Say goodbye to any topic that is even vaguely controversial.
Say hello to authors that harshly compete with one another, and potentially even start backstabbing one another.
The bottom line is that their quality will sink faster than... a very... fast... sinking... thing. *whistles*. (I was gonna say Trumps career but I'm sure everyone else is as sick to death about just reading that name, as I am...)
Maybe they could have done this as a bonus on top of a basic salary, but not as their entire salary.
I was just about to post something like this. Amazon charges a pittance to store large amounts of data ($0.004/gb/month).
If you plan on rolling your own backup solution anyway, then using glacier as a final endpoint is your best bet cause then you won't have to worry about replication, etc. All you do is upload your files. It doesn't care how or what you upload. It's basically just a very slow performing storage volume. Encrypt your files and maybe add some PAR files for extra security, and you're golden.
But the cloud is supposed to make everything awesome and great, right? Right?
*crickets*
Yet another example of why I refuse to indiscriminately jump on the "cloud" bandwagon, no matter how many people (mostly bloggers, it seems) accuse me of being a dinosaur. Regardless of consumer protection laws, I simply don't want to have to put myself in a position where I have to risk dealing with nonsense like this.
On the one hand, we have people who routinely don't do updates because they can't be bothered, or don't feel they bear any responsibility to the upkeep of their equipment.
On the other hand, you have companies like Microsoft who have done an excellent job of fucking up so many updates so badly, that people are now *afraid* to update for fear of having their machines get hosed.
So we're stuck taking everything at a case-by-case basis. If DJI doesn't have a history of botching their updates, there is no excuse for someone to update their copters. If the update fixes a catastrophic problem that is a possible safety issue, then I see no reason why the update *shouldn't* be forced, and that the copter should ground itself if not updated. This seems entirely sensible to me. Why should some bystander have to risk being injured cause some asshole doesn't feel enough responsibility to perform basic maintenance?
Why do I need to reconsider my perception? My "perception" is based on several decades of computing, including programming and administration. The fact of the matter is that the industry is absolutely flooded with people who are textbook definitions of the Dunning-Kruger effect. People think that they read a tutorial on javascript and now they're suddenly programmers. That's the problem with Javascript. It is VERY easy to get started on. There is virtually zero barrier to entry. Javascript is now in the same position that Visual Basic was a couple decades ago. Everyone gets to be a programmer and pump out products regardless of how god-awful they are.
Combine that with the fact that the average desktop or laptop hardware is now so powerful that your application will likely appear to run just fine, no matter how god-awfully inefficient your code is, that it just exacerbates the problem.
We are now caught in an endless cycle because applications have become so bloated and inefficient, that it is no longer possible to use even basic desktop applications unless you're running with at *least* 8GB ram and a generous sized SSD, because going even slightly less is excruciating.
Why do you think, for example, that Facebook+messenger takes over 750MB of storage? Shitty programmers that think they're good.
Honestly, the number of examples are literally endless. Have you ever seen code that iterates through a hashmap to find a desired value? I have.
What I don't understand, is why bitcoin is being valued so stupidly highly. To me, this kind of instability is frightening. The risk of losing value is so high that only a fool would invest.
And yet in the real world, I'm the fool because if I had bought bitcoin earlier on, I'd be filthy rich now.
You make a fair point, however it doesn't change what I'm saying. If this were 100 years ago or more, this conversation wouldn't be happening at all. (And not just because the internet didn't exist...;) )
The fact is, morality is not a constant. It is very much dependent on what people believe. You're right. "Normal" is a very charged word, and I probably shouldn't have used it as it has various unintended implications. But different people have different concepts of morality. Of good and evil. For example, the left believe it is completely right and proper for those who are in abundance, to share with those who do not. That is how we can have things like public schools, libraries, common utilities, etc. The overall benefit to everyone grossly outweighs the minor inconvenience caused to the rich. The right, on the other hand, consider this sharing to be outright evil. It is theft, nothing more, nothing less. I personally know conservatives who are outright livid that they are forced to give money for "useless shit" such as libraries and public schools. But I digress...
I have difficulty agreeing with "That he was a white supremacist sociopath is incidental to the crime." The fact that he was a white supremacist sociopath is very much a part of the crime he committed. If he hadn't been a white supremacist sociopath, he wouldn't have done that. It's as simple as that. The fact is that these sorts of extremist views are only taken up by extremist people. And these extremist people, when brought together, will inevitably goad each other into performing extreme acts. I don't see how this sort of thing *can* be stopped, without explicitly vilifying these people. Declaring, in no uncertain terms, that not only are these actions wrong, the thought processes that lead up to these actions are also wrong and if you believe them then there is something wrong with you.
If we are not willing to do that, then we need to stop complaining about how heinous these extremist actions are and just accept them. The distance between thought and action isn't that wide, so as long as we consider it acceptable for people to believe extremist views, then we need to consider it acceptable that extremist acts are also acceptable because they are a guaranteed inevitability.
That's because it isn't stated outright. If you just read the manifesto, it sounds almost reasonable. It's only when you start dissecting the arguments you realize how completely flawed and biased the manifesto is. When you start looking at Damore's history, it makes you question the paper even more.
Most fundamentally, he uses the already discredited idea of evolutionary biological psychology. I can't remember which one now, but even the author of one of the papers he cited, responded and said that Damore got the conclusion bass-ackward.
The groundwork of the manifesto is just so simplistic or outright wrong, that his conclusions are meaningless and can be very easily interpreted as offensive. It badly generalizes... well... pretty much *everyone* negatively, and does not accurately represent how things are.
I'm not going to bother breaking the manifesto down as others far better than me have done so. Not to mention it would probably just make me (even more of) a magnet for abuse than this post already will.
But really, it's not even about the manifesto anymore. By all rights, that document should have simply sunk into obscurity like a bad newsgroup posting. What it did do, however, was ignite a smouldering powder keg that I don't think people really appreciated or possibly even realized existed.
Except that they wouldn't, because to any normal human being with more than two neurons to rub together, it's patently obvious that badmouthing an innocent woman that was premeditatedly murdered by a white supremacist is not even remotely similar to website promoting equal rights.
Although, yes, if such a site would be brought down, there would most certainly be an outcry, because that would in fact be morally wrong.
Bigots of course, would disagree with that statement. To them, being cruel and hateful to people who haven't hurt anyone else and just want to live their lives in peace, is perfectly acceptable.
Unless there is absolutely no way to trigger AML remotely, I'm not sure I'd trust this system either.
Western countries have done a great job of demonstrating that they can and will violate every possible bit of privacy that they can manage, legality be damned.
Do we really want the various TLA agencies the ability to track the entire population down to the centimeter level?
Make sure you're not holding your phone while you're watching dirty videos!
Now the crooks can continue doing what they're doing unimpeded, meanwhile security professionals get their hands tied behinds their backs and anonymization techniques can be used regardless of how flaws they are.
I have this great method for anoymization, based on the tried and true ROT13 encryption algorithm. And if anyone cracks it, I can lay charges instead of wasting time wondering if my entire process is horribly broken.
Why? Because I've given up trying to. I've seen first hand what happens when you call for restraint from people who are hell bent on crushing their opposition.
The fact is, hatred wins out. Being constructive is *hard*. Trying to compromise is hard, and takes a great amount of effort. Hate is easy.
And all it takes is a charismatic hateful person to completely wipe out any gains you thought you had made.
Look at Trump. Look at Rob Ford. Look at all the anti-women legislation being pushed through various states in the US. Hell, look at most of the middle east.
People don't want to compromise. People *want* to hate. People *want* to oppress others. Hell, most major religions on the planet revolves around the fact that you need to have complete, unwavering conviction that "you are right" and anyone who disagrees should be put to death.
There is no room for compassion and moving forward when the majority of people in the world feel this way. Given the population pressures we're currently facing, I'm honestly surprised WW3 hasn't happened yet.
I admit that I shouldn't have allowed myself to get caught up in the hysterical witch hunt, and I apologize for that, as the paper has a lot of interesting points. But he didn't do himself any favors with his wording.
For example, in biology "neuroticism" may have a specific and useful meaning, but I've learned the hard way that that doesn't matter when the word in common parlance has different meaning. The "Theory" in "Theory Of Evolution" being a prime example.
I personally stopped reading his document favorably (or even impartially) as soon as I got to that line, because with that one word he flat-out insulted the entire female sex and tried to re-enforce the age old cliche of "women are hysterical", "Women can be safely ignored because they don't know what they're doing", etc.
You have to remember that women have been outright repressed for many hundred years. In some cultures today, they're still being badly repressed. And here we have an article that by subtle wording effectively implies that women shouldn't be programmers.
It's the sexism equivalent of when those in charge of Auchwitz installed those cooling-off showers. Sure, it was a good idea that made sense for the purpose in which it was intended. But we all know how well that turned out.
That right-of-centre manifesto was basically (almost) everything that is offensive in a decent society. The jerk whined about how right-wingers were being treated "unfairly" and in almost the same breath, he was very anti-diversity. In particular, the guy is breathtakingly sexist. He's practically a posterchild for all the things that are wrong with brogrammer culture. And this is despite the other anti-diveristy biases that *already* exist at Google, such as ageism.
While there are a couple valid points buried in that joke of an manifesto, they are completely buried in the mouth-frothing idiocy. The guy was, quite bluntly, an asshole, and I'm glad he was fired. Also, like a cliche right-winger, the concept of irony is completely lost on him.
Complaining that your own narrow-minded, blatantly sexist viewpoint isn't accepted, is NOT an example of the "liberals" being hypocritical. That's the equivalent of complaining that a criminal should not be punished for conforming to "alternative laws".
Even these "degraded" speeds are perfectly good enough to more than keep up with regular internet usage. Having a higher total bandwidth is infinitely more important than being able to download a web page in 0.7 seconds rather than 1.0 seconds.
What exactly would you have Apple or Google or any other app distributor do?
The fact of the matter is modern day applications are *shit*. Todays average "developer" is a glorified script kiddy that slaps a bunch of components together, adds some glue, and calls it done. And the bits that developers write themselves are so shockingly bad, that bloat is inevitable.
I mean, seriously..... Look at Facebook for example. The Facebook App + the Messenger app takes a whopping 3/4 GIGABYTE on iOS. The Slack desktop application, as good as it is, takes up a stupid amount of resources.
This is what happens when you lower the bar to programming to the point where any John Doe can slap some crap together and think that they are now a professional developer. This is what happens, when you push a culture of "You don't need a degree to write code!", of "young and new is always better than old and previous".
The focus is now on slapping some crap together and shoving it out the door, than doing things properly. As long as it runs, everyone is happy. The end result is low quality, ridiculously bloated apps that are replete with security issues. This has been a steady hole that everyone has been reveling in digging deeper and deeper, and that's exacerbated by the attitude that people who have learned from their previous mistakes should be fired to make room for young people who are still deep in dunning-kruger territory.
App sizes are just a symptom of a much larger issue: Computing in general have gone to shit, and the tech industry is happily dancing a jig in their own filth because they've so completely drank the koolaid of their own marketing that they think that filth is full of rainbow sparkles, and they ostracize anyone willing to lift their head up and go, "Wait a sec here...."
Okay, fair enough. But unless the legislation introduces something to the procurement process that isn't already there, then it's still pointless legislation. AFAIK the gov't is supposed to be *already* evaluating such things when they do their purchasing. It's still up to the buyer to verify that the vendor didn't cheat somehow.
Furthermore, this still leave out the consumers who are still getting shafted with shoddy insecure hardware.
It's more important to APPEAR that you're doing something, than it is to ACTUALLY do something.
How exactly do they propose to secure a marketing term? Cause that's all "Internet Of Things" is. It means absolutely nothing. While they're at it, why don't they also try to secure Big Data, The Cloud, and Web 2.0?
It's already plainly obvious that Idjit Patel is going to kill off those rules come hell or high water.
So what's the point of having a discussion? I doubt any of the 'tech leaders' want to waste their time with political theatre, having a bunch of politicians pat their heads and go "There there, it'll be ok."
Slashdot Mirror
Did they even *try* to think that through?
Say goodbye to any topic that is even vaguely controversial.
Say hello to authors that harshly compete with one another, and potentially even start backstabbing one another.
The bottom line is that their quality will sink faster than... a very... fast... sinking... thing. *whistles*. (I was gonna say Trumps career but I'm sure everyone else is as sick to death about just reading that name, as I am...)
Maybe they could have done this as a bonus on top of a basic salary, but not as their entire salary.
I was just about to post something like this. Amazon charges a pittance to store large amounts of data ($0.004/gb/month).
If you plan on rolling your own backup solution anyway, then using glacier as a final endpoint is your best bet cause then you won't have to worry about replication, etc. All you do is upload your files. It doesn't care how or what you upload. It's basically just a very slow performing storage volume. Encrypt your files and maybe add some PAR files for extra security, and you're golden.
But the cloud is supposed to make everything awesome and great, right? Right?
*crickets*
Yet another example of why I refuse to indiscriminately jump on the "cloud" bandwagon, no matter how many people (mostly bloggers, it seems) accuse me of being a dinosaur. Regardless of consumer protection laws, I simply don't want to have to put myself in a position where I have to risk dealing with nonsense like this.
On the one hand, we have people who routinely don't do updates because they can't be bothered, or don't feel they bear any responsibility to the upkeep of their equipment.
On the other hand, you have companies like Microsoft who have done an excellent job of fucking up so many updates so badly, that people are now *afraid* to update for fear of having their machines get hosed.
So we're stuck taking everything at a case-by-case basis. If DJI doesn't have a history of botching their updates, there is no excuse for someone to update their copters. If the update fixes a catastrophic problem that is a possible safety issue, then I see no reason why the update *shouldn't* be forced, and that the copter should ground itself if not updated. This seems entirely sensible to me. Why should some bystander have to risk being injured cause some asshole doesn't feel enough responsibility to perform basic maintenance?
FYI, for those that don't get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Why do I need to reconsider my perception? My "perception" is based on several decades of computing, including programming and administration. The fact of the matter is that the industry is absolutely flooded with people who are textbook definitions of the Dunning-Kruger effect. People think that they read a tutorial on javascript and now they're suddenly programmers. That's the problem with Javascript. It is VERY easy to get started on. There is virtually zero barrier to entry.
Javascript is now in the same position that Visual Basic was a couple decades ago. Everyone gets to be a programmer and pump out products regardless of how god-awful they are.
Combine that with the fact that the average desktop or laptop hardware is now so powerful that your application will likely appear to run just fine, no matter how god-awfully inefficient your code is, that it just exacerbates the problem.
We are now caught in an endless cycle because applications have become so bloated and inefficient, that it is no longer possible to use even basic desktop applications unless you're running with at *least* 8GB ram and a generous sized SSD, because going even slightly less is excruciating.
Why do you think, for example, that Facebook+messenger takes over 750MB of storage? Shitty programmers that think they're good.
Honestly, the number of examples are literally endless. Have you ever seen code that iterates through a hashmap to find a desired value? I have.
I stand by my "perception", thank you very much.
There's nothing wrong with killer robots (from Venus).
You might disagree, but I think they're A-Ok.
This desperately needs to be modded up. This sums it up exactly.
What I don't understand, is why bitcoin is being valued so stupidly highly. To me, this kind of instability is frightening. The risk of losing value is so high that only a fool would invest.
And yet in the real world, I'm the fool because if I had bought bitcoin earlier on, I'd be filthy rich now.
You make a fair point, however it doesn't change what I'm saying. If this were 100 years ago or more, this conversation wouldn't be happening at all. (And not just because the internet didn't exist... ;) )
The fact is, morality is not a constant. It is very much dependent on what people believe. You're right. "Normal" is a very charged word, and I probably shouldn't have used it as it has various unintended implications. But different people have different concepts of morality. Of good and evil. For example, the left believe it is completely right and proper for those who are in abundance, to share with those who do not. That is how we can have things like public schools, libraries, common utilities, etc. The overall benefit to everyone grossly outweighs the minor inconvenience caused to the rich. The right, on the other hand, consider this sharing to be outright evil. It is theft, nothing more, nothing less. I personally know conservatives who are outright livid that they are forced to give money for "useless shit" such as libraries and public schools. But I digress...
I have difficulty agreeing with "That he was a white supremacist sociopath is incidental to the crime." The fact that he was a white supremacist sociopath is very much a part of the crime he committed. If he hadn't been a white supremacist sociopath, he wouldn't have done that. It's as simple as that. The fact is that these sorts of extremist views are only taken up by extremist people. And these extremist people, when brought together, will inevitably goad each other into performing extreme acts. I don't see how this sort of thing *can* be stopped, without explicitly vilifying these people. Declaring, in no uncertain terms, that not only are these actions wrong, the thought processes that lead up to these actions are also wrong and if you believe them then there is something wrong with you.
If we are not willing to do that, then we need to stop complaining about how heinous these extremist actions are and just accept them. The distance between thought and action isn't that wide, so as long as we consider it acceptable for people to believe extremist views, then we need to consider it acceptable that extremist acts are also acceptable because they are a guaranteed inevitability.
That's because it isn't stated outright. If you just read the manifesto, it sounds almost reasonable. It's only when you start dissecting the arguments you realize how completely flawed and biased the manifesto is. When you start looking at Damore's history, it makes you question the paper even more.
Most fundamentally, he uses the already discredited idea of evolutionary biological psychology. I can't remember which one now, but even the author of one of the papers he cited, responded and said that Damore got the conclusion bass-ackward.
The groundwork of the manifesto is just so simplistic or outright wrong, that his conclusions are meaningless and can be very easily interpreted as offensive. It badly generalizes... well... pretty much *everyone* negatively, and does not accurately represent how things are.
I'm not going to bother breaking the manifesto down as others far better than me have done so. Not to mention it would probably just make me (even more of) a magnet for abuse than this post already will.
But really, it's not even about the manifesto anymore. By all rights, that document should have simply sunk into obscurity like a bad newsgroup posting. What it did do, however, was ignite a smouldering powder keg that I don't think people really appreciated or possibly even realized existed.
Except that they wouldn't, because to any normal human being with more than two neurons to rub together, it's patently obvious that badmouthing an innocent woman that was premeditatedly murdered by a white supremacist is not even remotely similar to website promoting equal rights.
Although, yes, if such a site would be brought down, there would most certainly be an outcry, because that would in fact be morally wrong.
Bigots of course, would disagree with that statement. To them, being cruel and hateful to people who haven't hurt anyone else and just want to live their lives in peace, is perfectly acceptable.
Unless there is absolutely no way to trigger AML remotely, I'm not sure I'd trust this system either.
Western countries have done a great job of demonstrating that they can and will violate every possible bit of privacy that they can manage, legality be damned.
Do we really want the various TLA agencies the ability to track the entire population down to the centimeter level?
Make sure you're not holding your phone while you're watching dirty videos!
Now the crooks can continue doing what they're doing unimpeded, meanwhile security professionals get their hands tied behinds their backs and anonymization techniques can be used regardless of how flaws they are.
I have this great method for anoymization, based on the tried and true ROT13 encryption algorithm. And if anyone cracks it, I can lay charges instead of wasting time wondering if my entire process is horribly broken.
Trump: Hey Ajit, announce something idiotic. I need to take some attention away from this whole North Korea thing.
Ajit: Already way ahead of you.
Why? Because I've given up trying to. I've seen first hand what happens when you call for restraint from people who are hell bent on crushing their opposition.
The fact is, hatred wins out. Being constructive is *hard*. Trying to compromise is hard, and takes a great amount of effort. Hate is easy.
And all it takes is a charismatic hateful person to completely wipe out any gains you thought you had made.
Look at Trump. Look at Rob Ford. Look at all the anti-women legislation being pushed through various states in the US. Hell, look at most of the middle east.
People don't want to compromise. People *want* to hate. People *want* to oppress others. Hell, most major religions on the planet revolves around the fact that you need to have complete, unwavering conviction that "you are right" and anyone who disagrees should be put to death.
There is no room for compassion and moving forward when the majority of people in the world feel this way. Given the population pressures we're currently facing, I'm honestly surprised WW3 hasn't happened yet.
So I don't repeat the same comment multiple times:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You mean, apart from women being neurotic?
I admit that I shouldn't have allowed myself to get caught up in the hysterical witch hunt, and I apologize for that, as the paper has a lot of interesting points. But he didn't do himself any favors with his wording.
For example, in biology "neuroticism" may have a specific and useful meaning, but I've learned the hard way that that doesn't matter when the word in common parlance has different meaning. The "Theory" in "Theory Of Evolution" being a prime example.
I personally stopped reading his document favorably (or even impartially) as soon as I got to that line, because with that one word he flat-out insulted the entire female sex and tried to re-enforce the age old cliche of "women are hysterical", "Women can be safely ignored because they don't know what they're doing", etc.
You have to remember that women have been outright repressed for many hundred years. In some cultures today, they're still being badly repressed. And here we have an article that by subtle wording effectively implies that women shouldn't be programmers.
It's the sexism equivalent of when those in charge of Auchwitz installed those cooling-off showers. Sure, it was a good idea that made sense for the purpose in which it was intended. But we all know how well that turned out.
Your URL broke.
That right-of-centre manifesto was basically (almost) everything that is offensive in a decent society. The jerk whined about how right-wingers were being treated "unfairly" and in almost the same breath, he was very anti-diversity. In particular, the guy is breathtakingly sexist. He's practically a posterchild for all the things that are wrong with brogrammer culture. And this is despite the other anti-diveristy biases that *already* exist at Google, such as ageism.
While there are a couple valid points buried in that joke of an manifesto, they are completely buried in the mouth-frothing idiocy. The guy was, quite bluntly, an asshole, and I'm glad he was fired. Also, like a cliche right-winger, the concept of irony is completely lost on him.
Complaining that your own narrow-minded, blatantly sexist viewpoint isn't accepted, is NOT an example of the "liberals" being hypocritical. That's the equivalent of complaining that a criminal should not be punished for conforming to "alternative laws".
Even these "degraded" speeds are perfectly good enough to more than keep up with regular internet usage. Having a higher total bandwidth is infinitely more important than being able to download a web page in 0.7 seconds rather than 1.0 seconds.
What exactly would you have Apple or Google or any other app distributor do?
The fact of the matter is modern day applications are *shit*. Todays average "developer" is a glorified script kiddy that slaps a bunch of components together, adds some glue, and calls it done. And the bits that developers write themselves are so shockingly bad, that bloat is inevitable.
I mean, seriously..... Look at Facebook for example. The Facebook App + the Messenger app takes a whopping 3/4 GIGABYTE on iOS. The Slack desktop application, as good as it is, takes up a stupid amount of resources.
This is what happens when you lower the bar to programming to the point where any John Doe can slap some crap together and think that they are now a professional developer. This is what happens, when you push a culture of "You don't need a degree to write code!", of "young and new is always better than old and previous".
The focus is now on slapping some crap together and shoving it out the door, than doing things properly. As long as it runs, everyone is happy. The end result is low quality, ridiculously bloated apps that are replete with security issues. This has been a steady hole that everyone has been reveling in digging deeper and deeper, and that's exacerbated by the attitude that people who have learned from their previous mistakes should be fired to make room for young people who are still deep in dunning-kruger territory.
App sizes are just a symptom of a much larger issue: Computing in general have gone to shit, and the tech industry is happily dancing a jig in their own filth because they've so completely drank the koolaid of their own marketing that they think that filth is full of rainbow sparkles, and they ostracize anyone willing to lift their head up and go, "Wait a sec here...."
Okay, fair enough. But unless the legislation introduces something to the procurement process that isn't already there, then it's still pointless legislation. AFAIK the gov't is supposed to be *already* evaluating such things when they do their purchasing. It's still up to the buyer to verify that the vendor didn't cheat somehow.
Furthermore, this still leave out the consumers who are still getting shafted with shoddy insecure hardware.
It's more important to APPEAR that you're doing something, than it is to ACTUALLY do something.
How exactly do they propose to secure a marketing term? Cause that's all "Internet Of Things" is. It means absolutely nothing. While they're at it, why don't they also try to secure Big Data, The Cloud, and Web 2.0?
It's already plainly obvious that Idjit Patel is going to kill off those rules come hell or high water.
So what's the point of having a discussion? I doubt any of the 'tech leaders' want to waste their time with political theatre, having a bunch of politicians pat their heads and go "There there, it'll be ok."