I wouldn't dispute what you are saying, but I was pointing out that even in the hypothetical use-case where a thermostat is actually going to need constant internet connectivity in order to simply operate as intended, throttling internet connectivity is highly unlikely to impact the practical operation of such a device because temperature changes are quite far from instantaneous, and so its bandwidth needs are generally going to be too low for any such throttling to make a perceptible difference. I would think even at worst, just getting one packet every 30 minutes would be enough to keep any area entirely liveable.
... that an internet connected device like a thermostat is going to need that they think throttling internet speeds is actually going to make any kind of difference for it?
In practice temperatures change slowly enough that even getting a single packet every half hour would probably be adequate for keeping a temperature entirely livable.
That would suggest that one of the best ways to convince a border guard you don't have anything that you are specifically not wanting them to discover is to turn off the secure unlock option on your phone just before passing through a security checkpoint, and then turn it back on once you are through everything.
Since, as you said, anyone who would have something to hide would not carry it unencrypted, you are likely going to get through faster.
There's no need this time 'round. Disney finally figured out that they can achieve the permanent protection status they want by trademarking the mouse instead.
This means that in countries where some of their works have already entered public domain, you can copy those works freely, but because the character is still protected by trademark, you cannot freely use the character in any of your own (even derivative) works.
But I'm still going to dis-agree with you. The Chicxulub event was only 10 to 15km across but it wipped out 75% of the critters on earth above a certain body weight.
None of which had anywhere even close to the versatile adaptability of human beings, largely attributable to our large brains rather than physiological characteristics.
A large enough object colliding with earth could indeed to correspondingly more damage, but then you are again, looking at technology that is either not currently available, or else would have to be continuously used, and would take so long to achieve any apocalyptic results that it is probable that the hardware being used would fail long before it had been achieved.
And even then, I'd suggest that it's probable that there'd still be plenty of (wealthy) humans with an evacuation plan, because there would be more than enough notice to achieve it.
Yeah we do. All we have to do is use nuclear demolitions to alter the orbit of a near earth asteroid. It doesn't have to be a big one, 10-20 miles across.
You are aware that one of those has already hit the earth, and it didn't wipe out all life. It exterminated many species, true... but none of the ones that it wiped out are anywhere nearly as adaptable as humans are. Humans on the far side of the planet from where the asteroid struck would still actually have a pretty good chance of survival as a species Our survival rate would drop drastically, of course... but it's nothing that we haven't recovered from in the past... and then before we even had language, let alone a whole lot of technlogy that could likely help.
The size of detonation required to actually alter the orbit of an asteroid large enough to wipe out all life on the plant is again outside of current technological reach.
Also, of course, there's nothing precluding the possibility of an escape plan, if people have sufficient warning. We could technologically achieve this now, but it is prohibitively expensive, and there are no *actual* threats to the species that would create an impetus for what amounts to throwing many tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars on an evacuation effort. Although there are a few feasible such threats, their actual likelihood at this time is still far too low to justify the expense involved. Given the choice of certain annihilation at a predicted point in time or escape, I'm pretty sure that humanity would be able to achieve the latter, as long as we had enough warning.
Common folks like you and I would be dead, of course... but the species would still carry on.
Take heart. We've had the ability to end human existence on earth for 70+ years,
No we haven't. We don't even have it now.
We have the ability to bring an abrupt end to modern civilization as we know it for every human being on the planet, and to render life on this planet far more harsh for the survivors for the next several generations, but we don't have the technology ability to end all of human existence ourselves.
The only thing that has any chance of doing that is either if technology which does not yet exist gets discovered, or if we get struck by a large enough chunk of rock that we don't currently know about.
Actually, the slinky effect you refer to is much more greatly caused by the fact that the distance between cars while stopped is generally much less than the distance between cars while they are moving, and much of the latter distance is simply owing to the rate at which the car can be slowed down, regardless of reaction time. Thus, once a light turns green, you must either start moving yourself after the car in front you starts moving, or you must have a slower acceleration. With the latter, each successive car has a slower and slower acceleration than the one in front of it, and before you know it, the maximum acceleration rate may be slower than the rate that the car would move without even touching the gas pedal.
That's sort of my point... calling something a vow when it's not one is like calling red black or a duck a cat. It's entirely the wrong word to use. Vows can, as I said, most certainly be broken, but you can't undo one without literally reversing the entire flow of time.
I think you got that backwards. Jimmy Carter killed the move to the metric system. The initial plan to move the US over to metric was made in 1975, and was axed in '77, afaik.
But if you insist that religion is that harmful, we can regulate it...
How do you you propose to regulate religion, exactly? Even ignoring laws allowing freedom of religion, what a person believes is something entirely in their own head. There's no possible way to regulate beliefs, legally or no.
Of course Alzheimer's can be treated... it jujst can't be cured. Currently, we treat it by putting the people with the most severe cases in specialized care facilities so that they do not harm themselves or others. Such care is not cheap.
Who would be willing to pay for such facilities to treat a case of "being religious"?
And if nobody is willing to pay for the necessary care to treat the disorder, then what good does it do to classify it as one?
And what, pray-tell, do you suggest to do to treat it, or to at least manage it? How does such classification help anyone?
You can't deprive a person of their religion like you can deprive them of alcohol, smartphones, or any thing else that has a material existence.
And just think about it for just a second... how do you imagine it might make things any better if it was classified as a mental illness? What good do you imagine it might do? I mean, if you think that they WHO should classify it as a mental illness, then you personally probably already treat it like one yourself, so what difference does it make if the WHO were to acknowledge it as such other than perhaps to justify your own feelings?
Okay.... I thought that it was always common knowledge that the Lisa was named after Jobs' daughter.... and I don't mean just recently... I mean when the thing first came out.
I remember seeing one in the computer store where I would regularly go and hang out on the weekends and meet up with fellow computer nerds, and saw the new Lisa computer that Apple had just come out with.
My first thoughts when I saw it ran along the lines of it being quite overpriced... because it didn't even have a color display.
I asked one of the guys who worked there they knew why the computer was called Lisa, because it seemed like an unusual product name choice to me. The guy told me right away that it was just the name of the daughter of one of the engineers at Apple. I never gave it a second thought afterwards that it was ever supposed to stand for anything.
I wasn't addressing the matter of how flippantly some people may or may not make vows.... I was addressing that a vow is not something that can be backtracked on liike it was never made. You can break a vow, but you can't just go back on one, any more than you can unshatter a piece of glass that you hit with a hammer.
I was not meaning to imply anything about the morality of breaking vows, only that when one changes their mind about something they may have vowed to do, then they are, in fact, actually breaking a vow. The only reason to even call it "backing out" is to perhaps maybe make it sound like it isn't really that bad, or perhaps more specifically to rationalize how it's not that serious because actually "breaking" a vow or a promise sounds a whole lot more serious and feels easier to judge harshly against than just trying to act like it never happened in the first place.
One would ordinarily think that somebody who was worthy of the title "journalist" would know the definitions of words well enough to realize that "backing out of a vow" is a complete and utter contradiction in terms.
As if breaking vows isn't considered serious enough, the fact that one would consider that a vow could simply be "backed out on" like it never happened in the first place really shows a very large misunderstanding of what it means to even make a vow in the first place.
Perhaps you could say it is an implied threat... but it's only one that points out the consequences of the decisions that the person makes.
Because the ISP has every right to degrade service for customers who violate the ISP's TOS.... so really all their so-called threat is doing is reminding those who might do so that their could be unintended consequences for such actions.
If I may give a better example of your analogy.... "That's great that you have your driver's license.... it would be a real shame if you were to lose it if you got caught drinking and driving".
Most stylists or hairdressers I've seen require payment afterwards, and the only restaurants I know of that require payment up front are fast food places that do not offer full service.
Basically, any occupation where one might reasonably expect to make a fair amount of money on tips based on quality of services received.
If I enter a wrong pin or choose the wrong account, that adds perhaps about 10 or 15 seconds to total the time it takes, which can still in some cases be faster than cash only.
But yeah.... that will slow things down a lot. In general, I don't have any difficulty with my pin, or choose the wrong account to pay from.
Notwithstanding, Ive seen some people take 2 or 3 minutes just counting out money from their own purse or wallet, compared to the 20 seconds or so it would take for me to handle such a transaction electronically via chip and pin.
Slashdot Mirror
The more interesting question is can you install a *MODERN* Linux on a 1993 PC?
I was using Linux in '93, so I can state without any doubt that you can *definitely* install it on a system from that period.
I wouldn't dispute what you are saying, but I was pointing out that even in the hypothetical use-case where a thermostat is actually going to need constant internet connectivity in order to simply operate as intended, throttling internet connectivity is highly unlikely to impact the practical operation of such a device because temperature changes are quite far from instantaneous, and so its bandwidth needs are generally going to be too low for any such throttling to make a perceptible difference. I would think even at worst, just getting one packet every 30 minutes would be enough to keep any area entirely liveable.
In practice temperatures change slowly enough that even getting a single packet every half hour would probably be adequate for keeping a temperature entirely livable.
That would suggest that one of the best ways to convince a border guard you don't have anything that you are specifically not wanting them to discover is to turn off the secure unlock option on your phone just before passing through a security checkpoint, and then turn it back on once you are through everything.
Since, as you said, anyone who would have something to hide would not carry it unencrypted, you are likely going to get through faster.
Just think... in the future, generations may be born that don't have any ancestors at all.
There's no need this time 'round. Disney finally figured out that they can achieve the permanent protection status they want by trademarking the mouse instead.
This means that in countries where some of their works have already entered public domain, you can copy those works freely, but because the character is still protected by trademark, you cannot freely use the character in any of your own (even derivative) works.
None of which had anywhere even close to the versatile adaptability of human beings, largely attributable to our large brains rather than physiological characteristics.
A large enough object colliding with earth could indeed to correspondingly more damage, but then you are again, looking at technology that is either not currently available, or else would have to be continuously used, and would take so long to achieve any apocalyptic results that it is probable that the hardware being used would fail long before it had been achieved.
And even then, I'd suggest that it's probable that there'd still be plenty of (wealthy) humans with an evacuation plan, because there would be more than enough notice to achieve it.
You are aware that one of those has already hit the earth, and it didn't wipe out all life. It exterminated many species, true... but none of the ones that it wiped out are anywhere nearly as adaptable as humans are. Humans on the far side of the planet from where the asteroid struck would still actually have a pretty good chance of survival as a species Our survival rate would drop drastically, of course... but it's nothing that we haven't recovered from in the past... and then before we even had language, let alone a whole lot of technlogy that could likely help.
The size of detonation required to actually alter the orbit of an asteroid large enough to wipe out all life on the plant is again outside of current technological reach.
Also, of course, there's nothing precluding the possibility of an escape plan, if people have sufficient warning. We could technologically achieve this now, but it is prohibitively expensive, and there are no *actual* threats to the species that would create an impetus for what amounts to throwing many tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars on an evacuation effort. Although there are a few feasible such threats, their actual likelihood at this time is still far too low to justify the expense involved. Given the choice of certain annihilation at a predicted point in time or escape, I'm pretty sure that humanity would be able to achieve the latter, as long as we had enough warning.
Common folks like you and I would be dead, of course... but the species would still carry on.
No we haven't. We don't even have it now.
We have the ability to bring an abrupt end to modern civilization as we know it for every human being on the planet, and to render life on this planet far more harsh for the survivors for the next several generations, but we don't have the technology ability to end all of human existence ourselves.
The only thing that has any chance of doing that is either if technology which does not yet exist gets discovered, or if we get struck by a large enough chunk of rock that we don't currently know about.
Actually, the slinky effect you refer to is much more greatly caused by the fact that the distance between cars while stopped is generally much less than the distance between cars while they are moving, and much of the latter distance is simply owing to the rate at which the car can be slowed down, regardless of reaction time. Thus, once a light turns green, you must either start moving yourself after the car in front you starts moving, or you must have a slower acceleration. With the latter, each successive car has a slower and slower acceleration than the one in front of it, and before you know it, the maximum acceleration rate may be slower than the rate that the car would move without even touching the gas pedal.
That's sort of my point... calling something a vow when it's not one is like calling red black or a duck a cat. It's entirely the wrong word to use. Vows can, as I said, most certainly be broken, but you can't undo one without literally reversing the entire flow of time.
If nobody can really perceive it as something with a bite mark, then why would anyone use the terms "appears bitten" to describe it?
Clearly it can be perceived as a bite mark, even if what is being depicted cannot be eaten.
I think you got that backwards. Jimmy Carter killed the move to the metric system. The initial plan to move the US over to metric was made in 1975, and was axed in '77, afaik.
How do you you propose to regulate religion, exactly? Even ignoring laws allowing freedom of religion, what a person believes is something entirely in their own head. There's no possible way to regulate beliefs, legally or no.
Of course Alzheimer's can be treated... it jujst can't be cured. Currently, we treat it by putting the people with the most severe cases in specialized care facilities so that they do not harm themselves or others. Such care is not cheap.
Who would be willing to pay for such facilities to treat a case of "being religious"?
And if nobody is willing to pay for the necessary care to treat the disorder, then what good does it do to classify it as one?
And what, pray-tell, do you suggest to do to treat it, or to at least manage it? How does such classification help anyone?
You can't deprive a person of their religion like you can deprive them of alcohol, smartphones, or any thing else that has a material existence.
And just think about it for just a second... how do you imagine it might make things any better if it was classified as a mental illness? What good do you imagine it might do? I mean, if you think that they WHO should classify it as a mental illness, then you personally probably already treat it like one yourself, so what difference does it make if the WHO were to acknowledge it as such other than perhaps to justify your own feelings?
Okay.... I thought that it was always common knowledge that the Lisa was named after Jobs' daughter.... and I don't mean just recently... I mean when the thing first came out.
I remember seeing one in the computer store where I would regularly go and hang out on the weekends and meet up with fellow computer nerds, and saw the new Lisa computer that Apple had just come out with. My first thoughts when I saw it ran along the lines of it being quite overpriced... because it didn't even have a color display.
I asked one of the guys who worked there they knew why the computer was called Lisa, because it seemed like an unusual product name choice to me. The guy told me right away that it was just the name of the daughter of one of the engineers at Apple. I never gave it a second thought afterwards that it was ever supposed to stand for anything.
I wasn't addressing the matter of how flippantly some people may or may not make vows.... I was addressing that a vow is not something that can be backtracked on liike it was never made. You can break a vow, but you can't just go back on one, any more than you can unshatter a piece of glass that you hit with a hammer.
I was not meaning to imply anything about the morality of breaking vows, only that when one changes their mind about something they may have vowed to do, then they are, in fact, actually breaking a vow. The only reason to even call it "backing out" is to perhaps maybe make it sound like it isn't really that bad, or perhaps more specifically to rationalize how it's not that serious because actually "breaking" a vow or a promise sounds a whole lot more serious and feels easier to judge harshly against than just trying to act like it never happened in the first place.
One would ordinarily think that somebody who was worthy of the title "journalist" would know the definitions of words well enough to realize that "backing out of a vow" is a complete and utter contradiction in terms.
You don't "back out" of a vow... you break it.
As if breaking vows isn't considered serious enough, the fact that one would consider that a vow could simply be "backed out on" like it never happened in the first place really shows a very large misunderstanding of what it means to even make a vow in the first place.
Perhaps you could say it is an implied threat... but it's only one that points out the consequences of the decisions that the person makes.
Because the ISP has every right to degrade service for customers who violate the ISP's TOS.... so really all their so-called threat is doing is reminding those who might do so that their could be unintended consequences for such actions.
If I may give a better example of your analogy.... "That's great that you have your driver's license.... it would be a real shame if you were to lose it if you got caught drinking and driving".
Most stylists or hairdressers I've seen require payment afterwards, and the only restaurants I know of that require payment up front are fast food places that do not offer full service.
Basically, any occupation where one might reasonably expect to make a fair amount of money on tips based on quality of services received.
If I enter a wrong pin or choose the wrong account, that adds perhaps about 10 or 15 seconds to total the time it takes, which can still in some cases be faster than cash only.
But yeah.... that will slow things down a lot. In general, I don't have any difficulty with my pin, or choose the wrong account to pay from.
Notwithstanding, Ive seen some people take 2 or 3 minutes just counting out money from their own purse or wallet, compared to the 20 seconds or so it would take for me to handle such a transaction electronically via chip and pin.
What if you didn't lie? What if the card was declined, or maybe you didn't realize that it was missing from your wallet?