It's much more difficult to do that on a usb jump drive.
When USB drives started to appear (back in the day of 64MB and 128MB being a "woah factor"), they would usually include a small switch that you could use to allow or prevent writing to the disk. I've *never* heard of anyone using it.
Most of the noise that you're going to hear is from the tyres rolling on the tarmac anyway. Having a noisier engine doesn't make much of a difference.
The main difference is on a motorbike. I recently purchased a Honda CBF 125, as my full motorcycle licence was canceled a few years ago and I just moved countries. The stock exhaust and engine was so quiet that nobody would hear me: not cars, not even pedestrians. I modified the intake a bit (by removing a metal filter after the air filter that stops quite a lot of air going through) and blocking out the resonator, and now the bike makes more noise. It's not massive, but it just brings the kind of noise down to something people pay attention to.
Truth is, pedestrians aren't the ones who need to be warned from oncoming traffic. They're supposed to be on the pavement, and look each side when crossing the street. Making cars "warn" them will just make them buy noise-cancelling headphones, or crank the volume up.
Look, just ask yourself if the unbillable time you're spending is making someone else money.
Sure it is, but if you've worked out a good relationship with your boss, or if you negotiated your package right, all that should swing back in your bucket. That's how my previous gig was (infosec consultant); I would work insane weeks, over 90 hours a week in the worst cases, but I either got it back in double as holidays, or healthy financial bonuses.
My bonuses equaled my salary at the end of the first year, at the end of the second year, my bonus were 3 times as high as my salary.
There's working like an idiot, and then there's knowing how much your work is worth.
I recently spent about 6 months in Australia, after having spent months in the US, a couple years in the UK, France, but also time in the Ukraine, Belgium, the Netherlands, and so on.
By far, Australia has one of the most "nanny-state" governments around. Maybe I just visited at a wrong time, maybe the politicians were really trying to make an impression or something, but good grief. This being said, in my experience, what the politicians are trying to do doesn't really reflect the view of most medium-class Australians (don't know about the farmers in the outback).
The fact is that most of Australia doesn't give a shit about these issues. The firewall? Well, that's hidden by the politicians behind the "save the children" argument. There is not a single discussion about the firewall on TV without the words "pedophile" or "underage pornography" being swung around left and right. So how does the public react? Well, first of all, I would say that "greater Australia" doesn't have the same relationship with the Internet as other westernised countries do. Yeah, it's a great tool, yeah, it's good infotainment, but I'd wager that most voters don't give a flying fuck whether there's a firewall that kinda limits their access or not -- after all, the government is telling them that being good citizens, they have nothing to fear, right?
I'm guessing this is the same. The main news channels will spin the story by showing extreme gore graphics (or blurring them, which makes their point even stronger) on PC, regardless of the fact that the game is unavailable in Australia, or rated 18+. They'll b-line to illegal downloads, showing how potentially easy it is to download this stuff on the internet (re-enforcing the firewall argument), and probably barely talk about mobile games. I even remember a 8PM main news story where they showed a 12 year old kid purchasing a 18+ game in a shop.
Actually thinking back to all this, I'd say that the government has been thinking about this a whole lot longer than just last week, and the media are helping them out great. There is no stronger censor in the western world than in Australia; I wouldn't be surprised if the Australian government also greatly encouraged specific news stories, months in advance, just to make people at large roughly aware of things, and then to the general public, it seems like the government is actually doing stuff that matters.
Effectively, the government is attempting to bubblewrap anything that is sharper than a golf ball. At least, that's how I remember Oz.
Part of the huge enjoyment for me was the twisted and black humor. GLADOS' accumulating lies and unhinged personality were a huge part of the enjoyment. The addition of an unhinged and slightly psychopathic computer added a great story to what would have otherwise been a puzzle/platformer.
On a semi tongue-in-cheek note, semi paranoid (android?) note, aren't all computers by definition psychopathic? From Wikipedia:
Psychopathy is characterised by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct but masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal.
Are computers moral? Can they experience empathy (or rather, as in Asimov's laws, simply are coded to never hurt a human, whether indirectly or not)? How can we tell from the outside if a computer behaves normally or not?
We've already seen scams where fake antivirus scanners look exactly "normal". How do we define that something looks normal, in a culture where change is the hottest trend, and diversity is key? Should the day that we are served by robots (or as most/.'ers would want, have sex with them) arrive, how can we tell from their exterior that they're masking feelings, an evil master plan, or their electrons are building up to rip our throat out?
Minis and sport-ish in the same sentence? Someone watched a specific Hollywood movie (The Italian Job) a bit too much.
They have a big cool-factor in the mind of most people (especially chicks), but for having owned a 1.6 turbocharged version, they remain quite slow, compared to other cars in the same price range. 9 seconds for a 0-60 is less than stellar, but then again, it's the same engine as what you get on a Peugeot 207 GT (or whatever they're called).
There's another thing that makes me go "duh", even more than the TV argument.
Books.
I recently had a discussion with a friend who was amazed that these days, there was so little censoring in the 100+ page media. He wondered if our governments (or corporations as he now calls them) were getting sensible.
I've always been amazed at this train of thought. Books don't require censoring anymore. There are so many books coming out, every single day, that it would be impossible for the public at large to have a "big thought" pierce through the cloud of utter bollocks that is being printed. Books had a very big potential for spreading ideas around the world; or at least countries.
Everyone can get a book published and printed. Heck, I have two books in print, and three which are currently being "worked on" -- and I went the old way, with a publishing house taking me under their wing, and I have some semi-monk semi-guru who tries to inspire me on a weekly basis.
Today, you'd be hard pushed to find anything remotely interesting or exposing novel ideas. It seems to me that as a whole, the amount of information is only a repercussion of a more general trend: people don't give a shit. After having to deal with mortgage, picking up the kids and dealing with an ego-driven sadistic boss, people don't want to care, they don't want to think.
Does this mean that there has been a shift in the way people think, or the fact they want to unwind? No, not at all.
The only real difference, is that now, through the limited costs of publishing things around the world, the crap you used to hear at the local pub now comes right into your inbox, or some idiot in Vermont has enough free time to actually write a whole book around it.
The dynamics haven't changed one bit. Only how the media presents itself, and how the crap flows down the drain.
Actually, Adam claimed he didn't have $20k to put in a massive obsession of his (own his own dodo skeleton), and he also said that he doesn't read slashdot comments, for the same reason he doesn't read the Discovery boards, as he doesn't "want to put himself up for that kind of abuse".
I've never had meat tenderiser shot up my back, but I've had two lumbar punctures. The first one wasn't too bad, the second one was almighty awful.
The only thing I underwent that hurt more was after a fight (I was doing street photography and was attacked by a bunch of youth), I had a corneal abrasion on my left eye. My understanding of it is that there was a small hole, gap, or something, on the outer layer of my eye, against which my eyelid rests. I had this small gap dead centre in front of my iris (or whatever you look through is called).
You may not be aware of this, but your eyes move constantly, and having a little gap in what used to be the smooth surface of your eye means that with every tiny movement of your eye, there's friction. I didn't notice anything after the fight, however, the next morning, I woke up around 5AM and was effectively blind (I couldn't open the other eye, as that would cause my other eye to try and open too). For the next two days, I was blind, not because my eyes were unable to see, but because the pain was unbearable. At the hospital, I was given a topical anaesthetic, which removed any trace of pain. That nurse became my new best friend. Though, what it didn't remove was the massive photophobia I was suffering from.
Photophobia is a very disturbing phenomenon. We aren't used to having our eyes not adapt to the available light. No matter where I went, everything was overexposed. I couldn't read anything written on white paper (too bright), they had to switch off all the lights in the exam room for me to get the eyesight test done.
Luckily, just over a week after the incident any discomfort was gone, I still had problems focusing (which lasted for about a month), and dry eyes (fake eyedrops are a godsend), and photophobia remained for about 3 months, in a lesser extent than previously. And using sunglasses when reading your email doesn't make you look cool, it just makes you look stupid.
Being an avid photographer, I was shell-shocked that my eyesight was so fragile, and that even though the pain withdrew relatively quickly, being blind for a couple of days really made me very, very humble towards people who have live with that handicap on a daily basis.
Makes you think, of all the senses we have (hearing, vision, smell, touch, and some might even argue that memory is a sense as well), which one would you choose to lose if you had to? We take a lot of things for granted, our body, and our most basic senses that make up the experience of self. If you couldn't remember the experiences that made you 'you', would you still be 'you'? Would you still be yourself if you couldn't see, or hear?
In the case that WikiLeaks happens to discover the identity of the source, then they destroy the information completely (the leak, and everything pertaining to it).
They will not allow anyone to come in harm because of what they do.
I remember pulling coax in the early first half of the 90s all over the place. Then ethernet came and made us damn ourselves. Everyone wanted to be connected. Centralised printer, easy file transfer.
How many people actually install Windows these days? Most corporations have a ghost image they roll onto every laptop, and I wouldn't be surprised most small tech firms do the same. Leaves Dell and supermarket computers, which are usually not used by the brightest of techies.
I'm guessing that I'd choose for "Microsoft" rather than "Mozilla" or "Opera" if I were to select a question I don't understand in the first place -- just because there's Microsoft branding all over the screen.
WikiLeaks are being responsible in their disclosure. They do redact things which offer no more insight than is required. The names of the people involved in specific stories will most commonly be redacted (nearly always), in order to ensure that there is no unnecessary repercussion.
WikiLeaks is a whistleblower. They are not trolls.
Besides, consider the following: The major goal in any living being's life is to ensure the survival of his genes. Those who get the most action have the best chance of doing so, which means on a sub-conscious, primal level they're going to have less to worry about. That means they won't be distracted from focusing on what's important to them.
If we want to get all pseudo-psychological (not saying you are, just disclaiming that I have no idea what I'm talking about), then I would wager that the animals who are getting tail in truckloads aren't striving for survival, they're trying to prove that their masculinity is intact and working well.
As opposed to another animal who only mates a couple of times and hits a home run ("She's pregnant! GO HOME, RUN!"), they can go to bed knowing that their lineage's survival is safe.
I'm not saying that the average/. stereotype doesn't get tail because he chooses not to; my train of thoughts goes more into a direction that as cultures get more civilised, their tendency to have 5 or more children slopes down very quickly.
So, as the GP said, a person with a decent education will have less of a need to get tail, as they will be able to focus on different things -- one might even say "more important" or "higher level" things. A monogamous relationship, almost symbiotic, making conscious decisions about when to have children, how many, and how it will fit into the household and careers of the involved parties; as opposed to the bulging sack of muscle emptying his backup singers on every cute face that opens her mouth and having sub-conscious, primal level instinct "hope" for offspring.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Eric "The Green", should've thought of that before making The Hulk movie.
It's much more difficult to do that on a usb jump drive.
When USB drives started to appear (back in the day of 64MB and 128MB being a "woah factor"), they would usually include a small switch that you could use to allow or prevent writing to the disk. I've *never* heard of anyone using it.
The 90s called, they want their dash back.
Also, somebody should get off my lawn.
Woops, my bad. Won't happen again.
JJ, is that you?
Most of the noise that you're going to hear is from the tyres rolling on the tarmac anyway. Having a noisier engine doesn't make much of a difference.
The main difference is on a motorbike. I recently purchased a Honda CBF 125, as my full motorcycle licence was canceled a few years ago and I just moved countries. The stock exhaust and engine was so quiet that nobody would hear me: not cars, not even pedestrians. I modified the intake a bit (by removing a metal filter after the air filter that stops quite a lot of air going through) and blocking out the resonator, and now the bike makes more noise. It's not massive, but it just brings the kind of noise down to something people pay attention to.
Truth is, pedestrians aren't the ones who need to be warned from oncoming traffic. They're supposed to be on the pavement, and look each side when crossing the street. Making cars "warn" them will just make them buy noise-cancelling headphones, or crank the volume up.
Look, just ask yourself if the unbillable time you're spending is making someone else money.
Sure it is, but if you've worked out a good relationship with your boss, or if you negotiated your package right, all that should swing back in your bucket. That's how my previous gig was (infosec consultant); I would work insane weeks, over 90 hours a week in the worst cases, but I either got it back in double as holidays, or healthy financial bonuses.
My bonuses equaled my salary at the end of the first year, at the end of the second year, my bonus were 3 times as high as my salary.
There's working like an idiot, and then there's knowing how much your work is worth.
I recently spent about 6 months in Australia, after having spent months in the US, a couple years in the UK, France, but also time in the Ukraine, Belgium, the Netherlands, and so on.
By far, Australia has one of the most "nanny-state" governments around. Maybe I just visited at a wrong time, maybe the politicians were really trying to make an impression or something, but good grief. This being said, in my experience, what the politicians are trying to do doesn't really reflect the view of most medium-class Australians (don't know about the farmers in the outback).
The fact is that most of Australia doesn't give a shit about these issues. The firewall? Well, that's hidden by the politicians behind the "save the children" argument. There is not a single discussion about the firewall on TV without the words "pedophile" or "underage pornography" being swung around left and right. So how does the public react? Well, first of all, I would say that "greater Australia" doesn't have the same relationship with the Internet as other westernised countries do. Yeah, it's a great tool, yeah, it's good infotainment, but I'd wager that most voters don't give a flying fuck whether there's a firewall that kinda limits their access or not -- after all, the government is telling them that being good citizens, they have nothing to fear, right?
I'm guessing this is the same. The main news channels will spin the story by showing extreme gore graphics (or blurring them, which makes their point even stronger) on PC, regardless of the fact that the game is unavailable in Australia, or rated 18+. They'll b-line to illegal downloads, showing how potentially easy it is to download this stuff on the internet (re-enforcing the firewall argument), and probably barely talk about mobile games. I even remember a 8PM main news story where they showed a 12 year old kid purchasing a 18+ game in a shop.
Actually thinking back to all this, I'd say that the government has been thinking about this a whole lot longer than just last week, and the media are helping them out great. There is no stronger censor in the western world than in Australia; I wouldn't be surprised if the Australian government also greatly encouraged specific news stories, months in advance, just to make people at large roughly aware of things, and then to the general public, it seems like the government is actually doing stuff that matters.
Effectively, the government is attempting to bubblewrap anything that is sharper than a golf ball. At least, that's how I remember Oz.
Part of the huge enjoyment for me was the twisted and black humor. GLADOS' accumulating lies and unhinged personality were a huge part of the enjoyment. The addition of an unhinged and slightly psychopathic computer added a great story to what would have otherwise been a puzzle/platformer.
On a semi tongue-in-cheek note, semi paranoid (android?) note, aren't all computers by definition psychopathic? From Wikipedia:
Psychopathy is characterised by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct but masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal.
Are computers moral? Can they experience empathy (or rather, as in Asimov's laws, simply are coded to never hurt a human, whether indirectly or not)? How can we tell from the outside if a computer behaves normally or not?
We've already seen scams where fake antivirus scanners look exactly "normal". How do we define that something looks normal, in a culture where change is the hottest trend, and diversity is key? Should the day that we are served by robots (or as most /.'ers would want, have sex with them) arrive, how can we tell from their exterior that they're masking feelings, an evil master plan, or their electrons are building up to rip our throat out?
"One word"
So, how badly did you fail at math, exactly?
Minis and sport-ish in the same sentence? Someone watched a specific Hollywood movie (The Italian Job) a bit too much.
They have a big cool-factor in the mind of most people (especially chicks), but for having owned a 1.6 turbocharged version, they remain quite slow, compared to other cars in the same price range. 9 seconds for a 0-60 is less than stellar, but then again, it's the same engine as what you get on a Peugeot 207 GT (or whatever they're called).
There's another thing that makes me go "duh", even more than the TV argument.
Books.
I recently had a discussion with a friend who was amazed that these days, there was so little censoring in the 100+ page media. He wondered if our governments (or corporations as he now calls them) were getting sensible.
I've always been amazed at this train of thought. Books don't require censoring anymore. There are so many books coming out, every single day, that it would be impossible for the public at large to have a "big thought" pierce through the cloud of utter bollocks that is being printed. Books had a very big potential for spreading ideas around the world; or at least countries.
Everyone can get a book published and printed. Heck, I have two books in print, and three which are currently being "worked on" -- and I went the old way, with a publishing house taking me under their wing, and I have some semi-monk semi-guru who tries to inspire me on a weekly basis.
Today, you'd be hard pushed to find anything remotely interesting or exposing novel ideas. It seems to me that as a whole, the amount of information is only a repercussion of a more general trend: people don't give a shit. After having to deal with mortgage, picking up the kids and dealing with an ego-driven sadistic boss, people don't want to care, they don't want to think.
Does this mean that there has been a shift in the way people think, or the fact they want to unwind? No, not at all.
The only real difference, is that now, through the limited costs of publishing things around the world, the crap you used to hear at the local pub now comes right into your inbox, or some idiot in Vermont has enough free time to actually write a whole book around it.
The dynamics haven't changed one bit. Only how the media presents itself, and how the crap flows down the drain.
Actually, Adam claimed he didn't have $20k to put in a massive obsession of his (own his own dodo skeleton), and he also said that he doesn't read slashdot comments, for the same reason he doesn't read the Discovery boards, as he doesn't "want to put himself up for that kind of abuse".
I've never had meat tenderiser shot up my back, but I've had two lumbar punctures. The first one wasn't too bad, the second one was almighty awful.
The only thing I underwent that hurt more was after a fight (I was doing street photography and was attacked by a bunch of youth), I had a corneal abrasion on my left eye. My understanding of it is that there was a small hole, gap, or something, on the outer layer of my eye, against which my eyelid rests. I had this small gap dead centre in front of my iris (or whatever you look through is called).
You may not be aware of this, but your eyes move constantly, and having a little gap in what used to be the smooth surface of your eye means that with every tiny movement of your eye, there's friction. I didn't notice anything after the fight, however, the next morning, I woke up around 5AM and was effectively blind (I couldn't open the other eye, as that would cause my other eye to try and open too). For the next two days, I was blind, not because my eyes were unable to see, but because the pain was unbearable. At the hospital, I was given a topical anaesthetic, which removed any trace of pain. That nurse became my new best friend. Though, what it didn't remove was the massive photophobia I was suffering from.
Photophobia is a very disturbing phenomenon. We aren't used to having our eyes not adapt to the available light. No matter where I went, everything was overexposed. I couldn't read anything written on white paper (too bright), they had to switch off all the lights in the exam room for me to get the eyesight test done.
Luckily, just over a week after the incident any discomfort was gone, I still had problems focusing (which lasted for about a month), and dry eyes (fake eyedrops are a godsend), and photophobia remained for about 3 months, in a lesser extent than previously. And using sunglasses when reading your email doesn't make you look cool, it just makes you look stupid.
Being an avid photographer, I was shell-shocked that my eyesight was so fragile, and that even though the pain withdrew relatively quickly, being blind for a couple of days really made me very, very humble towards people who have live with that handicap on a daily basis.
Makes you think, of all the senses we have (hearing, vision, smell, touch, and some might even argue that memory is a sense as well), which one would you choose to lose if you had to? We take a lot of things for granted, our body, and our most basic senses that make up the experience of self. If you couldn't remember the experiences that made you 'you', would you still be 'you'? Would you still be yourself if you couldn't see, or hear?
If only they managed to squeeze more than 200 HP out of those humongous engines...
Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope
Oh man, I remember that concert, it was just absolutely insane.
In the case that WikiLeaks happens to discover the identity of the source, then they destroy the information completely (the leak, and everything pertaining to it).
They will not allow anyone to come in harm because of what they do.
Can I be the first one to scream:
1.21 GIGAWATTS
And I sure as hell won't allow them to install any of that stuff here.
What are they going to do if I refuse? Throw me in jail? Fine me? We'll see how far this "land of the human rights" will take this farce.
To quote Mass Hysteria "Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Trois mensonges dans une phrase, ça fait quand même un peu pitié."
20, maybe. 10? Definitely.
I remember pulling coax in the early first half of the 90s all over the place. Then ethernet came and made us damn ourselves. Everyone wanted to be connected. Centralised printer, easy file transfer.
How many people actually install Windows these days? Most corporations have a ghost image they roll onto every laptop, and I wouldn't be surprised most small tech firms do the same. Leaves Dell and supermarket computers, which are usually not used by the brightest of techies.
I'm guessing that I'd choose for "Microsoft" rather than "Mozilla" or "Opera" if I were to select a question I don't understand in the first place -- just because there's Microsoft branding all over the screen.
WikiLeaks are being responsible in their disclosure. They do redact things which offer no more insight than is required. The names of the people involved in specific stories will most commonly be redacted (nearly always), in order to ensure that there is no unnecessary repercussion.
WikiLeaks is a whistleblower. They are not trolls.
If you want insight into what WikiLeaks is all about, and what their principles, and policies are, I would suggest this pretty good interview of Julian Assange by Chris Anderson at TED.
For those extra special pictures, when JPEG just isn't enough.
Besides, consider the following: The major goal in any living being's life is to ensure the survival of his genes. Those who get the most action have the best chance of doing so, which means on a sub-conscious, primal level they're going to have less to worry about. That means they won't be distracted from focusing on what's important to them.
If we want to get all pseudo-psychological (not saying you are, just disclaiming that I have no idea what I'm talking about), then I would wager that the animals who are getting tail in truckloads aren't striving for survival, they're trying to prove that their masculinity is intact and working well.
As opposed to another animal who only mates a couple of times and hits a home run ("She's pregnant! GO HOME, RUN!"), they can go to bed knowing that their lineage's survival is safe.
I'm not saying that the average /. stereotype doesn't get tail because he chooses not to; my train of thoughts goes more into a direction that as cultures get more civilised, their tendency to have 5 or more children slopes down very quickly.
So, as the GP said, a person with a decent education will have less of a need to get tail, as they will be able to focus on different things -- one might even say "more important" or "higher level" things. A monogamous relationship, almost symbiotic, making conscious decisions about when to have children, how many, and how it will fit into the household and careers of the involved parties; as opposed to the bulging sack of muscle emptying his backup singers on every cute face that opens her mouth and having sub-conscious, primal level instinct "hope" for offspring.
Did I miss a memo? When did Bill Gates become the new Harry Potter villain?