The one thing I can't understand in all of this is why they required the Other OS removal firmware update to access PSN. Yes, it may have reduced the number of hackable consoles out there, but anyone who planned on hacking it would just not update theirs. Overall, I think it likely inspired more hackers than it it deterred. It also means that since I haven't updated to keep "Other OS", I have no reason not to jailbreak it. I don't care about the backup feature, but if I can gain other functions (like GPU access in Linux?) that are likely to follow, then why not? What are they going to do, ban me from PSN again? They've already spent the one piece of ammo they had on something that didn't even have a good chance at allowing games to be copied.
My previous post was a joke pointing out that a single event doesn't have a rate. To compute a rate that has any meaning, you need to count occurrences in a statistically large sample over a fixed time. Even then, the value of the rate is mostly comparative between samples.
That's not true. Netflix streaming works without logging into PSN. I have a fat PS3 that I haven't updated (so that I can keep the Other OS option) and I stream movies regularly. Although, I am a bit concerned that they may disable the disks when they release the software version in October. If that requires a firmware update, I may need to jailbreak just to keep Netflix.
the students are treating mathematical expressions as a list of instructions to be obeyed, and not as expressions. This works fine for 1+2=? or 4/3=?, but leads to a cognative train wreck when trying to deal with even the simplest algebra
I think the problem isn't that students don't understand what they're being taught, it's that the way they're being taught leads them to false conclusions. Pose the problems in a way that shows "=" is transitive and the students will pick up on it. One simple way to do this is to use the form "x = 4 + 3" as often as "4 + 3 = x"
The next step is to lay out the algebraic logic by using a sequence:
x = 4 + 3
a = x + 2
What is a?
Then you can go into algebra:
x + 2 = 4 + 3 , what is x?
Of course, word problems need to be included as well to link these concepts to reality.
Yes, a gun probably would be better. An awl could be almost as effective in the right hands, but it requires you to get much closer to the intruder and therefore increases risk. It's also far less of an immediate deterrent compared to an imposing weapon like a shotgun.
Uh, marginal speed gain? Maybe the low end SSDs only have a slight performance advantage over the top end HDDs, but the PCI-e drives are almost an order of magnitude faster.
Fast sata HDD ~ 100 MB/s RAID 0 with 10k rpm drives ~ 175 MB/s Fast PCI-e SSD ~ 900 MB/s
While PCI-e SSDs may be expensive right now, there's already a market for them in servers and workstations which will only grow as prices drop and speeds increase. In fact, I'm sitting here right now using 2 of 8 cores on my workstation because a RAID 0 HDD array can't supply data quickly enough. My options to solve this are either buy a new machine with >100GB of RAM or add a $4000 PCI-e SSD. Neither of these are all that likely to happen as prices stand now, but I think SSD capacity/$ is going to outpace RAM for the foreseeable future.
In the US anyway, there are two different systems set up for this. Civil and criminal courts. Criminal courts are prosecuted by the state and the punishment is usually fines and/or jail time. The fines are retained by the state mostly to cover court costs and partially to discourage others from committing the same crime. The victim is usually able to sue in civil court independently to try to recover their losses. What has become an increasing problem is the tendency for civil cases to attempt to act as a deterrent by awarding damages that greatly exceed the original loss. It has mostly backfired, especially in the case of the RIAA. The excessive damages that have been awarded have given them a financial incentive to promote file sharing and then sue.
Hopefully, people will realize what's going on and limit damages to something more reasonable, but until then it's viable business strategy. (albeit an ethically dubious one)
So let me get this straight... what you're saying is... handing out guns to every random passer-by is a good way to teach gun safety and prevent murder by shooting?
That has to qualify as one of the most ignorant analogies I've ever seen.
It's more like putting up a billboard that says "The most widely used door lock on the market can be easily punched out with a captive bolt pistol"
Well, unless you "upgraded", they're forcing you to ignore all of their new offerings. I know I would definitely buy a few new games, probably the Move controller and a few things from the PSN store (DLC, PS1 games, MLBtv, etc.). But, apparently, preventing me from accessing the PSN keeps me from pirating things and Sony values that more.
The problem with Linux on consumer devices like that is this: Unless you make it like an embedded device, no updates and no plugging in anything non approved, then it will only work until the next update, because Linux from the kernel up is like the shifting sands and things that work today may not work tomorrow. I was talking on here just the other week with someone that bought one of the Dell Ubuntu netbooks. He gets it home, he updates it...can you guess what happened? No Sound and no wireless after the update!
Linux has great security, Linux has really nice looking UIs, what it needs now is some serious stability. It needs a stable driver ABI, it needs a way that retailers like me can actually sell your product without having to disable security just to make it usable. I ran Ubuntu on 4 machines, 3 desktops and a laptop, hoping against hope that they would get it right on the next release, but by 9.04 I simply gave up. Not once, not ever, did I get that damned OS to update without something breaking. wireless, sound, video, my printer, it got to the point I looked at the update notification as a "break your OS NOW!" button.
That's really strange. I've had a completely different experience. I'm posting from a laptop running Ubuntu 10.04 which I have had no trouble with through 3 or 4 upgrades and an uncountable number of updates (I originally installed either 8.04 or 8.10, can't remember which anymore). I've done the same with several other computers and only run into one issue (Pulseaudio).
Just look at how quick netbooks, which were supposed to usher in Linux on the desktop, were switched over to XP.
I'm not really sure why this happened. Linux netbooks were selling as fast as they could be built early on. I tried to buy one of the models that was around $199, but couldn't find them in stock anywhere. Although, I think Microsoft changing their pricing and hardware requirements for XP around that time frame definitely had an impact.
Hell even Canonical admitted Ubuntu netbooks had higher returns [laptopmag.com] which of course hurts any retailers bottom line.
The higher return rate is probably more of an issue of people not realizing that what they bought wasn't Windows. Microsoft has had such a hold on the market that to many people, if it doesn't have a start menu and a nice blue theme, it must not be a computer. The quality of the OS (not to say the custom images that the vendors came up with were all that great) wasn't really the issue.
As a retailer I'd like to sell your OS, I really would. But until I can take a bog standard AMD or Intel PC, install Ubuntu, run the updates, and have 100% of the hardware that worked before work after I run the update, then I just can't allow it in my shop. The time wasted trawling forums looking for "fixes" will cost me more than simply putting Windows Home on it. Sorry.
There's no OS out there that does what you're asking for. Although, I think some of the Linux distributions are far closer than XP. Linux hardware support is only lacking because some hardware manufacturers won't provide Linux drivers or publish the information needed so that an independent party can write one. Besides, Windows doesn't support much hardware out of the box either. I haven't had a fresh windows install yet where I didn't have to track down a driver or ten to get all of my hardware working. The difference is that the Linux hardware support issue is easily avoided by simply staying away from a handful of hardware vendors.
Again, I have no idea how you've been able to get updates to cause issues regularly on Ubuntu. Version upgrades sometimes have issues, but they're no more trouble than upgrading Windows service packs.
All I ask is that you evaluate Linux distributions with the same criteria as you use with Windows.
I could understand the argument that the market for x86 computers running Linux isn't big enough to warrant the effort of offering them, but I don't buy the claim that Windows is easier to deploy and support.
The ideology of science is that the methodology is a good one. There isn't much ideology, but it is non-zero. In order to conclude that the scientific method is a correct method for ascertaining truth, you first have to postulate that there is a persistent, objective reality, and that our senses bear some consistent relationship to it. That is moderately uncontroversial (at least today), but it is still a precondition to the conclusion that the scientific method is useful.
The scientific method is useful because it produces testable predictions. Science doesn't presuppose anything on "faith". The "assumptions" of causality and reality being objective are theories that are tested every day, and so far, are holding to be true. If this wasn't the case, our current theories would not hold up to scrutiny and new ones would have to be created.
Yes, this is a serious issue. I heard about an incident a while back in the area around South Park Colorado. An eight year old kid crashed a boat into a large beaver dam, flooding a nearby town.
Since it's highly unlikely that 1 will happen and 2 isn't desirable for those who value having both Other OS and PSN access over the cash, I propose a third option:
3. Restore full functionality to the owner by giving them a second PS3 and promise to never disable functionality again.
No, I think his death was meant as a metaphor for sacrifice. I interpreted it as a suggestion that Jobs should give up the thing he cherishes most, control, by releasing all Apple software as open source. When Microsoft attacks in an attempt to prevent him from undermining their business model, the public legal battle will draw the attention of federal regulators who bring an end to the Microsoft monopoly.
I already have a device (Nokia N900) that has an 800x480 display with video output. I can say from experience that it is possible to watch on the small screen as long as you have a stable place to set it (holding it at arms length for 1.5+hrs would get tiring).
The real advantage is that I can carry about 15 or so movies with me on trips and all I need is a TV w/ RCA inputs to watch them at a reasonable size. The only thing keeping me from having a completely portable movie collection right now is storage space. Streaming a large collection of movies and TV like Netflix does would fill the gap until something the size of a phone can hold a few TB.
Since Minkowski's observation was based on work with special relativity, people presume is observation applies only for relativistic systems. Sorry, Nature is more consistent than that: one needs to think about spacetime always, even if it contributes squat.
So in other words, people assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.
I had the opposite experience. I flunked Calc 2 a couple of times at the nearby university (ASU) before taking it at the local community college (SCC) and passing with an A.
Isn't the solution to valuation of the credits to allocate them by auction?
The only reason these credits have value is due to a government imposed restriction on CO2 output. Whether the market value of these credits is determined by auction or by trade amongst major producers is irrelevant because the value will be based only on how the cap is implemented and how many credits are available.
In order to minimize the total cost to the economy, the price of the carbon credits should match the actual external costs of releasing carbon dioxide. If the credits are above this value, the carbon producing companies are needlessly limited and if the credits are valued below they will not capture the full cost. The value of the credits is easily controlled by adjusting the cap and number of credits available. The real problem is in determining what the actual external costs of carbon emissions are.
As you may be able to tell from the Wikipedia page on Economics of global warming , we have no clue what this cost really is.
Slashdot Mirror
The one thing I can't understand in all of this is why they required the Other OS removal firmware update to access PSN. Yes, it may have reduced the number of hackable consoles out there, but anyone who planned on hacking it would just not update theirs. Overall, I think it likely inspired more hackers than it it deterred. It also means that since I haven't updated to keep "Other OS", I have no reason not to jailbreak it. I don't care about the backup feature, but if I can gain other functions (like GPU access in Linux?) that are likely to follow, then why not? What are they going to do, ban me from PSN again? They've already spent the one piece of ammo they had on something that didn't even have a good chance at allowing games to be copied.
My previous post was a joke pointing out that a single event doesn't have a rate. To compute a rate that has any meaning, you need to count occurrences in a statistically large sample over a fixed time. Even then, the value of the rate is mostly comparative between samples.
A mortality rate (like many rates) is per unit time.
In that case, I'll probably die once every 10^100 years (or however long the universe lasts) ...
My mortality rate is almost zero!
Uh, you need to sign into PSN to use Netflix
That's not true. Netflix streaming works without logging into PSN. I have a fat PS3 that I haven't updated (so that I can keep the Other OS option) and I stream movies regularly. Although, I am a bit concerned that they may disable the disks when they release the software version in October. If that requires a firmware update, I may need to jailbreak just to keep Netflix.
the students are treating mathematical expressions as a list of instructions to be obeyed, and not as expressions. This works fine for 1+2=? or 4/3=?, but leads to a cognative train wreck when trying to deal with even the simplest algebra
I think the problem isn't that students don't understand what they're being taught, it's that the way they're being taught leads them to false conclusions. Pose the problems in a way that shows "=" is transitive and the students will pick up on it. One simple way to do this is to use the form "x = 4 + 3" as often as "4 + 3 = x"
The next step is to lay out the algebraic logic by using a sequence:
x = 4 + 3
a = x + 2
What is a?
Then you can go into algebra:
x + 2 = 4 + 3 , what is x?
Of course, word problems need to be included as well to link these concepts to reality.
Yes, a gun probably would be better. An awl could be almost as effective in the right hands, but it requires you to get much closer to the intruder and therefore increases risk. It's also far less of an immediate deterrent compared to an imposing weapon like a shotgun.
What's wrong with installing Firefox for 99% of tasks, and also having IE6 available for the obsolete and soon to be extinct tasks that require it?
1. In the corporate world "soon to be extinct tasks" run on HPUX boxes. IE6 based web apps are just reaching what they would consider as stable.
and
2. Most people don't even know what a browser is, let alone have the ability to choose which is best to use from a security standpoint.
Although, I did just recently join an IE8 beta program at work. So it seems that change isn't impossible, just really slow.
If
Having a spare TB of space means never having to say 'you're sorry'.
and
"Love means never having to say you're sorry"
Then
Love means having a spare TB of space?
Uh, marginal speed gain? Maybe the low end SSDs only have a slight performance advantage over the top end HDDs, but the PCI-e drives are almost an order of magnitude faster.
Fast sata HDD ~ 100 MB/s
RAID 0 with 10k rpm drives ~ 175 MB/s
Fast PCI-e SSD ~ 900 MB/s
While PCI-e SSDs may be expensive right now, there's already a market for them in servers and workstations which will only grow as prices drop and speeds increase. In fact, I'm sitting here right now using 2 of 8 cores on my workstation because a RAID 0 HDD array can't supply data quickly enough. My options to solve this are either buy a new machine with >100GB of RAM or add a $4000 PCI-e SSD. Neither of these are all that likely to happen as prices stand now, but I think SSD capacity/$ is going to outpace RAM for the foreseeable future.
In the US anyway, there are two different systems set up for this. Civil and criminal courts. Criminal courts are prosecuted by the state and the punishment is usually fines and/or jail time. The fines are retained by the state mostly to cover court costs and partially to discourage others from committing the same crime. The victim is usually able to sue in civil court independently to try to recover their losses. What has become an increasing problem is the tendency for civil cases to attempt to act as a deterrent by awarding damages that greatly exceed the original loss. It has mostly backfired, especially in the case of the RIAA. The excessive damages that have been awarded have given them a financial incentive to promote file sharing and then sue.
Hopefully, people will realize what's going on and limit damages to something more reasonable, but until then it's viable business strategy. (albeit an ethically dubious one)
So let me get this straight ... what you're saying is ... handing out guns to every random passer-by is a good way to teach gun safety and prevent murder by shooting?
That has to qualify as one of the most ignorant analogies I've ever seen.
It's more like putting up a billboard that says "The most widely used door lock on the market can be easily punched out with a captive bolt pistol"
Well, unless you "upgraded", they're forcing you to ignore all of their new offerings. I know I would definitely buy a few new games, probably the Move controller and a few things from the PSN store (DLC, PS1 games, MLBtv, etc.). But, apparently, preventing me from accessing the PSN keeps me from pirating things and Sony values that more.
it clearly says it is atom based. The thing is made out of atoms, but it does not say how many atoms for each processor.
So what element is atomic number 512? I thought they only went up to around 118.
The problem with Linux on consumer devices like that is this: Unless you make it like an embedded device, no updates and no plugging in anything non approved, then it will only work until the next update, because Linux from the kernel up is like the shifting sands and things that work today may not work tomorrow. I was talking on here just the other week with someone that bought one of the Dell Ubuntu netbooks. He gets it home, he updates it...can you guess what happened? No Sound and no wireless after the update!
Linux has great security, Linux has really nice looking UIs, what it needs now is some serious stability. It needs a stable driver ABI, it needs a way that retailers like me can actually sell your product without having to disable security just to make it usable. I ran Ubuntu on 4 machines, 3 desktops and a laptop, hoping against hope that they would get it right on the next release, but by 9.04 I simply gave up. Not once, not ever, did I get that damned OS to update without something breaking. wireless, sound, video, my printer, it got to the point I looked at the update notification as a "break your OS NOW!" button.
That's really strange. I've had a completely different experience. I'm posting from a laptop running Ubuntu 10.04 which I have had no trouble with through 3 or 4 upgrades and an uncountable number of updates (I originally installed either 8.04 or 8.10, can't remember which anymore). I've done the same with several other computers and only run into one issue (Pulseaudio).
Just look at how quick netbooks, which were supposed to usher in Linux on the desktop, were switched over to XP.
I'm not really sure why this happened. Linux netbooks were selling as fast as they could be built early on. I tried to buy one of the models that was around $199, but couldn't find them in stock anywhere. Although, I think Microsoft changing their pricing and hardware requirements for XP around that time frame definitely had an impact.
Hell even Canonical admitted Ubuntu netbooks had higher returns [laptopmag.com] which of course hurts any retailers bottom line.
The higher return rate is probably more of an issue of people not realizing that what they bought wasn't Windows. Microsoft has had such a hold on the market that to many people, if it doesn't have a start menu and a nice blue theme, it must not be a computer. The quality of the OS (not to say the custom images that the vendors came up with were all that great) wasn't really the issue.
As a retailer I'd like to sell your OS, I really would. But until I can take a bog standard AMD or Intel PC, install Ubuntu, run the updates, and have 100% of the hardware that worked before work after I run the update, then I just can't allow it in my shop. The time wasted trawling forums looking for "fixes" will cost me more than simply putting Windows Home on it. Sorry.
There's no OS out there that does what you're asking for. Although, I think some of the Linux distributions are far closer than XP. Linux hardware support is only lacking because some hardware manufacturers won't provide Linux drivers or publish the information needed so that an independent party can write one. Besides, Windows doesn't support much hardware out of the box either. I haven't had a fresh windows install yet where I didn't have to track down a driver or ten to get all of my hardware working. The difference is that the Linux hardware support issue is easily avoided by simply staying away from a handful of hardware vendors.
Again, I have no idea how you've been able to get updates to cause issues regularly on Ubuntu. Version upgrades sometimes have issues, but they're no more trouble than upgrading Windows service packs.
All I ask is that you evaluate Linux distributions with the same criteria as you use with Windows.
I could understand the argument that the market for x86 computers running Linux isn't big enough to warrant the effort of offering them, but I don't buy the claim that Windows is easier to deploy and support.
The ideology of science is that the methodology is a good one. There isn't much ideology, but it is non-zero. In order to conclude that the scientific method is a correct method for ascertaining truth, you first have to postulate that there is a persistent, objective reality, and that our senses bear some consistent relationship to it. That is moderately uncontroversial (at least today), but it is still a precondition to the conclusion that the scientific method is useful.
The scientific method is useful because it produces testable predictions. Science doesn't presuppose anything on "faith". The "assumptions" of causality and reality being objective are theories that are tested every day, and so far, are holding to be true. If this wasn't the case, our current theories would not hold up to scrutiny and new ones would have to be created.
Yes, this is a serious issue. I heard about an incident a while back in the area around South Park Colorado. An eight year old kid crashed a boat into a large beaver dam, flooding a nearby town.
Since it's highly unlikely that 1 will happen and 2 isn't desirable for those who value having both Other OS and PSN access over the cash, I propose a third option:
3. Restore full functionality to the owner by giving them a second PS3 and promise to never disable functionality again.
So Apple ultimately will let Microsoft kill it?
No, I think his death was meant as a metaphor for sacrifice. I interpreted it as a suggestion that Jobs should give up the thing he cherishes most, control, by releasing all Apple software as open source. When Microsoft attacks in an attempt to prevent him from undermining their business model, the public legal battle will draw the attention of federal regulators who bring an end to the Microsoft monopoly.
Wow, I didn't realize until now that the movie Gran Torino was a commentary on the software market.
There's a TED talk from last year on this subject from the lead researcher, Rebecca Saxe.
Actually, I can't think of a single seal of approval, or certification, that means anything.
How about FAA certification? There's extensive testing and verification required for commercial aircraft to be in compliance with the FAA regulations
I already have a device (Nokia N900) that has an 800x480 display with video output. I can say from experience that it is possible to watch on the small screen as long as you have a stable place to set it (holding it at arms length for 1.5+hrs would get tiring).
The real advantage is that I can carry about 15 or so movies with me on trips and all I need is a TV w/ RCA inputs to watch them at a reasonable size. The only thing keeping me from having a completely portable movie collection right now is storage space. Streaming a large collection of movies and TV like Netflix does would fill the gap until something the size of a phone can hold a few TB.
Since Minkowski's observation was based on work with special relativity, people presume is observation applies only for relativistic systems. Sorry, Nature is more consistent than that: one needs to think about spacetime always, even if it contributes squat.
So in other words, people assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.
I had the opposite experience. I flunked Calc 2 a couple of times at the nearby university (ASU) before taking it at the local community college (SCC) and passing with an A.
Isn't the solution to valuation of the credits to allocate them by auction?
The only reason these credits have value is due to a government imposed restriction on CO2 output. Whether the market value of these credits is determined by auction or by trade amongst major producers is irrelevant because the value will be based only on how the cap is implemented and how many credits are available.
In order to minimize the total cost to the economy, the price of the carbon credits should match the actual external costs of releasing carbon dioxide. If the credits are above this value, the carbon producing companies are needlessly limited and if the credits are valued below they will not capture the full cost. The value of the credits is easily controlled by adjusting the cap and number of credits available. The real problem is in determining what the actual external costs of carbon emissions are.
As you may be able to tell from the Wikipedia page on Economics of global warming , we have no clue what this cost really is.