I still have somewhere the code of the ancient Disk Killer virus. Back in the day, it destroyed disks and drives by lowering the head and killed a floppy drive in a matter of seconds, and if not removed quickly destroyed the drive as well. Destroyed as in "irrecoverable damage, dump in the nearest trash bin". If they are still using 8'' drives, chances are those are still vulnerable to the hardware hacks that made the hardware misbehave this way.
To think that a single boring fellow can potentially destroy the launching codes and render the US without nukes is scary as hell.
Captcha: predict
A "single boring fellow" could potentially render the US without the nuke in his silo, but then he could do that anyway regardless of the hardware. That's why they don't advertise this position on Craig's List. I would be much more concerned about the nuke silos relying on new hardware designed to be outdated in 3 years.
Kids today or from not too long might not remember specific hardware, but will remember software that they first learned on. A lot of people remember specific hardware because at the time there was either a lot of difference between features they cared about, or more likely because the software they used was tied to it. So now there won't be so much as remembering a specific piece of hardware (unless someone is learning on something like the Pi, or some other system on a chip or embedded system), but will still have nostalgia for the language of platform they learn on.
But keep in mind the ubiquity of said hardware in software in today's world. I cut my teeth on the Vic-20 and later the C64, but back then I was one of the only kids in school who had a computer. That is what makes this type of nostalgia so, er, nostalgic. 30 years from now a kid who is ten today will not have been the only kid on the block with a computer. Shit, they got toddler laptops these days.
Why? An analogy I have seen is climate as a car speeding towards a cliff, and that waiting to get more data isn't enough.
The suggested solution have been to remove the foot from the pedal and eventually the car will come to a halt.
If I were to agree with the analogy I wouldn't just release the gas, I would hit the brake. That would be an active solution.
Actively trying to prevent global warming by releasing chemicals that reverse the effect of greenhouse gases would be like braking.
The problem is that there is a political movement that is more concerned with reducing human impact on the environment than with actually saving it, they give fuel to the other side that doesn't care about the environment but just want the hippies to leave their back yard.
If people were really concerned about the environment then it would be irrelevant if global warming was man made or not, if a natural climate changed with lead to catastrophic consequences we would still have to do something about it.
Too bad the environment is not so discreet a system as your car. If we are brilliant at one thing, it is underestimating the unintended consequences of our actions. So no, let's not rush out an fill the air with pine forest vapor.
Yeah, when you're arguing for a drug that effectively adds another abuse risk to society at large, maybe you want to cite more than three people who benefit from it? Does anyone with liver failure need this drug? About how many people suffer from recognizable chronic pain and liver failure together?
They are trying to humanize the issue, much like when a politician drags Grandma Winnie on the stump circuit as his example of the frail, old widow who can no longer afford her Depends undergarments. One would think that if they are a month away from FDA approval then they provided more than anecdotes to support their claims.
Yes, those dark-skinned ghetto-raised individuals could work hard and improve their situation, but they have to work a lot harder than their fair-skinned neighbors to see the same benefits.
Very few people are granted a free pass. A "dark-skinned ghetto-raised" individual doesn't have to work any harder than I to achieve the same level of success (let's just pretend for a moment that I am the definition of some level of success) with regard to the path I took (high school, then military - which paid for college - which got me a job that in almost 13 years of employment started me at $36k and now pays me almost $100k per year). The only extra friction along their version of that path comes from the losers in their community who are uncomfortable when one of their own becomes successful, or from within themselves due to the self-doubt instilled in them by their community leaders who have a vested interest in their presumption of failure.
I agree with you about the welfare system. One hits a certain level and realizes that half the job and an extra child will give them more free time and more money...That's apparently a hard handout to pass up.
The "ghetto" culture will never change because they by-and-large believe themselves to be victims of a system gamed against them, and their only hope for change must come from some external force (the government, Al Sharpton, etc.). Their victim mentality is reflected not only in the poor quality of their schools, but also in the poor quality of the neighborhoods, their homes, and their parenting.
I was raised poor relative to many of the people around me, but my parents told me I could accomplish anything I put my mind to, they continually improved the living environment for my siblings and I, and they never once implied that our problems were anyone's doing other than our own. That is what creates success; not white skin.
The government can't stop those with the mind to provide a better education to their children from finding a way. Close the inner-city schools and force so-called "desegregation" on charter schools, and while the inner-city kids fuck up new schools, those with the means will move on. And then repeat. Always repeat.
Didn't we already do this? A new nation that subverts the existing structures, even has a system built-in for making sure we don't have stagnant hierarchical power structures? I believe it was called "the United States of America."
Don't kid yourself into thinking you're "special" and "not like those guys." Please learn from previous generations and previous attempts. "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it" is not just a clever bon mot to be dismissed.
Yes, and we did a fabulous job of corrupting it by turning over the power to the few so we could have more leisure time. And now when talk of "Utopianism" comes up the ignorant think it is the same as Libertarianism, and they go on blissfully thinking that there is no way their socialist welfare states could ever turn against them. Worse, they think that what works on the scale of Sweden can work on the scale of the United States. Maybe on a given state.
I agree that this sounds like a ridiculous experiment. Of course, it can work while shielded within another system guaranteeing the security of those within as they ponder their quantified selves and hope the power doesn't go out or the network down, leaving them without a form of payment, data to tell them to eat more or less of a certain food, or a machine to make stuff for them. On a grand scale, however, it sounds like a voluntary prison. I feel the same way about your universal welfare state. For the record, the problem with the United States' form of government is that we failed to run it as intended. We the people - the many - turned over power to the few, and they abused the hell out of it. At least Walmart can't force me to buy their products. Well, not yet.
Wall Street operates on two principles: 1. Regulation defines what the government doesn't tell them they can't do; and, 2. The greed of those who invest in the market and the blind eye they turn when handed unrealistic expectations.
It is no fault of capitalistic ideals that it becomes a tool for evil.
Right, I wouldn't have any idea after spending 6 hours a day for 47 weeks going to school for nothing but Korean. But maybe I am just smart because I was part of the 47% of my class who graduated.
Korean somewhat splits the difference between the two, providing an alphabet that can substitute for the Chinese characters in Sino-Korean, as well being the way to write pure Korean. It also helps in that it provides a phonetic fallback when learning Chinese characters.
If a feature of AAVE is that a Rolex is called a "rollie," then I call bullshit. Not that Wikipedia is always correct, but reading that page doesn't convince me that speech patterns of ghetto punks in the 21st century represent a dialect of American English. Please don ax me ta swallow dat.
People vastly overreact to the threat of peanuts. My little sister is extremely allergic to peanuts and has been since she was a child. So allergic that a peanut touching her skin raises a welt. She grew up in a house where 6 other people ate peanut butter all the time like it was liquid crack. The real stuff, too - Teddy - not that Jiff or Skippy hydrogenated junk. She went to public school. She lives a normal life, but with an Epipen in her purse. As with damn near everything else a vocal minority have created a huge scare over something that while potentially deadly is easily avoidable.
My study found a similar correlation between cardiovascular and respiratory disease and radio stations whose names begin with "W" compared to those beginning with "K."
Will someone declare they have the unalienable right to Must See TV?.
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but is there not legislation in the U.S. that makes it a right to freely receive television signals that are broadcast over the air with an antenna? (The radio spectrum is a shared public resource).
Maybe; however, if I can't get NBC because I live outside the broadcast range of the nearest station, then too bad for me. But I am talking not just about the signal, but the means by which to convert into human-view-able terrible sitcoms. Currently, we still have purchase televisions in the US. They aren't issued along with our social security cards.
I'm not talking right-wing fascism, and perhaps not even a winged brand of politics at all. Rather, I mean the intention of the founders of the US. If we ran our government correctly we wouldn't stand for the government colluding with corporations to limit our choice (the Gub'ment Mac-n-Cheese comment).
I am very much against the government having nearly any say in what I can do (and I will admit the current incarnation of conservative/Republican politics in the US wants just as much control as the liberal/Democrat side, albeit on different issues [sidebar: you may have noticed how when one side argues for "freedom" the other argues for government control, and they switch sides based on the topic at hand - see gay marriage and guns]).
The problem with the left wing government - back on mac-n-cheese - is the idea that the government knows best and will ensure the mac-n-cheese is up to health standards - which they also set.
Inasmuch as my stance can hypothetically lead to anarchy and daily wild west style shootouts, I see the socialist philosophy of redistribution leading to total enslavement. Those - like a friend of mine - who blithely declare themselves socialist while wearing $500 shoes and eating at fancy restaurants must not realize what they are buying into, or hope they will die before they are the rich whose wealth is next on the chopping block.
Not that I think we shouldn't help our fellow man; however, my philosophy is Airline Oxygen Maskism: The government provides the protective hull, plus the safety net of oxygen masks, and in the event the cabin loses pressure we are responsible for donning our own mask, and then we should help others who are less able. In practice, something like extremely limited federal government, a return to sovereignty at the state level (i.e., get the states off the federal dole), my tax dollars should trickle up, not down, and super-local, voluntary communal efforts. Top down socialism is as much as a fail as top down fascism.
Which is exactly why I am politically on the right (at least, what the right is supposed to represent; let's be honest - both sides allow corporations to affect the legislative process because we don't kick them out for doing it). Kraft can place their Mac-n-Cheese in my favorite TV show. They can fill every commercial slot with unusually loud (volume) commercial spots. They can lie and tell me I am going to die if I don't eat their Mac-n-Cheese. But unlike when the government tells me I have to eat Gub'ment-Mac-n-Cheese, Kraft can't throw me in jail for choosing a salad. Or tossing the salad, if you're into that sorta thing.
That said, I don't like DRM, but I also don't care because, as you said, I can choose not to watch. Will someone declare they have the unalienable right to Must See TV?. But what is the end game here? We continually add DRM to everything to cover how people get around it? In the distant future a requirement of citizenship will be an electronic implant, and on that implant...DRM! (When I watch pirated movies my brain interprets the images and sound as a government-sponsored message about the evils of pirating!)
Metaphorically speaking, are you concerned about a future where everyone can assemble a house with prefabricated parts, but only the smallest minority know how to fabricate the parts? I fear as more high-level programming language jobs are created as entry level positions people become increasingly reliant on an entire layer of software they don't understand. Does that mean someone should have to know how to write a video driver to write a video game? Well, maybe. I don't know.
I never understood why anyone thought that the computer in Minority Report was something worth pursuing.
I think there has always been a desire to make fantasy into reality. It is only recently, however, that technology and science has made it possible to do it quickly.
Wonderfully put. I have a sneaking suspicion that the OP is just going through a brief bout of meteor envy, but the idea seems like a terrible one. I have many pictures of friends and family that I enjoy looking at, but none of them involve someone sitting on the toilet, puking up Jagermeister or getting a boil lanced.
Those would be far more interesting than the minimum 75% of nothing one would record. Reality TV is popular because it is nothing like reality.
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I still have somewhere the code of the ancient Disk Killer virus. Back in the day, it destroyed disks and drives by lowering the head and killed a floppy drive in a matter of seconds, and if not removed quickly destroyed the drive as well. Destroyed as in "irrecoverable damage, dump in the nearest trash bin". If they are still using 8'' drives, chances are those are still vulnerable to the hardware hacks that made the hardware misbehave this way.
To think that a single boring fellow can potentially destroy the launching codes and render the US without nukes is scary as hell.
Captcha: predict
A "single boring fellow" could potentially render the US without the nuke in his silo, but then he could do that anyway regardless of the hardware. That's why they don't advertise this position on Craig's List. I would be much more concerned about the nuke silos relying on new hardware designed to be outdated in 3 years.
Kids today or from not too long might not remember specific hardware, but will remember software that they first learned on. A lot of people remember specific hardware because at the time there was either a lot of difference between features they cared about, or more likely because the software they used was tied to it. So now there won't be so much as remembering a specific piece of hardware (unless someone is learning on something like the Pi, or some other system on a chip or embedded system), but will still have nostalgia for the language of platform they learn on.
But keep in mind the ubiquity of said hardware in software in today's world. I cut my teeth on the Vic-20 and later the C64, but back then I was one of the only kids in school who had a computer. That is what makes this type of nostalgia so, er, nostalgic. 30 years from now a kid who is ten today will not have been the only kid on the block with a computer. Shit, they got toddler laptops these days.
Why? An analogy I have seen is climate as a car speeding towards a cliff, and that waiting to get more data isn't enough. The suggested solution have been to remove the foot from the pedal and eventually the car will come to a halt. If I were to agree with the analogy I wouldn't just release the gas, I would hit the brake. That would be an active solution. Actively trying to prevent global warming by releasing chemicals that reverse the effect of greenhouse gases would be like braking.
The problem is that there is a political movement that is more concerned with reducing human impact on the environment than with actually saving it, they give fuel to the other side that doesn't care about the environment but just want the hippies to leave their back yard.
If people were really concerned about the environment then it would be irrelevant if global warming was man made or not, if a natural climate changed with lead to catastrophic consequences we would still have to do something about it.
Too bad the environment is not so discreet a system as your car. If we are brilliant at one thing, it is underestimating the unintended consequences of our actions. So no, let's not rush out an fill the air with pine forest vapor.
Yeah, when you're arguing for a drug that effectively adds another abuse risk to society at large, maybe you want to cite more than three people who benefit from it? Does anyone with liver failure need this drug? About how many people suffer from recognizable chronic pain and liver failure together?
They are trying to humanize the issue, much like when a politician drags Grandma Winnie on the stump circuit as his example of the frail, old widow who can no longer afford her Depends undergarments. One would think that if they are a month away from FDA approval then they provided more than anecdotes to support their claims.
Yes, those dark-skinned ghetto-raised individuals could work hard and improve their situation, but they have to work a lot harder than their fair-skinned neighbors to see the same benefits.
Very few people are granted a free pass. A "dark-skinned ghetto-raised" individual doesn't have to work any harder than I to achieve the same level of success (let's just pretend for a moment that I am the definition of some level of success) with regard to the path I took (high school, then military - which paid for college - which got me a job that in almost 13 years of employment started me at $36k and now pays me almost $100k per year). The only extra friction along their version of that path comes from the losers in their community who are uncomfortable when one of their own becomes successful, or from within themselves due to the self-doubt instilled in them by their community leaders who have a vested interest in their presumption of failure.
I agree with you about the welfare system. One hits a certain level and realizes that half the job and an extra child will give them more free time and more money...That's apparently a hard handout to pass up.
The "ghetto" culture will never change because they by-and-large believe themselves to be victims of a system gamed against them, and their only hope for change must come from some external force (the government, Al Sharpton, etc.). Their victim mentality is reflected not only in the poor quality of their schools, but also in the poor quality of the neighborhoods, their homes, and their parenting.
I was raised poor relative to many of the people around me, but my parents told me I could accomplish anything I put my mind to, they continually improved the living environment for my siblings and I, and they never once implied that our problems were anyone's doing other than our own. That is what creates success; not white skin.
The government can't stop those with the mind to provide a better education to their children from finding a way. Close the inner-city schools and force so-called "desegregation" on charter schools, and while the inner-city kids fuck up new schools, those with the means will move on. And then repeat. Always repeat.
Didn't we already do this? A new nation that subverts the existing structures, even has a system built-in for making sure we don't have stagnant hierarchical power structures? I believe it was called "the United States of America."
Don't kid yourself into thinking you're "special" and "not like those guys." Please learn from previous generations and previous attempts. "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it" is not just a clever bon mot to be dismissed.
Yes, and we did a fabulous job of corrupting it by turning over the power to the few so we could have more leisure time. And now when talk of "Utopianism" comes up the ignorant think it is the same as Libertarianism, and they go on blissfully thinking that there is no way their socialist welfare states could ever turn against them. Worse, they think that what works on the scale of Sweden can work on the scale of the United States. Maybe on a given state.
Yeah, I dug deeper and it turns out the main backer is NAMBLA.
I agree that this sounds like a ridiculous experiment. Of course, it can work while shielded within another system guaranteeing the security of those within as they ponder their quantified selves and hope the power doesn't go out or the network down, leaving them without a form of payment, data to tell them to eat more or less of a certain food, or a machine to make stuff for them. On a grand scale, however, it sounds like a voluntary prison. I feel the same way about your universal welfare state. For the record, the problem with the United States' form of government is that we failed to run it as intended. We the people - the many - turned over power to the few, and they abused the hell out of it. At least Walmart can't force me to buy their products. Well, not yet.
Wall Street operates on two principles: 1. Regulation defines what the government doesn't tell them they can't do; and, 2. The greed of those who invest in the market and the blind eye they turn when handed unrealistic expectations.
It is no fault of capitalistic ideals that it becomes a tool for evil.
Right, I wouldn't have any idea after spending 6 hours a day for 47 weeks going to school for nothing but Korean. But maybe I am just smart because I was part of the 47% of my class who graduated.
Korean somewhat splits the difference between the two, providing an alphabet that can substitute for the Chinese characters in Sino-Korean, as well being the way to write pure Korean. It also helps in that it provides a phonetic fallback when learning Chinese characters.
If a feature of AAVE is that a Rolex is called a "rollie," then I call bullshit. Not that Wikipedia is always correct, but reading that page doesn't convince me that speech patterns of ghetto punks in the 21st century represent a dialect of American English. Please don ax me ta swallow dat.
People vastly overreact to the threat of peanuts. My little sister is extremely allergic to peanuts and has been since she was a child. So allergic that a peanut touching her skin raises a welt. She grew up in a house where 6 other people ate peanut butter all the time like it was liquid crack. The real stuff, too - Teddy - not that Jiff or Skippy hydrogenated junk. She went to public school. She lives a normal life, but with an Epipen in her purse. As with damn near everything else a vocal minority have created a huge scare over something that while potentially deadly is easily avoidable.
You can have all the opinions you want. If you want me to seriously consider them you might want to say something I agree with.
Fixed that for you.
My study found a similar correlation between cardiovascular and respiratory disease and radio stations whose names begin with "W" compared to those beginning with "K."
Will someone declare they have the unalienable right to Must See TV?.
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but is there not legislation in the U.S. that makes it a right to freely receive television signals that are broadcast over the air with an antenna? (The radio spectrum is a shared public resource).
Maybe; however, if I can't get NBC because I live outside the broadcast range of the nearest station, then too bad for me. But I am talking not just about the signal, but the means by which to convert into human-view-able terrible sitcoms. Currently, we still have purchase televisions in the US. They aren't issued along with our social security cards.
I'm not talking right-wing fascism, and perhaps not even a winged brand of politics at all. Rather, I mean the intention of the founders of the US. If we ran our government correctly we wouldn't stand for the government colluding with corporations to limit our choice (the Gub'ment Mac-n-Cheese comment).
I am very much against the government having nearly any say in what I can do (and I will admit the current incarnation of conservative/Republican politics in the US wants just as much control as the liberal/Democrat side, albeit on different issues [sidebar: you may have noticed how when one side argues for "freedom" the other argues for government control, and they switch sides based on the topic at hand - see gay marriage and guns]).
The problem with the left wing government - back on mac-n-cheese - is the idea that the government knows best and will ensure the mac-n-cheese is up to health standards - which they also set.
Inasmuch as my stance can hypothetically lead to anarchy and daily wild west style shootouts, I see the socialist philosophy of redistribution leading to total enslavement. Those - like a friend of mine - who blithely declare themselves socialist while wearing $500 shoes and eating at fancy restaurants must not realize what they are buying into, or hope they will die before they are the rich whose wealth is next on the chopping block.
Not that I think we shouldn't help our fellow man; however, my philosophy is Airline Oxygen Maskism: The government provides the protective hull, plus the safety net of oxygen masks, and in the event the cabin loses pressure we are responsible for donning our own mask, and then we should help others who are less able. In practice, something like extremely limited federal government, a return to sovereignty at the state level (i.e., get the states off the federal dole), my tax dollars should trickle up, not down, and super-local, voluntary communal efforts. Top down socialism is as much as a fail as top down fascism.
Which is exactly why I am politically on the right (at least, what the right is supposed to represent; let's be honest - both sides allow corporations to affect the legislative process because we don't kick them out for doing it). Kraft can place their Mac-n-Cheese in my favorite TV show. They can fill every commercial slot with unusually loud (volume) commercial spots. They can lie and tell me I am going to die if I don't eat their Mac-n-Cheese. But unlike when the government tells me I have to eat Gub'ment-Mac-n-Cheese, Kraft can't throw me in jail for choosing a salad. Or tossing the salad, if you're into that sorta thing.
That said, I don't like DRM, but I also don't care because, as you said, I can choose not to watch. Will someone declare they have the unalienable right to Must See TV?. But what is the end game here? We continually add DRM to everything to cover how people get around it? In the distant future a requirement of citizenship will be an electronic implant, and on that implant...DRM! (When I watch pirated movies my brain interprets the images and sound as a government-sponsored message about the evils of pirating!)
What alternative to Google Voice do you recommend for people outside the United States?
Baidu Voice! But all calls are screened to make sure you only say nice things about the Chairman.
Please remember that these are the same types of people in bureaucracy who wanted to ban large soda's in NYC, along with salt.
Succeeded in their effort to ban large sodas as well as trans fat, and who want to reduce salt and eliminate smoking in the city altogether.
Metaphorically speaking, are you concerned about a future where everyone can assemble a house with prefabricated parts, but only the smallest minority know how to fabricate the parts? I fear as more high-level programming language jobs are created as entry level positions people become increasingly reliant on an entire layer of software they don't understand. Does that mean someone should have to know how to write a video driver to write a video game? Well, maybe. I don't know.
I never understood why anyone thought that the computer in Minority Report was something worth pursuing.
I think there has always been a desire to make fantasy into reality. It is only recently, however, that technology and science has made it possible to do it quickly.
Wonderfully put. I have a sneaking suspicion that the OP is just going through a brief bout of meteor envy, but the idea seems like a terrible one. I have many pictures of friends and family that I enjoy looking at, but none of them involve someone sitting on the toilet, puking up Jagermeister or getting a boil lanced.
Those would be far more interesting than the minimum 75% of nothing one would record. Reality TV is popular because it is nothing like reality.
Someone should hack them now just to remove the "we've been hacked" banner.