Dead people are bad for an economy, period. If the uber-capitalists really wanted to promote capitalist economies, they should be pouring money into research for life-extension and anti-aging therapies and technologies, plus of course way of increasing fertility and getting people to have more kids.
Even if there's no worthwhile information, the phone is still of immense value to those who want to take what's left of our privacy. You know, the same people who have us taking off our shoes in airports, in a security theatre exercise that would be farcical if it wasn't doing such a good job of making compliance with authoritarian demands a knee-jerk reflex among the citizenry.
I didn't see BG say anything that Google didn't also say. I saw that BG's lukewarm "we should start a discussion, this is important" was interpreted as support for the DOJ, and Google's "this is important, we should start a discussion" was interpreted as support for Apple.
But I could have misread their statements. But I didn't see it.
Thanks. Bill's stance is indeed a bit ambiguous. I made the mistake of letting other people interpret his statements for me instead of reading them myself. I would say that he's being a bit cagey - it almost sounds as though he said something because he thought it was expected, and not because he has a strong opinion. This story filled in some of the blanks for me: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/...
The last time I bought a laptop and tried running Linux on it the OS threw a fit because it didn't like some of the hardware (a Broadcomm wifi card if I remember right, plus some sort of bug with the CPU temperature probe which made it think the CPU was always overheating). If that has improved I might just hop over.
Researching a laptop's compatibility with Linux before buying can save a lot of grief. Also, there are companies that sell laptops with Linux pre-installed - not likely to be any compatibility problems there.
Moving from Windows to Linux can be made less stressful by moving in stages. Starting out with a dual-boot setup allows you to go fully back to Windows if necessary. As your Windows use decreases you can move to a VM, if peripherals and/or dongles you use will still work. You may find that in a while you no longer need Windows. I still keep a Win2K VM on my machine, because I have some old software that I suspect wouldn't work well with WINE and I'm at the stage where I'm more interested in doing stuff WITH my computer than TO it.
The founder of the company has sided with the DOJ against Apple. And Microsoft seems only to have gotten worse since Gates handed over the reins. That tells me all I need to know about Microsoft's trustworthiness as far as user privacy is concerned. Even if telemetry truly can be fully disabled, who's to say it won't be re-introduced without notice? Microsoft is sneaky that way.
I almost wish I was still a Windows user so I could quit in protest, but I moved to Linux almost 10 years ago and haven't looked back. I feel for those who are stuck with it, for whatever reason. I never thought I would say this, but if my only two choices were Apple and MS, I'd choose Apple.
Destroying the relationship between advertisers and consumers, is like destroying the relationship between parasites and their hosts. The sooner and the more decisively it's done, the better it is for all of the parties that really matter.
I've been shopping for a new HVAC unit for my home, and I'm shocked that there are very few I can even buy above SEER 16 that do not have mandatory internet connectivity in order to function. They even tried to sell me one that had an "zero-interface thermostat." The thermostat was in the unit and was controlled via smart-phone app - not directly between the phone and the HVAC unit, mind you. The HVAC unit phones home, and the smartphone app phones home, and so I request a temperature from the manufacturer's server, and the manufacturer's server tells the unit what to do. Completely ridiculous and unnecessary.
The IoT is a curse, not a blessing. It's just one more way for manufacturers to collect data about your personal habits and preferences, so they can sell that data to marketers. Of course, then there's government/NSA/etc...
Replying to this to make sure it doesn't get buried at 0. If what you say is true, then it's really, really scary.
i simply can't believe it. yet another buzzword from some marketing...
That was kinda my first thought too. Then I remembered 'the cloud'. Some marketing BS, like some Science Fiction, has a way of becoming real and integral to our daily lives.
Where is your criticism of the sentence fragments to be found in the letter to which you provided a link? Is it possible that you are loath to crtitcize the grammar of someone whose views you endorse?
Her essay used sentence fragments, run on sentences, split infinitive, improper grammar, and a host of other follies which one would not expect of someone with a degree in English Literature...
Sometimes, committing those 'follies', (and others), actually leads to more effective writing. Rules may be re-written in their breaking, and often it's for the better. That's how a language grows - not to mention science, technology, other arts, etc. Emerson said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Which of these are you little sir, perched atop your high horse?
Sponsored? Hell, I found this summary in the Firehose and was about to mod it binspam, even though it had already been accepted. I think I'll head on back to the Firehose and do just that.
It would be better if it became the habit to spend money on security...
Also, on VERY frequent offline backups using increasingly cheap mass storage options. And possibly even duplicate server racks. Get a call from your neighbourhood data extortionist? Take the servers offline, patch the hole, restore from backups or switch over to the second rack, and tell the extortionists to fuck off.
Unfortunately the poster deleted his original post, but one of the commenters provided a link to an archived copy: https://archive.is/QFL8e
I sure would like to know why that post was pulled with no explanation - did the guy fuck up and not want to come clean, was he or somebody else pressured into deleting it, or was there some other reason? Anyway, I agree that DOD will probably get a version with all that nonsense disabled - but simply assuming that only the Home and Pro versions are insistent on phoning home might not be such a good idea.
Sorry, no. If you remove the battery or run it completely flat, the fuel pump won't run, injectors and the spark plugs won't fire.
Depends on the age of the car. You may be right about cars with injectors and and a fuel pump - it depends on whether or not the electrical configuration allows the alternator to power those items. But certainly older, normally-aspirated engines, (old VW bug engines come to mind), are quite happy to run without a battery connected at all. I know this from first-hand experience.
It turns out software development is engineering, not clerical work.
At least some of what was going on there was hardware work. The first picture shows a woman holding a 'scope probe, connected to an advanced, (for its time). Tektronix oscilloscope. And if she used the equipment for more than just that photo op, then her role was considerably more than clerical in nature.
One of Wikipedia's largest problems is that it cites things which cite things which end up citing Wikipedia if you go far enough back.
This. I see a lot of notes on Wikipedia pages looking to correct / expunge 'original research'. WTF? I get that they'd like some corroboration on and confirmation of details forming part of an entry - but every footnoted citation that they consider acceptable, links directly or indirectly to original research somewhere back up the line. If a bunch of previous sources say the sky is green, does that make it so?
I would expect Wikipedia to encourage original research, along with the rigorous fact-checking and independent confirmation that would make it trustworthy and valuable. Previously-published material isn't inherently more reliable than original material which sees its first publication in Wikipedia.
First-world ivory-tower head-in-the-clouds narcissistic power-tripping douchebag misunderstands developing nation, loses investment, and shows himself as the ass he is. Nothing to see here, move along.
The social justice/political correctness crowd does indeed suffer from a strange obsession of erasing any sense of self-responsibility for individual decisions...
I'm not sure I'd characterize myself as a member of the "social justice/political correctness crowd", but I'll include myself for the sake of argument. I really don't see that we're interested in "erasing any sense of self-responsibility for individual decisions" - rather, we're dedicated to holding responsible those who contribute to those destructive choices through their own malice, incompetence, abuse of power, self-righteousness, or contributory negligence.
which comes in line with their hate of meritocracy, and finding reasons to blame anyone else...
"(H)ate of the meritocracy? Really? You actually believe that we live in a meritocracy? Are you blind, or wilfully self-deluded, or are you simply trolling? Donald Trump has a lot of wealth and power, and a good chance of becoming POTUS. Do you really think it was "merit" that got him there? Wake up.
...their own dumb decisions
When one is living in pain and despair and sees no way out, the ability to look at things rationally and to maintain enough hope to survive can utterly disappear. When you characterize it as "dumb", you highlight your own shallowness, lack of sophistication, and lack of compassion. Is that why you posted AC?
What a shame that in this relatively late stage of human development we should still be debating the moral pluses and minuses of applying technology to kill each other. Talking about "offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control" and "autonomous weapons would commit fewer battlefield atrocities than human beings" - shouldn't we be raising the level of discourse? A lot?
...What we really need is a hardware firewall that blocks all access to Microsoft domain names and IP addresses.
I recall reading within the past week, (probably in connection with Office 365), that some functionality was simply broken when telemetry was disabled beyond what the OS itself allows users to disable. Perhaps that breakage only applies to Microsoft applications; but if it doesn't already apply to third party programs, and indeed to the OS proper, I'm sure Microsoft will fix that 'oversight' sooner-rather-than-later in a mandatory update.
Or even better one that sends bad data to Microsoft. Maybe a nice little distributed computing project would be to know what data Microsoft is collecting and the write and distribute software that keeps feeding Microsoft bogus data to make their data collection less useful.
I think with Windows 10 we're seeing the advent of a brand of distributed computing in which 'error checking' takes place between MS servers and your computer. MS gets to define what an 'error' is; if the data your computer sends back to the mothership isn't what MS is expecting, they will simply discard it. And they may disable part or all of your OS functionality as well. Coming up with an algorithm which can successfully fool Redmond while sending false information might be quite a programming exercise.
...Microsoft might get the message and cut this out.
Not a chance. The only thing that will get Microsoft's attention is customers jumping ship in droves. And we all know that ain't gonna happen. Too many people don't understand where this is all going, and most of the rest simply don't care.
Slashdot Mirror
Dead people are bad for an economy, period. If the uber-capitalists really wanted to promote capitalist economies, they should be pouring money into research for life-extension and anti-aging therapies and technologies, plus of course way of increasing fertility and getting people to have more kids.
Sounds to me like the very definition of a Ponzi scheme. Oh, wait... I guess that's how our economy already works.
When was the last time you bought or rented a DVD of anything?
Last week.
No one wants some dumb physical medium that's just gong to get scratched up anyway.
Better that than letting yet another series of gatekeepers determine what's available to me, and when, and for how long.
Even if there's no worthwhile information, the phone is still of immense value to those who want to take what's left of our privacy. You know, the same people who have us taking off our shoes in airports, in a security theatre exercise that would be farcical if it wasn't doing such a good job of making compliance with authoritarian demands a knee-jerk reflex among the citizenry.
that we humans are both building and training our eventual replacements? Talk about outsourcing and off-shoring - sheesh!
I didn't see BG say anything that Google didn't also say. I saw that BG's lukewarm "we should start a discussion, this is important" was interpreted as support for the DOJ, and Google's "this is important, we should start a discussion" was interpreted as support for Apple.
But I could have misread their statements. But I didn't see it.
Thanks. Bill's stance is indeed a bit ambiguous. I made the mistake of letting other people interpret his statements for me instead of reading them myself. I would say that he's being a bit cagey - it almost sounds as though he said something because he thought it was expected, and not because he has a strong opinion. This story filled in some of the blanks for me: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/...
The last time I bought a laptop and tried running Linux on it the OS threw a fit because it didn't like some of the hardware (a Broadcomm wifi card if I remember right, plus some sort of bug with the CPU temperature probe which made it think the CPU was always overheating). If that has improved I might just hop over.
Researching a laptop's compatibility with Linux before buying can save a lot of grief. Also, there are companies that sell laptops with Linux pre-installed - not likely to be any compatibility problems there.
Moving from Windows to Linux can be made less stressful by moving in stages. Starting out with a dual-boot setup allows you to go fully back to Windows if necessary. As your Windows use decreases you can move to a VM, if peripherals and/or dongles you use will still work. You may find that in a while you no longer need Windows. I still keep a Win2K VM on my machine, because I have some old software that I suspect wouldn't work well with WINE and I'm at the stage where I'm more interested in doing stuff WITH my computer than TO it.
The founder of the company has sided with the DOJ against Apple. And Microsoft seems only to have gotten worse since Gates handed over the reins. That tells me all I need to know about Microsoft's trustworthiness as far as user privacy is concerned. Even if telemetry truly can be fully disabled, who's to say it won't be re-introduced without notice? Microsoft is sneaky that way.
I almost wish I was still a Windows user so I could quit in protest, but I moved to Linux almost 10 years ago and haven't looked back. I feel for those who are stuck with it, for whatever reason. I never thought I would say this, but if my only two choices were Apple and MS, I'd choose Apple.
Destroying the relationship between advertisers and consumers, is like destroying the relationship between parasites and their hosts. The sooner and the more decisively it's done, the better it is for all of the parties that really matter.
I've been shopping for a new HVAC unit for my home, and I'm shocked that there are very few I can even buy above SEER 16 that do not have mandatory internet connectivity in order to function. They even tried to sell me one that had an "zero-interface thermostat." The thermostat was in the unit and was controlled via smart-phone app - not directly between the phone and the HVAC unit, mind you. The HVAC unit phones home, and the smartphone app phones home, and so I request a temperature from the manufacturer's server, and the manufacturer's server tells the unit what to do. Completely ridiculous and unnecessary.
The IoT is a curse, not a blessing. It's just one more way for manufacturers to collect data about your personal habits and preferences, so they can sell that data to marketers. Of course, then there's government/NSA/etc...
Replying to this to make sure it doesn't get buried at 0. If what you say is true, then it's really, really scary.
i simply can't believe it. yet another buzzword from some marketing...
That was kinda my first thought too. Then I remembered 'the cloud'. Some marketing BS, like some Science Fiction, has a way of becoming real and integral to our daily lives.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next step toward technological advancement...
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next step toward technological enslavement...
FTFY.
Where is your criticism of the sentence fragments to be found in the letter to which you provided a link? Is it possible that you are loath to crtitcize the grammar of someone whose views you endorse?
Her essay used sentence fragments, run on sentences, split infinitive, improper grammar, and a host of other follies which one would not expect of someone with a degree in English Literature...
Sometimes, committing those 'follies', (and others), actually leads to more effective writing. Rules may be re-written in their breaking, and often it's for the better. That's how a language grows - not to mention science, technology, other arts, etc. Emerson said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Which of these are you little sir, perched atop your high horse?
There's little question this is a sponsored post.
Sponsored? Hell, I found this summary in the Firehose and was about to mod it binspam, even though it had already been accepted. I think I'll head on back to the Firehose and do just that.
It would be better if it became the habit to spend money on security...
Also, on VERY frequent offline backups using increasingly cheap mass storage options. And possibly even duplicate server racks. Get a call from your neighbourhood data extortionist? Take the servers offline, patch the hole, restore from backups or switch over to the second rack, and tell the extortionists to fuck off.
Nothing in that article indicates what version of Windows 10 they are running. If it is Home or Pro, it hardly applies to what the DoD will be using.
No, not in that article; but in another case, the tester is using Enterprise: https://voat.co/v/technology/c...
Unfortunately the poster deleted his original post, but one of the commenters provided a link to an archived copy: https://archive.is/QFL8e
I sure would like to know why that post was pulled with no explanation - did the guy fuck up and not want to come clean, was he or somebody else pressured into deleting it, or was there some other reason? Anyway, I agree that DOD will probably get a version with all that nonsense disabled - but simply assuming that only the Home and Pro versions are insistent on phoning home might not be such a good idea.
Sorry, no. If you remove the battery or run it completely flat, the fuel pump won't run, injectors and the spark plugs won't fire.
Depends on the age of the car. You may be right about cars with injectors and and a fuel pump - it depends on whether or not the electrical configuration allows the alternator to power those items. But certainly older, normally-aspirated engines, (old VW bug engines come to mind), are quite happy to run without a battery connected at all. I know this from first-hand experience.
It turns out software development is engineering, not clerical work.
At least some of what was going on there was hardware work. The first picture shows a woman holding a 'scope probe, connected to an advanced, (for its time). Tektronix oscilloscope. And if she used the equipment for more than just that photo op, then her role was considerably more than clerical in nature.
Now they want their turn
Where are my mod points when I need them? Still laughing out loud - thanks!
One of Wikipedia's largest problems is that it cites things which cite things which end up citing Wikipedia if you go far enough back.
This. I see a lot of notes on Wikipedia pages looking to correct / expunge 'original research'. WTF? I get that they'd like some corroboration on and confirmation of details forming part of an entry - but every footnoted citation that they consider acceptable, links directly or indirectly to original research somewhere back up the line. If a bunch of previous sources say the sky is green, does that make it so?
I would expect Wikipedia to encourage original research, along with the rigorous fact-checking and independent confirmation that would make it trustworthy and valuable. Previously-published material isn't inherently more reliable than original material which sees its first publication in Wikipedia.
First-world ivory-tower head-in-the-clouds narcissistic power-tripping douchebag misunderstands developing nation, loses investment, and shows himself as the ass he is. Nothing to see here, move along.
It's really just looting, right? Looters often find ways to justify what they do too, talking about greedy capitalists and store owners.
Ah yes, here come the Randroid Libertarians and their knee-jerk zest for creating more and more Tragedies of the Commons.
The social justice/political correctness crowd does indeed suffer from a strange obsession of erasing any sense of self-responsibility for individual decisions...
I'm not sure I'd characterize myself as a member of the "social justice/political correctness crowd", but I'll include myself for the sake of argument. I really don't see that we're interested in "erasing any sense of self-responsibility for individual decisions" - rather, we're dedicated to holding responsible those who contribute to those destructive choices through their own malice, incompetence, abuse of power, self-righteousness, or contributory negligence.
which comes in line with their hate of meritocracy, and finding reasons to blame anyone else...
"(H)ate of the meritocracy? Really? You actually believe that we live in a meritocracy? Are you blind, or wilfully self-deluded, or are you simply trolling? Donald Trump has a lot of wealth and power, and a good chance of becoming POTUS. Do you really think it was "merit" that got him there? Wake up.
...their own dumb decisions
When one is living in pain and despair and sees no way out, the ability to look at things rationally and to maintain enough hope to survive can utterly disappear. When you characterize it as "dumb", you highlight your own shallowness, lack of sophistication, and lack of compassion. Is that why you posted AC?
What a shame that in this relatively late stage of human development we should still be debating the moral pluses and minuses of applying technology to kill each other. Talking about "offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control" and "autonomous weapons would commit fewer battlefield atrocities than human beings" - shouldn't we be raising the level of discourse? A lot?
...What we really need is a hardware firewall that blocks all access to Microsoft domain names and IP addresses.
I recall reading within the past week, (probably in connection with Office 365), that some functionality was simply broken when telemetry was disabled beyond what the OS itself allows users to disable. Perhaps that breakage only applies to Microsoft applications; but if it doesn't already apply to third party programs, and indeed to the OS proper, I'm sure Microsoft will fix that 'oversight' sooner-rather-than-later in a mandatory update.
Or even better one that sends bad data to Microsoft. Maybe a nice little distributed computing project would be to know what data Microsoft is collecting and the write and distribute software that keeps feeding Microsoft bogus data to make their data collection less useful.
I think with Windows 10 we're seeing the advent of a brand of distributed computing in which 'error checking' takes place between MS servers and your computer. MS gets to define what an 'error' is; if the data your computer sends back to the mothership isn't what MS is expecting, they will simply discard it. And they may disable part or all of your OS functionality as well. Coming up with an algorithm which can successfully fool Redmond while sending false information might be quite a programming exercise.
...Microsoft might get the message and cut this out.
Not a chance. The only thing that will get Microsoft's attention is customers jumping ship in droves. And we all know that ain't gonna happen. Too many people don't understand where this is all going, and most of the rest simply don't care.