More to the point, gold may be an excellent investment, but not at the current price. And not at any price that is ever available to the public.
If you're expecting a collapse of civilization, then whiskey is probably a better investment. It's not only entertainment, it's medicine. But keeping it in fragile containers is a problem. The advantage of gold is that it's mobile. But an education in primitive medicine (not first aid, which is just what to do til the doctor arrives, and not modern medicine which depends on medicines that won't be available) would be an even better investiment. Bonus if you can do primitive dentistry.
If you're not expecting a collapse of civilization, then gold is more reasonable. It's important in lots of nano-tech and a non-corrodable covering of this and that. Of course, they don't use much, but then the amount of gold is rather limited unless you want to make it in a reactor, in which case I believe it will be radioactive...which might be an advantage if you want to trace your nano-gizmo.
I can't think of any possibility in which gold is the best investment, but if you can get it at a good enough price it's not a bad investment. It *has* increased in value even during my lifetime and relative to the costs of other things, and it doesn't have much in the way of up-keep costs like real estate does. (And it's portable. Did I mention that? This is possibly its majore benefit. Portable and anonymous.)
I won't even use bifocals. Instead I have two pair of glasses, one for the computer, one I would use for driving. (I'm near sighted enough that I just take off my glasses to read.)
The computer is a fixed distance from your eye. You want a single lense fixed at that distance. For other purposes, perhaps a progressive lens might be the best choice, it would depend on you, what you do, and what your eyes are like.
Forwarding an email is, legally, copyright infringement. But copyright infringement is only (legally) enforced if the owner of the copyright is willing to either enforce it or to delegate the enforcement to some other entity. The problem with the DMCA is that there is no penalty for fraudulent use of takedown notices. (Well, there *are* penalties, don't *you* try it, but any lawyer can work around them.)
IIRC, the DMCA only requires that you have a "good faith belief" that you control the copyright in order for mistaken use to be allowable without punishment. That's a pretty hard thing to disprove. And, also IIRC, a lawyer is allowed to have a "good faith belief" that his client is telling him the truth even if said client has a very long history of lying. (Did a lawyer actually issue the request? It's often done that way.) In that case the client risks NOTHING, except being refused.
So why *wouldn't* Sony cause spurious DMCA takedown requests to be issued?
It's my understanding that the usual practice is to "buy off" the local power structure ahead of time, and save the military threat for a threat. And the US would be unlikely to object at force being used to protect "private property". So China's military force is more than quite sufficient. (As far as I know, they've never needed to move from "threat" to action in the last decade or so.)
This isn't something new. Low wage jobs have already fled China to Indonesia. Factories more more slowly because of the capital investment in building them. Personally I doubt that many will head to Africa yet. But do note the "yet". You need stable enough conditions to trust that you can build a factory and have it pay for itself before it is rendered unusable in some way or other. And it doesn't matter WHAT you economic system or politics is, except that different forms of systems/politics enable different forms of payment to be acceptable. (E.g., when China builds a factory in a foreign country, typically the workers in that factory will be Chinese. This often causes local unrest, but the profis for China include exporting people and their associated support system. This allows China to pay off those running the country, and the locals are usually quite willing to sell to the Chinese laborers at the factory the supplies they need...possibly at a marked up price. So over time the locals become more accepting.)
The purpose of the police is to protect the state. Normally they do this by enforcing the laws in such a way that those with the power to threaten the state feel that they are more secure being supported by the state than by threatening it. Additionally they often enforce other laws that happen to be there.
Don't read this remit too narrowly. Consider it in context with "The law in its majesty forbids both the rich and the poor man from sleeping under the bridge."
Unfortunately, I have described an honest and upright police force, not the one we've got.
Sorry, but the term "cracker" was only created after the media started to refering to ANY computer exploit as the work of a hacker, and only publicizing the unlawful ones. It never caught on outside of a quite limited community. Give up the battle, it's time to invent a new word to mean what hacker used to mean.
Why do you think that was incompetence rather that political manuvering? Ask 10 people at random, and if they even know about the Sony hack, most of them will blame North Korea.
Lies, rather than incompetence, is what you should expect here until there is evidence to the contrary. (OTOH, if they were really competent, and cared, they could at least have come up with some decent evidence. My take is that they didn't care, however, rather than that they were incompetent.)
Sorry, but while lawyers typically have a very different set of interests than most of us do, that doesn't make them stupid. Very few of them *are* stupid, though many are quite hostile to the tech mindset, and their areas of flexibility do not map well to my own. I've known a couple that I counted as friends...perhaps they counted me as friends, but I've never been sure, because one thing they do is manipulate human relations.
You can say similar things about doctors, but they are less hostile to tech, and don't specialize in manipulating human relations, so you can generally tell whether they like you or not in a social context. But their intellgence is focused in a different way. Unlike lawyers they do deal with facts, so there is a greater overlap with the tech mindset, but most doctors also deal with (though not manipulate) relationships in such a way that I find their comments in a professional context to be untrustworthy. They say what they believe will get you to do what they want you to do on a short term basis. They call this "a good bedside manner". I don't know how they interact professionally outside of the doctor-patient relationship, but I've heard before that hospitals tend to be extremely status conscious.
Sorry, but that's not being a patent troll. That's enforcing only some of the patents they have a right to as the developer. You would be more reasonable to call them excessively generous because they didn't really enforce all the patents they had a right to enforce as the developer of the technology.
While I agree with your sentence, I'm not sure I agree with your meaning.
The advantage of written text is that it can be held static while you consider implications. This is not true of something that is transiet (or should I say volatile). This is one reason I prefer reading to hearing a story on the radio. And I generally avoid videos...though not always if it's really fluff.
Please note that "instant replay" does not more than partially satisfy the same need, though it does satisfy other needs. Your mental buffer (or at least mine) processes text and videos differently. And with text you can have the entire thing right in front of you, ready for instant reference. With videos you must at least backspace a few frames and play forwards. When this is even possible it usually at minimum requires significant effort and many delays. So videos are generally comsumed whole without thinking about what they mean....not in detail.
That's not clear. What is clear is that a tablet is a horrible tool for many kinds of job that a PC is decent at. But there's no reason that with advancing technology this couldn't turn into a large screen on a pedestal that WAS the PC, with attached peripherals like keyboards. A few more mods and it could be an eye-mounted screen running off a phone. But you still something to do the job of a keyboard and a mouse. I haven't seen anything convincing yet.
I suppose the question might hinge on "What is a PC?". Certainly the form factor of PCs has changed many times. In the Apple ][ it was built in one piece with the keyboard. In a recent Apple it was built into the screen, which set on a stand. But it wasn't very portable.
O, and also "What is a tablet?". There's no reason that a PC couldn't have a multi-touch screen. It just wouldn't be very useful because of arm strain. But there's no intrinsic reason (that I can see) that the PC and the table couldn't be the same device in two differnt modes of operation. You need to handle resolution or visibility or however you choose to think of it, but there's no reason that this couldn't be done by some development of an eye-mounted display combined with a data glove for input. It wouldn't make a very good thing to type with, however, unless you managed to couple in some haptic feedback.
The problem with rare earths isn't that they aren't here, it's that it's too expensive to mine them. (And I almost don't need to say where "here" is.) Various rare earths are widely distributed at low concentrations. And expensive to separate from each other. Active mines for rare earths, however, do tend to concentrate where costs of mining are low. Robot miners may address this problem. (The current approach tends towards open pit mines, but those are quite destructive.)
I think tablets *could* become a replacement for the PC, but only with some radically new input devices...and I don't know what those would be. If it did, it would require a stand, and become more of a portable screen than the current tablet computer in many work environments. I don't believe voice control will ever be reasonable, but some development of the data glove might work. Mind you, I do expect it to be ABLE to do voice control, I just can't see that as a major input mechanism. And you'd need a lot of safeties to prevent someone from saying the equivalent of "erase all files from local directory, yes I mean it.", but still to allow that command to be issued. This will probably mean it will need to identify individuals by their voice matched against their image. And this will require local processing. Making this depend on network access is just a killer in too many environments.
OTOH, I can easily imagine that this "portable screen" could be used as a tablet computer when in travel mode.
But please note that while this might *look* like a current tablet computer, it actually would be quite different.
That said, I'm not convinced that Oracle is here for the long term. The current company is too much the play toy of one individual, and I suspect that he's the only managerial talent they have. (Anyone with independant ideas will have been forced to leave.) And it's not that much better than some of its competition. I woud already prefer to use PostgreSQL. So I think Oracle depends on superstar management to keep it the darling of the corporate buyers that choose it.
I've always suspected that had more to do with reported NK threats against SK nuclear reactors. I still suspect that. Do note, however, that US culpability in the shutdown of NKs internet connetion is, while quite plausible (and I suspect orchestrated with China's acquiescence) is not proven.
Yes. The "conclusions" are "This is not conclusive.", and I believe that. It's also a reasonable scenario, with reasonable amount of data (that's checkable if you care enough). This quite different from the pronouncement by the government.
Your point, that it could be any number of other groups I also believe to be correct, though I haven't investigated.
While you are correct that the opinions aren't conclusive, THEY ADMIT THAT. For that reason I'm willing to give their opinions reasonable credence, and scoff at those who believe the spokesman for the FIB.
You can presume they have more. Perhaps Norse has a good enough reputation to merit that presumption. The other party's reputation, however, is quite a bit poorer, and I do not make that presumption about them.
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More to the point, gold may be an excellent investment, but not at the current price. And not at any price that is ever available to the public.
If you're expecting a collapse of civilization, then whiskey is probably a better investment. It's not only entertainment, it's medicine. But keeping it in fragile containers is a problem. The advantage of gold is that it's mobile. But an education in primitive medicine (not first aid, which is just what to do til the doctor arrives, and not modern medicine which depends on medicines that won't be available) would be an even better investiment. Bonus if you can do primitive dentistry.
If you're not expecting a collapse of civilization, then gold is more reasonable. It's important in lots of nano-tech and a non-corrodable covering of this and that. Of course, they don't use much, but then the amount of gold is rather limited unless you want to make it in a reactor, in which case I believe it will be radioactive...which might be an advantage if you want to trace your nano-gizmo.
I can't think of any possibility in which gold is the best investment, but if you can get it at a good enough price it's not a bad investment. It *has* increased in value even during my lifetime and relative to the costs of other things, and it doesn't have much in the way of up-keep costs like real estate does. (And it's portable. Did I mention that? This is possibly its majore benefit. Portable and anonymous.)
I prefer message passing through queues, but it clearly depends a lot on what problems you're working with.
Also, some problems can't be done in parallel, but we won't know how many can until we start trying....and then try for a few decades.
I won't even use bifocals. Instead I have two pair of glasses, one for the computer, one I would use for driving. (I'm near sighted enough that I just take off my glasses to read.)
The computer is a fixed distance from your eye. You want a single lense fixed at that distance. For other purposes, perhaps a progressive lens might be the best choice, it would depend on you, what you do, and what your eyes are like.
Forwarding an email is, legally, copyright infringement. But copyright infringement is only (legally) enforced if the owner of the copyright is willing to either enforce it or to delegate the enforcement to some other entity. The problem with the DMCA is that there is no penalty for fraudulent use of takedown notices. (Well, there *are* penalties, don't *you* try it, but any lawyer can work around them.)
IIRC, the DMCA only requires that you have a "good faith belief" that you control the copyright in order for mistaken use to be allowable without punishment. That's a pretty hard thing to disprove. And, also IIRC, a lawyer is allowed to have a "good faith belief" that his client is telling him the truth even if said client has a very long history of lying. (Did a lawyer actually issue the request? It's often done that way.) In that case the client risks NOTHING, except being refused.
So why *wouldn't* Sony cause spurious DMCA takedown requests to be issued?
It's my understanding that the usual practice is to "buy off" the local power structure ahead of time, and save the military threat for a threat. And the US would be unlikely to object at force being used to protect "private property". So China's military force is more than quite sufficient. (As far as I know, they've never needed to move from "threat" to action in the last decade or so.)
This isn't something new. Low wage jobs have already fled China to Indonesia. Factories more more slowly because of the capital investment in building them. Personally I doubt that many will head to Africa yet. But do note the "yet". You need stable enough conditions to trust that you can build a factory and have it pay for itself before it is rendered unusable in some way or other. And it doesn't matter WHAT you economic system or politics is, except that different forms of systems/politics enable different forms of payment to be acceptable. (E.g., when China builds a factory in a foreign country, typically the workers in that factory will be Chinese. This often causes local unrest, but the profis for China include exporting people and their associated support system. This allows China to pay off those running the country, and the locals are usually quite willing to sell to the Chinese laborers at the factory the supplies they need...possibly at a marked up price. So over time the locals become more accepting.)
The purpose of the police is to protect the state. Normally they do this by enforcing the laws in such a way that those with the power to threaten the state feel that they are more secure being supported by the state than by threatening it. Additionally they often enforce other laws that happen to be there.
Don't read this remit too narrowly. Consider it in context with "The law in its majesty forbids both the rich and the poor man from sleeping under the bridge."
Unfortunately, I have described an honest and upright police force, not the one we've got.
Sorry, but the term "cracker" was only created after the media started to refering to ANY computer exploit as the work of a hacker, and only publicizing the unlawful ones. It never caught on outside of a quite limited community. Give up the battle, it's time to invent a new word to mean what hacker used to mean.
Why do you think that was incompetence rather that political manuvering? Ask 10 people at random, and if they even know about the Sony hack, most of them will blame North Korea.
Lies, rather than incompetence, is what you should expect here until there is evidence to the contrary. (OTOH, if they were really competent, and cared, they could at least have come up with some decent evidence. My take is that they didn't care, however, rather than that they were incompetent.)
How certain can you be that you got the right servers? How certain can other people be?
It's not clear to me that this is justified. It's too easy for it to go wrong, or to "accidentally" target someone other than the ostensible attacker.
Isn't putting it in the hip pocket asking for it to be broken in half when you sit down?
Sorry, but while lawyers typically have a very different set of interests than most of us do, that doesn't make them stupid. Very few of them *are* stupid, though many are quite hostile to the tech mindset, and their areas of flexibility do not map well to my own. I've known a couple that I counted as friends...perhaps they counted me as friends, but I've never been sure, because one thing they do is manipulate human relations.
You can say similar things about doctors, but they are less hostile to tech, and don't specialize in manipulating human relations, so you can generally tell whether they like you or not in a social context. But their intellgence is focused in a different way. Unlike lawyers they do deal with facts, so there is a greater overlap with the tech mindset, but most doctors also deal with (though not manipulate) relationships in such a way that I find their comments in a professional context to be untrustworthy. They say what they believe will get you to do what they want you to do on a short term basis. They call this "a good bedside manner". I don't know how they interact professionally outside of the doctor-patient relationship, but I've heard before that hospitals tend to be extremely status conscious.
Sorry, but that's not being a patent troll. That's enforcing only some of the patents they have a right to as the developer. You would be more reasonable to call them excessively generous because they didn't really enforce all the patents they had a right to enforce as the developer of the technology.
While I agree with your sentence, I'm not sure I agree with your meaning.
The advantage of written text is that it can be held static while you consider implications. This is not true of something that is transiet (or should I say volatile). This is one reason I prefer reading to hearing a story on the radio. And I generally avoid videos...though not always if it's really fluff.
Please note that "instant replay" does not more than partially satisfy the same need, though it does satisfy other needs. Your mental buffer (or at least mine) processes text and videos differently. And with text you can have the entire thing right in front of you, ready for instant reference. With videos you must at least backspace a few frames and play forwards. When this is even possible it usually at minimum requires significant effort and many delays. So videos are generally comsumed whole without thinking about what they mean....not in detail.
That's not clear. What is clear is that a tablet is a horrible tool for many kinds of job that a PC is decent at. But there's no reason that with advancing technology this couldn't turn into a large screen on a pedestal that WAS the PC, with attached peripherals like keyboards. A few more mods and it could be an eye-mounted screen running off a phone. But you still something to do the job of a keyboard and a mouse. I haven't seen anything convincing yet.
I suppose the question might hinge on "What is a PC?". Certainly the form factor of PCs has changed many times. In the Apple ][ it was built in one piece with the keyboard. In a recent Apple it was built into the screen, which set on a stand. But it wasn't very portable.
O, and also "What is a tablet?". There's no reason that a PC couldn't have a multi-touch screen. It just wouldn't be very useful because of arm strain. But there's no intrinsic reason (that I can see) that the PC and the table couldn't be the same device in two differnt modes of operation. You need to handle resolution or visibility or however you choose to think of it, but there's no reason that this couldn't be done by some development of an eye-mounted display combined with a data glove for input. It wouldn't make a very good thing to type with, however, unless you managed to couple in some haptic feedback.
The problem with rare earths isn't that they aren't here, it's that it's too expensive to mine them. (And I almost don't need to say where "here" is.) Various rare earths are widely distributed at low concentrations. And expensive to separate from each other. Active mines for rare earths, however, do tend to concentrate where costs of mining are low. Robot miners may address this problem. (The current approach tends towards open pit mines, but those are quite destructive.)
I think tablets *could* become a replacement for the PC, but only with some radically new input devices...and I don't know what those would be. If it did, it would require a stand, and become more of a portable screen than the current tablet computer in many work environments. I don't believe voice control will ever be reasonable, but some development of the data glove might work. Mind you, I do expect it to be ABLE to do voice control, I just can't see that as a major input mechanism. And you'd need a lot of safeties to prevent someone from saying the equivalent of "erase all files from local directory, yes I mean it.", but still to allow that command to be issued. This will probably mean it will need to identify individuals by their voice matched against their image. And this will require local processing. Making this depend on network access is just a killer in too many environments.
OTOH, I can easily imagine that this "portable screen" could be used as a tablet computer when in travel mode.
But please note that while this might *look* like a current tablet computer, it actually would be quite different.
That said, I'm not convinced that Oracle is here for the long term. The current company is too much the play toy of one individual, and I suspect that he's the only managerial talent they have. (Anyone with independant ideas will have been forced to leave.) And it's not that much better than some of its competition. I woud already prefer to use PostgreSQL. So I think Oracle depends on superstar management to keep it the darling of the corporate buyers that choose it.
Thanks. That's what I got out of the summary, but apparently many others got something else.
I've always suspected that had more to do with reported NK threats against SK nuclear reactors. I still suspect that. Do note, however, that US culpability in the shutdown of NKs internet connetion is, while quite plausible (and I suspect orchestrated with China's acquiescence) is not proven.
Yes. The "conclusions" are "This is not conclusive.", and I believe that. It's also a reasonable scenario, with reasonable amount of data (that's checkable if you care enough). This quite different from the pronouncement by the government.
Your point, that it could be any number of other groups I also believe to be correct, though I haven't investigated.
While you are correct that the opinions aren't conclusive, THEY ADMIT THAT. For that reason I'm willing to give their opinions reasonable credence, and scoff at those who believe the spokesman for the FIB.
You can presume they have more. Perhaps Norse has a good enough reputation to merit that presumption. The other party's reputation, however, is quite a bit poorer, and I do not make that presumption about them.
Since this is a "public performance" does each performance count only as one showing, no matter how many watched?
And my hypothesis is the China did it as a favor to the US. But I can't prove it. And neither can you.