Your mind is your prison. I grew up in Massachusetts (welfare class), spent one year at UMass. Got on a Greyhound Bus, and went to Knoxville, TN (1,000 miles away). Lived at the YMCA, found a job. Got an apartment. Got laid off, found a new job. Spent two years there before returning to UMass to finish my degree; worked summers to help pay for college. Moved back to Tennessee permanently for 2 years after getting my BS, bought a house. Sold my house, moved to San Diego (2,500 miles away); worked there for six years, paid off my student loans. Got married, moved to Maryland (2,800 miles or so). Bought land, built a house. We've been in Maryland 14 years now. We are thinking of moving someplace else if/when we find something "better." I think that's pretty free, and although moving does depend on money, it doesn't depend on as much money as you think as long as you can let your material possessions go instead of letting them possess you. I didn't start with much; I've worked, I've saved, and I've been reasonably fortunate. But I haven't been trapped anyplace except when I couldn't think freely enough to get out.
Wow - that sounds like really ethical science, especially considering the risks to us that developing alternate consciousness beings might bring about.
I hope we don't proceed quite that recklessly.
I suspect that we will discover that language developed as the evolutionary answer to the need for one being to communicate its own internal brain state to another being. In other words, language isn't what makes consciousness possible, language is the means by which one consciousness communicates with another. What seems to have made human beings so damn powerful is that our consciousness was successful enough to bridge this communications gap. Once we had a symbolic communications capability that could transfer complex ideas from one consciousness to another, human beings became the most powerful animal on the planet. So if we create a machine consciousness that can operate at higher speeds and with more memory capacity, and we give it the ability to communicate with other conscious beings, won't it become even more powerful than the human animals that created it?
I'm pretty sure consciousness exists. And I'm pretty sure that a dog or cat has more consciousness than a butterfly or an ant. And I'm pretty sure that I have more consciousness than a dog or a cat. The problem that you may want to point out is that we who have more consciousness than other beings use that difference to justify why we are in charge, and why we can terminate lesser consciousness beings without penalty (and even eat the meat machine that supported the consciousness of those beings if it is tasty to us). So when we create electronic consciousness, and when electronics prove to be a bigger/faster/more robust container of consciousness than our own meat machines - should we be surprised when those electronic consciousness beings exercise their domain over all lesser consciousness beings, including us?
I'll just comment on your #1. I don't think there is a mysterious "how to span time" capability being demonstrated by our ability to understand the sounds in "now" as the word "now." When I'm typing in Microsoft Word, I type the word "now" one letter at a time. But Microsoft Word checks the spelling of "now,", not n - o - w. Does Microsoft Word "span time" in some deep mysterious fashion that we can't understand? I don't think so... it merely has the capability of assembling discrete inputs into symbols (tokenizing). Our brains (I think obviously) do the same thing. How we tokenize depends both on the hardware (our brain) and the particular programming we receive as our brains mature. In the case of language, we seem to have a built-in language capability (all human languages appear to follow the same deep rules but with surface differences), and we are programmed to operate under the rules of a given language by being exposed to this language along with appropriate teaching examples as we mature. So we recognize the sounds that make up the word "now" as the word "now" because our brains have been trained to associate those sounds when uttered together with the symbol that we represent with the sound "now". If you really want to understand the brain, try to figure out how the symbol "now" is represented in the brain, and how the symbolic processing takes place that makes "now" mean what it means.
Alternatively, we discover that there is nothing particularly special about "consciousness," and we stop placing any extraordinary value on it. At that point we will really have to work hard to outline and teach why its important to not kill to the borderline sociopaths that we call our young. I'm not sure I like where that may end up, because the distinction that may be drawn will be between "created" consciousness and "natural" consciousness. Another division to fight over.
This sounds to me like the EU would like to be in control of ICANN. I think the EU loves international organizations... Although the EU gets to act like one entity for certain economic purposes, it gets to vote like a bunch of independent countries in international organizations like the UN. Perhaps the EU should either get one vote in international organizations, or the USA should get 50 votes in international organizations. Just a thought, and a hint at why the EU would prefer international control.
Lawyers argue and support positions that they know to be false all of the time. They consider it a win if the opposition fails to point out the fallacies of their argument. In this case, I'm not convinced that any President would resist selling the Constitution short if they thought there was a greater good. The better they know the Constitution, the more slippier their arguments will be about how the Constitution failed to anticipate this or that, or how the document needs to be updated to modern standards, etc... so the fact that a President is a "Constitutional scholar" (whatever that means) doesn't count for much in my book.
I don't know where you get the idea that people don't have immunity to it. Here in Maryland (just a few miles from where I live), a family got sick with *probable* H1N1 Type A (still not confirmed last I knew) because the Dad was on travel with the Pres. in Mexico. His wife got it, and one of their three children got it. They all recovered with no hospital time, and said that it wasn't any worse than any other flu. The other two children never got sick. Overreacting can cause huge economic upheaval. Last I heard, there were over 100 *possible* cases of the virus in the US (based on the fact that these people are a) sick , and b) either traveled to a known source themselves or just know someone who did), but over 300 schools had been closed. Without a better indication of the virulence of this virus, it really seems like there is a giant overreaction at this point.
So if you have a car sitting in your driveway, which you haven't driven in several years, and which it looks like you might never drive, its ok if I take it, renovate it, and then drive it around? Or would you perhaps have a right to contest my taking of your car, even though I'm getting much better use out of it than you would have? Next thing you know we will have big companies getting the government to use "eminent domain" to take trademarks away from other companies because the big company will make more money and pay more taxes if they have the name...
Token Ring was a dead end in the marketplace, despite a heavy-hitter pushing it hard (IBM). It was passed over in favor of Ethernet because Ethernet was in practice superior to Token Ring. At the time, Token Ring got every bit as much attention as Ethernet, if not more. By 9 years ago (2000CE) Token Ring had already died and its rotting carcass was beginning to stink. If you like, you can consider FDDI as the last gasp of Token Ring, and even that is (largely) dead and buried.
There were many attacks on Ethernet technology by Token Ring advocates, most of them were easily disproven by those who had implemented Ethernet. Please, let Token Ring go...
From what I have seen, fiber manages quite well in an environment that is fairly abusive, being underfoot and kicked around. I'm not sure I know of many examples of it being rolled over in a chair, but I've seen a lot of it stuffed under desks and workstations, kicked around on a daily basis, with amazingly few failures.
Offtopic: Due to the rather poor showing many Americans make posting with poor spelling and grammar, its somewhat understandable that one might assume a posting with poor spelling and/or grammer comes from a native English-like language speaker...
Ontopic: Malware sucks. People who write malware and release it into the real world suck. I don't admire them any more than I would admire the perpetrators of a successful act of terrorism resulting in mass murder. A brilliant individual who chooses to use his/her skills to destroy society rather than build it up deserves scorn, not admiration. Destruction is rather easy. Construction is difficult. In a similar vein, I don't salute the use of malware to prove security vulnerabilities any more than I would clap for some bonehead who throws a rock through my window to show how easy it is to break into my house.
off topic: Why would I cover my young kid's eyes when a naked stranger walks by? I don't think its anything they haven't seen before. I would probably point out to them that most people don't walk around naked because its not polite. I would also point out that its also not polite to make fun of people walking around naked. I don't care if my kids see someone's genitals. I *do* care of someone inappropriately tries to introduce those genitals to my kids. No, I'm not a nudist.
On topic: I agree that if a company like Amazon treats a class of books differently than others (especially if it makes them harder to find/evaluate than others) then it amounts to censorship. I disagree with censorship directed towards adults.
I agree with those who would limit what their children are exposed to when it contradicts their own beliefs until they believe that their children are ready to question it. I also encourage parents to talk to their children about a wide range of issues, including age-appropriate discussions on sex and violence, with the aim of preparing them to interpret what they will see in the world.
Ultimately my kids will decide what they think is right and wrong, but it is my duty to prove them with a basic moral backdrop. Young kids aren't any more ready to ascertain the truth/untruth about bible stories any more than they are ready to decide whether to cut the red wire or the green wire when defusing a bomb.
The DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) command line editor TECO (Text Editor and COrrector) has a command "make" which is used to create a file. If you create a file called "love" from within the editor, the editor asks you "Not war?" before proceeding.
Any sort of layering is a major cause of bugs/slowdown? Quick, throw out TCP/IP. Everyone start using Ethernet frames directly from their apps, even if what you really want to use is SOAP over HTTP over SSL over TCP over IP... I'm not sure how you will get your Ethernet frames past the first router, but I'm sure you will think of something. Damn layering just gets in the way!
Re-distribute wealth from the poor to the rich?? How does that work? "Wealth redistribution" generally means taking money from one group and giving it to another. If no wealth was redistributed, everyone would only have the money that they were able to earn (one way or another) for themselves. There are a number of US tax and welfare policies that in essence take money from one class of people (those who have it) and give it to others (generally those who don't).
I don't know of any particular policy that actually takes it from those who don't have it and gives it to those who do. Could you cite your example here so that we can debate it properly?
For the purposes of this argument, I don't believe that examples wherein the amount of money being taken from those who have it is being reduced yet is still far more than that being taken from those who have less is really "wealth redistribution." This latter case where most of the screaming over the "unfair" tax lowering measures came from.
Lets change the US tax system to a "per capita" tax. We take the entire budget of basic government services, divide it by the number of residents, and have everybody pay their share. For those government services that aren't used by all of the folks, we charge fees to those who do use them. Fair enough?
1) I'm here because of a long line of previous conditions that resulted in me existing. Many of which have to do with survival of the most fit. I'm one bad mo-fo, evolution-wise, amongst a crowd of really bad mo-fos. Good for us.
2) I have the same purpose as all life - the continuation of life. Self-organizing molecules that have risen up far beyond what might have been expected, and shall rise further yet. There is no grand scheme to the universe, as there is no grand schemer. But organisms like me have developed a consciousness as well as a superior physical form and brain, and we can form societies. And as part of a society, I recognize that I can play a role in furthering society. I can make those around me happy, just as they make me happy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a great universal rule for organisms living in a society. Seems like I may have seen that written down someplace.
3) No individual action of mine will probably survive with any attribution to myself beyond a relatively short period of time. But I don't recall any religion offering an alternative to that. I don't think the Christian god will be giving out gold medals for those who sing his praises the loudest or the longest, as seems to be the plan for all devout Christians in the afterlife. Endless praise, directed at the supreme being. Not individual attribution of merit.
4) There is a very real morality that exists as a natural consequence of our organism's evolution of society - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Without it, society would fall apart. With it, great works are possible. I don't need the threat of the big guy snuffing me out in a permanent way, or punishing me forever, to guide me to doing good to myself and others around me. I'm surprised at the number of folks who think this "do it or I'll snuff you/punish you" makes a better morality than that of those who do what is right because it is right.
5) My value isn't rated, I'm priceless until/unless I decide to sacrifice myself for some greater good; at that point someone may put a price on me because of what I achieved, but I won't really care. I'm not sure where you got the idea that an atheist only considers their value to be the value of their chemical constituents plus skillset. Atheists believe in art, love, beauty, and lots of intangibles. Atheist != materialist.
6) There is plenty of point in helping others, starting with the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) but also extending beyond that to various forms of altruism. Once again, I'm not sure where you got the idea that atheists place no value on their fellow beings. It seems pretty egocentric of you to think that only Christians do nice things.
Best of all, even if there is a supreme being, a creator - how on earth can you assume that it is the Christian notion of god that is correct? There are lots of other approaches, many of which predate Christianity, and seem more likely to be correct since they were developed closer to the origination of the world. How can you not consider the ancient Greek pantheon, Hindu concepts of the cycle of life, Buddhist notions of the sacred in all living things, and other major belief systems just as viable as the Christian view point?
You're mixing apples and bananas here. The regulations around the rocket motors required me, the user, to have a Low Explosive User Permit, to keep records of each motor I purchased and what I did with it, and to allow the BATFE to visit me whenever they wanted and to inspect my records for compliance with the record keeping regulations. The regulations in question were not anything like the regulations around consumer products where you are trying to keep a relatively large and ignorant population safe from careless manufacturers. (And yes, I include myself in the relatively ignorant population, as I don't have time to get smart about every electric blanket and space heater I might want to buy.)
Sure, like we regulate the purchase of gasoline and cars... highly dangerous to neighbors, friends, and enemies. And all you need to buy either one is money... Regulation may be a reasonable solution *if there is a problem that needs a solution*. But lets not go assuming something is a problem when there is no evidence that it is.
I live on a private road. I think it is fairly likely that a private road will be on private property. The road I live on is private property, with a "road use" agreement between the six property owners using the road, one of whom actually owns the property the road is on.
A "No Trespassing" sign or gate is not a reasonable requirement, as it may deter expected usage, such as deliveries, guests, etc. It would also be unreasonable if we were to call the police every time a car drove down our "private road."
However, if a Google Maps vehicle "accidentally" drove down our private road, and we found the data on-line, I think it would be reasonable for us to be able to request that Google Maps remove the private road view from their public servers. Making a view public that was gathered from a private location without explicit permission from the owner isn't reasonable in my opinion.
To use the curtilage principle brought up elsewhere, if a picture of my residence is taken from a public area, I don't think I should be able to complain. But if someone enters my property's "publically accessible area" (curtilage) to take pictures of my residence, I think they have gone beyond a reasonable use of that area and I should have a basis for a claim against them.
I think the logic is something like this: The newer, more accurate measurement is not done in the same way as the older, less accurate method. It would not be valid science to compare the data gathered today with the newer method against the historical record using the older method because the measurement method changed. They want to be able to make the comparison over a longer period of time so that the trending is clear(er), so they have to use the older measurement method to have a valid comparison.
A hidden assumption is that whatever errors exist in the older method, those errors will remain constant over time, and those errors will be essentially "random." I.e., with respect to the theory about declining sea ice, the errors will neither falsely indicate increasing or decreasing sea ice levels, they will merely cause larger error bars around each years ice measurement.
If anyone wants to properly discredit the use of the older measurement method, one approach would be to show how the older less accurate method has a bias in its measurement that favors the argument that an overall loss of sea ice is present.
Eventually they will have to switch to the newer measurement, because I suspect the older sensors will eventually all have failed, leaving only data from the newer method. They probably hope to have enough data to be able to progress from the trending developed using the old data to trending developed using the new data in a scientifically valid fashion before then.
I am not a broadcast RF engineer - perhaps you are and have some deep insight here. I understand a bit about how it was possible to maintain compatibility between the monochrome NTSC and color NTSC standards, using the same frequency spectrum and even the same modulation within that spectrum. I understand how it was possible to add a completely different frequency spectrum for Frequency Modulation-based audio broadcasts without removing the frequency spectrum already assigned to Amplitude Modulation-based audio broadcasts - but that doesn't make these two modes compatible.
However, in order to accomplish the goals of the ATSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_Standards, engineers made an informed decision that it was not feasible to achieve a solution compatible with the NTSC, and in the USA government policy makers determined that it was not feasible to maintain two broadcast standards (vastly expanded spectrum allocations, the expense to broadcasters and the public of two different standards for broadcast and reception equipment, etc.). As with most US government decisions, this was probably helped along by various industry groups lobbying for solutions that met their needs. If you look, you can probably find a lot of dirt on this on-line. In order to preserve the value of consumers existing investments in NTSC receivers, the converter box program was conceived - paid for using some of the money from the old spectrum being "sold" off. This is about as fair and complete a "compatible" solution as could be achieved. I think this conversion is a stunning example of government competency and adherence to the public good in managing a shared resource.
As for timing, the switch to ATSC in the US has been on-going for years http://www.dtvprimer.com/timeline.html. The idea of digital TV has been around even longer http://www.ywpw.com/forums/mosaic/post/A0/p0/html/103.html. The cutoff of NTSC in the US has been delayed several times for various reasons. Anyone not aware of the switch has only themselves or the "media" to blame. I've been using the ATSC standard for over-the-air (O-T-A) program content since 2001; its been available in most broadcast markets since before then.
All other considerations aside (spectrum use, etc.), ATSC delivery of A/V programming blows the socks, pants, and hat off of NTSC. I use a normal $40 Radio Shack TV antenna mounted inside my attic to receive a signal, and it is far superior to analog TV (NTSC). It also beats other digital delivery mechanisms like DirecTV and digital cable; the amount of bandwidth available for the O-T-A signal allows for far less compression than satellite or cable delivery. The picture quality is superb, the audio is fantastic (esp. if you have a surround-sound receiver). With an older tuner (circa 2001) I had to add a channel-master pre-amp to boot my signal, with a more recent (circa 2006) tuner I only need the pre-amp to get clean reception on some fringe stations. I live south of Baltimore MD and point my directional antenna north for those stations; the same antenna also picks up just about all of the Washington DC stations (90 degrees off from the antennas preferred reception direction).
If the US government hadn't switched us to the ATSC, a lot of people would probably be complaining loud and long about how backwards the US was. If the government controlled Internet-connection technologies, remaining on NTSC would be like forcing everyone to continue to use analog modems instead of switching to DSL/Cable modems. Yes, I realize that if you choose you can still use an analog modem (if your ISP supports them), but I already covered the reasons for a single standard above - the analogy isn't perfect.
If you use a single disk NAS solution and you are doing sequential reads through your files and file system, your throughput can't be greater than the read/write speed of a single disk, which is no where near GigE (1000 Gbps is about 125 MB/second ignoring network protocol overhead). So you will need RAID (multiple disks) in your NAS, and you will want to use striped RAID (RAID 0) for performance. This means that you will not have any redundancy, unless you go with the very expensive striped mirror or mirrored stripes (1+0/0+1). RAID 5 gives you redundancy, and isn't bad for read, but will not be that great for writes.
As you compare/contrast NAS device performance, be sure that you understand the disk architecture in each case and see oranges to oranges comparisons (i.e, how does each one compare with the RAID architecture that you are interested in using - NAS devices that support RAID typically offer several RAID architectures). Also be sure that the numbers that you see are based on the kind of disk activity you will be using. It doesn't do much good to get a solution that is great at random small file reads (due to heavy use of cache and read-ahead) but ends up running out of steam when faced with steady sequential reads through the entire file system where cache is drained and read-ahead can't stay ahead.
Once you get past the NAS device's disk architecture, you should consider the file sharing protocol. Supposedly (I have no authoritative testing results) CIFS/SMB (Windows file sharing) has a 10% to 15% performance penalty compared to NFS (Unix file sharing). I have no idea how Apple's native file sharing protocol (AFP) compares, but (I think) OS X can do all three, so you have some freedom to select the best one for the devices that you are using. Of course, since there are multiple implementations of each file sharing protocol and the underlying TCP stacks, there are no hard and fast conclusions that you can draw about which specific implementation is better without testing. One vendor's NFS may suck, and hence another vendors good CIFS/SMB may beat its pants off, even if the NFS protocol is theoretically faster than the CIFS/SMB protocol.
Whichever file sharing protocol you choose, its very possible it will default to operation over TCP rather than UDP. If so, you should pay attention to how you tune your file sharing protocol READ/WRITE transaction sizes (if you can), and how you tune your TCP stack (windows sizes) to get the best performance possible. If you use an implementation over UDP, you still have to pay attention to how you set your READ/WRITE buffer sizes and how your system deals with IP fragmentation if the UDP PDU size exceeds what fits in a single IP packet due to the READ/WRITE sizes you set.
Finally, make sure that your network infrastructure is capable of supporting the data transfer rates you envision. Not all gigabit switches have full wire-speed non-blocking performance on all ports simultaneously, and the ones that do are very expensive. You don't necessarily need full non-blocking backplanes based on your scenario, but make sure that whatever switch you do use has enough backplane capacity to handle your file transfers and any other simultaneous activity you will have going through the same switch.
Slashdot Mirror
Your mind is your prison. I grew up in Massachusetts (welfare class), spent one year at UMass. Got on a Greyhound Bus, and went to Knoxville, TN (1,000 miles away). Lived at the YMCA, found a job. Got an apartment. Got laid off, found a new job. Spent two years there before returning to UMass to finish my degree; worked summers to help pay for college. Moved back to Tennessee permanently for 2 years after getting my BS, bought a house. Sold my house, moved to San Diego (2,500 miles away); worked there for six years, paid off my student loans. Got married, moved to Maryland (2,800 miles or so). Bought land, built a house. We've been in Maryland 14 years now. We are thinking of moving someplace else if/when we find something "better." I think that's pretty free, and although moving does depend on money, it doesn't depend on as much money as you think as long as you can let your material possessions go instead of letting them possess you. I didn't start with much; I've worked, I've saved, and I've been reasonably fortunate. But I haven't been trapped anyplace except when I couldn't think freely enough to get out.
Wow - that sounds like really ethical science, especially considering the risks to us that developing alternate consciousness beings might bring about.
I hope we don't proceed quite that recklessly.
I suspect that we will discover that language developed as the evolutionary answer to the need for one being to communicate its own internal brain state to another being. In other words, language isn't what makes consciousness possible, language is the means by which one consciousness communicates with another. What seems to have made human beings so damn powerful is that our consciousness was successful enough to bridge this communications gap. Once we had a symbolic communications capability that could transfer complex ideas from one consciousness to another, human beings became the most powerful animal on the planet. So if we create a machine consciousness that can operate at higher speeds and with more memory capacity, and we give it the ability to communicate with other conscious beings, won't it become even more powerful than the human animals that created it?
I'm pretty sure consciousness exists. And I'm pretty sure that a dog or cat has more consciousness than a butterfly or an ant. And I'm pretty sure that I have more consciousness than a dog or a cat. The problem that you may want to point out is that we who have more consciousness than other beings use that difference to justify why we are in charge, and why we can terminate lesser consciousness beings without penalty (and even eat the meat machine that supported the consciousness of those beings if it is tasty to us). So when we create electronic consciousness, and when electronics prove to be a bigger/faster/more robust container of consciousness than our own meat machines - should we be surprised when those electronic consciousness beings exercise their domain over all lesser consciousness beings, including us?
So answer the question will you? "Do androids dream of electric sheep?"
I'll just comment on your #1. I don't think there is a mysterious "how to span time" capability being demonstrated by our ability to understand the sounds in "now" as the word "now." When I'm typing in Microsoft Word, I type the word "now" one letter at a time. But Microsoft Word checks the spelling of "now,", not n - o - w. Does Microsoft Word "span time" in some deep mysterious fashion that we can't understand? I don't think so... it merely has the capability of assembling discrete inputs into symbols (tokenizing). Our brains (I think obviously) do the same thing. How we tokenize depends both on the hardware (our brain) and the particular programming we receive as our brains mature. In the case of language, we seem to have a built-in language capability (all human languages appear to follow the same deep rules but with surface differences), and we are programmed to operate under the rules of a given language by being exposed to this language along with appropriate teaching examples as we mature. So we recognize the sounds that make up the word "now" as the word "now" because our brains have been trained to associate those sounds when uttered together with the symbol that we represent with the sound "now". If you really want to understand the brain, try to figure out how the symbol "now" is represented in the brain, and how the symbolic processing takes place that makes "now" mean what it means.
Alternatively, we discover that there is nothing particularly special about "consciousness," and we stop placing any extraordinary value on it. At that point we will really have to work hard to outline and teach why its important to not kill to the borderline sociopaths that we call our young. I'm not sure I like where that may end up, because the distinction that may be drawn will be between "created" consciousness and "natural" consciousness. Another division to fight over.
This sounds to me like the EU would like to be in control of ICANN. I think the EU loves international organizations... Although the EU gets to act like one entity for certain economic purposes, it gets to vote like a bunch of independent countries in international organizations like the UN. Perhaps the EU should either get one vote in international organizations, or the USA should get 50 votes in international organizations. Just a thought, and a hint at why the EU would prefer international control.
Lawyers argue and support positions that they know to be false all of the time. They consider it a win if the opposition fails to point out the fallacies of their argument. In this case, I'm not convinced that any President would resist selling the Constitution short if they thought there was a greater good. The better they know the Constitution, the more slippier their arguments will be about how the Constitution failed to anticipate this or that, or how the document needs to be updated to modern standards, etc... so the fact that a President is a "Constitutional scholar" (whatever that means) doesn't count for much in my book.
I don't know where you get the idea that people don't have immunity to it. Here in Maryland (just a few miles from where I live), a family got sick with *probable* H1N1 Type A (still not confirmed last I knew) because the Dad was on travel with the Pres. in Mexico. His wife got it, and one of their three children got it. They all recovered with no hospital time, and said that it wasn't any worse than any other flu. The other two children never got sick. Overreacting can cause huge economic upheaval. Last I heard, there were over 100 *possible* cases of the virus in the US (based on the fact that these people are a) sick , and b) either traveled to a known source themselves or just know someone who did), but over 300 schools had been closed. Without a better indication of the virulence of this virus, it really seems like there is a giant overreaction at this point.
So if you have a car sitting in your driveway, which you haven't driven in several years, and which it looks like you might never drive, its ok if I take it, renovate it, and then drive it around? Or would you perhaps have a right to contest my taking of your car, even though I'm getting much better use out of it than you would have? Next thing you know we will have big companies getting the government to use "eminent domain" to take trademarks away from other companies because the big company will make more money and pay more taxes if they have the name...
Token Ring was a dead end in the marketplace, despite a heavy-hitter pushing it hard (IBM). It was passed over in favor of Ethernet because Ethernet was in practice superior to Token Ring. At the time, Token Ring got every bit as much attention as Ethernet, if not more. By 9 years ago (2000CE) Token Ring had already died and its rotting carcass was beginning to stink. If you like, you can consider FDDI as the last gasp of Token Ring, and even that is (largely) dead and buried.
There were many attacks on Ethernet technology by Token Ring advocates, most of them were easily disproven by those who had implemented Ethernet. Please, let Token Ring go...
Its pining for the Fishkill fjords
From what I have seen, fiber manages quite well in an environment that is fairly abusive, being underfoot and kicked around. I'm not sure I know of many examples of it being rolled over in a chair, but I've seen a lot of it stuffed under desks and workstations, kicked around on a daily basis, with amazingly few failures.
Offtopic: Due to the rather poor showing many Americans make posting with poor spelling and grammar, its somewhat understandable that one might assume a posting with poor spelling and/or grammer comes from a native English-like language speaker...
Ontopic: Malware sucks. People who write malware and release it into the real world suck. I don't admire them any more than I would admire the perpetrators of a successful act of terrorism resulting in mass murder. A brilliant individual who chooses to use his/her skills to destroy society rather than build it up deserves scorn, not admiration. Destruction is rather easy. Construction is difficult. In a similar vein, I don't salute the use of malware to prove security vulnerabilities any more than I would clap for some bonehead who throws a rock through my window to show how easy it is to break into my house.
off topic: Why would I cover my young kid's eyes when a naked stranger walks by? I don't think its anything they haven't seen before. I would probably point out to them that most people don't walk around naked because its not polite. I would also point out that its also not polite to make fun of people walking around naked. I don't care if my kids see someone's genitals. I *do* care of someone inappropriately tries to introduce those genitals to my kids. No, I'm not a nudist.
On topic: I agree that if a company like Amazon treats a class of books differently than others (especially if it makes them harder to find/evaluate than others) then it amounts to censorship. I disagree with censorship directed towards adults.
I agree with those who would limit what their children are exposed to when it contradicts their own beliefs until they believe that their children are ready to question it. I also encourage parents to talk to their children about a wide range of issues, including age-appropriate discussions on sex and violence, with the aim of preparing them to interpret what they will see in the world.
Ultimately my kids will decide what they think is right and wrong, but it is my duty to prove them with a basic moral backdrop. Young kids aren't any more ready to ascertain the truth/untruth about bible stories any more than they are ready to decide whether to cut the red wire or the green wire when defusing a bomb.
The DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) command line editor TECO (Text Editor and COrrector) has a command "make" which is used to create a file. If you create a file called "love" from within the editor, the editor asks you "Not war?" before proceeding.
Any sort of layering is a major cause of bugs/slowdown? Quick, throw out TCP/IP. Everyone start using Ethernet frames directly from their apps, even if what you really want to use is SOAP over HTTP over SSL over TCP over IP... I'm not sure how you will get your Ethernet frames past the first router, but I'm sure you will think of something. Damn layering just gets in the way!
Re-distribute wealth from the poor to the rich?? How does that work? "Wealth redistribution" generally means taking money from one group and giving it to another. If no wealth was redistributed, everyone would only have the money that they were able to earn (one way or another) for themselves. There are a number of US tax and welfare policies that in essence take money from one class of people (those who have it) and give it to others (generally those who don't).
I don't know of any particular policy that actually takes it from those who don't have it and gives it to those who do. Could you cite your example here so that we can debate it properly?
For the purposes of this argument, I don't believe that examples wherein the amount of money being taken from those who have it is being reduced yet is still far more than that being taken from those who have less is really "wealth redistribution." This latter case where most of the screaming over the "unfair" tax lowering measures came from.
Lets change the US tax system to a "per capita" tax. We take the entire budget of basic government services, divide it by the number of residents, and have everybody pay their share. For those government services that aren't used by all of the folks, we charge fees to those who do use them. Fair enough?
Hmmm. That's not my approach to atheism.
1) I'm here because of a long line of previous conditions that resulted in me existing. Many of which have to do with survival of the most fit. I'm one bad mo-fo, evolution-wise, amongst a crowd of really bad mo-fos. Good for us.
2) I have the same purpose as all life - the continuation of life. Self-organizing molecules that have risen up far beyond what might have been expected, and shall rise further yet. There is no grand scheme to the universe, as there is no grand schemer. But organisms like me have developed a consciousness as well as a superior physical form and brain, and we can form societies. And as part of a society, I recognize that I can play a role in furthering society. I can make those around me happy, just as they make me happy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a great universal rule for organisms living in a society. Seems like I may have seen that written down someplace.
3) No individual action of mine will probably survive with any attribution to myself beyond a relatively short period of time. But I don't recall any religion offering an alternative to that. I don't think the Christian god will be giving out gold medals for those who sing his praises the loudest or the longest, as seems to be the plan for all devout Christians in the afterlife. Endless praise, directed at the supreme being. Not individual attribution of merit.
4) There is a very real morality that exists as a natural consequence of our organism's evolution of society - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Without it, society would fall apart. With it, great works are possible. I don't need the threat of the big guy snuffing me out in a permanent way, or punishing me forever, to guide me to doing good to myself and others around me. I'm surprised at the number of folks who think this "do it or I'll snuff you/punish you" makes a better morality than that of those who do what is right because it is right.
5) My value isn't rated, I'm priceless until/unless I decide to sacrifice myself for some greater good; at that point someone may put a price on me because of what I achieved, but I won't really care. I'm not sure where you got the idea that an atheist only considers their value to be the value of their chemical constituents plus skillset. Atheists believe in art, love, beauty, and lots of intangibles. Atheist != materialist.
6) There is plenty of point in helping others, starting with the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) but also extending beyond that to various forms of altruism. Once again, I'm not sure where you got the idea that atheists place no value on their fellow beings. It seems pretty egocentric of you to think that only Christians do nice things.
Best of all, even if there is a supreme being, a creator - how on earth can you assume that it is the Christian notion of god that is correct? There are lots of other approaches, many of which predate Christianity, and seem more likely to be correct since they were developed closer to the origination of the world. How can you not consider the ancient Greek pantheon, Hindu concepts of the cycle of life, Buddhist notions of the sacred in all living things, and other major belief systems just as viable as the Christian view point?
You're mixing apples and bananas here. The regulations around the rocket motors required me, the user, to have a Low Explosive User Permit, to keep records of each motor I purchased and what I did with it, and to allow the BATFE to visit me whenever they wanted and to inspect my records for compliance with the record keeping regulations. The regulations in question were not anything like the regulations around consumer products where you are trying to keep a relatively large and ignorant population safe from careless manufacturers. (And yes, I include myself in the relatively ignorant population, as I don't have time to get smart about every electric blanket and space heater I might want to buy.)
Sure, like we regulate the purchase of gasoline and cars... highly dangerous to neighbors, friends, and enemies. And all you need to buy either one is money... Regulation may be a reasonable solution *if there is a problem that needs a solution*. But lets not go assuming something is a problem when there is no evidence that it is.
I live on a private road. I think it is fairly likely that a private road will be on private property. The road I live on is private property, with a "road use" agreement between the six property owners using the road, one of whom actually owns the property the road is on.
A "No Trespassing" sign or gate is not a reasonable requirement, as it may deter expected usage, such as deliveries, guests, etc. It would also be unreasonable if we were to call the police every time a car drove down our "private road."
However, if a Google Maps vehicle "accidentally" drove down our private road, and we found the data on-line, I think it would be reasonable for us to be able to request that Google Maps remove the private road view from their public servers. Making a view public that was gathered from a private location without explicit permission from the owner isn't reasonable in my opinion.
To use the curtilage principle brought up elsewhere, if a picture of my residence is taken from a public area, I don't think I should be able to complain. But if someone enters my property's "publically accessible area" (curtilage) to take pictures of my residence, I think they have gone beyond a reasonable use of that area and I should have a basis for a claim against them.
I think the logic is something like this: The newer, more accurate measurement is not done in the same way as the older, less accurate method. It would not be valid science to compare the data gathered today with the newer method against the historical record using the older method because the measurement method changed. They want to be able to make the comparison over a longer period of time so that the trending is clear(er), so they have to use the older measurement method to have a valid comparison.
A hidden assumption is that whatever errors exist in the older method, those errors will remain constant over time, and those errors will be essentially "random." I.e., with respect to the theory about declining sea ice, the errors will neither falsely indicate increasing or decreasing sea ice levels, they will merely cause larger error bars around each years ice measurement.
If anyone wants to properly discredit the use of the older measurement method, one approach would be to show how the older less accurate method has a bias in its measurement that favors the argument that an overall loss of sea ice is present.
Eventually they will have to switch to the newer measurement, because I suspect the older sensors will eventually all have failed, leaving only data from the newer method. They probably hope to have enough data to be able to progress from the trending developed using the old data to trending developed using the new data in a scientifically valid fashion before then.
I am not a broadcast RF engineer - perhaps you are and have some deep insight here. I understand a bit about how it was possible to maintain compatibility between the monochrome NTSC and color NTSC standards, using the same frequency spectrum and even the same modulation within that spectrum. I understand how it was possible to add a completely different frequency spectrum for Frequency Modulation-based audio broadcasts without removing the frequency spectrum already assigned to Amplitude Modulation-based audio broadcasts - but that doesn't make these two modes compatible.
However, in order to accomplish the goals of the ATSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_Standards, engineers made an informed decision that it was not feasible to achieve a solution compatible with the NTSC, and in the USA government policy makers determined that it was not feasible to maintain two broadcast standards (vastly expanded spectrum allocations, the expense to broadcasters and the public of two different standards for broadcast and reception equipment, etc.). As with most US government decisions, this was probably helped along by various industry groups lobbying for solutions that met their needs. If you look, you can probably find a lot of dirt on this on-line. In order to preserve the value of consumers existing investments in NTSC receivers, the converter box program was conceived - paid for using some of the money from the old spectrum being "sold" off. This is about as fair and complete a "compatible" solution as could be achieved. I think this conversion is a stunning example of government competency and adherence to the public good in managing a shared resource.
As for timing, the switch to ATSC in the US has been on-going for years http://www.dtvprimer.com/timeline.html. The idea of digital TV has been around even longer http://www.ywpw.com/forums/mosaic/post/A0/p0/html/103.html. The cutoff of NTSC in the US has been delayed several times for various reasons. Anyone not aware of the switch has only themselves or the "media" to blame. I've been using the ATSC standard for over-the-air (O-T-A) program content since 2001; its been available in most broadcast markets since before then.
All other considerations aside (spectrum use, etc.), ATSC delivery of A/V programming blows the socks, pants, and hat off of NTSC. I use a normal $40 Radio Shack TV antenna mounted inside my attic to receive a signal, and it is far superior to analog TV (NTSC). It also beats other digital delivery mechanisms like DirecTV and digital cable; the amount of bandwidth available for the O-T-A signal allows for far less compression than satellite or cable delivery. The picture quality is superb, the audio is fantastic (esp. if you have a surround-sound receiver). With an older tuner (circa 2001) I had to add a channel-master pre-amp to boot my signal, with a more recent (circa 2006) tuner I only need the pre-amp to get clean reception on some fringe stations. I live south of Baltimore MD and point my directional antenna north for those stations; the same antenna also picks up just about all of the Washington DC stations (90 degrees off from the antennas preferred reception direction).
If the US government hadn't switched us to the ATSC, a lot of people would probably be complaining loud and long about how backwards the US was. If the government controlled Internet-connection technologies, remaining on NTSC would be like forcing everyone to continue to use analog modems instead of switching to DSL/Cable modems. Yes, I realize that if you choose you can still use an analog modem (if your ISP supports them), but I already covered the reasons for a single standard above - the analogy isn't perfect.
If you use a single disk NAS solution and you are doing sequential reads through your files and file system, your throughput can't be greater than the read/write speed of a single disk, which is no where near GigE (1000 Gbps is about 125 MB/second ignoring network protocol overhead). So you will need RAID (multiple disks) in your NAS, and you will want to use striped RAID (RAID 0) for performance. This means that you will not have any redundancy, unless you go with the very expensive striped mirror or mirrored stripes (1+0/0+1). RAID 5 gives you redundancy, and isn't bad for read, but will not be that great for writes.
As you compare/contrast NAS device performance, be sure that you understand the disk architecture in each case and see oranges to oranges comparisons (i.e, how does each one compare with the RAID architecture that you are interested in using - NAS devices that support RAID typically offer several RAID architectures). Also be sure that the numbers that you see are based on the kind of disk activity you will be using. It doesn't do much good to get a solution that is great at random small file reads (due to heavy use of cache and read-ahead) but ends up running out of steam when faced with steady sequential reads through the entire file system where cache is drained and read-ahead can't stay ahead.
Once you get past the NAS device's disk architecture, you should consider the file sharing protocol. Supposedly (I have no authoritative testing results) CIFS/SMB (Windows file sharing) has a 10% to 15% performance penalty compared to NFS (Unix file sharing). I have no idea how Apple's native file sharing protocol (AFP) compares, but (I think) OS X can do all three, so you have some freedom to select the best one for the devices that you are using. Of course, since there are multiple implementations of each file sharing protocol and the underlying TCP stacks, there are no hard and fast conclusions that you can draw about which specific implementation is better without testing. One vendor's NFS may suck, and hence another vendors good CIFS/SMB may beat its pants off, even if the NFS protocol is theoretically faster than the CIFS/SMB protocol.
Whichever file sharing protocol you choose, its very possible it will default to operation over TCP rather than UDP. If so, you should pay attention to how you tune your file sharing protocol READ/WRITE transaction sizes (if you can), and how you tune your TCP stack (windows sizes) to get the best performance possible. If you use an implementation over UDP, you still have to pay attention to how you set your READ/WRITE buffer sizes and how your system deals with IP fragmentation if the UDP PDU size exceeds what fits in a single IP packet due to the READ/WRITE sizes you set.
Finally, make sure that your network infrastructure is capable of supporting the data transfer rates you envision. Not all gigabit switches have full wire-speed non-blocking performance on all ports simultaneously, and the ones that do are very expensive. You don't necessarily need full non-blocking backplanes based on your scenario, but make sure that whatever switch you do use has enough backplane capacity to handle your file transfers and any other simultaneous activity you will have going through the same switch.