Wow, take of the nostalgic rose covered glasses and wake up. I punched cards on and IBM mainframe and let me tell you it wasn't anything like you described. The only highly trained engineer was the IBM service rep. The university I went to attracted lots of geeks to mainfram programming they just didn't have degrees in computer science or E.E.
I'll grant you we didn't have to IPL the system every day and we did average 99% uptime during prime shift. On graveyard shift when the systems programmer make their changes it was another story but since the system wasn't officially available during those times we didn't have count the downtime in our stats.
No, there are only 3 differances that I can think of that really make differance
1) A Support contract - We pay big bucks and when there is real trouble truly amazing things will happen. They almost were going to rent a plane just to fly a part to us once because we were down with a hardware failure and we were approaching the 24 hour limit in our support contract.
2) Strict control over hardware and to a lesser extent the software on the mainframe. If some issue of hardware or software arose and fault was serious enough IBM could void the support contract unless it was fixed. In fact a bug was was found once in the OS and IBM contacted us and said that you must install this patch to to the OS or you will no longer be under support.
3) Finally, the complexity and 24/7 nature of computing today has really stressed machines far more than we used to back in the good old days. While we didn't IPL every day we did "roll the regions" every night starting at 4:00 AM just to make sure things would run smoothly the next day. Now we can't do that because we've got a region that needs to be up 24/7 to support the web.
As I recall there was a study done just on this subject. Basically the premise is true. People who receive a large lump sum of money from a lottery will typically "blow it". The article pointed out that it wasn't just wasting the money on junk but that these people made poor financial decisions simply because they'd never been faced with the problems associated with a large amount of money.
It also went on to say that those people that received payments in the form of a yearly annuity had a better chance of success because while they might make the same mistakes they learned from them and were able to manage later payments more effectively.
I think you have to take into account the economics of the publication process. Historically publishing an idea or opinion cost a lot of money therefore you as a publisher had to reach a minium amount of people to make it worth your while. This tended to moderate an extreme viewpoint to maximize the number of people who would buy a published work. Now that publishing on the web costs essentially nothing there is no supply and demand effect moderating the views available on the web.
I never said they can't vote, but if they cannot correctly do it themselves, they should ask for help.
Normally I'd excuse your ignorance of the psychology of the handicapped but obviously more than one person thought this was an intelligent statement so here goes:
You obviously don't have a clue about being handicapped. The last thing a handicapped person wants to do in a public place with a line of people behind them is to ask for help. Our society puts great value in personal independance. It is magnified 10 fold for those who have that independance impaired. Heck, there are times when I'm just grateful I can do my own grocery shopping. Something I'm sure you've never given a second thought to.
Asking for help for simple tasks that everybody else can do is a degrading experiance and I've often avoided doing things altogether rather than ask for help. Being handicapped from birth though has given me an advantage over those who have become impaired because of age. I am not self delusional about my limitations. Take my dad, he's great guy and doing well for man of 73 but he shouldn't be driving. Yet he continues to drive and literally risks his life and anybody elses life who is on the road with him. Why doesn't he just stop driving and ask for help? Well it's that pesky independance thing again and he convinced (all evidance to the contrary) that he's still a good driver.
And while I don't know how many votes were cast by the handicapped in error it is the ultimate irony that they probably are convinced that they voted correctly.
Your incorrect when you use the concept of entropy for the improbablity of life forming. Entropy only applies when there is a closed system. The primordial soup that life formed in is not a closed system. It is constantly recieving energy from the sun.
Re:The Solution is Quite Clear but very unpleasant
on
Living Terrors
·
· Score: 1
The MAD doctrine as promulgated during the cold war had the implied assumption that the enemy was lead by a rational leader or leaders and that the enemy was restricted to a geographic area.
Terrorists do not meet either of these two conditions. We have seen time and time again that fanatics will kill themselves if they believe their deaths would help in their ultimate cause and Bin Laden is a classic example of a terrorist that has a lot of money but no fixed location. If he should use a bio weapon on the U.S. who would you nuke?
Finally let us say that after a terrorist bio attack the U.S. was able to conclude without any doubt that exact number and identity of the people that were involved in the attack. At what point do we we decide to nuke the country of origin and killl millions of people and do immeasurable environmental damage? The main goal of the MAD doctrine really wasn't to try to discourge nuclear warfare it's purpose was to assure that even if a full nuclear attack was instigated against the U.S. there would be enough of a nuclear arsenal left for the U.S. to respond in kind.
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Wow, take of the nostalgic rose covered glasses and wake up. I punched cards on and IBM mainframe and let me tell you it wasn't anything like you described. The only highly trained engineer was the IBM service rep. The university I went to attracted lots of geeks to mainfram programming they just didn't have degrees in computer science or E.E.
I'll grant you we didn't have to IPL the system every day and we did average 99% uptime during prime shift. On graveyard shift when the systems programmer make their changes it was another story but since the system wasn't officially available during those times we didn't have count the downtime in our stats.
No, there are only 3 differances that I can think of that really make differance
1) A Support contract - We pay big bucks and when there is real trouble truly amazing things will happen. They almost were going to rent a plane just to fly a part to us once because we were down with a hardware failure and we were approaching the 24 hour limit in our support contract.
2) Strict control over hardware and to a lesser extent the software on the mainframe. If some issue of hardware or software arose and fault was serious enough IBM could void the support contract unless it was fixed. In fact a bug was was found once in the OS and IBM contacted us and said that you must install this patch to to the OS or you will no longer be under support.
3) Finally, the complexity and 24/7 nature of computing today has really stressed machines far more than we used to back in the good old days. While we didn't IPL every day we did "roll the regions" every night starting at 4:00 AM just to make sure things would run smoothly the next day. Now we can't do that because we've got a region that needs to be up 24/7 to support the web.
As I recall there was a study done just on this subject. Basically the premise is true. People who receive a large lump sum of money from a lottery will typically "blow it". The article pointed out that it wasn't just wasting the money on junk but that these people made poor financial decisions simply because they'd never been faced with the problems associated with a large amount of money. It also went on to say that those people that received payments in the form of a yearly annuity had a better chance of success because while they might make the same mistakes they learned from them and were able to manage later payments more effectively.
I think you have to take into account the economics of the publication process. Historically publishing an idea or opinion cost a lot of money therefore you as a publisher had to reach a minium amount of people to make it worth your while. This tended to moderate an extreme viewpoint to maximize the number of people who would buy a published work. Now that publishing on the web costs essentially nothing there is no supply and demand effect moderating the views available on the web.
I never said they can't vote, but if they cannot correctly do it themselves, they should ask for help.
Normally I'd excuse your ignorance of the psychology of the handicapped but obviously more than one person thought this was an intelligent statement so here goes:
You obviously don't have a clue about being handicapped. The last thing a handicapped person wants to do in a public place with a line of people behind them is to ask for help. Our society puts great value in personal independance. It is magnified 10 fold for those who have that independance impaired. Heck, there are times when I'm just grateful I can do my own grocery shopping. Something I'm sure you've never given a second thought to.
Asking for help for simple tasks that everybody else can do is a degrading experiance and I've often avoided doing things altogether rather than ask for help. Being handicapped from birth though has given me an advantage over those who have become impaired because of age. I am not self delusional about my limitations. Take my dad, he's great guy and doing well for man of 73 but he shouldn't be driving. Yet he continues to drive and literally risks his life and anybody elses life who is on the road with him. Why doesn't he just stop driving and ask for help? Well it's that pesky independance thing again and he convinced (all evidance to the contrary) that he's still a good driver.
And while I don't know how many votes were cast by the handicapped in error it is the ultimate irony that they probably are convinced that they voted correctly.
Your incorrect when you use the concept of entropy for the improbablity of life forming. Entropy only applies when there is a closed system. The primordial soup that life formed in is not a closed system. It is constantly recieving energy from the sun.
The MAD doctrine as promulgated during the cold war had the implied assumption that the enemy was lead by a rational leader or leaders and that the enemy was restricted to a geographic area. Terrorists do not meet either of these two conditions. We have seen time and time again that fanatics will kill themselves if they believe their deaths would help in their ultimate cause and Bin Laden is a classic example of a terrorist that has a lot of money but no fixed location. If he should use a bio weapon on the U.S. who would you nuke? Finally let us say that after a terrorist bio attack the U.S. was able to conclude without any doubt that exact number and identity of the people that were involved in the attack. At what point do we we decide to nuke the country of origin and killl millions of people and do immeasurable environmental damage? The main goal of the MAD doctrine really wasn't to try to discourge nuclear warfare it's purpose was to assure that even if a full nuclear attack was instigated against the U.S. there would be enough of a nuclear arsenal left for the U.S. to respond in kind.