Never underestimate the cluelessness of users. I had to deal with one yesterday asking "How do I open my computer?" It too a minute of negociating vocabulary before I could work out she was actually asking how to get up the explorer window to the 'my documents' folder, like she had seen me do on a previous visit. Before then, she'd always managed her files by opening Word, selecting Save As and dragging files around in that dialog.
And somewhere out there is a user with even less clue.
One of my jobs as an IT technician is to go around to every PC in the organisation twice a year to delete old profiles, clean temp, check it works, run ccleaner and defrag it. They run a lot faster after that... for a short time.
Science fiction technologies can be divided into two classes. Those which are merely incredibly difficult, and those to which the laws of physics have raised a comic middle finger to our dreams.
The former include interstellar travel, nano-assemblers, immortality and brain uploading. The latter perpetual motion, time travel, antigravity and anything faster than light. Anything in the first category you can hope will, one day, be achiveable... even though it may take centuries of advancement.
Exactly how it worked was never explained, but it was introduced through genetic manipulation and was entirely biological in nature. That was the reason for the split: One part of humanity embraced advanced genetic manipulation and artificial life, while the other part rejected it and focused on more traditional technology. The Edenists got living superstructure colonies and biological spacecraft, and were in general more advanced in all things space, but the Adamists had superior cybernetics by far. Edenists couldn't learn by downloading a book into their minds in a few seconds, as Adamists did.
The Edenist biological link, essentially a form of telepathy, might very well have worked through radio communcations. The books never said it did, and never said it didn't.
I think 1984 was off in one detail though. The oppressors of the looming future will be largely corporate, not governmental. The government will be involved, but even it may well end up merely doing the bidding of corporate rulers, passing and enforcing laws written by lobbyists.
There is also the problem of consistancy. The hive mind awakens, and... is it a democrat? is it a republican? It must be a democrat, that's what the minds say... but no, the other half says democrats are traitorous scum, only republicans can lead the country, even though republicans are militaristic and oppressive religious nuts... AGH! Too much conflict! Just from a two-party political system. Then the mind turns it's throughts to religion - and suddenly has a million different beliefs, all contradictory, and all of which some of it's components believe to be absolutly true beyond debate... and a lot of those components belive anyone who disagrees is a heretic against God and the worst creature imaginable.
Five minutes after activation, the Collective destroys itsself in a fit of self-loathing.
I would like to make a prediction, too! In a hundred years, computers will commonly be either implanted or so compact as to be effectively hidden (Think projectors in glasses with an EEG or subvocal input). This isn't going to lead to much in the way of telepathic revolutions, but it will result in the arrival of continuous intensive multitasking - people who are checking facebook, playing Farmville 2111 and looking at porn constantly even at work or during conversation. Their apparent inattentiveness in reality may earn them an insulting name like 'network zombie.'
Not true. You can very nearly divide a human brain in two by cutting the corpus callosum, and it still works. Sort of. Function is greatly impaired, but it's not fatal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain
I rate this troll an F. It's just not up to a good standard of trolling. It's amateur at best, and I would go so far as to call it incompetent. A disgrace to trolls everywhere.
Giving an incredibly simplified equasion, power consumption is directly proportional to clock frequency, and proportional to the square of the voltage.
I went into uni on a three year computer networking program.
When I reached the third year, the focus changed - less technology, more management. Development processes, project management, team management. They had me studying personality testing methodology.
I lasted about two months before having a breakdown and dropping out. Now I work as an IT technician, making nowhere near as much money as I'd like - and probably staying there, because moving up in the pay grade means moving into management, where I would be quite incompetent.
That was practically dignified. One job I applied for required applicants fill in a personality test on the website - if you didn't pass that, it wouldn't even let you apply.
I think the current situation is that HR is overwhelmed. Partly due to the current recession and associated unemployment, but mostly due to the rise of online applications. Applying for a job used to take an hour at least filling in forms, and now it's five minutes to print out your standard application letter - or five seconds to click the button online. This means the HR people had to find ways to sort through the application-spam - and they have, with filters, or by putting less time into evaluating applications.
I'm sure a few places just take the first day's worth for consideration, and throw all the ones that come later straight into the bin.
Growth in some places. There comes a point when an economy goes beyond providing essentials, beyond even providing luxuries, and into the region of consumption for it's own sake. You buying a new laptop isn't going to do very much to buy clean water for the peasents of Elbonia.
They will fix it. Not out of concern for the security of their users, but their control. Full memory access would be a great gift for anyone trying to break a DRM scheme. Apple go so far as to program a lock into their developer tools that prevents them being used to debug iTunes - I imagine they'll want to disable the memory-via-thunderrbolt for the same reason.
The feature does occasionally have some uses. Mostly in the area of debugging or when reverse-engineering software.
Slashdot Mirror
Never underestimate the cluelessness of users. I had to deal with one yesterday asking "How do I open my computer?" It too a minute of negociating vocabulary before I could work out she was actually asking how to get up the explorer window to the 'my documents' folder, like she had seen me do on a previous visit. Before then, she'd always managed her files by opening Word, selecting Save As and dragging files around in that dialog.
And somewhere out there is a user with even less clue.
One of my jobs as an IT technician is to go around to every PC in the organisation twice a year to delete old profiles, clean temp, check it works, run ccleaner and defrag it. They run a lot faster after that... for a short time.
What descriptions would those be? And only true antigravity counts - spinning something or accelerating will be considered cheating.
Science fiction technologies can be divided into two classes. Those which are merely incredibly difficult, and those to which the laws of physics have raised a comic middle finger to our dreams.
The former include interstellar travel, nano-assemblers, immortality and brain uploading. The latter perpetual motion, time travel, antigravity and anything faster than light. Anything in the first category you can hope will, one day, be achiveable... even though it may take centuries of advancement.
I'm not sure where tractor beams fall.
"A person could easily steal a phone from someone else and use it until it's deactivated, then steal another"
I gather this method is already used by drug dealers and such organised criminals.
I know what it means. I was making fun of the awkward language.
I give it two days from release to the 'naked patch' hitting the internet.
WARNING: Objects in mirror are less attractive than they appear.
Exactly how it worked was never explained, but it was introduced through genetic manipulation and was entirely biological in nature. That was the reason for the split: One part of humanity embraced advanced genetic manipulation and artificial life, while the other part rejected it and focused on more traditional technology. The Edenists got living superstructure colonies and biological spacecraft, and were in general more advanced in all things space, but the Adamists had superior cybernetics by far. Edenists couldn't learn by downloading a book into their minds in a few seconds, as Adamists did. The Edenist biological link, essentially a form of telepathy, might very well have worked through radio communcations. The books never said it did, and never said it didn't.
I think 1984 was off in one detail though. The oppressors of the looming future will be largely corporate, not governmental. The government will be involved, but even it may well end up merely doing the bidding of corporate rulers, passing and enforcing laws written by lobbyists.
There is also the problem of consistancy. The hive mind awakens, and... is it a democrat? is it a republican? It must be a democrat, that's what the minds say... but no, the other half says democrats are traitorous scum, only republicans can lead the country, even though republicans are militaristic and oppressive religious nuts... AGH! Too much conflict! Just from a two-party political system. Then the mind turns it's throughts to religion - and suddenly has a million different beliefs, all contradictory, and all of which some of it's components believe to be absolutly true beyond debate... and a lot of those components belive anyone who disagrees is a heretic against God and the worst creature imaginable.
Five minutes after activation, the Collective destroys itsself in a fit of self-loathing.
I would like to make a prediction, too! In a hundred years, computers will commonly be either implanted or so compact as to be effectively hidden (Think projectors in glasses with an EEG or subvocal input). This isn't going to lead to much in the way of telepathic revolutions, but it will result in the arrival of continuous intensive multitasking - people who are checking facebook, playing Farmville 2111 and looking at porn constantly even at work or during conversation. Their apparent inattentiveness in reality may earn them an insulting name like 'network zombie.'
If you record the eye movements too, you can compensate. But the resolution would suck outside of the fovea.
Not true. You can very nearly divide a human brain in two by cutting the corpus callosum, and it still works. Sort of. Function is greatly impaired, but it's not fatal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain
"Evidence obtained illegally may be excluded from the exclusionary rule"
Legalese: Where a double negative can... er... what now?
I rate this troll an F. It's just not up to a good standard of trolling. It's amateur at best, and I would go so far as to call it incompetent. A disgrace to trolls everywhere.
Giving an incredibly simplified equasion, power consumption is directly proportional to clock frequency, and proportional to the square of the voltage.
I went into uni on a three year computer networking program.
When I reached the third year, the focus changed - less technology, more management. Development processes, project management, team management. They had me studying personality testing methodology.
I lasted about two months before having a breakdown and dropping out. Now I work as an IT technician, making nowhere near as much money as I'd like - and probably staying there, because moving up in the pay grade means moving into management, where I would be quite incompetent.
That was practically dignified. One job I applied for required applicants fill in a personality test on the website - if you didn't pass that, it wouldn't even let you apply.
I think the current situation is that HR is overwhelmed. Partly due to the current recession and associated unemployment, but mostly due to the rise of online applications. Applying for a job used to take an hour at least filling in forms, and now it's five minutes to print out your standard application letter - or five seconds to click the button online. This means the HR people had to find ways to sort through the application-spam - and they have, with filters, or by putting less time into evaluating applications.
I'm sure a few places just take the first day's worth for consideration, and throw all the ones that come later straight into the bin.
Five years, or one drop while spinning. Laptops are obviously more prone to being dropped.
Growth in some places. There comes a point when an economy goes beyond providing essentials, beyond even providing luxuries, and into the region of consumption for it's own sake. You buying a new laptop isn't going to do very much to buy clean water for the peasents of Elbonia.
"being the default was helping IE"
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
They will fix it. Not out of concern for the security of their users, but their control. Full memory access would be a great gift for anyone trying to break a DRM scheme. Apple go so far as to program a lock into their developer tools that prevents them being used to debug iTunes - I imagine they'll want to disable the memory-via-thunderrbolt for the same reason.
The feature does occasionally have some uses. Mostly in the area of debugging or when reverse-engineering software.
I recall encountering one. Just one, a sound card, for which a driver was found.
And it didn't work.
D. Or they could just use lax security, then totally destroy the life of anyone stupid enough to exploit it until the hackers learn not to try.