Only when the population pool is extremely small. I.E. within the same family (inbreeding). From what I understand, remarkably small population pools maintain genetic diversity very well. It's definitely sub-50 members, and I think it is actually in the teens but I'm too lazy to look it up.
Basically, following the "second cousin" rule is about as big a pool as you need to preserve genetic diversity.
I suspect the problem with Cheetahs may be the individual families are too spread out, and they don't intermingle, causing several generations of inbreeding. However, it can be restored with the introduction of just a few new lines.
You obviously don't know a thing about modern dog breeds. Some of them happened by chance, sure, there are various mutt breeds out there that come from strange, unguided mixings. But a lot of them, particularly the highly prized breeds, were bred with those traits specifically in mind from the very beginning. There was no chance involved.
Take a look at the history of the Doberman Pincer. That dog was designed by Mr. Doberman with a few things in mind: he wanted it to be sleak, fast, aggressive, and intelligent. He set out, and achieved, exactly what he wanted in a dog. Modern breeds of Doberman Pincer have almost the exact same trait, with the exception of the agression, dog breeders have been intentionally breeding that out over the last few decades to produce a milder pincer.
The Doberman Pincer is by no means unique. The process of designing a dog is methodical, but it is not left to chance. It is not some happenstance, and dog breeders aren't shooting in the dark. In fact, breeders today could start over and produce an identical dog to the Doberman Pincer without using any of the current dog's lines. They could "rebuild" it from scratch.
So, what else would call it, other than "intelligent" design?
Aye, Einstein wasn't making pie in the sky "Hey what if X?" statements, he was working from verifieable evidence and extrapolating. I.e. if we know A, B, and C are true, the X is plausible; but with D, E, and F thrown in X is downright probable. With further analysis (much of which I'm sure was mental gymnastics that he did not record) a framework was exposed within which virtually all of modern physics fits into.
The main point being, his theory was verifyable because the physics at the time fit into his framework quite neatly. The stuff that was not yet verifyable were simply extrapolations, predictions of what they would find as long as his theories held true.
That's a hell of a lot different than asking a dumb question like "I wonder if Red isn't really Red?". It's like an idiot trying to play at being smart.
I only drink from glass or aluminum containers (not cans, more like the containers for bikes)
If it's an aluminum container, it is likely coated with PC. You may want to check on that. More than just throw-away aluminum cans were coated like this.
Can you read? Do you understand how the courts work?
Judges can issue temporary injunctions against -anybody-. If they are unfounded, all the AG has to do is talk to another judge to get it removed. That doesn't work if the injunction is issued for legitimate reasons, because judge #2 will just say "Looks like they did the right thing to me, better just wait it out".
In this case, Craigslist has a pending lawsuit against the SC AG in its initial stages. The SC AG has been threatening Craigslist with prosecution for months. Without an injunction, the AG could prosecute in the middle of the Craigslist lawsuit, which would stop the lawsuit in its tracks withough going through the legal process. Also, the AG being able to prosecute mid-lawsuit is a clear conflict of interest. The lawsuit needs to be settled first, otherwise any criminal charges will be greatly suspect.
To prevent this potential abuse of the court system, CL asked a judge to issue an injunction against prosecution by the AG until their lawsuit is decided. The judge agreed.
This does NOT mean the AG doesn't get to prosecute, or the AG doesn't get to decide who it prosecutes. What it means is that, should the AG wish to make good on its threats, it can't prosecute Craigslist until their lawsuit has been decided.
This is WELL within the Judiciary's power, and it happens all the time when two cases conflict, or there is potential for one case to influence the outcome of another.
Seriously, it's a good idea to at least know a tiny bit about the subject before you speak. What's the old saying? Better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Very applicable here.
I'm too lazy to RTFA, naturally, but it appears that in this case it's not "online gaming" as in WoW, it's "online gaming" as in Pokerstars.net or UltimateBet.com.
They are technically online games, but they are betting sites.
If I'm wrong, and Thai judjes' leap of logic was "Boy commits suicide over not being allowed to play WoW, therefore we should ban all gambling websites", then Thailand has got to be one fucked up place.
If they sue, it's civil, and if it is civil, they don't have to "prove" anything, not very convincingly at least. You don't even have to prove anything beyond all possibility in a criminal court.
All they need to show is that you were more likely than not in Denver at the time. If they have NO case this will be very difficult. Unfortunately, if "Our phone records show X" is stronger evidence than what you have - i.e. "I have never been west of the mississippi... No I don't have anybody who can verify that." - well you just might be screwed.
Actually yeah, the new OEM deployment tools that are available to them, plus the paradigm shift in Vista's base install method, allow them to give you a Vista re-install disk that has all of their bloatware and intentional/unintentional malware already on it.
In most cases, I don't see it happening, as they probably won't make anything off the re-install whether it has the bloat/malware or not. Not yet anyway.
Got any links to back that up? I'd be interested to know, because everything I've heard in the last few years says frozen preserves nutrients, i.e. if you don't freeze quickly vegetables lose their nutrients -very- quickly, whereas they maintain them longer when frozen. Obviously leaving fries frozen in the freezer for weeks will destroy much nutritional value, but short of that they should be great. And of course, I haven't heard everything, so I could easily be wrong.
Also, deep frying is essentially flash-steaming, as long as you don't over-fry the potatoes they are steamed inside. There should be very little difference between their nutritional value and baked potatoes, other than fat. What makes a properly fried potato unhealthy is the fact that it is coated in oil when you are done, not necessarily anything about the process of cooking. Now, over-cook your fry and the steam loses pressure, allowing the oil to soak in deep. Those fries would be significantly worse for you than regular fries.
Lastly, just so you don't confuse this post, the fries in my previous post were definitely a joke.
I suppose it was the "Ubuntu kinda sucks", it couldn't have been the counter I gave to the parent's I3Vista post.
Well, Ubuntu does kinda suck. I didn't say Linux sucked, I just said it takes a lot of effort to make it really good and I wasn't willing to expend said effort. MS has teams of people who try to do that for me, and I think they tend to be better at it than Ubuntu's people. That's my personal experience with my own personal machines. I'm sorry if you don't like it.
Linux doesn't protect you from falling for phishing attacks, which is how they get most people these days.
In fact if you are naive enough to think "I use linux, I'm safe!" then you are probably more likely to fall for them.
Frankly, Linux is very much not a secure system, not in most cases anyway. I'd take XP and Linux as about equivalent on the security front, as a patched/firewalled XP machine with AV software is reasonably secure. Moreso than most Linux builds, the only thing protecting Linux (and to be fair, right now it is a huge protection) is its unpopularity among desktop users. As any good security professional knows, security through obscurity is the weakest form of security there is. Windows doesn't have that to lean on, and look how well it does. It isn't perfect, but 99.9% of all threats are targeted at Windows, and yet it takes user intervention to infect it in 99.8% of cases.
If Linux were to over-night become immensely popular on the desktop, within weeks it would be the laughing stock of security professionals. All of its holes would be exposed and exploited, stuff that nobody is looking for right now would be blown wide open, and all the Linux preachers would have egg on their faces. Same is probably true with OSX, but they are already in somewhat of the limelight and wouldn't fall nearly as hard.
None of that should happen if the transition is gradual, though.
First, the autorun worm was absurdly difficult to remove. The larger the organization the more likely it is to stick around.
Second, have you ever built a corporate or OEM OS image before? Using a usb drive to install drivers is not only likely, it's practical.
The way modern mass-images work is as follows: you have your technician machine, upon which you build the custom tools to incorporate into the image - this would be scripting software packages, customizing settings, etc. Then you have your build machine - this is a clean machine with a fresh OS install on it. You then customize that machine exactly the way you want it, installing custom packages, add all the drivers for all the machines in your product lineup (be sure to include a script to remove the unneeded drivers post-sysprep!), and reseal it to OEM spec with sysprep (which calls any necessary post-build scripts).
Now, you test, test, test, and test to be sure it is good, and mass deploy it to all your hard drives that will be going into all your machines. Much of this does not have to be changed when new models are added, and with MS's newer tools a lot can simply be slipped in to the image itself without having to re-seal it. Very convenient. That also may be how this thing got in as well, who knows.
The breakdown here was on the final step: apparently nobody scanned the test machine for viruses/malware before deploying the image. I'm surprised only a few netbooks were hit, unless the others just haven't noticed yet, heh.
Re:Mac abstraction affects the non-savvy...
on
Safari 4's Messy Trail
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Right, because clicking "Safari -> Empty Cache..." is amazingly complicated...
Er, did you RTFA? Or even TFS? Or even a few of the comments?
That's the PROBLEM! "Safari -> Empty Cache" doesn't empty potentialy hundreds of megs of data that Safari 4 generates. A normal user can handle an "Empty Cache" function, they can't handle digging through the browser's cache locations to manually delete the gigs of data built up because the "Empty Cache" function didn't do what it was supposed to do.
For internet settings (for IE at least), it's Options > delete offline content (exact location varies based on version). You get a warning about cache and cookies, you hit OK and it is gone. Deleted. ALL of the internet temp files.
To get of -all- temp files, just run disk cleanup. It will empty all standard temp directories. A program uses windows temp, disk cleanup removes it. None of this hiding BS, at least not in XP.
Jeeze, seriously, I didn't even RTFA but I noticed TFS said Safari 4 was generating potentially gigabytes of cached info, which it did -not- delete when you "cleaned" the cache.
So...
Did you really expect 700+ MB of Cache from a browser?
You should read Asimov's robot short stories, particularly the packaged version called "I-Robot". He basically asked himself the question "If robots were sentient, what rules would be essential to protecting humans from robots?" This produced his three laws of robotics: A robot must not harm a human, or by inaction allow harm to come to a human; a robot must obey humans, unless the order it recieves violates the first law; and last a robot must preserve itself unless doing so violates the first or second laws.
That is the basis of the stories, and he writes about 15-20 scenarios where his simple, near perfect laws break down. The final conclusion (this was part of his I-Robot collection, not his original short stories) was that by the time robots were smart enough and powerful enough that humans started turning to them to manage their global systems, robots would begin to quietly usurp human control - all for the good of the people. Because such a global robot would be seeing humanity as a whole, and see its first law as applying to humanity and not the individual, it would be capable of destroying potential threats within human society - like subtly hurting the economy of a small country's budding dictator, causing the people to revolt and him to never gains his platform to cause trouble, or destroying a selfish billionare stock trader with dreams of market manipulation before he can send anything out of balance.
In his scenario, robots took control, and it was hard to argue humanity wasn't much better off because of it.
I don't think this is by any means a simple concept like writing three rules that can never be broken. If the system is intelligent it will always find ways around the rules to complete the task...
Anybody who has read Asimov's robot short stories, which were based on his three laws of robotics, would agree with that statement. Indeed, that was the point of his stories. He created three perfect rules to protect humans from robots, then came up with dozens of practical scenarios where the logical outcome of that particular scenario is not what was expected or intended by the 3 laws.
My favorite is probably the story of the robot on Mercury, where the robot got stuck "between" two laws in his decision making process, which immobilized him and put in great danger the two men sent to ensure that the robot would continue to function as need. He was ordered to collect a mineral at a particular pool, but the emitted enough radiation to damage the robot. The closer the robot got to the pool, the greater the danger to itself and the less likely it would be able to fulfil its orders. So there was a point where the orders, based on the second law, were made irrelevant and the third law, self preservation, took over. However once it got far enough away that it was no longer in danger and the orders became priority again, causing the robot to turn back toward the pool. It got stuck in this loop, and ended up walking around the pool for hours, unable to move forward and unable to return.
The problem there was the orders were given rather flippantly, and the robot knew its own value to the company. The robot was also not aware that not following the seemingly flippant order (it was made in such a manner because, at the time it was given, there was more than enough time to collect it safely) put humans at risk. Also it was not given the option of collecting the material at another, safer location. It was told exactly where to get it, and that happened to put the robot in danger. Had any of these conditions been different, the orders phrased better and/or more strongly, or had the robot been made aware that the material was vital, or had it not known how valuable it was to the company, things would have turned out better (though the robot would have been damaged to some extent). As it was the humans had to don special suits and go find the robot, nearly dieing in the process.
Just an example, but he came up with dozens of them, the ultimate being robots quietly subverting human control to manipulate the economy and thus manage to prevent all future wars.
Umm... used commercial aircraft are bought and sold all the time, just like automobiles.
The market is much smaller, because the cash you need is not in the thousands but in the millions, but some corporations (including airlines, but they aren't the only ones in the market) are very frugal when buying a new commercial jet and some have to have the latest and greatest.
I thought you were showing how similar the used car market is to the used jet market at first, before I realised you were attempting to make the opposite point.
My company (a rather large oil company), for example, flat out refuses to buy a jet new. This is inspite of the fact that BOTH of their previous planes were un-usable and needed replacing, and they had to use a local airline to ferry workers for about a year, at a much increased cost.
So they have now purchased two used but good condition jets and their charter service is back up and running. If you want to extend the analogy, the car finaly gave up the ghost so he sold it for parts and rode in a taxi until he could find that '05 subaru he had been wanting.
The only reason airplanes last longer is because no company can afford to drop $500 million every 10 years for a new plane. If they CAN spend that kind of money, they are probably buying more than one, in which case they still can't afford it every 10 years. Not if they want to stay in business.
Also note that, with proper care and a regular maintenance schedule, even cheap cars should last 15-20 years.
Yeah, there was high quality, there was also a lot more crap.
For furniture, you can still today buy heirloom quality furniture that will last 100+ years, it's just expensive. The cheap stuff from the 50's is all long gone now, but the quality stuff is still around. That we've had 50 years to accumulate it and yet we are not flooded with all of this quality stuff is evidence that there wasn't all that much quality stuff to begin with.
Guess what? That pre-WW2 german made desk chair you inherited from your grandparents? It cost them an arm and a leg new!! Of COURSE they are going to take care of it! That's what makes it worth it. Why didn't you also get their pre-ww2 livingroom set, TV, refrigerator, stove, kitchen sink, kitchen table, kitchen chairs, etc.? Sure someo of it was probably great, if they spent the money on it. Chances are most all of it is long gone in a trash heap now.
Just because you got it for free, doesn't mean they did, and if you want something that lasts today you're going to have to spend the cash to get it. Just like back then.
It's nothing new, but with cheaper and cheaper materials/manufacturing, it's no longer a choice of "spend piles of money on a nice X or do without" it's "spend piles of money on a nice X, or buy a lower quality one for a little less, or just buy this cheap piece of crap I'll have to replace in a few years".
We trust the guy who "just says so" over the guys who collect and analize the data and compare the results for a living?
Sorry bro "just cause" doesn't cut it when there are mountains of data proving you wrong.
Linux extremely popular in a few areas: network backbones, pure data crunching applications (often a windows application passes data to a linux server farm for processing), web server applications where up-front OS cost is a significant portion of the cost (else the MS server product is often cheaper in the long run), web server applications that require very custom applications and very fine OS control, very small embedded hardware applications, etc. For a lot of these applications I'd wager linux has 50/50 market share with microsoft (roughly, novel still has a portion of the server market, and apple has a very small portion as well). In a few areas like embedded apps, MS has very little market share, and Linux is probably in the 50-70% range, maybe even higher.
However, ALL of those applications are trounced by the desktop PC market, and MS still owns that hands down, even with Macs at 9%. 1% is not at all unbelievable for Linux, MS has its hands in almost everything, and has very good products that are strong competitors in almost every catagory. Linux doesn't even compare, it's a niche OS used for niche applications and it is very very good at filling most all niche needs. Unfortunately "Niche" is just everything MS doesn't dominate.
Slashdot Mirror
I would think the chimp would need more than just a bottle of tequila...
Only when the population pool is extremely small. I.E. within the same family (inbreeding). From what I understand, remarkably small population pools maintain genetic diversity very well. It's definitely sub-50 members, and I think it is actually in the teens but I'm too lazy to look it up.
Basically, following the "second cousin" rule is about as big a pool as you need to preserve genetic diversity.
I suspect the problem with Cheetahs may be the individual families are too spread out, and they don't intermingle, causing several generations of inbreeding. However, it can be restored with the introduction of just a few new lines.
You obviously don't know a thing about modern dog breeds. Some of them happened by chance, sure, there are various mutt breeds out there that come from strange, unguided mixings. But a lot of them, particularly the highly prized breeds, were bred with those traits specifically in mind from the very beginning. There was no chance involved.
Take a look at the history of the Doberman Pincer. That dog was designed by Mr. Doberman with a few things in mind: he wanted it to be sleak, fast, aggressive, and intelligent. He set out, and achieved, exactly what he wanted in a dog. Modern breeds of Doberman Pincer have almost the exact same trait, with the exception of the agression, dog breeders have been intentionally breeding that out over the last few decades to produce a milder pincer.
The Doberman Pincer is by no means unique. The process of designing a dog is methodical, but it is not left to chance. It is not some happenstance, and dog breeders aren't shooting in the dark. In fact, breeders today could start over and produce an identical dog to the Doberman Pincer without using any of the current dog's lines. They could "rebuild" it from scratch.
So, what else would call it, other than "intelligent" design?
Aye, Einstein wasn't making pie in the sky "Hey what if X?" statements, he was working from verifieable evidence and extrapolating. I.e. if we know A, B, and C are true, the X is plausible; but with D, E, and F thrown in X is downright probable. With further analysis (much of which I'm sure was mental gymnastics that he did not record) a framework was exposed within which virtually all of modern physics fits into.
The main point being, his theory was verifyable because the physics at the time fit into his framework quite neatly. The stuff that was not yet verifyable were simply extrapolations, predictions of what they would find as long as his theories held true.
That's a hell of a lot different than asking a dumb question like "I wonder if Red isn't really Red?". It's like an idiot trying to play at being smart.
I only drink from glass or aluminum containers (not cans, more like the containers for bikes)
If it's an aluminum container, it is likely coated with PC. You may want to check on that. More than just throw-away aluminum cans were coated like this.
Er, since there have been judges and courts?
Can you read? Do you understand how the courts work?
Judges can issue temporary injunctions against -anybody-. If they are unfounded, all the AG has to do is talk to another judge to get it removed. That doesn't work if the injunction is issued for legitimate reasons, because judge #2 will just say "Looks like they did the right thing to me, better just wait it out".
In this case, Craigslist has a pending lawsuit against the SC AG in its initial stages. The SC AG has been threatening Craigslist with prosecution for months. Without an injunction, the AG could prosecute in the middle of the Craigslist lawsuit, which would stop the lawsuit in its tracks withough going through the legal process. Also, the AG being able to prosecute mid-lawsuit is a clear conflict of interest. The lawsuit needs to be settled first, otherwise any criminal charges will be greatly suspect.
To prevent this potential abuse of the court system, CL asked a judge to issue an injunction against prosecution by the AG until their lawsuit is decided. The judge agreed.
This does NOT mean the AG doesn't get to prosecute, or the AG doesn't get to decide who it prosecutes. What it means is that, should the AG wish to make good on its threats, it can't prosecute Craigslist until their lawsuit has been decided.
This is WELL within the Judiciary's power, and it happens all the time when two cases conflict, or there is potential for one case to influence the outcome of another.
Seriously, it's a good idea to at least know a tiny bit about the subject before you speak. What's the old saying? Better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Very applicable here.
I'm too lazy to RTFA, naturally, but it appears that in this case it's not "online gaming" as in WoW, it's "online gaming" as in Pokerstars.net or UltimateBet.com.
They are technically online games, but they are betting sites.
If I'm wrong, and Thai judjes' leap of logic was "Boy commits suicide over not being allowed to play WoW, therefore we should ban all gambling websites", then Thailand has got to be one fucked up place.
Oh my god, he's, he's Phoneless!!!
If they sue, it's civil, and if it is civil, they don't have to "prove" anything, not very convincingly at least. You don't even have to prove anything beyond all possibility in a criminal court.
All they need to show is that you were more likely than not in Denver at the time. If they have NO case this will be very difficult. Unfortunately, if "Our phone records show X" is stronger evidence than what you have - i.e. "I have never been west of the mississippi... No I don't have anybody who can verify that." - well you just might be screwed.
Actually yeah, the new OEM deployment tools that are available to them, plus the paradigm shift in Vista's base install method, allow them to give you a Vista re-install disk that has all of their bloatware and intentional/unintentional malware already on it.
In most cases, I don't see it happening, as they probably won't make anything off the re-install whether it has the bloat/malware or not. Not yet anyway.
Got any links to back that up? I'd be interested to know, because everything I've heard in the last few years says frozen preserves nutrients, i.e. if you don't freeze quickly vegetables lose their nutrients -very- quickly, whereas they maintain them longer when frozen. Obviously leaving fries frozen in the freezer for weeks will destroy much nutritional value, but short of that they should be great. And of course, I haven't heard everything, so I could easily be wrong.
Also, deep frying is essentially flash-steaming, as long as you don't over-fry the potatoes they are steamed inside. There should be very little difference between their nutritional value and baked potatoes, other than fat. What makes a properly fried potato unhealthy is the fact that it is coated in oil when you are done, not necessarily anything about the process of cooking. Now, over-cook your fry and the steam loses pressure, allowing the oil to soak in deep. Those fries would be significantly worse for you than regular fries.
Lastly, just so you don't confuse this post, the fries in my previous post were definitely a joke.
Now that is much more helpful, is it not?
You don't have to be callous about it. You do have to be firm and stick to your guns.
Ouch, troll? Really?
I suppose it was the "Ubuntu kinda sucks", it couldn't have been the counter I gave to the parent's I3Vista post.
Well, Ubuntu does kinda suck. I didn't say Linux sucked, I just said it takes a lot of effort to make it really good and I wasn't willing to expend said effort. MS has teams of people who try to do that for me, and I think they tend to be better at it than Ubuntu's people. That's my personal experience with my own personal machines. I'm sorry if you don't like it.
Linux doesn't protect you from falling for phishing attacks, which is how they get most people these days.
In fact if you are naive enough to think "I use linux, I'm safe!" then you are probably more likely to fall for them.
Frankly, Linux is very much not a secure system, not in most cases anyway. I'd take XP and Linux as about equivalent on the security front, as a patched/firewalled XP machine with AV software is reasonably secure. Moreso than most Linux builds, the only thing protecting Linux (and to be fair, right now it is a huge protection) is its unpopularity among desktop users. As any good security professional knows, security through obscurity is the weakest form of security there is. Windows doesn't have that to lean on, and look how well it does. It isn't perfect, but 99.9% of all threats are targeted at Windows, and yet it takes user intervention to infect it in 99.8% of cases.
If Linux were to over-night become immensely popular on the desktop, within weeks it would be the laughing stock of security professionals. All of its holes would be exposed and exploited, stuff that nobody is looking for right now would be blown wide open, and all the Linux preachers would have egg on their faces. Same is probably true with OSX, but they are already in somewhat of the limelight and wouldn't fall nearly as hard.
None of that should happen if the transition is gradual, though.
First, the autorun worm was absurdly difficult to remove. The larger the organization the more likely it is to stick around.
Second, have you ever built a corporate or OEM OS image before? Using a usb drive to install drivers is not only likely, it's practical.
The way modern mass-images work is as follows: you have your technician machine, upon which you build the custom tools to incorporate into the image - this would be scripting software packages, customizing settings, etc. Then you have your build machine - this is a clean machine with a fresh OS install on it. You then customize that machine exactly the way you want it, installing custom packages, add all the drivers for all the machines in your product lineup (be sure to include a script to remove the unneeded drivers post-sysprep!), and reseal it to OEM spec with sysprep (which calls any necessary post-build scripts).
Now, you test, test, test, and test to be sure it is good, and mass deploy it to all your hard drives that will be going into all your machines. Much of this does not have to be changed when new models are added, and with MS's newer tools a lot can simply be slipped in to the image itself without having to re-seal it. Very convenient. That also may be how this thing got in as well, who knows.
The breakdown here was on the final step: apparently nobody scanned the test machine for viruses/malware before deploying the image. I'm surprised only a few netbooks were hit, unless the others just haven't noticed yet, heh.
Right, because clicking "Safari -> Empty Cache..." is amazingly complicated...
Er, did you RTFA? Or even TFS? Or even a few of the comments?
That's the PROBLEM! "Safari -> Empty Cache" doesn't empty potentialy hundreds of megs of data that Safari 4 generates. A normal user can handle an "Empty Cache" function, they can't handle digging through the browser's cache locations to manually delete the gigs of data built up because the "Empty Cache" function didn't do what it was supposed to do.
For internet settings (for IE at least), it's Options > delete offline content (exact location varies based on version). You get a warning about cache and cookies, you hit OK and it is gone. Deleted. ALL of the internet temp files.
To get of -all- temp files, just run disk cleanup. It will empty all standard temp directories. A program uses windows temp, disk cleanup removes it. None of this hiding BS, at least not in XP.
Dunno about Vista personally.
Uh, dude, RTFS?
Jeeze, seriously, I didn't even RTFA but I noticed TFS said Safari 4 was generating potentially gigabytes of cached info, which it did -not- delete when you "cleaned" the cache.
So...
Did you really expect 700+ MB of Cache from a browser?
Yes?
You should read Asimov's robot short stories, particularly the packaged version called "I-Robot". He basically asked himself the question "If robots were sentient, what rules would be essential to protecting humans from robots?" This produced his three laws of robotics: A robot must not harm a human, or by inaction allow harm to come to a human; a robot must obey humans, unless the order it recieves violates the first law; and last a robot must preserve itself unless doing so violates the first or second laws.
That is the basis of the stories, and he writes about 15-20 scenarios where his simple, near perfect laws break down. The final conclusion (this was part of his I-Robot collection, not his original short stories) was that by the time robots were smart enough and powerful enough that humans started turning to them to manage their global systems, robots would begin to quietly usurp human control - all for the good of the people. Because such a global robot would be seeing humanity as a whole, and see its first law as applying to humanity and not the individual, it would be capable of destroying potential threats within human society - like subtly hurting the economy of a small country's budding dictator, causing the people to revolt and him to never gains his platform to cause trouble, or destroying a selfish billionare stock trader with dreams of market manipulation before he can send anything out of balance.
In his scenario, robots took control, and it was hard to argue humanity wasn't much better off because of it.
I don't think this is by any means a simple concept like writing three rules that can never be broken. If the system is intelligent it will always find ways around the rules to complete the task...
Anybody who has read Asimov's robot short stories, which were based on his three laws of robotics, would agree with that statement. Indeed, that was the point of his stories. He created three perfect rules to protect humans from robots, then came up with dozens of practical scenarios where the logical outcome of that particular scenario is not what was expected or intended by the 3 laws.
My favorite is probably the story of the robot on Mercury, where the robot got stuck "between" two laws in his decision making process, which immobilized him and put in great danger the two men sent to ensure that the robot would continue to function as need. He was ordered to collect a mineral at a particular pool, but the emitted enough radiation to damage the robot. The closer the robot got to the pool, the greater the danger to itself and the less likely it would be able to fulfil its orders. So there was a point where the orders, based on the second law, were made irrelevant and the third law, self preservation, took over. However once it got far enough away that it was no longer in danger and the orders became priority again, causing the robot to turn back toward the pool. It got stuck in this loop, and ended up walking around the pool for hours, unable to move forward and unable to return.
The problem there was the orders were given rather flippantly, and the robot knew its own value to the company. The robot was also not aware that not following the seemingly flippant order (it was made in such a manner because, at the time it was given, there was more than enough time to collect it safely) put humans at risk. Also it was not given the option of collecting the material at another, safer location. It was told exactly where to get it, and that happened to put the robot in danger. Had any of these conditions been different, the orders phrased better and/or more strongly, or had the robot been made aware that the material was vital, or had it not known how valuable it was to the company, things would have turned out better (though the robot would have been damaged to some extent). As it was the humans had to don special suits and go find the robot, nearly dieing in the process.
Just an example, but he came up with dozens of them, the ultimate being robots quietly subverting human control to manipulate the economy and thus manage to prevent all future wars.
Yeah they did, they just didn't do it with conscious effort.
Who knows what machines will do?
Umm... used commercial aircraft are bought and sold all the time, just like automobiles.
The market is much smaller, because the cash you need is not in the thousands but in the millions, but some corporations (including airlines, but they aren't the only ones in the market) are very frugal when buying a new commercial jet and some have to have the latest and greatest.
I thought you were showing how similar the used car market is to the used jet market at first, before I realised you were attempting to make the opposite point.
My company (a rather large oil company), for example, flat out refuses to buy a jet new. This is inspite of the fact that BOTH of their previous planes were un-usable and needed replacing, and they had to use a local airline to ferry workers for about a year, at a much increased cost.
So they have now purchased two used but good condition jets and their charter service is back up and running. If you want to extend the analogy, the car finaly gave up the ghost so he sold it for parts and rode in a taxi until he could find that '05 subaru he had been wanting.
The only reason airplanes last longer is because no company can afford to drop $500 million every 10 years for a new plane. If they CAN spend that kind of money, they are probably buying more than one, in which case they still can't afford it every 10 years. Not if they want to stay in business.
Also note that, with proper care and a regular maintenance schedule, even cheap cars should last 15-20 years.
Cheers!
Wow, somebody is wearing blinders.
Yeah, there was high quality, there was also a lot more crap.
For furniture, you can still today buy heirloom quality furniture that will last 100+ years, it's just expensive. The cheap stuff from the 50's is all long gone now, but the quality stuff is still around. That we've had 50 years to accumulate it and yet we are not flooded with all of this quality stuff is evidence that there wasn't all that much quality stuff to begin with.
Guess what? That pre-WW2 german made desk chair you inherited from your grandparents? It cost them an arm and a leg new!! Of COURSE they are going to take care of it! That's what makes it worth it. Why didn't you also get their pre-ww2 livingroom set, TV, refrigerator, stove, kitchen sink, kitchen table, kitchen chairs, etc.? Sure someo of it was probably great, if they spent the money on it. Chances are most all of it is long gone in a trash heap now.
Just because you got it for free, doesn't mean they did, and if you want something that lasts today you're going to have to spend the cash to get it. Just like back then.
It's nothing new, but with cheaper and cheaper materials/manufacturing, it's no longer a choice of "spend piles of money on a nice X or do without" it's "spend piles of money on a nice X, or buy a lower quality one for a little less, or just buy this cheap piece of crap I'll have to replace in a few years".
I think me means "Mr. Chekhov".
He got confused because, if you say it poorly, it sounds like " Mr, check off". Kinda like those pesky nuclear wessals.
So...
We trust the guy who "just says so" over the guys who collect and analize the data and compare the results for a living?
Sorry bro "just cause" doesn't cut it when there are mountains of data proving you wrong.
Linux extremely popular in a few areas: network backbones, pure data crunching applications (often a windows application passes data to a linux server farm for processing), web server applications where up-front OS cost is a significant portion of the cost (else the MS server product is often cheaper in the long run), web server applications that require very custom applications and very fine OS control, very small embedded hardware applications, etc. For a lot of these applications I'd wager linux has 50/50 market share with microsoft (roughly, novel still has a portion of the server market, and apple has a very small portion as well). In a few areas like embedded apps, MS has very little market share, and Linux is probably in the 50-70% range, maybe even higher.
However, ALL of those applications are trounced by the desktop PC market, and MS still owns that hands down, even with Macs at 9%. 1% is not at all unbelievable for Linux, MS has its hands in almost everything, and has very good products that are strong competitors in almost every catagory. Linux doesn't even compare, it's a niche OS used for niche applications and it is very very good at filling most all niche needs. Unfortunately "Niche" is just everything MS doesn't dominate.