I truly feel for you. I seriously wouldn't be able to tolerate the entire OS going down. This is modern hardware and software, such crashes plain and simply shouldn't happen. App crashes, fine, the OS can't cancel out stupid developers.
However, if I were to blame somebody, I'd definitely look at Motorola. Their software tends to be absolute garbage (Hello, Motoblur!), so I wouldn't be surprised if this extended to drivers. Unfortunately, Google has very little say in those areas, or at least they didn't at that point. I'm hoping to see a major turnabout with Motorola being Google now.
In the meantime, I have to say to any and all/. reader: just pick up Nexus phones. Even if things like the SGSII or HTC Sensation sound nice, there are just so many advantages to going vanilla. Stable software, good, solid hardware, high polish (certainly higher than most third-party additions like TouchWiz), extremely fast updates, etc. I have a Nexus S and outside of some envy towards the Galaxy Nexus (because I'm a hardware geek), I couldn't be more pleased.
I seem to recall a fair few CEOs working for wholly private and "free market" corporations getting tidy sums for running their companies to the ground.
Has anybody been to Italy? It seems like every town of more than a hundred people has what they call a ZTL where foreigners cannot drive in. Those zones are bordered by barely legible signs with cameras attached to them. License plates are automatically scanned and fined with what appears to be no doublechecking.
I know that the last time I went there, we were fined for entering the zone when we'd specifically been "cleared out" by the hotel we were staying at. Apparently they send the tickets no matter what and quietly accept payments even if you did no wrong.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Quantum behavior disappears at macroscopic sizes simply because all lengths involved are microscopic. Take a hallmark of quantum mechanics as a simple example: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It has been shown that the standard deviation of the position times that of the momentum MUST equal or exceed Planck's reduced constant divided by two. Considering the latter is in the order of 10^(-34), it's no surprise that macroscopic measurements are not affected by this limit at all, but nanoscopic ones most definitely are. In the same way, quantum tunneling is also an effect which could theoretically happen at macroscopic sizes, but with a probability so low it's effectively impossible. There's no hard limit, it's just a spectrum which rapidly becomes negligible as size increases.
As I said, the biggest problem is an engineering one: how do you scale up the number of qubits to an appreciable amount while keeping errors below an acceptable threshold? How do you operate on said qubits without measuring them so as to preserve the wavefunction? Some cases have answers, but this is still overall an open question, unlike classical computing where the first question's been answered by transistors and the second question has no bearing.
A similar question could've been asked years ago, back when transistors didn't exist: 'I'm now offering a US$100,000 award for a demonstration, convincing to me, that scalable personal computing is impossible in the physical world.'
Using only technology available then, the answer would've to scale down tubes to the minimal size and go "well this computer's too weak to do anything useful, ergo it's impossible to have a personal computer that isn't just a toy computer." Then transistors happened.
These kinds of things are stupid, because you're asking for a demonstration to an engineering problem, when engineering is always capped by scientific research. You could have a perfectly "convincing" proof today and tomorrow a new discovery crumbles it all to the ground.
Unless a theoretical and fundamental proof can be made that quantum computing is impossible, there's no reason to say that it is, and I have serious doubts such a proof can be made considering what has been accomplished thus far. Current limitations are engineering issues, but nothing fundamental is stopping a useful and practical quantum computer from existing.
When many of the lines were laid by the government, no.
Even when considering cable, the lines have been laid down a long time ago by now and most of the network doesn't need to be replaced when new, faster tech arrives.
The answer is much easier: few telcos, price fixing (effectively if not legally speaking).
Teksavvy has extremely low penetration though. Outside of the main cities, it's impossible to get service with them, and I'm not speaking of rural areas either (I'm in a new area in a 80k-large town, not small by any means, and they don't service us).
Try again, this time by reading the fucking bill or at the very least the digested version from somebody who knows their stuff. I'll just quote the much more knowledgeable Michael Geist on the subject:
Bill C-11, the Canadian copyright reform bill, is the latest iteration of several attempts at Canadian copyright reform. There is a lot to like about the bill: it includes an expansion of the fair dealing provision, new consumer rights for format shifting, time shifting, and backup copies, a provision facilitating user generated content, a new distinction between commercial and non-commercial infringement, as well as a fair and effective approach to Internet provider liability. Some of these provisions are not perfect (flexible fair dealing would be better than the C-11 model, eliminating statutory damages for non-commercial infringement is needed), but the bill is far better than prior Conservative copyright bills.
I was genuinely suprised to hear that C-11 actually had positive sides to it, but apparently it does. If the bad parts are corrected, it could be a win for the people.
If you actually looked at C-11, you'd notice that it's not actually a bad bill. It just needs the digital locks provision removed or reworked so that it's not batshit stupid, and it also needs to be protected from... you guessed it, USofA influence.
Sadly, the money-loving, backwards-running Conservative government sure as hell won't follow that train of thought.
It's not much of a mindfuck actually because your definition of "teleportation" is flawed.
Quantum teleportation (ie the only teleportation we know of thus far) works by taking two entangled particles and essentially sending the first particle's state to the second instantaneously (there are details but that's the basis of it), destroying the original. There is still that destruction bit which most likely means a teleported you, even bit by bit, would just be an undistinguishable copy of yourself with you being dead.
If you want a job in IT, you don't take a CS degree. It's as simple as that and I still can't fathom why people can't get it through their bloody heads.
I am in a computer science degree at university. The goal of the degree is NOT to make you a good programmer or sysadmin or whatever. It's about making you a scientist (you know, the S after C?). Research, learning, development, touching a little of everything... so you can take a Master's degree in whichever direction you'd prefer. You're getting groomed up for R&D and academia, not working at Cisco.
If you want those kinds of skills, you should be looking at a professional degree in information technology, programming, analyst or if you're motivated, a computer engineering degree. Those are all fairly different from a CS degree because they're specifically geared towards making you work with tools and be hands-on.
I have absolutely nothing against IT or engineering, but I do have something against IT guys and engineers who complain that CS doesn't teach them IT. Do you also complain that a mathematics degree doesn't teach you about accounting?
I guess it's better to understand 50% than to regurgitate 80% of the material you've been given. Sure, the latter might give you better grades, but if grades are all you care about, I'm not sure you've actually understood the purpose of "learning".
What Professor Bjork is doing, from what I can tell, is giving you a method to learn better, not to memorize better. Anybody can cram stuff the day before the exam, but that knowledge won't last much longer than the time it took you to throw it down on the exam sheet. The method's going to be hard initially, you will forget things, but in the end you'll have a better understanding and a better methodology for learning.
It definitely sounds intriguing and I'm tempted to put it to work, even if I actually do some of the stuff he's talking about already; I tend to find that switching between subjects allows me to "cool down" about each one and come back to them refreshed and oddly more knowledgeable than I was at the end of the last bout of studying. This is often even more obvious after a good night's sleep, where things that eluded me constantly the day before would pop to mind instantly come morning.
Funny that, most class averages I've seen hover in the C- to C+ range. Then again, I'm not in the US, so perhaps our own education system is not as bad as I thought.
You have access to the code and know how it would behave in such a case?
The sync server being down would most likely have the same result as not having a network connection at all; Dropbox would just wait until it can connect, not affecting your files in any way.
Slashdot Mirror
I truly feel for you. I seriously wouldn't be able to tolerate the entire OS going down. This is modern hardware and software, such crashes plain and simply shouldn't happen. App crashes, fine, the OS can't cancel out stupid developers.
However, if I were to blame somebody, I'd definitely look at Motorola. Their software tends to be absolute garbage (Hello, Motoblur!), so I wouldn't be surprised if this extended to drivers. Unfortunately, Google has very little say in those areas, or at least they didn't at that point. I'm hoping to see a major turnabout with Motorola being Google now.
In the meantime, I have to say to any and all /. reader: just pick up Nexus phones. Even if things like the SGSII or HTC Sensation sound nice, there are just so many advantages to going vanilla. Stable software, good, solid hardware, high polish (certainly higher than most third-party additions like TouchWiz), extremely fast updates, etc. I have a Nexus S and outside of some envy towards the Galaxy Nexus (because I'm a hardware geek), I couldn't be more pleased.
Do you have a twin brother we can steal for Canuckland?
Carly Fiona? Stephen Elop?
I seem to recall a fair few CEOs working for wholly private and "free market" corporations getting tidy sums for running their companies to the ground.
Has anybody been to Italy? It seems like every town of more than a hundred people has what they call a ZTL where foreigners cannot drive in. Those zones are bordered by barely legible signs with cameras attached to them. License plates are automatically scanned and fined with what appears to be no doublechecking.
I know that the last time I went there, we were fined for entering the zone when we'd specifically been "cleared out" by the hotel we were staying at. Apparently they send the tickets no matter what and quietly accept payments even if you did no wrong.
He should post it up on Conservapedia.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Quantum behavior disappears at macroscopic sizes simply because all lengths involved are microscopic. Take a hallmark of quantum mechanics as a simple example: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It has been shown that the standard deviation of the position times that of the momentum MUST equal or exceed Planck's reduced constant divided by two. Considering the latter is in the order of 10^(-34), it's no surprise that macroscopic measurements are not affected by this limit at all, but nanoscopic ones most definitely are. In the same way, quantum tunneling is also an effect which could theoretically happen at macroscopic sizes, but with a probability so low it's effectively impossible. There's no hard limit, it's just a spectrum which rapidly becomes negligible as size increases.
As I said, the biggest problem is an engineering one: how do you scale up the number of qubits to an appreciable amount while keeping errors below an acceptable threshold? How do you operate on said qubits without measuring them so as to preserve the wavefunction? Some cases have answers, but this is still overall an open question, unlike classical computing where the first question's been answered by transistors and the second question has no bearing.
Thank you! I wanted to compare this to flight, but I didn't have sources or references at hand.
A similar question could've been asked years ago, back when transistors didn't exist: 'I'm now offering a US$100,000 award for a demonstration, convincing to me, that scalable personal computing is impossible in the physical world.'
Using only technology available then, the answer would've to scale down tubes to the minimal size and go "well this computer's too weak to do anything useful, ergo it's impossible to have a personal computer that isn't just a toy computer." Then transistors happened.
These kinds of things are stupid, because you're asking for a demonstration to an engineering problem, when engineering is always capped by scientific research. You could have a perfectly "convincing" proof today and tomorrow a new discovery crumbles it all to the ground.
Unless a theoretical and fundamental proof can be made that quantum computing is impossible, there's no reason to say that it is, and I have serious doubts such a proof can be made considering what has been accomplished thus far. Current limitations are engineering issues, but nothing fundamental is stopping a useful and practical quantum computer from existing.
When many of the lines were laid by the government, no.
Even when considering cable, the lines have been laid down a long time ago by now and most of the network doesn't need to be replaced when new, faster tech arrives.
The answer is much easier: few telcos, price fixing (effectively if not legally speaking).
Teksavvy has extremely low penetration though. Outside of the main cities, it's impossible to get service with them, and I'm not speaking of rural areas either (I'm in a new area in a 80k-large town, not small by any means, and they don't service us).
Because IW employees are probably paid to submit them and editors post them?
Try again, this time by reading the fucking bill or at the very least the digested version from somebody who knows their stuff. I'll just quote the much more knowledgeable Michael Geist on the subject:
Bill C-11, the Canadian copyright reform bill, is the latest iteration of several attempts at Canadian copyright reform. There is a lot to like about the bill: it includes an expansion of the fair dealing provision, new consumer rights for format shifting, time shifting, and backup copies, a provision facilitating user generated content, a new distinction between commercial and non-commercial infringement, as well as a fair and effective approach to Internet provider liability. Some of these provisions are not perfect (flexible fair dealing would be better than the C-11 model, eliminating statutory damages for non-commercial infringement is needed), but the bill is far better than prior Conservative copyright bills.
I was genuinely suprised to hear that C-11 actually had positive sides to it, but apparently it does. If the bad parts are corrected, it could be a win for the people.
If you actually looked at C-11, you'd notice that it's not actually a bad bill. It just needs the digital locks provision removed or reworked so that it's not batshit stupid, and it also needs to be protected from... you guessed it, USofA influence.
Sadly, the money-loving, backwards-running Conservative government sure as hell won't follow that train of thought.
It's not much of a mindfuck actually because your definition of "teleportation" is flawed.
Quantum teleportation (ie the only teleportation we know of thus far) works by taking two entangled particles and essentially sending the first particle's state to the second instantaneously (there are details but that's the basis of it), destroying the original. There is still that destruction bit which most likely means a teleported you, even bit by bit, would just be an undistinguishable copy of yourself with you being dead.
Your clone wouldn't, but you'd be dead. I doubt having two copies of the same brain suddenly make your consciousness share both of them.
When the original dies, you die. An undistinguishable copy of you lives on.
Obviously only the bad guys (ie those who disagree with me) are biased.
Alternatively, don't download shit you don't trust?
Mind you, that might be too straightforward for most people to follow, I know.
If you want a job in IT, you don't take a CS degree. It's as simple as that and I still can't fathom why people can't get it through their bloody heads.
I am in a computer science degree at university. The goal of the degree is NOT to make you a good programmer or sysadmin or whatever. It's about making you a scientist (you know, the S after C?). Research, learning, development, touching a little of everything... so you can take a Master's degree in whichever direction you'd prefer. You're getting groomed up for R&D and academia, not working at Cisco.
If you want those kinds of skills, you should be looking at a professional degree in information technology, programming, analyst or if you're motivated, a computer engineering degree. Those are all fairly different from a CS degree because they're specifically geared towards making you work with tools and be hands-on.
I have absolutely nothing against IT or engineering, but I do have something against IT guys and engineers who complain that CS doesn't teach them IT. Do you also complain that a mathematics degree doesn't teach you about accounting?
I guess it's better to understand 50% than to regurgitate 80% of the material you've been given. Sure, the latter might give you better grades, but if grades are all you care about, I'm not sure you've actually understood the purpose of "learning".
What Professor Bjork is doing, from what I can tell, is giving you a method to learn better, not to memorize better. Anybody can cram stuff the day before the exam, but that knowledge won't last much longer than the time it took you to throw it down on the exam sheet. The method's going to be hard initially, you will forget things, but in the end you'll have a better understanding and a better methodology for learning.
It definitely sounds intriguing and I'm tempted to put it to work, even if I actually do some of the stuff he's talking about already; I tend to find that switching between subjects allows me to "cool down" about each one and come back to them refreshed and oddly more knowledgeable than I was at the end of the last bout of studying. This is often even more obvious after a good night's sleep, where things that eluded me constantly the day before would pop to mind instantly come morning.
Nice way of conflating your dislike of closed-source software and Microsoft in general with what Gates can do outside of said corporation.
Why was this even modded informative to begin with? You can disagree with someone without resorting to ad hominem attacks.
Funny that, most class averages I've seen hover in the C- to C+ range. Then again, I'm not in the US, so perhaps our own education system is not as bad as I thought.
How bizarre that large news corporations heavily involved in copyright lobbying wouldn't report about the negative bits of ACTA, huh?
By that logic, we wouldn't invent anything because people can only list inventions they've already made.
Nicely done, really.
At least Quebec didn't vote the Conservatives into power...
You have access to the code and know how it would behave in such a case?
The sync server being down would most likely have the same result as not having a network connection at all; Dropbox would just wait until it can connect, not affecting your files in any way.