When there is a need to verify identity, like when doing a financial transaction, anonymity is bad. Both sides want to make sure, in the strongest possible way, that they are dealing with the actual entity they believe they are dealing with.
Anonymity is sometimes good.
If we are posting a political opinion, exposing government corruption, or just doing private things, anonymity is good, maybe even essential.
The next generation internet should support both; in the strongest possible way.
A while ago, I worked for a company that did contract work for GM. Some of the stuff we worked on was similar to this.
The funniest and most absurd idea we built was a pneumatic "finger" that would tap you on the shoulder to alert you to an upcoming McDonalds, Gas Station...etc. I thought it looked like a "Mr Squirmy" dildo. The name got a big laugh out of the crew.
But seriously...
Don't the car companies realize that they only have ONE problem that needs to be solved?
The so called "promise" of intelligent agents assumes the intelligent part. Maybe, someday, if and when real artificial intelligence is developed, they might be useful.
The problem today is that they are stupid, really, profoundly stupid. Hence the endless flow of clippy jokes. "I see you are trying to..."
I can imagine a niche for cloud computing, maybe even a big one. But...my crystal balls say that it will not completely dominate computing. No way, no how.
I want more control of my computer and data, not less. I want to decide if and when to change versions of software.
Imagine waking up one morning, at the peak of panic on a late project, only to find that all your cloud apps have been "improved" with a new interface that takes a week to learn.
Cloud computing is driven by software publishers, eager to gain a revenue stream and eliminate piracy. Unfortunately, the technical press drinks the Koolaid and pronounces it inevitable. Remember bubble memory? Remember pen based computing?
I used to work for GM as a contractor. When I visited their R&D facility, I got a chance to hear them rant. All they talked about was health care cost and retiree benefits. They basically said that no matter how smart they were and no matter how brilliant their inventions, they could never win with such a huge disadvantage. These were not exectutives, these were R&D engineers.
The problem is not the vehicle, it's how the vehicle is used. A big 4-wheel drive vehicle, filled with cargo or passengers, and driven off road makes sense. The same vehicle driven by one person, on paved roads is wasteful and more than a little silly.
Some people devote their lives to a career because it's who they are, not what they do. As the newspapers die, a large pool of talent will be freed. Those who never really had the passion will find other jobs.
But, those who view journalism as their essence will somehow find a way to get paid while practicing their craft. They will invent the next journalism business. They will not quit.
Believing that the end of newspapers equals the end of journalists is like believing that once the record companies all die, there will be no more music.
With cheep hardware readily available, I agree that, for many projects, it makes no sense to spend lots of time optimizing for performance. When faced with this situation, I optimize instead for readability and easy debugging, at the expense of performance.
But, and this is a big but, fast hardware is no excuse for sloppy, bloated code. Bad code is bad code, no matter how fast the hardware. Bad code is hard to debug, and hard to understand.
Unfortunately, bad or lazy programmers, combined with clueless managers fail to see the difference. They consider good design to be the same as optimization, and argue that both are unnecessary.
I believe the proper balance for powerful hardware is well thought out, clean unoptimized code.
The existence of all of the "quack" therapies is just a symptom of a bigger problem. Modern medicine has achieved a lot, but to a certain extent, is still in the dark ages.
If all diseases could be accurately diagnosed and perfectly cured, or even better, prevented, there would be absolutely no market for the alternatives.
We are very good at "battlefield repair", sewing up cuts, setting bones etc. Unfortunately, our ability to cure cancer, heart disease and all the other complex diseases is poor at best.
And no...I am not a fan of alternative medicine, I firmly believe that science is the right tool to use to solve the problem. Unfortunately, it is a big, difficult problem.
Good article. They covered actual vs advertised power, efficiency, noise, ripple etc. But they only tested the performance of the units for a short time.
They did not test MTBF or useful life.
Yes, I know that most MTBF ratings are actually calculations and estimates, but they still have value.
My concern with cheepo power supplies is component quality.
Electrolytic capacitors can be very troublesome. Even the good ones are nowhere near as reliable as semiconductors, and the bad ones are truly awful.
Fans are another problem. Semiconductors tend to follow a decaying exponential reliability curve. After the initial "infant mortality" period, the longer they run, the less their chance of failure. But mechanical devices wear out. And cheepo fans were out quickly
My musician friends once had to join the union because one club they worked at had a union contract. The union took their money, and threatened to fine them if they worked non-union venues. Sometimes, when you are a musician, that's all there is.
Unions also tend to enforce specialization. They insist that you hire an electrician here, a carpenter there etc. I have always been a generalist. There is no union for a guy that can do everything. In fact, they are actively hostile to us.
I personally have no use for unions. I have done very well in my career because of my intelligence, skill, honesty and discipline. In many cases, unions exist to help the average, or below average worker. The excellent generally have no need for them.
IANAAE (I am not an aerospace engineer) but to me, Ares looks silly. Solid rocket boosters do not burn smoothly, they have a big problem with thrust oscillation. The designers actually worry that these vibrations will incapacitate or kill the crew.
To quote a real expert...also known as Resonant Burning - described as vortices that shed within the solid rocket motors during combustion due to the shearing of internal flow at propellant discontinuities - the issue relates to when the frequency of thrust oscillations is coincident with the acoustic modes of the motor cavity.
Solids work fine when grouped together with liquid stages, but a single solid booster just seems wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Anonymity is sometimes bad.
When there is a need to verify identity, like when doing a financial transaction, anonymity is bad. Both sides want to make sure, in the strongest possible way, that they are dealing with the actual entity they believe they are dealing with.
Anonymity is sometimes good.
If we are posting a political opinion, exposing government corruption, or just doing private things, anonymity is good, maybe even essential.
The next generation internet should support both; in the strongest possible way.
If you don't have the vocal ability to sing in tune then you shouldn't be singing.
That's a pretty harsh, extreme and uncompromising attitude.
I compose music as a hobby, and I can't sing precisely in tune.
But, I want to hear how my songs sound when the vocal is in tune. So, I use pitch correction
I find songwriting and music making to be a very rewarding hobby, and I enjoy it tremendously.
Would you recommend that I quit making music?
I have a somewhat less hostile attitude toward pitch correction.
I make music as a hobby.
I can't sing precisely in tune.
But, I still want to be able to produce an audio rendering of my compositions, with the vocals in tune.
So I use Melodyne.
I know it's cheating, and I constantly work to sing better, but this tool helps me make music despite my limitations.
If you don't like nuclear power, you can freeze in the dark.
Here's the song.
Freeze In The Dark
What I find odd is that almost everybody uses profanity, even those legislators who would seek to ban it.
I bet they cuss like Nixon in private.
The biggest problem with spreadsheets is that they are hard to debug.
If all you do is add columns of numbers, everything is fine, and mostly accurate (unless you miss the top or bottom cell).
But once you get fancy, it's like spaghetti assembly code, riddled with gotos.
Oh, and by the way, you can never see the entire program on one page, you have to look at the code through a soda straw, one cell at a time.
He's dead
Everybody knows he's dead
But he fights on
Even though I profoundly despise everything about him, I ever so slightly admire his determination.
Or...is it just delusional fixation?
A while ago, I worked for a company that did contract work for GM. Some of the stuff we worked on was similar to this.
The funniest and most absurd idea we built was a pneumatic "finger" that would tap you on the shoulder to alert you to an upcoming McDonalds, Gas Station...etc. I thought it looked like a "Mr Squirmy" dildo. The name got a big laugh out of the crew.
But seriously... Don't the car companies realize that they only have ONE problem that needs to be solved?
Build a car that doesn't need gas.
The problem today is that they are stupid, really, profoundly stupid. Hence the endless flow of clippy jokes. "I see you are trying to ..."
I can imagine a niche for cloud computing, maybe even a big one. But...my crystal balls say that it will not completely dominate computing. No way, no how.
I want more control of my computer and data, not less. I want to decide if and when to change versions of software.
Imagine waking up one morning, at the peak of panic on a late project, only to find that all your cloud apps have been "improved" with a new interface that takes a week to learn.
Cloud computing is driven by software publishers, eager to gain a revenue stream and eliminate piracy. Unfortunately, the technical press drinks the Koolaid and pronounces it inevitable. Remember bubble memory? Remember pen based computing?
Or a Honda Element. Great cargo capacity, great turning radius...and RUBBER SEATS! You can hose it out!
I used to work for GM as a contractor. When I visited their R&D facility, I got a chance to hear them rant. All they talked about was health care cost and retiree benefits. They basically said that no matter how smart they were and no matter how brilliant their inventions, they could never win with such a huge disadvantage. These were not exectutives, these were R&D engineers.
The problem is not the vehicle, it's how the vehicle is used. A big 4-wheel drive vehicle, filled with cargo or passengers, and driven off road makes sense. The same vehicle driven by one person, on paved roads is wasteful and more than a little silly.
Some people devote their lives to a career because it's who they are, not what they do. As the newspapers die, a large pool of talent will be freed. Those who never really had the passion will find other jobs.
But, those who view journalism as their essence will somehow find a way to get paid while practicing their craft. They will invent the next journalism business. They will not quit.
Believing that the end of newspapers equals the end of journalists is like believing that once the record companies all die, there will be no more music.
With cheep hardware readily available, I agree that, for many projects, it makes no sense to spend lots of time optimizing for performance. When faced with this situation, I optimize instead for readability and easy debugging, at the expense of performance.
But, and this is a big but, fast hardware is no excuse for sloppy, bloated code. Bad code is bad code, no matter how fast the hardware. Bad code is hard to debug, and hard to understand.
Unfortunately, bad or lazy programmers, combined with clueless managers fail to see the difference. They consider good design to be the same as optimization, and argue that both are unnecessary.
I believe the proper balance for powerful hardware is well thought out, clean unoptimized code.
The existence of all of the "quack" therapies is just a symptom of a bigger problem. Modern medicine has achieved a lot, but to a certain extent, is still in the dark ages.
If all diseases could be accurately diagnosed and perfectly cured, or even better, prevented, there would be absolutely no market for the alternatives.
We are very good at "battlefield repair", sewing up cuts, setting bones etc. Unfortunately, our ability to cure cancer, heart disease and all the other complex diseases is poor at best.
And no...I am not a fan of alternative medicine, I firmly believe that science is the right tool to use to solve the problem. Unfortunately, it is a big, difficult problem.
Good article. They covered actual vs advertised power, efficiency, noise, ripple etc. But they only tested the performance of the units for a short time.
They did not test MTBF or useful life.
Yes, I know that most MTBF ratings are actually calculations and estimates, but they still have value.
My concern with cheepo power supplies is component quality.
Electrolytic capacitors can be very troublesome. Even the good ones are nowhere near as reliable as semiconductors, and the bad ones are truly awful.
Fans are another problem. Semiconductors tend to follow a decaying exponential reliability curve. After the initial "infant mortality" period, the longer they run, the less their chance of failure. But mechanical devices wear out. And cheepo fans were out quickly
My musician friends once had to join the union because one club they worked at had a union contract. The union took their money, and threatened to fine them if they worked non-union venues. Sometimes, when you are a musician, that's all there is.
Unions also tend to enforce specialization. They insist that you hire an electrician here, a carpenter there etc. I have always been a generalist. There is no union for a guy that can do everything. In fact, they are actively hostile to us.
I personally have no use for unions. I have done very well in my career because of my intelligence, skill, honesty and discipline. In many cases, unions exist to help the average, or below average worker. The excellent generally have no need for them.
My answer is to periodically copy all of my backup data to a new, larger hard drive. Drives get bigger and cheaper...my data grows...perfect match.
As interfaces, formats, or software become obsolete, I always keep up with the current technology.
I am skeptical of any solution that promises tens or hundreds of years of accurate retention.
The study claims to be quantitative and scientific. But when he goes into his anti-nuclear rant, it's all just opinion.
We currently have no perfect energy sources. I for one think nuclear sucks less than most of the others.
Assigned a guy to handle schedule and budget, so I didn't have to.
Took care of the company politics, so they wouldn't affect me.
Created an environment where I could concentrate on my project.
Paid well.
Didn't require a lot of paperwork.
Didn't wast our time in meetings.
Approved the purchase of necessary tools.
Left the technical details to me.
Required excellence, rewarded success and dealt harshly with those who failed to deliver.
And no...this isn't a fantasy, it really happened.
IANAAE (I am not an aerospace engineer) but to me, Ares looks silly. Solid rocket boosters do not burn smoothly, they have a big problem with thrust oscillation. The designers actually worry that these vibrations will incapacitate or kill the crew.
To quote a real expert...also known as Resonant Burning - described as vortices that shed within the solid rocket motors during combustion due to the shearing of internal flow at propellant discontinuities - the issue relates to when the frequency of thrust oscillations is coincident with the acoustic modes of the motor cavity.
Solids work fine when grouped together with liquid stages, but a single solid booster just seems wrong.