Megapixels are pretty meaningless nowadays. What makes a bigger difference is the lens and the sensor. All other things being equal (like skill of the photographer), you'll take better photos with an 8MP camera with a good lens and sensor than with a 24MP camera with a horrible lens and sensor. Unfortunately, MP is a nice number to toss out for people to ooh and aah over.
Rogue drones with a 100% false positive rate, would be a huge tragedy and a massive black eye for the responsible nation (likely the USA), but it wouldn't come close to wiping out humanity. As some point, the drone would need to refuel or reload. At that time, they would be shut down. Even if we armed the drones with nuclear weapons (in a MASSIVE display of stupidity), we would be more at risk from the escalating tensions triggering a nuclear war than we would be from the drones themselves wiping us out.
As much as robots/technology takes away many people's jobs, the job of "threaten mankind with extinction" remains firmly a human job. (I'm not sure whether to celebrate this or mourn this, though.)
Exactly. The first eBook reader (according to Wikipedia) was released in 2004 - twelve years ago. The Amazon Kindle (the most popular eBook reader right now) was first released in 2007 - only 9 years ago. Think about where computers were when they were nine years old. We didn't go from the first consumer model of a personal computer to smartphones in a decade or two. The first personal computer was released in 1981. (There were similar devices earlier, but the IBM Personal Computer coined the term.) That makes the PC 35 years old. When eBooks are 35 years old (in the year 2039), they'll likely match or exceed paper books in every way. Yes, there will still be a niche market for paper books, but eBooks will be the main method of publishing works.
Exactly this. I run a small computer help forum on the side. Two terrorists could easily create accounts and PM each other with plans to blow up something and I'd never ban their accounts because I'd never see the messages. Technically speaking, I can look in the database and read all of the messages, but I never do this unless there's some really out-of-the-ordinary event. I might have done this one time while looking into a troll account.
By the plantiff's argument, I'm providing aid to ISIS by running a forum that they could use to trade secret messages.
It is not aliens, fellow humans-person. All humans-persons such as myself knows that aliens does not exist. Aliens definitely ares not infiltrating your Internet to plan for global conquest. Let all of us humans-persons just ignore this and go on with our lives.
The big problem with living a long time is that your body deteriorates. I'm 41 and my body isn't what it was when I was 21. When I'm 61, I'm sure I'll be wishing I still had 41-year-old-me's body. But if I was 145? The problems I'd face simply because the human body doesn't handle that extreme level of aging well? I'm sure death would be preferable.
If you could guarantee me immortality with my body frozen at 21 (or even 41), I might jump at the chance. Yes, I might regret it when everyone I knew passed away, but I'd constantly be able to see what's coming up next an could forge new friendships. But aging to 145 seems too long for me. Not that I'm looking forward to death, but I have a feeling that I'd be eagerly waiting it way before I hit 145.
I'll second BackBlaze - but with the caveat of expecting your initial upload to take a long time depending on your Internet speeds. I have a 15/1 connection so the ~1TB that I wanted to back up took me about 8 months. (I couldn't use my full 1Mbps upstream bandwidth for backup traffic.) Now that this is done, however, it's pretty much automatic. New data gets written and the backup occurs. They even have an app you can use so you can access your data no matter where you are.
If you need to restore from backup, BackBlaze will ship you a thumb drive or external hard drive for a fee. The fee is refunded if you send the drive back (thus ensuring that people don't abuse this service) and it beats having to download TBs of data.
Besides BackBlaze, I back up everything on to two external hard drives. This way, if one drive blows, the other drive keeps the data safe. As another person posted, follow the 3-2-1 rule. 3 copies of the data (for me, 2 external HDs and 1 on BackBlaze), 2 different mediums (e.g. external HDD and cloud), and 1 copy offsite (e.g. BackBlaze or another cloud provider).
I'm normally the first one to defend Kindles. I love how easy and ubiquitous they made eBooks. However, I do agree that limiting eBooks to just Amazon sources isn't too bright. This thread has made me come to a decision regarding my first novel (to be published next month - shameless plug). It'll be available in paperback and Kindle versions as per usual book publishing methods (because, like it or not, that's where most people will buy the book from), but I'm also going to look into setting up a DRM-free option for people. Perhaps even a Pay-What-You-Like system.
If anyone has any recommendations for systems like this that an author (with a web development background) can put into place, I'd be interested in hearing them.
Back in middle school, I was so proud of myself when I figured out the thre rules to never losing a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. I've passed this down to my kids so now all our games end in ties.
Server companies sell servers that these pirates use, sue them also. Computer makers make computers that pirates use so sue them also. Networking companies provide the bandwidth for pirates to trade copyrighted files so sue them also. Hey, all of these things use electricity so let's sue the electric company also!
Our roof runs for about half a foot past the house. So the roof above the house is warm and melts the snow (see my explanation in the next paragraph) and the edge of the roof is cold and freezes it back to ice.
We have an upstairs room that was converted (from a previous owner) from attic space. We think that they insulated the former attic area poorly but redoing it would be highly expensive and time consuming. As is often the case (especially when your home is as old as the one we own), there are other more pressing concerns to deal with. So I keep raking the roof and putting panty-hose filled with ice melt (a certain kind we know won't damage the shingles) to minimize the ice dam problem. Still, melting from our upper roof onto a lower section of the roof causes ice to build up (quicker than any other area of the roof). It's on our list of Things We'd Like To Get Done One Day but finance-wise probably won't get tackled anytime soon.
Here in upstate NY, winters often mean that I need to get out our roof rake to pull snow off our roof. If I don't, ice dams form and then runoff from melting snow gets under our roof shingles and can get into our house. My questions for SolarCity would be: Would these solar shingles hold up to having a roof rake scraped across them? (It would be useless if I had to replace shingles every year due to roof raking damage.) Also, how would they handle snow melt getting under the shingles? Presumably, there will be wiring there. Would moisture under the shingles cause issues?
I know you're joking but Blackberry's problem was that they DID rule the world and thought that since they were on top they didn't need to make any changes - that the market would always clamor for what they offered because they ruled. By the time they actually faced reality, it was too late, they were a distant third behind Android and iOS, and were falling further behind. Had they not taken their being #1 for granted, they might have stayed on top, but hubris did them in.
Windows is just an also-ran whose company thought they could rule the mobile OS world because they dominate the desktop OS world.
They also will pad their cable TV numbers by pricing Internet Only plans above Internet+TV plans. So to save money, you need to be counted as a cable TV subscriber even if you put the box in your closet and never plug it in.
I'm not in Comcast territory, but I'm not much better off. Time Warner Cable... I mean Charter is my only high-speed wired option.
They have more information, but they don't have ALL of the information. Only when they have all of the information can they tighten their grip, crush down on those who oppose them, and serve you better.
(Anyone remember the Dinosaurs TV show? Fran convinces a store to accept returns and the owner remarks: "This is just the policy that will enable us to crush our competition, become a monopoly, and serve you better!" Basically this only with the government.)
The anti-vax nonsense seems to be equally from the right and left loonies. As a parent of a child with autism - and also as someone who is on the spectrum - It's infuriating when a major political candidate touts the "Vaccines Cause Autism" garbage.
The last time I checked, they got rid of it by allowing a pseudonym but requiring that the person choose a public name that included their real name. So I could be "Jason Levine (Pseudonym)", "Jason (Pseudonym)", "Pseudonym (Jason Levine)", etc. Not really helpful if you didn't want your real name publicized.
(Yes, I realize that there's something odd about me complaining about a real name policy when I use my real name on Slashdot. I signed up for this account years ago when I didn't care if my real name was out there. I don't want to sign up for a new account so this is one of the few accounts I use with my real name and I never directly reference my pseudonym account.)
The article I read about this mentioned that these 300,000 traffic lights are on the Internet and that's how Audi's going to receive the data. I'm hoping that the article had it wrong and these lights are just on some city intranet that Audi is going to gain access to. It would be very scary to have traffic lights online. How long would it take for someone to hack the traffic system and change all of the lights at random intervals. (Especially bad if those traffic lights happen to be hooked up to red light cameras that automatically issue fines.)
I really did like Google+ the best. My major beef with the service was their real name requirement. Had they gotten rid of that (maybe require real names on the account but let people use "public names" that could be pseudonyms), then I know that I and a lot of other people would have used the service more.
I had the same experience some years back. We went to Canada with my brother-in-law and his family. One the way back the agent asked us some rudimentary questions and then asked "And which one of you was born outside the US?" We sat there stunned for a few minutes because none of us were born outside the US and we were all trying to think of what we might have said to lead to this belief. Finally, we tentatively answered "none of us" and were allowed to pass.
It was the weirdest experience. It was as if the agent thought that one of us would raise his/her hand and say "I was born outside of the US and am trying to sneak in to commit massive acts of terrorism - oops, you caught me!"
AmiMoJo's comment puts it best: "The people complaining about this was a get-out-of-jail-free card. They want to be able to say "free speech" or "it's just a joke" or "words can't hurt you" to excuse any behaviour short of physical violence. Some even want to be able to say "religious freedom" to excuse discrimination.
Sorry, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. In most places courts recognize this, and laws against verbal harassment have been found to be compatible with the US 1st Amendment and European Convention on Human Rights."
In other words, you can't just say "Freedom of Speech" covers anything that comes out of your mouth. Just because Free Speech has limits doesn't mean it's not Free Speech anymore. There are just rules for where Free Speech ends. You can argue about where the line should be, but you can't argue that the line shouldn't exist at all.
Slashdot Mirror
"What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind."
- George Berkeley
Megapixels are pretty meaningless nowadays. What makes a bigger difference is the lens and the sensor. All other things being equal (like skill of the photographer), you'll take better photos with an 8MP camera with a good lens and sensor than with a 24MP camera with a horrible lens and sensor. Unfortunately, MP is a nice number to toss out for people to ooh and aah over.
Rogue drones with a 100% false positive rate, would be a huge tragedy and a massive black eye for the responsible nation (likely the USA), but it wouldn't come close to wiping out humanity. As some point, the drone would need to refuel or reload. At that time, they would be shut down. Even if we armed the drones with nuclear weapons (in a MASSIVE display of stupidity), we would be more at risk from the escalating tensions triggering a nuclear war than we would be from the drones themselves wiping us out.
As much as robots/technology takes away many people's jobs, the job of "threaten mankind with extinction" remains firmly a human job. (I'm not sure whether to celebrate this or mourn this, though.)
Easy solution: Buy a physical copy and a Kindle copy!
(I'm not just saying that because my first book is being published soon and I'd love to get double-royalties. Not at all!)
Exactly. The first eBook reader (according to Wikipedia) was released in 2004 - twelve years ago. The Amazon Kindle (the most popular eBook reader right now) was first released in 2007 - only 9 years ago. Think about where computers were when they were nine years old. We didn't go from the first consumer model of a personal computer to smartphones in a decade or two. The first personal computer was released in 1981. (There were similar devices earlier, but the IBM Personal Computer coined the term.) That makes the PC 35 years old. When eBooks are 35 years old (in the year 2039), they'll likely match or exceed paper books in every way. Yes, there will still be a niche market for paper books, but eBooks will be the main method of publishing works.
Exactly this. I run a small computer help forum on the side. Two terrorists could easily create accounts and PM each other with plans to blow up something and I'd never ban their accounts because I'd never see the messages. Technically speaking, I can look in the database and read all of the messages, but I never do this unless there's some really out-of-the-ordinary event. I might have done this one time while looking into a troll account.
By the plantiff's argument, I'm providing aid to ISIS by running a forum that they could use to trade secret messages.
It is not aliens, fellow humans-person. All humans-persons such as myself knows that aliens does not exist. Aliens definitely ares not infiltrating your Internet to plan for global conquest. Let all of us humans-persons just ignore this and go on with our lives.
And then CD/DVD/etc sales will drop, the industry will claim that this is due to piracy, and will call for harsher laws.
Or, more realistically, a big boycott will be called for, few will participate, and the industry won't even notice as they roll on by.
The big problem with living a long time is that your body deteriorates. I'm 41 and my body isn't what it was when I was 21. When I'm 61, I'm sure I'll be wishing I still had 41-year-old-me's body. But if I was 145? The problems I'd face simply because the human body doesn't handle that extreme level of aging well? I'm sure death would be preferable.
If you could guarantee me immortality with my body frozen at 21 (or even 41), I might jump at the chance. Yes, I might regret it when everyone I knew passed away, but I'd constantly be able to see what's coming up next an could forge new friendships. But aging to 145 seems too long for me. Not that I'm looking forward to death, but I have a feeling that I'd be eagerly waiting it way before I hit 145.
I'll second BackBlaze - but with the caveat of expecting your initial upload to take a long time depending on your Internet speeds. I have a 15/1 connection so the ~1TB that I wanted to back up took me about 8 months. (I couldn't use my full 1Mbps upstream bandwidth for backup traffic.) Now that this is done, however, it's pretty much automatic. New data gets written and the backup occurs. They even have an app you can use so you can access your data no matter where you are.
If you need to restore from backup, BackBlaze will ship you a thumb drive or external hard drive for a fee. The fee is refunded if you send the drive back (thus ensuring that people don't abuse this service) and it beats having to download TBs of data.
Besides BackBlaze, I back up everything on to two external hard drives. This way, if one drive blows, the other drive keeps the data safe. As another person posted, follow the 3-2-1 rule. 3 copies of the data (for me, 2 external HDs and 1 on BackBlaze), 2 different mediums (e.g. external HDD and cloud), and 1 copy offsite (e.g. BackBlaze or another cloud provider).
I'm normally the first one to defend Kindles. I love how easy and ubiquitous they made eBooks. However, I do agree that limiting eBooks to just Amazon sources isn't too bright. This thread has made me come to a decision regarding my first novel (to be published next month - shameless plug). It'll be available in paperback and Kindle versions as per usual book publishing methods (because, like it or not, that's where most people will buy the book from), but I'm also going to look into setting up a DRM-free option for people. Perhaps even a Pay-What-You-Like system.
If anyone has any recommendations for systems like this that an author (with a web development background) can put into place, I'd be interested in hearing them.
Back in middle school, I was so proud of myself when I figured out the thre rules to never losing a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. I've passed this down to my kids so now all our games end in ties.
Server companies sell servers that these pirates use, sue them also. Computer makers make computers that pirates use so sue them also. Networking companies provide the bandwidth for pirates to trade copyrighted files so sue them also. Hey, all of these things use electricity so let's sue the electric company also!
Our roof runs for about half a foot past the house. So the roof above the house is warm and melts the snow (see my explanation in the next paragraph) and the edge of the roof is cold and freezes it back to ice.
We have an upstairs room that was converted (from a previous owner) from attic space. We think that they insulated the former attic area poorly but redoing it would be highly expensive and time consuming. As is often the case (especially when your home is as old as the one we own), there are other more pressing concerns to deal with. So I keep raking the roof and putting panty-hose filled with ice melt (a certain kind we know won't damage the shingles) to minimize the ice dam problem. Still, melting from our upper roof onto a lower section of the roof causes ice to build up (quicker than any other area of the roof). It's on our list of Things We'd Like To Get Done One Day but finance-wise probably won't get tackled anytime soon.
Here in upstate NY, winters often mean that I need to get out our roof rake to pull snow off our roof. If I don't, ice dams form and then runoff from melting snow gets under our roof shingles and can get into our house. My questions for SolarCity would be: Would these solar shingles hold up to having a roof rake scraped across them? (It would be useless if I had to replace shingles every year due to roof raking damage.) Also, how would they handle snow melt getting under the shingles? Presumably, there will be wiring there. Would moisture under the shingles cause issues?
They'll call themselves Raspberry.
As a bonus, that'll be the sound they'll make when anyone reminds them of how they used to dominate the mobile phone market.
I know you're joking but Blackberry's problem was that they DID rule the world and thought that since they were on top they didn't need to make any changes - that the market would always clamor for what they offered because they ruled. By the time they actually faced reality, it was too late, they were a distant third behind Android and iOS, and were falling further behind. Had they not taken their being #1 for granted, they might have stayed on top, but hubris did them in.
Windows is just an also-ran whose company thought they could rule the mobile OS world because they dominate the desktop OS world.
They also will pad their cable TV numbers by pricing Internet Only plans above Internet+TV plans. So to save money, you need to be counted as a cable TV subscriber even if you put the box in your closet and never plug it in.
I'm not in Comcast territory, but I'm not much better off. Time Warner Cable... I mean Charter is my only high-speed wired option.
They have more information, but they don't have ALL of the information. Only when they have all of the information can they tighten their grip, crush down on those who oppose them, and serve you better.
(Anyone remember the Dinosaurs TV show? Fran convinces a store to accept returns and the owner remarks: "This is just the policy that will enable us to crush our competition, become a monopoly, and serve you better!" Basically this only with the government.)
The anti-vax nonsense seems to be equally from the right and left loonies. As a parent of a child with autism - and also as someone who is on the spectrum - It's infuriating when a major political candidate touts the "Vaccines Cause Autism" garbage.
The last time I checked, they got rid of it by allowing a pseudonym but requiring that the person choose a public name that included their real name. So I could be "Jason Levine (Pseudonym)", "Jason (Pseudonym)", "Pseudonym (Jason Levine)", etc. Not really helpful if you didn't want your real name publicized.
(Yes, I realize that there's something odd about me complaining about a real name policy when I use my real name on Slashdot. I signed up for this account years ago when I didn't care if my real name was out there. I don't want to sign up for a new account so this is one of the few accounts I use with my real name and I never directly reference my pseudonym account.)
The article I read about this mentioned that these 300,000 traffic lights are on the Internet and that's how Audi's going to receive the data. I'm hoping that the article had it wrong and these lights are just on some city intranet that Audi is going to gain access to. It would be very scary to have traffic lights online. How long would it take for someone to hack the traffic system and change all of the lights at random intervals. (Especially bad if those traffic lights happen to be hooked up to red light cameras that automatically issue fines.)
I really did like Google+ the best. My major beef with the service was their real name requirement. Had they gotten rid of that (maybe require real names on the account but let people use "public names" that could be pseudonyms), then I know that I and a lot of other people would have used the service more.
I had the same experience some years back. We went to Canada with my brother-in-law and his family. One the way back the agent asked us some rudimentary questions and then asked "And which one of you was born outside the US?" We sat there stunned for a few minutes because none of us were born outside the US and we were all trying to think of what we might have said to lead to this belief. Finally, we tentatively answered "none of us" and were allowed to pass.
It was the weirdest experience. It was as if the agent thought that one of us would raise his/her hand and say "I was born outside of the US and am trying to sneak in to commit massive acts of terrorism - oops, you caught me!"
AmiMoJo's comment puts it best: "The people complaining about this was a get-out-of-jail-free card. They want to be able to say "free speech" or "it's just a joke" or "words can't hurt you" to excuse any behaviour short of physical violence. Some even want to be able to say "religious freedom" to excuse discrimination.
Sorry, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. In most places courts recognize this, and laws against verbal harassment have been found to be compatible with the US 1st Amendment and European Convention on Human Rights."
In other words, you can't just say "Freedom of Speech" covers anything that comes out of your mouth. Just because Free Speech has limits doesn't mean it's not Free Speech anymore. There are just rules for where Free Speech ends. You can argue about where the line should be, but you can't argue that the line shouldn't exist at all.