view.
Sure, by humans.
When we talk of software, "very easily" is something a programmer hears when someone who has never programmed is talking.
I have a small utility that makes DNS calls to build up a picture of all 5-letter domains (which are actually bought domains). It then graphically shows this info and does some statistics on various letter combinations as being more or less likely to be in a domain. The 30 million possibles give a pretty good dataset. Now I throw my software in the garbage because some slimeballs wanted to make another 0.000001 cents per subscriber. I wanted to try the 6-letter domains (all 890 million), but now that dream is dead.
If we don't pay back the debt, that means no one shows up at the treasury auctions and THAT will cause devastation. It's not the current debt that will kill us. It's the fact that we can't go 30 days without begging the world's investors that we'd gladly pay them Tuesday for a hamburger today. The day they stop being nice (or when we indicate there's a chance we won't pay them back) is the day we become a third world country. Oh, and fuck you too.
And if they decided to start dumping some of the trillions in US cash on the currency market, they'd immediately eliminate the USA as a superpower.
Of course, economists will tell you they won't because that would cost them money. I say once they want to devastate us, they might decide they could afford to lose a few bucks on the deal. And this would be a relatively cheap way to destroy us--probably cheaper than buying ICBM fuel.
I've started a car at -44 degrees (not wind chill--that's a mythical concept) and let me tell you, it's not pretty. I think at the really cold temperatures in the antarctic, you really do want to run the generator non-stop. Also, it was litres, so less than 300 gallons.
If there's a man in the middle, I send you my public key. They intercept, store and replace with their own. The other end uses the MITM's key to encrypt, and the MITM can easily read it. They then re-encrypt with your stored key and no one's the wiser.
Public key isn't safe when there's a man in the middle!
For now, I think you have to hand deliver any key you want to use. Not exactly convenient, but look at the lengths our enemies (i.e., our governments) will go to install men in the middle. We must be willing to go to lengths as well.
I did not realize that a future service would come along to obsolete my house! NOW I have to move out?!?
I'm guessing if a dirty bomb goes off in your city and your house is made unlivable, you wouldn't just kick back and say "Well, it serves me right for choosing to live here." But believe me, I'll be thinking it.