Using USB disks for backup seems pretty interesting at current prices.
If you run some kind of unix you can make backup-like copies using rsync so you'll only need to buy a new disk when you want an off-line archive backup.
Be honest with yourselves Slashdot - would you *really* want the average slashdot commenter managing *you*? An autocrat who only can see things in black or white and cannot work with other people - well, that is last on my list of wanted bosses.
I've worked with both kinds, and I'd rather have a boss that understand how the business works than a boss who has a great ability to manipulate people.
The absolutely worst type of boss is one who's always demanding I do something in the most ineffective way because that's the consensus that was reached by everyone in the meeting, a meeting where no one understood what it's all about but a smooth talker convinced everyone that it must be done that way.
The best kind of boss is one that was promoted due to his technical skills and hates managing people, so he lets everyone work the way they know how to.
Liking Microsoft products is one thing, but keeping tabs of every story and writing a multi-line first post for every other one, well that looks like a real job to me. I wonder how much Microsoft pays him. Does he get overtime, considering all this was done in a weekend?
If you persist in electing assholes (or failing to campaign against them hard enough), you'll get this kind of activity going unchallenged.
The problem is that you elect *ONE* person to represent you.
Don't want to elect a religious nut? Then you are automatically voting for government controlled health care, no matter what's your opinion on that.
And no matter how you feel about "intellectual property" you are sure to vote for someone who has funding from the big media corporations, unless you vote for some fringe candidate who will have some weird ideas of his own.
A Congress that decides everything made sense in an age when a letter took weeks to get from a village to the capital, but those times are long past. We have no more need of someone to "represent" us in drafting legislation.
It's like, can we just replace the whole desktop shell with a browser and be done with it
KDE is very much like that if you use konqueror as the default file manager. The way I use it is having konqueror open in the file manager profile and maximized all the time.
Konqueror also has some nice shortcuts, like CTRL+SHIFT+L splitting the window so you can see two directories at the same time, that's great for moving files and for comparing stuff.
But the logic of self-interest is that, if the system of government is such that wealth translates to power (doesn't matter why - be it due to being a king's favorite, or due to having a powerful lobby, or due to ability to fund election campaigns), bearers of said wealth will use that power to secure the wealth they have
That logic applies to any economic system, but it works better with socialism.
In a perfect capitalist system, power is completely independent of wealth. In an imperfect system, such as exists in all nations today, government power is used to increase the wealth of those who have the political influence.
The strongest the government power, the more corrupt this system is. It's a simple, sad, fact that it's not the names you call the system that defines its means and ends.
Calling a system "socialist" does not mean the people in power have no self interest. But the more power you give to the government, the more power you give to the people in the government.
In the end, the difference between capitalism and socialism is not the existence or not of greed and self interest. The difference is that in capitalism the self-interest of one goes against the self-interest of the other, so it all balances out in the end. In socialism the self-interest of those in power goes against the self-interest of the others, who have no means to defend themselves.
It's no coincidence that ALL countries that ever had all economic power concentrated on the state ended being dictatorships.
I was bitten by a P. Nigriventer once in Brazil, I was walking through a lawn wearing flip-flops and it bit me in the toe. I think I was fortunate that it wasn't in the "armed" position, so the bite just glanced me and I didn't get the full poison load. I stepped on the spider to kill it and a biologist neighbor identified it for me.
I had a painful toe for a few hours, but that was all.
Can't say about the sex boost, since I was 16 at the time and a nearly continuous hard on is a fact of life at that age.
The Nigriventer is so deadly because of the large amount of poison it can inject, up to 8 ml. I knew a family who lost a 4 year old soon to a bite. The spider was hidden in the child's shoe and bit him in the foot. A good practice in the country in Brazil is to shake boots and shoes before wearing them.
Say what you will about the confusing configuration dialogs and lack of build config options. Visual Studio + Visual Assist is (so far) untouched in terms of features and stability.
(And I'm saying this as a full time developer of Gnome apps...)
Had you been a Kde developer you'd know kdevelop, which is truly the best development environment of them all.
The significant number is interconnect. In that area electronics is several orders of magnitude farther behind. Far enough that is seems doubtful something even remotely like the interconnect of a human brain can be reached artificially.
Hint: simulating is not the same as duplicating. A digital computer trades high-speed communication for interconnections. Think of serial vs parallel. If you simulate a neuron as an object located in memory, each neuron is interconnected to each other, only they cannot all communicate at the same time.
Considering the relatively slow rate at which neurons fire, that problem isn't so insurmountable as it seems at first.
The honeybee is interesting because it's complexity is at about the limit of what personal computers can simulate today.
In rough order of magnitude terms, a honeybee brain has a million neurons with a thousand synapses each. Assume a neuron fires a hundred times per second. In the standard model of a neuron, each synapse can be simulated by a floating point multiplication and one addition.
Doing the math, a computer simulation of a honeybee brain in real time would need 100 gigaflops, which is in the range of what a GPGPU video card can do.
Most electronic designers are competent enough to put a choke at their power line and a bandpass filter at their cabling. It's not "easy" but it's done in just about any military grade electronics
And to play a violin all you need to do is to draw the bow across the strings. There's a lot more to this than theory.
A choke is inductive at a limited range of frequencies, at other frequencies it acts as a capacitor. Likewise, put a high enough frequency across a capacitor and its behavior becomes inductive. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is a very complex subject, there are no easy solutions and it's nearly impossible to have a perfect solution that works at all frequencies.
The 2.4 GHz band used in WiFi is one of the most difficult to shield. All the small metallic parts used in electronic equipment, like screws and button levers, are in the same size magnitude as the wave, so there are plenty of conductive parts to retransmit and conduct the radio frequency.
I guess Boeing engineers didn't think it was necessary.
moving food to the starving tends to put the local farmers out of business
Very true, but there are no simple ways to eliminate starvation.
First, you need to get rid of the dictators that create the political situation that leads to starvation, and getting rid of dictators has been quite expensive.
Four of your points are that it's easier to maintain a console than a PC. But, I repeat, what if you DO need a PC? What is the advantage of a console if you have a perfectly working PC?
(car analogy) - If you had a Ferrari, would you want a '96 Camaro to go with it?
Besides the higher price, bulkier setup, and all the issues related with maintaing a PC, what other benefits do you see here that a console doesn't offer?
Hmm, let's see. How about running all your PC applications? I could never really understand why someone who already has a PC at home needs a console.
I will turn your question around: What benefits does a console offer that a PC doesn't? This is anecdotal, but everyone I know that has a console is someone who has some difficulty in maintaining a computer. If you have a PC you don't need a console.
If you have limited specifications, you can do with a netbook plus a console, and the total cost will be lower than that for a good PC. But if you really need more performance than a netbook can offer you don't need a console at all.
No, you bastard -- the No, you bastard -- the poison is in both cups; I'm not drinking. I win the battle of wits by not falling for your trick.poison is in both cups; I'm not drinking. I win the battle of wits by not falling for your trick.
"The battle of wits ends when you decide and we both drink" -- If Vencini hadn't drunk, the battle wouldn't have ended. By picking a poison to which he was immune, Westley cheated.
But, of course, in a battle of wits cheating is to be expected. Like Snake Plissken playing by Bangkok rules.
The race has already reached the bottom. Capitalism has reached its pathological limit: selling low priced crap to as many people as possible.
The way out is socialism. Readers will disagree because they're still on the winning end of having shafted their fellow man. But there's only so much people will take.
Let me understand this: if a book is sold at $0.99 that's capitalism, but if the same book is sold at $9.95 that's socialism?
Your point is that socialism is selling high priced crap?
Which could be solved by having the actors wear real weights while they're doing the motion capture. Not that they'll do it, of course.
What about having them wear real muscles? In the times when swords and shields were used, everything was hard work for everyone, man, woman, and child.
Before breakfast could be served, the house wife had to knead dough to make bread. The little boy had to go to the well and bring a bucket of water. Meanwhile the husband was milking the cow. Day to day life was an endless iron pumping for everyone.
I have a friend who has an uncle in Spain who makes replicas of medieval battle axes. They weigh up to 30 kilos. Try swinging one of those "naturally" with your 21st century muscles.
What can be done can be undone. If this gets accepted as evidence in court, why not get a sample of someone's writing and duplicate it in a compromising message?
Slashdot Mirror
Using USB disks for backup seems pretty interesting at current prices.
If you run some kind of unix you can make backup-like copies using rsync so you'll only need to buy a new disk when you want an off-line archive backup.
Be honest with yourselves Slashdot - would you *really* want the average slashdot commenter managing *you*? An autocrat who only can see things in black or white and cannot work with other people - well, that is last on my list of wanted bosses.
I've worked with both kinds, and I'd rather have a boss that understand how the business works than a boss who has a great ability to manipulate people.
The absolutely worst type of boss is one who's always demanding I do something in the most ineffective way because that's the consensus that was reached by everyone in the meeting, a meeting where no one understood what it's all about but a smooth talker convinced everyone that it must be done that way.
The best kind of boss is one that was promoted due to his technical skills and hates managing people, so he lets everyone work the way they know how to.
I started counting a couple of stories back, this is the sixth first post defending Microsoft that devxo has posted in the last three days.
The other five are:
1
2
3
4
5
Liking Microsoft products is one thing, but keeping tabs of every story and writing a multi-line first post for every other one, well that looks like a real job to me. I wonder how much Microsoft pays him. Does he get overtime, considering all this was done in a weekend?
If you persist in electing assholes (or failing to campaign against them hard enough), you'll get this kind of activity going unchallenged.
The problem is that you elect *ONE* person to represent you.
Don't want to elect a religious nut? Then you are automatically voting for government controlled health care, no matter what's your opinion on that.
And no matter how you feel about "intellectual property" you are sure to vote for someone who has funding from the big media corporations, unless you vote for some fringe candidate who will have some weird ideas of his own.
A Congress that decides everything made sense in an age when a letter took weeks to get from a village to the capital, but those times are long past. We have no more need of someone to "represent" us in drafting legislation.
So how exactly does your theory distinguish between "shills" and people who hold less hostile views of Microsoft of their own volition?
This is the fifth time in three days that he writes a relatively long first post defending Microsoft.
FYI, the other four are:
1
2
3
4
Amazon shows dozens of different choices for 25GB BD-R packs, some for as low as about $1/disk.
Which Japanese country in the Netherlands is it again?
You know there was a big tsunami two days ago, right? And you know most of the Netherlands are under sea level.
It's like, can we just replace the whole desktop shell with a browser and be done with it
KDE is very much like that if you use konqueror as the default file manager. The way I use it is having konqueror open in the file manager profile and maximized all the time.
Konqueror also has some nice shortcuts, like CTRL+SHIFT+L splitting the window so you can see two directories at the same time, that's great for moving files and for comparing stuff.
But the logic of self-interest is that, if the system of government is such that wealth translates to power (doesn't matter why - be it due to being a king's favorite, or due to having a powerful lobby, or due to ability to fund election campaigns), bearers of said wealth will use that power to secure the wealth they have
That logic applies to any economic system, but it works better with socialism.
In a perfect capitalist system, power is completely independent of wealth. In an imperfect system, such as exists in all nations today, government power is used to increase the wealth of those who have the political influence.
The strongest the government power, the more corrupt this system is. It's a simple, sad, fact that it's not the names you call the system that defines its means and ends.
Calling a system "socialist" does not mean the people in power have no self interest. But the more power you give to the government, the more power you give to the people in the government.
In the end, the difference between capitalism and socialism is not the existence or not of greed and self interest. The difference is that in capitalism the self-interest of one goes against the self-interest of the other, so it all balances out in the end. In socialism the self-interest of those in power goes against the self-interest of the others, who have no means to defend themselves.
It's no coincidence that ALL countries that ever had all economic power concentrated on the state ended being dictatorships.
Look, if you want to fight capitalism, you need to focus on the idea of capitalism, not on the people who you define as "capitalists".
Otherwise, you will fall into the "No True Scotsman" logical fallacy.
Having the government make laws to give privileges to a selected few is absolutely not what capitalism is about.
This is FEUDALISM.
a glow in the dark erection, that also spits webs instead of...
Well, it shoots a web that catches the girl and brings it to you.
What good is a four hour erection otherwise?
BTW, where does the spider need to bite them?
I was bitten by a P. Nigriventer once in Brazil, I was walking through a lawn wearing flip-flops and it bit me in the toe. I think I was fortunate that it wasn't in the "armed" position, so the bite just glanced me and I didn't get the full poison load. I stepped on the spider to kill it and a biologist neighbor identified it for me.
I had a painful toe for a few hours, but that was all.
Can't say about the sex boost, since I was 16 at the time and a nearly continuous hard on is a fact of life at that age.
The Nigriventer is so deadly because of the large amount of poison it can inject, up to 8 ml. I knew a family who lost a 4 year old soon to a bite. The spider was hidden in the child's shoe and bit him in the foot. A good practice in the country in Brazil is to shake boots and shoes before wearing them.
Say what you will about the confusing configuration dialogs and lack of build config options. Visual Studio + Visual Assist is (so far) untouched in terms of features and stability.
(And I'm saying this as a full time developer of Gnome apps...)
Had you been a Kde developer you'd know kdevelop, which is truly the best development environment of them all.
The significant number is interconnect. In that area electronics is several orders of magnitude farther behind. Far enough that is seems doubtful something even remotely like the interconnect of a human brain can be reached artificially.
Hint: simulating is not the same as duplicating. A digital computer trades high-speed communication for interconnections. Think of serial vs parallel. If you simulate a neuron as an object located in memory, each neuron is interconnected to each other, only they cannot all communicate at the same time.
Considering the relatively slow rate at which neurons fire, that problem isn't so insurmountable as it seems at first.
The honeybee is interesting because it's complexity is at about the limit of what personal computers can simulate today.
In rough order of magnitude terms, a honeybee brain has a million neurons with a thousand synapses each. Assume a neuron fires a hundred times per second. In the standard model of a neuron, each synapse can be simulated by a floating point multiplication and one addition.
Doing the math, a computer simulation of a honeybee brain in real time would need 100 gigaflops, which is in the range of what a GPGPU video card can do.
Most electronic designers are competent enough to put a choke at their power line and a bandpass filter at their cabling. It's not "easy" but it's done in just about any military grade electronics
And to play a violin all you need to do is to draw the bow across the strings. There's a lot more to this than theory.
A choke is inductive at a limited range of frequencies, at other frequencies it acts as a capacitor. Likewise, put a high enough frequency across a capacitor and its behavior becomes inductive. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is a very complex subject, there are no easy solutions and it's nearly impossible to have a perfect solution that works at all frequencies.
The 2.4 GHz band used in WiFi is one of the most difficult to shield. All the small metallic parts used in electronic equipment, like screws and button levers, are in the same size magnitude as the wave, so there are plenty of conductive parts to retransmit and conduct the radio frequency.
I guess Boeing engineers didn't think it was necessary.
You guessed wrong.
moving food to the starving tends to put the local farmers out of business
Very true, but there are no simple ways to eliminate starvation.
First, you need to get rid of the dictators that create the political situation that leads to starvation, and getting rid of dictators has been quite expensive.
Four of your points are that it's easier to maintain a console than a PC. But, I repeat, what if you DO need a PC? What is the advantage of a console if you have a perfectly working PC?
(car analogy) - If you had a Ferrari, would you want a '96 Camaro to go with it?
Besides the higher price, bulkier setup, and all the issues related with maintaing a PC, what other benefits do you see here that a console doesn't offer?
Hmm, let's see. How about running all your PC applications? I could never really understand why someone who already has a PC at home needs a console.
I will turn your question around: What benefits does a console offer that a PC doesn't? This is anecdotal, but everyone I know that has a console is someone who has some difficulty in maintaining a computer. If you have a PC you don't need a console.
If you have limited specifications, you can do with a netbook plus a console, and the total cost will be lower than that for a good PC. But if you really need more performance than a netbook can offer you don't need a console at all.
No, you bastard -- the No, you bastard -- the poison is in both cups; I'm not drinking. I win the battle of wits by not falling for your trick.poison is in both cups; I'm not drinking. I win the battle of wits by not falling for your trick.
"The battle of wits ends when you decide and we both drink" -- If Vencini hadn't drunk, the battle wouldn't have ended. By picking a poison to which he was immune, Westley cheated.
But, of course, in a battle of wits cheating is to be expected. Like Snake Plissken playing by Bangkok rules.
The race has already reached the bottom. Capitalism has reached its pathological limit: selling low priced crap to as many people as possible.
The way out is socialism. Readers will disagree because they're still on the winning end of having shafted their fellow man. But there's only so much people will take.
Let me understand this: if a book is sold at $0.99 that's capitalism, but if the same book is sold at $9.95 that's socialism?
Your point is that socialism is selling high priced crap?
it's much more like the battle of wits in The Princess Bride than random guessing.
Did you watch that movie? The game was entirely random, but Westley won by cheating, he poisoned both cups. You can't do that in RPS.
Which could be solved by having the actors wear real weights while they're doing the motion capture. Not that they'll do it, of course.
What about having them wear real muscles? In the times when swords and shields were used, everything was hard work for everyone, man, woman, and child.
Before breakfast could be served, the house wife had to knead dough to make bread. The little boy had to go to the well and bring a bucket of water. Meanwhile the husband was milking the cow. Day to day life was an endless iron pumping for everyone.
I have a friend who has an uncle in Spain who makes replicas of medieval battle axes. They weigh up to 30 kilos. Try swinging one of those "naturally" with your 21st century muscles.
What can be done can be undone. If this gets accepted as evidence in court, why not get a sample of someone's writing and duplicate it in a compromising message?