"A meteor that exploded over Russia's Chelyabinsk region this morning was the largest recorded object to strike the earth in more than a century, Nature reports."
Don't these people realize we're in the 3D printing epoch now? Can they just print out a new LHC in less than two years?
Well, yes but from whose point of view? Remember all those black holes that that LHC was supposed to create? Everyone was afraid they were going to destroy the world. That didn't happen but they did create a bit of a time dilation issue. For the gang working at the collider, they're just shutting down for a couple of weekends to do a little sweeping up. But for the rest of us on the outside, it's two years.
If you flick it to off then back to on, your steering will only briefly lock, and you'll still have non-power steering (the power steering pump only makes it EASIER to steer)
An expert system is only as good as the information it is fed. Until we get machines that can quickly scan a human body and tell us everything there is to know about it, we will still need doctors to talk to patients, vet what they say, observe what didn't mention and ask followup questions.
If I add a disk, is it the same device? If I swap the disk, is the same device. If I keep everything but swap the CPU, is it a new computer? If I keep the CPU but swap the motherboard?
If I swap components incrementally, when do I need to buy a new license? Does the software actually check?
I own some old stuff. An Amiga 2000, a C64, an Apple IIe, a Macintosh se/30. I maintain them because they were a part of my childhood. I have an emotional connection to these machines. Someday (I am watching) I will buy the digital microvax my old university used for their comp labs if I can. Loved that box. Spent days on it. I'll own an original Defender cabinet someday too.
I guess what I'm trying to say is why? You have no connection to this machine. You won't get nostalgic when you see it boot. Why bother?
You don't actually know that. Just because the OP did not own this machine at the time does not mean he didn't use one or even just want one back then. Putting aside the obvious impracticalities, I think it would be really cool to have a Vax 11/750 at home. I have never owned one but I did lightly use one in the 80s. The important part though, is that in it's heyday, the Vax 11/750 was held up as the lusted after prototype of what desktop computers were to become.
Sparc pizza box machines from the time when RISC work stations absolutely crushed PC's in every way are also kind of cool.
That said, I have a hard time getting excited about a V1280. They come from a time when Sparc machines were already on the wane. Contemporary x86 machines were faster, although I don't know if any had 12 processors. It competed with the first 64-bit x86 machines so it didn't have that sizzle either.
Not so long ago niche platforms and disparate architectures were slated to be good BECAUSE they were so diverse it wasn't worth the time to hack them individually...
I also remember a time not so long ago that Microsofties used to complain that the frequency and ease of attacks on public sites was due to their dominance and being a big target. I wonder what Linux admins say now, since they now dominate the data centre?
But these are not niche platforms or disparate architectures. They are all compatible from the point of view of applications and malware. It is just the customization and vendor disinterest that prevents updates. It is as if Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc added their crapware so deeply into the Windows infrasture that Microsoft's security updates could not be applied and the vendors were not interested in creating or distributing adapted versions.
I at least try to use better passwords for more important logins. I don't waste brain power or worse resuse high quality passwords for sites where it really doesn't matter if my account gets hacked.
The annoying trend I see that the sites that most often enforce "better" passwords are the ones I don't care about. Must have at least one upper and one lower character, must have a non-alpha numeric character, no more than two consecutive characters: All this just so I can post to a web forum. Meanwhile the bank will accept almost anything.
No, actually, the article does no such thing. The term was "personal computer". The acronym "PC" appears nowhere in that article, which should be no surprize because it was not in common usage at that time. "Personal computer", on the other hand was widely used to describe a variety of different platforms available at that time. "PC" comes from "IBM PC" and it's clones. It only gained a tentative broader definition after nearly all alternatives to the IBM PC linage were extinguished.
Are you sure the back room conversion with your friend's boss didn't go something like this?
Boss: That's it? Is there nothing more to it? Friend: Uh no. I think that's everything. Boss: Couldn't you do that? Friend: Um. Probably, yeah. Boss: Well, then, you have a new assignment.
Customers definitely care. However, the ones likely to care the most are the ones with a significant investment in Nikon format lenses. These lenses don't work with Canon and there may not even be an equivalent for Pentax, Sony, or Olympus.
You can get adapters to fit Nikon lenses on Canon dslrs.
As long as you don't need things like auto-focus or stabilization sure. The adapters are purely mechanical. Any electronic linkage is broken.
Venus, on the other hand, already generates a good magnetic field, and has no problem holding a significant atmosphere. It's just too hot and toxic. But a couple thousand tons of bacteria into the upper atmosphere will solve that problem, so Venus is actually the best candidate to turn into an Earth-like place
Venus doesn't have enough hydrogen to support hydrocarbon based life. Your cyanobacteria will simply die unless you hit Venus with a preposterous mass of comets. You may also need to get rid of the excess CO2 so your bugs don't they don't get too cooked.
Ding. If customers care, they'll buy from different manufacturers. This guy doesn't have a right to those parts.
Customers definitely care. However, the ones likely to care the most are the ones with a significant investment in Nikon format lenses. These lenses don't work with Canon and there may not even be an equivalent for Pentax, Sony, or Olympus.
. 'In certain types of music, like classical or jazz, we are condemning them to poverty if this is going to be the only way people consume music,
Has anything actually changed? For as long I've been alive, the music industry has been starkly stratified. The big stars make lots of money but most musicians barely get by if they are even fortunate enough to not need a day job to pay the bills. It's hard to sell CD or tapes or LP's of 'Avant cello' when few people have heard of the genre, much less the artist, and only the largest stores carry anything close.
There is all kinds of new technology. (Finfets, carbon nanotubes, meta materials, etc). And there are new devices: smart phones, dvrs, drones.
What we don't often see are new technologies suddenly making their appearance in new devices that consumers can see and buy. That's the classic (and mostly wrong) inventors tale. What happens much more often is that new technology is first applied to existing applications and new applications are cobbled together from existing technology. This model substantially reduces risk since, if we can make it work, we know there is a market for new technology. New devices can be created much more quickly and be much more likely to work if they are not based on unproven technology.
It does raise the question of what sort of breakthrough devices are we missing out on because the required technology is not useful for any current applications.
Consider our ancestors. Would it be a good idea to always rush from point A to point B, risking near constant exhaustion? Predators would find us an easy kill at that point.
I'd argue that this conservative behavior is evolutionarily driven.
Quite so. Though, I think you have the scenario backwards. Our ancestors were the predators. They relentlessly "ran" down their prey, moving efficiently while forcing the quarry to sprint erratically trying to get away until they collapsed from exhaustion.
All he had to do is pretend to be one of their female friends? Forget the con part. He was able to find 350 women who didn't think it was all that peculiar that one of their friends wanted them to video Skype naked. Who knew?
The idea was that you would go into Vine, Vine would search your facebook profile for friends of yours who were also using Vine and add them to Vine's friend list for you. That is providing real functionality. Now you have to manually search for and enter each of your friends one by one. So no, they aren't just jumping on the bandwagon, they are using the information from the Facebook API in a way that is so incredibly obvious that the fact that it is blocked makes you wonder what the hell the API was supposed to be fore in the first place.
From Facebook's perspective, the API is supposed to make being on Facebook more valuable and, therefore, help to retain users. Facebook's main asset is isn't user base. Facebook has the users, other sites don't and Facebook would like to keep it that way. Marketing to those users is how Facebook makes its money.
What you are describing is a migration tool. Once your Facebook friends have been moved to your Vine friends list, Vine doesn't need Facebook anymore and will be competing for those user's attention. I'm pretty sure this is not what Facebook Corporate had in mind.
When a corporation offers you a API, you need to keep in mind that they are doing it for themselves, not for you. If what you do with the API does not advance the business of the corporation, don't be surprised if they cut you off.
But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
You could learn to repair the machines, or learn to make the machines.
Not if other machines repair the machines and make the machines.
However, we have seen it before and we will see it again.
Not quite. Just because it appears to have happened before doesn't mean that nothing changed or that there isn't an end.
In the pre-industrial age, most earned their income through brute labor.
Early machines took much of that away but there was still profitable tasks to done by trained hands doing the tasks that machines lacked the finesse for.
The factory automation came in, able to perform many of the many tasks that well trained hands previously did. It became difficult to make a living working with one's hands. But machines still weren't very smart and so people that were smart learned to make their living by using their brains.
But machines are getting smarter. They do brain work too and the kind of work they can do goes higher each higher. A knowledge worker can attempt to move up the food chain, of course, but eventually there will be no further up to go. If one can't profitable use one's brawn or one's brain, what is there left to do? Probably the last stand will be the artists. Human creativity feeding irrational human desires. Unfortunately, society has never provided many artists with a living wage.
Of course, this doesn't happen overnight or with 100% efficiency. There will always be a few people who someone make their living through archaic means. But there will come a time when most people will be unable to provide value beyond what machines are already doing.
Can't you just take out insurance on your luggage and enjoy the trip? It it gets stolen, you'll get new gear.
regards
Sort of. You get new gear after you get home. For the remainder if your trip you will have none. That's probably going to be an issue because, if you didn't need your gear on your trip, why did you bring it with you? Loosing your camera gear on the way out to a photo safari pretty much blows the trip.
I do a lot of travel in third world countries where theft risk is a big issue. I'm not sure if a long train ride in first world country qualifies for such paranoia but here's what I do:
1) Padlock all the metal zippers. Anything with in a compartment with a fabric zipper can not be secured. There is little point in securing a bag if someone can simply open a zipper and remove the good stuff. A lock is pointless if someone an simply cut the handle with a pocket knife.
2) String a cable lock through one or more padlocks and wrap it around an immovable object, like a seat leg. I use a cheap bicycle lock much like this one: http://www.campmor.com/outdoor/gear/Product___56711?cm_vc=PDPZ2 but there are plenty of options.
Security doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough that isn't worth the trouble or risk to the thief.
That said, there have been times when I would have liked something a proximity alarm: not so much for theft but so that I don't absent mindedly leave something behind.
I would say that this shows that people's priority filters work pretty well.
As popular as it is to put down chit-chat, the truth is that words spoken by real people that you actually interact with about things that actually happen are astoundingly more important for one to remember than well crafted prose from characters who never existed.
This goes to the core of why learning structured information is often so difficult. The brain's filters have not been trained to treat the information as important so it gets discarded along with all the other rubbish.
Still, this is a pretty serious permissions flaw. Users that are not privileged to see information should not be able to search for it either.
As far as I can tell, if they have your phone number but it's set to not be visible to anyone else, it can't be searched for.
The only tests the author seems to have performed would not give any indication of what privacy setting was assigned to the phone number. So, all of his results could have been from people who had public phone numbers on Facebook.
I tested it with a friend's email address. Her "real" email address is not visible but by searching for it, I can find her page.
Slashdot Mirror
"A meteor that exploded over Russia's Chelyabinsk region this morning was the largest recorded object to strike the earth in more than a century, Nature reports."
Meteors don't hit earth, meteorites do.
Is the atmosphere not Earth?
This one, Tunguska,and one in 1947 called Sikhote-Alin that some are claiming is bigger than yesterday's rock (though still smaller than Tunguska).
Granted, Russia is the largest country in the world by land area but do *all* the big rocks have to land there?
Don't these people realize we're in the 3D printing epoch now? Can they just print out a new LHC in less than two years?
Well, yes but from whose point of view? Remember all those black holes that that LHC was supposed to create? Everyone was afraid they were going to destroy the world. That didn't happen but they did create a bit of a time dilation issue. For the gang working at the collider, they're just shutting down for a couple of weekends to do a little sweeping up. But for the rest of us on the outside, it's two years.
If you flick it to off then back to on, your steering will only briefly lock, and you'll still have non-power steering (the power steering pump only makes it EASIER to steer)
"brief" is a long way down the road at 125mph.
An expert system is only as good as the information it is fed. Until we get machines that can quickly scan a human body and tell us everything there is to know about it, we will still need doctors to talk to patients, vet what they say, observe what didn't mention and ask followup questions.
If I add a disk, is it the same device?
If I swap the disk, is the same device.
If I keep everything but swap the CPU, is it a new computer?
If I keep the CPU but swap the motherboard?
If I swap components incrementally, when do I need to buy a new license?
Does the software actually check?
I own some old stuff. An Amiga 2000, a C64, an Apple IIe, a Macintosh se/30. I maintain them because they were a part of my childhood. I have an emotional connection to these machines. Someday (I am watching) I will buy the digital microvax my old university used for their comp labs if I can. Loved that box. Spent days on it. I'll own an original Defender cabinet someday too.
I guess what I'm trying to say is why? You have no connection to this machine. You won't get nostalgic when you see it boot. Why bother?
You don't actually know that. Just because the OP did not own this machine at the time does not mean he didn't use one or even just want one back then. Putting aside the obvious impracticalities, I think it would be really cool to have a Vax 11/750 at home. I have never owned one but I did lightly use one in the 80s. The important part though, is that in it's heyday, the Vax 11/750 was held up as the lusted after prototype of what desktop computers were to become.
Sparc pizza box machines from the time when RISC work stations absolutely crushed PC's in every way are also kind of cool.
That said, I have a hard time getting excited about a V1280. They come from a time when Sparc machines were already on the wane. Contemporary x86 machines were faster, although I don't know if any had 12 processors. It competed with the first 64-bit x86 machines so it didn't have that sizzle either.
Given the danger to the New Horizons probe, the appropriate mythology names would have to be Scylla and Charybdis
Not so long ago niche platforms and disparate architectures were slated to be good BECAUSE they were so diverse it wasn't worth the time to hack them individually...
I also remember a time not so long ago that Microsofties used to complain that the frequency and ease of attacks on public sites was due to their dominance and being a big target. I wonder what Linux admins say now, since they now dominate the data centre?
But these are not niche platforms or disparate architectures. They are all compatible from the point of view of applications and malware. It is just the customization and vendor disinterest that prevents updates. It is as if Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc added their crapware so deeply into the Windows infrasture that Microsoft's security updates could not be applied and the vendors were not interested in creating or distributing adapted versions.
I at least try to use better passwords for more important logins. I don't waste brain power or worse resuse high quality passwords for sites where it really doesn't matter if my account gets hacked.
The annoying trend I see that the sites that most often enforce "better" passwords are the ones I don't care about. Must have at least one upper and one lower character, must have a non-alpha numeric character, no more than two consecutive characters: All this just so I can post to a web forum. Meanwhile the bank will accept almost anything.
I think not.
The IBM PC was introduced on August 12, 1981.
Yet, here is a 1978 Computerworld article, slinging the phrase about with abandon
No, actually, the article does no such thing. The term was "personal computer". The acronym "PC" appears nowhere in that article, which should be no surprize because it was not in common usage at that time. "Personal computer", on the other hand was widely used to describe a variety of different platforms available at that time. "PC" comes from "IBM PC" and it's clones. It only gained a tentative broader definition after nearly all alternatives to the IBM PC linage were extinguished.
Are you sure the back room conversion with your friend's boss didn't go something like this?
Boss: That's it? Is there nothing more to it?
Friend: Uh no. I think that's everything.
Boss: Couldn't you do that?
Friend: Um. Probably, yeah.
Boss: Well, then, you have a new assignment.
You can get adapters to fit Nikon lenses on Canon dslrs.
As long as you don't need things like auto-focus or stabilization sure. The adapters are purely mechanical. Any electronic linkage is broken.
Venus, on the other hand, already generates a good magnetic field, and has no problem holding a significant atmosphere. It's just too hot and toxic. But a couple thousand tons of bacteria into the upper atmosphere will solve that problem, so Venus is actually the best candidate to turn into an Earth-like place
Venus doesn't have enough hydrogen to support hydrocarbon based life. Your cyanobacteria will simply die unless you hit Venus with a preposterous mass of comets. You may also need to get rid of the excess CO2 so your bugs don't they don't get too cooked.
Ding. If customers care, they'll buy from different manufacturers. This guy doesn't have a right to those parts.
Customers definitely care. However, the ones likely to care the most are the ones with a significant investment in Nikon format lenses. These lenses don't work with Canon and there may not even be an equivalent for Pentax, Sony, or Olympus.
. 'In certain types of music, like classical or jazz, we are condemning them to poverty if this is going to be the only way people consume music,
Has anything actually changed? For as long I've been alive, the music industry has been starkly stratified. The big stars make lots of money but most musicians barely get by if they are even fortunate enough to not need a day job to pay the bills. It's hard to sell CD or tapes or LP's of 'Avant cello' when few people have heard of the genre, much less the artist, and only the largest stores carry anything close.
There is all kinds of new technology. (Finfets, carbon nanotubes, meta materials, etc). And there are new devices: smart phones, dvrs, drones.
What we don't often see are new technologies suddenly making their appearance in new devices that consumers can see and buy. That's the classic (and mostly wrong) inventors tale. What happens much more often is that new technology is first applied to existing applications and new applications are cobbled together from existing technology. This model substantially reduces risk since, if we can make it work, we know there is a market for new technology. New devices can be created much more quickly and be much more likely to work if they are not based on unproven technology.
It does raise the question of what sort of breakthrough devices are we missing out on because the required technology is not useful for any current applications.
Consider our ancestors. Would it be a good idea to always rush from point A to point B, risking near constant exhaustion? Predators would find us an easy kill at that point.
I'd argue that this conservative behavior is evolutionarily driven.
Quite so. Though, I think you have the scenario backwards. Our ancestors were the predators. They relentlessly "ran" down their prey, moving efficiently while forcing the quarry to sprint erratically trying to get away until they collapsed from exhaustion.
All he had to do is pretend to be one of their female friends? Forget the con part. He was able to find 350 women who didn't think it was all that peculiar that one of their friends wanted them to video Skype naked. Who knew?
The idea was that you would go into Vine, Vine would search your facebook profile for friends of yours who were also using Vine and add them to Vine's friend list for you. That is providing real functionality. Now you have to manually search for and enter each of your friends one by one. So no, they aren't just jumping on the bandwagon, they are using the information from the Facebook API in a way that is so incredibly obvious that the fact that it is blocked makes you wonder what the hell the API was supposed to be fore in the first place.
From Facebook's perspective, the API is supposed to make being on Facebook more valuable and, therefore, help to retain users. Facebook's main asset is isn't user base. Facebook has the users, other sites don't and Facebook would like to keep it that way. Marketing to those users is how Facebook makes its money.
What you are describing is a migration tool. Once your Facebook friends have been moved to your Vine friends list, Vine doesn't need Facebook anymore and will be competing for those user's attention. I'm pretty sure this is not what Facebook Corporate had in mind.
When a corporation offers you a API, you need to keep in mind that they are doing it for themselves, not for you. If what you do with the API does not advance the business of the corporation, don't be surprised if they cut you off.
But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
You could learn to repair the machines, or learn to make the machines.
Not if other machines repair the machines and make the machines.
However, we have seen it before and we will see it again.
Not quite. Just because it appears to have happened before doesn't mean that nothing changed or that there isn't an end.
In the pre-industrial age, most earned their income through brute labor.
Early machines took much of that away but there was still profitable tasks to done by trained hands doing the tasks that machines lacked the finesse for.
The factory automation came in, able to perform many of the many tasks that well trained hands previously did. It became difficult to make a living working with one's hands. But machines still weren't very smart and so people that were smart learned to make their living by using their brains.
But machines are getting smarter. They do brain work too and the kind of work they can do goes higher each higher. A knowledge worker can attempt to move up the food chain, of course, but eventually there will be no further up to go. If one can't profitable use one's brawn or one's brain, what is there left to do? Probably the last stand will be the artists. Human creativity feeding irrational human desires. Unfortunately, society has never provided many artists with a living wage.
Of course, this doesn't happen overnight or with 100% efficiency. There will always be a few people who someone make their living through archaic means. But there will come a time when most people will be unable to provide value beyond what machines are already doing.
Can't you just take out insurance on your luggage and enjoy the trip? It it gets stolen, you'll get new gear.
regards
Sort of. You get new gear after you get home. For the remainder if your trip you will have none. That's probably going to be an issue because, if you didn't need your gear on your trip, why did you bring it with you? Loosing your camera gear on the way out to a photo safari pretty much blows the trip.
I do a lot of travel in third world countries where theft risk is a big issue. I'm not sure if a long train ride in first world country qualifies for such paranoia but here's what I do:
1) Padlock all the metal zippers. Anything with in a compartment with a fabric zipper can not be secured. There is little point in securing a bag if someone can simply open a zipper and remove the good stuff. A lock is pointless if someone an simply cut the handle with a pocket knife.
2) String a cable lock through one or more padlocks and wrap it around an immovable object, like a seat leg. I use a cheap bicycle lock much like this one: http://www.campmor.com/outdoor/gear/Product___56711?cm_vc=PDPZ2 but there are plenty of options.
Security doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough that isn't worth the trouble or risk to the thief.
That said, there have been times when I would have liked something a proximity alarm: not so much for theft but so that I don't absent mindedly leave something behind.
I would say that this shows that people's priority filters work pretty well.
As popular as it is to put down chit-chat, the truth is that words spoken by real people that you actually interact with about things that actually happen are astoundingly more important for one to remember than well crafted prose from characters who never existed.
This goes to the core of why learning structured information is often so difficult. The brain's filters have not been trained to treat the information as important so it gets discarded along with all the other rubbish.
Still, this is a pretty serious permissions flaw. Users that are not privileged to see information should not be able to search for it either.
As far as I can tell, if they have your phone number but it's set to not be visible to anyone else, it can't be searched for.
The only tests the author seems to have performed would not give any indication of what privacy setting was assigned to the phone number. So, all of his results could have been from people who had public phone numbers on Facebook.
I tested it with a friend's email address. Her "real" email address is not visible but by searching for it, I can find her page.