Which is why it irks me to no end, when I log in as administrator on a Windows-box and tell it to please terminate a given process, and it does not. Not until you've told it to do that three times and waited for minutes anyway.
Or I tell it to delete a file, and it tells me I "can't" do that, because the file is "open". I don't want to fiddle with that shit. I know what I'm doing, I want the OS to get out of my way and just bloody do what I tell it to do. Which Windows won't.
And yes, I am -fully- aware of the WHY. The underlying reason is a weakness in the "file" metaphor used on Windows, but that's not much of an excuse. (on unix a "file" is a chunk of bytes with zero-or-more names. On Windows a "file" is a chunk of bytes with -precisely- ONE name) (okay, that ignores character and block-devices and fifos, but don't be nitpicky here...)
I want to be able to install a update, yet NOT reboot anytime during the next 4 hours. Yes, I'm fully aware that program FOO may then fail to work properly until I finally do reboot, I STILL don't want to reboot now. And I'd much prefer if the OS could refrain from nagging every 15 minutes about that....
Actually, Fligth-Data-Recorders are generally placed in the tail-section of aircraft because that is the placement with the highest chance of successful recovery, and crash-survival.
But even if it wasn't, a pierce-test is part of the testing-procedure these things need to survive to be approved. They have a heavy, sharp metal-spear dropped on them from considerable heigth, and need to work afterwards.
Also, most of the metal in an aircraft is ligthweigth aluminum. It is strong for its mass, but it is not very hard. It is -quite- difficult to pierce half-inch thick stainless steel with a piece of aluminum, even if you deliberately try.
That's a good point, but in that case, wouldn't it be more sensible to specify it in terms of total storage-capacity ?
A device with capacity for 3 hours of data may not want to record for more than 10 minutes after a powerloss, but it makes little sense to restrict the recording to a max of 11 minutes after powerloss if a better device has capacity for 48 hours of data. (in that case recording for say 1-2 hours after powerloss is more likely to be optimal)
"Devices should be capable of continuing recording for atleast 10 minutes without external power. Devices should not write to more than 10% of internal storage-capacity without being supplied external power."
Sure it's personal, it doesn't tell much about the person though, other than some names sometimes giving imperfect hints as to cultural background.
It makes no difference to stalking though. The *huge* majority of stalkers already know the precise name of the target, simply because the typical stalker is either an ex-friend, ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend or other person you know, or alternatively someone stalking a public figure.
It's fairly rare that some random person suddenly starts stalking a random person they see on the street. And even if they did, after following someone home and rummaging in trash and mailboxes, I'd say in the huge majority of cases they'd learn the name anyway.
Just out of curiosity, do you also turn on your paranoia whenever a pal of you shout your name across a crowded street or a room in a bar or whatever ?
Worse yet, if the deprecation-rate is 5% a year, will $1 invested towards bringing unobtanium from that distant star bring more of it than investing $11 here on earth, or in this solar-system ?
Deprecation means that if something takes a long time, it must be VERY productive to pay off.
I remember that one. They somehow completely forgot to factor in that though cryosleep may help in shortening the travel-time to acceptable levels, it'll do nothing to the deprecation of investments, thus the entire thing would never pay off.
I seem to recall that the medical research was a little sloppy too.
True. But "hard enough" is subject to the packaging. Package a chip in 3 inches of elastic-but-hard epoxy, and package that clumb of epoxy in half an inch of stainless steel, and you'll find that the "hard enough" dropping, needed to fracture the silicon, is much MUCH more than the terminal velocity of same (i.e. it'll likely survive a freefall from ANY height)
They are shot from air-cannons and hit concrete-walls at 900mph. They have sharp, heavy objects dropped on them from large heigths. They are soaked in gasoline and set on fire, they are immersed in sea-water pressurised to the level you'd have a thousands of feet.
Contrary to your claims, solid-state storage is actually able to pass these tests. The lack of moving parts make it much easier to armor the thing. It is -quite- hard to physically shatter a solid-state chip that is encased in 3 inches of elastic but hard epoxy, which is again inside of a solid steel shell. Embedding a working electric motor and tape-reel in epoxy isn't quite so simple...
Not really. That would imply that a device was out-of-spec if it somehow managed to record for MORE than 11 minutes without being supplied external power. I see no sensible reason for such a prohibition.
It'd be gambling, all trade is offcourse, but the uncertanity rises sharply with rising timespans.
Also, there's the problem that $1 today is worth more than $1 delivered in 10 years, how much more depend on your deprecation-rate, but even at miniscule deprecation (which would only be possible in a stagnant economy) long time-periods means that the trade must be monumentally profitable for it to be worthwhile.
If there exists a place where gold is $1/lb, shipping it to earth for a shipping-cost of $0 is still not worthwhile if the shipping takes 2 millenium and your rate of deprecation is 5% annually. 1.02^1000*$1 = $398 million -- which is a lot more than that 1lb of gold is worth on earth.
And notice these are optimistic estimates, a shipping-cost of $0 is hardly realistic, and neither is 2% a year deprecation, 5% a year is more like it...
The only kind of trade I can see is trade of information among star-systems within say 10 light-years of aoneanother. Even then, it'll be of the kind "send some info, hope you get a worthwhile response in 20 years, if so, repeat"
That's true. But I have an -added- reason for caring more about the gigabytes of personal information.
People are really REALLY good at ignoring things that aren't IN-THEIR-FACE. When the government proposes to make a new database, which shall store when and for how long anyone telephones anyone else, and the same for email, IM, and all other forms of electronic communication, initially there's an outrage. (I wish this was a fictious example -- sadly it's not)
After a while people forget about it. It's not something they see or that inconvenience them in their everyday life, so they stop questioning it and go on with their lives. Part of it is probably a survival-tecnique, you can't spend ALL your energy figthing windmills if you want to live happily.
So, stuff that people notice have a much bigger chance of remaining scrutinized. 5 years from now, everyone will still be aware that you can't bring a can of Coke on a plane. Many of them will completely have forgotten that for the plane at all to be allowed to land on US soil, the government demands a SHITLOAD of information on all the passenger.
They want to know when you bought your ticket. Your name, address, sex and birthdate. Who you're traveling with. Your frequent-flyer status. If you've got a return-ticket or single. If you paid with credit-card, cheque or cash. If you bougth the ticket online, in a travel-agency or ordered by phone. How many pieces of checked-in luggage you have. The expiry-date of your credit-card (assuming you paid by creditcard), etc etc etc etc.
They KEEP all this information for a undisclosed (likely infinite) time. And use it to compile secret lists according to secret criteria of people who're not allowed to fly. They may use it for other purposes to, and likely are, but they're not telling. All this happens without the average passenger even -NOTICING- it.
Honestly, being unable to bring the can of Coke is just an inconvenience. The above really is MUCH worse.
True. Should've added "easy and cheap backups" to the list of advantages.
Neither list was complete anyway, just an attempt at illustrating that eBooks are superior in some ways, and inferior in other ways.
I've been wondering about that too. In -theory- for example Norway has much less complete separation of church and state compared to USA. We even have non-neutral language in our constitution, which is a complete disgrace if you ask me.
However, in *practice* Norway is nevertheless a lot MORE secular than USA, religion is a fringe interest-group here, not a MAJOR issue like it is in USA. It is completely unimaginable that, for example, the teaching of evolution would be controversial, that violence would be threathened against doctors who carry out abortions, or any such thing.
Largely, despite the laws, religion is considered a private matter of no real relevance to public policy.
As you just pointed out, Ebooks -are- infact superior to wood-pulp books in some ways, and inferior in other ways.
As long as that remains so, they will suceed in some uses and fail in others. Notice how wood-pulp books are unlikely to improve much over the next few decades but Ebooks are certain to do so though, this likely means that ebooks will get more popular over time.
Advantages:
Can be read in darkness
Saves space physically.
Free when the content is. (there is much free content)
Cheaper than paper to buy content.
Search, bookmarks, annotations, integration of errata
Instant availability of content wherever there is a net-connection.
User-selectable font-sizes (good for people with poor eyesight)
I don't just write to them. I discuss with them on mailing-lists, I participate in political think-tanks, I am an active member of EFF and the Norwegian branch, Efn. When I'm PARTICULARILY opinionated on a topic I pick up the phone and TALK to the relevant politicians about it. (a luxury of living in a small country: You can actually talk to the actual people)
I'm all with you. Stuff like this only happens because too many care too little, or atleast DO too little.
Even a full swimming-suit does next to nothing to hide body-shape, it's just a single thin layer of generally thight-fitting fabric, afterall.
I guess some people don't go to the beach at all, because they don't want anyone to see their body-shape. Fair enough. My argument wasn't that this is completely harmless. My argument was that the many other abuses we currently suffer are even worse.
But that isn't the choice you get. You get CLAIMS of increased security that are hard to evaluate fairly. For a factor that is already ignorable on the list of death-risks you're facing. In exchange for severe limits to your freedom.
Would you live in a polstered faraday-cage cell, and NEVER leave it, to avoid the (real!) 0.001% chance that you'll be killed by ligthning ?
There is some level where the trade-off may be worth it. This ain't it.
Yeah. People are bad at statistics, so stuff like that happens.
A large procentual change to a TINY risk can indeed be completely ignorable, whereas a moderate change to a high-risk can be worth doing something about.
How many lives would have been saved in USA over the last 30 years if terrorist-attacks on US soil where halved ?
How does that number compare with the number of lives saved over the last 30 years if car-accidents where down by 10% ?
The page says a plastic-bag tends to concentrate vapors, giving chemical sniffers more of a figthing chance than without. Fair enough, and a quite different claim from looking for visible condensation, which REALLY won't work unless the terrorists are AMAZINGLY inept.
Current screenings fail to ensure that nobody brings any weapons. Did you read the report where testers (employed by the airlines) tried taking 40 different plane-rides carrying concealed weapons of various sorts (mostly guns and knifes), two thirds of them came trough.
This also ignores the fact that a broken vodka-bottle is not as a weapon -that- much less threathening than the weaponry employed in 9/11.
It also ignores the -cost- of the screenings. I don't mean just the manpower to do them, also the inconvenience, the various problems and the invasion of privacy.
As for "nobody has asked for your opinion", that's nonsense. I live in a democracy, I participate in the debate. Both are most definitely asked for. And if any politician do -not- wish for that kind of participation, then that in itself would be a strong argument for tossing him/her.
I didn't mean to categorize you, I don't know you so I couldn't possibly. I apologize if you read it that way, that was not my intention.
I meant you as in the collective you, as in the general American public. I thougth this was obvious, because certainly the individual you did not write thousands of articles on the naked boobie, but the collective you, as in the general US public equally obviously, did.
I said I don't particularily care very much, not that I find it super. I too would prefer a world free of forced strips. It's just that, like I said, my priorities are oposite; I consider storing gigabytes of personal data for decades a much LARGER problem than somehow getting a glimpse of a naked person.
It's not -THE- main flaw, but it's a serious flaw.
In general, when we choose to enact, or not, new laws, we should weigh the benefits against the drawbacks.
Being completely unenforcable outside a totalitarian police-state is a serious drawback for a law, it means in practice that only the honest, the ones you'd get no trouble from anyway, will obey it, the rest will ignore it. So, you'll "catch" the innocents and let the "guilty" go free, which is a pretty serious flaw in any law in my opinion.
This suggested law is completely braindead for aproximately 100 reasons, unenforcability is just one of those, and not really the most serious one.
Atleast in Europe they would. Conditions say, you check in atleast 30 (45 for abroad) minutes prior to your scheduled departure-time. Assuming you make -that- time-limit, the airplane is liable if you still miss your plane.
Which is logical, the security-check-people are (indirectly) hired by them afterall, if they want to they can hire more people and handle more people in parallell to make the lines shorter.
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Me too, at work anyway.
Which is why it irks me to no end, when I log in as administrator on a Windows-box and tell it to please terminate a given process, and it does not. Not until you've told it to do that three times and waited for minutes anyway.
Or I tell it to delete a file, and it tells me I "can't" do that, because the file is "open". I don't want to fiddle with that shit. I know what I'm doing, I want the OS to get out of my way and just bloody do what I tell it to do. Which Windows won't.
And yes, I am -fully- aware of the WHY. The underlying reason is a weakness in the "file" metaphor used on Windows, but that's not much of an excuse. (on unix a "file" is a chunk of bytes with zero-or-more names. On Windows a "file" is a chunk of bytes with -precisely- ONE name) (okay, that ignores character and block-devices and fifos, but don't be nitpicky here...)
I want to be able to install a update, yet NOT reboot anytime during the next 4 hours. Yes, I'm fully aware that program FOO may then fail to work properly until I finally do reboot, I STILL don't want to reboot now. And I'd much prefer if the OS could refrain from nagging every 15 minutes about that....
Actually, Fligth-Data-Recorders are generally placed in the tail-section of aircraft because that is the placement with the highest chance of successful recovery, and crash-survival.
But even if it wasn't, a pierce-test is part of the testing-procedure these things need to survive to be approved. They have a heavy, sharp metal-spear dropped on them from considerable heigth, and need to work afterwards.
Also, most of the metal in an aircraft is ligthweigth aluminum. It is strong for its mass, but it is not very hard. It is -quite- difficult to pierce half-inch thick stainless steel with a piece of aluminum, even if you deliberately try.
That's a good point, but in that case, wouldn't it be more sensible to specify it in terms of total storage-capacity ?
A device with capacity for 3 hours of data may not want to record for more than 10 minutes after a powerloss, but it makes little sense to restrict the recording to a max of 11 minutes after powerloss if a better device has capacity for 48 hours of data. (in that case recording for say 1-2 hours after powerloss is more likely to be optimal)
"Devices should be capable of continuing recording for atleast 10 minutes without external power. Devices should not write to more than 10% of internal storage-capacity without being supplied external power."
Sure it's personal, it doesn't tell much about the person though, other than some names sometimes giving imperfect hints as to cultural background.
It makes no difference to stalking though. The *huge* majority of stalkers already know the precise name of the target, simply because the typical stalker is either an ex-friend, ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend or other person you know, or alternatively someone stalking a public figure.
It's fairly rare that some random person suddenly starts stalking a random person they see on the street. And even if they did, after following someone home and rummaging in trash and mailboxes, I'd say in the huge majority of cases they'd learn the name anyway.
Just out of curiosity, do you also turn on your paranoia whenever a pal of you shout your name across a crowded street or a room in a bar or whatever ?
Worse yet, if the deprecation-rate is 5% a year, will $1 invested towards bringing unobtanium from that distant star bring more of it than investing $11 here on earth, or in this solar-system ?
Deprecation means that if something takes a long time, it must be VERY productive to pay off.
I remember that one. They somehow completely forgot to factor in that though cryosleep may help in shortening the travel-time to acceptable levels, it'll do nothing to the deprecation of investments, thus the entire thing would never pay off.
I seem to recall that the medical research was a little sloppy too.
True. But "hard enough" is subject to the packaging. Package a chip in 3 inches of elastic-but-hard epoxy, and package that clumb of epoxy in half an inch of stainless steel, and you'll find that the "hard enough" dropping, needed to fracture the silicon, is much MUCH more than the terminal velocity of same (i.e. it'll likely survive a freefall from ANY height)
These things are tested, severly.
They are shot from air-cannons and hit concrete-walls at 900mph. They have sharp, heavy objects dropped on them from large heigths. They are soaked in gasoline and set on fire, they are immersed in sea-water pressurised to the level you'd have a thousands of feet.
Contrary to your claims, solid-state storage is actually able to pass these tests. The lack of moving parts make it much easier to armor the thing. It is -quite- hard to physically shatter a solid-state chip that is encased in 3 inches of elastic but hard epoxy, which is again inside of a solid steel shell. Embedding a working electric motor and tape-reel in epoxy isn't quite so simple...
Not really. That would imply that a device was out-of-spec if it somehow managed to record for MORE than 11 minutes without being supplied external power. I see no sensible reason for such a prohibition.
It'd be gambling, all trade is offcourse, but the uncertanity rises sharply with rising timespans.
Also, there's the problem that $1 today is worth more than $1 delivered in 10 years, how much more depend on your deprecation-rate, but even at miniscule deprecation (which would only be possible in a stagnant economy) long time-periods means that the trade must be monumentally profitable for it to be worthwhile.
If there exists a place where gold is $1/lb, shipping it to earth for a shipping-cost of $0 is still not worthwhile if the shipping takes 2 millenium and your rate of deprecation is 5% annually. 1.02^1000*$1 = $398 million -- which is a lot more than that 1lb of gold is worth on earth.
And notice these are optimistic estimates, a shipping-cost of $0 is hardly realistic, and neither is 2% a year deprecation, 5% a year is more like it...
The only kind of trade I can see is trade of information among star-systems within say 10 light-years of aoneanother. Even then, it'll be of the kind "send some info, hope you get a worthwhile response in 20 years, if so, repeat"
That's true. But I have an -added- reason for caring more about the gigabytes of personal information.
People are really REALLY good at ignoring things that aren't IN-THEIR-FACE. When the government proposes to make a new database, which shall store when and for how long anyone telephones anyone else, and the same for email, IM, and all other forms of electronic communication, initially there's an outrage. (I wish this was a fictious example -- sadly it's not)
After a while people forget about it. It's not something they see or that inconvenience them in their everyday life, so they stop questioning it and go on with their lives. Part of it is probably a survival-tecnique, you can't spend ALL your energy figthing windmills if you want to live happily.
So, stuff that people notice have a much bigger chance of remaining scrutinized. 5 years from now, everyone will still be aware that you can't bring a can of Coke on a plane. Many of them will completely have forgotten that for the plane at all to be allowed to land on US soil, the government demands a SHITLOAD of information on all the passenger.
They want to know when you bought your ticket. Your name, address, sex and birthdate. Who you're traveling with. Your frequent-flyer status. If you've got a return-ticket or single. If you paid with credit-card, cheque or cash. If you bougth the ticket online, in a travel-agency or ordered by phone. How many pieces of checked-in luggage you have. The expiry-date of your credit-card (assuming you paid by creditcard), etc etc etc etc.
They KEEP all this information for a undisclosed (likely infinite) time. And use it to compile secret lists according to secret criteria of people who're not allowed to fly. They may use it for other purposes to, and likely are, but they're not telling. All this happens without the average passenger even -NOTICING- it.
Honestly, being unable to bring the can of Coke is just an inconvenience. The above really is MUCH worse.
True. Should've added "easy and cheap backups" to the list of advantages. Neither list was complete anyway, just an attempt at illustrating that eBooks are superior in some ways, and inferior in other ways.
I've been wondering about that too. In -theory- for example Norway has much less complete separation of church and state compared to USA. We even have non-neutral language in our constitution, which is a complete disgrace if you ask me.
However, in *practice* Norway is nevertheless a lot MORE secular than USA, religion is a fringe interest-group here, not a MAJOR issue like it is in USA. It is completely unimaginable that, for example, the teaching of evolution would be controversial, that violence would be threathened against doctors who carry out abortions, or any such thing.
Largely, despite the laws, religion is considered a private matter of no real relevance to public policy.
As long as that remains so, they will suceed in some uses and fail in others. Notice how wood-pulp books are unlikely to improve much over the next few decades but Ebooks are certain to do so though, this likely means that ebooks will get more popular over time.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
You can sue anyone or anything you like.
I don't just write to them. I discuss with them on mailing-lists, I participate in political think-tanks, I am an active member of EFF and the Norwegian branch, Efn. When I'm PARTICULARILY opinionated on a topic I pick up the phone and TALK to the relevant politicians about it. (a luxury of living in a small country: You can actually talk to the actual people)
I'm all with you. Stuff like this only happens because too many care too little, or atleast DO too little.
Even a full swimming-suit does next to nothing to hide body-shape, it's just a single thin layer of generally thight-fitting fabric, afterall.
I guess some people don't go to the beach at all, because they don't want anyone to see their body-shape. Fair enough. My argument wasn't that this is completely harmless. My argument was that the many other abuses we currently suffer are even worse.
But that isn't the choice you get. You get CLAIMS of increased security that are hard to evaluate fairly. For a factor that is already ignorable on the list of death-risks you're facing. In exchange for severe limits to your freedom.
Would you live in a polstered faraday-cage cell, and NEVER leave it, to avoid the (real!) 0.001% chance that you'll be killed by ligthning ?
There is some level where the trade-off may be worth it. This ain't it.
Yeah. People are bad at statistics, so stuff like that happens.
A large procentual change to a TINY risk can indeed be completely ignorable, whereas a moderate change to a high-risk can be worth doing something about.
How many lives would have been saved in USA over the last 30 years if terrorist-attacks on US soil where halved ?
How does that number compare with the number of lives saved over the last 30 years if car-accidents where down by 10% ?
The page says a plastic-bag tends to concentrate vapors, giving chemical sniffers more of a figthing chance than without. Fair enough, and a quite different claim from looking for visible condensation, which REALLY won't work unless the terrorists are AMAZINGLY inept.
Current screenings fail to ensure that nobody brings any weapons. Did you read the report where testers (employed by the airlines) tried taking 40 different plane-rides carrying concealed weapons of various sorts (mostly guns and knifes), two thirds of them came trough.
This also ignores the fact that a broken vodka-bottle is not as a weapon -that- much less threathening than the weaponry employed in 9/11.
It also ignores the -cost- of the screenings. I don't mean just the manpower to do them, also the inconvenience, the various problems and the invasion of privacy.
As for "nobody has asked for your opinion", that's nonsense. I live in a democracy, I participate in the debate. Both are most definitely asked for. And if any politician do -not- wish for that kind of participation, then that in itself would be a strong argument for tossing him/her.
I didn't mean to categorize you, I don't know you so I couldn't possibly. I apologize if you read it that way, that was not my intention.
I meant you as in the collective you, as in the general American public. I thougth this was obvious, because certainly the individual you did not write thousands of articles on the naked boobie, but the collective you, as in the general US public equally obviously, did.
I said I don't particularily care very much, not that I find it super. I too would prefer a world free of forced strips. It's just that, like I said, my priorities are oposite; I consider storing gigabytes of personal data for decades a much LARGER problem than somehow getting a glimpse of a naked person.
It's not -THE- main flaw, but it's a serious flaw.
In general, when we choose to enact, or not, new laws, we should weigh the benefits against the drawbacks.
Being completely unenforcable outside a totalitarian police-state is a serious drawback for a law, it means in practice that only the honest, the ones you'd get no trouble from anyway, will obey it, the rest will ignore it. So, you'll "catch" the innocents and let the "guilty" go free, which is a pretty serious flaw in any law in my opinion.
This suggested law is completely braindead for aproximately 100 reasons, unenforcability is just one of those, and not really the most serious one.
Atleast in Europe they would. Conditions say, you check in atleast 30 (45 for abroad) minutes prior to your scheduled departure-time. Assuming you make -that- time-limit, the airplane is liable if you still miss your plane.
Which is logical, the security-check-people are (indirectly) hired by them afterall, if they want to they can hire more people and handle more people in parallell to make the lines shorter.