...same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives.
I'm a boomer who used to go out to see movies quite often. I don't even mind how pricey it is today. What I DO mind is all the advertising for crap not related to movies. That, and the ad-filled trivia games and crap that show before the ads that roll before the movie, have so totally put me off that I stay away for all but the biggest must-see-in-a theatre shows.
I really hate paying to see advertising in a theatre - fucked if I'll also pay to sit in a movie house with a bunch of non-house-broken smartphone addicts. Now get off my lawn...
Your 'free' gear was not free, no matter what they say.
No, but it may have been free, or at least heavily subsidized, from the standpoint of the recipient. Such offers are in the same class as loyalty / rewards programs - the 'freebies' and 'discounts' are paid for by those of us who don't drink that particular Koolaid, and/or by those who buy the product without the special offer both before and after the fact. It's all a shell game within the greater Ponzi scheme.
that Pirate Bay-like streaming services will arise, and will pwn all the legal streaming services that are being hobbled by legislation and fragmented by self-important artists.
Maybe they will even accept payment for the service of aggregating content from existing legal streaming services, for as long as said legal services last. Heck, there might even be a legal aggregator in our future - call it MetaStream.
i want a crappy win95 clone and most likely will continue to want one in the future unless there is a really compelling reason to give it up, which i havent seen yet
My gold standard for UIs is Win2K, so I hear you. And honestly, the closest I've been able to come to that in Linux, is XFCE. When I finally gave up on Windows I switched to Gnome on Debian, then went to XFCE on Debian when Gnome 3 reared its ugly head. Then late in Jessie when shit started breaking, I switched to Xubuntu and haven't looked back.
I don't have a truly good file manager - the only one in Linux that gives me everything I want is Dolphin, and it comes with a HUGE amount of KDE cruft, so I go without. And the only file search tool I've found that does everything I need, (searching for text within files for example), is the cranky and non-intuitive Gnome Search Tool. (To me a good file manager has fully-featured search built right in - having them separate is a pain). And then there's the whole filetypes mess - I really wish I could override that on an extension-by-extension basis instead of having my Kicad files open in a text editor, (and in one case even a music player), or having Kicad attempt to open my text files.
I know it doesn't sound like much of a "gold standard", but in spite of that I'm utterly grateful for Xubuntu. Without it I'd be complaining even more and contemplating a computer-free hermetic existence.
It's a valid neologism that is very common in the information technology field. Learn to adapt.
I would argue that "setup" as a noun is a valid neologism, and that "setup" as a verb is simply sloppy and arose from a failure to understand basic grammar. If "setup" is a valid verb, then "goover", "cometo", "passon", and any such other bastardizations should also be considered valid. There's really no good reason to create a new, awkward, and entirely redundant class of verbs.
...making the body of the fuselage one huge supercapicitor with quick charge capabilities.
Aside from the very poor energy density of supercaps, (even when compared with liquid hydrogen), there's also the problem of even minor fuselage damage seriously compromising or destroying your energy source.
I've had a PC on the internet since the early-mid 1990's, and so far have had precisely zero security problems with this... But then, I don't do a bunch of stupid shit, either.
Sure. But do you have credit cards and/or bank accounts? Medical records? Employment records? A social security number? It's great that your own personal hardware and software are housed in a citadel of common sense and best practices bolstered by specialized knowledge probably not attainable by Joe and Jane Average; but what about your personal data, out there in the hands of people who don't know and/or don't care about security?
The people I see with weekly or monthly malware infestations are the ones absolutely refusing to learn. Even after the 20th time they do Stupid Thing X and get infected yet again, that doesn't seem to stop them from doing the very same thing again next week. Yet they act bewildered about what could have happened.
Too true. And in the physical world we have pressure, and sometimes laws, to get vaccinated against communicable diseases. We also enforce driver education and licensing. So as distasteful and problematic as I find the concept, maybe we need to seriously look at the suggestion made by some pariahs that we require testing and licensure before using the web. Then again, how can we effectively police it? 'Cause at that point we're back to square one, security-wise.
If you have one population that has constant problems, and another that has none, maybe just maybe the population having all the problems should ask themselves, "What are we doing wrong, that those other guys are not? Why are we having so many problems, and those guys are not having any problems at all? What should we be learning?"
The 'population with problems' should wise up, but most of them probably won't, ever. In the absence of their enlightened and disciplined involvement, how do you suggest we proceed?
Damn! According to the link you provided they can "determine subtle differences in body shapes" and "determine a person's breathing patterns and heart rate". That means I have to forego the tin-foil hat in favour of a full-body Faraday suit! I guess it's time to get me some copper mesh and pay a visit to my tailor...
Microsoft gets 6 free articles on the main page. Is this what slashdot is reduced to, shilling for the MICROS~1 organization?
Like it or not, (and I decidedly don't like it), Microsoft is still a major force in computing. So it's inevitable that sometimes a bunch of MS articles will show up in one place at one time, like a cancer cluster that turns out to be just a statistical anomaly.
Please believe me when I say that I understand and feel what you're saying. But shouldn't we give the new Slashdot owners the benefit of the doubt until such time as shilling articles have been a consistent theme for 6 months or so? They haven't been at the helm for that long - cut'em some slack!
...undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market."
By all means prosecute the people committing cybercrime, regardless of what country they're from. But please don't thump your chest and run off at the mouth about "Truth, Justice, and The American Way" when all you're doing is protecting the home-grown crooks and their scams from the foreign crooks and their scams.
The amplification attack introduces a detectable latency in the keyfob's response due to the time required to process and relay the communication.
That's only true if they are demodulating and remodulating the data. If they are simply up-converting / down-converting the RF signals using mixers and local oscillators, the additional latency probably isn't detectable without complex and expensive circuitry at the car end, and extremely consistent processing delays in the key itself.
The purpose of a university is to teach — any research done is coincidental to that primary purpose.
Isn't part of higher education the teaching of conducting research? If not, how the hell did universities become research centres in the first place?
So long as nobody is forced into doing something they don't want to, there is no damage whatsoever.
That's entirely true in a philosophy that views corporate hegemony and rapidly increasing concentration of wealth, power, and control over society as A-OK. But when one looks beyond that to the importance of individual rights and the common good, this is just another move toward ubiquitous serfdom.
if we manage to solve the problem of what happens when a satellite or an airplane or a flock of birds or whatever flies through the beam
Nothing happens. We're talking about multi-kilometer-wide beams of a wavelength we've chosen to be as harmless as possible. Plus planes are designed to handle lightning strikes, and satellites are hardened to handle exposure to radiation and solar wind so I don't see why a Faraday cage on the really sensitive parts would be so difficult (if that isn't already part of the design).
Well, I guess a radio telescope that was pointed right at it might get fried... but come on.
Thanks - I didn't realize the beam would cover such a large area. Guess I wasn't thinking... Do you also have any insight into what the ultimate efficiency would be, or what the optimal frequencies are?
Um, if we manage to figure out how to 'wirelessly beam' energy over great distances with an efficiency that's anywhere near useful, and if we manage to solve the problem of what happens when a satellite or an airplane or a flock of birds or whatever flies through the beam, then maybe it'll be time to talk about automating the building of solar power plants on the Moon.
OTOH, if we manage the sci-fu and eng-fu to accomplish those things, maybe we can just efficiently generate and distribute cheap solar electric power right here on Earth, and forget about space robots and moon shots. Just a thought.
In Pale Moon, belua.com comes up with a totally blank page for me, even in a clean profile with no extensions active and with a working Flash plugin installed. However, it does load in Vivaldi. That would suggest an incompatibility with at least some versions of Firefox.
Moving towards Internet *ownership* for all citizens, (as opposed to mere *access*), is an intriguing concept to be sure. However, perhaps publicity for the idea ought to have been delayed until the basic infrastructure for promoting it was a little better developed. For the site to fulfill its implied mandate, it needs to be universally accessible.
If they get enough traction soon enough and have a strong enough core team, maybe they can pick up a few Mozilla devs when FF crashes and burns. The existing team will need to reign in the new Mozilla devs and totally squash that fucking "we know better than the users" craptitude that sent FF swirling down the drain - hence the need for a strong, established core of Pale Moon devs to establish, protect, and enforce the 'user requirements first' culture.
...eventually pedestrian crossing could be completely eliminated since anyone could just hop in a driverless car and go a couple blocks away instead of walking and if you wanted to go for a walk/run then you would take a driverless car to a nearby park or gym.
WTF? Having to go to some special pedestrian-designated place just to walk or run in the city? Better yet, having to try to get a dog into a car which probably has a no-pets policy just so you can take Fido for a walk? You're trolling, right?
"First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then...? Then you serve machines." I was going to say "No, thanks", but I'll amend that to say "Hell no. No. Fucking. Way."
Assuming for the sake of argument that we ALL have a stake in, and ALL have contributed to, the progress that our civilization has enjoyed - why is society becoming so extremely polarized at the very rich and very poor ends of the economic spectrum? In other words, why is the middle class disappearing?
Don't get me wrong - I understand that hard work, intelligence, and creativity, (along with a HUGE amount of sheer luck that is usually unnoticed, much less acknowledged), engender differential material gain and economic stratification, to some extent. We will always have inequality - it seems to be the law of the universe. But I don't believe that we must have the extreme inequality that has taken hold over the last three decades or so. Victor Yakovenko has some interesting things to say about the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We use artificial mechanisms to protect ourselves from extreme weather, disease, natural disasters, etc. Now, how can we all pull together to protect ourselves from extreme economic conditions? For this kind of polarization is unstable - like a lightning storm, major discharges will occur. Many of these 'discharges' will be very destructive - global war, famine, climate change, bloody revolution... Andy Puzder sounds both self-righteous and somewhat panicked at the prospect of having to defend his masters' hoard against those who insist on a decent living wage for Carl's Jr. employees - he really sounds like he's talking about war tactics and strategies. Why can't we arrange it that 'more than enough' is considered the end of this fight for wealth concentration? How can we tame the collective gluttony which both feeds on the misery of our fellow man and steals a staggering amount of opportunity from our children's children's children?
I ask these questions and make these observations in the context of TFA and TFS because with all of the automation and efficiencies of production our civilization has gained over the past several decades, we ALL should be working fewer hours while having both a better standard of living and a better quality of life.
Apologies for seeming a bit rambling and unfocused. This is a very complex, very broad issue, and it's hard to formulate thoughts and questions at all, much less do it in the space of a Slashdot comment.
All along I've just been assuming that mass surveillance "contribute(s) to the silencing of minority views" and "undermine(s) democracy", to the point where TFA is about the equivalent of the statement "water is wet". The question I struggle with is "did the authors of these policies and mechanisms foresee this outcome and purposely work towards it, or did they just get lucky"? Not that it much matters though, because the outcome is the same regardless; but it would be nice to know how clever and foresightful the enemy really is when the peasants finally do revolt.
Slashdot Mirror
...same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives.
I'm a boomer who used to go out to see movies quite often. I don't even mind how pricey it is today. What I DO mind is all the advertising for crap not related to movies. That, and the ad-filled trivia games and crap that show before the ads that roll before the movie, have so totally put me off that I stay away for all but the biggest must-see-in-a theatre shows.
I really hate paying to see advertising in a theatre - fucked if I'll also pay to sit in a movie house with a bunch of non-house-broken smartphone addicts. Now get off my lawn...
Your 'free' gear was not free, no matter what they say.
No, but it may have been free, or at least heavily subsidized, from the standpoint of the recipient. Such offers are in the same class as loyalty / rewards programs - the 'freebies' and 'discounts' are paid for by those of us who don't drink that particular Koolaid, and/or by those who buy the product without the special offer both before and after the fact. It's all a shell game within the greater Ponzi scheme.
that Pirate Bay-like streaming services will arise, and will pwn all the legal streaming services that are being hobbled by legislation and fragmented by self-important artists.
Maybe they will even accept payment for the service of aggregating content from existing legal streaming services, for as long as said legal services last. Heck, there might even be a legal aggregator in our future - call it MetaStream.
i want a crappy win95 clone and most likely will continue to want one in the future unless there is a really compelling reason to give it up, which i havent seen yet
My gold standard for UIs is Win2K, so I hear you. And honestly, the closest I've been able to come to that in Linux, is XFCE. When I finally gave up on Windows I switched to Gnome on Debian, then went to XFCE on Debian when Gnome 3 reared its ugly head. Then late in Jessie when shit started breaking, I switched to Xubuntu and haven't looked back.
I don't have a truly good file manager - the only one in Linux that gives me everything I want is Dolphin, and it comes with a HUGE amount of KDE cruft, so I go without. And the only file search tool I've found that does everything I need, (searching for text within files for example), is the cranky and non-intuitive Gnome Search Tool. (To me a good file manager has fully-featured search built right in - having them separate is a pain). And then there's the whole filetypes mess - I really wish I could override that on an extension-by-extension basis instead of having my Kicad files open in a text editor, (and in one case even a music player), or having Kicad attempt to open my text files.
I know it doesn't sound like much of a "gold standard", but in spite of that I'm utterly grateful for Xubuntu. Without it I'd be complaining even more and contemplating a computer-free hermetic existence.
It's a valid neologism that is very common in the information technology field. Learn to adapt.
I would argue that "setup" as a noun is a valid neologism, and that "setup" as a verb is simply sloppy and arose from a failure to understand basic grammar. If "setup" is a valid verb, then "goover", "cometo", "passon", and any such other bastardizations should also be considered valid. There's really no good reason to create a new, awkward, and entirely redundant class of verbs.
...making the body of the fuselage one huge supercapicitor with quick charge capabilities.
Aside from the very poor energy density of supercaps, (even when compared with liquid hydrogen), there's also the problem of even minor fuselage damage seriously compromising or destroying your energy source.
Why are Americans so unbelievably stupid?
Why are you so unbearably snobbish?
I think you mean "as long as A few, like EC2 and S3, keep winning."
I think you mean "as long as a few, like EC2 and S3, keep winning." Capitalising the article in the middle of the sentence is simply incorrect.
The original phrase has a completely different meaning. But then, you're AMERICANS. Cretins.
Either you are not so good at grammar as you imagine, or you are a poor typist. But then, you're an ASSHOLE. Cretin.
That's bad news for women.
And if women are aroused by robots, that's really bad news for men...
I've had a PC on the internet since the early-mid 1990's, and so far have had precisely zero security problems with this... But then, I don't do a bunch of stupid shit, either.
Sure. But do you have credit cards and/or bank accounts? Medical records? Employment records? A social security number? It's great that your own personal hardware and software are housed in a citadel of common sense and best practices bolstered by specialized knowledge probably not attainable by Joe and Jane Average; but what about your personal data, out there in the hands of people who don't know and/or don't care about security?
The people I see with weekly or monthly malware infestations are the ones absolutely refusing to learn. Even after the 20th time they do Stupid Thing X and get infected yet again, that doesn't seem to stop them from doing the very same thing again next week. Yet they act bewildered about what could have happened.
Too true. And in the physical world we have pressure, and sometimes laws, to get vaccinated against communicable diseases. We also enforce driver education and licensing. So as distasteful and problematic as I find the concept, maybe we need to seriously look at the suggestion made by some pariahs that we require testing and licensure before using the web. Then again, how can we effectively police it? 'Cause at that point we're back to square one, security-wise.
If you have one population that has constant problems, and another that has none, maybe just maybe the population having all the problems should ask themselves, "What are we doing wrong, that those other guys are not? Why are we having so many problems, and those guys are not having any problems at all? What should we be learning?"
The 'population with problems' should wise up, but most of them probably won't, ever. In the absence of their enlightened and disciplined involvement, how do you suggest we proceed?
Don't worry, the good folks at MIT have been able to track you for years.
Damn! According to the link you provided they can "determine subtle differences in body shapes" and "determine a person's breathing patterns and heart rate". That means I have to forego the tin-foil hat in favour of a full-body Faraday suit! I guess it's time to get me some copper mesh and pay a visit to my tailor...
Microsoft gets 6 free articles on the main page. Is this what slashdot is reduced to, shilling for the MICROS~1 organization?
Like it or not, (and I decidedly don't like it), Microsoft is still a major force in computing. So it's inevitable that sometimes a bunch of MS articles will show up in one place at one time, like a cancer cluster that turns out to be just a statistical anomaly.
Please believe me when I say that I understand and feel what you're saying. But shouldn't we give the new Slashdot owners the benefit of the doubt until such time as shilling articles have been a consistent theme for 6 months or so? They haven't been at the helm for that long - cut'em some slack!
Mod parent up!
...undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market."
By all means prosecute the people committing cybercrime, regardless of what country they're from. But please don't thump your chest and run off at the mouth about "Truth, Justice, and The American Way" when all you're doing is protecting the home-grown crooks and their scams from the foreign crooks and their scams.
There is, in fact, a 6-prong plan to make Apple entirely independent of third parties.
Does that plan include in-house fab and foundry? If not, then they can never be truly sure of the "loyalty" of their servers.
The amplification attack introduces a detectable latency in the keyfob's response due to the time required to process and relay the communication.
That's only true if they are demodulating and remodulating the data. If they are simply up-converting / down-converting the RF signals using mixers and local oscillators, the additional latency probably isn't detectable without complex and expensive circuitry at the car end, and extremely consistent processing delays in the key itself.
The purpose of a university is to teach — any research done is coincidental to that primary purpose.
Isn't part of higher education the teaching of conducting research? If not, how the hell did universities become research centres in the first place?
So long as nobody is forced into doing something they don't want to, there is no damage whatsoever.
That's entirely true in a philosophy that views corporate hegemony and rapidly increasing concentration of wealth, power, and control over society as A-OK. But when one looks beyond that to the importance of individual rights and the common good, this is just another move toward ubiquitous serfdom.
if we manage to solve the problem of what happens when a satellite or an airplane or a flock of birds or whatever flies through the beam
Nothing happens. We're talking about multi-kilometer-wide beams of a wavelength we've chosen to be as harmless as possible. Plus planes are designed to handle lightning strikes, and satellites are hardened to handle exposure to radiation and solar wind so I don't see why a Faraday cage on the really sensitive parts would be so difficult (if that isn't already part of the design).
Well, I guess a radio telescope that was pointed right at it might get fried ... but come on.
Thanks - I didn't realize the beam would cover such a large area. Guess I wasn't thinking... Do you also have any insight into what the ultimate efficiency would be, or what the optimal frequencies are?
Um, if we manage to figure out how to 'wirelessly beam' energy over great distances with an efficiency that's anywhere near useful, and if we manage to solve the problem of what happens when a satellite or an airplane or a flock of birds or whatever flies through the beam, then maybe it'll be time to talk about automating the building of solar power plants on the Moon.
OTOH, if we manage the sci-fu and eng-fu to accomplish those things, maybe we can just efficiently generate and distribute cheap solar electric power right here on Earth, and forget about space robots and moon shots. Just a thought.
In Pale Moon, belua.com comes up with a totally blank page for me, even in a clean profile with no extensions active and with a working Flash plugin installed. However, it does load in Vivaldi. That would suggest an incompatibility with at least some versions of Firefox.
Moving towards Internet *ownership* for all citizens, (as opposed to mere *access*), is an intriguing concept to be sure. However, perhaps publicity for the idea ought to have been delayed until the basic infrastructure for promoting it was a little better developed. For the site to fulfill its implied mandate, it needs to be universally accessible.
I really hope they do this and are successful.
If they get enough traction soon enough and have a strong enough core team, maybe they can pick up a few Mozilla devs when FF crashes and burns. The existing team will need to reign in the new Mozilla devs and totally squash that fucking "we know better than the users" craptitude that sent FF swirling down the drain - hence the need for a strong, established core of Pale Moon devs to establish, protect, and enforce the 'user requirements first' culture.
wouldn't wind shear be a really big concern?
...eventually pedestrian crossing could be completely eliminated since anyone could just hop in a driverless car and go a couple blocks away instead of walking and if you wanted to go for a walk/run then you would take a driverless car to a nearby park or gym.
WTF? Having to go to some special pedestrian-designated place just to walk or run in the city? Better yet, having to try to get a dog into a car which probably has a no-pets policy just so you can take Fido for a walk? You're trolling, right?
"First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines." I was going to say "No, thanks", but I'll amend that to say "Hell no. No. Fucking. Way."
Sorry, but it just had to be said...
Assuming for the sake of argument that we ALL have a stake in, and ALL have contributed to, the progress that our civilization has enjoyed - why is society becoming so extremely polarized at the very rich and very poor ends of the economic spectrum? In other words, why is the middle class disappearing?
Don't get me wrong - I understand that hard work, intelligence, and creativity, (along with a HUGE amount of sheer luck that is usually unnoticed, much less acknowledged), engender differential material gain and economic stratification, to some extent. We will always have inequality - it seems to be the law of the universe. But I don't believe that we must have the extreme inequality that has taken hold over the last three decades or so. Victor Yakovenko has some interesting things to say about the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We use artificial mechanisms to protect ourselves from extreme weather, disease, natural disasters, etc. Now, how can we all pull together to protect ourselves from extreme economic conditions? For this kind of polarization is unstable - like a lightning storm, major discharges will occur. Many of these 'discharges' will be very destructive - global war, famine, climate change, bloody revolution... Andy Puzder sounds both self-righteous and somewhat panicked at the prospect of having to defend his masters' hoard against those who insist on a decent living wage for Carl's Jr. employees - he really sounds like he's talking about war tactics and strategies. Why can't we arrange it that 'more than enough' is considered the end of this fight for wealth concentration? How can we tame the collective gluttony which both feeds on the misery of our fellow man and steals a staggering amount of opportunity from our children's children's children?
I ask these questions and make these observations in the context of TFA and TFS because with all of the automation and efficiencies of production our civilization has gained over the past several decades, we ALL should be working fewer hours while having both a better standard of living and a better quality of life.
Apologies for seeming a bit rambling and unfocused. This is a very complex, very broad issue, and it's hard to formulate thoughts and questions at all, much less do it in the space of a Slashdot comment.
All along I've just been assuming that mass surveillance "contribute(s) to the silencing of minority views" and "undermine(s) democracy", to the point where TFA is about the equivalent of the statement "water is wet". The question I struggle with is "did the authors of these policies and mechanisms foresee this outcome and purposely work towards it, or did they just get lucky"? Not that it much matters though, because the outcome is the same regardless; but it would be nice to know how clever and foresightful the enemy really is when the peasants finally do revolt.