Yes, because terrorist m.o. is to move around in groups, brandish side arms and shout "STOP, POLICE"
Actually, impersonating officials IS a common m.o. for terrorists. It hasn't happened in Britain yet, but that doesn't mean it won't -- it's happened many times in Iraq.
Well, gee, then maybe try not to be in a religious group that advocates suicide bombing, and you won't have a problem with the whole terrorist label
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right? Because our government never labels anyone a terrorist unless they actually are terrorists. (Of course, Richard Jewell, Steven Hatfill, and Hossam Shaltout might disagree with you)
Conspiracy theorists are idiots - our government commits its evil acts in plain view.
You're right about conspiracy theorists being idiots, but if you are suggesting that the US government never engages in illegal or immoral covert actions, you are wrong. Yes, the government does commit some evil acts in plain view, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also do evil things in secret. You may recall the Iran/Contra scandal, the Bay of Pigs scandal, the toppling of democratic governments in Iran and Chile -- and those are just the ones that got screwed up and became public. Presumably there are others that were successfully kept secret (or at least "plausibly deniable").
and instead of being out in the sunshine, taking in rays, talking to women, GOING OUTSIDE, here we are, in front of our screens debating about which language to build our web apps with?
The problem with talking to women is that so few of them have anything interesting to say about whether or not C++ is better than Perl...;^)
Micrix users, now getting their operating system for free, do not mind paying out for a word processor
This bit made me laugh. If there's one thing that's true about OS's, it's this: the less you paid for the OS, the less you are likely to be willing to pay for applications. After all (the user thinks) if the a whole OS only costs $X, why should one measly application be worth more than that?
From what I heard on NPR, the thought was that global warming might make the island more accessible to shipping traffic in the future, at which point there may be natural resources that can be economically extracted from the island and its vicinity.
Altruism is nothing more than emotional hedonism. People are kind to others because they derive pleasure from kindness.
If we are going to deconstruct things, why not also deconstruct the psychology behind people who refuse ever to take anyone's virtue at face value?
I suspect that people who refuse to admit the possibility of virtue do so because they do not have (or do not care to have) any virtue of their own, and they need to find a way to justify their lack of virtue without feeling inferior or immoral. If they can "prove" the non-existence of virtue in anyone else, then they are no worse than anyone else, despite being selfish uncaring bastards.:^)
Yeah, this from the nation that can't be bothered to switch to metric units. (if it weren't for the illegal drug trade, our kids would have no clue about metric units at all...)
Aww, is mommy's widdle fascist having a bad day? Did those mean nasty Democrats make you feel angwy and impotent? Here, have some hot chocolate, you'll feel better.
The world would be well-served if "people" like you were killed.
Americans are lazy, consumptive, and just can't be bothered to do anything about becoming more efficient.
This is probably true (and not just of Americans, but of most people). The way to motivate them is to make it easy for them to conserve, and save them money in the process. For example, I bet a company that offered to install Sunflowers on peoples' roofs for free, and then split the monthly profits/savings with them thereafter, could do really well.
A Texas Republican who doesn't take global warming seriously. That's sort of like a Catholic Pope.
A Texas Republican who, when the facts disagree with his political preconceptions, rejects the facts and tries to discredit the messenger. Now where have I seen that before?
Like those Republicans who ban smoking everywhere, pass laws to prevent me from modifying my car, raise my taxes in order to alleviate health-care costs for illegal immigrants, and try to prevent me from buying firearms... Oh wait, those aren't Republicans.
Yeah, those bastard Democrats keep trying to make it so I can leave my house without having to breathe second-hand smoke, get killed by unsafe car modifications, or get hit by random machine gun fire! May they rot in hell!
(as for the illegal immigrants -- if you really want them out of the country, stop paying them to come here)
Re:Amiga Was The Only Computer Ever
on
Happy Birthday, Amiga
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Ya know the biggest selling point for the amiga was the PC "sidecar" that let it run 8086 stuff
What planet were you living on? If people wanted to run 8086 software it was much cheaper to just buy an 8086 machine. Amiga had lots of selling points, and the sidecar was way down the list.
What OS did Amigas run (don't tell me they called it Amigos)? What was it based on? Also why was the OS "far ahead of its time"?
They ran AmigaDOS... it was a fully pre-emptive multitasking OS, complete with color GUI windowing system and a nice command line shell. Its feel was a lot like BeOS, except without any memory protection (so Amiga programmers had to be very careful not to corrupt memory, or they'd take out the entire OS, not just their own process).
The tipping point is approaching and the day is drawing nigh when "We The People" WILL take action so that this country can honestly be called a Free Country again...
Yup, there's nothing like an armed revolt to ensure freedom and democracy.... not.
Most likely a serious violent revolt would end up with the installation of a dictator and martial law... no matter which side 'won'.
CCTV's in every station/car? Just want we would need...another infringment on privacy, being filmed all the time...tracking your movements? Not for me thanks.
No worse than any other form of public transportion... thank Bin Laden for that.
This also doesn't look practical for normal city emergencies. How would one of these function as an ambulance with all the equipment they need? Firetrucks? Police?
Correct... PRVs aren't a replacement for the automobile, they are a replacement for the subway. Think of them as automated taxis.
If you have too many people for one car, take multiple cars. If you have more than four children, then maybe PRV is not for you -- you would probably be better off on the bus, or in a large automobile of some sort. However, that is a rare case, and nobody is forcing anyone to use the PRV system. You would still benefit, because traffic would be lighter with so many people using PRV and keeping their cars off the road.
Cool links... so when will we see the first non-trivial use of PRTs? I think they will become much more popular if/when everybody can see at least one operating success story...
Simply declare the objects that you will need for the duration of the real-time task as "important", and it will be as good as reading them in.
That is a reasonable work-around for systems that must use slow storage. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be nicer to have a system where all storage is fast, and the programmer doesn't have to worry about what is "important".
The problem with using software abstractions to eliminate the distinction between disk and RAM is that it doesn't eliminate the performance differences: disk access will still be thousands of times slower than RAM access. For some programs, performance may be unimportant, but many programs (games, audio, video, real-time apps, etc) it's critical that the software know when it will be hitting the disk, and when it won't be. So, while I agree that you can make a system that abstracts away the logical differences between disk and RAM, I don't think it would be a very useful system, at least not for the sort of tasks that people like to do on their desktop PCs. Having large-scale persistent storage with the same performance characteristics as RAM, on the other hand, would completely solve the problem.
Since the article is as good an excuse as any to post my own top 5, here goes:
Cheap, persistent solid-state RAM. I want to throw 80GB of static RAM into my PC and get rid of my unreliable, slow, noisy hard drives forever! Also, this will allow the OS to get rid of the (largely unnecessary and unintuitive) distinction between "disk" and "RAM" -- everything just becomes "storage".
Hands-free mousing. I know what part of the screen I'm looking at; the computer should know it also. As it is, I have to reach-over to the mouse several times a minute to tell it. This is slow and hard on the wrist. Some sort of reliable eye-tracking system to guide the mouse pointer would be great.
Wireless everything -- yes, this is in the original article. But the difference is in how the security is implemented. If I want component X to be used in conjunction with my PC, I should be able to "bless" that component by physically touching it to an RFID reader on the PC. When I do that, a little light lights up on both the component and the PC to tell me that they are "connected" -- otherwise, no access by default. This would be much simpler and less prone to security problems than the current solutions
Negligible power usage, especially when idle. There is no reason that my PC should be sucking down half a kilowatt of power and making my office feel like a sauna, especially when all it is running is vi and a web browser, and "top" shows 1% CPU usage.
Silence. My PC should make as much noise when operating as my monitor does, i.e. absolutely none. That means no fans, and no moving parts.
Slashdot Mirror
The first person to crack this DRM implementation will win a free story about it on Slashdot!
Actually, impersonating officials IS a common m.o. for terrorists. It hasn't happened in Britain yet, but that doesn't mean it won't -- it's happened many times in Iraq.
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right? Because our government never labels anyone a terrorist unless they actually are terrorists. (Of course, Richard Jewell, Steven Hatfill, and Hossam Shaltout might disagree with you)
Conspiracy theorists are idiots - our government commits its evil acts in plain view.
You're right about conspiracy theorists being idiots, but if you are suggesting that the US government never engages in illegal or immoral covert actions, you are wrong. Yes, the government does commit some evil acts in plain view, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also do evil things in secret. You may recall the Iran/Contra scandal, the Bay of Pigs scandal, the toppling of democratic governments in Iran and Chile -- and those are just the ones that got screwed up and became public. Presumably there are others that were successfully kept secret (or at least "plausibly deniable").
More likely it would just make your sunglasses go completely opaque.
The problem with talking to women is that so few of them have anything interesting to say about whether or not C++ is better than Perl...
This bit made me laugh. If there's one thing that's true about OS's, it's this: the less you paid for the OS, the less you are likely to be willing to pay for applications. After all (the user thinks) if the a whole OS only costs $X, why should one measly application be worth more than that?
From what I heard on NPR, the thought was that global warming might make the island more accessible to shipping traffic in the future, at which point there may be natural resources that can be economically extracted from the island and its vicinity.
If we are going to deconstruct things, why not also deconstruct the psychology behind people who refuse ever to take anyone's virtue at face value?
I suspect that people who refuse to admit the possibility of virtue do so because they do not have (or do not care to have) any virtue of their own, and they need to find a way to justify their lack of virtue without feeling inferior or immoral. If they can "prove" the non-existence of virtue in anyone else, then they are no worse than anyone else, despite being selfish uncaring bastards.
Yeah, this from the nation that can't be bothered to switch to metric units. (if it weren't for the illegal drug trade, our kids would have no clue about metric units at all...)
Aww, is mommy's widdle fascist having a bad day? Did those mean nasty Democrats make you feel angwy and impotent? Here, have some hot chocolate, you'll feel better.
The world would be well-served if "people" like you were killed.
See you at the gas chambers, then, fascist!
This is probably true (and not just of Americans, but of most people). The way to motivate them is to make it easy for them to conserve, and save them money in the process. For example, I bet a company that offered to install Sunflowers on peoples' roofs for free, and then split the monthly profits/savings with them thereafter, could do really well.
A Texas Republican who, when the facts disagree with his political preconceptions, rejects the facts and tries to discredit the messenger. Now where have I seen that before?
Yeah, those bastard Democrats keep trying to make it so I can leave my house without having to breathe second-hand smoke, get killed by unsafe car modifications, or get hit by random machine gun fire! May they rot in hell!
(as for the illegal immigrants -- if you really want them out of the country, stop paying them to come here)
What planet were you living on? If people wanted to run 8086 software it was much cheaper to just buy an 8086 machine. Amiga had lots of selling points, and the sidecar was way down the list.
Oh, wait
Perhaps you are thinking of AirBall? I really enjoyed that game, the graphics and music were great.
They ran AmigaDOS... it was a fully pre-emptive multitasking OS, complete with color GUI windowing system and a nice command line shell. Its feel was a lot like BeOS, except without any memory protection (so Amiga programmers had to be very careful not to corrupt memory, or they'd take out the entire OS, not just their own process).
Most likely it's because you are running an unpatched/insecure OS and you didn't know you were providing that service...
OTOH, maybe you are an ISP and are providing file hosting services?
Yup, there's nothing like an armed revolt to ensure freedom and democracy.... not.
Most likely a serious violent revolt would end up with the installation of a dictator and martial law... no matter which side 'won'.
Or are you spouting baseless FUD? Anonymous use of public transport systems is not your right, and never has been.
No worse than any other form of public transportion... thank Bin Laden for that.
This also doesn't look practical for normal city emergencies. How would one of these function as an ambulance with all the equipment they need? Firetrucks? Police?
Correct... PRVs aren't a replacement for the automobile, they are a replacement for the subway. Think of them as automated taxis.
If you have too many people for one car, take multiple cars. If you have more than four children, then maybe PRV is not for you -- you would probably be better off on the bus, or in a large automobile of some sort. However, that is a rare case, and nobody is forcing anyone to use the PRV system. You would still benefit, because traffic would be lighter with so many people using PRV and keeping their cars off the road.
Cool links... so when will we see the first non-trivial use of PRTs? I think they will become much more popular if/when everybody can see at least one operating success story...
That is a reasonable work-around for systems that must use slow storage. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be nicer to have a system where all storage is fast, and the programmer doesn't have to worry about what is "important".
The problem with using software abstractions to eliminate the distinction between disk and RAM is that it doesn't eliminate the performance differences: disk access will still be thousands of times slower than RAM access. For some programs, performance may be unimportant, but many programs (games, audio, video, real-time apps, etc) it's critical that the software know when it will be hitting the disk, and when it won't be. So, while I agree that you can make a system that abstracts away the logical differences between disk and RAM, I don't think it would be a very useful system, at least not for the sort of tasks that people like to do on their desktop PCs. Having large-scale persistent storage with the same performance characteristics as RAM, on the other hand, would completely solve the problem.