I find it dubious that people who have been convicted of crimes, nearly all of which are expressly forbidden in major religions (killing, theft, etc), are complaining about the lack of exceptions being made for their closely held religious beliefs.
I think most of these religious protests in prison are bullshit, an excuse to be defiant and rebellious against prison rules and authorities.
Isn't the argument that firms don't have any responsibility other than the fiduciary interest of their shareholders?
So shouldn't Facebook only care about which Presidential candidate will increase the profitability of Facebook?
Given all the time people seem to spend posting anti-Trump messages on Facebook now, you could almost argue that they have a fiduciary interest in assuring a President Trump because it will surely create the "social dynamics" which leads to more Facebook use.
Or if that analysis isn't good enough, shouldn't they look to support a Presidential candidate whose economic policies will support multinational corporations (lower taxes, more H1Bs, etc etc)?
They've lost me when they can't find "good deeds" to do with higher priority than "stopping" a candidate unlikely to end up on the ballot.
but none of that manifests itself in making the work force at large more productive.
Sure it does.
Firms A and B exist in a market for X and Firm C comes around with some new innovation on how to service market X. Firm B adapts to to the competition and continues to service a segment of market X. Firm A does not adapt and goes out of business.
Firm C succeeded because it was more efficient than A, either by offering better goods, better services or lower prices. Firm B adapted its own practices to remain competitive with Firm C.
The customers in market X are now more productive because they spend less money or get a better product for the same money. Firms B and C are more profitable. The capital and employees of Firm A are applied elsewhere in the larger market where they can be more useful.
How is this not an improvement of productivity? More profit, better products and less inefficiency?
A tape cartridge with enough solid state storage such that the drawbacks of LTFS like slow seek times can be avoided for frequently read files and the ability to re-coalesce data on the tape to avoid holes created by deleting files from a linear mechanism.
A filesystem that does hierarchical storage management, where stale data is dumped off to tape drives but where links remain in the original file system allowing access to the data as if it was on disk. This allows you to have a much larger data pool in a unified filesystem. A changer would help here, but I could live with a prompt telling me to insert tape X.
I've been in more than one public restroom where it's been outright obvious they have thinned the marginally effective soap with water. Either because they're cheap or the person who "fills the soap" just doesn't give a shit.
As I remember it, we went to backups a hell of a lot more in the 1990s than we do now. I think some of it may have just been a software reliability thing where PC based networks and software were just a whole lot less reliable -- direct-access (often shared) databases that shit on files from time to time, applications that wrote gibberish and other types of problems.
I don't think I ever worked in IT where even PC servers weren't backed with RAID, even if it was tiny 5x1 GB arrays in 1995. They were mostly reliable at surviving disk failures, but I can remember a specific HP model that required the system offline to rebuild a failed drive -- there was no auto-rebuild mode, you had to hit a function key or boot with a floppy to get the thing to rebuild.
I'm amazed to this day at the people who insist on automated replication as a solution for anything but site failure. It's like nobody thinks that the most *likely* problems aren't going to be catastrophic storage system failures, but some other failure mode that results in all those problems happily replicating everywhere. I do like asynchronous replication of virtual machines (with adjustable retention history, so I can get the previous version with no issues), but that's usually a software product not a storage feature -- storage doesn't do it will unless you have the patience for a zillion VM-size volumes and replicate them separately.
I agree that an LTO-6 capacity drive that would do USB3 would be great. Flash density is getting to the point where it would probably make it a lot more user friendly to just have 128 GB flash on the tape with a detailed index to allow for faster access and some level of random access to the data, or at least write buffering.
I seem to remember that it's use is still allowed in some places as kind of "shock treatment" -- used briefly, before much adaptation can occur to knock back insect populations significantly, while applying more sustainable control methods which on their own take a long time to reach peak effectiveness.
IIRC, the big problems with DDT were rapid adaptation in target populations and the negative effects to birds of persistence in the food chain. Used in a very controlled manner, these negatives I think are less of a problem.
I think the larger problem is that it's so effective in the short run that they don't want to stop using it.
Leaving the US for a privacy Shangri La sounds appealing, but where is this place?
By my estimations, it's a small number of European countries, most of which might face EU regulations which could end up being nearly as "bad" as the US for no real gain.
Most other places don't have enough privacy protections (crooked, authoritarian governments) or if they do, are too small to resist the diplomatic pressure the US could bring to bear on their privacy practices. Further, they may be small enough that the Chinese could be tempted to tamper with their manufacturing to create hardware back doors, as one disincentive the Chinese have is an open confrontation with the US over manufacturing.
The other unintended consequence could possibly US import restrictions on the devices now that they are a product of a "foreign" company.
Dude, don't you know that startups and can do anything? If you restate a problem into a startup, you'll have at least a working prototype in a few months.
There's probably some merit to the idea in some ways if you filter out some of the ego and myopia. The older an organization is, the more likely it may be hanging onto old ideas or ways of thinking that can be counter-productive. And the larger an organization is, the more slowly it changes.
I'm not entirely sure if you're critical of phony unemployment statistics (like the kind that eliminate "discouraged workers", the people who have given up looking) or whether you think that "disability" is a new code word for lazy.
I'm inclined to believe that there's more to disability than simply being quadriplegic. There's all the hassles of getting to and from work. Maybe less of a burden if you grew up that way and you've adapted your entire life to that "lifestyle" but what if you already owned a house and had a job and then lost the use of your legs? Even if your job didn't really need much mobility, it's still a huge clusterfuck trying to get from home to work, deal with shopping, etc.
You could, of course, move into more wheelchair friendly housing, get a different job, etc etc, and maybe you would, but that kind of adaption can take years, not "oh, the scars have healed you can go home now" timelines.
Recently I've been sick (thought it was a cold, but I'm thinking ear infection after 3 weeks) and while I haven't been high-fever bed ridden, just this small illness is making every day life a bit of a struggle. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a chronic, low-grade illness like this all the time. Mine hasn't kept me from working, but I have been cutting like every corner imaginable because I feel so crappy.
That's kind of the point. People shouldn't have to hide their race or gender to avoid the abuse those attributes seem to attract.
I agree, but I think we live in an era of such conspicuous identity politics that people who *do* flaunt their identity or take identifiable sides in identity politics will attract hostility. It's less overt racism against them personally than our culture's vehement reaction to identity politics.
Like I said, there is little hostility towards women or minorities writing boring stories about bond futures or obituaries or other news pieces where the reporting is factual, as free as possible of ideological orientation and where the author isn't making a point of their own specific identity.
Wait, you mean "going undercover" is a new thing that journalists don't know how to do? They never ghostwrite anything or use pseudonyms or otherwise mask their identity? And I'm sure it would be *so hard* to mask an identity on the Internet, I mean, nobody gets away with that. On the Internet, everybody knows you're a dog.
While it doesn't entirely surprise me that columnists identifiable as specific genders or races might attract more negative comments, it'd be illuminating to have data on how often they write any kind of advocacy journalism or, and if, and to what extent they make their race or gender part of their subject matter.
My guess is that high visibility blacks and women are highly correlated with either controversial opinions and/or controversial subjects. And that hostile commentary is highly correlated with controversial opinions or subjects.
It seems less plausible that blacks or women who write in identity free tone about uncontroversial topics will attract identity-focused hostile comments.
I can possibly see the objection to art by living artists (or a single generation dead) who in theory make money off it, but art by artists dead 2, 3, 4+ generations? It makes no sense. Especially when its held by museums who publicly display it -- or worse, have it in their collection and *don't* display it because they haven't the wall space.
I got sad news for 99% of the museums out there, me viewing or even printing life-size versions of their collections isn't going to be why I don't ever pay the admission fee to their museum, buy a snack in their snack bar or shop in their gift shop.
I once read an interesting piece by an economist about art museums that said that most of them should sell a lot more art -- especially what they don't display, and even a good chunk of what they do display to generate capital. IIRC, he thinks the reasons they don't boils down to ego (museums and curators are judged by acquisitions and size of holdings), a certain amount of collusion with art dealers (who fear falling prices) and their own fear that once a lot of pieces start being sold their paper capital will collapse.
Is it something you're entitled to, need or that will cost someone else time and/or money? Then CHATBOTS ARE FOR YOU!
You thought interactive voice prompting was slow and frustrating? Wait until you get a load of chatbots. No way to "zero" out to an operator or some other menu. You're stuck with "Saro" our virtual assistant. And since chats have persistence, you can't just call back and start over. Our bots will remember the EXACT place in existential hell you were stuck before so we can quickly and easily return you to this void of non-service.
Is it something you want or are willing to purchase? THEN REAL LIFE HUMANS ARE FOR YOU!
We have a complete lineup of pushy, ignorant sales people fully motivated to ignore your requests, wiling and able to sell you what they think you should have. Don't worry, they won't waste your time checking stock to see if what you want is in -- when they eventually sell you sort of what you want instead of what they want you to buy, it will conveniently be back-ordered, with a fulfillment date from the manufacturer that's completely unreliable and appears to correspond to an ancient, time-traveling culture from a binary star system. But don't worry, when it finally does ship, we will make sure to use the most unreliable shipping service possible, fully capable of delivering it directly to that address you lived at 8 years ago, two states away.
It won't work because criminal activity is either part of the shadow economy or part of the security services or both in most places.
I'd guess Western Europe, North America and parts of Asia-Pacific already have laws like this and will generally play ball with each other's law enforcement systems. In "important" cases, some non-aligned states may vulnerable to diplomatic pressure.
But by and large, China and its client states and Russia and its client states will never agree to this, as will the US in most cases involving the other two. Some non-aligned states will just be too incompetent to cooperate (whether they are or aren't, it'll be impossible to tell).
And that's just the baseline politics of it all, it says nothing about actually catching anybody. We can't contain drug smuggling at the Mexican border, and that involves a physical product moving over a closely watched international border. Data on the Internet? I don't have any hopes there.
Was your former faith in the honesty and integrity of the moneyed and ruling classes actually shaken by these revelations, or was it merely a narrow beam spotlight shining on somewhat you could already see in the shadows?
I mean, name and shame, it's great, but it's more like all it's done is reinforce the existing doubts we have about the wealthy and the powerful.
Is there a coordinate system with a value that represents, say, the radius of accuracy of the point coordinates?
It seems like that would be useful for an application like this or anything else where you want to report a center but should also report the potential error value.
I usually filter by "Amazon Prime" which cuts out a lot of the weird third party sellers. I have noticed this does get you a certain amount of "Sold by Acme Widgets, fulfilled by Amazon".
My assumption is that if the product is some kind of actual brand name you might find somewhere besides Amazon and the fulfillment is by Amazon, the "seller" part is some kind of electronic arbitrage and the product itself is the same thing you might get if you bought it from Amazon as the seller.
It's like the "seller" bought the stuff on paper and is willing to sell it for an even smaller margin than Amazon and in reality it's all the same SKU on the same shelf in their warehouse and the next unit in line to be shipped someplace could be sold by either Amazon or the third party seller.
Is this at all accurate? Or is it possible to set yourself up as an Amazon seller, buy counterfeit crap from China and just funnel it through Amazon's logistics chain to buy that thin veneer of respectability?
A sound analysis. We just spent vacation with two couples with Apple watches and I never saw them glancing at their watches for info.
I've owned three watches since 1985. A Timex that I wore (still own, but don't wear) for 22 years until my wife bought me a Tag chronograph for my 40th birthday and a Seiko solar chronograph I bought when I had to have the Tag bracelet replaced due to link pins breaking and couldn't stand to go without a watch.
I don't think the Timex battery was replaced more than 4 times in its life, the Tag never needs a battery, just wearing (self-winding) and the Seiko basically needs either wearing or some nominal exposure to light (I keep it out on my dresser, and it doesn't seem to lose time or indicate low power).
I can't even begin to deal with the idea of charge anxiety on a smart watch. And I only take my watch off for sex and at the airport, which isn't very often (see: over 40, married), so taking it off every night is not in the cards, either.
And all of the watches I've owned are waterproof way below any submersion I'm likely to experience (the Seiko says 10 bar, I think the Tag is at least that), so I can wear them swimming and boating in the summer without thinking about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it dubious that people who have been convicted of crimes, nearly all of which are expressly forbidden in major religions (killing, theft, etc), are complaining about the lack of exceptions being made for their closely held religious beliefs.
I think most of these religious protests in prison are bullshit, an excuse to be defiant and rebellious against prison rules and authorities.
Isn't the argument that firms don't have any responsibility other than the fiduciary interest of their shareholders?
So shouldn't Facebook only care about which Presidential candidate will increase the profitability of Facebook?
Given all the time people seem to spend posting anti-Trump messages on Facebook now, you could almost argue that they have a fiduciary interest in assuring a President Trump because it will surely create the "social dynamics" which leads to more Facebook use.
Or if that analysis isn't good enough, shouldn't they look to support a Presidential candidate whose economic policies will support multinational corporations (lower taxes, more H1Bs, etc etc)?
They've lost me when they can't find "good deeds" to do with higher priority than "stopping" a candidate unlikely to end up on the ballot.
but none of that manifests itself in making the work force at large more productive.
Sure it does.
Firms A and B exist in a market for X and Firm C comes around with some new innovation on how to service market X. Firm B adapts to to the competition and continues to service a segment of market X. Firm A does not adapt and goes out of business.
Firm C succeeded because it was more efficient than A, either by offering better goods, better services or lower prices. Firm B adapted its own practices to remain competitive with Firm C.
The customers in market X are now more productive because they spend less money or get a better product for the same money. Firms B and C are more profitable. The capital and employees of Firm A are applied elsewhere in the larger market where they can be more useful.
How is this not an improvement of productivity? More profit, better products and less inefficiency?
I don't care where they fly as long as the legroom is good.
I wonder if and how the declining middle class and income inequality play into espionage of all types.
Does it just lower the price or does it increase the number of people who are willing to be bought?
I'd like a few things...
A tape cartridge with enough solid state storage such that the drawbacks of LTFS like slow seek times can be avoided for frequently read files and the ability to re-coalesce data on the tape to avoid holes created by deleting files from a linear mechanism.
A filesystem that does hierarchical storage management, where stale data is dumped off to tape drives but where links remain in the original file system allowing access to the data as if it was on disk. This allows you to have a much larger data pool in a unified filesystem. A changer would help here, but I could live with a prompt telling me to insert tape X.
I've been in more than one public restroom where it's been outright obvious they have thinned the marginally effective soap with water. Either because they're cheap or the person who "fills the soap" just doesn't give a shit.
As I remember it, we went to backups a hell of a lot more in the 1990s than we do now. I think some of it may have just been a software reliability thing where PC based networks and software were just a whole lot less reliable -- direct-access (often shared) databases that shit on files from time to time, applications that wrote gibberish and other types of problems.
I don't think I ever worked in IT where even PC servers weren't backed with RAID, even if it was tiny 5x1 GB arrays in 1995. They were mostly reliable at surviving disk failures, but I can remember a specific HP model that required the system offline to rebuild a failed drive -- there was no auto-rebuild mode, you had to hit a function key or boot with a floppy to get the thing to rebuild.
I'm amazed to this day at the people who insist on automated replication as a solution for anything but site failure. It's like nobody thinks that the most *likely* problems aren't going to be catastrophic storage system failures, but some other failure mode that results in all those problems happily replicating everywhere. I do like asynchronous replication of virtual machines (with adjustable retention history, so I can get the previous version with no issues), but that's usually a software product not a storage feature -- storage doesn't do it will unless you have the patience for a zillion VM-size volumes and replicate them separately.
I agree that an LTO-6 capacity drive that would do USB3 would be great. Flash density is getting to the point where it would probably make it a lot more user friendly to just have 128 GB flash on the tape with a detailed index to allow for faster access and some level of random access to the data, or at least write buffering.
I seem to remember that it's use is still allowed in some places as kind of "shock treatment" -- used briefly, before much adaptation can occur to knock back insect populations significantly, while applying more sustainable control methods which on their own take a long time to reach peak effectiveness.
IIRC, the big problems with DDT were rapid adaptation in target populations and the negative effects to birds of persistence in the food chain. Used in a very controlled manner, these negatives I think are less of a problem.
I think the larger problem is that it's so effective in the short run that they don't want to stop using it.
Leaving the US for a privacy Shangri La sounds appealing, but where is this place?
By my estimations, it's a small number of European countries, most of which might face EU regulations which could end up being nearly as "bad" as the US for no real gain.
Most other places don't have enough privacy protections (crooked, authoritarian governments) or if they do, are too small to resist the diplomatic pressure the US could bring to bear on their privacy practices. Further, they may be small enough that the Chinese could be tempted to tamper with their manufacturing to create hardware back doors, as one disincentive the Chinese have is an open confrontation with the US over manufacturing.
The other unintended consequence could possibly US import restrictions on the devices now that they are a product of a "foreign" company.
Dude, don't you know that startups and can do anything? If you restate a problem into a startup, you'll have at least a working prototype in a few months.
There's probably some merit to the idea in some ways if you filter out some of the ego and myopia. The older an organization is, the more likely it may be hanging onto old ideas or ways of thinking that can be counter-productive. And the larger an organization is, the more slowly it changes.
You might want to blame the Swedes.
I'm not entirely sure if you're critical of phony unemployment statistics (like the kind that eliminate "discouraged workers", the people who have given up looking) or whether you think that "disability" is a new code word for lazy.
I'm inclined to believe that there's more to disability than simply being quadriplegic. There's all the hassles of getting to and from work. Maybe less of a burden if you grew up that way and you've adapted your entire life to that "lifestyle" but what if you already owned a house and had a job and then lost the use of your legs? Even if your job didn't really need much mobility, it's still a huge clusterfuck trying to get from home to work, deal with shopping, etc.
You could, of course, move into more wheelchair friendly housing, get a different job, etc etc, and maybe you would, but that kind of adaption can take years, not "oh, the scars have healed you can go home now" timelines.
Recently I've been sick (thought it was a cold, but I'm thinking ear infection after 3 weeks) and while I haven't been high-fever bed ridden, just this small illness is making every day life a bit of a struggle. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a chronic, low-grade illness like this all the time. Mine hasn't kept me from working, but I have been cutting like every corner imaginable because I feel so crappy.
That's kind of the point. People shouldn't have to hide their race or gender to avoid the abuse those attributes seem to attract.
I agree, but I think we live in an era of such conspicuous identity politics that people who *do* flaunt their identity or take identifiable sides in identity politics will attract hostility. It's less overt racism against them personally than our culture's vehement reaction to identity politics.
Like I said, there is little hostility towards women or minorities writing boring stories about bond futures or obituaries or other news pieces where the reporting is factual, as free as possible of ideological orientation and where the author isn't making a point of their own specific identity.
Wait, you mean "going undercover" is a new thing that journalists don't know how to do? They never ghostwrite anything or use pseudonyms or otherwise mask their identity? And I'm sure it would be *so hard* to mask an identity on the Internet, I mean, nobody gets away with that. On the Internet, everybody knows you're a dog.
While it doesn't entirely surprise me that columnists identifiable as specific genders or races might attract more negative comments, it'd be illuminating to have data on how often they write any kind of advocacy journalism or, and if, and to what extent they make their race or gender part of their subject matter.
My guess is that high visibility blacks and women are highly correlated with either controversial opinions and/or controversial subjects. And that hostile commentary is highly correlated with controversial opinions or subjects.
It seems less plausible that blacks or women who write in identity free tone about uncontroversial topics will attract identity-focused hostile comments.
The gender/race alias thing would be genius.
It'd be so easy to do online you almost wonder why they haven't done it already, unless they're worried about what theories it might not validate.
I can possibly see the objection to art by living artists (or a single generation dead) who in theory make money off it, but art by artists dead 2, 3, 4+ generations? It makes no sense. Especially when its held by museums who publicly display it -- or worse, have it in their collection and *don't* display it because they haven't the wall space.
I got sad news for 99% of the museums out there, me viewing or even printing life-size versions of their collections isn't going to be why I don't ever pay the admission fee to their museum, buy a snack in their snack bar or shop in their gift shop.
I once read an interesting piece by an economist about art museums that said that most of them should sell a lot more art -- especially what they don't display, and even a good chunk of what they do display to generate capital. IIRC, he thinks the reasons they don't boils down to ego (museums and curators are judged by acquisitions and size of holdings), a certain amount of collusion with art dealers (who fear falling prices) and their own fear that once a lot of pieces start being sold their paper capital will collapse.
Is it something you're entitled to, need or that will cost someone else time and/or money? Then CHATBOTS ARE FOR YOU!
You thought interactive voice prompting was slow and frustrating? Wait until you get a load of chatbots. No way to "zero" out to an operator or some other menu. You're stuck with "Saro" our virtual assistant. And since chats have persistence, you can't just call back and start over. Our bots will remember the EXACT place in existential hell you were stuck before so we can quickly and easily return you to this void of non-service.
Is it something you want or are willing to purchase? THEN REAL LIFE HUMANS ARE FOR YOU!
We have a complete lineup of pushy, ignorant sales people fully motivated to ignore your requests, wiling and able to sell you what they think you should have. Don't worry, they won't waste your time checking stock to see if what you want is in -- when they eventually sell you sort of what you want instead of what they want you to buy, it will conveniently be back-ordered, with a fulfillment date from the manufacturer that's completely unreliable and appears to correspond to an ancient, time-traveling culture from a binary star system. But don't worry, when it finally does ship, we will make sure to use the most unreliable shipping service possible, fully capable of delivering it directly to that address you lived at 8 years ago, two states away.
It won't work because criminal activity is either part of the shadow economy or part of the security services or both in most places.
I'd guess Western Europe, North America and parts of Asia-Pacific already have laws like this and will generally play ball with each other's law enforcement systems. In "important" cases, some non-aligned states may vulnerable to diplomatic pressure.
But by and large, China and its client states and Russia and its client states will never agree to this, as will the US in most cases involving the other two. Some non-aligned states will just be too incompetent to cooperate (whether they are or aren't, it'll be impossible to tell).
And that's just the baseline politics of it all, it says nothing about actually catching anybody. We can't contain drug smuggling at the Mexican border, and that involves a physical product moving over a closely watched international border. Data on the Internet? I don't have any hopes there.
Isn't it kind of a dog-bites-man bit of news?
Was your former faith in the honesty and integrity of the moneyed and ruling classes actually shaken by these revelations, or was it merely a narrow beam spotlight shining on somewhat you could already see in the shadows?
I mean, name and shame, it's great, but it's more like all it's done is reinforce the existing doubts we have about the wealthy and the powerful.
Sounds vaguely like a new and improved PowerBook Duo or the SurfaceBook Pro.
Is there a coordinate system with a value that represents, say, the radius of accuracy of the point coordinates?
It seems like that would be useful for an application like this or anything else where you want to report a center but should also report the potential error value.
I usually filter by "Amazon Prime" which cuts out a lot of the weird third party sellers. I have noticed this does get you a certain amount of "Sold by Acme Widgets, fulfilled by Amazon".
My assumption is that if the product is some kind of actual brand name you might find somewhere besides Amazon and the fulfillment is by Amazon, the "seller" part is some kind of electronic arbitrage and the product itself is the same thing you might get if you bought it from Amazon as the seller.
It's like the "seller" bought the stuff on paper and is willing to sell it for an even smaller margin than Amazon and in reality it's all the same SKU on the same shelf in their warehouse and the next unit in line to be shipped someplace could be sold by either Amazon or the third party seller.
Is this at all accurate? Or is it possible to set yourself up as an Amazon seller, buy counterfeit crap from China and just funnel it through Amazon's logistics chain to buy that thin veneer of respectability?
I would almost guess that from an ad revenue perspective, controversial posters are more valuable than uncontroversial posters.
A sound analysis. We just spent vacation with two couples with Apple watches and I never saw them glancing at their watches for info.
I've owned three watches since 1985. A Timex that I wore (still own, but don't wear) for 22 years until my wife bought me a Tag chronograph for my 40th birthday and a Seiko solar chronograph I bought when I had to have the Tag bracelet replaced due to link pins breaking and couldn't stand to go without a watch.
I don't think the Timex battery was replaced more than 4 times in its life, the Tag never needs a battery, just wearing (self-winding) and the Seiko basically needs either wearing or some nominal exposure to light (I keep it out on my dresser, and it doesn't seem to lose time or indicate low power).
I can't even begin to deal with the idea of charge anxiety on a smart watch. And I only take my watch off for sex and at the airport, which isn't very often (see: over 40, married), so taking it off every night is not in the cards, either.
And all of the watches I've owned are waterproof way below any submersion I'm likely to experience (the Seiko says 10 bar, I think the Tag is at least that), so I can wear them swimming and boating in the summer without thinking about it.