What makes it geeky? It's not particularly niche. It doesn't have a geek theme. It's doesn't require much in the way of making calculations while playing. It doesn't consume large amounts of time. It doesn't involve building and painting huge numbers of miniatures. In fact I struggle to think of anything geeky about it.
Compare with:
Android: Netrunner - very geeky theme. Dungeons and Dragons - this was once the definition of geeky... RoboRally - geek theme plus "programming" of sorts. 1817 - 6 hours of pretending to buy company stocks and of course there are trains (what geek isn't into trains), any 18XX in fact. Warhammer 40,000 - science fiction and fantasy and painting hundreds of fiddly miniatures. Any miniatures war game really. Magic: The Gathering - why paint miniatures when you can spend thousands of dollars on cards. The rules are easily mistaken for the US tax code: http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/resources/rules/MagicCompRules_21031101.pdf encouraging players to push literal reading of card text as far as they possible can. Dominion, Agricola - all the multiplayer solitaire games that are just optimization problems at heart and can likely be converted into solving some equations.
None of the google results for me were anything that a standard food service permit wouldn't cover. You may not have noticed but most Starbucks stores aren't only open a maximum of twice a year because those permits aren't in fact restricted to a maximum of twice a year.
So what's the reference for your case and the paranoid rantings that followed?
We are very sorry to inform you that due to an error in our warehouse we have dispatched the incorrect product. We are contacting you in order for us to arrange a collection of the incorrect item which is on the way to you. If possible, please keep the parcel in its original packaging ready to hand back to the courier.
do you interpret as asking for payment and not arranging for return?
1) Because there are consequences of doing so that apply to others. You want to limit it to "grave consequences" but obviously not everyone does. Simple things like the other members of the community you are in not liking large numbers of homeless people descending upon them (which again is a stupid reason, but I'm sure there's an asshole somewhere who would classify that as "grave").
2) This particular permit is usually aimed at food safety and preventing people getting sick from unsafe food. That a law that was likely written in order to apply to restaurants also happens to apply to a soup kitchen isn't that surprising really - enforcing it is though. I'm not sure what requiring permits to serve food to the public has to do with the just world fallacy...
Which doesn't make it illegal to feed the poor, that just means you need a permit to do so. As long as those permits aren't ridiculous then why is that a problem? Silly sure...
I need a permit to drive on a public road, does that mean it is illegal to drive?
No there is not always a way of writing to a ROM purely via software on the machine it is installed in. Congrats on managing no to learn anything in 25+ years of being a shitty repair main.
Except the subject is the higher up OS not the bios. Making the computer unbootable means that the bios fails to boot the actual OS the user wants to run in the context of this particular discussion. Which should be obvious really.
Yes you can brick the bios too - I explicitly mentioned that if your ROM isn't actually RO then if you get really unlucky you could hit the right sequence of pokes to screw with it. Did you get your repair certification without learning to read or something?
Though I guess that you had to change my wording from "the OS" to "AN OS" in order to rant indicates you can in fact read but are just choosing to misinterpret in order to pleasure yourself.
The bios is not the OS being talked about, which should be obvious since if that is what you are considering then modern computers are exactly the same as older ones - just turn it off and on again and you'll be back at the bios boot screen just fine.
Half of hem are pointless and stupid - don't make images of God, don't work on the Sabbath. And if you ignore those the priorities of the ones that are about morality are terrible - adultery and coveting are so important as to get a mention, much more important than not keeping slaves or not torturing children which don't.
Sure don't murder, steal, or lie seem ok, but they aren't so earth shattering amazing that they justify the rest of the garbage.
You seriously don't think it might be offensive to an atheist to have their government proudly build monuments (or whatever) declaring that God brought them out of Egypt? With all the associated context of "death to unbelievers" that surrounds those commands in the source material. Or that it might be offensive to have your own government loudly declaring that a man owns his wife exactly as he might own a house or an animal? Different strokes I guess.
Want to do a crazy program you can't write on modern computers?
What?
Yeah, can't is a blatant lie.
Yeah, that's trivial to do on a modern computer too. A trivial loadable kernel module in linux could do so, for example.
Simply loop through a sequence of poking two random numbers, and incrementing a number that you print.
What?
That is what it says, write a random value to a random memory location in a loop.
Every time, the system will do different things.
What ?
Of course it will. Sometimes you random memory location will be the memory mapped to the screen and a character will show up. Sometimes you'll change a return address on the stack and run some random code.
If you did this on a modern computer, eventually it'd corrupt system files and the thing wouldn't boot.
WHAT?
That's true, eventually you'll write over some file data just before it is flushed to disk and trash a file required for booting. Or screw with memory the file system is using and mess that up on the next write (though given the use of checksums that's pretty unlikely). The key is eventually since you'll have to run it a *lot* of times before it does something like that before crashing itself.
And of course not when running as a normal user process.
It makes you wonder why modern OSes aren't hardened with the theory: No matter what the user does, allow the computer to boot up safely next time.
You're an idiot.
Yes he is.
Computers that have the OS on ROM unsurprisingly aren't susceptible to making the system unbootable by screwing with boot files. The same is true of a modern computer hardwired to boot off of ROM as well though. And of course it makes upgrading that base OS essentially impossible (short of replacing the ROM, or actually using an EEPROM - and of course if software can do the upgrade then the random memory setting could also cause it to happen and screw up booting)
Usually I'm all for testing the obvious since when it doesn't turn out as you expect that's useful information.
But seriously...People who don't have to give a shit about directions because someone else is handling that for them aren't as good at giving directions as those who do in fact have to work out their own directions themselves. Astounding!
The reading light you need to read a book will have cause the same "circadian imbalance".
E-readers aren't backlit in the first place of course. Yes if you are reading an e-book on a backlit LCD then it will suck in bright sunlight and in darker conditions when your eyes haven't adjusted yet - I know I can't read the text on my laptop when I get woken up by an alert at 4am and need to ssh to a remote machine - in a few minutes it's fine of course so for reading purposes that really won't matter. But why would you do that? Those tablets aren't primarily for reading.
Though of course if it's pretty dark you'll get more eyestrain from trying to read a book in the low light (hence those reading lights) than from the backlit LCD.
Of course I stare at a backlit LCD for at least 10 hours a day (at work and playing games at home, and of course the TV is such screen) with no eyestrain to speak of so it can't be *that* bad. Heck I'm reading text much smaller than would be used in an e-book this very second...
It would be exactly the same as if you bought a used car and then a search of the car turned up a bag of cocaine. "Good luck" with your argument that it was there when you bought it and you didn't know it existed.
Usually such failures just result in the autopilot turning itself off and the humans taking over - not really an option if you want to ditch the human pilots altogether.
I'm not disagreeing with the basics though. A computer is much less likely to be tired, or have been drinking, or to forget a step. However, our current solution to errors being detected in the sensors is "let the human pilots fly it", I don't think we have another solution for that just yet.
But then you have things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951 in which the autopilot decided that 2000 feet high was a good place to do a landing flare, shortly followed by the expected plummet to the ground.
What you should rather have is the computer flying the plane with a competent human pilot to save the day when something goes wrong (usually with the various sensors the computer it using). But of course, and it's what the article is about, if the plane is almost always under computer control how do you keep the human pilots competent. Since, as you're examples point out and my example points out, incompetent crews make things worse and don't save the day when the computer has issues either.
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What makes it geeky? It's not particularly niche. It doesn't have a geek theme. It's doesn't require much in the way of making calculations while playing. It doesn't consume large amounts of time. It doesn't involve building and painting huge numbers of miniatures. In fact I struggle to think of anything geeky about it.
Compare with:
Android: Netrunner - very geeky theme.
Dungeons and Dragons - this was once the definition of geeky...
RoboRally - geek theme plus "programming" of sorts.
1817 - 6 hours of pretending to buy company stocks and of course there are trains (what geek isn't into trains), any 18XX in fact.
Warhammer 40,000 - science fiction and fantasy and painting hundreds of fiddly miniatures. Any miniatures war game really.
Magic: The Gathering - why paint miniatures when you can spend thousands of dollars on cards. The rules are easily mistaken for the US tax code: http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/resources/rules/MagicCompRules_21031101.pdf encouraging players to push literal reading of card text as far as they possible can.
Dominion, Agricola - all the multiplayer solitaire games that are just optimization problems at heart and can likely be converted into solving some equations.
If b and n are integers, n < b and b%n != 0, then 1/n can't be written exact in base-b.
Have fun proving that...
Yeah that's going to be great fun...
n=4; b=10
4 10 - check.
10 % 4 != 0 - check (2 != 0)
1/4 = 0.25 in base-10 which is exact.
Provings things which aren't true is always fun.
They know what it looks like. The know what the number plate is. They know where is will be.
Why do you think they couldn't pull it over?
And you mightn't think that something that is obviously not a bug is a bug.
None of the google results for me were anything that a standard food service permit wouldn't cover. You may not have noticed but most Starbucks stores aren't only open a maximum of twice a year because those permits aren't in fact restricted to a maximum of twice a year.
So what's the reference for your case and the paranoid rantings that followed?
Which part of:
do you interpret as asking for payment and not arranging for return?
Now how about (a) and (b) which would also have to be true since the word used is "and".
1) Because there are consequences of doing so that apply to others. You want to limit it to "grave consequences" but obviously not everyone does. Simple things like the other members of the community you are in not liking large numbers of homeless people descending upon them (which again is a stupid reason, but I'm sure there's an asshole somewhere who would classify that as "grave").
2) This particular permit is usually aimed at food safety and preventing people getting sick from unsafe food. That a law that was likely written in order to apply to restaurants also happens to apply to a soup kitchen isn't that surprising really - enforcing it is though. I'm not sure what requiring permits to serve food to the public has to do with the just world fallacy...
As I said that's a silly thing to do.
Which doesn't make it illegal to feed the poor, that just means you need a permit to do so. As long as those permits aren't ridiculous then why is that a problem? Silly sure...
I need a permit to drive on a public road, does that mean it is illegal to drive?
No there is not always a way of writing to a ROM purely via software on the machine it is installed in. Congrats on managing no to learn anything in 25+ years of being a shitty repair main.
Except the subject is the higher up OS not the bios. Making the computer unbootable means that the bios fails to boot the actual OS the user wants to run in the context of this particular discussion. Which should be obvious really.
Yes you can brick the bios too - I explicitly mentioned that if your ROM isn't actually RO then if you get really unlucky you could hit the right sequence of pokes to screw with it. Did you get your repair certification without learning to read or something?
Though I guess that you had to change my wording from "the OS" to "AN OS" in order to rant indicates you can in fact read but are just choosing to misinterpret in order to pleasure yourself.
I wish. Revolutionizing an entire field of science would be pretty good for 3 minutes work after all.
The bios is not the OS being talked about, which should be obvious since if that is what you are considering then modern computers are exactly the same as older ones - just turn it off and on again and you'll be back at the bios boot screen just fine.
Good rules? Have you actually read them?
Half of hem are pointless and stupid - don't make images of God, don't work on the Sabbath. And if you ignore those the priorities of the ones that are about morality are terrible - adultery and coveting are so important as to get a mention, much more important than not keeping slaves or not torturing children which don't.
Sure don't murder, steal, or lie seem ok, but they aren't so earth shattering amazing that they justify the rest of the garbage.
You seriously don't think it might be offensive to an atheist to have their government proudly build monuments (or whatever) declaring that God brought them out of Egypt? With all the associated context of "death to unbelievers" that surrounds those commands in the source material. Or that it might be offensive to have your own government loudly declaring that a man owns his wife exactly as he might own a house or an animal? Different strokes I guess.
It's too broad a brush. LaVeyan Satanism is an atheist belief system. Theistic Satanism obviously isn't.
Want to do a crazy program you can't write on modern computers?
What?
Yeah, can't is a blatant lie.
Yeah, that's trivial to do on a modern computer too. A trivial loadable kernel module in linux could do so, for example.
Simply loop through a sequence of poking two random numbers, and incrementing a number that you print.
What?
That is what it says, write a random value to a random memory location in a loop.
Every time, the system will do different things.
What ?
Of course it will. Sometimes you random memory location will be the memory mapped to the screen and a character will show up. Sometimes you'll change a return address on the stack and run some random code.
If you did this on a modern computer, eventually it'd corrupt system files and the thing wouldn't boot.
WHAT?
That's true, eventually you'll write over some file data just before it is flushed to disk and trash a file required for booting. Or screw with memory the file system is using and mess that up on the next write (though given the use of checksums that's pretty unlikely). The key is eventually since you'll have to run it a *lot* of times before it does something like that before crashing itself.
And of course not when running as a normal user process.
It makes you wonder why modern OSes aren't hardened with the theory: No matter what the user does, allow the computer to boot up safely next time.
You're an idiot.
Yes he is.
Computers that have the OS on ROM unsurprisingly aren't susceptible to making the system unbootable by screwing with boot files. The same is true of a modern computer hardwired to boot off of ROM as well though. And of course it makes upgrading that base OS essentially impossible (short of replacing the ROM, or actually using an EEPROM - and of course if software can do the upgrade then the random memory setting could also cause it to happen and screw up booting)
Usually I'm all for testing the obvious since when it doesn't turn out as you expect that's useful information.
But seriously...People who don't have to give a shit about directions because someone else is handling that for them aren't as good at giving directions as those who do in fact have to work out their own directions themselves. Astounding!
And that would be different than having Boeing build rockets and planes and so on, how exactly?
Even in your crazy scenarios there are a bunch of obvious options:
The US denies the sale to Russia or Iran or China - just like they have always done with sales and mergers that impact national security.
The US nationalizes SpaceX.
The US dusts off its old NASA stuff and goes from there.
The reading light you need to read a book will have cause the same "circadian imbalance".
E-readers aren't backlit in the first place of course. Yes if you are reading an e-book on a backlit LCD then it will suck in bright sunlight and in darker conditions when your eyes haven't adjusted yet - I know I can't read the text on my laptop when I get woken up by an alert at 4am and need to ssh to a remote machine - in a few minutes it's fine of course so for reading purposes that really won't matter. But why would you do that? Those tablets aren't primarily for reading.
Though of course if it's pretty dark you'll get more eyestrain from trying to read a book in the low light (hence those reading lights) than from the backlit LCD.
Of course I stare at a backlit LCD for at least 10 hours a day (at work and playing games at home, and of course the TV is such screen) with no eyestrain to speak of so it can't be *that* bad. Heck I'm reading text much smaller than would be used in an e-book this very second...
Has a cop every not smelled marijuana when he wanted to search a car?
It would be exactly the same as if you bought a used car and then a search of the car turned up a bag of cocaine. "Good luck" with your argument that it was there when you bought it and you didn't know it existed.
You're an idiot. Nationalized does not mean annexed.
Or do you think that in the 80s the US annexed all those S&Ls? And the US annexed General Motors in 2009?
The Chicago Manual of Style disagrees with your "the Standard". As does the Bluebook. As does the Associated Press Stylebook..As does APA Style.
The Modern Language Association of America did once, but I believe they've given up on that particular nit (and they never specified italics).
Rght, but sensors do break. At which point a human pilot is going to be preferable to a computer using garbage data.
And some failures occur in flight without any chance for service techs to find and fix them, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72
Usually such failures just result in the autopilot turning itself off and the humans taking over - not really an option if you want to ditch the human pilots altogether.
I'm not disagreeing with the basics though. A computer is much less likely to be tired, or have been drinking, or to forget a step. However, our current solution to errors being detected in the sensors is "let the human pilots fly it", I don't think we have another solution for that just yet.
But then you have things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951 in which the autopilot decided that 2000 feet high was a good place to do a landing flare, shortly followed by the expected plummet to the ground.
What you should rather have is the computer flying the plane with a competent human pilot to save the day when something goes wrong (usually with the various sensors the computer it using). But of course, and it's what the article is about, if the plane is almost always under computer control how do you keep the human pilots competent. Since, as you're examples point out and my example points out, incompetent crews make things worse and don't save the day when the computer has issues either.